PALMERSTON DAY BY DAY.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 754, 1 March 1910, Page 3

PALMERSTON DAY BY DAY.

SAD DEOWNING FATALITY. IN THE MANAWATU RIVER. (By Telesraph.-Special Correspondent.) Palmerston North, February 28. Plaus iu connection with the Government Engineer's report on tlio protective works necessary on the bank of the Manaivatu Itiver in the borough came to hand to-day, but the report itself lias not yet arrived. From a glimpse at tho plans, it seems that a very large number of up-river groynes are provicbd for, and the work will be extensive and costly. The council cannot, of course, take action until it receives the report. At a meeting of the Holiday Association to-day, Messrs. G. H. Bennett and J. Wallace were appointed to represent the association on the deputation from the Chamber of Commerce and Borough Council, which, it has been arranged, will wait on the' Minister for Railways on his way to Feilding shortly.- Tho business relates to tho railway time-table.

At the Police Court to-day, before Mr. A. D. Thomson, S.M., Charles Fenton was charged with disobeying an order of tho Court, and sentenced to 14 days' imprisonment, tho order to be suspended if £o was paid within a week. The licensee of tho Central Hotel, Denis Itoynihaii, was fined £b and costs for supplying liquor to a person already intoxicated. The evidence was to the effect that the liquor was supplied by an ..attendant in the bar. No endorsement on the license was ordered, as the liouse lias recently changed hands. C. W. Blackburn was fined 20s. and costs on two charges involving breaches of the labour laws in not paying wages weekly, and failing to keep his wages and overtime book properly written up. A very. sad double drowning fatality happened at Foxton late yesterday afterBoon, by which a wharf labourer, named Joshua Riches, aged 35, a former man-o'-warsman, and a boy named Clifford Podmore,- aged eleven..years, lost their,lives. It seems that young Podmore and a number of other boys were bathjng near tho boatshed, the river at the time being in flood, and flowing swiftly. Podraore got into trouble and Riches, fully clothed, jumped into the water and went to the rescue. The boy clutched Riches round the neclc, aud both disappeared. Foilmore's body, waa recovered about 'thirty minutes afterwards, but life was extinct. The body of Biclies was not recovered till this morning. An inquest was held this .afternoon by Mr. Eraser, district coroner, and a verdict of accidental deaths was returned.