A BRAVE BAKER.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1253, 5 March 1886, Page 3

A BRAVE BAKER.

Under date of December 18 a London correspondent writes :—“ I turn to an incident which illustrates in a peculiar degree the kind of bull-dog courage that one occasionally meets with even in looalites in which if there is any fighting to be done, the police, man is generally expected to do -it. If all householders could muster even a decimal share of the bravery recently displayed by Mr Nurse, of Walworth, the enterprising burglar would speedily discover that the risks of his profession were provokiugly large in proportion to the emjluraeuts thereof, and the reflections growing out of that discovery might make him pause ere ho deliberately apprenticed his favorite son to the sime calling. Mr Nurse is a little man a good deal below the middle height, who was once a skipper of a vessel, but now, as father of a family, prefers home life and a baker’s shop. On Sunday morning he awoke with a sound in his bed* room, and saw a fellow in the act of removing his watch from the m.in tieshelf. Without a moinent’shesitatioaho sprang the floorand attempted to grasp the thief, who, however, dodged him, ran downstairs, and got out at the back of the house with the watch in his possession before he could get hold of him, Mr Nurse in bis night gear, was in no condition to give chase out of doors, so the burglar, getting over the wall dropped into the street, where ho was run down, and after much trouble taken by' the police, one of whom happened to see him alight from the wall without his boots, he had removed ere he began his work of spoliation. But when Mr Nurse turned back from his kitchen door, baffled by the escape, as he supposed, of the robber and :he loss of his watch he heard a sound in the parlor or front kitchen, and, proceeding thence encountered in the darkness a second ruffian on whom he at once laid a determined grasp. A conflict then ensued, wkichlasted fully half-an-hour. The burglar was a big powerful built young fellow, bat the sturdy old salt got him down, three times, never losing his hold although his ill-pro-tected body was bruised all over in desperate struggle. At one peiiod of the fight the burglar viciously used his teeth and at another he caught up a plate and broke it over Mr Nurse’s head, cutting his face open, and covering it with blood. At last a member of the family came with a rope and while the man was down and partly stunned his legs were bound. By this time also an alarm was raised in the street, and the services of the police secured. The lower part of the house was seen to have been ransacked before the more daring robbery from the upstairs bedroom was attempted, and, besides the watch, property to the value of about LI 3 had been appropriated by the two prisoners. Tho bravery of Mr Nurse has not only saved his own goods, but has, at the height of the burglary season, placed two old offenders in safe keeping for some little lime to come.”