A FEARFUL CRIME.

Dunstan Times, Issue 618, 20 February 1874, Page 3

A FEARFUL CRIME.

Yesterday afternoon, just before going to pnss, the manager of the Queen of Beauty mine called at our office, request ing us to suppress for public purposes, anything that we had heard or might hj ;ar respecting the cutting of their winding-rope Our morning contemporary, not perhaps having received the same caution, has not observed the same reticence. It appears that between the 12 p.m. and S am shifts there is no winding done, as the mine is at present, sixteen hours being suffice nt to wind the whole of the stuff from the mine. During the time the cages were not working some cowardly scoundrel almost severed the rope. The rope is flat, almost new, and of great strength. It appeared to have been cut with a sharp knife, which operation was all the more easy as the rope was in a state of tension, and every stroke of the knife would tell with double power. It is impossible tor the rope to have chinked, the poppet pullies and drum working too smoothly for that supposition. Whoever committed the rascally act was a fool as well as a coward, the shift first to use the cages would come on in the daylight, and his crime was at once apparent. It may be the cur intended to sever the rope completely, and was disturbed. It may have been in revenge for some slight received at the Company's hands, or possibly an attempt at some individual life which would first descend the shaft in the morning. Whoever committed the act may be assured that whatever his fate may he in the next world, he is. and will be most heartily damned in this. Of all the Manchester rattening during the last strike, nothing so diabolically fiendish was ever attempted as that at the Queen of Beauty on Thursday morning last.—Thames Evening Star, January 30,