DOMINION NEWS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVII, Issue 21, 25 September 1913, Page 6

DOMINION NEWS.

! AN INTERCEPTED LETTER. i [Per Press Association.] Auckland, September 24. At the Police Court this morning, David A. Hedley was charged that on February 14 he fraudulently obtained a postal packet intended for auotaer person. Mr Selwyn Mays, who prosecuted, asked leave to withdraw the indictable charge and substitute a summary charge that defendant induced a postal officer by means of false pretences to deliver to him a postal packet not posted to or intended for him. Mr Page, S.M., allowed the lesser charge to be substituted. Dr. Bamford, for defendant, pleaded guilty, and explained the circumstances. Counsel said that Hedley had been unable to obtain his wife’s address, though he had suspicions that a certain person was in communication with her. He received information on February 14 that this person had posted a letter addressed to Mrs Hedley, so he stationed himself by the pillar box till the postal officer came to clear the box. He then told the officer that he had posted a letter to his wife] hut had given a wrong address and he wished to change it. Ho thus induced the officer to sort out the letter he wanted, From it he got Mrs Hedley’s address, and he thereupon gave as a correct address the 'address of a relative of his at Onehunga, where the letter eventually went and was Secured by him. Remarking that the matter was one that could not be viewed lightly by the Court, though there were mitigating circumstances in the present instance, the magistrate imposed a fine of £3 and 28s costs.

A PRISON PROTEST. Wellington, September 24. Round about the Upper Wiilis street tram shelter shed there was enough bread this morning to suggest the collapse of a baker’s cart. The bread was thrown there by prisoners from the Terrace Gaol on their way to the Mount Cook brick kilns. There are usually GO or 70 men marching in this gang. The bread they threw away this morning amounted to 25 or 30 rations. Inside some of the loaves were notes written on paper used in the prison, and through the medium of these notes the prisoners apparntly, acting in concert, decided' to ventilate their grievances. The following notes were recovered, one being writly, in ink, one in copying ink pencil, and the other in ordinary black lead pencil:— “We want an inquiry into the conduct of this gaol. Yon people, the taxpayers, are paying big salaries to inspectors whom we very seldom see. There is also a Maori hero who is one, mass of running sores. We have got to use the same bath and sanitary conveniences. The doctor says that the complaint is catching.” “This is half of what we get. Smell it, and if you take it yon would do the prisoners a good turn. Take this with it; it is what we get to live bn. A prisoner.” “Will the public kindly gather this bread up and send it to the warder whose children are starving in the street. Sour bread to do eight hours’ work on I” A piece of the bread, probably a pound of it, was picked up and submitted to a well-known baker for his expert opinion. Ho described it as yesterday’s make of good quality white bread, moist, well-baked, and in every way a satisfactory article. Mr Scanlon, chief gaoler, was seer by a pressman with reference to the prisoners’ demonstration. He at once recognised the bread shown to him as gaol bread. Mr Scanlon took the pressman into the prison kitchen, and the chef there selected a loaf that was asked for and cut in two. The bread was of equal quality to that flung away in the street. It was selected haphazard. The dinner for the prisoners was being prepared. It consisted of three-quarters of a pound of meat dess bone), parsnips, onions, carrots, greens and turnips, also potatoes boiled in the skin. There was plenty of food, and good food. To-day was “roast day” so that the prisoners had gravy instead of soup, which goes | with the rations. The men get a loaf a day. The kitchen, although the cooking was going on, was scrupulously i clean.

THE DEVON WBECK. Wellington, September 24. As the outcome of the trouble that arose with the watcrsiders and Harbor Board employees over the discharge of the Devon’s salvaged cargo from the schooner Echo and the steamer Awaroa, a claim lias been made on the Harbor Board by the New Zealand and African Steamship Company, as agents for the owners of the Devon, for £llO, for demurrage for failure to unload the first instalment of salvaged cargo. The Board disclaims liability. At to-night’s meeting of the Harbor Board it was decided to ask the owners of the wrecked steamer Devon to remove the hull, on the ground that it obscures the low level light at Pencarrovv, and so constitutes a danger to navigation.