ITEMS OF INTEREST.

Evening Star, Issue 14036, 17 April 1909, Page 8

ITEMS OF INTEREST.

THE WORLD’S PRESS. A private of the Northampton Regiment has effected his escape from the military prison at Colchester in a daring and dramatic manner. In the early hours of the morning he rang the alarm bell in his cell, and when the warder answered it he stunned him with the metal end of the fire hose, and, having tied the warder hand and foot, he rolled him under the bed,

seized his keys, and escaped. The absconding soldier was traced to Warley, but evaded his would-be captors, and was last heard of in London.

The Bellerophon, which was recently commissioned at Portsmouth by Captain Evan Thomas, is Britain’s first " electric ” battleship. For working the guns, hoisting boats and ammunition—in fact, practically all purposes except propulsion—electricity is used. All future inen-of-war will be electrically equipped throughout—until some newer power is discovered. In several ways the Bellerophon is an improvement 011 the Dreadnought. Her hull has been stiffened, to lessen the vibration from the screws; she has a double conning-tower, no fewer than eleven searchlights, and the most up-to-dute system of fire control yet devised.

A marvellous escape from death is reported from the village of Chirk. A five-year-old girl named Francis Povey, of Castle row. Chirk, was playing on the canal aqueduct, when she slipped through the iron railings and fell from the bridge into the meadow below, a drop of seventy feet. People who had seen her fall rushed to the spot expecting to find the child dead, but they were delighted to find her apparently unhurt, not a bone being broken. The child's clothes had filled with wind, and served as a parachute, thus breaking the fall. In London on February 23 Frederick Thomas Daniel, formerly a steward with the P. and 0. Steamship Company, was awarded £2,000 damages against the Great Northern Railway Company in respect of injuries sustained in a railway accident. He was travelling by a train from Finsbury Park to Stroud Green, when the train in a fog ran into another train, and. he sustained severe injuries to his spine, which made him a cripple and incapacitated him from work

A lawsuit regarding the possession of twenty-four titles of nobility, which has lasted for a century, has just been decided in Rome. By the decision of the Court of Cassation the twenty-four titles have been awarded to Signor Baldassarre Curacciolo, of Naples. Signor Caracciolo will therefore be entitled to bear the title of prince, that of marquis, three titles of count, and eighteen distinct titles of baron. A twenty-fifth distinction which Signor Caracciolo will receive is that of Grandee of Spain of the First Class.

An extraordinary incident occurred at Malaga on Sunday, February 21. A child of three having been run over by a tiamcar, the parents and neighbors fired shots and threw stones at the car. They then demolished it, filled it with straw, and set fire to it. An officer at length induced them to disperse. A clerk who got three months at London for stealing eighty-four photographic post cards said he was tempted by the photos of the new play, ‘ An Englishman’s Heme.’ He had been a soldier himself, and had sunstroke and fever in South Africa.

A tragic incident occurred last month at a wedding at Pontefract. The church was filled, and before the ceremony began Gertrude Jackson, of Pontefract, and fiancee of the bridegroom’s brother, had a seizure, and she died a few minutes later in the churchyard. The ceremony was proceeded with, the Hide not being acquainted with the tragedy. Being on bad terms with his family, a workman at Epinal (France) twelve years ago swallowed his weath, consisting of fifty-five pieces of gold, of the value of £SO, and then committed suicide. The money has now been recovered by the - exhumation of the body. Having described the recent Women’s in St. Petersburg by a most- objectionable term, in the course of a letter to one of the principal organisers, M. Purishkevitch, a member of the Extreme Right of the Duma, was sentenced to a month’s imprisonment without the option of a tine. His insult, had already brought him a challenge to a duel from a lady. At Warwick Assizes on February 23 Harry Ambrose Smith, works manager for live Deasy Motor Company, was found guilty of' the manslaughter of a boy by running over him with a motor car. He was sentenced to sis months’ imprisonment in the second division, Mr Justice Darling remarking that the time had come when persons who drove these powerful and d uigerous machines negligently must be severely punished. Others should take warning • of. what they might expect. It was stated that the prisoner had generously compensated ihe deceased’s parents rat rick MTlale, of Hindley, and his wife Catherine were summoned before the Wigan county justices on February 25 for neglecting their children. An inspector of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children said the whole of the family of eight, with the exception of the father, slept in one bed, which was covered with two dirty sheets and some old clothes. Dr Ainscough said that three of the, children were suffering from pneumonia, and he had no doubt that the illness was largely due to their filthy, ill-fed, and ill-clad condition. M’Hale Was sent to gaol for three months' hard labor and his wife for one mouth.