AUSTRALIAN NEWS

Evening Star, Issue 10394, 16 August 1897, Page 3

AUSTRALIAN NEWS

The Victorian marksmen who fired at Bisley are coming home by way of America, and will fire at the Canadian Association meeting.

At the recent Hobart criminal sittings Walter WiUi&ms, charged with unlawfully assaulting Frances Virtue Dixon in her own house on the night of May 10 last, was sentenced to nine years' imprisonment. He had secreted himself at night in the house where a widow and her two daughters resided. The Judge stigmatised the prisoner's oonduct as atrocious. A yoang man named Robinson was killed during a bicycle raoe at Melbourne recently. The head tubing ot his oyole snapped, and he was throwD on to the track. His nose was Btnished and his head and face were reduced to a pulp. He died shortly after the accident. sEhe Women's Hospital in Melbourne is overcrowded, and it has been found necessary to .provide a number of extra cots for babies. A man named William Keenan lately sold his farm in Viotoria. With £I,OOO in his possession he went to a Chinese camp near St. Arnaud. In a fortnight he got through £3OO, when he waß arrested for drunkenness. " Fools and their money." The quantity of wheat ground in Victoria laßt year was 6,224,991 bushels, making 123,750 tons of flour. Several of the best gold mines in Western Australia are to be incorporated into one company, with a capital of £20,000,000. A young girl named Ross wasuolacing her boot with a fork at Warrnambool (Victoria), when the prorgs of the fork entered her eye and gouged it out. The late grape season at Rutherglen was highly successful. Upon the Government lands the average return in wine was 382 gallons per acre, as against ,150 gallons per acre in 1896.

An examination of the charges made by the San Francisco officials discloses that the British Consul in that city paid to the State court officials no less a sum than £I,OOO to recoup the expenses in connection with the extradition of Butler from the United States. From the judge down to the under-sheriff the officials participated in the distribution of this'money. On Wednesday afternoon, the 4th inst., in an outhouse at the rear of the Imperial Hotel, Burnsdale (Victoria), an explosion was fceard, and on investigation the body of a man was found lying dead there upon' a stretcher. The whole of the face of the corpse was blown away, and only the top of the skull and back of the head were remaining. He lay on his back, with his hands clasped together on the pit of his stomaih. Deceased, who is believed to have been a miner from Bulumwaal, had given his name as Joseph Larsen, and was between fifty and sixty years of age. He had been staying at the hotel for some days. On the previous evening he was brought back to the hotel drunk. In his pocket six inches of freshly-cut fuse was found, and there were two matohes lying upon his breast. Evidently he had placed a dynamite cap in his tn.outh, attached a fuse, lit it, crossed hiß hands #jrer his body, and waited for tha explosion,. The cause of the snioide is not ( knowß, •-• , .

Mr Ben Tillett, leoturing at Sydney on * The Wealth and Progress of the Empire,' said if it were possible to bring a savage there he would not understand, with all the signs of wealth and progress in the world, that so much poverty and distressß could exist how sut of 400,000,000 of people 350,000,000 were in a state of more or less poverty. That was because 50,000,000 controlled the remainder. They had the grossest form of slavery the world had ever known. In England if a person stole a turnip he wa9 punished by the man who stole the field. The sense of justice and religion generally was viler, lower, more animal, and more damnable than that of the grossest savage. Increase of wealth wa3 an added reason for the abolition of poverty, but its effect was the very reverse. 'Men were poor because they worked so hard that they forgot to appreciate and used what they produced. William Botham Turton petitioned in the Melbourne Court recently for the dissolution of his marriage with Lucy Elizabeth Turton on the grounds of desertion. The parties were married at Campbell Creek, Castlemaine, on 17th December, 1874. Petitioner said he was a member of an amateur band. His wife was of an extremely religious disposition, and did not approve of his attending band practices. She said they were a frivolity. Petitioner went to church once every Sunday except when his work as an engine - driver prevented him. His wife thought he ought to go to church on week days and also attend tea meetings and prayer meetings. Finally she said that if they could not live together more comfortably she would go back to her father. There were occasionally other little wrangles between them, but he used to keep quiet and let his wife do all the talking. One day, about ten months after the marriage, he came home and found that his wife had cleared out, taking her clothing and some pictures, and leaving him a note saying that she had gone home to her father, and would not live with petitioner any more. He went to her father's house and tried to induce her to return, but she would not. He had frequently asked her since then to return, but she always said that she was determined not to live with him again. She subsequently summoned him for maintenance, but on his stating that he was anxious Bhe should return and live with him the case was dismissed. A decree nisi was granted. The only fixtures decided upon for Stoddart's cricket team so far are for five test matches with Australia. These will begin respectively in Sydney on December 10, in Melbourne on December 31, in Adelaide on January" 14, in Melbourne on January 26, and in Sydney on February 25. In the previous tour the final match clashed with the V.R.C. races, but the dates have been so arranged as to avoid anything of the kind during the present tour.