GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 2018, 21 August 1919, Page 4

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

The Peterborough coroner, in returning a verdict of “accidental death” on a married woman who was burned to death through wearing a ilanelette'nightdress, said that, despite many protests and recommendations on the subject, the Government refused to prohibit the sale of flanelette, and consequently people would still continue to be burned to death.

There, was no evidence, said Mr Harmsworth, in the House of Commons recently, that when Henry Hudson visited Spitsbergen in ,1607 he raised the British flag there. The British claim had never been recognised by the Dutch Government, and occupation had ceased for two centuries, It was recognised as a no man’s land by the Spitzbergen Conference in 1914.

The Lord Mayor of Birmingham, presiding at the annual meeting of the Hospital for Nervous Diseases, said that lassitude and apathy appeared to have entered most departments of life owing to relaxation from' the tension of war. “Attendance at the city council meetings is not so regular as it used to be,” he said, “and those who come seem unable to support the burden of remaining until business is completed.” -

“Alice in Wonderland” is dead. The original of Lewis Carroll’s famous book has just passed away iif Cheltenham. She was Mrs Edith Maitland, the daughter of Canon Litton, of Gloucester. As a child she was a great favourite of Rev. C. L. Dodgson, the real name of Lewis Carroll, and she wrote a book “Childish Memories of Lewis Carroll,” which has been incorporated in a life of the writer of “Alice in Wonderland.”

The mystery surrounding the dentils of numerous horses and other animals in the Lutterbaeh region of Al.sa.ee recently has been solved. Specialists who made a careful investigation have determined that (he animals were poisoned by grasses grown in a region where poison gas had been extensively used during the war.' Although the gas settling on (he plants rendered them poisonous, the facilities of the plants themselves were not'affected. Chinese and Japanese newspapers are in a furore over allegations that eleven South China delegates to the Shanghai conference last April received £100,1)00 in bribes from the pro-Japanese clique in Pekin. ,The hinder, it is said, received £loo,*ooo, and ton others got £O,OOO each to desist from taking up China’s territorial claims as against Japan and to refrain from questioning the Sino-Japanese agreements of 1915 and 1918 with regard to Tsingtao and the Shantung railway. A number of human skeletons, including skulls and other bones, have been unearthed during excavations in a meadow at Chertsey. Most of the bones were within a couple of feet of the surface, and were found in all postures, indicating a hasty burial. The most feasible theories are that they belonged to persons who died in the Great Plague —having been brought from London in barges —or to victims of the cholera scourge which affected Chertsey between 1830 and 1810.

On the mantelpiece in (he managing director’s rooms of a London linn stands the chief article of office furniture: a dark-coloured football with “Ilontauban Cup” chalked faintly upon it. It was one of the famous footballs kicked over the top when the great advance of July Ist, 1910, began. The inscription on the pedestal reads: —“This football was kicked over the top on July Ist, 191(5, by Private A. A. Fursey, No. ti Platoon, B. Company, 81 h East Surrey Regiment, during the attack from Carnoy Valley to Montauhan.” Private Fursey was killed that day 7. A story of a woman who married a burglar in total ignorance of his mode of life was told in the Court of Criminal Appeal, when a sentence of seven years’ penal servitude passed on George Bell at the Middlesex sessions for house-breaking was reduced to live years’ penal servitude. Mr Justice Darling said Bell committed a bigamous marriage, and had been divorced, but he had since married a respectable young woman, who did not know that he was a burglar. When he failed to return home she went to the police station to inquire, and found that he had been arrested. It was found by the police that the man had been three times sentenced to penal servitude.