OUR DUNEDIN LETTER.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume V, Issue 453, 23 November 1880, Page 2

OUR DUNEDIN LETTER.

(Fkom our own Correspondent.)

Dunedin, November 18.

A case of considerable interest was heard at the Police Court on Monday, before Mr 1. N. Watt, R.M., when a lady teacher named Miss Conll was charged with having 'assaulted William Fenwick, a pupil in her class. The boy's evidence went to show that Miss Ooull had given him nboufc twenty strokes on the hand with a cane, or some such instrument, the effect of which necessitated the callii g in of medical assistance. The witnesses for the defe-ice stated that the plaintiff's conduct was such as to merit severe correction, in order that discipline might be enforced, while no such instrument as a cane was used by the pupil teachers in the infliction of punishment. As the evidence was contradictory, His Worship dismissed the case; but stated that he would always look curiously into cases where chastisement was given by means of strokes either on the head or hands, as he knew of one case in which a boy lost .three fingers from the effects of the latter mode of punishment.

Mary Prescott, whose disappearance a few days ago caused so much alarm, has at length turned up. She has evidently changed her mind—if indeed she ever contemplated it—of committing suicide, for, after all, she does not appear to have gone into the water, but to Port Chalmers, where, about 230 a.m. on Wednesday, a constable on night duty, observing a young woman coming down the street whose description resembled that of the missing woman, apprehended her and lodged her in the'lock-up. Next morning she was discharged, as no information had been laid against her. As yet she has refused to assign any reason for her conduct, which has certainly occasioned the police a good deal of trouble, and her friends no little amount of anxiety.