The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1881-12-10 00:00:00

THE EMPLOYERS' LIABILITY ACT.

In the High Court of Justice the cause of "Moyle
v. Jenkins " has been heard. It was a case which
raised a question of some interest under the Employers'
Liability Act. The plaintiff was a miner employed by
the defendant, and, while working in a boring, was
injured by an explosion of dynamite, causing the loss
of an arm. In an action for compensation which he
brought in the County Court it appeared that Ice had
given no written notice to his employer that he in-
tended to sue him, and the Judge holding that this
omission on his part was an infringement of the
Act, directed a nonsuit. A rule was obtained to set
the nonsuit aside, against which Mr. Crump now
showed cause. Mr. W. Evans supported the rule.
The 4th section of the Act in question enacts that
notice of action must be given to the employer within
six weeks of the occurrence, and the action cora-
,menced within six months; and the 7th section,
without mentioning the word " writing," sets out
that notice in respect of any injuiy must contain
certain particulars, and must be served on the em-
ployer.
The Court held that these sections clearly showed
that the notice must be in writing, and that a verbal
notice, even when the employer might be taken to be
aware of the injury, was not sufficient. The rule,
therefore, would be discharged.
.1••••

THE BRIBERY SENTENCES.

The Standard of Tuesday says :—" We continue to
receive a large 'Amber of letters demonstrative of the
sympathy which has been excited in the public mind
by the severity of the sentences passed on the prisoners
convicted of bribery at Sandwich and Macclesfield.
We cannot but trust that tke Home Secretary, now
that the dignity of the law has been vindicated, and
the desired warning given, by such sentences having
been pronounced, will consent to mitigate the severity
which the public have so little expected and so coldly
welcomed."—The Morning Advertiser thinks that "the
Home Secretary would perform a graceful act if he
would remit or shorten the sentences of the persons
who have just been imprisoned for bribery. The pro-
longation of the punishment will be cruel to indivi-
duals, and will add nothing to the force of the
example."

CUTTINGS FROM AMERICAN PAPERS.

It kind of broke up a temperance man from down
East when he went into the rooms of-a Total Abstinence
Club to find the club believed in total abstinence from water.

mulatto woman aged 187 years, has just died in
Brazil. This was the first time she ever did such a thing.
Boston Transcript. And she was old enough to know better,
too. —Norristown Herald.

In the voyage of life every man is provided with a
skull, with which to paddle his own canoe.—Norristown
There are beautiful warm soda-springs in Colorado,
and people who go bathing in them at once exclaim, "Oh,
but this is sodalicious !"

A Modoe Indian, who had taken to fanning and
rafted a pretty good crop of corn, asked a white neighbour,
" How do white man cook corn so he drink him out of a
bottle?" lie was referring to "corn" whisky.

"Is this my train?" asked a traveller at the Kansas
Pacific depot of a lounger. "I don't know, bull guess not,"
was the doubtful reply. "I see its got the name of a rail-
road company on the side, and I expect it belongs to them.
Have you lost a train anywheie ?"
A sarcastic Georgie editor, in noticing a fair which
recently catne off In Macon, says:—" One °Muir contem-
poraries took a very valuable premium, but a meddlesome
and firm policeman made him put it right back where he
took it from."
Reply of a New York poet to a bookseller :—" What
do I want with your Encyclopaedia? I couldn't ride one if I
had it I I have tried every kind of velocipede, sir."

It rains alike on the just and the unjust—and on
the just mainly because the unjust have borrowed their
umbrellas.

Theodore remarked, when Angelina's father shoved
him off the doorstep, that the old gentleman had consider-
able push about him.

Lady lodger: "Your dog, sir, is unbearable. He
howls all night." Male lodger: "Indeed I Well, he might
do worse than that; he might play the piano all day."
It is estimated that the sun's light is equal to four
hundred billion billion gas jets. This is what =lves Edison
feel so blue while tinkering with his dynamo machines and
talking to newspaper men.
It is rumoured that Edison is inventing a - talking,
kachine, and excited.women all over the Eastern coast are
aking, their fingers at him and telling him they will
brook no rival. Ile is treading on dangerous ground.
A Missouri bride's father gave her a cook stove as
a wedding present; her mother, a car4pet he„r father-in•law,
a china tea set •, other friends, brooms, sacks of flour,
kitchen utensils, dining-room table; her brother, a canoe ;
her uncle, a bird cage ; her cousin, a tame crow, and the
bridegroom gave her a smack. "These useful and domestic
articles where all valued above mere gewgaws," says the
local paper.

A note for £l,OOO has been sent to the bishop for
the building fund of Truro Cathedral by one who wishes to
be anonymous.