STOKERS IN REVOLT.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3723, 8 November 1906, Page 3

STOKERS IN REVOLT.

BEHAVE LIKE MADMEN

London, Nov. 6,

The stokers again rioted at Portsmouth, and smashed the officers windows. The riot was followed by the taking of stringent precautions. Several officers wore assaulted and some policemen were badly hurt. Large bodies of armed sailors and marines succeeded in arresting hundreds of the stokers. They were caught inside the barracks, and failing to see a way of escape, they behaved like madmen, smashing the furniture and electric fittings. An officer kept the men on parade unnecessarily long during a deluging rainstorm. The men at last bolted to shelter without awaiting the order of dismissal.

The officer ordered them to parade in the gymnasium. Hearing insulting remarks from the stokers there, he directed the front rank to kneel, in order that ho might see the rear ranks. The men refused, but when the order was repeated they all knelt except two, one of whom declared that he would bend the knee to God alone. After the stokers’ attempt to quit the barracks had been frustrated, Commodore Stopford released those arrested, and after inquiry announced that the matter had dropped.

A seventeen-year-old girl has worked her way up from Waimate to Masterton under unusual circumstances. She rode a hired bicycle from Tiraaru to Christchurch, and sold the machine at Christchurch for £2, coming on to Wellington with the proceeds. Later she put in two weeks at Taihape as a domestic, but returned to Wellington, where she appears to have done nothing in particular for some time. Walking to the Hutt, she adopted an old expedient and hiring a bicycle rode over the Rimutakas to Masterton. She was endeavouring to dispose of the machine when arrested for vagrancy. The girl, who has been seven months away from home, was remanded to the Wellington Receiving Home, pending inquiries; '

From the Mangaweka Settler :~ Here is the version of one labour bureau navvy who asked for the usual shakedown and tucker. When asked where he came from, he said : “ I bum frufn ther blanky ' Labour Brop ter and yvus sent up to old bloke as put me intp^' a’ draihrWifh some more blokes, but they were no blanky good, so I chucked it; after three days I got 12 bob on pay day and skipped the boardin ouse an hoofed it to Ohakune. I got a job on ther road there and had only worked three hours when the blankey boss told me to get a wriggle on, I told ’im ter go to 'ell, an I chucked that job. I’m going to Makatote now, if I don’t strike a job there I'll go through to Auckland.”