ACCIDENTS, OFFENCES, ETC.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1233, 30 August 1884, Page 1

ACCIDENTS, OFFENCES, ETC.

Mr Vaile, draper,, Auckland, estimates ihe damage to his stock by fi r e at £7OOO. The insu'ances were £4OO in the North British,.£loo in the. New j.Zealand, and £IOOO in the Norwich Union. The build* jug was owned by F. L. Prune, and was insured in the New Zealand office for £750. No further light ha» been thrown on the origin of the fire. : A Maori girl, seven, years old, was burnt to death at Mangawai, (Auckland), in a- where. The * Maoris buried the remains. 1 The pdlice will disinter the ■remains and get the Coroner to bold an inquiry into the affair. In the case of Mildenhall v Stevens, at Invercargillji an action ;by the father for the seduction of a daughter, aged 16, by the nephew of a runhplfjer by whom the plaintiff was employed, the jury gave £l5O damages. Ip the. divorce case, Kean v. Kean and Aylwafd, the verdict was for .the petitioner with £l6O damages. In the divorce case Sorenson v. Sorenson and Watson, the verdict was for • the husband, who was the petitioner, with £2O damages. In the*N Z. Agricultural Company v. Pagan and Dickson, the Company recovered £645 interest on the purchase of- the Ardlussa station, which defendants had failed to complete. At Nelson, bn Wednesday, a lady named Airs Scarfe was burnt to death. She was well-known in musical circles in tliat district.

The Waipawa police made a sudden raid on three sly grog bouses on Wednesday in the Seventy-Mile Bush, Wellington seizing large quantities of spirits in each case. One person had over £IOO worth. The police are located in the houses. A special sitting of the Court is to be held to hear the charges. = . , , A* the. Auckland Police Court on Wednesday, two more of the Saturday night , rioters were sentenced. One, named Henry Barker, got twosjnonths ; and the other was fined 20s and ordered to pay for the damage to the police uniform. A man named-Thomas Burns, residing with his brother at Bishop’s Court, Hoslyn, (Otago), met with his death through the explosion of a guopat about eleven o’clock on Wednesday mornmg. It appeared that the deceased left his brother’s house for the purpose of going rahb t shooting.,; with some companions. .When about a quarter of a mile from Mi Hume’s Ashbum Hall Asylum, half way to the bush, the single barrelied gun -'that Burns was carrying went;.bff,d:|diootihg him in the head. The othernien.werp twentv yards in the rear. Hearing the:report they ian up to deceased,: who only .uttered, ’“Oh, Jim,” and died immediately. Burns was carrying his gun in hia hand, with the muzzle upward-. The tide of the unfortunateman’s head . .was very much shattered. ..The deceaseda laborer, and was twenty-four years of age. At t he inquest the conipaiiions Pf the deceased all averred that he was shot by his'own gun, but the doctor who made the post- mortem examination was of-opinion ilw it was I not so, as the ever aj diameter of eight inches. I,However, the jury returned a ,Verdict to the effect that the deceased was accidentally shot by his own gun. . At the Supreme Court, Invercargill, on Wednesday, J. H. C. Christie was convicted of setting fire to a house at Soho creek, Wakatipu, which had tha* day been sold to one Hamilton, but which had been formerly been the property of his mother-in-law Airs Champion. Ha was sentenced t;o seven years’ penal servitude. The Crown Prosecutor stated that the prisoner had been known to ti e police, for a number of years. In September, 1863, he received a sentence in Dunedin of four years penal servitude for tape. After that he was convicted of horse stealing, receiving one month ; at Christchurch in 1869 three summary convictions were obtained against hiip for larceny ; at the Supremo Court in Invercargill he received four yeaia’ penal servitude f,er larceny, and two years afterwards . while in cuatoily ho escaped from gaol, and was sentenced to three years’ penal servitude. Two more summary convictions were obtained for larceny in Dunedin iu.lßßo. The prisoner had for the last. twenty years been little out of gaol. :