WOMAN'S WORLD.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 333, 21 June 1911, Page 6

WOMAN'S WORLD.

(Conducted by "Eileen")

JEALOUS WOMAN'S CRIMB. SHOOTS SUPPOSED RIVAL. After a three days' trial at Fort Worth, Texas', Mrs. Elizabeth Brupka, the wife of thu principal lawyer there, has been acquitted, under the "unwritten law" theory, of the murder of Mrs. .Mary Binford, who was alleged by Mr*. Brooks to be a rival for the aflevtions of the latter\s husband. The case was one of the most sensational and dramatic ithat has ever open known in America. Mrs. Brooks, after brooding over the matter for a long time, concealed a revolver in her mull' and went to the department store in which Mrs. Billfold was one of the hands, and before a whole assemblage of frightened shoppers shot Mrs. Billfold repeatedly, killing her, and then quietly gave herself up to the police. Both women had been prominent in religious and social circles, and for some time had been attached in work for a missionary cause. Mrs. Binford 'had been wealthy, but a few years ago divorced her husband, Mr. Brooks acting as her counsel in the case. It was through this case and Mrs. Brooks' sympathy with the murdered woman at the time of the divorce that their friendship came about. In reduced circumstances, Mrs. Binford became an employee at a shop, but the two women constantly wet at church. Indeed, the religious element that enters into the case is the most extraordinary part of it. At ithe trial Mrs. Brooks elected to make a statement, in the course of which she said that for two years she had prayed every day, and many times a day, that the h»art of the woman who was destroying her home life might be changed.

The court, crowded with society people and clergymen and their wives, listened with breathless interest to the stery of the crime as related by the prisoner, and it was evident that the.lawyer's wife was driven very nearly insane by jealousy, though her husband and Mrs. Binfprd's friends declared that she was mistaken as to facts.

The prisoner's counsel' in bis address to the jury declared that his client' was not responsible for the crime, because she believed her home was being destroyed. He pictured the devotion of her husband to her until the murdered woman came into their lives, and declared that the prisoner was only executing what she believed to be "the righteous judgment of God" in shooting Mrs. Binford. It was evident from the first that the jury sympathised with the prisoner, and after exceedingly brief consideration they rendered a verdict in her favor. The whole court applauded this decision, and hundreds crowded round the prisoner to express their sympathy with her.

SUICIDE OF A PRINCESS. TRAGIC Rl'ATll AFTER 20 YEARS' ISOLATION. Berlin, April SO. With £IOO,OOO in banknotes, gold, and silver concealed in her room, the Princess Shachavoskoi died of starvation in her magnificent palace at Moscow on Friday night, after living a life of seclusion for twenty years. A love affair is said to have been the cause of the Princess' voluntary retirement from the world . The sudden death of her lover, shortly before the date fixed for her wedding, twenty years ago, unbalanced her mind, and she shut herself up in two rooms of her palace. She refused to leave them or admit anyone to them.

For the last two decades she lived like a hermit in these two rooms, receiving her meals from an old attendant, who placed the food in the first room while the Princess hid in the second room. The attendant, although serving her food three times daily, never saw the Princess during the twenty years she remained hidden from the world.

Princess Schachavoskoi, who had taken her whole realisable fortune into, her apartments, paid for each meal separately, leaving the money on the table in! 'ihe outer room for the attendant. j Once when the Governor of Moscow paid a visit of inspection to the palace for the purpose of ascertaining what had be-1 come of the Princess, she shrieked abuse at him from behind the closed door of her apartments, and threatened to commit suicide if he attempted to force an entrance into her retreat. The Government thereupon appointed the Countess Tournay guardian of the Princess, and this lady, with the help of_ a legal adviser, administered the Princess' vast estates, and kept the remainder of her palace in order. Yesterday the Princess was found dead, and a post mortem examination showed that the cause of death was starvation. The police found £IOO,OOO hidden in a mattress and in other nook* and corners of the inner room, which had not been entered for twenty years by anyone save the Princess. A BRIDE AND A FORTUNE. With six months at his disposal, Clias. Compton, a young tobacco salesman, of Kansas City, must find a bride, or lose a fortune. Compton is a very much sought young man, for he is at'present touring .Missouri in search of a bride, so that he can inherit the sum of £25,000 under the will of his grandfather. The grandfather, Richard Compton, was a firm believer in "home life," and he left his estate to his grandson on condition that he married before October of this year. Young Compton lias no objection to marriage, but he prefers to choose a bride carefully, so having decided that none of his lady friends in Kansas City were eligible, he visited St. Louis. There, however, he was incautious enough to explain to a friend why he was so anxious to get married, and the reporters, and, incidentally, all the eligible young ladies of St. Louis, were soon on his track. Being a modest young man who has no intention of taking the first girl willing to marry him for his money, Compton has disappeared into the West, confiding sadly to a persistent interviewer that "Brewster's task of spending a million is nothing t«

my job of falling in love in the six months at my disposal." I -: A SINGER'S DISCOVER t. A little girl, aged 13, known as Stella Carol, was discovered by Mme. Amy Sherwin, the singer and teacher, last Christmas Kvo singing "While shepherds watched their flocks by night" in a London street for the purpose of earning a few coppers to buy her mother a Christmas present. Recognising in her the makings of an artist, Mme. bnorwin took steps to adopt her, and now, after a few months' assiduous work, the girl has made a most promising debut. She has just sung before Princess Alexander of Teck, at the Girls' Guild, Hoxton, making the success of the evening, "1 and upon being presented to the Princess by Lady Maitland, she was warmly congratulated.

GENERAL. Queen Mary lias adopted the geranium as her colors—red, with a narrow blue stripe of the Royal House of Wurtemburg. All the maids of honor and ladies-in-waiting to her 'Majesty wear these colors as a badge, attached to which is "M" in diamonds.

The knack of getting coal and the instinct to descend mines are family traits in the Northumberland mining towns and villages. A3 a contrast, however, to what exists in Lancashire — where there are 251)0 pit-brow women—females have never been employed about mines in the, north-eastern county; nor are there any performing such work in Durham, the greatest coal-mining county. From the way a miners' official conveyed this information to me (vsays a writer in the Millgate Monthly), they seem to he proud of having no record against them (in the whole history of Northumberland mining) of ever having dragged women to this uncongenial task. The women there see that the men do the work. And this is so, in spite of the fact that in these mining districts there is jittle or no industrial occupation to which females can go.' If the daughters of colliers go out to work it is in domestic service either on farms or at the houses of rich people in the larger towns or on the coast by the seaside. Mrs. Herbert, a Montreal woman whose marriage was annulled by tho Supreme Court of Quebec on the ground that, while the parties were Roman Catholics, the ceremony was celebrated by a Protestant clergyman, has applied for a re-hearing of the case. If the decision is averse, the issue will be carried to the Privy Council; and the Protestants of Quebec have promised to provide the funds to light the case to a finish.