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Hawke's Bay Times, Issue 1624, 30 October 1874, Page 410

The scarcity of labor available in Tauranga, (says the local paper) is evinced by the fact that the Chairman of the Town Board at its last meeting stated that he could not obtain manual labor at seven shillings a day. The ladies of Melbourne have undertaken the graceful task of supplying the hospitals of that city with flowers. And we are told that the patients appreciate very highly the efforts made to embellish their apartments, and to relieve as far as possible the gloom which naturally attaches to places where sufferers are congregated. The Hospital Flower Mission, as it is termed, commenced, if we mistake not, in the United" States, whence it spread to London, and now, with the natural contagiousness of good deeds, it has become established in Australia. Will not some of our New Zealand ladies copy the example thus set by their sisters of Melbourne ? The execution of Charles Dyer, the Pakiri murderer, has been fixed for today. The Southern Cross of the 18th October, writing after the conviction, said:—lf ever a man was justly convicted and sentenced to be hanged for an atrocious crime, Charles Dyer, the murderer of the unhappy Eliza Battersea, was righteously doomed to death yesterday. Of all the harrowing narratives of systematic bodily torture and deliberate cruelty that ever the strong inflicted on the weak and defenceless, few will excel in utter wickedness, the story of the wrongs of Eliza Battersea, and the fiendish character of her tormentor. It is hardly credible that such inhuman treatment so, long continued and so long borne by its victim could be met with in real life. The cruelty that Dickenß embodies in the character of Daniel Quilp, fades into insignificance compared with the conduct of this vile felon, Dyer. Dyer's crime is one so hateful in its wickedness, as the culmination of years of barbarous cruelty, that considerations of law and justice alike should make people pause before they attempt any agitation which may seek to save from a just punishment one who has so outraged the law and the ordinary feelings of humanity, and so well deserves the doom he has received,