THE GAOL RETURNS.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2700, 2 December 1882, Page 3

THE GAOL RETURNS.

By Telegraph

[from our correspondent.]

WELLING TON, December 1

With reference to the return of prison punishments, which is exciting so much interest, I may add to what I have already quoted another glaring instance of what I may call eccentricity. One man was committed for one month for larceny, and received successive sentences from the visiting Justices of (1) fourteen days, (2) fourteen days, (3) ten days, (-1) seven days, (5) seven days, (ti) fourteen days, (7) one mouth, (8) six weeks, (9) one month, (10) one month—or nearly seven months altogether, all for idleness. His original sentence expired, on the 2Gth March, but he actually died in gaol on the 30th August, five months after ho should have been released, and even then more than a month of his added sentences had yet to expire. The various visiting Justices who sentenced him were Mr 1. T. Thomson twice, Mr J. Logan four times, Mr A. C. Strode five times. Captain Fraser and Mr E. B. Car-o-ill each once. Another was sent up for fourteen days for vagrancy and was not released till eight months and thirteen days after the expiration of the original sentence of a fortnight. His offences comprise, idleness, insubordination, and “ improper language.” Another, m for six months for larceny, was detained in gaol fifteen months and sixteen days, or nine months sixteen days beyond the sentence ; another was sentenced to six mouths for larceny, and was detained for two years all but five days, or seventeen months an'd twenty-six days beyond the expiration of the original sentence. All these were for mere “ prison offences,” such as those above instanced, and all occurred in the Dunedin gaol. Thei;o is nothing in the remotest degree approaching this in the other gaols of the colony.

AN ASTONISHED DEAYMAN.

Muscle is often a convenient and serviceable thing to have upon one’s person, and next to muscle comes a civil tongue. It is not a pleasant thing, as a rule, to see a man knocked down, but there are times, nevertheless, when the sight is refreshing. Such an occasion transpired, not long since, on one of the streets, and was related to us by an eye-witness. A burly drayman, perched upon the seat of his empty lumbering dray, had stopped his team in a narrow pass where digging of the way, in overhauling gas pipes, had caused a portion of the street to be blocked and fenced off. The man had not stopped on business, but to chat with a laborer. While he was thus engaged two ladies drove up in a light buggy, and asked him if he would move on and allow them to pass. He looked around with a swaggering, impudent air, and made reply—- ' Do you own this street ?’ This response, from a man who looked the brute entirely, coarse, beetle-browed, and ugly, nonplussed the ladies ; but presently she who held +he reins ventured, in dignified tone and bearing—‘We have a right to pass, sir, and I trust you will move on, and grant it to us.’ ‘ Well/ returned the brute, with a hyenalike grin, ' I guess you’ll wait a while. ’Twon’t hurt you to rest. At the moment of the stopping of the carriage a gentleman had come out from a house directly opposite the spot—no less a personage than a well-known and highly esteemed physician of the city, with a goodly sprinkling of Scotch blood in his veins. He had seen and heard the whole of it, and as the last speech left the drayman’s lips, the doctor, indignant beyond his power of control—for he knew the ladies—leaped from the sidewalk, and with one more bo mid was upon the thill of the dray. He did not speak, but the emotion and desire were expressed in a blow of his fist that knocked the brutish man upon the pavement, and then springing down he started the horses of the heavy team out from the pass, and bade the ladies drive on.

'Hurry now, my dear lady/ lie said, and thank me at some other time/

And she drove on just as the drayman had picked himself up, and with curses and imprecations dire and deep was advancing upon the doctor in fighting attitude. He came up, and aimed a swinging blow at the gentleman, and in a moment more he was staggering hack under the weight of a stinging buffet full in the face—then another —and then a third, planted under his ear, which sent him to earth a second time ; and with that the doctor turned upon his heel and walked away. ' When the burly drayman had again picked himself up he was not in a mood so belligerent as before. Grief and chagrin were uppermost. He saw his late antagonist in the distance, but did not offer to follow him.

‘ Do you know who that man is ?’ asked his labouring companion. ‘ No, I never saw him afore. Who is he ?’

‘ I don’t justly know his name, but he’s one of the tiptop, fashionable doctors, and is tending’ old Holden in the brown stone front, opposite.’ 'Well,’ said the punished man, rubbing the sore spots upon his face and neck, ‘he may be a doctor, but I’ll bet a five spot ’at his father was a drayman.’