NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume LVII, Issue 4811, 16 July 1937, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

'Sir Charles Clifford, a sheepfarmer, and a well-known sportsman, of Stonyhurst. North Canterbury, pleaded guilty in the Kaiapoi Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday, to a charge of being intoxicated in charge of a car in' Cookson Street* Kaiapoi, on July 6th. He was fined £25, his license, was suspended until May 31st, 1938* and he: was prohibited from obtaining another until July 14th, 1940. Seriously burnt about the face and arms, Mr V. Quarterman, foreman of works at the Harbour Board quarries, Kaiwhaiki,’was admitted to the Wanganui Hospital on Wednesday as the result of a premature explosion which oceui’red prior to setting off a charge in a face of shell rock. A woi-kman, Mr A. Mutrie, received a painful* injury' to a thigh when he was. hit by flying, rock-' Mr: Quarter man. was pouring powder into a hole in the rock when the explosion occurred, caused apparently by the heat generated by friction igniting the charge.

1 “I hope that one day every boy and girl will have to stay at school until he or she is 18 years of age,” said Sir Percy Meadon, an eminent English educationist, when addressing school teachers at Christchurch on Wednesday. He added that if this ideal became an actuality he would make a break between primary and secondary phases of education at 13 years of age. “There is no reason why every child should have the same curriculum,” he added. An effort was being made to break down the barrier between schools with an academic curriculum and traditions going back centuries and ' new schools with a realistic curriculum.

Two persons were injured and a kitchen was wrecked when an explosion occurred at the home of Mrs Hatch, in Be veil iSt.,. Hokitika, last week. Mrs Creagh and her son Gerard were sitting in front of the stove. Mrs Creagh was : preparing breakfast when, without warning,a terrific explosion occurred. The stove was blown to pieces, a portion of the oven door was hurled through the' doorway into an adjoining room, and the walls of the kitchen were plastered with fragments of the stove. Kitchen cooking utensils, a kettle of boiling water, and a pot of porridge were blown to pieces and . the contents blown over Mrs Creagh and her son. Mrs Creagh was making toast at the time. The son Gerard was badly burned and suffered scalding, being removed .to the Westland Hospital. Mrs Creagh received nasty wounds on the head/ neck, arms and legs, requiring several stitches and dressing. The cause of the explosion is believed to be due to a plug of gelignite in the coal, and from; the extensive damage and report a cap must have been in the plug.