NEWS BY THE MAIL.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 116, 28 April 1870, Page 6

NEWS BY THE MAIL.

An advance, equal to /our shillings per week, has been granted to the men working at the Earl of Bradford's pits, Bolton. A great free trade demonstration took place at Bordeaux, on a Sabbath. There was a numerous attendance, and all passed off quietly. Two hundred and eighty railway station telegraph offices are to be opened in Scotland, in connection with the Post Office uniform system. Mr. Hercules Ross, son of the wellknown crack shot, Mr. Horatio Ross, has, for the fourth time in succession, won the rifle championship of India. Some journals state that the Government will not only prosecute the father of the Welsh fasting girl, but also the committee who combined to keep her without food. Mrs. Olivia Lynn, who is now residing in Fayette, county Pennsylvania, is 106 years old. She has lived to see her children of the fifth genertion — the whole number of her descendants being now 259. Brazil demands the " championship" for a coloured man, aged 150, who has just died there. The memory of this modern Uncle Ned was so good that it reached back until 1730, and his mind wore as well as his body. The " Echo " believes that the Naval Estimates will be laid before the House on the 21st, and that they will show a saving of £2,000,000. The same journal says that a Financial Secretary is to be created in connection with the War Department. The " Cloninel Chronicle " says that the troops comprising the flying column in Waterford and South Tipperary are traversing the country in full marching order, the infantry carrying their rugs strapped over their shoulders, and the ambulance waggons in the rear. An extraordinary case of incendiarism is reported from Coventry. On Sunday four cottages were destroyed by fire, and on examination of four adjoining cottages, it was discovered that a greased rope had been passed from one end of the block to the other, having attached to it bundles of matches, whilst the stairs were covered with cotton wool, saturated with oil. The shareholders of the Charing Cross Hotel Company held their halfyearly meeting lately, when it was stated that the gross trade receipts for the past half-year had been £36,483, and that after deducting all payments and charges thero remained a disposable balance of £10,605, or 13? per cent per annum. It was agreed to declare a dividend of 10 per cent.' for the year, and to carry forward a sum of £243. In the Court of Exchequer the case of Goad v. Rigg, which was an action for breach of promise of marriage, was called on. Mr. Sergeant Ballantine, for the plaintiff, stated that the trial would not be proceeded with. The plaintiff was a young lady, nineteen years of age, the daughter of a gentleman of high rank in the army ; and the defendant was a gentleman of the highest respectability, the member of an eminent mercantile firm. A verdict for £2000 was taken.

A most accomplished letter-box breaker has been apprehended in Glasgow. His name is Robert Davie, and he was at one time a stationmaster at Polmont, and for about a year he has carried on a most lucrative boxbreaking business — lifting in one case bills to the value of £2400 from one letter-box. From one commission agent's place of business he took away a large number of accounts which had been forwarded for collection; he lifted the money, granting receipts in the agent's name, and then made off — having as a finishing stroke persuaded a merchant to send him. a sum of money to Ayr by representing himself as the commission agent out on a holiday. He is held for trial at the next circuit.

The international wrestling match resulted in favour of the Englishman by five falls to three. Sir H. Barron has been unseated from Waterford, Mr. Bernal Osborne declared disqualified, and the seat is now vacant. A " Dickens' Party " was recently given in Boston, at which each of the participants was dressed to represent one of Dickens' characters. The unfortunate vessel the Duke of Edinburgh, which went ashore on Ailsa Craig a few days ago, has broken in two, and the after part of the ship has sunk in deep water. The Glasgow Town Council received upwards of 700 applications in answer to an advertisement for a man to take charge of the Exhibition Rooms at Kelvinside. John William Wells was tried at the Central Criminal Court, and sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment with hard labour, for attempting to procure abortion. At a church not very far from Camberwell Green, the sermon preached last Sunday morning only took nine minutes in delivery. A local paper thinks this " something like a sermon." A San Francisco paper says George Peabody made his foi'tune in the last twenty-five years of his life ; but it ! should be remembered that he never owned a horse, a buggy, or a wife. At a Mormon Conference at Birmingham lately it was stated that there are 10,000 members of the Mormon sect in the British Isles, divided into twenty-one " conferences," or districts, each presided over by an " elder." Nearly a thousand men employed in the ironstone quarries in the Cleveland district of Yorkshire, would not continue work in consequence of the refusal of the owners to increase the payment for getting the ironstone from lOd to ll^d per ton. The following is a comparative statement of the Customs Revenue at the port of Glasgow for the months of January in the undermentioned years : —1866, £66,292 '4s 8d ; 1867, £85,113 10s lid; 1868, £111,743 2s 9d; 1869, £97,602 16s Id; 1870, £73,363 19s Bd. Fully two thousand ladies and gentlemen accepted invitations issued by the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce to a conversazione in the Industrial Museum. During the evening, Mr Josiah Livingston, Chairman of the Company, read a long and able description of the Suez Canal and the ceremonies connected with its opening. A lady from New York, belonging to the shoddy interest, has been arrested at the Grand Hotel, Paris, with three " gals," " handsome and millionaires," as, of course, all our Transatlantic cousins are. She boasts that the ostensible end of her voyage is to have her three Graces painted by the " old masters," who have the best reputation for this sort of thing. Recently several ladies travelling alone in first-class carriages between Blackburn and Accrington have been insulted by a young fellow, who always entered the carriage when the train was in the tunnel just outside the Blackburn station. One evening a detective officer, dressed as a woman, was placed in one of the carriages. The bait took, and the rascal referred to was made a prisoner, and taken to Blackburn. He turned out to be a servant at the goods station. The "Bristol Post" says:— "Mr. Hampden, formerly of Bristol, sends us the following statement : — £500 has been offered and accepted on the result of a scientific investigation as to whether the surface of the earth and water is level or convex. The challenge was made by Mr. Hampden, of Swindon, and has been accepted by a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of London. " The £1000 has been lodged at Coutt's, and the survey is to be made before the 15th March, in the county of Cambridge. The editor of an old-established London paper has been chosen umpire ; each party names a referee. Much interest in the decision is felt by the innumerable advocates of the Newtonian and Copernican theory of the rotundity and revolution of the earth, which Mr. Hampden affirms to be a downright fiction and a fraud, in the face of all the philosophy and science of the United Kingdom.

A shocking suicide took place at Cwmavon, near Neath lately. It appears that a domestic servant named Mary Ann Barry had for some time accepted the addresses of a young man residing in the same neighbourhood. The female was, however, a Roman Catholic, and her lover a Protestant. The girl's father, after endeavouring by persuasion to sever the attachment, recently remonstrated in rather unmeasured terms with his daughter in reference to .the intended match ; the lover consequently felt himself at liberty to discontinue his attention to his sweetheart. He formed an acquaintance with another female, and the fact of his having done so appears to have been felt most keenly by the deceased, for she obtained some sulphuric acid from a bottle in her master's house, and mixing it with some beer, drank sufficient to cause her the most frightful and excruciating agony for some hours. Strange to say, she went to the house of her former lover, and, after a most agonising scene, died in his arms.