KILLED BY A LION.

Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12470, 22 February 1909, Page 4

KILLED BY A LION.

-A tragic encounter wron.a -jlumi '* the dressing room of a theatre was the basis <of au application the other day to the Goui-t of Appeal, consist^: ing of the Master- of : the Rolls and Lords Justices Moulton and Farwell, under tho Workmen's Compei:satoin Act. ■ .' ■ , The applicants were the dependents of .a man named. Hasselmaiin, wLb was employed 7 by Mme. Ella .the lion tamer, recently arrived iri^Gloucester to perform at the Palace Theatre." 'She left Hasselmann in charge of the lions, and later r in the afternoon a man named Higgins found Hasselmann doing something to a cage. Hasselinan called to him to come and heip; Hasselmann apparently wanted to put one of the 4 OIIS out of a cage, and while, he was removing the empty cage ho-, called out, "A lion has got out, and is ' in tlie dressing room." Hassehnaiin then went into the dressing" room to drive the lion baciv into the cage, bnt it would. not go in. He threw: a chair, which the lien broke up. He then threw another chairj and' the lion made for him, "and there was a desperate fight, in the course- of which the man was ; killed;K; ;^: - ".'■, '■"".- --• The; Court held that it saw no evidence 6f :r Jrross and serious misconduct qa the part of the deceased. It was his duty, when the lion escaped, to try-to get it back into the cage, and ,therefore, the accident arose ouc of or in the course of his employment Mme. Ella was liable to pay the applicants compensation under the Act, and the case must go back to the county court judge for him to assess the amount of the compensation. HUNGER MARCHES. Hunger-marching has become play- 1 ed out as a method of cadging "says the 'Argus')/ From time to time processions of men out of employment have started for London from tho. Lancashire ■ and Midland towns, professedly to make known "their need of employment. . In some cases their declared object has been to impress Parliament with the necessity of finding "work for all," but in only one case have these demonstrations reached the metropolis. They have fizzled out. en route; They mostly fared very well at the hands of those who gave .of ; their indiscriminate charity. Failing to find employment, which few. of them seriously desired, .they. accepted free rations and Salvation Army shelters wherever the opportunity offered. One prominent organiser of these hunger marchers was a man named Powellj of Bradford. He has just thrown up his enterprise in disgust. In the course of a speech on "the subject three days ago lie said that the f ailur&'of his recent march was", due to the fact that a large proportion of. the men did not intend. to look for work; some of thern^ he said, had never looked for work in their lives. Several "of tho party even refused to eat comed •beef and butter j others complained that boiled bacon was two fat. At Bolton these processionists demanded 16d a day as their pay for demonstrating; "apart from three decent meals. Ab Stoke, said this eye-wit-ness, there was to -have been a ohurch parade, but several of the men had been drinking, and were too "fresh" to be seen in a place of worship. Powell accused the collectors :who had. charge "of the money boxes, of pilfering /the contents! He declared that he would wash his hands of such men, for he was not justified in appealingito the public to help thgm. ..;." ■ DECLINE OF NOBLE FAMILIES. Professor von Gruber, of the University of Munich, has collected some tell-tale_ statistics of the declfne of noble families, which he Secured by investigating the ' history of no fewer than % twenty thousand German and Austrian families. He has fouwd that 6"nly sixty-eight of the twenty thousand families existed longer than six hundred ' years. "In -England," he says,- but three of the 'ancient ducal houses survive, and only eleven of, the old-time families of earls. In Sweden 76per cent of the noble houses have, vanished from the face of " the earth." - . ■