AUCKLAND.

Thames Star, Volume XI, Issue 3674, 4 October 1880, Page 2

AUCKLAND.

This day.

A little child was decoyed and stripped of its clothing in the suburbs this morn, ing. It is supposed to'be the act of some drunken woman.

Arrived : The N.Z.B. Coy's ship Waikato, 90 days from land to land. On the 15th of August she spoke the Waitangi, bound for Lyttelton. .Eighteen saloon passengers; second cabin, 22; and steerage 57.—Ovalau, schooner, from Earotonga. On the night of July the 25th a severe gale was experienced in Earotonga Harbour. The Ovalau and the Agnes Donald both were anchored there during the nigbt, but came together several times.. Considerable damage was caused to the Agnes Donald. The Ovalau lost her large boat attempting to get a hawser on shore. A subscription is "being raised for Mrs Bees, the widow of the man murdered by the Fijian. A meeting was held on Saturday evening to form a Seamen's Union ; thirty persons attended. It was decided to start I a union, the scale to be the same as that at Fort Chalmers. Sixteen persons paid their subscriptions. 1 Twenty-six employees of the Auckland railways have mutually agreed to leave the service and proceed to the Cape unless their wish regarding the adjust* ment of the wages is complied with. Supreme Couit—Judge's Charge. The Supreme Court Criminal Sittings opened this morning.; Judge Richmond, in his charge, commented on the smallness I of the calendar, but said there were some heavy charges—-viz., that of the crime of murder by the native of the New Hebredies. The discourse occupied the forenoon. The murderer appeared to be an utter stranger, and the cause seemed to be a sudden outbreak of ferocity rarely witnessed in New Zealand. Prisoners charged with this offence were generally of foreign or an inferior race, or seamen or other visitants. Commenting on the. growth of larrikinism, he supposed that one of the causes was that boys were too early apprenticed, and the demand for labor was so great that they obtained high wages. Such boys had less home restraint than they would in England, and the Church and school were powerless, and failed to reach them. The only effectual means to bring them under was to punish them by the penal code, but he and the other judges had resorted to this at the dread risk of introducing such boys to associate with hardened criminals, which would destroy their chances of reformation. The subject raised a debateable point in morals, public policy, and

religion, but that was not the proper place to discuss it. <