NEWS FROM ALL QUARTERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 122, 25 May 1935, Page 4 (Supplement)

NEWS FROM ALL QUARTERS.

FATAL "LAZY BATH."

TWO MOTHERS: 38 CHILDREN. Two mothers appeared with their sons at Lambeth Juvenile Court. One of the mothers had 18 children. The other had 20. PHANTOM MONK IN CHURCH. A woman at Fakehkam, Norfolk—described by the vicar, the Rev. C. Carroll, a's "not an imaginative person"—claims to have seen the ghoetly figure of a cowled monk walking along a ledge in Binhain Parish Church. She said: "Thinking I was 'seeing double' 1 purposely looked away for a second. When I looked back the figure was still there. I looked a third time' and it had gone." AN ELEPHANT NEVER FORGETS. A circus elephant in Vienna was given, by way of a joke, a sandwich thickly spread with pepper. He did not like it. He waited patiently for his revenge—elephants never forget. He eavght the man—a pugilist in the circus-outside' his cage. He attacked him furiously. Two keepers intervened. Enraged at being despoiled of his prey, lie beat one of the keepers into insensibility against the wall. The pugilist was (it enough to take his part in the next performance. But the keeper was taken to hospital critically ill. MOTOR CYCLE OF THE AIR. A new motor cycle of the air, which costs only a halfpenny a mile to fly, and can be mastered by a beginner in a few hours, without dual instruction, was demonstrated 1 recently by Mr, Robert Kronfeld, the German gliding ace. Kronfeld went to Britain to join the B.A.C. firm building tiny fivc-horse-powered baby 'planes, and he made the first demonstration at Hanworth Air Park. The new aerial motor cycles cost, at present, £27;'), but this price is likely to be reduced considerably when the production increases. Fuel costs are less than 2/ an hour. The craft is powered with a conventional motor cycle engine. They are remarkably cheap to fly, and their comparatively low speed—7s miles an hour is the maximum —makes them exceptionally safe for the beginner.

Death from carbon monoxide poisoning, caused-accidentally, was the verdict recorded at the inquest at Bath on Mile. Marie Thercse Fabre, a 19-year-old French student, who was found dead in her bath. Dr. KtTsley, who had made a post-mortem examination, stated that, in Ilia opinion, death was due to carbon monoxide poiso'.iing, possible accelerated by a very hot bath after a meal. Blood tests showed definite quantities of carbon monoxide enough to cause death. There would, he said, have been no warning symptoms, if death should have been caused by the incompletely burned gas retained in the room through a defect of ventilation or a back draught, because there would be very little odour. Apparently, added the doctor, Mile. Fabre had gone to have a "good, long, lazy bath." If it had been a quick bath after turning off the geyser doubtless there would have been ao trouble. FORTUNE IN RUSTY SAFE. When Mrs, Eliza Ogdcn, 71, a Bradford widow, died last year, she left £16,898or so everyone thought. But in January her daughter, Eva, found in the cellar a rusty old safe. In it was £19,900 in notes. This was the story told at Leeds Assizes when Miss Ogdcn sought probate ot her mother's will. She was opposed by two brothel's, Joseph and Herbert, and a sister, Mrs. Jowott, who alleged that their mother was not of sound mind, memory or understanding. Mr* C. l'aley Scott, K.C., for Miss Eva Ogden. said Mrs. Ogden left £1000 to be divided equally between five of her children, and the whole of the residue of her estate to his client. Joseph Ogden left home in 1900 and settled in Bray, County Wicklow. Herbert left during the war, got married and never returned. In 19''li Mr. and Mrs. Ogdcn entered into a document in which they set out all they were prepared to do for Joseph. He was to receive 1/ only as his share of their estate. "They had heard of the expression 'cut off with a shilling,' and thought that unless they gave him a shilling it would not be legal," said counsel. ARE MEN MORE NERVOUS? Nervous ailments are popularly supposed to be the monopoly of women, but according to Mr. Henry Lesser, president of the National Federation of Employees' Approved Societies, men are rapidly becoming more nervous than women. Mr. Lesser declares that among members of employees' approved societies, incapacity among men due to nervous diseases has steadily increased from . ( Ji) day per member in 1929 to 1.53 days per member in 1934, while the amount of illness due to similar causes among women has remained almost stationary. Worry > about unemployment and insecurity are' stated to be the chief contributory causes of nervous breakdown among men. But another authority denies that the percentage of nervous ailments is greater among men than among women. An official of the Institute rtf Medical Psychology told a "Daily Mail" reporter that the institute's experience is that women still predominate as nervous cases.

"Before 1034, where there were 2000 men patients attending for nervous ailments there were 2700 women. And last year, among 1007 new patients, 377 were women while only 2.03 were men. The rest were children, , he added. The burden of worry about' unemployment and insecurity which lies upon the male bread-winner of a family is no less than the strain of worry borne by the wife or mother, was the view expressed by another authority. Therefore, women, being less able to stand the strain of prolonged worry than are men, are prone to give way more easily to nervous disorders.

LEARNING IN SLEEP. £ Dr. Feodor Knueriit», a nvnfn.. philology, claims UrA the brain> of a registering machine, and that it i sible to learn m one's sleep Tlii.i , * way, according to the professor, to atf< the feat. First accustom your s >< sleeping while the gramophone is nuJ* Then have lessons on the subjected wish to study mprinted on records N P « keep the records automaticallyrunnfo.9 your bedroom—and, says Herr Kn, s -" 1 your brain will assimilate the lessor ' SCALDING FUMES HOLD UP a STREET. A Pedestrians suddenly doubline un -•«. fits of coughing; traffic Blowing to coming to a dead .stop. . WnvV T 1 jangling of fircbclk. Tine" little was played out in High Street, PecS' recently Clouds of ammonia »S escaped from a butcher's shop whm «? cap of a refrigerating plant blew unV" 6 the cause. A cordon of police wa« ft\ e round the building and feC masks entered and plugged the left Ihreo firemen were slightly scalded bv tl,' funics. . "* "" GIRL TESTS THEORY OF CRIME. An 18-year-old bookkeeper Violpt- tt-h. Icon Cattell, of Oxford Road, Ealimfl: said that she wanted to test her the'ori* was charged with stealing jewellery vaCi at £15, belonging to -Mr John AdaS Grange Road, Baling. Mr. Adams saiJ i,hat he found the girl in ;. bedroom. Sh« treated the affair as a joke. Cattell tnU the Bench: "I did not do it wUh any criminal intention. 1 have always been interested in that type of thing and I always believe that practice is better tW theory I thought that if I fo*,™ why these things are done I should hi wiser. The chairman (Mrs. Chard)"That is a peculiar excuse." The girl's father said she had been reading literature referring to the C.I.D. and the Secret Service and had a big idea of going into one of those services. She did this to Dot"' a theory into practice. The magistrates agreed that there was n -> ' Ijnious intent and the girl was discharged. She left the dock smiling.

U.S. DIVORCES EQUALLING MARRIAGES. There have been nearly as many divoMS as marriages in the United States dunii? the last ."seven years. The prophecy ni li)2S of Judge Ben Lindsey, famous divoiw court judge and advocate of compnuional.: marriage, is coming tine. He said trnit in 1938 the number of divorces WOU.d equal the number of marriages. "Marriage is doomed," he declared a few weeks ago. "Free love, domestic chaos and sexual anarchy are at hand. And why? Because the ideas of our grandparents—the good oHfashioned until-death-do-us-part mnmaee and the old-time home—are passing. M their place has come a flippant? : irre sponsible attitude towards marriage. Judge Lindsey puts it all down to M economic condition of modern l« e », m which women compete with men for jous, and make it difficult or impossible for men to marry between the "ideal ages « 20 and 150. "Marriage," he said, m« been rigid and unyielding of a new social and economic situation. Human nature lias been allowed to niTi free, driving close to a social catastrppm. There is only one remedy, rhe aid M science must be called in, and we «.» turn to our religion and our educat to meet the altered conditions ot Wj day."