NEWS OF THE WORLD.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 59, 18 June 1910, Page 11

NEWS OF THE WORLD.

DARING BANK BOBBERV. £757 PAID OUT OX A FORGED CHEQUE, 'H ' " London, April 26. & daring forgery on the London and ■'South-Western Bank, suggestive of the "D. iS. Windell" fraud, was discovered .yesterday. A tall, well-dressed man,of middle-age, wearing a silk hat ami a dark grey overcoat, entered the head olKce of the bank in Fenchurch street, City. He presented an open cheque for £757 signed with a well-known name. The paying-out cashier -glan.cd at it, and as it seemed in perfect order, asked, "How will you take it V" "Seven £IOO notes and the rest in .gold,'' replied the man, and the casuier passed over the ibank-notes and the cash. No suspicion was aroused that anything was wrong, and the hearer of the ■cheque calmly folded up the notes and placed them in his pocket-case. The .vgold he put carefully in a small bag, and then walked out "of the bank, which -was crowded with customers at the time. A little later the manager of the Lon- , "don and South-Western Bank had his attention called to a slight discrepancy .;and rang up the customer hi whose name the cheque was signed-. It. was then discovered that it was a • clever forgery and the police were informed. By that time, however, the man who had cashed the cheque could mot be traced. A full description of the man, who is believed to have been cleverly disguised, has been circulated, and bankers and .money-changers have received a ust of ■the stolen nates. Bank-notes for £IOO were asked for, it is believed, in case a request for smaller notes might have aroused suspicion, but large notes can he changed easily on the Continent, and the' French police' have been informed iby Scotland Yard. ' I ' V * ACTOR'S PRINCELY FEE. "£60.000 FOR THE MAN WHO PLAYS "OHANTEOLER." Paris, April 26. M. Guitry, who plays the name part in "Chantecler," is guaranteed by contract a minimum of £OO,OOO, and 10 per *cent. of the gross receipts. The play ihas reached its hundredth performance in Paris, and, although it is still doing pretty well, there is a considerable falling-off in the receipts. During the first few weeks the aver- . ; age evening's receipts &t the Porte St. Martin were between £450 and £SOO. "They now average £320, and on Sundavs —which compare with Saturday evenings in London—the receipts are very ■low indeed. This shows that the popularity of the play has-not extended to the bourgeois »class. SECRET OF A PEDESTAL. ACCIDENTAL DISCOVERY OF GEMS WORTH £20,000. New York, April 26. A search for £20,000 worth of gems, left by Mrs. Theodore Mossi, the millionaire widow of a famous theatrical manager, who died in January, met with unexpected success to-day.

Mrs. Moss, who was of most eccentric habits, developed a craze for shopping.

After her death her house was foun.! littered with hundreds of unowned pa: c-el> from department stores. But there was no trace of her beaut!ful collection of gems. It was genera.,, supposed that she had sold th. m, ..:i. her grandson continued the search, an . while examining a hollow pedestal in the drawing-room he accidentally touched a secret spring. The pedestal opened, showing the gems concealed inside. The discovery was a timely one, since the furniture was bei.n<* appraised by a dealer who intended to purchase it. . PEARLS IX A BUTTON BOX. STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A £3OOO NECKLACE. Paris, April 24. A marquise—a member of a prominent family—who is stopping for a few days at an hotel in the Rue de la Paix, discovered yesterday that her pearl necklace, worth £3OOO, had disappeared from her room. <

Suspicion fell on the messenger boy, Alfred IPaul, who admitted his guilt to the police, but declared that the necklace had been taken from him by his mother. The mother corroborated her son's statements, while expressing her astonishment that so much trouble should be made about "a trashy little trinket." The necklace was, no longer in her possession, and Mme. 'Paul explained that it looked so cheap and tawdry that she had given it to her daughter-in-law, who resided in the Rue Secretan. ' Mme. Paul, jun., displayed an equal contempt for the "string of glass beads." She told the police that she had given the necklace to her little girl to wear, hut as it was much too wide she had to remove about half the beads. All the missing pearls were found in a box among 'buttons and hooks and eye 3. The marquise is so delighted at.the recovery of her treasure that she has decided not to prosecute the Paul family. Alfred has been discharged with a caution. ROYAL LOVE MATCH. PRINCE VICTOR RENOUNCES HIS CLAIM TO A THRONE. Brussels, April 26. King Albert has sent General Daelman to accompany Princess Clementine—the youngest daughter of the late King Leopold—to Austria, where she will be the guest of her sister, Princess Stephanie (Countess Lonyay), and will meet her fiancee, Prince Victor Napoleon.

The terms of the marriage, which is to take place at Famborough in Aunust. are to be settled between Prince Victor and General Daelman, who is the King's representative. Prince Victor will renounce his claim to the throne of France. A LADY BELLRINGER. HURLED TO THE CEILING OF THE BELFRY. London, April 27. ■A remarkable accident occurred to a lady bellringer at the weekly practice of the foellringers at the Priory Church, Christehurch, last evening. She was pulling the rope when the bell stay failed to act, with the result tnat she was hurled to the ceiling of the belfry.

London, April 27.

She sustained serious wounds on the

head, and was conveyed to the vicarage in a precarious condition. £2,000,000 ON A LINER. KEGS OF GOLD SHIPPED FOR THE BANK OF ENGLAND. New York, April 26. The largest single consignment of coin and 'bullion —of the total value of £2'062,620 —since the financial panic is on its way to London for the Bank of England, in the liner Kronprinzessin Cecilie, which sailed to-day. The freight consists of two hundred kegs, each containing £IO,OOO in gold, and 505 bars of silver, each worth £124. The treasure rests in a steel-lined room, eight by ten feet. The captain and the purser ihold duplicate keys. The strong room will he constantly under a guard till the kegs are transferred to the tug at Plymouth, whence it will be conveyed to London by train. The loading took all day yesterday. The treasure was carried aboard by hand. The hoisting machinery was discarded, the officials fearing that an accident might happen. A HONEYMOON TRAGEDY. YOUNG BRIDE'S TERRIBLE PLIGHT IN ALGIERS. Paris, April 26. A honeymoon at Algiers had a tragic ending yesterday. The bride's husband accidentally shot himself before ' his young wife's eyes. M. Andre Holtz returned some time .ago from a Government mission at Lake Tchad to get married to his fiancee at Marseilles. After the wedding- the happy pair left for Algeria, where they intended to take a four weeks' motor tour. While on the road to Millana. close to the ravine known as the "Robbers' Precipice," M. Holtz alighted from the car to shoot a bird. The earth gave way beneath him, and to save himself he leaned upon his rifle, and accidentally caused the charge to go off. The next instant he dropped dead, with a bullet through his head. The bride, who was alone in the car, swooned, and was found several hours later, unconscious, hanging over the edge of the .precipice. POLICE TRY TO LASSO A MADMAN. Lisbon, April 22. Owing to the intense heat, Antonio Palacios, a merchant of San -Esteban, went suddenly mad yesterday, and, after blowing out his wife's brains, ran through the streets, brandishing a loaded revolver and a hatchet. The streets were crowded, and Palacios fired in all directions. The panic-stricken people fled before him, and the Civil Guards vainly tried to throw him wit'ii a lasso. Palacios, however, ran back into his (house and barricaded the doors and the windows. After a terrible struggle, he was overpowered, and taken to a madhouse. In addition to his wife, Palacios' victims were one man brained and four injured, two dangerusly. ' 'DESPERATE BATTLE IN A SMUGGLERS' CAVE. Lisbon, April 15. ■A desperate battle between. a notorious 'band of smugglers, who occasionally

adopted the role of hrigands, and the civil guards occurred yesterday at Oviedo, a town in the north-west of Spain. The smugglers had infested the neighborhood for some time, and all attempts to effect their capture had hitherto failed. ■Another band at length volunteered, in exchange for a free pardon, to conduct the guards to the smugglers' retreat. In the middle' of the night, says the Seculo, in a graphic account of the engagement, the guards, accompanied by a guide, marched in strong force to a cave iu the heart of the Sierra range ot mountains. Here they found fifteen men sleeping. Though taken by surprise, the smuggled fought bravely. They were outnumbered, and after" three had been slain and six wounded they surrendered. The losses of the civil guards were 'slight. SHERLOCK HOLMES IN REAL LIFE. METHODS DESCRIBED IN COURT. MARKED STAMPS. Sutton, April 29. An extraordinary story, which might have been lifted from the .pages of one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous "Sherlock Holmes" novels, was told at the Sutton Police Court yesterday, when Annie Tugwell, wife of the local registrar of births and deaths, was charged on a warrant with libelling Canon Cafferata, the Roman Catholic priest at Wellington. The case is a. sequel to a libel action brought by Mrs. Tugwell against Annie Dewey, the Canon's housekeeper. It was alleged that she was the author of three letters in which accusations were made against the character of Mrs. Tugwell. The girl was acquitted, and subsequently, after enquiries at the instance of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Mrs. Tugwell herself was arrested. Mi". Bodkin, who prosecuted on behalf of the Treasury, stated that after the acquittal of Annie Dewey, anonymous letters began to he circulated again, and the police took steps to put a stop to what then passed out of the range of ordinary private libels.' "The libels were enclosed in envelopes Bearing 'half-penny stamps, but sealed down, he said.. "Accordingly the police became possessed of a number of halfpenny stamps. It was known where the Tugwells purchased their stamps, and so these were handed to the sub-post-master with instructions that they were only to be sold to members of the Tugwell household. Before that the police had resorted to chemicals. There are certain chemical preparations which can 'be written with an ordinary pen, but which, leave no mark and are in no< way affected 'by color. A second chemical will at once bring out that writing; These stamps were so treated.

"A servant at Mrs. Tugwell's house bought -s-x halfpenny stamps, and was handed those that were marked in this way. The first recipient of one of these marked envelopes was Canon Cafferata It purported to be signed .by a Miss Sullivan. That name appears in at 1-jaat two of the letters alleged in the last trial to have.heen sent by Annie Dewey. "The stamp was treated with the second chemical I have referred' to, and so the first of the six stamps was accounted for. Another of the stamps was-. on a letter sent to Mi's. Wesley, in Carshalton road, and then came a letter addressed to Mrs. Tugwell herself in exactly the same handwriting as on the other letters. The police, seeing that the

stamp was a halfpenny one, treated it with the chemical, and another ir.ariceu stamp was accounted for.

"A few yards from Mrs. Tugwell'* house," continued -Mr. Bodkin, ''is a post office letter box, and Inspector Ward arranged that it should be watched. On April 16, about eight o'clock, Mrs. Tugwell was seen to go to the front door of her house, look up and down the road, and then go indoors again. At five minutes to nine she did the same thing Directly she went .indoors the second time, a post office official was requested by Inspector Ward to clear the letterbox. He did so, and a minute or two later Mrs. Tugwell came out again, and dropped two communications into the empty letter-box. She returned to the house, and the 'box was at once opened and the letters taken out. Those letters were in precisely the same handwriting as the letters I have previously referred to, and both .bore halfpenny stamps. One •was addressed to Mrs. Wesley, of Carshalton road, and the other to Mrs. Tugwell herself.

Mrs. Tugwell was committed for trial. SUICIDE FOLLOWS A QUARREL. Paris, April 28. A young man, who is said to he an American, committed suicide this afternoon in the train between Paris and Bourg la Reine. He had spent the early part of the day in the company of a woman in the country.. They quarrelled on the way back to. town, and on arriving in Paris the man: left his companion, and jumped into a train.

The woman entered an adjoining carriage, and told a passenger there that she had quarrelled' with her friend, who had threatened to take his life The word* were just uttered when a revolver 'shot was heard, and the man was found on the floor of the compartment dead, with a bullet through, his brain. BOY "REVOLUTIONARY." BRITISH STUDENT ON TRIAL IN MOSCOW; •Moscow;. April 20. A British subject, named Watson, isone of' the twenty-seven persons, principally workmen and men and women star dents,,, whose trial began yesterday, on a charge of association, with the Social Revolutionary party. Watson is a mere boy, whose dead father was English, while his mother wasof Russian nationality. It is alleged that documents of a revolutionary nature were found in hi* possession. He has already suffered imprisonment for a year; The trial is -being-'Held with closed doors.

It is understood that the British Foreign Office Ms been) informed of the' developments in the case since the arrest of Watson, and the' British Consul is watching proceedings,. THE KIXH REWARDS A BRAVE GIRL FIGHT WITH A MAD BULL TO SAVE HER MOTHER. London, April 20. The King has awarded the Edward ! Medal of the second class to Hannah i Hugill, a girl of fifteeir. Last night's Gazette, in which t&e aflr nouncement was made, gives the following account of the brave deed for which Miss Hugill hasbeendeeorated:— On September 1, 1909, Mrs. Hugill, on going into a field at Court House Farm,

to bring in some cows, was at tacked by an infuriated bull.

She defended herself with a pitthioi-.., •but was knocked down by the bull, wliieh began to gore her. Her daughter Hanmuh. aged lit'.tt-n years, who ha;l ibeen Jet: at the gate, about a hundred yards from the place where her mother was attacked, came to her aid, and recovering the fork from under the bull, used it with all her strength, thus diverting the animal's attention.

The mother and daughter then succeded in making good their escape from the. field, though the mother was again attacked while crossing the fence. The girl's action saved her mother from severe and, possibly, fatal injury.