NEWS BY MAIL.

Hokitika Guardian, 19 July 1921, Page 3

NEWS BY MAIL.

£8,000,000 FOR SAYING GIRL. NEW YORK, June 1

Fifteen years after he had saved it girl from a life of degradation the Rev j David Byrne, a Chicago clergyman, is j about to be rewarded by inheriting a! fortune estimated at £8,000,000. j

When a lay worker in Chicago, Mr Byrne, whose name was then Kidd, was ' accosted in a slum by a young woman who asked him to buy her a drink. lie offered to pray for her instead.

She derided him. but sought him out • a leu hours later, and asked him to offer up a prayer for her. He did so and induced her to return to her par- | cuts. j

Tee girl’s father was an illiteratemillionaire living in Florida. In the

~,,nr: e of years he had accumulated oil lands, grazing rights, and timber lands in manx quarters. W lien he died 2 years later, Mr Kidd was bequeathed a quarter of his fortune ott condition that, ho adopted the name of Byrne. “ Other beneficiaries were the widow, daughter and son. The daughter lmd died some time previously and a codicil awarded' her share of the estate to Mr Kidd.

Mrs Byrne and her son travelled extensively after the father’s death. It appears certain that they were aboard the liner Empress of Ireland when she sank in the St Lawrence River, Canada, in May 1914, with the loss of 1,690 lives. The bodies wore never found. Next Sunday the period which is required by law to elapse before permission to assume the death of a missing person is granted expires, and Mr Byrne will enter into the inheritance of the whole family fortune.

His first act will he to establish a rescue liotne for women and girls in Chicago <tt a cost ol £500,000. ACCUSED of POISONING.

NEW YORK, June 1 That she poisoned 4 husbands,, a brother-in-law, and a husband's children in order to receive insurance on their lives is the charge made by the Idaho police against a Mrs Lydia Southard, who was arrested in Honolulu vesterday.

Her fifth husband, a petty officer in a United States battleship stationed at Honolulu, testified before a magistrate there yesterday that his wife had recently been trying to persuade him to take out a life-insurance policy tor 1-2.000. .Mrs Southard is 28. Her hist husband was an Idaho farmer ; her second ii waiter at Twin Kails, in the same State; her third was a motor-ear dealer lit Billings, a small town in Montana ; and her fourth, a foreman oil a farm near the place in which she had lived V. itii her first lutshandd.

The prosecuting attorney at Twin Falls County, Idaho, states that the bodies of all the woman’s husbands have been exhumed and found to contain arsenic. Each, it Inis been ascertained, died alter a brief illness suddenly contracted. Death in 3 cases was attributed by the coroner to t \ plioicl fevdr. The simi alleged to have been obtained by Mrs Southard from the proceeds of the insurance of her dead husbands amounts to about 63,000. Her first marriage was in 1012. The others have occurred at fairly regular intervals since.

TROOPS I'TGHT LOCUSTS. . MARSEILLES, June 1 Three detachments of troops, wit : flame-throwers, have been sent into Go country outside Toulon, to help the farmers to rid themselves of a plague of locusts which have been devouring every shred of vegetation for some days

past. The Toulon Municipality lias tes - graphed to the War Ministry asking for considerable reinforcements. \ ‘■Union of Defence against Locust s” lias been formed. Meetings are being called m all the threatened towns, and a fond has 1 t•• n.ionod to pa v the cost of providing adequate supplies of pest-killing liquids such as creosote and methylated spirit. Processions of military vehicles laden with antiseptics and spraxing app.ua tits choke'the roads towards the strick-

Manv trains arc being held up by the ,(,;,»of pests, whose crushed bodies cause tie wheels to skid hopelessly. Some farmers are besieged in their homes.

hohenzollern review. BERLIN, May 31. Prince Kitel Friedrich, second son of Hi,., ex-Kaiser, held a review of troops on the Moabit parade ground yesterday lor all the world as it there had never been a revolution in Germany. To do honor to the fallen meii of the 4tit Guard Regiment, disbanded alter tin* fall of the llclieiizollern dynasty, more than 2,0(10 men and 200 officers lmm all parts of Germany assemfield m military formation.

Thc majority wore civilian dress, hot 2 companies, now forming part ol the Sill, infantry Regiment, appeared in the uniform ef the Army of the German Republic. Alter a patriotic harangue |. v Army chaplain, standing before a' temporary altar, Prince Eitel, dressed. as a general of the old regime, attended Ire General von Karlowitz and a brilliant staff, inspected the ranks. Then the regiment goose-stepped past the prince, cheering him enthusiast ieallv.

'Phe Monarchist Press gives glowing accounts of the ceremony, while the constitutional papers ask what the Government is going to do about “H Hohenzollern parade of troops ol Republic.”

airmen in a storm : NEW YORK. June 1. | 'Pile accident in which 7 occupants of j the Army aeroplane returning to Wash- j in.iton from the great military air sta- j tion at Langley Field, Hampton, Vir- I s/inia. lost their lives is the worst in the ! history of aviation in this country. j Details of the accident, which occur- I red late on Saturday evening, make it clear that the aeroplane, which was , converted into an ambulance machine. | was swept away like a leaf by one of a series of tremendous wind-storms. Only good fortune, in the opinion of fly. ing experts, prevented the loss of several more lives at the same time. Captain “Eddie” Rickenbacker, the greatest United States fighting pilot, who was in the air at 'the same time ■iiiprnacliin <* Washington on the last

lap of bis flight across the continent, ,aught the same storms and made a forced landing on the side of a n.ountain. i • , Tho accident to the Curtiss machine involve* the Cited States 'Air Seme, in the loss of one of its most, bnll.ant officers, Colonel Archie Miller. this officer, well known to British airmen, commanded the United States Air Forces in France, and was m charge of tho arrangements for the reception of the British dirigible R 34, in the summer of 1919. The pilot was Lieut. \mes who enlisted in the British Army at the outbreak of war, and was traits. f e ,-red to the United States forces when they entered the war. _ •*- The authorities are unanimous in the belief that the machine was forced down, by the storm and that a sudden mist sent it into a nose dive from which tie pilot was unable to recover.

WEDDING SURPRISE. BERLIN, May 31. The bravest man in Germany lives nt Gotha. Yesterday ho went to the town hall witjh his intended bridge and the wedding party for the mar riage ceremony. In reply to the registrar’s question whether he would take the woman to be his wedded wife he replied in a determined manner, “No, I won’t,’ toolup his hat and went away.