NEAR AND FAR.

Otautau Standard and Wallace County Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 349, 16 January 1912, Page 7

NEAR AND FAR.

What is known m Yorkshire as the Erdington mystery has had a somewhat sensational clearing up. Against the wishes of her husband, the wife of Captain Coventry, a district magnate, was m the habit of having drinking bouts with Charles Gilks, a dependent of the family. During one of her husband's absences Mrs Coventry sent for Gilks, and between them they consumed a bottle of whisky. Next morning Gilks's body was found m the street, where there was reason to believe that she had removed it, after the man had tumbled down the stairs. Death was due to a fractured skull. There were protracted court proceedings and unpleasant disclosures, ending m the committal of Mrs Coventry on a charge of manslaughter. But at the Warwick assizes Mr Justice Ridley told the grand jury of the county that " Gilks may have staggered downstairs m his drunkenness, and the removal of the body does not prove guilt. I can find no evidence to justify you m putting Mrs Coventry on her trial." On that direction there was nothing for the grand jury but to throw out the bill, which they did.

An extraordinary defence was made by Victor Chapman, who was found guilty and sentenced to death at' Nottingham for the murder of Ralph Hill, whom he shot m the Market place from jealousy, it was stated, of the other's attentions to his sweetheart. The prisoner declared that from 10 o'clock on the morning of the crime till he found himself at divine service m gaol, four' days later, he had not tfte faintest, recollection of what had happened to him. He denied that he had the slightest desire to harm Hill, or that he had threatened him. A medical witness said that when arrested the prisoner appeared utterly indifferent to all going on around him. During the whole of the time he was questioned Chapman stared him straight m the face with a fixed and vacant expression.

There is to be shortly introduced into the British Parliament a measure to provide for the compulsory detention of the feeble-minded, whose number is increasing at such a. rapid rate as to occasion grave alarm. Some idea of the urgency of this reform may be gathered from this extract from a recent report by Dr Forbes Winslow, the mental specialist: — "We have 133,157 lunatics m our asylunls, and no fewer than 149,000 feeble-minded degenerates at large m the community. Fully 66 per cent, of the lunatics m London asylums have hereditary connections with the disease. But these m asylums are not so dangerous to the community as the feeble-minded who are at .liberty to iiave children. This is why degeneracy is increasing so alarmingly. In 1859 there was one lunatic for every 536 sane persons; to-day the ratio is one m 275 ; and m less than 300 years, unless drastic 6teps are taken, there will be more lunatics and degenerates than sane people amongst the Western nations." As there is no divorce law m Ireland, marriages m that country have to be dissolved by Act of Parliament, which is such an expensive proceeding that only persons with means can take it on for dissolving the matrimonial bond. Thus the House of Lords was the other day called upon to Tead a second time a Bill ' ' to dissolve the marriage of Josephine Turner Maxwell, of Crinken Abbey, Shankell, m the county of Dublin, with Henry Pendleton Maxwell, and to enable her to marry again, and for other reasons." In giving evidence m support of the second reading of the Bill Mrs Maxwell 6aid that her husband, m addition to misconduct, frequently caught her by the throat, and once he threatened to blow her brains out because she refused to have the dogs m the bed. She left him m 1896, but had not taken proceedings, according to her counsel, because her father had a great objection to divorce. Mrs Maxwell waited until he died, because she said she was afraid if she applied for a divorce it would break hi 6 heart. The Bill duly passed all its stages.