“The Press” In 1864

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30593, 9 November 1964, Page 12

“The Press” In 1864

November 9, 1864. INQUEST —An inquest was held yesterday afternoon at 3 p.m. before the coroner at the house of Mr Ashton, on the Harewood road, on the body of a child six months old, named Joseph Ashton. The jury were unanimously of opinion that the parents of the child had shown great negligence in not sending for a medical man sooner, but returned a verdict of “Death from natural causes.” DOWN WITH TOLL BARS!—ToII bars appear to be very obnoxious institutions to the minds of the public, if we may judge from the summary course pursued with the one on the Papanui road last night. This institution was, the public will remember, commenced some little time back, the Road Board taking care that the gates and bar should be of neat con-

struction—making it, in fact, rather an ornamental feature in the road as far as appearance went. The effect was also heightened by its having been painted white—emblematical probably of the purity of the chairman’s intentions. The obstruction was to commence operations today; the tollkeeper’s house was completed—the tariff of the tolls to be levied was posted on the orthodox black board, and every arrangement made for the successful phlebotomy of our pockets. But “there’s many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip.” Last night the establishment came to grief in a manner that reminds us strongly of the somewhat similar achievement of Samson with the gates of Gaza—the gate was carried away bodily, and together with the board, and other

minor parts of the institution, deposited under a gorse hedge near Christchurch, where they were discovered this morning by a vigilant police. There is a delicious coolness in the audacity of the undertaking which must be painful to the sensitive minds of the harrassed members of the Road Board. No unseemly haste was shown by the conspirators by demolishing a half-com-pleted structure; no, they waited till the arrangements were completed, and the bar to come in force, and then—they destroyed it. The police find no clue to the offenders, and it is currently reported that on entering several houses in the neighbourhood to seek information and tell the story, they were informed that the inmates were uncommonly glad to hear of it