ACCIDENTS AND OFFENCES.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1162, 8 April 1884, Page 3

ACCIDENTS AND OFFENCES.

A Mrs Plumbridge, better known as Miss Higgins, a balf-caste, well known in Auckland and Wellington, poisoned herself and two children with strychnine at about half past eight o’clock yesterday morning at New Plymouth. it appears she went into New Plymouth and purchased five drachms of strychnine on Friday last, to poison some rats, as she said.

The infant son of W. B. Topp was drowned in an open drain near his residence, Aratapu, Auckland. The jury censured the parents for lack of care. A boy named Jonathan Bayman was taken into the Christchurch Hospital on Thursday night at half-past twelve, with his left hand badly wounded. He was out rabbiting with his father, whose gun ho was carrying, when it went off, the charge going through his hand. He cannot tell what caused the discharge. A respectable looking young man named James Boss, a through passenger by the Rotorua, was arrested in Nelson on a charge of stealing jewellery, shawls, and other articles from the house of the Rev. Robert Taylor, in Christchurch.

A farmer named Stalker was killed last Thursday night, at Oamaru, by his horse falling with him and throwing him on his head. ‘ The body was not found till Friday morning,

The police have arrested Nora Walsh, a single woman aged 22, of Oamaru, for abandonment of a child at Pine Hill, Dunedin, on Friday night. The child was comfortably clothed and wrapped in a shawl, but as it rained very heavily the child must have perished if it had not been discovered. The matron at the hospital where the young woman had been for her confinement, has identified the child. The young woman left the hospital on Friday.

At the adjoqrned jnqqest on Michael Whelan, found dead at Hamilton (Otago), the jury returned the following verdict : ‘ Died from the effects of excessive drinking and injuries caused by being inadvisedly put, while in a state of delirium tremens , in a stable where there were hqrses,' At the Supreme Court, Auckland, on Satin day, Harry Goodwood was found guilty of rape on Ellen Payne. Judgment was reserved.