GENERAL NEWS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12070, 13 September 1902, Page 2 (Supplement)

GENERAL NEWS.

ROYAL AQUARIUM SOLD.

It was announced at the sitting of tb« Wesleyan Conference at Manchester that arrangement* had been provisionally made tot the purchase of the Royal Aquarium. Westminster, with the view* to erecting on a ar . lion of the site a Wesleyan Church Hou»« and Great Hall. The purchase price was £530,000, which will come out of the millioa guinea fund recently raised by the denomination. An extraordinary meeting of tlm shareholders of the Royal Aquarium to confiller the scheme has been called by Mr. Ritchie, the managing director, and M" Wilkinson, the secretary. The ground coat" prises over two ami a-half acres and include* the site of the Imperial Theatre, as well a* those of six house!- to the left of the froao of the Aquajiutn ill Prince's-atreet. The. whole of the Aquarium buildings, Mr. Rit-e-hie told an interview ei, would be demolished, although he did not believe thai; the Wesleyan Church House would occupy the whole" of the sit*. In fact Mr. Perks had told hiin that only 40,000 ft of ground would be required for the Church House, and that, it would he built at the AbVy end of the site. The best otter the company had ever had before was £210,000 to £220.000. Their capital was £317.500 and the property was mortgaged for £80.000. On the completion' of the purchase they expected to be able to pay everybody in full, satisfy the . liquidating expenses, and leave a manna I for an equitable acknowledgment to the large staff of employees. Mr. Ritchie added that he did not think the side would interfere with Mrs. Laitgtvy's tenancy of the Imperial Theatre. It seems that Mr?. Langtry took the theatre on a fourteen years' lease, ou the understanding that the Aquarium Company, if they disposed of their whole site, should be entitled to determine her lease at six months' notice on payment to her of £8000 which she undertook to expend on improvements in the theatre. At the time of signing her lease Mrs. Lang try possibly did not contemplate practically reconstructing the house, on which she eventually expended £38,000. The Aquarium was opened in January, 1876. CHILI) INSURANCE. Some remarkable evidence was given at an inquest held at the Battersea Coroner's Court on the body of William Gathercole, aged fifteen, the son of a labourer residing at Millgrove-street. In spite of the boy's age be weighed only 131b, although he was | 3ft 6in in height. The doctor said there was no similar case on record. It was stated that the child was one of twins, and could only speak one or two words and had never been able to walk. Death was due to heart failure from weakness. The mother said s.he insured the boy's life four and ahclf years ago. The premium she paid was 2d a week, which she had been given to understand would entitle her to £15 or £16. She increased the insurance from Id a week to 2d at the suggestion of the collector. The coroner said he could not sea what useful purpose could be served by insuring any child, especially one of this kind, for a sum three or four times more than would be required to bury it. It was not right of insurance agents to put pressure' upon parents to have so large an insurable interest in their children. The jury returned a verdict in accordance with the medical evidence. IF MORGAN WEN» MAD. Mr. Murray Tuley, one of the oldest and ablest of the Chicago judge,'-, having been elected president, has addressed the Illinois Bar Association ou compulsory arbitration in labour disputes, which, he said, aided the growth of Socialism. After calling attention to the anthracite coal strike, costing £200,000 daily, the same sum as the Spanish war did, Mr. Tuley assailed " one John P. Morgan, who absolutely controls the billion ami a-quarter dollar Steel Combine, a. geeeral of finance, before whom Royalty bows obsequiously, who heard the pleas of great financiers and representatives of the working men for the arbitration of the miners' case, and walked away, indulging in a long supercilious stare. Kings," he proceeded. " have gone mad. Suppose the brain of this man, with a thousand million dollar interests, were to give way and he were to arrogantly defy the federation of labour, and precipitate a general cessation of work! Placing corporations of employers under public restraint and forcing the submission of labour disputes to Courts of Arbitration would do much to solve the problem." CHILD LABOUR IN AMERICA. Lady Florence Dixie has addressed a letter to the President of the United States, drawing his attention to the " shocking and inhuman toleration of child labour in America, in which children, little more than infants, toil for long, long hours daily and nightly in order to line the pocket of those bloated monstrosities called millionaaires." She asks him to use. his great power and put down what she declares to be "a most horrible form of slavery" in the "land of the free." woman's shocking crime. A double murder and suicide took placa in Birmingham. The police having, at the request of the neighbours', broken into the house of Thomas Collins, Leamington Road, Sparkbrook, found Collins and his wife lying on the bed upstairs, the former with "his tiead battered in and the latter with her throat, cut. In another room a live-year-old child was found dead in bed, and, in the opinion of the doctor who was called in, the boy had been suffocated by a pillow, which had been pressed upon his face for some time. It is thought that she murdered her husband while he was asleep with a chopper, which was found hidden in the cellar, and that, after suffocating her child, she went upstairs, lay on the bed beside lief husband, and cut Iter own throat. There is little doubt that the tragedy was the outcome of a tit of insanity. It is stated that a brother of Mrs. Collins died in a lunatic asylum a mouth ago. In August last year the woman became the mother of twins, both of whom died, and she had since been strange in her manner. AtTOB TAKES POISON" ON TUB STAGE. Dr. Wynn Westcott held an inquiry at Hackney concerning the death of Arthur A, Sharpley, an actor, of Rock Road, Clapton, who died in the local infirmary. Deceased had parted from a woman with whom he had been living, and when he arrived on the stage at Dartford for rehearsal on May 27she offered him some stago property. Deceased said he was not talking to her, and on another actor asking him what part be was going to play he replied, "This is the part I am going to play," and drank from a bottle containing spirits of salts, which he drew from his pocket. Dr. Moore Hall said deceased was much emaciated as the result of the action of the poison, and death was due to exhaustion from ulceration of the stomach and bowels caused by the acid. A verdict of "Temporary insanity" was returned. DARING honeymoon trip. A. small covered-in sailing boat, 16ft in length, arrived in Dover Harbour recently, the occupants being Mr. Bradley and his wife, who are stated to be on their honeymoon trip. The -married couple started from Nova Scotia, "and Mr. Bradley stated that, some rough weather had been experienced in crossing the Atlantic. The boat, however, stood it splendidly. THE PRICE OF A LADY'S HAT. A remarkable story in which the price of a lady's hat appears to have provided the foundation for the plot is told by the NewYork correspondent of the Dailv Mail. A Mrs. Davis Thomas, of Seattle", Washing" tou. it, seems, admired a hat in a shop window. The price was £3 12«, and her busbard offered to purchase it. She refused, saying it was too extravagant. Her brother, Samuel Lake, urged her to let her husband buy it. but she still refused. Reaching home the discussion continued, and Lake shot Mr. Thomas dead, mortally wounded his sister, who told the police the cause of the tragedy before dying, and then reloaded the pistol and killed himself.

WJBEUXSS TKLEGRAI'HY. We mm- possibly (says the Daily Wegraph) have rival' wireless telegraph schemes before long. Sir Oliver Lodge led the wav in England in finding a coherer sensitive enough to detect Hertzian waves at a distance: In 1894 he gave a demonstration of its efficiency m a lecture at the Roval Institution. For P"cUcM purposes Mr. Marconi improved on uw with his vertical elevated wire. Dr. AM*, ander Muirkead is now reported to have invented a new coherer with which »g, sages were sent recently between Jtog End and Down, Kent, a distance of seven and a-haif. miles, at the rate of-j b*W words a minute. It is believed (fat«£ neatei electric power the transmission can be effected aver longer distances.