NEWS BY MAIL.

Hokitika Guardian, 10 February 1930, Page 3

NEWS BY MAIL.

MASKED MAN

WOLVERHAMPTON, Dec. 14',

Aii unknown man, who has been described on one occasion as wearing a rod hatikerchiel over, the lowor part of his face, is terrorising women lithe Bi is ton district of fclie Black Country. Throe women have reported attackby a- handbag snatcher oil lonely wash, hauls.

'1 iio last attack is reported by llr> P.ioebe \V, rd, of Wafor-streel, Bradley. Mrs Ward says that soon after S p.m. on Friday she was attacked from belli ad by a man who gripped her neck tightly and placed a cloth,. co\ercd with white powder, over her face.

She felt her face tlvcni and became dizzy. She believes she was either carried or dragged, for when she regained her senses she found herself on a pit mound. Her hat was off, her basket was missing and a piper packet containing £2 K's had gone.

Later Mrs Ward’s hat and baskol were recovered by neighbours.

A WIDOW’S WILES. BERLIN, December 11, Frau Martha, Mobiles, a widow, .of sb, was ciiargxl Jicre yesterday with, swindling the lour , men who. desired to. marry her. - •

There .was a,murmur, of surprise , in, the, court w’hen ' tills elderly woman who played havoc : with, hearts hobbled i.,. ie.unng on stick and supported oy a wtydress.. She was, moreover, a singularly ill-favoured person with thin gey hair. And yet she received a proposal of marriage from a man of 62 on the fiist day that she entered his service as housekeeper.

She had told him that she had money and enough furniture for a large house stored at Frankfurt-on Main, and required money to pay for the transport of the furniture to Berlin. When she had extracted it from her employer and fiance she disappeared. ,

Again there appeared in a Berlin newspaper an advertisement like the one that had brought Frau Martha anil the man of 62 together. Again a. guileless man fell into the clutches of that respectable widow who again extracted a handsome sum to bring that fabulous . furniture from Frank-furt-on-Main.

Had the four men whom she has swindled made inquiries about her past, they would have found that she had been convicted of fraud 18 times.

“How could you get engaged to a woman about whom you knew nothing,” said the judge to one of the widow’s cx-fiances, a man of 69 from whom she had wheedled £050,: ■‘The older; the-sillier,-”' he answered, amid loud laughter. • - She was'sentenced to a year’s- imr prisonmentv and fined' £ls. ’ -

26-YEARS-OLD WEDDING

NOT VALID

BIRMINGHAM, December 21

A woman with six children learned hi the police court here today that her marriage l 26 years ago was not a valid one;

Mrs Clifford, ' who sued her “husband,” Richard Edmund Clifford, aged 49, a millwright, of the Parade Birmingham, for desertion, produced a certificate dated January 13, 1902, of a marriage ceremony at St. Vincent s Roman Catholic Church, Ashted, Birmingham. She said that after the priest had married them in the Church at 6.30 p.m. he told them to go. to the registrar of marriages the next day, but they did not do so. Clifford’s defence was that the marriage was not .a • legal one, .as the ceiemony took place during prohibited hour’s.

Alderman James, the. .chairman, said that the case must be dismissed. After such a lapse of time it was difficult to say who was to blame. There was no .doubt nothing was done in regard to registration, and as a consequence, the woman, after thinking she had been mn pried for 26. years,' . found Unit she was not a wife. . , ... . “BENEATH CONTEMPT,” “The magistrates,” he continued “have nothing but sympathy for her, as her six children are in the eyes of the law, illegitimate. A man who takes advantage of a misunderstanding of that sort to repudiate his moral obligations is beneath contempt. ..

BERLIN DISGRACE

BERLIN, December 21

This great city is in disgrace. Extravagance ,and . mismanagement have got to such a pass that the Piussian Government, has been, forced, to. intervene and to give one of . its chjef officials, the Ober-President of Brandenburg, the right to supervise the finances of the city. .

Matters came to a head yesterday when the city council, which is dominated by Socialists and Communists voted the sum of £300,000 for Christmas gratuities for the unemployed, who already receive the dole, regardless of the fact that the money can only be got hv borrowing. ’Hie reply of tlie Government was prompt. To-day the mayor was informed by the Ober-President that expenditure beyond a certain: limit would not he permitted this month, and received an order that the city council must nay at least £250,000 a month into the Prussian State Bank to form an amortisation fund.