NEWS BY THE MAIL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 8885, 23 May 1892, Page 6

NEWS BY THE MAIL.

THE HOLY COAT OF TREVES. The Kreuz Zeitung states that Bishop Korum, of Treves, is preparing a detailed account of the miracles alleged to have been wrought in connection with the exhibition of the Holy Coat at Treves last year. CLASS HATRED IN AMERICA. Here is a tragic illustration of the class hatred which still animates certain portions of the United States. An unknown negro was lynched by a mob at Millersburg, Kentucky, simply because lie " had lingered about people's doorsteps and annoyed them in various ways," instead of leaving the town as ordered. The poor fellow was the only negro | in that county. A HUSBAND POISONER. A young lady in Finland, Mrs. Anna Sainio, having been convicted of causing the death of her husband—a professor at the State College at Tavastehus—by wilfully administering poison to him, was"last week sentenced to be beheaded, and afterwards burnt. Mrs. Sainio was only 22 years old and had been married to her husband, eight years her senior, since 1890. She had forged his name to a cheque, and when rebuked poisoned him. CRUEL MRS. MONTAGU. The Londonderry Sentinel understands that a movement is likely to be initiated with the object of securing, if possible, the release from prison of Mrs. Montagu. The request will be based on the decision to liberate Mrs. Osborne, Mrs. Montagu's condition being similar, and the date of her expected accouchement coinciding. The same journal states that Mrs. Montagu is prostrated in Grange Gorman prison, and is quite unable to be removed to Londonderry. THREE MEN SUFFOCATED.

News has been received in Vienna of a terrible lire which occurred at a village named Modlin, near Selowitz, in Moravia. The flames, fanned by a strong wind, spread from house to house with great rapidity, and although the fire brigades summoned from the neighbouring towns worked hard, they did not succeed in getting the fire under control until forty-five houses were burned down. Three men were suffocated, and a considerable number of cattle were destroyed. TERRIBLE BOATING FATALITY. A terrible boating fatality occurred near Thompsons Island, Boston, on Sunday evening, April 10. An instructor and ten boys connected with the Farm School at the islaud were returning from Boston in a sailing boat when the boat capsized, and the instructor and eight of the boys were drowned. According to the testimony of the two survivors the instructor and the boys all managed to cling to the overturned craft at first, but succumbed one after another to the fearful cold.

A GIRL MURDERED AND MUTILATED. On Tuesday, April 12, the mutilated remains of a girl, about 17, who had been outraged before being murdered, were, says a New ork telegram, discovered at Pittsburg. The body was discovered hi a thicket in Schiller Park. Such had been the savagery with which the perpetrator carried on; his operations that the head was completely severed from the body. The remains were afterwards identified as those of a Polish domestic servant, who was last seen in the company of her lover. EXTRAORDINARV lIAIL-STORM. Columbia (South Carolina) was visited by a hailstorm of a phenomenal character on April 1-1. Hailstones two inches in diameter fell with terrible force, driving pedestrians from the streets, and covering the ground to a depth of six inches. Live stock, pigs, poultry, and domestic pets were killed in large numbers in the neighbourhood of the city. In almost every house, for miles around, the windows were smashed to atoms. Fruit trees were stripped of heir branches, and vegetable and cereal crops were incalculably damaged. GREAT FLOODS IN r AMERICA.

Telegraphing from Aberdeen (Mississini), on April 14. Daiziel's correspondent said that it is estimated that 250 people have been drowned through the floods caused by the rising of the Tombigbee River. Three relief parties, which started out on Tuesday, have recovered 150 bodies. In the case of one family of nine, rescued by a raft, a boy had become insane before relief arrived. Of another family, a negress, and a baby which was found floating on a mattrass, are the only survivors of ten. .Seventy-five men, women, and children have been rescued from trees, in which they had sought refuge as long as four and even six days ago.

SELF-HELP AND EMIGRATION. _ Through the efforts of the self-help Emigration Society 76 males and 20 females, all capable of doing manual work, have just left England for Canada. Ot this number the metropolis contributed 40 per cent., the southern and home counties 10 per cent., the midland and northern counties .'l'» per cent., and Scotland M per cent. Of the male emigrants (>') are fitted for agricultural work. The majority of the females are unmarried domestic servants, but five " have the care of large families." It is said that employment has already been secured for every one of the emigrants.

RELIGIOUS WAR IN AFRICA. The Standard's Zanzibar correspondent confirms the recently published story about fighting in Uganda, East Africa, between Protestant natives and Catholic converts led by King Mwanga. The Protestants, lie says, were well armed with Snider lies, and were victorious until Captain Lugard, the British East Africa Company's agent, arrived with reinforcements armed with Maxim rifles. There were many casualties on both sides. The correspondent also says that Bishop Heath reports that many Catholics have been sold into slavery. He states as well that the Catholics are massing their forces to renew the attack on the Protestants.

A GRUESOME STORY. A gruesome and terrible story cropped up at Tottenham Hospital, before Dr. Macdonald, during the inquest held on the body of William Burgess, a labourer, aged 'J, His mother stated that until viewing the corpse she had not seen him for two years. It transpired that the deceased had found rest ill the fields and also at an unfinished house in Selbourne Road, Walthainstow. While lighting a pipe of tobacco the clothes of Burgess got ignited, and he was so frightfully burnt that he could not crawl out of his lair. Burgess said that for just a week Ik; had only partaken of a drink of sewage water. This is one of the rude tragedies of actual life, and looking at the poor fellow's fate, it seems that his only friend was death.

THE SITUATION IN RUSSIA. Renter's correspondent has finished a tour of the famine-stricken districts of Russia, and summing up, says the same picture of extravagance was presented to him everywhere. Immense forests have been wantonly cut, rivers have been neglected and the climate is ruined. The peasants are regarded by the authorities simply as tax-paying units, and the welfare of their minds and bodies is a matter of the most supreme indifference. The country is face to face with bankruptcy, the land is exhausted and the agricultural system is a hopeless failure. The Nihilists are eagerly taking advantage of this discontent to extend their propaganda and practical reformers are divided as to what is to be done to remedy the evils.

AN EXCITING ENCOUNTER. On Monday, April 11, at Fallcville, Morgan County, United States, an exciting encounter occurred between a troop of officials and four negro train robbers who had tried to break open a sealed freight car on its arrival at Williite early in the morning. In this attempt they had been foiled by the vigilance of the railway officials, on whom they fired, but without effect. The negroes having made their escape, several officers and section men started from Falkville in pursuit. They came up with the negroes a short distance from tin; town, and demanded their surrender. The negroes replied by a volley of bullets. A sharp fight ensued, in which one negro was killed. Another was made prisoner, and the two others, who ran away up the line, were subsequently captured after a desperate encounter, by a conductor who pursued them 011 ail engine.

ALLEGED CHLOROFORM PLOT. It will be remembered, says the Central News, that one of the Anarchists convicted at Walsall was arrested in London, and that a bottle of chloroform was found in his possession. How and where he obtained the chloroform, and what he intended to do with it, were matters which were purposely kept in the background at the trial. The circumstance, however, received the earnest attention of the authorities, who are convinced, as the result of special uiries which were conducted at great personal risk by the officers engaged for the purpose, that "there exists in London an Anarchist conspiracy for chloroforming and kidnapping public men, Government officials, or foreigners of note visiting this country, and holding them to ransom with the mad idea of thus replenishing the revolutionary treasury. The number of men engaged in this extraordinary plot and the identity of all the conspirators have not yet been definitely ascertained ; but the information already obtained promises to lead to full discovery.

MOCK HUMILITY. What is called a picturesque ceremony was performed at the Imperial Castle in Vienna on Thursday, April 14th, when the Emperor washed the feet of twelve old men, in commemoration of the washing of the feet of the

Apostles. The " picturesqueness" consisted in the splendour of the artifieally lighted room, the waxened floor, mirroring the great pillars of the apartment; in the lavish, perhaps barbaric, display of gold on the occasion. The mock banquet was served on golden dishes; it was carried away untasted; golden were the vases from which water —warm let us hopewas poured on the old men's feet; of the most fine linen the towel with which the Emperor perfunctorily dried the said feet; golden was the basin in which the Emperor washed his hands after the ceremony, and encircled with the finest lace was the towel with which His Majesty wiped his hands. Princes assisted in the service ; " noble" ladies and high Court officials looked on upon the ceremony— of silly mockery from first to last. It is surely time that even monarchs were laying aside this sort of mock humilty and vulgar pretence. HORRIBLE CHARGE OP CRUELTY. A woman named GodifF has been committed for trial at the Salford Police Court on the horrible charge of wilfully placing a baby in an oven so hot that the child was blistered in the thigh. According to the statement of one of the prisoner's stepdaughters, the woman " seemed to have a spite" against the mother of the child, who had left her infant in the charge of another stepdaughter. This latter declared that Goilill, who had been drinking, took the child out of her arms, and, patting it in the oven, said, " Close the oven door." At this moment, according to the same witness, the mother returned, and exclaimed, "Oh ! my child !" The house surgeon at the Salford Hespital, deposed that when the infant was brought to him it seemed very sore. The prisoner, however, declared that she had burnt the child by holding it to the fire to warm it, and Dr. Ileywood admitted that it was possible for the injury to' be caused that way. Mrs. GodifF was also charged with subsequently throwing a kettle of boiling water at the mother, which struck her on the head, inflicting a wound, besides scalding her arm. Such are the alleged facts of this little episode of modern manners in Salford.

MURDERED FOR A FEW PENCE. Another terrible murder, the third within the last nine weeks, sent a thrill of horror throughout Vienna on April 15. A widow named Amelia Schramm, aged 45 years, has for the last five years, since the death of her husband, been living at No. 52, in the Kranzgrasse, in the suburb of Fuenfhaus, a poor locality, with her daughter Marie, aged 18. She kept a small publichouse or liquorshop, and was respected by her neighbours as a hardworking honest woman. About five o'clock on the morning in question as Marie, the daughter, was lying i>n bed in the room behind the shop, she heard the noise of a fall, followed by moaning. The girl at once got up and rushed into the public room, where she found her mother lying beside the rum-cask with four fearful wounds in her head, evidently inflicted with some such instrument as an axe. The poor woman opened her eyes, but did not speak, and expired in a few moments. On the shop being examined it was found that the till, which had contained only a few pence, had been emptied, and it became evident that the widow had been struck down while she was bending down beside the rum-cask to supply a customer who, without doubt, was the murderer.

COAL MINERS AND IRONSTONE MINERS. While the Durham coal miners are playing, the Cleveland ironstone miners are starving. The latter complain that when they came out on strike in 1874 the Durham miners sent men into Cleveland to urge and almost force them to renew work, but that now that they appeal to the Durham miners to resume work their remonstrances are angrily resented. Mr. .Joseph Toyn, the agent of the Cleveland men, writes to a northern contemporary as follows :—" Where would the coal and coke trade of .South Durham be if it were not for the Cleveland iron trade? And I, for one, am not going to sit still and see that trade destroyed, our men's homes without food and (ire, and not raise a protest against it. People who have been collecting funds for us have been told that we are not using our influence with the parties in Durham to get the dispute settled, and have refused to give on that account. Then, again, Other trades' Unionists have been appealed to by us, and they have not sent us a simile penny yet, but have sent liberal support to the Durham men, who were altogether in a better social and financial condition to begin with than the men in this district, who are actually on the verge of starvation. Of course, every word of this applies not only to the case of the ironstone miners, but to the ironworkers also. The only comfort, is that the truth appears to be slowly and surely dawning upon the minds of lie Durham men.

AN INDUSTRIAL CRISIS. England is face to face with a great industrial struggle. Already the thousands who are starving have threatened violence, and violence seems certain to come. Bread riots have occurred in the north, owing to the shutting down of cotton mills. Bread and grocery shops have already been broken open in Sunderland, and in West Hartlepool people are starving rather than accept pauper relief from the authorities, as thereby they would lose their right co vote in the coming election. An appeal will probably be issued to the working men and women throughout England who still have employment to come to the aid of the thousands in distress, but there is little hope of a favourable response at this time. The gigantic strike of the Durham coal miners threatens to become a national calamity. Never in the history of trade and industry in the north of England has there been so grave a crisis. Next week not a single furnace producing Cleveland pig-iron will be at work. Among the 60,(XX) miners themselves and their families there is great suffering, and thousands of children are being fed by charity. At West Hartlepool, in Durham, 1201) men have been discharged from the steel works, and many of their families are without food or fuel except that furnished by the Town Council and poor law guardians. Still the miners remain lirinly determined not to accept a redetion of wages. At a ballot recently taken as to whether they should return to work on the masters' terms about .'IO,(XX) strikers did not vote.

A MOTHER AND SON BEHEADED. By the double execution which took place at Dortmund, Germany, 011 April 13, a mother and her son paid the penalty for a peculiarly horrible murder which was perpetrated nearly a year ago. The scene of the crime was a little village named Loll, not far from Dortmund. A miner who was no longer fit for work was there, on May 11,1891, deliberately murdered by his wife and two sons, who had conspired together to get rid of him in this manner. The woman and her two sons were tried and convicted of the murder: Frau Reuse and the elder son, Wilhelm, being condemned to death, while the younger son was sentenced to penal servitude for life. According to the custom which obtains in that part of Germany, the condemned criminals were beheaded with an axe. When six o'clock struck Wilhelm Kruse was led out to the courtyard, where a scaffold with a block upon upon it had been erected. Not a moment was lost in carrying out the last penalty. Kruse submitted quietly while his 1 fart was unbuttoned at the neck and folded back. This done, he was laid upon the scaffold. The executioner then raised his axe, and with one swift, powerful stroke severed the murderer's head from his body. The truncated corpse having been placed in a coffin which was in readiness, the blood-stained block was sluiced with water and fresh sand was sprinkled on the ground, which had also been deluged with blood. The female prisoner was then led out. She walked with a firm step, and was remarkably self-possessed to the last. She was delivered over to the headsman in the same manner as her son, and in a few seconds her head also rolled upon the ground. Both executions were performed with wonderful celerity, occupying between them hardly 10 minutes.

THE BETRAYAL OF OFFICIAL SECRETS. A remarkable case came to an end in London 011 April 10. Edward Holdeu was charged with soliciting a corporal in the Royal Engineers to commit a breach of trust in regard to the fortifications of Malta, and with communicating the information to persons to whom it should not have been sent in the interests of the State. The Lord Chief Justice characterised the offence as one of the " most detestable and treasonable acts of which any citizen could be guilty." This is the first prosecution which has taken place under the Official Secrets Act of 1890, and excited proportionable interest. Holden himself, who had originally been a surveyor at Bolton, enlisted in the Royal Engineers in 1872, and from 1885 to 1888 was stationed at Malta. As his education in the surveyor's ollice made him a useful man in the corps, he was employed in a special department concerned with the construction of fortresses, with ammunition, with sighting artillery, ami so forth. _ At this time Corporal McCartney was working under him in the same office, and remained behind when the prisoner left Malta. Last year Holden left the army, and went to live at Manchester, and it was from this place that he addressed a letter to McCartney, who had then been removed to_ Gibraltar, asking him for the information in question, " as to forts, levels, guns, and batteries," which lie could obtain from one of the draughtsmen at Malta. McCartney at once took the letter to his superior officer, with the result that inquiries were set on foot, ending in the prisoner Holden appearing in the dock at Liverpool. Letters were found in the prisoner's possession from a correspondent in Paris, who signed himself " Poncet," alluding to certain sums of money which had already been forwarded to Holden, aud also to questions which he had been re-

quested to answer abouf the character and position of the guns, ft was informed, at the same time, that he wuld be generously dealt with, ana was on lis way to Paris, at the invitation of Poncei to explain various details, when he was apprehended in London. Some of the information sought could have been forwarded byanybody, but a good deal of it was special,and could only nave been obtained from solders inside the forts. Major Lewis, from the (ffice of the InspectorGeneral of Fortifications, said that many of the items asked for by the prisoner would be of great service to an enemy. The jury at once found the prisoner guilty, and Lord > Coleridge sentenced him to twelve months imprisonment with hard labour.