News from All Quarters

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 130, 2 June 1923, Page 19

News from All Quarters

4» The "Berliner Tageblatt" reports that Prince Slgismuud, son of Prince Henry (the ex-Kaiser's brother), who Is representing a Hamburg coffee Importing linn in South America, is being joined by his wife, Princess Charlotte Agnes, who has already started on her voyage. At the inquest at Barrow, on David Phillips, who committed suicide by gas poisoning, a letter was read ln which he 6ald he tried to commit suicide ten years ago, on which occasion he wns run over and lost a leg. -Subsequently ho tried to poison himself, and then again to gas himself, but all attempts failed. THE WIDOW'S WASHING. Seeing a widowed charwoman carrying With difficulty a basket of clothes home for washing at Durham, Alderman Arthur Pattlson, ex-mayor, offered hia assistance. A few moments later they met Bishop Weldon strolling along the river bank. He also offered relp, and the bishop and the alderman, each holding a handle, carried the basket a quarter of a mile to the widow's homo. ROYAL CASTLE RENTED. The Duchess of Parma, mother of the tx-Empress Zlta, has let tho ancient family castle at Schwarzau, near Vienna, to a company, which Is establishing there a boarding house for excursionists. The castle contains priceless antique furniture, magnificent halls and State rooms, the doors decorated with the lily emblems of the Bourbons, to which the Parmas belong. UNCLE-STEPFATHER. Francis Chappie, who gave evidence at an Islington inquest on nnother man named Chappie, said that tho dead man was his stepfather. The Coroner: Your surnames are the «ame. Chapplo : My mother first married his brother, and when he died she married this man. The Coroner: Then this man was both your stepfather and your uncle. AFTER EIGHTEEN YEARS. A Sheffield jury assessed damages at £100 in a breach of promise action in which judgment had been obtained by Miss May Prouting, Sheffield, against Hyman Spier, a cutlery factor. Mr. Arthur Neal, for Miss Prouting, said ■he became engaged to Mr. Spier in 1903 or 1904, but for IS years he had made excuses for not marrying her. She called on him one day when he was ill and found another woman sitting with her arms round his neck, calling him endearing names. MONKEY FINED FOR SMOKING. Performing animals run some risk in tho United States. Some time ago a chimpanzee gave a performance at South Bend, Ind., and among other tricks, smoked a cigarette. As soon as he lit up, a policeman stepped forward and demanded the animal's name ln order that a summons might be issued against him for infringing a law of the Indiana Legislature against cigarette smoking. In court the following day it -_s pleaded that the chimpanzee could hardly be expected to know the extern of (his guilt, but the magistrate ruled that ignorance was no excuse for lawbreaking, and fined the defendant five dollars, which was paid by his trainer. FATAL ANNIVERSARY. It was brooding over the anniversary Of her lover's death in a submarine disaster that caused Miss Beryl Western to •hoot herself at Earl's Court. ■This was brought out by the evidence of her father. Colonel Western, at the inquest, and the jury returned a verdict of suicide whilst of unsound mind. Colonel Western said his daughter had •altered from insomnia about a month ago, when she wj>s upset by the recollection of her loss, and this led to depression of spirits. She had no other worries, and had never threatened to take her life. The automatic pistol with which iMiss Western killed herself, said her father, was given her by her fiance before he went •way on his last cruise. COSTLY CRICKET BALL. What is probably.the most costly cricket ball in the world is in the possession of a wealthy tradesman In Melbourne. It Is mounted on ebony and shielded By a glass case, and Its value is placed at £20, although five times that amount would not buy it. Its owner left England thirty years ago and arrived in Australia with £5 and the cricket ball, which had been presented to him by the members of a cricket club to which he had belonged. In the middle of the ball £20 was placed. The recipient of the gift promised that he would not open the ball until he was reduced to his last penny. On his arrival at Melbourne he obtained work, and from that day to this tie has never been forced to rob the ball of its treasure. FIRST RAILWAY TICKET. Probably not one in ten thousand pas•engers ever gives a thought to the man Who' Invented the railway ticket. Possibly there are still a few railway passengers who remember that the early tickets were like the coach bills which Were given as vouchers, showing that a passenger had paid his fare. Like many other useful devices, they were a product of the North of England. The first tickets were made in 1536 by Thomas Edmondson, a Lancashire Quaker, who was appointed st'ationmaster at Brampton (then called Mlllon), on the Newcastle and Carlisle railway. He printed a ticket rather smaller than the one we use now, in a machine of his own making. Later he invented a rack fot containing and issuing the tickets in sequence of their numbers, and then per.fected a date-stamping machine. Developments of these machines are In use all over the country to-day. HIGH COST OF DYING. "The cost of living makes life impossible but dying Is also 100 expensive." Tha there Is a considerable element of truth il this popular German epigram is emphasise! by the frantic, efforts being made by Ger man municipalities to overcome the presen exorbitant expense of funerals. Setting burled is becoming a problen soluble only by communal enterprise, it na: been found. Solution has been sougn along various lines. Usually special taxa tion is resorted to, and the full cost of tin funeral borne by the municipal treasury Several cities, however, have adopted j coffin the bottom of which slides back afte It has been lowered Into the grave, tnu gently depositing the defunct on the bar. ground and permitting the coffin to h salvaged and used again. At Zwickau, in Saxony, a heavy cardboan box serves as a lining for the trick caske and keeps the corpse from contact with th earth. The city of Hildeshelm has gone 1 f or the purchase of collins on a wholesal Bt- ale. it specialises in five different sizes Which are sold to individual citizens a cost, the price thereby being greatly re meed.

l« f bc „, Loi,do >" General Omnibns Company wh"h tn° U ? a r cia omnibus which can give free cinema shows, with Iron 'T- ? the mMt brUllant «S . consists of T??l n ' sht ' The a PP"«u B i nr ,k , i tt f ° Mlng cavorn - J » the back I or which the screen Is set. Behind this is hereof' 0 / ltS6lf ' Which "Plates from , the rear Instead of from the front. ] SENTENCED TO UARLY RISING As an alternative to sixty days In goal, ' an incorrigible youth was sentenced by » I New lork police judge to report every ' morning at seven o'clock at police head- ' quarters. He had pleaded that he was a chronic ' oversleeper and had lost employment thereby. The Judge said he hoped the sentence would instil the early rising habit, , LANGUAGES BY WIRELESS. The French Post Office High School has , given its first lesson in English by wireless. The lesson was devoted to the pronuncla- ' tion of words, and lasted three-quarters of an hour. The method proved highly satisfactory. The possibilities of broadcasting French lessons for British students from the Eiffel " Tower are under consideration by the French authorities. , KEPT SON IN CHAINS. American police are searching for tho father of 12-year-old Joseph Czajka, who, after two years ln lock and chains, ln an upstairs room at his home nt Lorain, Ohio, was rescued by police. ' ' Young Czajka told authorities his father placed him in the chains each night after school and held him prisoner under lock and key from Friday afternoon until Monday morning of each week. The heavy chain was cut from the boy's bleeding wrist in police headquarters as he swore to an affidavit charging his parent with torturing a minor child. RADIO CHURCH FORMED. Instead of people going to church on Sunday or any other day, the church will be brought direct to tho people by radio under a plan proposed by the Radio Church ! of America, which was incorporated at Sacramento, California, last month, under the laws of the State of California, and' purports to be non-sectarian and non-1 denominational. , Headquarters of the church will be In San Francisco. Branches will be estab-! llshed whenever and whenever a radio broadcasting station Is available. AN EXTRAORDINARY TRAGEDY A priest was shot recently under extraordinary circumstances In a little village church at Lograto, near Drcssla, Italy. Early in the morning a few people were quietly praying while the priest, Michel Mlnlnl, was hearing confessions. Suddenly the church vaults echoed with a revolver shot and the cries of a wounded man were heard coming from the confessional. People rushed there and found the priest mortally wounded. Tho murderer, a peasant called Osta, was arrested before he could escape from the church. Crossexamined, he made an astonishing statement : 'The priest wouldn't give mc absolution so I shot him dead." £10,000 BANK TRICK. Two Marseilles bnnk clerks were robbed of. £10,000 by a clever ruse recently. They were paying ln the money at the Bank of France, one man making out tho paylng-ln slip, while the other watched the package of money, which he had placed on the counter. A stranger spoke to the latter, and pointing to two 50-franc notes on the floor, said. "Do these belong to you?" The clerk, thinking he must have dropped them, bent down to pick up the notes. At the same moment the stranger substituted for the package of money on the counter a parcel which, when it was opened, was found to contain old newspapers. By that time the obliging stranger had vanished. CHILD CRIME IN RUSSIA. An Italian paper publishes some significant Russian statistics sent by Its correspondent ln Helslngfors. The Commissary for Justice of the i Soviet Government has proposed a bill under which some effort will be made to deal with juvenile crime in Russia. In 1022 the Russian tribunals —without counting the vast provinces of the Ukraine —had before tbem no fewer than 30,000 cases ln which juveniles were accused of crime. Sixty per cent were crimes of murder prompted by theft; 15 per cent were, theft alone; and 10 per cent murders alone. Of these crimes 7200 odd were by children between the ages of S and 12: 35 per cent were by boys and girls of 12 to 15; and 45 per cent by striplings of 15 to 18. A CRIPPLED GAOL-BREAKER. •Among the inhabitants of German gaols Frledrlch 'Heifer, former shoemaker, holds the all-round championship for gaol breakHeKer, both of whose legs are paralysed so that he can move only with difficulty on crutches, was arrested for burglary, placed in a cell and his crutches taken away. A few days later the apparently hopeless cripple managed to break from his cell, pick the lock to the room where the prisoners' belongings are kept, obtain his crutches ana escape from the gaol. He was captured while robbing a shoe store in Zwelbruecken and -returned to prison. FINES FOR CHURCH TRUANTS. The canons and Constitutions Ecelesiustigoing to church was a servant named IsaacWalton. In 1864 he disobeyed his mistress when told to attend divine worship. In cousequence he appeared before the magistrates, who imposed a fine of Os Od. The canons and Constitutions Eccleiasti cal (1603) were published under royal authority, with the object of compelling people to attend church. Their provisions made it clear that the churchwarden's lot was an unenviable one. These were a fevr of his duties: — "They shall see that the Lord's Day be duly obserted; they shall search ale-houses on Sundays, and if any persons are found therein during divine service tbey shall make them pay 3/4 and also 1/ for being absent from church; and the master of such ale-house shall forfeit 10s. "Churchwardens shall levy the forfeiture of Is a Sunday on the goods of persons who do not come to church. The churchwardens shall, on pain of the forfeiture of 120, present at the sessions once a year the monthly absence from church of all recusants; also the names and ages of their children who are above nine years old, and the names of j their servants. And if the party presented shall be convicted, the churchwardens shall ; be entitled to a reward of 40s, to be levied on the recusant's goods by "warrant of the justices ln session."