PLAYING WITH FIREARMS.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 1928, 9 March 1875, Page 4

PLAYING WITH FIREARMS.

A London paper records a most sensa- j tional incident which happened at the Marylehone Police Court, affording one more example of the danger of meddling with fire-arms on the supposition that they are not loaded. A half or wholly insane gentleman attended before Mr Knox to complain that his wife had threatened to shoot him. The wife said that in order to male© her husband desist from threatened violence she had, indeed, taken a, revolver out of a drawer in which it had lain for 16 years, but that she believed the weapon was not loaded. To confirm her account of the innocence of her intention, the revolver was handed to Mr Knox, and the Magistrate, after examining it and pulling the trigger, observed that it was not loaded. He was proceeding with the case, when he again took up the levolrer, and was playing with it rather than testing it, when a loud report was heard and a bullet went right through the chair which , the clerk had quitted but two minutes before/and, rebounding, passed close to Mr Knox's head. This time the weapon was sent to be examined by a more competent hand, and in the result.it was found to be loaded with three rusty bullets, which had probably lain in ihe chambers for 20 years. Nothing is said in the account as to the state of Mr Knox's feelings, but it is whispered that when the business of the day was over, and the public and the reporters had left the Court, he nought the lookingglass in his private room, and thus addressed the image he found there:—V Yoir have this day.afforded a sad example of an almost criminal carelessness, and, if it were not for your past good character and my knowledge of the respectability of your family, I should feel it my du'y to commit you. Instead of pointing out to the woman that under no circumstances of .c supposed certainty is a fire-arm to be considered empty •wheii there were people! ;in ihe way: instead of impressing" this lesson upon her by your own scrupulous care in avoiding the touch" of an explosive Weapon, you played With a revolver uniil nothing but the favor of Proyjdence prevented you from taking the life of a clerk, and inflicting serious injury on a v ortby Magistrate sitting on the Bench of Justice above him. Such folly, hardly to be excused in a child, is in the highest degree reprehensible in a person of mature age; and if it should lead to a lasting shyne?s on the part of the clerk—who for the future can never be quite certain what mischief may not be .preparing for him behind his back—you will ocly be rightly punished. You jn'sy now stand down, but 1 warn you that the next time I have to speak to you on this subject it will be m a different strain."