NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2407, 21 March 1922, Page 1

NEWS AND NOTES.

Lieut.-Colouel 0. C. Clare, in unveiling a war memorial at the Constitutional Club, Cliertsey, Surrey, said it sometimes happened in France that troops were given an impossible task, and, after seeing the cost of the enterprise, he could not help comparing the cheapness with which the lives of those splendid young men were held with the care and expense to which the nation went to ensure long life for habitual criminals, incurable lunatics, and hereditary paupers. “For my self,” he added; “I should welcome the operation of the lethal chamber, w,hich would prevent the proportion of unfit to fit becoming any greater, and at the same time help to relieve the nation of one of its many burdens.” In reply to a onel Clare said he did not suggest a subsequent speaker’s criticism, Collethal chamber for a child of tender years.

When Betty Landers, aged 20, address refused, feels like dancing she doesn’t want restrietons, says a New York paper. Betty, who said she was a “cabaret artist,” doffed all restrictions down to a pair of silk stockings on the platform of a subway station at Nintey-sixth Street and Lexington Avenue, New York, early one morning recently and danced, while blushing passengers fled and called a policeman. Bejtty had hold of her garters,.which also appeared to be restraining her freedom of movement when Patrolman August Preitler wrapped her up in his overcoat, holding it shut with one hand while he collected Betty’s garments with the other. At the station house she continued to wear the overcoat and she continued to wear it also in Harlem Court until Magistrate Joseph E. Corrigan appeared on the bench. Then she took it off. Magistrate Corrigan’s face extends clear up over the back of his neck and Court attendants swear he blushed all the way . Leaving the bench hastily while the policemen equally hastily 1 .. . put the overcoat back on Betty, the Magistrate went over to the; prison pep and while policemen held the overcoat he held a brief hearing and sent Betty to Bellevue Hospital for observation. Fred Poller, : eighteen years old, recently made it clear to Newark police and railroad detectives just how and why the locomotive, water tender and first coach of a train on the Central Railroad of New Jersey were derailed and overturned at 'Port Newark a few days before. Fred confided that he had seen such a stunt on the screen and )for a long time had wanted to have a train wreck of his own creation. So he set about finding a train to wreck and a place to wreck it. He went to a switch at Maple Creek in the New Jersey Meadows, and with a rod of pig iron broke the switch lock, he told the police, and placed two iron bolts in the four sections of the switch after swinging it wide open. Then along came a passenger train bound from Elizabethport for Broad Street, Newark. There was a rasping sound as the train struck the derail, and the locomotive turned over on its side, the water tender and the first coach following. No one was injured. The wreck was kept secret until railroad dectectives arrested Poller.

The Faculty Club at Columbia University, New York, the last remaining building that once formed the Bloomingdale Asylum, is being torn down, and it is believed that the University ghost will pass with it. The ghost has haunted the subterranean passages of the University, but it is believed to hhve made its headquarters'in the former asylum building. It is the ghost of a student who became crasy through studying too hard and was sent to Bloomingdale almost half a century ago. The unfortunate youth "was obsessed with the idea that he was immortal in a physical sense, and when other ,lunatics questioned his theory he put it to the test by committing suicide. At intervals since the university succeeded the asylum his' ghost has laid violent hands upon persons using the subterranean passage, seizing them by the arm or shoulder and shouting in their ears that he was immortal. The ghost’s most recent appearance was just about a year ago, when he seized S. F. Covert, a sophomore, in the underground passage connecting Fainveather and Science halls. The imprints of the ghost's fingers showed black and blue on Covert’s arm for several days.