The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-10-31 00:00:00

EPITOME OF NEWS.

BRITISH AND FOREIGN.

About 180 persons were present last Sunday morning
at the openieg of the first English church erected in Itome.
- -

- -
The total amount received up to laet Saturday
eight on behalf of the Saturday Hospital Fund was under
£4,000.

-- •
The Camperdown whaler, reached Shetland au
Monday, bringing 32 whales and 175 tuns of oil. Such a
successful fishing has not been achieved for very many years.
The value of the entire catch will be worth nearly £lOO,OOO.
No casualty has occurred.

Her Majesty will, according to present arrange-
ments, leave Balmoral next week for Windsor Castle, In order
to meet the Empress of Russia
- - -

It is stated that the expenses of collecting the
Hospital Saturday Fund have amounted to £l,lOO, and that
special appeal is to be made to the leading bankers and
merchants of London for subscriptions towards the paiment
of this sum.

A Reuters' telegram says that the Pope gave an
audience last Saturday to the Bishop of Verdun, to whom he
spoke in particularly affectionate terms of France. lie said
be trembled at the thought of the dangers by which she was
menaced, and dwelt upon the necessity for Catholics to join
all their forces in order to obviate these dangers, and success-
fully oppose the enemies of the Church and society.

The .Teloish World says that an official circular has
been despatched to the several Russian railway companies,
prohibiting the employment of Jews in the railway and
telegraph service. The railway companies are, at the same
time, instructed to dismiss those already employed belonging
to the Jewish religion, and engage employ Cs of other creeds
instead.

The marriage festivities of three generations were
recently held in St. Gaul, Switzerland. Two old people cele-
brated their golden wedding, their children kept their silver
wedding, and their granddaughter was married- all on the
same day.

Signor Visconti-Venosta, the Italian Minister for
Foreign Affairs, has delivered a speech to his constituents,
in which he stated that the Government would come before
the country with the questions most urgently requiring
settlement—namely, those relating to the finances and to
the state of public security in certain provinces. The speech
was much applauled.

-
Jane Faulkner, a domestic servant, aged thirty-
eight, died on Wednesday morning at the Norfolk and Nor-
wich II ospital from the effects of injuries she received in the
late collikon at Thorpe. Both her legs were fractured. This
make. the twenty-sixth death. Other patient. are doing
welL

Mr. Joseph Arch was announced to address a meet-
ing at Cheltenham r n Monday evening, but was prevented
from attending through serious illness.

Every attempt at economising coal is worthy of note.
The Southede (Pittsburgh) Ledger informs us of some con-
siderable saving made in the production of "Breeze Coke"
by the Pittsburg ironmasters availing themselves of the
laws of specific gravity. 'the ashes from the furnace
ash-pits are thrown into water, and a certain portion float,
the heavy cinders sinking to the bottom. This floating por-
tion is selected, and found to be the best possible fuel for a
forge lire.

"It is a pretty fashion for ladies to have one or more
mechanical birds, halt concealed in the flowers and foliage
which decorate their boudoirs. They supersede musical
boxes, and cut out canaries, finches, and jalibering parrots.
Cats cannot harm them, and scented poodles are not jealous
of them."—Court Journal.

A New York telegram says that Mr. Elihu Burritt
is dangerously ill.

Lord Lyttelton and Lord Hampton waisted at the
ripening of new board schools at Kidderminster. Roth
of them insisted on the Importance of the religious element
in education. Lord Hampton represented it as the difficulty
of the future whether board schools and voluntary schools
could exist side by aide. Ile hoped that the good sense ~f the
people might yet allow of a compromise being arranged to
secure the religious education of the masses.

Magnificent indiscretion ' was the phrase which
a great English Parliamentary debater applied to the display
of a rival A critic inclined to be complimentary would
perhaps call Prince Napoleon's Manifesto to the inhabitants
of Ajaccio a magnificent indiscretion An indiscretion of
some sort, and of a very characteristic kind, it certainly is.
The Prince completely breaks with the other members of
the Bonaparte faintly hi the open face of day, Rini publishes
a long and formal arraignment of almost all the recent
policy of Napoleon Ill.—Leader In Daily New.

The 28 horses which have run in the stage coach
between London and Brighton during the summer were sold
by auction hat Saturday at Aldridge'. lhpository, St.
Martin's-lane, London. Many hi the horses were of good
pedigree, and fast roadsters. There was a spirited competi-
tion to secure these teams for tom--in-hand clubs. A
chestnut gelding, Twig, fetched 73 guineas All Right was
knocked down to the last bidding of b 2 guineas; Chelsflehl
fetched 75 guineas and the entire stud realised 1,124
guineas, and averaged 40 guineas each.

On Moro lay the Lord' Mayor of London distributed
the mires annually offered by the Turners Company to com-
petitors in bra., gun metal, and lapidaries' work The pre-
sentations took place at the Ilansion House. Some of the
specimens of worknuniship handed in were of great excel-
lence, elicited warm expressions of approval from Sir
Gilbert Scott, one of the judges.

At an anti•vs.ccination conference held in Binning.
ham, en Monday. the I ollowitg letter was read from Mr,
John Bright, M.P. :—"Dear bir,—l cannot take any part
in your conference, nor will I express any opinion on the
main question in which you are interesting yourself, except
no far as to say that the facto which have come before me
seem tote against you ; but I have no objection to express
my doubts sa to the wisdom of compulsion, and I have always
felt that the law which inflicts penalty after penalty on a
parent who is unwilling to have his child vaccinated is
monstrous, and ought to be repealed.-1 am, very truly
yours. JOHN BRIGHT...

It is notified in Tuesday night's Zomisin i:azette that
the Queen has signified her intebtlon to confer the decoration
of the Victoria Cross Major Reginald William Senorita,
C. AL 0., of the 6th Bengal Cavalry, whose claim to the same
has been submitted for her Majesty's approval, for an act of
bravery which he performed during the late Ashantee war.
During the attack on Abogoo, on the I.7th January last, he
removed from under a heavy fire nerjeant-Xlakor Braiinah
Doctor, a Rousse non-commissioned officer, who was mortally
wounded, and placed him under cover.
In London, on Tuesday evening, a special meeting
of the National Temperance League was held is Exeter Hall
for the purpose of hearing the testimony of a number of
medical men on the subject of alcoholic drinks. The first
speaker was Mr. Q. B. Clark, L R.C.P 5. who maintained
that moderation in drinking was the "Will-o' the-Wisp.
which had lured millions to destruction, and that there was
no remedy for drunkenness but total abstention. Nearly
every disease that humaulty was liable to was caused by the
nse of alcohol. fie had seen all sorts of evil arising from it,
and quite suffirient to make hhn a teetotaler, were it not
huecedothtehre spheea heat
ticers of
theas vr
for the fact that he had been one all his life. It was a
common error to suppose that alcohol gave strength. fix
perimenta had shown that. instead of Inereasing, it decreased
human
bodarpyo The power, and
ti.th.y
atmttotretd
;lad*

---
The Priughin olice have begun to prosecute monku
begging for alms.
The Times is asked to contradict the statement that
a 11, arrant has been issued for increasing pensions in the
army_
'l'he COnservatives of Liverpool claim a gain of
3,175 on the remit borough resin's.
A general meeting of the Council of the Working
mess Peace Association was held last Saturday in London,
at which it was resolved to hold n conference iti Paris.
Thomas Miller, author if "Gideon Giles," and
several other popular novels and literary works, died on
Sunday morning, in the 68th year of his age.
The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh have given the
two lifeboats which the English residents at St. Petersburg
presented to them on the occasion of their marriage to the
Russian Society of Help to the Drowning. One of the boats
is destined for the Bleck Sea, and the other will be stationed
at the island of Oesel in the Baltic.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, in an address to
the students at Durham University, told them they would
, be unwise to shut their eyes to the progress that insterial
science sue making, and he warned them against joining in
the senseless cry that the prosecution of such science neces-
sarily ended in an irreligious materialism.

Captain Paul Boyton exhibited his life-Raving up.
paratus In Queenstown 'Labour on Monday. lie remained
an hour in pretty rough water with the dress on, swimming
freely about, hoisting flags firing oil rockets, and eating and
drinking with ease The apparatus appeared quite efficient.
Several thousand persons witnessed lbS experiments.
"The announcement," says the Record, " that the
Day of Intercession for Foreoi Missions is to be continued,
and that et. Andrea"' Day, Nov. 30, has been fixed for it
this year, comes upon us at somewhat short notice. The
Church Missionary Society feel that this lateness of the in-
vitation tends to limit the sphere of the day X observance.
For this the committee are manifestly not responaible. We
trust that, as on the two former occasions, it will be made
the means of drawing increased attention to the great mi.
sionary subject."
Two thousand persons are said to have lost their
lives in and near Midnapore, in Bengal, by the recent
cyclone, and that town itself was nearly swept away by the
Igor=
Lieutenant James de Houghton, of the 10th Foot,
has been awarded the silver medal of the Royal Iluniane.
beciety for having, at serious personal risk, saved the life of
• mall who had fallen overboard from a yacht at Lowestoft
Several other persons were also presented with bronze medals
for similar acts of bravery.
-- • • • • •

Last Sunday the annual collections in aid of the
hospitals of the town of Eirmiugham were made at the
various places of worship. This is the sixteenth time a
similar collection has been made. The proceeds are to be
given to the General Hospital, the oldest charity in the
town.
On Monday the Executive Committee of the Agri-
cultural Labourers Union conferred with a deputation from
Mississippi as to the scheme for a wholesale emigration of
farm labourers to that State. The Labourers' Committee
accepted the offer to pay the expenses of union delegates to
visit and report on the prospects of the country.
We find from the returns a criminal lunatics, ob-
tained through the Commissioners in Lunacy, that the
numbers under detention in the different asylums, hospitals,
and licensed houses during the year ending the 29th
September, 1873, amounted to 837.
Last Sunday, an officer in the Hussars, a Hungarian
a member of the Jockey Club, started from Vienna for Parts,
a distance of 192 Austrian utiles. The condition is that he
I. to arrive in Paris within a fortnight, on the same horse.
Large stakes have been deposited.
The foundation-stone of a new market at 13illings.
gate, which is about to be erected by the Corporation of
London, was publicly laid on Tuesday by Mr. Andkin, the
Chairman of the City Markets Committee, in the presence of
a large assemblage.
There were 681 fires in London in the year 1540,
being one to every 2,600 people, and to every 879 houses;
and the population averaged 738 persons to each house. In
1873 the fires were 1,548, being one to every 2.159 persons
and to every 304 houses, and there were but 710 persons
per house. In these 34 years the population increased 76
per cent., and the number of houses 52 per cent. but the
number of tires more than doubled, having increased 127 per
cent.
The King of Sweden has presented to the chairman
of Messrs. John Brown and Co. (Limitein—Mr. .1. Devonshire
Ellis, of Sheffield—the Knighthood of the Order of Wasa as a
mark of His Majesty's approbation of the manner in which
the iron fortilications of Waxhohn, near Stockholm, have
been constructed by that company. These fortifications are
similar to those now being constructed by the English War
Department, and are formed of very wide armour plates
rolled upon a system patented by Mr. Ellis.
During last week 5,605 births and 3,421 deaths were
registered Ist London and twenty other large towns of the
tinted Kingdom. The natural increase of population visa
2,187. The mortality from all causes was at the average
rate 01 23 deaths annually in every I,oeo persons living. In
London 2,550 births and 1,293 deaths were registered.
allowing for increase of population, the births exceeded by
233, whereas the deaths were 197 below, the average num-
bers in the corresponding week of the lett ten years. The
1,293 deaths included 5 from measles, 105 from scarlet fever,
4 from diphtheria, 10 front whooping-cough, Si) from
different forms of fever, 25 from diarrhica, and not one
from small-pox thus to the seven principal diseases of the
zymotic class 179 deaths were refersed, against 2-La and 215 in
the two precentor weeks. The. 179 deaths were 104 below
the corrected average number front the same diseases is. the
corresponding week of the last ten years.