EIGHTY-FIVE YEARS AGO

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27357, 5 April 1950, Page 6

EIGHTY-FIVE YEARS AGO

FROM THE FILES OF THE ©tago Bail? Uimes DUNEDIN, APRIL 5, 1865. The ensign was hoisted at the main of the ship Hydra when she arrived in port, a signal for the police boat. The members of the crew, it appears, were under the impression that they were not bound to discharge the cattle as their time on the articles had expired and in consequence they had refused duty. Upon a little reasoning, and the appearance of the officials, matters were soon arranged and the work was proceeded with.

A day or two ago we stated that the resident magistrate had .taken the “ dying deposition ” of the wife of a small farmer in the Anderson’s Bay district, and that Mr Strode had so acted in consequence of the statement of the medical man. who had been called to attend the woman for injuries caused by her husband throwing her out of the window. We were misinformed as to the last parictular; for whatever the husband may have done to his wife, there is no window in the house through which he could have thrown her. There seems to have been a quarrel which is said to have resulted from the wife’s intoxication. Whether she suffered any injury, and if so, whether that injury accelerated death, remains to» be ascertained, for the woman died yesterday morning.

The impecuniosity of Southland—the “ bankrupt province,” as its own press calls it—is becoming a New Zealand scandal. The News of the 30th ult. says: “ Twice within the past week has the humiliating spectacle been presented of a Government in abject distress, depending for continued existence on the obstacles which the peculiar application of the law interposes between it and its creditor. We shall be understood to refer to the applications made before our resident magistrate, in open court, for execution against the Provincial Government, at the suits of two individuals, and which applications have been refused. If the only way by which a wretched existence can be prolonged is by interposing those vexatious delays, and thus, either to weary out, or in some way to defeat the public creditor, the sooner our individual being as a province is blotted out the better.”