GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 246, 1 June 1922, Page 1

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

A Moray Firth skipper’s swim for life .in heavy sea boots and in a rough sea is- described by a Daily Chronicle representative. While going out from Hopeman Harbour to shoot some lines in the motor-boat Bells, Skipper Davidson was washed overboard by a tremendous sea which swept over the little craft. “I swam fully clad, with heavy sea boots on, for the shore.” said the skipper. “I could hear the crowd on the pier cheering me as I battled with the waves. Ulitmately I was lifted by a huge wave and throwm on to a rock, and I can remember nothing after that.” Three fishermen attempted to rescue Skipper Davidson by jumping into the sea, and two succeeded in reaching the rock, and managed to get him ashore. .Looking sad and dejected, Frederick Henry Rogers, a coal porter, of Camden Gardens, Kentish Town, was charged on remand at Marylebone with stealing a barrel of strong ale, valued at £lO, from the public bar of the Devonshire Arms, Kentish Town Road. Rogers said he helped himself because “they” refused to serve him. He took the barrel from underneath a table in the public bar, rolled it a distance of three hundred yards to his lodgings, and carried it to his bedroom. When discovered by the police two hours later he was sitting on the bed with his wife; both of them were “quite drunk” and were apparently quite oblivious of the fact that the beer was running to waste from the barrel and (lowing over the room. The Magistrate ordered the accus- | ed to pay £2, with £3 costs to flic ! proscculor. or go to prison for one ; month. He was given a week in which to pay. lloang-Ques, a Chinaman, aged 20, recently .jumped into the Seine at Paris and was drowned. .\ letter written in excellent French, said that unrequited love for a Monltnatre artist’s model had driven him to commit suicide. ITe left her close upon £B,OOO.

When walking in his sleep in the early hours of the morning, Albert Sallwell, of Scotland Green, Tottenham, fell from a window and ('matured his skull. Saltwell, who was formerly in the Navy, is an expert diver, and it is thought that in a dream he attempted to dive from the open window. He is now lying in North Middlesex Hospital. A sensational attack on a girl took place in a Bradford street recently. As Lily Malkin, a woolcomber, was going to work along Bolton Road, a man came up from behind, drew n razor across her throat, and then ran away. The wound was not serious, and the girl is progressing favourably in an infirmary. Her assailant escaped but the police have a clue to his identity. The enterprising merchant who provides a supply of bathtub and wash-basins stoppers for Russia will be hailed enthusiastically for foreigners and natives alike, as these articles have utterly disappeared. The inhabitants are using corks and wooden plugs wrapped with cloth. The most popular member of the American colony now in Moscow is a young woman who thoughtfully brought a supply of rubber stoppers from New York and distributed them among her friends as Christmas presents. Virtually all hotels, office buildings and resi*. dences provided with plumbing have been occupied at some time within the last four years by troops or government officials, with the result that plumbing and light fixtures have either been removed entirely or badly damaged.

It ss said of an 83-year-old German. named Pf'ahlmer, whose suicide was inquired into at Westminster, London, a few weeks ago, that he had never slept in a bed since the war. He preferred an armchair. Pf'ahlmer, a watchmaker, took cyanide of potassium. In a letter to his partner he said: —“The last shilling was drawn out of the bank to pay the undertaker I ain

not sorry to leave the world with all its troubles but I go with a clear conscience. Never have I done any wrong to anyone; I never was extravagant in any way; neither did I smoke, drink or bet, and I have never had anything to do with women.” Suicide while of unsound mind was the verdict.