ENGLISH ITEMS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXVI, Issue 8035, 7 December 1886, Page 3

ENGLISH ITEMS.

The following items are from our English files:— A HEROINE INDEED. How much necessity there is for opening up new spheres for women's work may be seen from the case of the girl in boy's clothes which came before a police magistrate the other day. The young lady, " who has good features and closely cut hair," was attired in a short jacket and trousers, with stand-up collar and peaked cap, and conveyed the general impression of a respectable boy. bhe had done her work faithfully, and had fallen easily into the habits of metropolitan errand boys—such, say, as smoking cigarettes. But this was only playing her part, and up to now her proceedings were worthy of the greatest praise. If her mother's story is true, it reveals a very pitiful state of affairs indeed: — She said that she had four children, and that the prisoner had been supporting her aud her brothers aud sisters for soma time past, every farthing that she earned being brought home. Che had tried to got employment aa a girl, but failed, and ultimately in a state of desperation at seeing them all in a condition of Beini-starvation, she assumed the garb of a bjy, and at once .succeeded in obtaining employment. If this is really the state of the labour market, the austerest of British matrons might condone the short-cut hair and the breeches. For here is a girl well able and willing to do haTd work. She can get no employment of any kind, and her mother and four sisters are starving. What can she do ? In a moment of desperate inspiration she dons the clothes and with them the opportunities of the stronger sex. She finds work at once. There is a touch of real heroism in this, and there are two classes of the community who should not forget it. First, it should rouse new energy in all who are working directly on behalf of or in support of young girls ; and second, it should constitute a fresh and powerful appeal to all who have relations of any kind whatever with young women, not to add, either by thoughtlessness or deliberate selfishness, to the difficulties with which nature and convention have already so unfairly handicapped theti. THE PRINCE OF PLUNGERS. The brief career of the late Marquis of Hastings, the owner of Lady Elizabeth, if not one "to point a moral or adorn a tale," is, for all that, worth recalling. It was at

once brilliant, hazardous, and disastroos. Fortune, the fickle jade, finding him a young peer of easy disposition, employed herself for four years in knocking him down and setting him up, and thea. knocking him down again for a finish. He drew a 500- guinea prize in The Duke out of the Hampton Court lucky-bag in 1863, and, by " following the blood," The Earl fell to his nod three years later for 50 guineas less. Per contra, King Charles (1500 gs) and Robespierre (1050 gs) were the result of lees happy inspirations from the top of a drag, and it is said that the cheque for Kangaroo was nearer .£12,000 than .£IO,OOO. Ackworth's purchase and his Cambridgeshire Stakes victory was a grateful " refresher" early in the day, and two years after, when his Lordship seemed to have scarcely a horse left in his stable, Lecturer, whom none suspected to be a clever one in disguise, led the "forlorn hope," and landed the Cesarewitch and another pot of gold. Like a giant refreshed the Marquis not only met the Quorn as master at Kirby Gate, but went in with such spirit against Hermit that .£103,000 was the Derby balance against him. With the Second October Meeting a change came over his fortunes. It was a strangely chequered week. Nai'rate, a high bred filly, proved a failure, and as the Marquis had always hankered after The Earl, he was persuaded to back Lady Elizabeth, heavily for the Middlepark Stakes, for which she " was left sitting in a tantrum," and only finished fifth; there was another. This race, curiously enough, was the key to both Derby and Oaks. The two leaders were in the same stable with Blue Gown and Formosa; the Oaks and One Thousand winner was fourth. Then Fortune was at her old tricks, and the young peer won such a victory with his mare over Julius, at only 91b for the year, as will be talked of so long as there is a Weatherby calendar to read or a cover-box to sit on. There could be no pretence that Julius was stale or slow; he had only two days before " romped home" first for the j Cesarewitch Stakes under Bst, and he had reached Lord Lyons' head in the spring. It certainly did look as if the three events of 1868 were over. Lord Hastings felt so sure that he proclaimed from his own private printing prees : "Lady Elizabeth (1), Blue Gown (2), Pace and The Earl a dead heat for third place. Won by two lengths." We all know now how that prophecy was unfulfilled, and what a sad ending this noble football of Fortune had. He certainly deserved a better fate. SUICIDE IN EUSSIA. Some instructive statistics are published by a St Petersburg paper (the Novosti) with regard to the concurrent increase of suicide and insanity in Russia. The inmates of the Asylums at St Petersburg have doubled within the last ten years, and this is ascribed by the Novosti to the great spread of pessimistic and Nihilist doctrines. In the early part of the century, the number of suicides was at the rate of only 17 per 1,000,000 inhabitants, while it is now nearly 30 per 1,000,000, and in St Petersburg itself there are more suicides than in any other capital of Europe except Paris, there being 20G, as against 170 in Berlin, and 87 in London. The increase commenced about twenty-five years ago. and of late years it has been so rapid that while the population has risen hy only 8 per cent, the increase in the proportion of suicides has been 7G per cent. The number of cases of insanity has not kept pace with the number of suicides, though they, too, have increased at the rate of 35 per cent; and it is pointed out that, while meat is 20 per cent, and house rent 35 per cent, dearer than it was, the number of suicides has been out of all proportion greater, so that want, cannot be the sole cause of this increase. The most distressing part] of this return is that which tells now no fewer than 42 boys and 15 girls between eight and sixteen years of age committed, or attempted to commit, suicide in the last ten years, mostly because their parents maltreated them. A TEERIBLE TALE. The following horrible story is reported in an Italian paper. The incident occurred at S. Giovanni a Teduccio, a town near Naples. A poor mad woman, falsely believed to have hydrophobia, was followed in the streets by a mob intent on killing her. Especially one man repeatedly took up a big Btone with both hands and threw it at her. The unhappy creature fell under the blows, rising only to fall again. The crowd was inspired by the brutal fury so easily propagated in a mob when it believes itself justified in executing summary justice on some miserable creature —a fury that is only increased at the tight of blood. There was actual rivalry as to who should give the murderous final blow. Women threw stones, chairs, whatever came first to hand. Strong young men struck at the poor maniac with thick sticks. Weak and dizzy with pain, the unfortunate creature crawled along, her hair dishevelled, her face covered with blood and dirt. In this state she reached the house of the head-policeman, who stood regarding the scene with crossed arms from the causeway, surrounded by his subordinates. The mob now proceeded to bind her. In fact, a slip-knot was made in a rope, and passed round her neck, and she was thus dragged along the ground ) into a court yard, her head striking the pavement repeatedly. Then her feet were tied with another rope, and her hands with a thin string. But the owner of the courtyard drove her out again, upon which the mob fastened her by the rope round her neck to a ring on the closed door, and by the rope round her feet to a post opposite. Now she was safe, and the mob began to mock her, having no longer any fear. At every movement of her body the slipknot tightened! Someone, rather more humane than his fellows, relieved her of this rope, on which she fell to the ground, striking her head against the edge of the causeway. Finally it entered the head of the chief policeman to send the mad woman to the asylum; and after an hour's delay, there arrived one of the wooden boxes used to transport the corpses. It was, of course, destitute of all that was necessary to transport a living, and, above all, a wounded, person. Into, this box or coffin the unhappy lunatic was dragged by the hair, the cover was placed over her, and she was carried off; while for some time was heard dull thuds as her limbs, struggling in delirium, struck the sides of the wooden box. The unhappy woman had become insane because her husband, a mason, fell from a scaffolding and was killed on the spot.