The Sun.
London, England, 1862-08-25 00:00:00

A WOMAN IN MAYS A 7 TIRE.

At the Gateshead Police-court, last week, John
M'Cabe and Maria Dixon were placed in the
dock as suspicious characters. Notwithstanding
the difference of sex, the magistrates found it neces-
sary to ask which was M'Cabe and which Dixon,
for, on the names being called, two persons, both
apparently stout, strong lads, were brought for-
ward. It appeared, however, from the statement
of Mr. Superintendent Schorey, that Dixon was
a female in man's clothes, and that on Saturday
night she and the male prisoner went into the
Steamboat public •house, and sold to the landlady
some petticoats and other female habiliments. Sus-
picion being aroused, information was sent to the
police, the two parties were taken into custody, and
Dixon, on being asked if she was a female, acknow-
ledged the soft impeachment. She was a roundly-
formed, strong-looking person, and with hair cut
short and parted on the left side, might well be mis-
taken for a young man. She had pale blue eyes, and
a round and not unpleasing face. Her companion,
M'Cabe, might be either an agricultural labourer
or a navvie. He was a young fellow, not ill-look-
ing, and wore a smock and red neckerchief. He I
said that he met the female on Friday, and that
they had agreed to go harvesting together, she put-
ting on man's clothes, because she could earn more
money in the male character than in her own.
From questions put to her by the bench, however,
it appeared that this was not a new freak. She said
she was a native of the Highlands, but had been in
these parts about two years. She had generally
worn male attire, because she could get more money
by working as a man, and she had so worked at
Witton Park for nearly twelve months ; she had
also worked at spennymoor Iron Works, and had
been working down a coal pit at Leasingthorpe. At
Bishop Auckland she had a quarrel with a man
about wages, in consequence of which she was sent
for three months to Durham gaol. There her sex
was discovered, and since she came out she had
been in female garb. She had put herself, she said,
into man's clothes again to work for money to take
her to Australia, She added that she was 24 years
of age. The bench recommended her to assume her
proper attire, and on her promising to do so she and
the male prisoner were discharged. Among other
articles found in her possession, in u bundle which
she carried about with her, were a looking-glass, a
small photograph of a female, who, she said, had
fallen in love with her, and a lock of hair presented
to her by another female, who had been captivated
by what appeared to be a very handsome boy of
nineteen or twenty years.—Sunderland Herald.

IMPORTATION OF FRUITS AND PLANTS.—Sundry
other fruits and plants were first cultivated in England
about this time, such as apricots, gooseberries, currants
(brought from the island of Zante), and garden roots of
different sorts. Cherries, of a species not previously known
in England, were imported about 1540 from Flanders, and
planted in Kent with such success, that an orchard of 32
acres, produced in one year as much fruit as yielded £lOOO.
Probably the novelty of the fruit made people at first give
high prices for it.—Capper's Fort and To* oi "tonic".