ACCIDENTS, OFFENCES, ETC.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1244, 27 September 1884, Page 1

ACCIDENTS, OFFENCES, ETC.

An elderly married man named Thomas Brown was committed for trial at Dunedin on Wednesday on a charge of rape on a girl of tender years. There are twenty-nine prisoner for trial at the Supreme Court session in Auckland, fifteen of whom are Maoris. The only case of importance is that of Rosioa Smith, for child murder. Mr Henderson, the chief officer of the Timaru fell overboard into the Buller on Wednesday night. Kis body was recovered on Thursday afternoon. There was a severe cut over the left eye, caused by striking the timber of the staiths when falling. On Thursday afternoon a deplorable occurrence took place at the new Presbyterian Church in course of erection at Surrey Hill, Auckland. Part of the building had been put up, when a gust or wind caught and blew it down, and Gavin Miller Darrell wns struck violently by the falling timber. His head was crushed, and death was instantaneous. Percy Lipscombe, who at the time was conversing with Darrell inside the building, ■jumped through an opening and escaped. A man named Frank Davidson attempted suicide at Northcote (Auckland), on Thursday morning. He was tired of his life, having become troubled with paralysis, and he adopted the following singular mode of self-destruction. He placed an iroD pot in the ground and put in it twenty pounds of powder, and having heated a soldering iron, he lay down over the pot and stuck che iron into the powder. A great explosion followed, and Davidson was found with his clothes on fire and terribly mutilated, rushing about looking for pistols which he had previously loaded m case his other efforts failed. His neighbors toot him to the hospital, where he now lies in a dangerous state. The man's head is completely denuded of skin, and his flesh is torn all over his body. He was 65 years of aga, and had been living alone, though he had a wife, who is living in Auckland.