ITEMS BY THE MAIL.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 18, Issue 1124, 19 September 1871, Page 2

ITEMS BY THE MAIL.

Tt is announced that Baroness B<ivdett Ooutts has presented £4,000 fat division among the clerks in the eminent banking firm with which she is associated.

A letter from Fort Griffin, Texas, received at New York, records the occurrence of a frightful massacre. A body of United States cavalry met 200 Indian men, women, and children, ami " killed all they could lay hands upon." The writer adds : " Such yelling I never did hear. Every man was for himself. The infantry was in reserve and caught all stragglers, not even one escaping, orders having been given not to showquarter." The divinity hedging royalty in these days does not amount to much, but such as it is it renders the life of the. Marquis of Lorne somewhat unenviable. The Prince of Wales utterly refuses to. receive his sister's husband as a member of the royal family, and at the state ball, recently, gave orders that the Marquis should not be admitted a.t the royal' entrance. He was according-, ly refused admittance, and the Princess declined to enter except with her husband, saying that her place was where he was. The Marquis would not take, the Princess in by Ihe general public. entrance, and the result was that they did not attend the ball.

Colonel Charles 0. Chesney has been sent by the Imperial Government on a special mission to the Continent, with instructions to chaw up a report on the. late war.

The death is announced of Mr John, Dayicl Walker, proprietor of the,

Gloucester Journal, aged 80 years. He is said to have been at the time of his death, the oldest newspaper pvo : prietor in England. The Registrar-General of England state* that the. population of the United Kingdom is increasing at the rate of 1,173 a day. But emigration takes away 468 of the number leaving 705 to. swell the population at home.

lb is under.-tood that Mr E. J. Heed, 08, late Chief Constructor of tliu British .Navy, lias accepted an engage-, ment from the German Government, and is about to construct some ironclad ships of war for that Power. Since Mr Heed's retirement from office at ihe Admiralty no less than four foreign Governments have endeavored to secure his service, and both Russia and Austria have, we hear, taken advantage of his visits to those countries to introduce, under his advice, reforms in their systems of naval construction.

Capt. W. F. Lyons, the well-known Irish patriot, died at New York on the 9th August. He had been for some years past an editorial writer on the New York Herald.

Four oases of smallpox were caused in Denmark street, Camber.well, London, by linen from a smallpox patient being sent to a laundress in that street. The poor woman and her assistant have both been seized with the disease, and it also attacked two of her customers.

The European Mail says :—A proposal has been published to organise an Australian and New Zealand Dividend Goldmines Investment Co. (Limited), with £50,000 in shares of j£l each. The first series will be for Australian investments ; the second for New Zealand investments; together £IO,OOO. There will'be eight other, investments ot .£5,000 each •' 5s per shai e is to be paid on application, 5$ per shave on allotment, and 10s pershare one month after date of allotment.

Admiral Sir James. Hope was shoeing some ladies oyer the turret ship Devastation, which is lying in tha steam basin of Portsmouth dockyardEndeavoring to protect the ladies froin a hole which they were dangerous!? near, he slipped and fell into the hole himself. Both bones of the right leg were fractured by the fall, and a soverj wound o\er tlje' right eye was causeq by his falling against some angle iroi}.

The Rev. W. M Punshon lias arrived in England. He comes a* the Canadian representative of Wesley anism at the annual conference at Manchester.

The deaths in London for the week ending 23rd June, were 1,349, smallpox carrying off 240 of that number. During the same week 1,908 births registered,

According to the Manchester Guardian the Mordaant divorce case will a wrin be before Lord Penzance before Ion". The respondent, Lady Mordaunt, was supposed to be insane, but was itlso suspected of feigning insanity. Careful medical investigation has led to the confirmation of that suspicion, and Sir Charles Mordaunt will, therefore, renew his application for a divorce. A boy, nine years old, Thomas Purcell, has died at Bonmahon, county Waterford, from drinking about two o-lasses of whisky given to him in a public-house in mistake for ale. The deceased was employed with other children in doing some work on the promise of being rewarded with some sweets. When the work was done it was discovered that there were no sweets in the shop, «o.the woman of the hou-e thought a drink of ale would do the children no harm. Unfortun ately she took up a jug which contained whisky, and the other children having refused to drink, the boy Purcell drank his own share and theirs. He went home, as it was supposed, sick, and his mother, not knowing the rause, put him to bed. The child died on the following day.

If a new sermon were needed, if a new warning were likely to be effective, against all illicit and shameful connections, such a sermon, such a warning, might be found in the terrible story which has just been finished, in a verdict of manslaughter and a sentence to eight years' penal servitude, at the .Cer.tval Criminal Com t. Frederick Graves Moon was a man of education, .of good social position, whom no external circumstance, no rigor of fate, prevented from leading an honorable ami happy life; the woman who was airaigued for having caused his death was a person of good education likevise, who atone time filled a respectable position in society. Mr Moon in an evil hour for himself was attracted by the woman described as Hannah jSTewiugton, otherwise Flora Davy. He formed"" with her that sort of connection which a few years ago it was the fashion of certain writers to describe as one of the most convenient, peculiar, and satisfactory institutions of modern civilisation. The pair so diawii together seem to have got on about as well as couples thus assorted usually do. Mr Moon's mode of life, like most every other example of the same kind of thing drawn from practical existence, was a bitter evidence of the truth that it is only too ea-.v to combine all the harshest trials of ill-assorted marriage with the worst sufferings and degradations of lawless .intercourse. Mr Moon and his companion did not always get on very well together. There were, of course, seasous of fitful affection and ephemera'! congeniality. But theie were times when all that the most savage cynic could have said about the '-cat and dog " auairels of matrimonial life would have applied with cruel fidelity to this voluntary and irresponsible alliance—this convenient contract, terminable at the will of the parties Mr Moon was apt to be '-depressed and gloomy " ; he was '.'.changeable in his spirits, and very .excitable.'' Both he and the woman were fond of drinking. One day, the 21th of May last, a shocking crisis came. The companions had had some trivial quarrel in the day. No living eyes but those of the woman who has just been on trial saw what took place during that awful interval. Bells were heard ringing, shrieks ran through the house, and' the friends and servants hurrying into the room found Mr Moon, lying oil the floor and bleeding to death, while Mrs Davy, in frantic distraction, was vainly endeavoring to find and standi the wound which killed him. The wound was the stab of a knife, and the question which the jury had to decide was whether Mrs Davy inflicted the blow. Her story, proclaimed with shrieks and sobs, at the very moment of the tragedy, and since repeated again and again, seems to bear on its face a

certain aspect of truth. She says that they fell to quarrelling ; that Mr Moon called her by some name, or used some language which particularly stung her; and that she told him he must not repeat it. He declared that he would, and vowed that if she did not keep silent he would throw a bottle at her head. Tt appeared from oilier evidence that this sort of civility had, on at least one former occasion, passed between them—that Mr Moon had flung a bottle at the woman. Then, according to her statement —" T jumped up with a knife in my hand. We struggled and fell. I saw the blood pouring—l don't know how. r This statement, in \arious tones and form*, she repeated many times, always acknowledging that the weapon she grasped must have been the immediate cause of her companion's death., always denying that she had any purpose to kill him, or that she even knew how the knife entered his body. She appears to have suffered wild agonies of grief when the worst became

known. She shrieked and swooned, she accused herselt, and madly called for help, and frantically tried to repair the irreparable—to undo the evil that had been too securely done. So far as human eye and sense might judge, ihe deed was the wild woik of one moment of blind, purposeless, half intoxicated passion, and was repented before its fatal result had been fully accomplished. The persons involved in this case belonged in no wise to what are conventionally called our criminal classes. But the pair combine*l to set at defiance the higher social laws, the true moral laws. They trod the path that leads downward; crime and death lay in their way, and they found them.- -English Paper,