NEWS FROM NEAR AND FAR

Evening Star, Issue 13090, 24 October 1908, Page 2

NEWS FROM NEAR AND FAR

James Milnee, the : young ,man Who attempted to commit. suicide at Christchurch on October 15, again made bis ap. i pyataned after a week’s. comwilsory, re- „ tiiement in , the • Samaritan Home. 7He " assured the magistrates that he had had a lesson, and was convicted and discharged. i '~ Owing to no having been received froth the immigration authorities at Sydney, K. Sando, the Japanese deserter from the Mortiake, who was to be , shipped to. Sydney yesterday, still remains in gaol at Sando, who is on remand, will bo brought before the Court) again, when, some decision ,os to what steps shall be taken in regard to his transhipment will probably be arrived at. Before the Arbitration Court at Auckland yesterday a Maori claimed £2OO compensation for the death of his son through an accident at a saw-mill. A question of law was raised by counsel for the respondents as to the effect of a Maori marriage. Claimant was married according to Maori' OTstmn to his wife some twenty years ago. He lived with his wife and with no other woman, and according to Maori custom she was Ids wife. There were a large number of children issue of the marriage, the eldest of whom was the boy who was in the accident, and who was at, the tinie of his death eighteen years of 1 age. He was born while the parties were subject only to the marriage by Maori custom. The parties lived together under the Maori marriage until 1896, when, on the solicitations of some of their European friends, they were married by a Maori clergyman in the Waikato, and they had since lived together under their European names. The question would arise upon those facts as to whether the fathom—the natural father of the boy who was killed—was the father within the meaning of the Act, and therefore a dependent within the meaning of the Act. The case was adjourned till Tuesday. The Wellington branch of the Now Zealand Institute of Architects last night passed a resolution affirming that all Government works of importance should be competed for outside of the Public Works Department, but deprecating anything that might have been said or implied in Parliament derogatory to the Government Architect’s abilities, and recording confidence in Mr Campbell and appreciation of his devotion to the interests of the Dot minion. A fine bequest has reached the Stratford-on-Avon Memorial Committee through thy death of Mrs Sarah Flower, of Avonßank, Stratford-on-Avon, who left an estate valued at £84,881 gross. The bequest is conveyed to the Shakespeare Memorial Association in these terms:— A picture of Battersea by Whistler, n picture by Halswell, and-all pictures not otherwise disposed of; such books as the i librarian shall select fqr the library of the Association, the album which accompanied the portrait of my late husband by Phil Morris, the silver plaque presented to my husband on his retirement from business. £12,000 for the gen- ' oral purposes of the Association, £3OO for the library of the Association, her house “ Avonbank ” and grounds (about three acres), and landing-place, to be used as an adjunct to the Memorial grounds. In conformity with the testator’s declared irish, a pathway will be kepi open for all time between the Memorial grounds and the church, with a rustic bridge over “The Wash.” Mr De Forest, the inventor of the system of wireless telegraphy adopted by the U.S. Navy, has perfected a system of wireless telephony that is full of possibilities. He says that “ any person within thirty miles of Covent Garden will lie able to hear any opera by means of wireless telephony. The apparatus will be so cheap that it will be brought within the reach of everyone. The receiving mechanism is very simple, and so inexpensive that it can be installed at an average cost of £5. All that the subscriber -will have to do will be to fix up a flagpole on his house. The cost of an opera season should not bo more than 4s a month.” Mr De Forest has proved the practicability of hip invention over a distance of thirty miles without using wires, and now that his apparatus has been perfected he proposes to demonstrate to the British Admiralty officials that it win be used over seventy-five miles. He expects to make his trials from the training ship'Vernon at Portsmouth. The Hon. W. Hall-Joncs is a loyal supporter of the Salvation Army, and the members of that body respect him accordingly. When it became known that he was going Homo, Adjutant Brown, commanding officer of the Army in Timaru, wrote a, letter of congratulation to him. In reply to this came the following telegram from Mr Hall-Jones : “ Thanks for your congratulations and your blessing, which I warmly appreciate. I wish you continued success in your great and good work.” When Marion Desmond, a handsome young woman, was arrested in New York for shoplifting, she begged the matron of the city prison to which she was temporarily committed for a book to read herself to sleep in her cell. From the gaol library the matron brought her n novel, ‘ The Long Reckoning.’ In the story one of the most important characters commits suicide to escape disgrace similar to that with which Miss Desmond was threatened. In the early morning the matron found her prisoner hanging from a twisted sheet fastened to one of the bars in her cell. She had strangled herself to death. On the table beside the corpse lay the novel open at the page describing the suicide of which the novelist wrote. There was buried at Finchley last September a man who years ago was the organiser of some of London’s most daring “coups” in the way of hotel robberies. For the last fifteen years the ex-cracksman kept a small general shop off Chalk Farm road, and was much respected in the neighborhood. He was an office-bearer in one of the local chapels. Mr James Westen—as lie was then styled—was, twenty years ago, one of the best-known of swell mobsmen in London. But he never got into the hands of the police himself. His father and grandfathci were accomplished criminals—the lattci dying in gaol. As a boy of ten he was taken by his father to his first “ job" and taught “lob-crawling”—which consists of abstracting cash from the tills of small shopkeepers. In a few years Weston was busy perfecting himself as a “swell-mobsman,” learning how to pass spurious coin, rushing one or two cheque frauds through, and even trying a small hotel robbery. The most serious job he ever got mixed up with was a big Liverpool hotel coup, when the gang 'secured £12,000 of jewels and bank notes from an American millionaire’s room. His connection with the criminal classes ceased suddenly after he attended revival services in a Kentish Town-road Wesleyan chapel.