GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2338, 6 October 1921, Page 4

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

When several women had complained of the bad behaviour of another of their sex, the Wood Green magistrate asked wlmt kind of a husband she had. A man stepped forward and said: “One of the best —a kind husband and a good worker.” Magistrate: Is he in Court? The Man: Yes; I’m him. Puncheons of whisky and barrels of oil were among the storage which was destroyed in a fire on the Great Eastern Railway at Ilytlie. Ten loaded trucks and a goods shed were gutted, and three explosions occurred during the blaze, which at one time threatened a neighbouring store containing many thousand gallons of petrol. Two women’s fight with an eagle which tried to fly off with a little girl of three is reported from the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, Quebec. The women were picking berries in the hills when the bird swooped down on the child. One of the women struck it with a bucket and forced it to drop its prey. The other woman snatched up a stick and came to her aid. All three were badly scratched. A woman who applied at Tottenham Police Court for a summons said that a man living near by had assaulted her. “I don’t know his name,” she said, “but he is a drunken, blackguardly, murderous, abusive beast, more like a reptile than a man —” Another woman came forward. “I believe I can help,” she said. “I’ve never seen this woman before, but from what she says, I think the man must be my husband.”

A man named Rose, of Chicago, has just been granted a decree of divorce" from his third wife at the age of 91. He declares: “Women are getting worse with every generation! My first wife was pretty good, my second was just medium, and my third no good.” He adds that he will not take a chance with the fourth generation for fear something should happen to him. There was an unpleasant scene at St. Martin’s Church, Scarborough, one Sunday evening recently. An elderly man who rose and protested against the service was ejected. It is understood that his protest had reference to the use of incense and other alleged Ritualistic practice. As he was being removed, he called out: “You are getting as near Roman Catholics as you can get.” St. Martin’s is the church where an attempt was made to destroy by fire a figure of Christ on the war memorial cross.

The divorce of Mary Pickford and Owen Moore will stand as the result of the district judge granting a motion and quashing the summons in the Attorney-General’s proceedings in this connection. Mary Pickford was divorced from Owen Moore in April, 1920, and shortly afterwards she was secretly married at Los Angeles, California, to Douglas Fairbanks, who, like herself, is a film star in America. In June last year the couple came to London on a holiday, and were “lionised” by West End crowds. Fairbanks had himself been divorced by his wife, the daughter of a wealthy cotton broker.

An elephant appearing in a theatrical show at Burton-ou-Trent surprised people in the Market Hotel by making her way through an open doorway in the bar and stretching her trunk across the counter. Enticed down the yard, she then spied some Indian corn through the kitchen window. This she smashed. Then she burst open a boiled door, and seized the corn, while a chained dog cowered in helpless fear. She then walked up a stone stairway, and the keeper had to crawl between her legs to gel to her head and coax her to back down the stairs again. She had escaped from custody by pulling from a wall the staple to which she was secured, and carrying her chain in her trunk so that the keeper should not be aroused.

After eating mutton, a Lambeth family became very ill, and a four-year-old boy,died. The father said that on Bank Holiday they went to Hampton Court, where they had mutton sandwiches made from the remains of the Sunday joint. Next morning they were all taken ill. They had noticed nothing wrong with the mutton. Dr. Weir said the child’s death was due to food poisoning. The mutton might have been perfectly good and gone wrong through being infected by some germ without the taste being tainted. The coroner said he was satisfied the mutton (New Zealand) was perfectly good when sold, and it had got tainted in one day with germs flying about in the dry and dusty weather.