A BURGLAR'S DESPERATION. (From the Daily News.)

Waikato Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1856, 29 May 1884, Page 3

A BURGLAR'S DESPERATION. (From the Daily News.)

Inspector Marshall and Inspector Roots, attached to the Criminal Invesigation Department entered, with a search warrant, the room of George Copeland, described as a notorious burglar, in Great Chapel stieet, Westminster. The | apartment being fouud stored with property which the officeis suspected to be the proceeds of recent robberies, Copeland was directed to consider himself in custody. The pii&oner was very slightly clad, having scrambled out of bed when he heard the officeis a&cending to his room. Having leason to legard Copeland as a desperate man— -a levolver Mas found in his room— the officers had stationed Sergeant Preston to guard the door, a piecaution they deemed sufficient. But the window had been opened by the oflicers fiom the top to admit of air, and by the prisoner at the bottom on the pretence that he desired to place a bird on the window sill ; and while the seaich was piocecding, suddenly Copeland sprang out of the window, over the bar of the upper sash. The jump Avas se\ en or eight feet, and the spung was made directly fiom the floor. It is described as a splendid feat in gymnastics, and the police officeis who were present expressed the utmost astonishment at the act of thepii°onei f who, it is said, was attiied at the time in " buiglais' stock ings, "' The police confess that they saw only the prisoner's heels, and when Inspector Marshall who immediately made a lush, got to the outer door, Copeland was nowheie to be seen, Copeland had sprang a distance of 12 feet on to the leads of another house, .and thence he h id jumped the height of .mother storey into a yard below. He £ob clear awiy, but Inspector Marshall was quickly on the track of the pnsoner. Copeland e\cntually made tor s-jine waste land lying betwen the new Westminster Town lla.ll and the Bt. .Tames l\ulc station, and theie was brought up by the high wall which gnaidh an open pait of the Undctgiound 1 ail way. Whether he o.ime suddenly upon this wall, or whether he purposely jumped it, cannot be judged, but o\er it lie went. Its height was no less than 23 feet, and Copland must have fallen upon it with a great thud. From the ballast at the side of the wall he 1 oiled on to the shunting line alongside, and there he was Jiscoveted unsuccessfully attempting to move ironi the platform by one of Paitineton's b llstickeis, whom he threatened when he appioachen. He was at once conveyed to the Westminster Hobpital, where he was found that he had lost pait of his left ear, had sustained a fiacture of the head, had injured hi& aim, and broken his leg.

Tim Caiola mine in Saxony is now \entilated by tans fhhen by clcctiic power. A dynamo diiven by a steam engine is fi\od on the pit- head, and another is fitted below to drive the dynamo there, which is coupled to the a\le of the fan. The cm rent 13 led from the stationaiy to the second dynamo by a copper conductor, and returns to the stationary dynamo by a wire rope already in the mine. \\ ith this ai rangement a million cubic feet of air can be supplied to the mine at a cost of threepence. WiiJiTHLR, Spiritualism be a delusion or thing of serious i in poit, it is at least well i ept evented in the- press. Theie aie five Spnitnalistic organs in Fiance, four in Belgium, two in Holland, eight in Spam, two hi Italy", and thiee inGeiinany. In addition toseveia! journals devoted to the cause in England and the United States, — ithas one organ each inAustiia, Russia, Mexico, the Antilles, Chili, Biazil, Uiuguay, the Argentine Republic, Austialia, India, and Capo Colony. Om; day when, still a Prince, Victor Emmanuel was walking with the Duke of Genoa along the Po at Turin, they met a gipsy, whom the Princes requested to tell their fortunes. To Feidinand, looking at the palm of his left hand, she predicted that he would die young; and to Victor Emmanuel, "Yon will die at Rome in the Quiiinal." The Piince liu«hed, but never foigot the strange piophecy, and in 1803 lecounted it to the Count Ponzo, di .San Maitino, to whom he recalled it w hen, in 1870, San Maitino went to Rome as beaier of a letter fiom the King to the Pope, using these words, " You go to Rome to piepare the chamber in which I shall die." SriRiTUAMiST Uxmaskld. — An amusing defeat of the American spiritualist, Mrßistian, is announced from Vienna, w here for some time the eminent medium h,\f> been the cause of much discussion among the higher and highest classes of society. The Crown Prince of Austria and Arch-Duke John, having detei mined to sound the mysteries ot Sir Bastian's ait, arranged three seances at the Archduke's residence Thefhstwas held without any revelations, but before the second meeting began preparations were secretly made to catch the ghost in a trap. After the select audience had gathered in a dimly-lighted loom a spirit clad in a garb of mourning silently entered, while the medium was appaiently lying in the next loom stilf' and fast asleep. This loom was sepaiated from that m w Inch the audience was assembled by a cut tai tied dooiway through which the ghost passed. In this entrance the conspiiatois, however, had, fixed a secret door, which they could shut silently and instantly by touching a spring. While the mournful ghost was before the awe-struck assembly, this door suddenly shut and the ghost, who stood revealed as Mr Bastian, vainly endeavoured to make his escape. The merriment of the company knew uo bounds when the medium's shoes alone were found in the next room, where a few moments before Mr Bastian had been lying in mesmeric sleep. The depression in spiritualistic circles is very great. The London correspondent of the Post writes :— Moncure Comway has completed his trip round the world, and is back again at his own chapel in Finsbury Place. The other day he was interviewed by a reporter of the Pall Mall Gazette, and pietty closely cross-exam-ined as to his impressions of the countries and colonies he visited. Very little seems to have been said about Australia and New Zealand. " I am glad to be back in London "' said MrConway, "London with its free atinospheie and broad Catholicity ot soul — London, with its learned societies, its free interchange of human thought, its theatres, its picture galleries and all apparatus of culture. London, I confess, seemed to me more attractive when I was at the Antipodes than it had ever seemed before. In America they kept fairly abreast of intellectual movement. In Australia and New Zealand you have material civilisation in superfluity, but of culture, art, broad-minded toleration for all forms of human spooulatiou, there is much less than here. Bigotry and sectarianism have mads the Antipodes their field of future operations apparently but they will hardly maintain it against the increasing colony of broad-minded thinkers there." Conway was greatly struck with colonial papers, which he <;on§id,eied are often of a very superior class to English provincial prints. " I do not," Conway says, think there is a better paper in the whole world than the Melbourne ArgU3." Antipodean politics Conway found too parochial to be interesting. Some Cabinet Ministers he met aeemed shrewd, self-reliaut, and intelligent ; but the Legislative Assemblies did not appear to be drawn from, or indeed, to have much interest for the best people. "In the Australias," he continues, " there is a c«riou§ mature of d.em.Qcrao.y and snobbery as distinct from plutooraoy To a republican like himself the latter was very distasteful. There is one good thing about Australian and New Zealand capitalists, and that is that they have no magnet like London to draw off their best men : hence there is in each city a circle of well-informed intelligent people such as you will not find in English provincial tqwng. That is , an element of strength which should not be lost sight of iv considering colonial society. , It prpmiqes a fine literature,," ,