The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1888-03-10 00:00:00

Advo-
xted by
' was

EPITOME OF NEWS,

A Cabinet Council was held on Saturday at the
Foreign Office. The Ministers present were the Mar-
quis of Salisbury, the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour, Earl
Cadogan, the Lord Chancellor, the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, :Viscount Cranbrook, Viscount Cross, Lord
George Hamilton, Sir M. Hicks Beach, Lord Knutsford,
the Right Hon. H. Matthews, the Right Hon. C. T.
Ritchie, the Right Hon. W. H. smith, and the Right
Hon. E. Stanhope.
At a recent meeting of the Electing Trustees of the
British Museum, Professor Huxley was elected to the
vacancy in the Trust caused by the death of Mr. Beres-
ford-Hope.
A Royal Warrant for the establishment of an Army
Medical Reserve of Officers was issued on Saturday.
The ranks of officers of the Army Medical Reserve are
to be those of surgeon-major and surgeon.
Lieut. General Sir J. Ross has been selected for the
command of the troops in Canada.
The Bulgarian Government has informed the Porte
that it will be compelled to reject any communication
from the Turkish Government that would be likely
to disturb the present tranquil situation in the Prin-
cipality.
The Queen, with Prince and Princess Henry of Bat-
tenberg, travelled on Saturday afternoon from Windsor
to Farnborough to visit the Empress Eugenie.
Mr. Gladstone has sent to the Dean of Winchester a
reply to the address expressing approval of Home Rule
which was presented by some clergymen of the Church
of England.
Lord G. Hamilton, presiding at the Royal United
Service Institution on Saturday, referred to the Navy
Estimates, and said that although they had endeavoured
to remove the extraneous growth of expenditure of
recent years, they had in every essential made larger
provision than in previous years.
Mr. Raikes at Oxford on Saturday evening addressed
a meeting of the Strafford Club. He alluded briefly to
the recent speeches in that City about Irish affairs,
and dwelt upon the tithe agitation in Wales. He said
Conservatives were now battling for all that made life
worth living; and he called upon the rising generation
to support them.
Sir James Paget delivered the annual address on
Saturday, at the London Mansion House, to the
students connected with the London Society for the
extension of University teaching. His subject was
"The Value of Scientific Study.'
The brother and sister named Haskell. and Gadd,
who were convicted last week of arson at Hammer-
smith, were, on Saturday, at the Central Criminal
Court, severally sentenced to six years' penal servitude.
Five well-dressed men, named Weston, Johnson, Fair-
child, Hill, and Daker, were convicted of conspiring to
obtain thirty thousand pounds by fraud, and were
severally sentenced to eighteen months' hard labour.
Lord Colin Campbell's appeal from the decision of
Mr. Registrar Giffard, refusing to grant him a certifi-
cate removing the disqualifications of bankruptcy, was
argued on Saturday in the Court of Appeal. The
Master of the Rolls said that to entitle a bankrupt to
such a certificate his failure must be one of pure mis-
fortune; but this could not be said in the case of Lord
Colin Campbell, who had his divorce proceedings, to
which his bankruptcy was attributed, under his control.
Lords Justices Fry and Lopes concurring, the appeal
was dismissed.
A man named Lyons, secretary to a trade society,
applied to the magistrates at the Thames Police-court,
London, on Saturday, and complained of the over-
crowded and unhealthy condition of what he termed
the sweaters' dens, of which he said there were about
2000 in the East of London. He urged that as the
local authorities had declined to act Mr. Slade should
empower constables to enter the premises. The magis-
trate said that in default of the vestry talfing action he
would grant a summons.
Vice-Chancellor Chatterton delivered judgment in
Dublin on Saturday in the action brought by the Irish
King's and Queen's College of Physicians against the
Apothecaries' Hall and the College of Surgeons, for a
declaration that the Apothecaries' Hall was not
entitled to hold a qualifying examination in respect of
medicine, and for an injunction restraining that body
from entering into a combination with the College of
Surgeons to hold a joint examination, as a qualifying
examination, for the purposes of being regarded as
practitioners under the Medical Act. He held that
upon the construction of the two Medical Acts, the
Apothecaries' Hall is a corporation, capable of granting
a diploma entitling the holder of it to act as a medical
practitioner, and accordingly the Hall was entitled to
combine with the College of Surgeons to hold a joint
examination. He therefore dismissed the action with
costs. It is stated that the College of Physicians will
appeal.
The bank notes, to the amount of £llOO, stolen from
the British Linen Bank, Coldstream, Berwickshire,
three days ago, have been recovered through the in-
strumentality of Superintendent Moir, of the Berwick-
shire Police, who has been investigating the robbery
since Wednesday of last week. For a time no trace of
the money could be got, but suspicion falling upon
Robert Carr, junior clerk in the branch, his movements
for some days were closely investigated. A stackyard
at the farm of Sunlaws, near Wark, Northumberland,
occupied by Kerr's father, was searched, and in a corn-
stack there all the missing notes were found by Super-
intendent Moir, carefully concealed. Robert Kerr,who
had been meanwhile apprehended, was conveyed to
Duns, where, on Saturday, he was judicially examined
before Sheriff Dundas, and committed to prison for
further examination. Prisoner is about 22 years of age,
and has, hitherto borne an excellent character.
Early on Saturday morning a fire broke out in the
Fleece Mills, Keighley, near Bradford, the efforts of
the Corporation Fire Brigade being of no avail. The
mills are situated in Coney-lane, and are at right angles
to each other. One mill was 40 windows long and three
storeys high, stocked with valuable machinery; and the
other mill was 16 windows long and three storeys high,
also containing new machinery. In the top storey of
the angle of the two mills the fire was discovered about
one o'clock, and the flames burnt so rapidly that the
brigade could save nothing but the adjoining property.
All the machinery in the smaller mill is broken up and
damaged. The damage to buildings is £15,000, and to
stock and machinery £50,000.
A fire broke out on saturday morning at a house in
Milton-terrace, Halifax, occupied by John Thackrah, a
cashier, and resulted in the loss of two lives. Thackrali,
it is stated, had some unpleasantness on the previous
night with his wife, who, with her two children, slept
downstairs. Thackrah occupied a bedroom upstair,
and in another apartment was a lodger named Mrs:
Atkinson, about 60 years of age. Shortly before two
o'clock a fire was discovered, evidently having originated
in Thackrah's bedroom. Mrs. 'Thackrah and the children
were got out in safety, but Thackrall, who was badly
burned, died soon after being taken from his room.
Mrs. Atkinson was found on her bedroom flour suffo-
cated.
The -death is announced, at New York, of Miss
Louisa May Alcott, the well-known American authoress,
at the age of 55. Miss Alcott was the daughter of Mr.
Amos Bronson Alcott, a literary celebrity, who died at
Boston on Sunday.
Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, the newly-appointed
British Minister to the Court of the Shah of Persia,
left Victoria Station on Tuesday evening, by the Con-
tinental mail, for Constantinople, en route for Teheran,
to assume his new duties.

From a telegram received at Lloyd's it is feared that
the English ship Eastminster has been lost on the
Australian coast with all on board. A telegram received
from Brisbane, Queensland, dated March 5, states that
wreckage and boats have been-picked up north of
Keppel Island. The name on the stern of the boat was
"Eastminster." There were also buoys and oar blades
with the sa me name, main hatches and gangway, and
boards with numbers, supposed to be emigrants' bunks.
The Eastminster sailed on February 19 from Mary-
borough for Newcastle, N.S.W., and the same evening
a hurricane passed over Brisbane, doing considerable
damage to property. A steamer is searching the locality
where the wreck is supposed to have occurred. The
Eastminster is owned in London, and was an iron ship
of 1208 gross tons.
Two letters from the Queen relating to the late
General Gordon, and addressed to his sister, appear in
a volume which has just been published. They were
written after the news had been received of the death
of the hero of Khartoum. Her Majesty expresses in
the warmest terms her sorrow and sympathy with the
family, and adds that she keenly feels that a stain has
been left upon England by Gordon's cruel though
heroic fate.

On Tuesday the City of London Commissioners of
Sewers unanimously resolved to introduce a measure
into the House of Commons to enable them to levy a
tax not exceeding sixpence in the pound on the owners
of property in the City for the purpose of effecting
public improvements.
Mr. D. A. Thomas, a local manufacturer, a Home
Ruler, and a Welsh Nationalist," has been cnosel
candidate for the vacancy in the representation ot
Merthyr Tydfil, caused by the retirement of Mr. C. H.
James.
Arthur Hazleton, a young man with many aliases,
was charged at the Westminster Police-court on Tues-
day with stealing property from hotels and lodging-
houses in the West-end of London, and also with
assaulting the detective who took him into custody. A
woman who is supposed to have been concerned in some
of the robberies was placed in the dock with him. It
was stated that the proceeds of the various thefts were
of the value of many hundreds of pounds. Both pri-
soners were remanded in custody.
Private information has reached Rome that a serious
engagement between the Italians at Massow4h and
the Abyssinians is pending, if it has not already been
fought.
Monsignor Persico, who has lately been staying in
this country, will shortly return. to Ireland to resume
his mission. New instructions have been sent from the
Vatican; based upon recent assurances given by the
Duke of Norfolk.
A deputation, which was introduced by the Marquis
of Hartingto, and which consisted of many other
memberS ii-Parpament, waited upon Mr. W. 11.
Smith, the First Lord-of the Treasury, on Tuesday,
and represented' to him
,the loss which the leading
ports of the United •Kingdom sustain through the
ntion of the Government in claiming exemption from
~aes for goods and other material shipped for the pur-
pose of railways in India. In reply, Mr. Smith said he
should ,fake care to represent the views laid before
him to 'his colleagues, and. to ensure for them full con-
sideration.
George Clarke, 42, an army pensioner and the land-
lord of a public-house at Aldershot, was found guilty
at the Winchester Assizes on Tuesday'of the wilful
murder of his stepdaughte,r, Annie Vaughan, aged 18.
Jealousy is supposed to have prompted the crime, and
Clarke, entering the girl's room as she lay asleep, cut
her throrkw4ll-,a razor. He was now sentenced to
death.
It is reported by the Registrar-General that the
"death-rate per thousand in London last week was 21-9
as compared with 206 and 21-6 in the two preceding
weeks. The rate averaged 22.5 per thousand during the
first nine weeks of the current quarter.
Between the Ist of April and the 3rd inst. the
Exchequer receipts amounted to £81,768,784, as com-
pared with £82,964,166 in the corresponding period of
the last financial year; and the expenditure to
£78,135,517 as against £80,523,330. On Saturday last
the Treasury balances stood at £8,853,730, and on the
same date last year at L 7,630,468.,
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