Miscellaneous Items

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 110, 7 March 1893, Page 4

Miscellaneous Items

~+ — At Chester assizes recently, Alfred Orrett was indicted for fraudulently embezzling £300, received by him as manager of Messrs Parrs' Bank, at Knutsford. It was stated that the prisoner had borrowed £300 from a money lender at 30 per cent, interest, in order to be married, and although the original capital still remained due, he had paid £1,400 ia interest. Messrs Parr recommended him to mercy, and a petition signed by every tradesman in Knutsford was submitted, giving him an excellent char acter. Mr Justice Lawrence said money lending at extortionate rates of interest was almost as great a curse in this country as drink and gambling. The prisoner was led by his struggles to meet the horrible debt which he had contracted, to appropriate £300, and he was to be pitied. He sentenced him to four months' imprisonment. A physician has started a theory that most confirmed drunkards can be cured by a very simple and pleasant course of treatment, namely, by eating apples at every meal. Apples, this authority maintains, if eaten in large quantities, possess properties which entirely do away with the craving that all confirmed drunkards have for driuk. The doctor says that in many bad cases which have come under his notice he has been able to effect a cure by this means, the patient gradually losing all his desire for alcohol. Dr Parker writes iv the number of the Idler just published :— "I hate smoking. From end to end it is a nuisance. It ends in caDcer, apoplexy, bad temper, bankruptcy, and almost in hydrophobia. It is an invention of the devil. It is the pastime of perdition. No dog smokes. No bird pines for tobacco. No horae is a member of a pipe club. No intelligent person ever puts a cigar into his mouth. The whole idea of smoking must be condemned as atheistical, agnostical, and infinitely detestable. Smoking has been abandoned by all reputable persons, and left to ministers, editors, poets and other intellectual confectioners." A table of statistics concerning illegitimacy, published by Dr Alfred Leffingwell, shows that in the matter of sexual morality the Irish are superior to all other peoples. The ratio of illegitimate births among the Irish is 26 per 1000 ; among the English 48 per 1000; and among the Scotch 82 per 1000. Next to the Irish come the Russians, with 28 per 1000 ; the Dutch have 32 per 1000 ; the Italians 72 per 1000 ; the French 82, or the same as the Scotch. In Sweden Saxony, and Bavaria, the rate is still higher, and ranges from 100 to 140 per 1000. Austria is at tho opposite nole from Ireland with 146 per 1000.