NEWS IN BRIEF

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21396, 20 October 1934, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF

Women in prison in Britain lately numbered 600, as compared with 12,000 men. A house of the official non-parlour type cost £286 to build in England last March. One-tenth of the population of Chelsea, London, belong to the sixty-five-and-over age group. All meat displayed in butchers' shops in the United States of America is kept in refrigerator show-cases. Only University men will, in future, be recruited for the Surete Generale, the Scotland Yard of France. The bed of clay which lies below London is regarded as its best protection against the risk of earthquake. " Soccer " is becoming quite a rage in Russia; there are 15.000 players in Moscow and 8000 in Leningrad, all amateurs. Borrowers who keep books over time from the Croydori, Surrey, public libraries pay, on an average, over £IOO a month in fines. One English village, Wingfield, in Wiltshire, hold the quaint record of not having had one new house built for more than fifty years. Five-shilling pieces, though never very popular, are still coined; last year the British Mint turned out 2832 of these cumbersome coins. & Britain has to thank the drought for a decrease in the number of flies recently; these pests need moist conditions for their breeding-places. Telephone poles are doomed in Britain. Already 9,000,000 miles of line run underground; now the remaining 1,000,000 miles are to be tackled. Many of the inner districts "of London are losing their inhabitants. In the case of Southwark, the population has fallen by 22,764 in the last ten years. At a cost of £750,000, thousands of men are at work laying a cable that will put Scotland in instantaneous telephonic communication with the rest of Britain. Valuing the Great Western Railway's property for rating means dividing £2,800,000 between thirty-two counties. 455 rating authorities, and 1973 parishes. Ten families in Newcastle-on-Tyne have cost the ratepayers £10,700 in outdoor relief. In one case all the six children were born while relief was being received. . Britain's export boot and shoe trade has fallen from 381,590 dozen pairs in the first seven months of 1932 to 252,160 dozen pairs in the same period of this year. Of the 7,000,000,000 eggs consumed in Britain every year, 5,000,000,000 are produced at home, more than half the remainder coming from Australia and New Zealand. During the past six years more than

99,000,000 people in Britain have paid admission to attend greyhound races, the entertainment tax paid amounting to £1,091,261. There was recently, for the first time for years, an increase in the numbet of miners employed in Britain, the number now being 2000 higher than twelve months ago. Films handled by the British Board of Film Censors last year measured 1000 miles in total length and comprised 1713 subjects, of which twenty-three subjects were rejected. The first mails carried by a heavier-than-air machine were those with which, nearly 24 years ago, Gustave Hamel flew from Hendon to Windsor, doing the journey in twelve minutes. A "flying squad" in the Clity of London Police Force is supplied with pedal bicycles, as Experts regard this means of transport' as best, suited to the streets crowded with traffic. Liverpool is worse off, so far as juvenile unemployment is concerned, than many of the British mining districts. That city, has between 8000 and 9000 juveniles who cannot find work. The largest civilised territory in the world without a military force is probably Newfoundland, the nearest approach to one being the Church Lads' Brigade, which is armed with rifles. Tailors who are employee! in hotels in Britain to press clothes are regarded ,as "hot-el workers" by the Ministry of Labour, and so do not come under the scales of hours and pay for fixed tailors. The American typist spends, on an average, thirty shillings-a week on her clothes, her hats costing ten shillings, her shoes- fifteen shillings, and her dresses from twe'nty to thirty shillings each. : . A motor-car killed a man near Brunn, Czechoslovakia. When the driver stopped he was confronted by a dancing bear belonging to the dead man. The bear rushed at the motorist and killed him. It was then shot. Lancashire is said to be losing its cotton-spinning mills at the rate of more than fifty a year, most of the machinery being sold for melting down and used in the manufacture of new machinery and motor-cars. The shipment of a British motorcar to the Rajah of Poonah, potentate of a small Indian state in the region of Kashmir, entailed the transportation of its dismantled parts for 40 miles over rocky mountain trails. Cooking for 900 patients and a staff of 200, which meant 3300 meals a day, has been the job of Miss Eltjca Crannis, who recently retired from her post as head cook at St. Giles Hospital, London, after 37 years' service.

Bob, King George's new terrier, is a proud and happy dog. He has passed ins probation, and now he holds the position in his Royal master's affection which was formerly occupied bv the late and widely-lamented Snip. As a result of a medical census at Enfield. Middlesex, it is snfcated that half the 549 pupils attending the wealthier schools wett? "below par"* among 332 poorer children examined, only twenty-five per cent wora "below par." Parents in England who leave their young children shut up alone in the house in the evening while they themselves go to the pictures or some other amusement? are now liable to be prosecuted after a first warning has been sent. When the Hon. Christopher Lowther was batting against Chiswiek for the M.C.C. recently he went to hit a fast ball to leg and hit, instead, a sparrow which flew across the path of the ball at the crucial moment. Ha hit the sparrow right into the squareleg's hands. Necessity is making somg British towns take to strange trades. From ships, Howden-on-Tyne has turned to wooden portable buildings. Toy-making is being developed in Londonderry; while brickmaking from colliery waste is engaging attention at one Durham colliery. At a Red Cross demonstration in Sydney, just after the outbreak of the war in 1914, Madame Melbft acted rfs auctioneer, and sold a number of farthings for gold. She invited the assembly to make a special bid for the last farthing, .which brought,, £3O. She a small for 65 guineas.