THE MELBOURNE LARRIKIN.

Evening Star, Issue 4113, 3 May 1876, Page 3

THE MELBOURNE LARRIKIN.

An act transcending in audacity anything yet done by the larrikin tribe of Collingwood, was committed the other evening (says the Melbourne ‘Argus.’) Just as it was dusk, a lad of about sixteen, accompanied by another boy, walked up and down in front of George Black's Norfolk Hotel, at the comer of Easey and Budd streets, Cnllingwood, for a few minutes, with a doublebarrelled gun on his shoulder, and then discharged the contents of one barrel into the bar of the hotel. Black, who has smelt powder before, ran out and recognised the boy, but could not catch him. It was supposed that the gun bad been loaded with gravel instead of shot, and the charge appeared to have been put in loose, the gravel on top of the powder, without any wadding either between the powder and the gravel or on the whole chaige. This was surmised from the nature of the report, and the fact that no wadding was picked tip, though a quantity of small pebbles were found on the floor, and the shelves just above where Mr Black’s head had been were identified with marks such as pebbles fired from a gun would make. The larrikins in that part of Collingwood bear much enmity to Mr Black on account of his having prosecuted some of them at different times for petty offences, and probably the gun was fired more with the intention of intimidating him than with the view of injuring him. The police know the youth, but he has contrived to keep out of their reach so far.