GENERAL NEWS ITEMS

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2424, 4 May 1922, Page 4

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS

A suit for £40,000 damages against the invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, incorporated under the laws of Georgia, has been filed by Miss Melda Meyer, of Houston Texas. The petition alleges the receipt by Miss Meyer of a threatening letter from Richmond Klan, 38, which/she asserts was damaging to her dharaeter and reputation. Michael Nolan, homeless, found a resting place recently in the basement of the establishment of James Duffey, Fourth Avenue, New York. This is an undertaking shop and the material against which Nolan rested his head was a coffin. Duffey was making a general inspection while on night duty when he heard snoring in the casket room. He insisted., that the sound did not shake his nerves, but he called a policeman who dragged Nolan out. The latter received a suspended sentence on a charge of vagrancy.

Commercial circles in London attach great importance to the invitation to Germany to exhibit at the Fourth London Fair and Market which will be held at tlje Royal Agricultural Hall in London, July 3 to 14. It is considered symtomatic of the changed attitude of British trading circles towards German industries. Among the German products (to be represented will be jewellery, iron goods, stationery, fashion and luxury articles, toys and sporting goods. It is likely that the German representation will be exceptionally .strong. “Some operations are performed to-day in almost the same way as they were in the 14th century,” said Sir' D’Arey Power, of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, in a lecture at the Royal British Nurses’ Association. John Arderne, who lived in the time of Edward 111., and whose methods of operation for fistula are still used to-day, received the present-day equivalent of £I,OOO for each operation he performed, Sir D’Arey added. “In addition to this princely fee, he demanded £4O a year for the rest of the patient’s life, and looked to each of the patients to supply him with two changes of garments a year.” Found guilty of forging and uttering a notice of withdrawal of £133 from the Post Office Saving Bank account of a convict at Parkhurst Prison, Paul Bruce Clayton, 35, an engineer, was sentenced at the Old Bailey to 18 months’ hard labour. It was stated that he learned of the convict’s banked money while he was serving a term of imprisonment for embezzling £l2lO from the Ministers' of Munitions. Clayton, who denied the charge, said that'he had hidden part of the embezzled money at Corfe Castle, Dorset and had gone back there and dug up £l4O, with £IOO of which he opened a Post Office account.

General Pershing has declined to accept a Distinguished Service Cross voted to him by,the army board of awards and which seere-

fary Weeks had planned to bestow on him at a “surprise party” in the secretary’s office. The general learned the secret of the party and went to Mr Week’s house to declare his undeservedness of the honour. Secretary Weeks then decided that the general’s wishes should be rejected and cancelled his plans for the parly. General Pershing declined the award of the Medal of Honour for the same act of heroism. This was an incident tfint occurred when he was a Brigadier-General in the Phillippine Islands in 1913.

The New York Transit Commis-' sion has received all sorts of complaints about the new so-called “featherweight” gates, of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, but the most hopeless of all, they consider, are complaints that the gates smash flasks carried in the hip pockets. Several times indignant persons have telephoned the commission to complain that as they go through the gates on their way out. the bars swing against their hips viciously and smash flasks. The commission in every case expressed regret, but has told I he complainants it can do nothing because the carrying of flasks of liquor is not any more legal than the action of the gales in smashing them. Marguerite Bertrand, a red-hair-ed girl of 18, has been arrested by Paris police on a charge of burglary with violence. Tt is alleged that she is the head of a band of young armed Apa dies, who have been terrorising the outskirts of Pjiris. She is known to < her comrades as “the Panther of Mouffelard,” from the name of the district'which Ims seen most of the exploits of her gang, all girls and boys. The other day, at the head of five boys and girls, she entered a grocer’s shop and having shut the doors rifled the till while her companions loaded their pockets with bottles of wine and tins of preserved meat. The shopkeeper was threatened with stabbing if he did not remain silent. Marguerite’s companions in this exploit have also fallen into the hands of the police, and the whole gang will shortly-.bo brought before (lie Paris Assize Court.