Villains’ Deeds.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 17, 26 April 1911, Page 8

Villains’ Deeds.

Hull rhymes with dull, and the idea that the association may go even further is suggested by the statement that a “hoax epidemic” breaks out in that seaport every three, years. Taedium vitae seems a very reasonable explanation for a couple of youths who read a publication called “Villains’ Deeds,” and made a fairly successful effort in their own small way to combine depravity with amusement. Cine of them found relief from ennui for a time by puncturing cycle tyres and putting uncorked bottles of oil in his friends’ pockets. When these recreations began to pall, the evergreen amusement was taken up of distributing bogus orders among the local tradesmen. A builder was set to work upon the roof of the Queen’s Hall, the licensed trade was consoled for its sufferings by an order for forty-seven barrels of beer, waggons of coal were, requisitioned from Sheffield, and even London had a share in the illusory “boom.” Between them the two office-boys managed to get goods to the value of £250 delivered—chiefly, we gather, to their own employers, and they may feel fairly entitled to have some future issue of “Villains’ Deeds” all to themselves. Tho periodicity of this sort of thing points very strongly to Hull's need of some permanent and satisfying distraction.