Duckworth and Spurgeon. REPORTED ASSAULT. London, May 26.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 372, 29 May 1889, Page 5

Duckworth and Spurgeon. REPORTED ASSAULT. London, May 26.

It is reported that Mr J. Duckworth* the Rochdale mill-owner, assaulted the Rev. Chailes Spurgeon. junior, for paying attention to his wife on the mail steamer Mariposa during her recent passage from Auckland to San Francisco. [Mr Duckworth, who is a wealthy mill owner, and a member of the Town Council of Rochdale, came to the colonies for the benefit of his health, and was deputed by the United Methodist Free Church body, of which he is a prominent member, to report upon the state of the churches connected with that body in the colonies. He preached on several occasions in Auckland. Mrs Duck- i worth accompanied her husband, j and during their stay here they had apartments at " Fernleigh," Symonds-street, near the Grammar School. They took passage for San Francisco by the Mariposa, the vessel on which the Rev. Charles Spurgeon also proceeded to San Francisco. The arrival of the steamer at that port was only cabled at the beginning of last week, and was published in our issue of Tuesday last. Any report with regard to the incident referred to in the above cablegram must therefore have come through an American source, and it is highly probable that it has lost nothing in colouring through the American love of sensational journalism. It is not unlikely that some trivial incident has been grossly exaggerated.]