GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2391, 11 February 1922, Page 1

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Crime in the village of Walden, Orange County, New York, being entirely lacking, it has been decided by the board of trustees to sell the gaol there. For months there have been no prisoners, and there is no indications, the village fathers say. Mr Jesse Joseph Jacobs, a Chicago salesman, has filed a counterpetition in answer to the divorce suit of his wife, Meryl. “She had a poodle, ‘Ruffles,fsays Jacobs. “She told me, ‘Love me, love my dog.’ The pup was no good. I ordered it out. She went too. We had been married three years.” The first attempt to walk made by Sidney Casey, aged 11 months, of South Norwood, ended tragically. Leaving his father’s knee, the child took three tottering steps towards the kitchen table. Losing his balance as he reached it, he clutched at a saucer and upset a cup of hot cocoa over himself. At the inquest a' verdict of death from scalds and shock was returned. An 800 mile hike across country is only a jaunt for Charles Blum, 15 years old, of Geneva, Indiana. Charles arrived in New York recently on foot to see his father, Charles Blum, sen., of Staten Island. He spent the day wandering about the city looking for his father, but New York is a lot bigger than Geneva, and Charies was getting discouraged when a policeman picked him up in Wall Street. He slept at the Children’s Society for the night, and it was the first time he had been in a bed for nearly a month, he said. He was restored to his father next day. A Jeckyll and Hyde character was ! convicted recently when a well- ■ dressed man named Mcßaigh, of ' st"’!:ing appearance, was placed in ! ihe dock at Marlborough Street, i London. It was stated by the police j ilint during the day he mixed in the J host society, and lived in the leading hotels, lie had boasted that he spent f 5 a day on champagne for his friend*. A.t night he turned “swell cracksman,” and according to llie police was a wonderful jewel thief, lie was caught at night peering into a jeweller’s shop in Piccadilly Circus, and it took five policemen to arrest him. A first-class set of burglar’s implements were found on him. Mcßaigh was sentenced to nine months’ hard labour. “You might give me a. few strokes with the cat and a short, severe sentence,” suggested John Wilcock,. a collier, to Mr Justice Roche recently at the Staffordshire Assizes. He had been found guilty of robbery with violence and serious outrage on a woman school teacher, and pleaded guilty to unlawfully wounding a woman caretaker at Stoke-on-Trent Chapel. The police said he had served two terms of penal servitude, and had also been convicted a* an habitual criminal. Mr Justice Roche sentenced the man to five years’ penal servitude, ten years’ preventive detention, and 25 strokes with the eat. Wilcock collapsed on hearing his fate. The question of what a wife is worth has again risen in Chicago. Harold C. Phelps quoted 1,000 dollars as the upset price for his wife, whom he had married a week previously. He ordered her to produce the amount or he would sell her at auction. She received a divorce. .Joseph Laknzek traded a concertina for his wife, and regrets the deal. He begged Judge Jacobs to help him out of tlie bargain. For thirty-live years he was happy with his concertnia, but two weeks ago, in an evil moment, he traded the music box for a wife. “My concertina. was worth a dozen women,” he told the judge. “I could shut it up when 1 wanted to.” The judge told him to make the best of the situation. John Dully, a prisoner in Sing Sing prison. New fork, was recently operated on in the prison hospital for the removal of a cancer. Duffy has been suffering from a cancerous growth on the face. After a conference between Dr. Amos O. Squire, head prison physician, and Dr. Townsend, a New York specialist, it was decided to cut away the cancerous growth. Later on Duffy will be treated with £2,000 wprth of radium, owned by Dr. Squire, who in private practice is a radium specialist. A few weeks after he reached prison a growth appeared on Duffy’s lip, which developed into a sore. Dr. Squire diagnosed it as a cancer. By using' the surgeon’s knife and the radium the doctors are hopeful of saving Duffy’s life. His sentence has several more months to run.