South Canterbury Times. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1889.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 6028, 3 October 1889, Page 2

South Canterbury Times. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1889.

A moral for the Railway Commissioners has been drawn from the results of the competition which the Dunedin tramways have had to face since the arrival there of Young’s Palace Oars. The tram fares, which were 3d, have been reduced to Id, and to judge from appearances at least four times as many people now use the trams. So marked has been the increase of traffic that it is believed the Tramway Company would not see any advantage in returning to the old rates if the opposition were removed. The moral drawn from this experience is, that a reduction, say of half, on railway fares especially first-class fares for distances under 80 miles would create a large amount of extra traffic, at an infinitesimal extra cost. There are scores of people who simply let the railroads alone because they do not care to pay the exorbitant fares charged, but who would gladly avail themselves of an occasional run into the country to see their friends at a cost of Is or Is (Id. The question is, is it any use making such a suggestion to the Railway Commissioners P Who is really the head of it, McKerrow or Maxwell P If the latter, certainly it is no use. His policy is to keep down expenses, and this can be most easily done by keeping down the traffic.

A London paper, the Daily Chronicle, in a note on the last but one of Jack the Ripper’s murders remarks that “ It is a strange and inexplicable fact that no one has ever passed a man with tell-tale stains on his clothing such as have attracted any attention, nor has anybody subsequently seen a suit of clothes cast aside which might possibly have been worn by the murderer. It has been conjectured on that account, as well as in consequence of the mechanical skill displayed in the use of the knife, that the culprit is a slaughterman, and as time goes on the impression certainly deepens that the unknown murderer is engaged in a trade of the kind indicated, and if so it is plain that the state of his clothing would on that very account attract no notice either at his lodgings or elsewhere.” It appears then that the suspicion mentioned in a cablegram of later date that the multiple murderer is a woman disguised as a man and working at a slaughterhouse, is a developemcnt of an earlier suspicion as to to the locality in which the Ripper should be sought for. If the fiend really is engaged as a slaughterman it was proof of his recklessness that a horrible murder was committed after that conviction had, as stated, gained ground. It may be that he, (or she, as it may be) determined to wind up with one more horror,

in spite of the increased risk of discovery, and that the tale of murder and mutilation Is now closed till a death-bed repentance may reveal its secret.