News by the December Mail.

Cromwell Argus, Volume I, Issue 17, 9 March 1870, Page 3

News by the December Mail.

The rank of cornet and ensign is to be abolished. These grades will, accordingly, disappear from the Army List at the commencement of the next financial year. The Abyssinian Medal has been issued to officers and men proceeding on foreign service ; but the one for the New Zealand war, which was virtually over before the t Jitack on the late King Theodore was contemplated, still " hangs fire." Another gunpowder explosion took place 1 at Messrs Curtis ifc Harvey's powder mills lat Hounslow on December 17. Three men were blown to pieces, and, as usual with these accidents, nobody knows how it came to happen. All Rome is laughing at an adventure of two representatives of the London demiI vwnde, who, on their way to Rome, fasI teued themselves on an innocent prelate, I and were presented by him to Cardinal Antonelli as English ladies of fashion. The fireman in the employ of Messrs i John Bright & Brothers, carpet and cotton manufacturers, Rochdale, discovered that James Mills, aged 49, a man of intemperj ate habits, had got into the premises during December 14, and had been scalded.to death in the boiler-house. The first suicide from the new bridge at Blackfriars took place on December 17. A man, apparently between twenty and thirty years of age, jumped into the river, | and was drowned. He rose five or six j times, and several parties endeavoured to | save him. The body has not been rej covered. On December 11, the punishment of the lash was carried out upon eight garotters who had been sentenced by Mr Justice Lush at the Leeds Assizes. From what I occurred, it is obvious that the convicts | dread the lash to a degree which illustrates 1 the wisdom of the Legislature in giving I judges the power of ordering its infliction. • On December 7 two young .men named | Bellis and Jones were rowing in a small j boat on the Mersey, near Tranmere. Bellis 1 had his dog with him. The boat capsized. I Jones, who was a good swimmer, tried to £ save Bellis, but the dog, mounting on BelI lis' back, bit Jones,savagely every time he' ■ approached Bellis. The result was that (poor Bellis was drowned. [ A frightful accident occurred at the B Bristol Tkeatre on Boxing Night. The ■pit and gallery entrance is approached by descent, and the crowd was so great that a large number of persons were thrown , Idown and trampled upon. Eighteen were I killed. The manager very wisely opened Jjtlie doors, and permitted the performance ■to proceed ; and by doing so, in all probajjbihty prevented a further loss of life. IJ Old players at billiards will be amazed Hat the scores which have recently been jjinade at home. In a game between Cook gland the son of the champion Roberts, the Bformer ran up a break of 388, making 119 jjspot strokes in succession. This was the jjlargest break at billiards ever known; but ithe same player has since exceeded it, having scored in one break no less than 393, including 112 spot strokes. Cook is said to have challenged the champion, and it is not likely Roberts will oppose him. A boy named Wareing, who put a child four years of age on the fire for singing a political song at Blackburn, was brought up for examination before the local magistrates on December 18. The solicitor who I appeared for the defence said that Wareling had been warned against singing such jjsongs, and having been so taught, he iinaBgined it was wrong in others. He asked (that the case might be adjourned, and the glad released from custody, so that the iparents of the children might settle the ■matter. The Bench said that had the prijjsoiier been older, they would have dealt jjwith him severely. ; I On December 9an explosion took place Bin one of the storehouses of the Rosslyn HPowder Mills, situated about a mile from jjtiie village of Rosslyn, near Edinburgh. || Eighteen barrels of sporting gunpowder jjwere placed in the store-house, and a short Htiine before the explosion the house was gvisited by the person in charge, who found Hall right. A quarter of an hour afterwards Han explosion took place, the building being jjcompletely destroyed, and other works ungroofed. The houses near had their wing dows all broken. Wonderful to state, only Hone man was hurt, and his injuries are not U serious. I Captain Norman, R.N., died, from I disease of the heart, on December 12, at •■Ramsgate, aged 58. He entered the Navy I I in early age, and by perseverance gained igfor himself the rank of Commander. He Bcommandod H.M.'s steamship Victoria at '1 Melbourne. Captain Norman was in 1 fcharge of the expedition in.search of Burke land his followers, who were lost in the lAustralian bush in 1862. He commanded ) jthe Naval forces during the war in New j IZealand, and received the thanks of the JAssembly for his valuable services; and fce led the exploring party in search of D shipwrecked people upon the Auckland i; {lslands in 1865. The deceased only re turned home a few months ago for the Jpurpose of taking out the turret-ship, at jfpresent being built at Chatham for tho degsnce of Melbourne.

Ia reference to the fine inflicted upon Kerr Bandmann, the tragedian, in Melbourne, for " wilfully und maliciously" destroying a case of photographs belonging to Mr Norman, the Pall Mall Gazette remarks : —" It spaakfl well for our artistes at homo that although nothing can exceed the ridiculous light in which man/ of them, especially the danseusos, are daily exhibited by photographs in tho shop windows, they never attempt to destroy these works of art. Tho provocation, moreover, is greater than that which roused Mr Bandmann to fury, the error committed in his case being only the substitution of one set of garments for another, whereas our actresses might plead in extenuation of their taking the law into their own hands, that their photographs represent them as wearing hardly any garments at all." " The Anglo-Australian in London," a writer in the European Mail, states that " the Lenton Troupe are still at the Holborn Amphitheatre. Lady Don has been indisposed and absent from the stage for several weeks, but she is now recovering. George Fawcett is playing at the Olympic. Julia Mathews impersonates the ' King of the Gold Mines,' at the Oovent Garden Theatre, in the pantomime entitled ' The Yellow Dwarf.' I hear that those clever artistes, Mr and .Mrs George Case, will shortly return to England. Barry Sullivan has gained fresh laurels by his production of ' Love's Sacrifice.' His Matthew Elmore is a splendid piece of acting, and all the newspapers in London have been unanimous in praising his performance. Madame Celeste has been performing at the Greenwich Theatre. Charles Wihnot, the comedian and burlescpie actor of Dunedin, has been engaged to appear at the Lyceum in Opera Bonffe early in January. Australians will regret to hear of the death of their old cricketing friend Tom Lockyer, who died of consumption on December 22, at Croydon." On December 3 a distressing accident •happened at Bradley, near Wolverhampton, at the Britanniu Iron Works. About 11 a.in., when the works were fully on, and all the hands were engaged at their furnaces, one of the boilers blew up, and was rent into nearly a dozen pieces; the roofs of the furnaces, and the surrounding brickwork and iron piping, were shattered and driven in all directions. General consternation and panic at once prevailed. Men who were cut and scalded ran away. When the ruins could be searched, one young man was found dead, with Irs skull shattered, and his whole body dreadfully burnt by the hot masonry which was over him. Not far off was another very similarly mutilated, and quite dead ; and close by wdre six workmen, some partly buried and others wholly so, all burnt and scalded, and some with fractured limbs and fearful contusions about the head and other parts of the body. Vehicles, with straw and blankets, were got with as little delay as possible, and seven sufferers were taken to the hospital in Wolverhampton. By two o'clock one of the seven had ceased to live. George Hawthorne, the engineer in charge of the boiler, was on the works at the time, and escaped with slight injuries.