HERE AND THERE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17345, 27 September 1924, Page 8

HERE AND THERE.

AN EYE FOR EVERYTHING. CRAZY WITH LOSS. Charles Rohutizk, of Jersey City, went to lunch with 2000 dollars in currency in his pocket. When he returned to the shop where he is employed, the money was missing He became hysterical and was taken to the Psychopathic Hospital. SUICIDE IN SLEEP. That he may have cut his throat in his sleep was suggested at an inquest on Thornton Jones, solicitor, at Bangor- J ones lived eighty minutes after the wound. He cried out to his wife and son. “ Forgive me,” then motioning for paper and pencil, he wrote : “ I dreamt that I had done it. I awoke to find it true.” A verdict of “ Suicide while temporary insane ” was returned. LORD NORTHCLIFFE’S BEQUEST. Mr Justice Russell, in the Chancery Division, conditionally approved a compromise scheme for the payment to employees of legacies under tjie will of Lord Northcliffe. It was stated tliat in order that the legacies to the people with whom his brother had so long been associated should be paid in, full, Lord Rothermere had offered to provide £IOO,OOO. TREASURY WINDFALL. The will was proved at Derby of Lieut.-Colonel William Dickson Winterbottom, J.P., D.L., of Aston Hall, Derby, well known in local hunting circles, who died on April 23 last, aged 66. The estate has been sworn at £1,069,964 gross, with net personalty £987,617. Death duties amounting to over £300,000 have been paid. Subject to certain small legacies to servants, the only l>eneficiaries under the will are the widow and three children, and the widow of a son killed in the BRITISH PEOPLE LIVE LONGER. The general health of the English nation is better, aud the expectation of life longer, than ever before. This whs the encouraging theme of an address by Dr F. C. Shrubsall to the British Association at Toronto. Points in his paper, are: —In London elementary schools there has been a gain of a full half inch in stature since 1901. The average weight of boat race crews lias increased nearly in stone in sixty years. LADY BURGLAR. Two charges of burglary were preferred -against Jean Chapman, hged forty-four, woman domestic servant sent for trial by the Croydon Magistrates. At midnight a constable said lie found that the dining-room window of a house at Russell Hill, Purley, was smashed and a large stone was lying on the window sill. He caught the woman coming out of the kitchen window. She said: “I am the servant here. My people are away. I thought I heard the front door move, so I came out of the back.” Chapman was also charged with breaking into a house at Sanderstead and with stealing property valued at £B. A glass panel was then broken in the front door. £SOOO GEM AS ~PAPER-WEIGHT. The world’s largest sapphire, weighing ten ounces, and valued at more than £SOOO, was exhibited at Wembley. It is intricately carved in the form of an oar-ornament, and must originally have been about twice its present sizeIt was discovered in the home of a Mohammedan official in Hyderbad, byMr Wakefield, Director-General of Revenue, who was tokl that the children of the family had played with it as they would with ordinary stones. It is shown in the Bombay Court of the Indian Pavilion. The stone has a long and romantic, history. It was formerly an ornament on a Buddha belonging to the Ballala kings of Southern India in the twelfth century. POLICE DOG AND THIEVES. Trained as a police dog, a fine Alsatian wolf-hound, owned by a Putney constable, put, to flight. petrol thieves at three o'clock one morning. Four men in a Ford car burgled the Pioneer Petrol Filling Station. Kingston Vale, broke open a bin, and were running away with fourteen cans of petrol, when the bold Alsatian appeared on the scene. TTie dog was on patrol with his master, Police Constable Charman, and was the first to spot, tho men, and sprang after them. The thieves caught a glimpse of the ferocious-looking animal, and promptly dropping their booty, sped off in different directions, getting clear away. One clue that they left behind was their six-seater motor-car. £107.000 FROM GRETNA. A total sum of £107.762 was obtained from the auction at Gretna (the Government munition town), it was stated by Air Snowden in the House of Commons. Only the works and plant of the Ether factory were sold, said Mr Snowden. All the other factories were still on the Government’s hands. Scottish Labour members had complained of the “ridiculous prices” at which public plant was being disposed of. The Government last week refused to interrupt the sale, but has instituted a Cabinet inquiry into the possible adaptation of Gretna to public uses in peace time. The factories and town originally cost £9,000.000. THE BUSY RICH. Two women prominent in New York society received decrees of divorce in the Saine Tribunal at Paris, both on the ground of abandonment. Mrs Malcolm Whitman, formerly Alisa Jeannie Crocker, and Airs John AYolfe, formerly -Miss Alary Hudson Coffin, were the plaintiffs. Airs AYolfe has two children by her first marriage, Harriet and Ralston Coffin, both of whom are at boarding schools in the United States. The Wolfes were married in 1916. Airs Whitman inherited a San Francisco fortune of 10.000.000 dollars, and Air Whitman, who is a Boston man, is also a millionaire. They were married in San Alateo, California, in 1912. and came to reside at 876, Fifth Avenue, New York. Air Whitman, a graduate of Harvard, was American tennis champion for several years. He was a widower, his first wife having been Aliss Janet Al’Codk.