OUR LONDON LETTER

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 1003, 12 September 1877, Page 2

OUR LONDON LETTER

* [Specially Written for the Gloee.] London, July 26. The summer is nearly over, and the end of the London season has almost come. We have had a I'ew sunny days, not so bright as colonists tell me you have in oN T ew Zealand* but still good enough for London. "We can this uionth see the sun for about one hour of every four that it is above the horizon, yet the cloudy state of the sky comports with the dull slate of everything below. Wimbledon is over —there has been better ride shooting than ever this year —and the usual select circle of rank and fashion is going to Groodwood as the guests of the Duke of Richmond, " One crowded hour of glorious life " in his splendid park, and theu for the seaside! Everybody who lias a sovereign to spend goes otlie seaside now-a-days, and I don't wonder it it, for as London grows, and it does so rapidly, human life gets very worn out, and iu August and September it is better to sit on yellow sands than to scorch on stone pavements. [ went to St. Paul's Cathedral a few morn, inge jsiaue u witness & short but imjpjesei\«

ceremony, viz., the unveiling of a memorial to Captain Thomas J. W. Lloyd, Lieutenant Tragett, and others of the 57th Regiment, who lost their lives in New Zealand during the war against the Maoris, from 1861 to 1866, and to the larger number of their comrades who were killed in the Crimea and in India. Soon after eleven o'clock, a lew officers both commissioned and non-commis3ior.ed, arrived at the Cathedral, and when the hour of noon was tolled on the great bell, one of the Cathedral attendants withdrew a linen cloth and revealed a very handsome memorial, representing Christ the Comforter. Then one of the Generals, under whom the 57th had served, both in New Zealand and India, stepped forward, and said how glad he was to meet so many of those who had fought with him, and expressed his gratification that the memory of those who died abroad had not been forgotten. One of the Canons of the Cathedral, on behalf the Chapter, accepted the care of the memorial, and said a few words of exhortation to those present. I hope the fact of this memorial being raised may be read with interest by many throughout the colony. The only commercial news of interest to you that I have to mention relates to the fourteenth annual general meeting of the Trust and Loan Company of New Zealand, which was held yesterday afternoon at the city office, in King William street. The directors reported that the whole of their preference share capital had been raised, and that a corresponding increase had been made in the investments of the company in New Zealand. They asked for power to issue at their discretion the remaining quarter of a million of capital created two years ago, and this the shareholders unanimously gave them. The accounts for the past half year showed that the profits of the company had so increased that the directors had been able to strengthen its £> os itio>i by the addition of £SOOO to the reserve fund, and to pay a nrach larger dividend than usual. 1 have witnessed an extraordinary scene this afternoon in Bow street, where thousands of people have congregated in the hope of catching a glimpse of three of the oldest detectives in London who are in custody on a very serious and most extraordinary charge of conspiracy. When the prison van drew up with such an exceptional load of inmates there was quite a rush and a great noise, while the little room that is used as the chief Metropolitan Police Court is packed to suffocation. The history of the case is marvellous. Last year it was found out that a pack of swindlers had set themselves up as betting agents, and did an extensive trade by means of advertisements in foreign newspapers. One of their victims was a French widow, out of whom they obtained £IO,OOO. Before they could bag so large a haul and spend the proceeds it was necessary to destroy every trace of the notes in which the money was paid by the bankers. The swindlers were hand-in-glove with one Meiklejohn, a Scotchman, who held a first rate position in the London detective force. They had also taken an office about two minutes walk from the police office in Scotland Yard —a place which in their slang they termed "the factory." Meiklejohn went down with them to a remote part of Scotland, where his father and brother lived, and got them introduced to some bankers, with whom they opened an account. He had also introduced them to Druscovich, another detective, who has been entrusted with some of the most remarkable cases in our criminal records. A large sum of money was lent to Druscovich, who seems to have been rather an unwilling tool, and to have had tremendous difficulties to encounter when warrants were given to him 1 for the arrest of the swindlers. The latter had also established themselves in the good graces of Palmer, another detective, who was principally employed in the office work, and who was enabled to send them messages warning them of any movements by the heads of the police or by the legal gentlemen who were the Frenchwoman's advisers. At last, however, the swindlers were arrested on the Continent, and then an attempt was made to procure their release by means of a forged telegram. Their own solicitor, one of the best known men in that line at the West End, is also charged with them in this conspiracy. The Magistrate takes bail for his reappearance, but sends the policeman back to the House of Detention in the prison van into which they have put hundreds of other people in the course of their time. One of the most horrible events of the month is the suicide of a little boy named CHbbs, one of the pupils at Christ's Hospital or " the Blue Coat School " as it is more popularly called, from the quaint costume worn by every inmate. Such an unparalleled event in 'one of the most famous of our public schools lias raised a storm of indignation at the management of the institution, more especially as before hanging himself the boy had twice run away from the place, and laid his untimely end to the charge of one who had ill-treated him in the school. A coroner's inquest was held and the jury found tbatthe little fellow was temporarily out of his mind, but this did not satisfy any one. Hundreds of letters were written to the newspapers demanding there should be some fuller inquiry, especially as charges of cruelty towards the younger lads are not unfrequently made against the monitors and even the masters of our public schools—charges which are made it is true mostly by those who dislike corporal punishment. However the storm of popular opinion rose to such a height that to appease at once the public and the House of Commons the Home Secretary has asked half a dozen of the best of our public men to make a full investigation into the management of the school. Since last I wrote there has been quite a panic amongst the holders of gas shares, and the stock of all companies went down as fast as a balloon with the valve open. This panic was caused by a report that a Eussian inventor had succeeded in perfecting an apparatus for illuminating our houses with an electric light. The uproar has subsided, and it is said that the invention is not quite so clever as was at first represented, and shares are again " steady." I have not yet seen the proverbial straw that shows which way the wind blows. I recollect an incident which happened about a month before that "Black Friday," which was so fatal to many firms. I handed to a shrewd stockbroker a list of four or five lots of shares which I wished him to purchase for me. One of these was some shares in Overcnd, Cumey, and Co., the great discount bankers, about whose solvency then not a whisper had reached the outside public. My stockbroker shook his head, "No, no," said he, "they're selling _ very fast in Norfolk" —the county in which all the Gurneys lived. I did not buy, and i» ie;s than a month later I had

cause to be thankful. The lesson has not been lost on me. I do not lind that the friends of those connected with the great works at Beckton, where two-thirds of the gas used in the metropolis is made, are in any hurry to sell. Coal is lower in price in England than it hns been for very many years, and the gas companies have now the power to distribute higher dividends in proportion as they reduce the priee ofgas to the cons"mer. Still, so rapid is the progress of electrical science that the substitution of the electric light for gas cannot be regarded as impossible or even only likely to be accomplished in a very remote future. We have just had a noteworthy fact at the promenade concerts which are now being held in our Queen's Theatre. Mr Cromwell Varley, one of our foremest men of science has just produced the telephone, an instrument which he patented seven years ago, long before a similar invention was thought, of in America. He is able successfully to reproduce through a wire any musical tune played miles away. Tins is our latest scientific wonder, and it is quite on the cards that at some future crisis in our coal trade we may find our gas mains supplied by coils of wires connected with some great central establishment where the electric force can be generated for supply to our houses. "Baron" Albert. Grant, who amassed a princely fortune by the promotion of companies which have turned out ruin to other people, seems now to be in the full ebb of tide and to be gradually sinking out of public notice. When he was an immensely prosperous man he invested a lot of money in pictures, but these were sold off a few weeks ago for much less money than he gave for them. With a view to notoriety he built himself the most magnificent mansion to be found in all modern London. Nearly half a million of money was spent on a house which has never yet had a chair or a table in it, but it is most splendidly put together. In fact it is far too grand for anybody now-a-days. An unsuccessful attempt was made this month to sell it by auction, but nobody could afford either to buy it or to live in it, except perhaps half a dozen of our richest noblemen, and they have all splendid family mansions of their own. An attempt was made to turn it, into a club, at which the "Baron" got furious, but this failed, and I expect that " Kensington House" is doomed to be an empty monument of human impudence.