NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2511, 28 November 1922, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

“I have been a laudanum drinker since childhood 1 , and I give it regularly to my two children, aged eighteen months and three years.” This admission was made by Mary Hodgson, wife of an unemployed miner, who was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment at Bishop Auckland, England, for stealing a. bottle of chlorodine. Her husband who was summoned with her for childneglect, was fined £l. It was said that the woman’s mother was undergoing treatment for the drug habit. A tragic coincidence is reported from New York, Mrs Samuel Simpson of Baldwin, Long Island, who has been unable to speak for more than a year, because of paralysis affecting the throat, and has been in a comatose state throughout that period, regained consciousness and said, “Nurse, where is Sam?” She immediately relapsed into unconsciousness. Shortly afterwards news reached the house that almost, at the moment when Mrs Simpson revived her husband, who is vicepresident of a firm of accountants, had died suddenly in a city restaurant. A woman was travelling with her five-year-old daughter on the Bas-le-Paris express when the carriage door suddenly swung open and the little girl fell on the line. The train was stopped and it was found that the child had' been killed. The bereaved mother, who could not speak a word of French, tried to make her fellow passengers understand that she was on her way to join her husband in the United States, and had intended catching a liner at Havre. Ultimately the woman, leaving her dead child behind her, rejoined the train and came on to Paris in order to catch the liner. An attempt to reach the North Pole by airship is,likely to be made within the next few months. Captain Charles Frobisher, who served with the R.A.F. during the war, is to be the leader of the expedition, which is being delayed by lack of funds. It is estimated that at least

£20,000 will be required to finance the project, and a non-rigid airship will be used, with a crew of ten, who have already been selected. It is proposed to start from London, with stops at Aberdeen, Christiania, North Cape and Bear Island. The final dash will be made from Spitsbergen, which is 700 miles from the Pole.