GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2288, 11 June 1921, Page 4

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Interesting statistics for the last financial year of the Old People s Home shows that on ,March 31st, 1920, there were 29 inmates, 15 were admitted during the year, 6 were discharged, and 5 died. The total remaining on March 31st, 1921, was 33. The collective days .spent by all patients in Ihe home were 10,894, and the individual average 248 days. The number of beds occupied each day was 29.8. Pursued by gendarmes who fired at him while he tried to escape on a bicycle he had stolen, a 14-year-old workhouse boy named Mcunier finally surrendered in a wood near HisOrangis, 16 miles from Paris, who ( he had been wounded in the head, arm, and both legs after a revolver battle. He reached the wood well ahead of the police, and amlm.-hed them on their arrival, -when he fired two shots from his revolver. An hour later Mcunier was found up a tree and stalked by the police, to whose lirc'he replied,. The lad, who is in a critical condition, is thought to be the leader of a gang of boy highwaymen - who had escaped from a workhouse school and committed a series of burglaries and gamblings. “1 have crossed the Atlantic twice recently, and each time have been asked to contribute to a fund for a baby born on board," write.- a correspondent to a London paper. “1 sought a ship’s doctor, and learnt that sea voyages are very popular with expectant mothers, especially .migrants from the Continent. Many of them realise that they can avoid an expensive time and get money enough to give baby born at sea a good start in life. The inevitable collection for baby touches more pockets every year." A Canard Line official said that generally this i- true of the third-class accommodation. “'Collections on hoard for the baby have been very successful *4 late," he said. “Recently one baby was presented with £450 collected on its behalf, and another in addition to money got a motor car. The last two Registrar-General's returns of babies born at sea in ships “to and from England and Wales" show that 68 were born during 1918 and.lsl in 1919.