GENERAL NEWS.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 890, 21 November 1871, Page 2

GENERAL NEWS.

The followicg are the rates of wages queued by a Christchurch paper as having been obtained by those engaged of the last lot of immigrants recently arrived by the Glenmark :—Married couples, £OO to £75 per annum, and board ; single men (grooms, gardeners, and ordinary labourers), £2(5 to £35 ; farm labourers and ploughmen, £35 to £ls; single women (cooks and laundressses), £3O ; general servants, &c., £25 to £3O. A farewell dinner was given to Mr A. Cracroft Wilson, at the Empire Hotel, Lyttelton, on the 31st ult., on the occasion of his retiring from the Bank of New Zealand to ensage in business in Auckland. Dr Donald, presided. Mr Coster, Manager of the Bank in Christchurch, the Rev W. J. G-. Bluett, and the leading business men of Lyttelton, and several friends from Christchurch were present. The great match against time, in which Mr Gwynne, the landlord of the Junction Hotel, Auckland, backed himself to walk eighteen miles in three hours, cams off lately in Cunningham's paddock, Newmarket. The match created considerable interest, as it was known that Mr Gwynne was a large and heavily built man, and by no means young, and in consequence opinions were various as to the possibility of his accomplishing a feat seldom attempted by the young and agile. Some 200 or 300 people were on the ground, and a great number in the road outside. Betting was free during the event, and a considerable amount of money changed hands. The pedestrian started off at a tremendous rate, and accomplished the first mile in nine minutes, in good style. He kept up a fast speed until the thirteenth mile, when he began to show symptoms of fagging, and his pace gradually slackened until the fifteenth, when he found he had taxed his power of endurance to too great an extent, and very wisely yielded up the victory to Old Time. Mr Gwynne's muscles, however, when rendered flaccid by over-exertion, must have extraordinary powers of retraction, for he was very shortly afterwards seen at his hotel conversing with people, and apparently quite restored, whereas less powerful men would assuredly have been found in bed. Mr Gwynue, therefore, although he says he is too old, is evidcutly juvenile enough to win more victories of pedestrianism, in spite of the feat attempted being a trifle too much for him.—" Herald." The funeral of Renforth, the deceased late champion sculler, took place at Gateshead. The town of Gateshead was crowded, and a noticeable feature in the proceedings was the arrival of several special trains from the outlying districts. The traffic in the street's was completely stopped ; and yet the greatest order was maintained. The funeral cortege started from the late residence of the deceased about half-past two o'clock,

headed by a brass band playing the " Dead March." The pall-bearers were the four gentlemen who accompanied the crews abroad, and returned with the corpse. It is stated that every oarsman on the Tyne attended the funeral, and that there were about 70,000 people present. Everything was conducted in the most respectful and orderly manner, and the spectacle will long be remembered in the north. The subscription for the widow and child is progressing favourably, and money is plentiful.

The first instance of death from Asiatic cholera since the present .outbreak, in a northern seaport of England, occurred at Hartlepool Cholera Hospital, the victim being a Prussian sailor, named Jobann Frederich Marekmaun, aged fifty-one, a native of Altona, one of the crew of the steamship Uhlenhorst, which arrived at West Hartlepool from Hamburg on the Bth Sept. The New York papers contain full details regarding the mysterious murder of a young woman unknown, whose body was discovered in a box directed to be forwarded by the Hudson Kailway. The young woman was identified as Alice Bqwlsby, a girl occupying a respectable position in Patterson City. She had been acquainted with a young man named Conklin, by whom she had been seduced, and had applied in consequence to a notorious pseudomedical practitioner named Rosenzweig. Her death was the result, and to conceal his crime Rosenzweig had endeavoured to get rid of the body in the way described As soon as Conklin heard of the girl's death, he blew his brains out with a pistol. The coroner's jury found the following verdict in the case of the girl:—" We find that Alice Augusta Bowlsby came to her death by metro-peritonitis, the result of an abortion produced, as we btlieve from the testimony, by Jacob Rosenzweig." Rozenzweig was then committed for trial by the coroner for murder. The ironclad frigate Normandie, built at Cherbourg, and which had inaugurated the transformation of the French fleet, has just been ordered to be broken up at Toulon, where it had been disarmed. This vessel, which has cost millions, has only lasted ten years. Its frame-work, attacked by dry rot, scarcely held together. It had to be condemned as unfit for service, and when it is being demolished it will probably fall to pieces. The plating will be thrown aside as old iron, and the engines will be sent to the store house until they can be utilised.—" Galignani." The St Petersbug " Moniteur" announces that cholera had not abated in Russia up to September 10th. At Kieff there were 150 deaths daily.