BREVITIES

Evening Star, Issue 15136, 18 March 1913, Page 8

BREVITIES

The process of inoculation was first introduced into England on the 18th of March, 1718.

The Tainni, which arrived at Wellington from London yesterday, brought 488 passengers for various ports, 461 being in the third class. During the voyage a passenger lost his reason and attempted to commit suicide with a razor, but he did not seriously injure himself. Christchurch Citv Council last night made a grant of £250 towards the cost of entertaining the men of the battleship New Zealand. The Labor members opposed the grant. The members of the Forestry Commission yesterday visited a number of shelter plantations on the Canterbury Plains, and were much impressed with the sagacity and foresight of the early settlers in providing these valuable belts of timber. At a Shoreditch inquest recently on a ninennonths-old child the mother, said that when it fell ill she gave it some saffron. Dr Speed explained that there was a popular notion that saffron was good for children, but as a matter of fact it had no medicinal virtue at all, and was only coloring matter. An. American husband’s labor-saving ingenuity has cost him £2 10s. He invented a spanking machine, and on his wife objecting to him using it on the children, he turned the weapon on herself, so that she had to seek court protection. Dipsomaniacs in Sweden, when put under restraint, are fed almost entirely on bread steeped in wine. In less than a fortnight they loathe the very look and smell of liquor, and when liberated generally become total abstainers. In Russia a similar treatment is followed with good results.In the House of Commons recently Mr Ellis Griffith said that during the' last seven years sentence of death had been passed on 21 women, and in one case the sentence was executed. During tlw same period the capital sentence was passed on nine persons in their teens, and in four the judgment was carried out. The French police have got hold of a first-class all-round international criminal. Arrested on a charge of posing as a doctor and obtaining £470 in fees from “ patients,” he has been discovered to be wanted by the police for fraud, incendiarism, and bigamy in America, Italy, Germany; England, Belgium, and Egypt. A Stockton man, charged witH being drunk and disorderly in the early hours of a recent morning, indignantly" denied the charge, explaining that ho had only awakened two policemen whom he found standing asleep in a doorway.