The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1887-02-19 00:00:00

COMNIENTS ON CURRENT NEWS.

Ox Wednesday the Queen's Jubilee cele-
bration was signalised in our great Indian
dependency by the outward opening of prison
doors to some 25,000 criminals incarcerated
for minor offences;' while 300 debtors in
durance vile were set at liberty from obliga-
tion and. confinement at one and the same
time through the gracious act of their
Empress. This and other functions of mercy
and condescension on a mammoth scale will
have much effect in that magnificence loving
domain. The arrangements for the com-
memoration of the 50th year of the reign of
the Sovereign are nowhere being prosecuted
with greater enthusiasm and sprit than in
India.

WHEN, in the month of March, her
Majesty goes to visit the Midland metropolis,
we may make 'right sure she will have a
ringing Warwickshire welcome, and sunshine
only will be wanting to render the scene in
Birmingham streets a very brilliant one, and
much more gala like than when, last year,
the rain remorselessly destroyed the charm
of the royal spectacle in Liverpool, and
drenched to the skin the Lancashire loyalists
eager to see their sovereign. But the
pleasure of the inhabitauts of the great
hardware centre of Mid-England will hardly
exceed the delight with which East Lon-
doners will throng to look upon their Queen
when she makes her p 1 ogress to open the
People's Palace, on Saturday, the 14th of
May. London Eastenders may be rough
and unpolished in speech and appearance,
but none can be more effusive in applauding
and revering their Princes and rulers than
they. And now their love for the Throne
is to be rewarded by a visit from its occu-
pant in propria persona ! All East-London
in raptures already, from Epping Forest
to the river, and down on the sontn side
from Bermondsey to beyond the Woolwich
Dockyard district; from the City bounds to
Barking. Old Sol should shine his bright-
est on the second Saturday in May, and
light with a glorious glow the gala gather-
ing. of the picturesquely-clad silkworkers of
Spitafields, the toilers of Bethnal-geen and
Shoreditch, the teeming thousands of the
Tower Hamlets and the dock districts, the
denizens of Shadwell and Stepney, of Bow
and Bromley, of Whiteehapel and of Wap-
ping. Living within easy walking distance
of the Queen's palace, there is not one in
a hundred among East-Londoners who has
ever set eyes upon her Majesty.

THAT was a big fire at Battersea the other
day, and the inflammable timber whose con-
flagration seemed as it were "to set the
Thames on fire," ' 1;.-ht up the sky as
with the splendr—. --As at one
time in sdanger of making a blaze as int tsastrou s
as any that has occurred in London for many
a Year. The confusion created by the wild
career along the riverside streets of some
three hundred "Shrewsbury and Talbot"
cab horses, let loose by their panic-stricken
keepers from the adjoining stables, will long
be remembered by those who saw the modern
"Corso." One can never by precaution
make absolutely certain of escaping tire, but
it is surely within the power of prudence to
devise a method by which large numbers of
horses could be saved from a sadden out-

break without having to
.set them at liberty

to race at terror-prom- pted speed Ulm-ugh the
thoroughfares of a densely-populated com-
munity, to the manifest danger of pedes-
triansi

THE remaining at liberty for full ten days
in London of the man Currell, accused of
the murder of a poor woman in Hoxton,
despite the hue and cry raised by the police,
and the publicity given to the whole matter
by the Press, has been a great surprise, and
bid fair to become a great sensation. And
when, after all, th 3 fugitive from justice
was arrested, it was not so inuch because of
the astuteness and vigilance of the police as
on account of the action of the hunted man
himself. He was worn out with hunger and
hiding, and wrote to the authorities saying
he proposed to give himself up on the morn-
ina upon which he was actually secured.
And yet during all the time that his name
had been ringing through the metropolis,
while minute descriptions of the man were
being printed in every newspaper, when
portraits of him were plastered up in all the
barber's shops and at all the railway and
police-stations in London and for miles
round, this man had never teen beyond a
short distance from where the murder was
committed. What a testimony to the truth
of the oft-asserted contention that the
Modern Babylon is the best hiding-place in
the world. There you can be next-door neigh
boar to—ay! dwell under the same roof as—a
Charles Peace for many a month without
the remotest suspicion that he is perhaps
the greatest villain unttung. And among
the five-million metropolitan folk who know
less of the doings of the dwellers quite close
to them than inhabitants of provincial
centres could ';ell of the business of fellow-
townspeople residing an hour's walk away,
it is comparatively easy to keep out of sight.
The whole story of the search for Carrell is,
however, an interesting one, though at some
points it is scarcely satisfactory. For in-
stance, be is said to have been twice pointed
out to the police, and yet not taken into
custody, and to have even presented himself
at Scotland-yard and been allowed to walk
safely away. These allegations demand in-
vestigation if the officers of the law are to
be held blameless.

IT is high time that something was done
to put an end to the fraudulently marking
of inferior foreigu-made goods to the end
that they may pass as English manufacture.
We are glad to note that Government in-
tends to bestir itself in the matter. At the
same time we cannot but lament that a mis-
understanding should have arisen upon such
a simple subject between English masters
and their operatives. Their interests, at any
rate, are indissolubly bound together We
trust and think that the workers, for whom
Mr. Broadhurst has been spokesman, are al-
together wrong in thinkirig that merchants
and manufacturers in this country are base
enough to wink at the practice of forging
the mark of English makers to cheap Con..
tinental productions, FO that they may there
y get greater profit. The capitalists, it
eons, desire ixnmedia e legislat:on, t 4 put
rycedy stop to the abuses eomplaineo of;
the labour roprosoutatips, ;joy contra, claim