STRANGE HAPPENINGS

Taranaki Daily News, 5 January 1929, Page 22

STRANGE HAPPENINGS

IN NEW SOUTH WALES

EMPLOYER’S DILEMMA.

COUNCIL’S WAR ON LOVERS.

Sydney, Dec. 20. Australia has become, within the past two days, a land of remarkable and amazing happenings, judging by those that have been chronicled. Most amazing is the disclosure made by the police with regard to thefts being made from a Sydney firm. A man doing work involving tremendous risks, thus” making his services indispensable, was found by his employers to have been stealing materials which cannot be replaced. The .systematic disappearance of valuable goods imported from the Continent led to the employers being forced to call in the aid of the police. The officers soon centred their suspicions on one man, but before taking action they consulted with the manager of the firm. The employee concerned was engaged in work involving exceptional risks, and it >was problematical whether the firm would have been able to secure anyone to take his place. There were big contracts to fulfil, and finally the manager of the firm was forced to ask the police to relinquish their investigations. He called in the employee and placed the position before him, extracting a written confession and the return of the goods in return for the re-employ-ment of the man. The employer stated that the loss of the man from the work which he was executing would have meant almost financial ruin for the % nrm.

At Bankstown a horsefly stung a horse, and the action led to the injury of five persons, the destruction of two plate glass windows, injury to the horse and the smashing of a sulky to which it was attached. The horse was standing in the main street at Bankstown at noon yesterday. In the sulky attached to it were two young children, who were waiting outside while their father was transacting business in a nearby shop. Suddenly the horse bolted and dashed through a shop window. Flying glass cut the face and hands of the two children. Their father saw the flight of the horse and made an heroic dash to rescue his children, but was too late. An interesting matrimonial tangle has arisen over the case in which a woman named Edith Price, nearly 70 years of age, is concerned. She was chief witness against her second husband, who has been charged with having committed bigamy in 1924 while his wife was still alive.

Edith Price confessed in the witness box that she had been married before, and that she did not know whether her first husband had divorced her or not. He moved in divorce proceedings, she said, but could not remember whether the decree had been made absolute.

The case has been adjourned to allow of the police searching the records to discver whether Price’s first husband completed proceedings. An amusing, news item featured in the Sydney Press has been the decision of the Wollahra Municipal Council to declare war on lovers who frequent the streets of the municipality in motor cars, and pull up in shaded spots on the council’s roads.

One of the most frequented spots, said the council at its latest meeting, was the northern end of Rose Bay. Here the council declared cars park night after night, leaving behind them all descriptions of rubbish. Police have patrolled the area, but as there is no regulation to stop cars parking there they are powerless. Council has decided to station an officer there for several hours at night to watch for the “lovers” cars, and take action should he detect any of the cars’ occupants depositing rubbish on the spot. Goulburn police have unearthed the inebriate de luxe. He admitted, when brought before the Court on Wednesday last, that he had been convicted of drunkenness on 131 occasions. The police produced as evidence against him a sheaf of pledges, which he had signed from time to time, as well as a number of convictions for obtaining drink after hours.

He was fined £l, and told that if he appeared before the Court again he would be sent to the Inebratee’ Home in Sydney. Once again he signed a pledge to abstain from imbibing. An unusual request was read in the will of Mrs. Welsford Smithers, wife of the vicar of St. John’s Church, Toorak, Melbourne. She asked in her will that she be buried to the strains of bright music. At her funeral in St. John’s Church, Toorak, yesterday, the service was a choral one, and the choir sang bright anthems instead of the usual funeral hymns. .As the coffin was carried from the church the choir sang “Onward Christian Soldiers,” with the organ pealing in its loudest tones.