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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VII, Issue 202, 24 August 1872, Page 2

From the Cape papers we learn that matters at the diamond fields are becoming every day more disorderly. Robberies were frequent and daring, and colls on the Government for protection were urgently advanced. Business was said to be overdone, the briske&t trade which was carried on being in guns, which realised from £6 to £7 apiece. From 50 to 60 were being sold daily, but as a parcel was expected hourly, it was believed the price would Eoon fall. Justices' Justice.— At the last Aldershot Petty Sessions, Captain Newcome (chairman) G. F. Bricb, Esq., and Captain Elliott being on the bench, an old man of sixty, named John Cranh&ra, was charged with stealing a few chips, of the alleged value of twopence, the property of Messrs. Poole, builders. According to a local journal, the case was one of a most trivial character. The prisoner alleged that ha picked up the chips on a footpath, and notwithstanding the fact that he bore a twenty years' good character, and had been in prison four or five days since his apprehension, the magistrates, to the gi'eat surprise of all in court, sentenced him to undergo three weeks' imprisonment with hard labour, saying they must make an example of such cases. A sad scene was ■witnessed outside the court. The wife and son of the unfortunate man were weeping in an hysterical manner} and lamenting, to use their own words, that " they should have been robbed of their good name."