FIGHT FOR POSSESSION OF A CHURCH.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1255, 19 March 1886, Page 3

FIGHT FOR POSSESSION OF A CHURCH.

A most scandalous and painful scene took place on the morning of the 7th inst. at the Fry street Presbyterian Church at Grafton (N.S.W.) At the Presbyterian Synod of Eastern Australian, held on Thursday last, a meeting oi the congregation was called by five persons, denominating themselves the trustees of the church, at which resolutions were passed taking possesdon of the church, and also one intended to depose the minister, the Rev. Jswc Mackay. After the meet* ing the trustees fastened the doors of the church, which were subsequently reopened by someone. The trustees then had ■ the doors more securely fastened, and on Saturday night three of their number, with two others, took up their quarters in the vestry room adjoining At a quarter to eleven o’clock on Sunday, the minister, in the presence of about thirty of the congregation and a large assemblage of people, three - times demanded ' admission, and failing to secure compliance with his request, he procured a large axe and burst open the vestry door. While pushing open the door l , assisted by half a dozen men, the minister being in front and the door ajar, a clenched fist, with a massive ring on one of its fingers, was seen to descend on the pastor’s tem* pie, from which the blood bespattered the wall, and streamed down his lace. The vestry having been taking by storm was speedily tilled with people, and the scene which ensued baffles description. Some fifteen or twenty people were hustling and grappling with each other. Some blows were struck, and all were talking at the tops ot their voices Four ladies the wives of respectable townsmen, and a young woman of about twenty years of age, got to close quarters with three of the besieged) and from woids came to blows with parasols, which were returned by the sterner sex with their feet, the young woman receiving a se--vere kick in the stomach in the melee. At this time a wilder scene was never enacted in a booth in Dounybrook Fair. One of the besieged had his hair pulled, his watch chain broken, and his clothes torn, while challenges from others to see it out on the green were freely thrown out. In the thick of the fight one of the besieged escaped by the door leading into the church, which ho 1 olted behind him. The others seeing the flight of their companion, were now somewhat cooled, and with little resistance were put out of the vestry by the females. Overtures were made to the

man who had taken refuge inside the sanctuary, and after a little parleying he opened the door and thereby saved the axe being applied to the church proper. The alleged trustees and their abettors having gathered up their bags, supposed to contain provisions for a prolonged siege, retired outside the fence, while the minister,' as far as possible, removed the traces of the fight from his fa e and clothes and proceeded to conduct the usual service, in the course of which ho was nob inn terfered with.—‘Age.’

Mr BiuWolcy, 11. M.,Ashburton,sentenced Geo. Watts, licensee of Hinds Hotel, to a month’s imprisonment, without the option of a fine, for mieaonduct, in allowing drunkenness and fighting, and using violence himself, in his licensed house.