SYDNEY SCENE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 192, 15 August 1941, Page 5

SYDNEY SCENE

CHILD MURDERED

SAWDUST CIGARETTES

THIEF'S CONSCIENCE PRICK (0.C.) SYDNEY, August 11. After a night-long search on Saturday the body of Jeanette Irene Walsh, aged three, of Surry Hills, Sydney, was found in tall grass behind the golf links at Moore Park. She had been outraged and strangled and her body, which was fully clothed, had been terribly injured, fhe girl was last seen at play about 0.30 p.m. on Saturday. Two hours later she was missed. Some 200 police, drawn from all over the metropolitan area, assisted by many civilians, searched vacant allotments, Parks, ponds and vacant premises, ? nd a police bloodhound was used |n the nunt. A man aged 65 was «ter charged with murder.

Cigarette Fraud Sydney hotels and shops which in the midst of the tobacco shortage thought they were doing good Business by buying cigarettes offered to them under price by wandering salesmen have been left lamenting. Jhe cigarettes are filled with sawoust. The fraud had evidently been carefully planned, for several weeks Before men had been going around collecting empty tobacco tins. Two years and a half ago when Miss Peggy Welch became Mrs. E. •Moss, wife of a hotelkeeper, a man went into the bar to deliver two Redding presents in big parcels. He save them to a man who said he Wa s Mr. Moss, but they never reached the couple. On Saturday a Jhan telephoned that he had taken the parcels because he had been s®ra up and had pawned them. «ow he had been able to get them ®5r as it had worried his conference he -would post them to Mrs. Moss, he told her. He declined her to take them himself.

Wife Murder Alleged

A police witness at an inquest, Sergeant March, said that after a man had confessed that he had strangled his wife, he had to be forcibly restrained from demonstrating on her body how he had done it. The inquest was on Muriel Kathleen Kelly, who was found strangled in her room on July 27. Her husband, Francis Joseph Kelly, 41, labourer, has been charged with murder. Sergeant March said Kelly told the police: "I choked my wife with both my hands. If I had had three hands I would have used them all. I would have cut her throat before, but I did not get the chance." Kelly, according to the sergeant, walked to the side of the bed and said: "We were both in bed. I put both my hands round her neck and held them there until I was sure she was done for. Then she fell out of the bed on to the floor."

The proprietress of the residential .where the Kellys lived, said Mrs. Kelly used to pawn everything, even her false teeth, to get money for drink. Mrs. Kelly told her that she had a wonderful husband and that they never fought. The proprietress added that Kelly had always treated his wife well, and the day of the tragedy was the first time she had seen him drunk. She said Kelly said to her: "I killed her with these hands. I stop at nothing when I'm wild. When I get into a real bad temper, I'm a wild Irishman."

Crown's Plea For Man

In the Criminal Appeal Court this week, the Crown took the unusual course of pleading for a man whose appeal against sentence of death had been rejected. The man, Charles Tarleton, 43, labourer, had been sentenced to death for the murder of Henry Henness at Chullora, Sydney, on April 21. The Solicitor-General, Mr Weigall, K.C., said there -wjas evidence that Henness had made a very insulting remark to the woman with whom Tarleton was living, and that Tarleton had also been provoked by a blow. The Crown considered that a verdict of manslaughter would have been proper. The Chief Justice,' Sir Frederick Jordan, then set aside the verdict of murder for one of manslaughter and sentenced Tarleton to 10 years' penal servitude.

Quite a poMe ccottown hu been -waged in the newsnpers this week on the question whether can-

ing should be allowed in schools. The controversy has been fanned by statements and actions by the Teachers' Federation following thei issue of an order by the Labour I Minister of Education, Mr. Clive Evatt, banning corporal punishment in schools. The headmaster of one Sydney High School went so far as to take a vote among parents on whether they would have used the cane as punishment in six cases of serious misconduct which had occurred in his school. An overwhelming majority of the parents said they would have caned the culprits.

In one case, the headmaster said, one of his most brilliant boys was hit in the eye by a paper pellet fired from a catapult. After six months in hospital in great pain he lost the sight of his eye. The boys were assembled and told of this and forbidden to use catapults. The same afternoon another boy fired a pellet and hit another boy in the eye. Another case quoted by the headmaster concerned two big boys who tortured a little boy by rubbing itching powder into his nose, eyes, mouth and body. The boy suffered great pain and had to receive medical attention.

13-year-old Inventor In contrast with these instances; of bad conduct is the case of David j John Bearman, 13, the youngest! inventor to be interviewed by the I Army Inventions Board. When he l went to them with a plan to send! fleets of radio-controlled bombers \ over Germany, they were amazed 1 by his technical grasp of the subject, although they had to tell him that radio was not sufficiently advanced to make his idea practicable. His planes, only 6ft long, would have radio-operated trap-doors through which their load of bombs would be dropped.

Motorists, a long-suffering class in Australia, were really annoyed this week when police, acting for the Commonwealth Liquid Fuel Control Board, began stopping them on the road, asking them how much petrol they had, where they came from and where they were going, and so on. This was the last straw on top of the long history of petrol bungling, allegations of oil cartel betrayal by diverting tankers from Australia to Japan, and rationing far more drastic than has been enforced in England.