THE OCEAN BEACH SCHEMES.

Evening Star, Issue 10792, 29 November 1898, Page 4

THE OCEAN BEACH SCHEMES.

Sir, —Ae voting on the Ocean Beach Domain Board’s new proposals takes place in a day or so, it may be of interest to recall what tho schemes originally submitted to the Board were: - Mr Petre.—Solid wall at St. Clair on site of wall recently destroyed : clay bank along old railway line at back of sandhills to protect the Flat. Mr Reynolds.—Hubble mound on brushwood mattress all along beach, with road on top. Second scheme (uow under vote), similarly constructed groynes. Mr Hutcheson.—Wall at St. Clair on lino of present bank, with long curved toe and street piling; sandhills to be re-erected by parallel brushwood fences ; when raised, protect by planting. —I am, etc., An Sin. Dunedin, November 28. TO THE EDITOR. Sir,— There seems to be a great deal of misapprehension ns to what the intentions of the Ocean Beach Domain Board really arc, if they succeed in raising a loan. - I believe the chairman slated at a meeting of tho Boaid that the whole of tho money would bo spent on reclaiming St. Clair, and that tho rest of tho beach would have to take its chance. Now, if this is the intention of the Beard, it is a great injustice to St. Kildu, which has a considerably longer foreshore than St. Clair. Wo shall shortly be called upon to vole for or against tho loan, and it is advisable that the people should know exactly what they are voting for.—l am, etc., Ratepayer. St. Kildo, November 28. WHO SLEW ALL THESE? TO THE EDITOR. Sir,— On the Sih inat., at Wanganui, a prosperous young tradesman committed suicide. He had ben drinking heavily of late—so heavily that his friends had taken out a prohibition order against him. The Australian papers report the case of a German Count who had been trapping rabbits in Victoria. He received a remittance of £2OO six weeks ago and was a dead man in a little more than a month. At Wanganui last mouth an inquest was held on the remains of a woman who, according to the evidence of the medical witness, died of suffocation. The deceased had b >t?n drinking of lato, and had entered a Hagoy home for treatment. There was no evidence us to how tho suffocation was caused. At Riccarton on November 18 a man com mitted suicide by cutting his throat. The deceased, according to one witness, had, on the previous day, been feeling queer and was taken by him (the witness) to a doctor, who add the man had been drinking. He (witness) knew that ho hud come home on the Saturday night drunk. The jury which sat to inquire into the cause of (Bath found that the deceased “ committed suicide while temporarily insane from tho effects of drink.” The ‘ Mount Ida Chronicle ’ of November 5 records the finding of a coroner’s ii quest on the body of an old in m whom body was found hung;', g in Ins hut. The medical evidence was that hanged himself during a fit of temporary insanity, produced by illness and accelerated by drink. At the conclusion of tho evidence Dr Church deemed it his duty to make a general statement on the subject of drinking. It was, he said, a well-known fact that there was a great deal of sly drinking in Naseby apart from the licensed house. On November 1 an inquest was held at Auckland on the body of a young man. The finding of tho jury was that deceased had committed suicide by cutting tbe carotid artery while temporal y insane from excessive drinking.

The above are all culled from the last issue of the 1 Prohibitionist,* amt they do not record all toe drink tragedies which have occurred in this colony some of them in Dunedin during the period covered by the records. What reply wll bo given to my inquiry—Who slew all these?—by the Liberty League and their followers who voted for a continuance of licenses and the highly respectable moderate licensing committees who have given to the liquor trade cxtcndel time in which to dispense the poisonous drink by which so many of our fellow citizens are “ drawn into death ” and made ready to be slain—l am etc., Veritas Yiscit. Dunedin, November 29.