The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1868-10-24 00:00:00

EPITOME OF NEWS,

BRITISH AND FORKON.

During the past week thirty-seven wrecks have been
reported, making for the present year a total of 1,869.
Rumours of a congress for settling the affairs of
Europe without a war are again in the air.
The personalty of the late Bishop of Peterborough
has been sworn under £35,000.
About one thousand women will, so far as can be
I foreseen, cast their votes at the next election.
A young lady writes to one of the innumerable penny
periodicals, anti asks for a receipt for turning the hair grey!
The editor states his inability to supply the wish of his fair
correspondent.
When Rothschild heard that the head of the Agna,de
family was dead : "110 w much does he leave?' he asked.
Twenty millions." " You mean eighty?' "No, twenty.
Dear me, I thought he was in easy circumstances," remarked
the models Cronus.
It is stated that Earl Percy will shortly lead to the
hymeneal alter the Lady Edith Campbell, eldest daughter of

...."rinou paper at Salt Lake complains that the
progress of the Pacific Rillroad has brought upon them what
Mr. Roebuck would call a' feculent tide" of immigration
from the States, which to rapidly demoralising the pople of
Utah, and calls upon the immigrants to pass on, and leave
the saints to their seclusion.
The United States government have granted the
sum of £2O to each of the four widows of the coast-guards-
men who lost their lives in their noble efforts to save the
crew of the American ship R. if. Tucker, which was wrecked
on the Blackwater Bank off the coast of Wexford, on the 17th
of September last.
The following despatch appears in the lirashington
Chronicle of the lot inst. Philadelphia, Sept. 30.—The
train which left Washington at 0.40 p.m, to-night was
attacked by ruffians at Baltimore, and harr of the delegates
stabbed. All persons coming throngh Baltimore should have
a uniform for protection, as the ruffians enter the cars and
attack passengers indiscriminately."
At All Saints' Church, Windsor, on Sunday. morn-
ing last, during the performance of divine Berne°. Mr.
Annett, the sexton, aged about sixty, dropped suddenly and
expired. The suddenness of his death caused anneal profound
sensation among the congregation and in the neighbourhood.
The cricket match between the All England Eleven
anti the Philadelphians was concluded on the etli inst., in
layout of the former, with two wickets to spare. The match
Is stated to have been the best contested in the annals of
cricket in America
It is stated that Into. Whitmore, the Conservative
candidate for nridgnorth, has sent his portrait to every elec-
tor of the borough.
A collision, arising from causes similar to those
which occasioned the Abergele accident, has occurred on the
Manchester and Sheffield Railway, near the Deepear station.
Some waggons broke loose front a goals train and ran back
along the line for about four miles, when they met a passen-
ger train from Sheffield. Ihe train bad been stopped, and
this somewhat lessened the shock, but a good deal of damage
was done to the engine and waggons, and some of the
passengers were shaken. Happily there was no petroleum in
the waggons.
A fashionahly-dreased young man, described as a
merchant's clerk, has been convicted by a London police-
magistrate of a brutal and unprovoked assault upon a
barman, and sentenced to six months' imprisonment and
hard labour. The clerk appears to have thought that the
worst Inc had to dread was a One. and was not a little
astonished when he heard the sentence.

-
The Ballot Society, in an address just issued, warns
the electors, new and old, "against the dangers to which
they are exposed." They are cautione•l against both corrup-
tion and intimidation in all their ramifications, and urged to
expose both of then, in whatever form they may he mani-
fested, "that so their immediate effects may, an far as possi-
ble, be neutralised, and their ultimate destruction
secured.' The society rejnices, to find "that so many
candidates more than at any previous election and so many
constituenciex, have manifested their determination to sup-
port the question of free voting, anti trust that, loy a vigorous
and well-sustained effort, a majority may be returned to the
new House of Commons in favour of the aooption of vat by
ballot..
--• • •
_

The latest accounts from China and Japan show the
prospects of the Chriatian missionaries to be anything but en-
couraging in those countries At I' angchow, Mr. Taylor, the
head of the Protestant mission, and his party have narrowly
escaped death at the hands of a mob of infuriated Chinese,
some thousands strong, who attacked and burnt the mission
house and a decree laying the Christian religion under a
formal interdict has been posted up at liomura and the gates
;of Yokohama The placards describe Christians as "the
devilish sect." The British and American consuls have
actively interfered on behalf of the injured missionaries.
Sub-Inspector Murphy, of the Rathkeale constabu-
lary, at whom a pistol was fired a day or two ago, escaped
unhurt, but his thick overcoat was pierced by the shot. The
man who discharged the revolver came deliberately behind
him, a few paces oft, and three distinct shots were heard.
Some of the police ran out of their barracks, close by, and
were also tired at by the assailant of Murphy, who succeeded
ln getting mixed with the crowd, it being fair day in the
town, and escaped. Murphy's activity against the Fenians
last winter is the cause popularly asaigned for the attack
upon hint.