NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 2072, 30 December 1919, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

A French boy, 12 years of ago, named Daniel Vasseur, who went through four years of the war with British troops, has been handed over to the French authorities. The boy was living with his mother at Barneville, near Doullen.s, when the war brokd out. He wears the British and inter-allied military medals. He was once wounded.

The eastern confines of the Polish Republic present a state of utter misery and starvation. Inquests on many victims of death from hunger reveal in the stomach the presence of sand and wood. In many communities as much as one-half of the population have died, while in others a very large percentage arc suffering from hunger typhus. A man named Rd. Simpson had his hands terribly injured on the bank of the River Petterill, near Penrith. He had gone to the river for fish, and had with him half-a-do/.en home-made bombs, one of which exploded, and instead of killing fish in the river, as had been -his plan, practically blew his hands off.

Reading Gaol is to be closed. I.he staff is to be transferred to Chelmsford. The old prison has room for 200 prisoners; at present there are only five aliens interned there. Xo criminals have been housed there since the early days of the war. There has been a Reading Gaol from very early times, but the present bnikbng the Berkshire County Gaol, to give it its official name — dates back only from 1831. Among famous criminals who served terms there were Mrs Dyei’, the notorious baby-farmer, and Oscar Wilde.