AUSTRALIAN ITEMS.

Thames Guardian and Mining Record, Volume I, Issue 174, 30 April 1872, Page 3

AUSTRALIAN ITEMS.

A HORRIBLE case of alleged malpractice on the part of a medical man named William H. Jackson is reported from the Western district. Mr Jackson being called in to attend a Mrs Petering whilst in labour, performed the operation of cranitorny, the instruments lie used being a carpenter s auger, chisel, and a hook made of fencing wire. The body of the child after birth appears to have been subject to the most indecent treatment before burial. A few days after it had been buried it was disinterred, and an inquest held upon it. At the inquest, the medical testimony was to the effect that the operation was quite unnecessary, and Mr Jackson was committed to take his trial for manslaughter. In summing up, the coroner said that “ in the whole course of his experience lie had never met with a case so horrible and brutal." In a letter to the local paper Mr Jackson defends his conduct, and says that the emergency of the ease justified his action. 9 The canoe trip down the Murray to Adelaide, on which Messrs Gair and Carke started some days back, has come to rather an untimely end, through ail accident which befell the latter gentleman. In search of sport, lie ventured to rest his weight on what appeared to he the stem of a fallen tree ; it turned out. however, to be only a loose log resting over the hank. He was consequentally upset, and fell from a height of 12ft., thereby causing a severe injury to his shoulder. They had paddled about 400 miles, and were sanguine of reaching Adelaide earlier than they expected at the outset of the trip. Owing to this mishap, they were compelled to return to Swan-hill, and come hack to Melbourne overland, the state of Mr Carke’s shoulder quite precluding the possibility of his paddling any further.

Fried Canaries. A young friend of mine (well known in Collins-street) has been spending some months in Madeira. In a letter by the last mail, he says that the favourite dish just now at the cafes in St. Michael’s is “ fried canaries.” They don’t pay a pound a-piece for canaries there—only a dollar a hundred in the canary season. Wasn’t it Vitellius who betrayed a weakness for a stew of nightingale’s tongues? They are as materialistic in Madeira. It is some consolation to know that cooked canary isn’t any nicer than sparrow pic. My Australian friend played iii the farce of* “ A Regular Fix” to a Portugese and Spanish audience with such success that the performance had to be repeated on a second occasion—the words being about as intelligible to a large section of the audience as the opera libretto to the majority of a Melbourne audience. —A ustrulusion.

There is a story on ’Change of a gentleman, with a gift of admiration for the possessions of others, becoming especially ecstatic over a diamond ring on the finger of a friend. So marked was his approbation, that the friend at length said, “ Would you like to have it ?” " All, you know, I wouldn’t like to deprive you of it, but it really is an exquisite stone.” « Well,” said the wearer, half drawing the ring from his finger, the expectation of the other meanwhile beating high, “ look l, ere —I really wish I could afford to give it to you 1” The revulsion was so great that he hasn’t openly admired any of that friend’s property since.—A untrahnian. Some dishonest person succeeded in obtaining £6O very easily last week. On the sth inst. a Mrs Elizabetli Nichols arrived from Hobart Town in the steamer Southern Cross, having in her possession amongst other things a reticule containing a purse in which were sixty sovereigns. Just before landing at Melbourne she went below, and laid the reticule on a seat. When coming away she called her husband, who went down and put the reticule into ’his po'-ket without examining it. Upon their arrival at the place where they were to stop in town, they found that the purse containing the sovereigns had disappeared. So far no clue to the missing money has been obtained, but it is supposed that some one opened the reticule unobserved, and took out the purse.