GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 2006, 24 July 1919, Page 1

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

The permanent Court of Arbitration in disputes between Copenhagen employers and workmen recently fined the Dockers’ Trade Union £44,000 for conducting an illegal strike. That dry volume, the annual report of the Registrar-General, contains this human interest item: — There’s an increase of 28 per cent, in the number of widows re-marry-ing. This is supposedly due to the great number of young war brides whose husbands were killed in war.

Major Wood, the new member for Central Aberdeen, created a stir by appearing in kilts in the House of Commons recently to take the oath. The late Colonel Duncan Campbell, when member for North Ayrshire, used to attend the House during the war in the kilted uniform of the Black Watch. In the House of Commons recently, Commander Viscount Cnr/.on asked if members of the Casement brigade now in Dublin were furnished with money and given prominent positions at seditious gatherings by the Sinn Fein organisation. Air Samuels, Attorney-Genera! for Ireland, s;iid he had no information, but six of these men were believed to have returned to their homes in Ireland. Commenting on the coughing nuisance in church, Councillor John R. Chart, of Mitcham, who is nearly 00, said at the church centenary celebrations recently; —“When T worshipped in this chapel as a boy the deacons made a determined stand against coughing.” He explained that as soon as any member of the congregation began to cough during the sermon, “as if he meant it,” Deacon Killick left his pew, placed a piece of liquorice on a hymnbook, and solemnly presented it to the sufferer. “It was a capital remedy,” Councillor Chart added, “and I often wish the custom was observed in the churches nowadays.”

Eighteen months ago a flowerseller was charged at Tottenham with the unlawful possession of a brooch valued at £SOO, and Major Malone, M.P., the magistrate, inquired recently what had become of it. None of the police officers in court was able to answer, and the magistrate remarked: “I desire some information at the next court. This brooch worries me.” The flowerseller, who had been charged, told the court that a Canadian soldier gave her the brooch, and that he picked it up on the battlefield in France. She was discharged. The police advertised the brooch, and several hundred applications were received for it, but no one could give a correct description. Drums of mustard gas, believed to have been washed fi’om a transport, have been polluting the Welsh coast for some time past, and several persons have been seriously injured in the popular bays near Swansea. The most recent case is that of two young brothers named Egerlon, who went to bathe at Oxwich one Sunday. After being near a drum for some time they went home in agonies, and have been under medical treatment since. Their bodies are burned, and they are suffering from the same symptoms as those exhibited by two Mumbles coastguardsmen who handled a drum of the gas at Limeslade about four months ago, and who were placed under hospital treatment.

A debtor n( (lie London Bankruptcy Court recently, who showed liabilities £10,372 and assets £llO, stated that for some years he was in receipt of a voluntary allowance of £BOO per annum from Ids father. In December, 1914, he obtained a commission in the army, hut was invalided out through wounds in May, 1918. Witness attributed his failure to losses by betting' and gambling; loss in connection with the purchase, training, and upkeep of racehorses; and to interest on borrowed money. In May, 1918, he lost £IOOO by playing “auction bridge” on a train journey between London and Manchester.

A new gambling gome, which, it was slated, had superseded fan-tan among' the patrons of the gaminghouses in the Chinese quarter of London, was described at the Thames Street Police Court recently. On several of the people in the house were found papers used in playing pukka poo. The papers contained representations of 80 Chinese symbols, including the dragon, the seaj a sword, gold, and nuts. Those who took part in the game blotted out 10 of the 80 characters, and once every hour one of the principals also blot - ted out 10 characters, at the same time chanting a Chinese song. A competitor fortunate enough to have blotted out the same 10 characters as the man conducting the gamble would get in return for a shilling £l7O, or, if eight out of the 10 were right, he would receive £42. Dr. Leonard Williams, lecturing on “Common Sense,” at the Peace Nursing and Midwifery Conference

and Exhibition at London, said that people with tight collars did not drain their brains properly, and often suffered from bad tempers. He had noticed that since women had given up high collars, and had worn garments which gave complete freedom to the neck, they had become sweeter tempered.

A veritable revolution in the practice of medicine, and even surgery, al sea is threatened by the progress of “wireless.” Only a few days ago physicians in two transports in (lie Atlantic, 15 miles apart, held consultation by wireless telephony over certain inlluenza cases in one of the vessels, and also diagnosed the ailment and prescribed treatment by wireless telegraphy of a sick man on a steamer 100 miles distant from both transports.