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Marlborough Press, Volume XXIV, Issue 1369, 25 January 1883, Page 2

At the Resident Magistrate’s Court, Wellington, Knigge, proprietor of the Brunswick Hotel, was fined £lO, with £2 costs, on a charge of adulterating beer with sulphuric acid. From the evidence it appeared that there was no wilful intention to adulterate, hut that the jar in which the beer was sold had previously contained sulphuric acid.

Who that has taken notice of the verdicts given by the Coroners* Juries will hesitate in saying that reform is necessary. Some of these verdicts ore downright ludicrous, others are the essence of ignorance, while again many are unjust. Mr Murray, an ex M.H K., writes forcibly on this subject in the (Waikato Times He say : —“lt is high time that the cumbrous and solemn farce of coroners’ juries should be changed and some form analogus to the Scotch practice substituted. The adherence to antiquated prejudices and forms, useful possibly in a very different, but now obsolete state of things, though indicative of characterestic English pride of perfection, is not creditable to British intellectual progress. On an adjoining station in Otago a hard working and very clever and ingenious carpenter knocked down some forty pounds in drink in a week, and in a fit of delirium hanged himself, and yet the intelligent jury gave the blasphemous verdict that‘he died by the visitation of God.