NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 2037, 4 October 1919, Page 1

NEWS AND NOTES.

yThe moist notable haunted house in London is St. Stephens, which is alleged to have several ghosts which occasionally visit its precincts. The most famous and sinister of these is Big Ben, who is said to walk when a death is impending in the royal family. A number of folk declared they saw him on the evenings before the deaths of the Prince Consort, Princess Alice, and the Duke of Clarence. Each of these appearances was on the 13th of the month at midnight. A ybuth of 18, against whom it was stated that there were 50 charges, with others to come, appeared at a London police court recently. His name was Alfred Huberts, and he was now charged with breaking and entering a house in Bt. Stephen’s Road, Bow, and with maliciously wounding Elizabeth Baigent. A detective-inspector stated that the prisoner went to houses and represented that his father wanted to buy them. lie asked to be shown over, and went upstairs. He next requested the tenant to go downstairs and bang the front door in older to test whether the windows rattled, and then seized the opportunity to ransack the room. With the termination of hostilities -Iho perils from West-end “sharks” have returned with added forces, says a London paper. The case of the young ex-soldier of aristocratic family who got into the hands of West End crooks, with the result that he found'himself in the dock, is not the only one of the kind by any means which throw light on the work of these gangs. During the war their operations were on a very minor scale. Now they are sufliciently serious to require the attention of special men . from Scotland Yard. There are.several of those gangs operating in the West End. Although they work separately, ills believed that each one is well known to the others, and that they assist: each other in emergency. They are composed of well-dressed, gentle-manly-mannered men. whose pockets, thanks to their nefarious practices, are generally well lined. They rob hotels and boarding-houses, and win the friendship of young men of good family when possible, using them to secure good social introductions, or blackmailing them. Introductions into good circles, of course, aid them tremendously in their pursuits. Prices of fat stock in most of the selling centres of the Dominion have now reached what are familiarly termed famine prices (stales .the Lyttelton Times), with the result that the retail price of meat Ims been raised to a point practically unheard of in the country. As an indication of the high prices ruling for fat stock, it may be mentioned that two bullocks purchased at Burnside last Wednesday by a leading city butcher for £25 2s (id each, weighed re.spectively 540 lb. and 010 lb., or an average of 025 lb. each. This ’works out at 80s 5d per 100 lb., or at the rate of approximately 9 58d per lb, for the carcase. In this connection it may be pointed out that these were by no means the dearest cattle sold at Burnside last week, and it is confidently asserted that several pens of bullocks were bought for local consumption at well over lOd per lb. for the carcase. The position which has arisen is by no means unexpected, as those who have watched the trend of events l’6r the past six months have prophesied that prices would soar to unheard-of heights. The scarcity of winter feed is the prime factor which has contributed to the present condition, and this has been accentuated by the railway restrictions. For; Children’s Hacking Cough, Woods' Great.Pepperroint Cure.