The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1869-07-31 00:00:00

THE STOURBRIDGE OBSERVER.

of. With rvg trd to the other married members of
the Mmicreine family, they had all sustained their
temition4 well; they occupied very legh btations in
life with honour to themeelves and their family.
The cause of " Mordaunt e. Mordaunt, Cole, and
JohnFtone came before Lord Penzance, on 'fue-day, in
Chambers on affidavits as to the insanity of the res.

p;;--
Mr. Serjeant Ballantine, Dr. Spinks, Q.C., and
Mr. Inderwick appeared for the petitioner; Mr. Deane,
Q.C., and Mr. Searle for the respondent. Reporters
were admitted, but his lordship expressed a hope that,
looking to the number of families involved in the in-
quiry, they would exercise a proper discretion and
avoid the publication of any thing calculated to give
unnecessary pain.
Mr. Serjeant Ballantine observed that his lordship
would see that the matter was of the greatest import.
ance to Sir Charles Morilaunt, who desired the earliest
possible investigation of the case. The real point to
be decided in the suit was the state of mind of the lady
at the time ohs made certain admissions on which the
case for the petitioner would mainly rect. It was
, stated in one of the affidavits that she would never be
sane again, hut that did not affect the material issue.
His lordship reminded the learned serjeant that if
Lady Mordaunt were now insane she could not plead,
and was thereby debarred from availing herself of the
defences which the law allowi d her to at up. It was
impossible that the qtisstion ,d her present sanity could
be d cided on affi lavits, and he therefore suggested
that the respondent's father should file an answer as
her next friend alleging her insanity, and the question
could then be tried by a jury next Miohaelmas term.
The suggestion was adopted by the learned counsel
on both sides, and the matter accordingly stands over
until November.

hinds of some merchant of whom he knows no-
thing, the chancre are that he will get as fair wine
ai ordinarily he tares or expects to drink. In
C ,nt y ears. as our readers know, there has
been a waiked improvement, not, indeed, in the
character, taken alone, of the wines imported into
Great Britain—this, on the contrary, may have de-
ter.orated—but in the character as proportioned to the
price. Thanks to the Gladstone or Cobden Treaty,
and to the impetus which it gave to the importation of
foreign wines, men of moderate means can now afford
to drink sound and palatable wine of a kind which ten
years ago would have been altogether beyond their
reach.
Every Englishman can, as we have already said,
procure sound wine at moderate rates if he will take
a little trouble in the matter. But then this, un-
fortunately, applies only to domestic consumption.
The novelty, ouch as it is, of the experiment made at
the Manchester Exhibition connote in the fact
that wine at once good and cheap was offered at
a public bar. Why it should be a novelty we
canuot say. but the fact is, unhappily, beyond
dispute. Every member of the large class of
Englishmen now on the point of preparing for
their annual holiday knows, from sad expelierce, that
at u-arly all the hotels in this country he will be
charged as much for wine as if the Gladstone Treaty
had never been made. The innkeepers, who ought to
have been the first to take advantage of it, seem the
only people who Owns it. They charge exactly as
much for claret and champagne and sherry as they
might reasonably have charged ten years ago. As a
natural consequence, comparatively little of their
wine is drunk. Even the rich, to whom high prices
are in themselves no formidable obstacle, have
nevertheless a British objection to pay more for
any artide than they know it to be worth, while
the can scarcely be said to have any choice in
the matter. They know they cannot get wine which
it would be either pleasant or safe to drink unless they
pay for it about twice as much as they would
have to pay for it at home, and so they take
beer at dinner and a elms of spirits after-
wards. If they order wine at all, it is usually
"for the good of the house." The majority
consult their own interest, and the result is that,
while they have to go without the wine which at home
gives a zest to their daily dinner, the landlord goes
without his profits. All that he makes by over.
charging those who drink dues not compensate him
for what he loses by those whom his high prices deter
from drinking.
It is to the innkeeper*, therefore, that we specially
commend the experiment tried at Manchester. We are
quite sure, if they adopt it, they will meet with the
same success. They may make less than they now
make on each bottle sold, but they will sell so many
more bottles that the aggregate of their profits will
increase, and they will send their customers away in
better humour, and much more disposed than they now
usually are to come again." We believe that many
Englishmen are driven abroadsimply becausethey resent
the treatment they meet in their wanderings about
their own country. It is true they are treated quite as
ill—perhaps in many respects worse—abroad, but then
they are not equally conscious of their ill-treatment.
In a f areign country few Englishman know what
ought to be cheap and what dear, but in England they
know, of course, that the innkeepers need not pay
higher prices, to say the least, than they themselves
are in the habit of paying, and that it is simply an
extortion to charge, say, gs. or 10s. for claret which
their own merchant supplies them at 3s. or 4a, 12a, for
champagne which any merchant will supply at Os., and
gs, a bottle for so. called cherry which never before cost
more than 245. a dozen. They, therefore, either go
without wine or else order it very much, as the phrase
goes, "against their conscience." The landlord may
be content with the latter of these alternatives, but
both are unsatisfactory to his guests.

Imor.

-
mg. _
dedh."
In the second case the deceased, John Hunter, aged
forty•one wan cleaning the windows of a builder's
house, at Clapham, on Friday morning about nine.
He wan on a ladder, and was seen to fall off the ladder
fiat on his back on to the stonm. Be wan picked tip
in a state of insensibility, with blood flowing from his
nose and ear. He was raised and taken into the
house, and assistance called in. Hie immediate
removal to St. Thomas's Hospital was deemed neces.
nary, but death ensued before arriving there. The
house surgeon of the hospital said he had no doubt that
the deceased died in a fit of errious apoplexy, which
might have been brought on by the extreme heat, but
death was accelerated by the fall. Verdict, "death
from natural causes."

yhe jury returned a

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