GENERAL NEWS ITEMS

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2398, 28 February 1922, Page 4

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS

The .limit in fraudulent audacity is displayed by a, nia n of 53. for whom the Paris police are looking. He-has been in the habit yrf calling at the homes of women who have just come out of hospital, presenting himself as a Poor Law doctor sent to examine them and report on their progress. Having caused a woman to undress, he gravely covers her head with her clothes, instructs her to count. 40 slowly, and then hold her breath. When the woman’s attention is thus distracted, the man snatches up anything of value and steals away.

A passion for sport was said to be the cause of the downfall of Frederick John Dart, a city postman, who was fined £5 at Exeter for stealing h letter. Dart’s solicitor explained that he was one of the “Old Contempt ibles,” was wounded in the retreat from Mons, and also saw service in the Dardanelles and Egypt. Dart, had an exemplary character in the Army. He belonged to several sports clubs in Ibe city, and travelled with Ids favourite football team when they played their away matches. In this way he had spent far more than he could afford. “We spend £IO,OOO a year on the silk and other materials (hat wo spoil in creating our models,’' said the manager of a well-known firm of modistes, explaining that tlm-proprietress lias decided to sign the firm’s name tag- attached to every costume sent out, and to add to it the finger print of I lie designer. “These original models, invented at such expense,” he continued, “are frequently bought, by agents of Germans, who copy Ihem clumsily in a series,, and ship them to America to be sold with our name stitched in them as genuine Paris frocks." A daring theft of jewellery, valued at £309, was committed by two well-dressed women from a shop in Victoria Street on a recent evening. While one of tlie women wa- examining articles on a tray l hat had been taken from the window by the assistant, her companion seized another tray and decamped. The articles stolen include 28 gold rings of various patterns set with diamonds, sapphires, and rubies. By die time the alarm was raised, both women had disappeared in the crowds passing along Victoria Street. Mr Leapman, the jeweller, told a press representative it was evident from the cool manlier in which ii was carried out. that the robbery had been carefully planned.

The man who spoke about spending a “bobe” is generally regarded as expressing himself in the language of slang. And yet in the “bobe," some times “bob,” meaning a shilling, we find a survival of the very ancient name for the equivalent ot 12 pennies Scots money. In reply to a letter regarding an old ! , 'rcneh coin known as a “bobe,” one of the coinage experts of the National Library of Paris explains that the “liolte,” or douzain, belong* (<> period of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and was value for ]2 deniers, or pennies. Gn Mich evidence the “bobs” call claim quite a venerable pedigree, and may bold up its head in any company of numismatic rivals.