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Southland Times, Issue 1308, 16 September 1870, Page 3

How Vagrants are Dealt with at Bath. — The workhouse at Bath is situated on a high table land, about two miles from the police station in the town, from which there is an almost continued ascent. All vagrants or tramps requiring relief are now compelled to apply at the police station, where they are examined by one of the four inspectors, and, if found to be destitute, the able-bodied have tickets given them for the workhouse, the old and infirm being sent to the lodging houses in the town. At the workhouse they receive supper, bed, and breakfast, but are made to break stones for three hours the next morning. Under this system vagrancy is now diminishing in Bath at the rate of 30 per cent. A Frugal Family.— There is a man in the vicinity of Cedar Keys, Fla., who has twenty-two children living. The family subsist principally on fish and oysters. They have never had a plate nor a cup and saucer in their house. In lieu of cups they use gourds and shells. They help themselves to the cooked fish or oysters from a common large dish, and each member of the family uses his or her own jack-knife for that purpose. These articles of diet are spread on corn bread, which they make themselves, and then they consume the plate as well as the food on it. In this way the washing of dishes is wholly obviated. The family are all healthy, and are more robust than graceful. Sutgujlab History op a Vagabond. — An individual arrested by the, Paris police a short time ago for vagabondage has turned out to be a convict named Montrousier, aged thirty-five, escaped from Cayenne a few years ago under rather extraordinary circumstances. He was condemned in 1861 to .transportation for setting fire to the farm of a neighbor in Algeria, where he had. settled. In the penal colony he adopted the calling of a fisherman, and married a woman who was undergoing a sentence of five years. They eventually resolved to escape, and with three other convicts got away in their boat, and, after being ten days at sea, landed on Barbiche Island. Having no money to purchase provisions, .they stole what they could, and then again put to sea. A terrible tempest then sprang up, in the midst of which the woman gave birth to a female child, and died a few days after ; the infant, however, survived, being fed with bread steeped in water. After being thirty days in that precarious state, the fugitives were picked up by an English steamer, and landed in France, where they concocted some plausible story to avert suspicions. The four men came to Paris, still accompanied by the child, and have since formed the nucleus of a band of depredators. Montrousier has refused to give any information relative to his companions.