English and foreign Items.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 15, Issue 769, 14 March 1870, Page 3

English and foreign Items.

A witness in a Richmond (Virgina) court, last week, told the judge to "hush his mouth, as he couldn't talk to two men at once." He had an opportunity to reflect upon his rudeness in jail. Lord William Beresford, an officer of the 9th Lancers, has been fined at a London police court £5 for assaulting a police officer. The ladies of Janesville, Wisconsin, have formed a secret society called a. " Phalanx," for a crusade against drinking and gambling saloon_s. There is a wonderful account in all the French papers of an astounding baby just dead, at the age of ten months, at St Urbain, near Lyons. The strongest medical evidence is said to be given that the child was so highly endowed with electricity that all the persons in the same room with him received constant electric shocks. In his charge to the grand jury at Nottingham, Mr Justice Blackburn expressed himself in favor of flogging as a punishment for the crime of arson. He believed that if it were generally known the punishment for this crime included flogging, the dread of the sharp fang of the lash would be a deterrent. His lordship said it was a question for the legislature to consider. The Rev. S. Vaughan, M.A., vicar of St Mark's, Dewsbury, was seized with paralysis whilst attending to his duties in the Sunday-school on Sunday afternoon. The words, " Suffer little children to come unto me, for—" had dropped from his lips when he fell paralysed into the arms of a gentleman who, observing something unusual in Mr Vaughan's demeanour ran to his assistance. Women's rights are now to be advocated in the weekly press. Miss Lydia Becker and her friends in Manchester contemplate starting a new journal, The Home. This publication is to be managed by women, written by women, set up in type by women, for the advocacy of the rights of women. Men, we presume, will be allowed to read it. But its chief interest will of course be for the " other sex." The type-setting is to be done by machinery. With regard to this it is stated that —A few gentlemen interested in improving the art of printing, and introducing women into the trade, quietly employed a joung woman from one ol of our Lancashire mills who had never before seen printer's types. She spent ten days in studying upon a plan devised, to give with rapidity and thoroughness, the knowledge needed by the type-setter. At the end of this time she commenced to set type, and in two weeks she could earn double her ordinary wages at the usual rate paid to men

The county magistrates sitting at Chorley, on Dec. 21, sentenced a buteher, named Robert Chadwick, of Coppull, to three months' hard labor, for having in his possession, dressed for the market, the carcase of a cow which had died from hydrophobia. The animal had been bitten by a mad dog. At Exeter assizes, Sam. Sparkes, laborer, has been sentenced to five years' penal servitude for attempting to murder a gamekeeper in the employ of one of Sir Stucley. Stucley's tenants at Bideford. The prisoner han been heard to say that he would shoot any gamekeeper who attempted to take him. A Wigan collier, named Gregson, was convicted at the Liverpool assizes on Monday, Dec. 20, of the murder of his wife, and sentenced to death. ' The case was a very brutal one, the prisoner having almost literally kicked his wife to death in a fit of drunken fury because she would not pawn a jacket in order to get him more drink. Some of the jury appeared to have a doubt whether this was murder, and recommended the man to mercy. The judge promised to forward the recommen dation to the proper quarter, but expressed his own opinion that it was a bad case of murder.