NOTES OF THE MONTH.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 121, 20 October 1874, Page 4

NOTES OF THE MONTH.

[From the Spectator , August Ist, |

Portugal has, we believe, given up the Macao Coolie trade. At least, she says so, and the Governor of the settlement has prohibited it by proclamation. Nevertheless it appears, according to the Journal Official. that on June Bth the Napoleon Camarero, an Italian vessel, left Macao with 633 coolies for Callao, there to die in the guano diggings. After a few hours at sea the coolies —all, of course, kidnapped, bought from the Mandarins, or deceived found out their destination, rose on the crew, and set fire to the ship. They calculated, as usual, that the crew would leave, that they could put out the fire, and that they could then run the ship ashore ; but, unfortunately, there were 8003 packets of fireworks among the cargo. The crew fled in the boats, but the flames reached the fireworks, and the 633 coolies were blown to atoms. We assume, but do not in the least believe, that some inquiry will be made as to who fired the ship, but even if the crew did it, nobody would lie punished. If China had a fleet she would stop that traffic at once by the only method which, to judge from the facts, will be permanently efficacious, namely, a blockade of Callao.

Mr G. C*. T: Bartley, of Ealing, in a short letter to the Times, describes one of those cases of cruelty which seem so inexplicable, from the entire absence of motive. He found in the Brentfoid Union, Isleworth, seventeen infants, aged from eighteen months to seven years, kept in two attics, one, the day room, 18 ft by 15 ft, and the

o,her 18 ft by 22 ft, with a foul closet attached. The charge of them is entrusted to an old pauper of seventy-nine, and a young woman; and though the children are “as healthy as it is possible for them to be,’’ none of them have been out of the attics for nine mouths, or it may be, ever since they were burn, for nobody in the union knows when they were last in the air. There is every reason to believe, nevertheless, that the union has a doctor, a chaplain, and a workhouse master, not to mention a board of guardians, including, it may be safely assumed, at least one man who does not think childhood and poverty crimes sufficient to justify nine months’ close imprisonment, without exercise even in a yard. Is Sir E. Wilmot a candidate for the vacancy never quite filled up since Mr Darby Griffiths’ retirement, of the irrelevant-ques-tion-asker? He asked the Prime Minister whether, considering the often-expressed wish of the Irish people, the Government would consider the expediency of establishing a Royal residence in that island, “for the purpose of encouraging occasional visits of members of the Royal Family to that portion of the United Kingdom ?’’ to which Mr Disraeli replied, that he is very much in favor of Royal residences, “ particularly when they are inhabited,” and that the great interest he takes in Ireland would make him very much rejoice “if there were Royal residences in that country inhabited by members of the Roval Family,”—an answer which caused much merriment. An empty cage is no great step towards obtaining your bird-of-paradise. A curious and striking invention, called “ a telephone,” the effect of which is to telegraph musical sound, and even tunes, through any length of wire, has been made, it is said, by Mr Elisha Gray, of Chicago. The keys of an instrument are connected with electromagnets. so that, touching a key, the corresponding magnet is set in operation, and a tongue or reed in connection with it is set vibrating; the sound each of these tongues gives out is transmitted a thousand miles by wire, and there received on a reflecting surface, the tune being distinctly heard. Mr Gray hopes one day to be able to transmit the sound of the human voice also by telegraph, so that we might talk to each other audibly across the Atlantic; but towards this curious result nothing seems to have been yet done, nor it ever been easy to resolve articulate sounds into mere vibrations. Talking across the Atlantic would indeed have an eerie and ghostly effect of its own. The next step would be to enable the interlocutors to see each other 3000 miles off, which to the popular mind would be not a more, but a less difficult proceeding. A great fuss has been made at Shrewsbury about a flogging case, in which the head master, the Rev H. W. Moss,inflicted eightyeight strokes with a birch on a boy of fourteen, for having repeatedly smuggled beer into the studies of the school against orders. The eighty-eight stripes, however, appear to have been given without really hurting the boy, though the skin appears to have been slightly broken, without Mr Moss being aware of it. The boy went about his work just as usual after the flogging, took his usual place in the boat within forty-eight hours, and was much more injured in mind than in body, his view being that when Mr Moss, at his father’s solicitation, undertook not to expel him, but to accept his apology and his promise not to offend in the like manner again, accounts were squared, and all punishment remitted. It is perfectly clear, however, that that had never been Mr Moss’s view of the case, and his letter to the boy’s father expressly states that instead of expelling the boy, he should “ much prefer to take other measures,” the “ other measures ” being obviously the flogging actually administered. Our own objection to flogging—which is, we fear, for certain kinds of offences, indispensable in England—has always been the sense of degradation much more than the pain inflicted by it, and for such offences as disobedience to orders we should greatly prefer a different penalty. In any case, flogging should not only be moderate—as we think this was—but seem so, which eighty-eight strokes of any kind (though many of them must have been “ mere taps,” as the Shrewsbury boys say that Mr Moss’s strokes are oftener than not), are not likely to appear. The head boy of the sixth form bore his very strong testimony to Mr Moss’s humane government of the school, in the name of the school. The governing body came to a very sensible conclusion, supporting Mr Moss, but regretting the misunderstanding, and the apparent excessiveness of a not really severe punishment. The Saturday Review has maintained that sick women do not usually wish to be attended by women. An interesting letter in the Times lately, signed “ A Surgeon,” seems to make it quite clear that this is a mistake. It tells us that “ in the only hospital in London where women can be attended by female physcians, the influx of patients is so great, that to prevent the work from becoming altogether too overwhelming to the staff and the resources of the hospital,’ it has been necessary both to increase the money payment and to enlarge the buildings. The truth seems to be that distrust of women physicians is still keenly felt in the middle and higher classes, but not in the lower classes, where they are very popular. And it is certainly a most monstrous grievance that the supply of female physicians should be stopped by that masculine love of monopoly which is now denying to women all avenues to medical diplomas.