CRIMES AND SUICIDES.

Auckland Star, Volume XVII, Issue 286, 4 December 1886, Page 5

CRIMES AND SUICIDES.

As the passengers by the morning train on the Northorn line at Invercargill were passing through Makarewa bush on Friday morning, November 11, they saw a man banging from a tree. This proved to be a settler named Michael Crowe, who lately went through the Bankruptcy Court and who had sought retuge from trouble in suicide.

Captain Hume,' Inspector of Prisons, having had his attention drawn to the increase of juvenile crime in Auckland, said that the same state of affairs prevails'in the centre of population in the South, and this year double the number of youths would appear as convicted of crime. It was hard to say v/hut was the cauee of this moral epidemic, as the State system of education ought to lessen and suppress crime among the youth of the colony. The shio Timaru, Captain Fullarton, 106 days from* London, arrived, at Wellington on Friday, November 19. Twelve days before, during a heavy gale, all hands were ordered to shorten sail. One of the crew refused, and the-mate, Mr Bowling, proceeded to fetch him from the forecastle, when the sailor struck the mate in tho left breast with a sheath knife, inflicting a terrible wound. He was about to make a second blow when another sailor secured the would-be murderer. From intelligence brought ashore there seems scarcely any hope of the mate's recovery.

About seven o'clock on Friday evening, November 12, Constable Kilkenny, while on duty in Queen - street, was informed by Mr Joseph Thomas, grocer, of Wakefield-street, that there was a man lying in the Park either dead or in a clyiDg condition. Accompanied by his informant the . constable hastened to the Park, aud just under the trees a little above the Bowen-Rtreet turn stile, and some half-dozen yards from the main path, he found a man lying on his face upon the graes. He appeared to be dead, and close beside him lay a bottle halffull of carbolic acid, and bearing the label " Poison," as well as the trade label of Mr Hudson, chemist. A messenger having been despatched for Dr. Haines, that gentleman arrived five minutes later, and after a brief examination of the body he pronounced life to have been extinct for fully an hour, After the body had been placed in the morgue it w»9 identified by John Sinclair (barman at the Waitemata Hotel) as being that of Henry George Woods, who had been boarding recently at that hostelry, Ib seems that deceased, who is about SO years of age, came to Auckland a short time since from the Waikato, where he had been gumdigaing for three or four mouths previously. Before going to the Waikato, he had boarded at the Waitemata for some four months. He Tfaa a single man, and was believed to bo well-connected at Home, as he had been in the habit of receiving remittances, and notice of a registered letter is lying at the hotel for him. He came out to tho colony by the Kimutaka in March last. The body was welldressed, and smelt strongly of carbolic acid, while in the pockets the constable found two £1 note?, a threepenny bit, a silver watch, puree, pipe", knife, and pencil case.