The Sun.
London, England, 1870-05-23 00:00:00

LAW AND POLICE.

A BEGGING PETrriori,—Two Nestorian priests—Andrea
and Elias, have been charged at Marlborough-street with
begging. An officer of the Mendicity Society had seen one
of them go into several houses and shew a petition holding
out his hands for money. Professor Amenney, of King's
College, was sent for, and requested to interpret. He said
the defendants admitted the statement was true. They
asked for money, but they did not know it was
against the law to do so. They had been
sent to this country by their Patriarch, their villages
having been destroyed, their cattle carried off, and their
people massacred by the Kurds. They had come to Eng-
land to ask for assistance. The Patriarch had complained
to the authorities at Constantinople; and Colonel Taylor
recommended that some persons should ,be sent
to Ent,oiand to collect money. Some gentlemen had
applied to the Archbishop of Canterbury on their behalf,
and a meeting had been held at Willis's Rooms, at which
it was resolved to send out money through English clergy-
men. The Turkish Consul allowed them £2 a week, but
they would rather starve than return with their object un-
accomplished. Mr. Knox said he would discharge them
if the defendants had a reasonable hope of returning to
their country, and asked the Professor to make them
understand that begging was prohibited. They were then
discharged.
CHARGE AGAINST A YOUNG WOMAN.—Selina Skelsey,
young woman of respectable appearance, has been charged
at Leamington with stealing a cashbox containing money
and securities to the amount of 1,400, the property
of her uncle, Mr. Holmes, with whom she
lived. The prosecutor is an independent gentleman
and the prisoner, who is his wife's niece, left his house
during the night in consequence of alleged ill treatment. She
was arrested by Mr. Holmes's direction on a charge of
stealing the cash box. A_ detective wno had been
employed in searching the house gave somewhat
startling evidence. When first he searched Mr. Holmes's
house, after Miss Skelsey was taken into custody, he
could find no trace of the missing box, but on a second
inspection of the coal cellar be noticed that some
coal had been disturbed since his visit and under
that coal he found the box. On hearing this
evidence, the counsel-for the prosecution threw up the
case, and Mrs. Holmes loudly declared the detective had
perjured himself. The magistrate severely reproved her,
and it was said on behalf of the accused that proceedings
would be taken for false imprisonment.

FALSE IMPRISONMENT BY A FARMER.-At the Hasling.
den County Court, a man named John Butterworth,
lately a farmer, was sued by Catherine Fletcher, the wife
of a labourer, for damages for false imprisonment.
The damages were laid at £lOO, and the facts
were briefly these : On the 4th January defen-
dant was at the Black Dog public-honse, Craw-
shawbooth, drunk. Mrs. Fletcher went in and called
for a glass of beer; and the prisoner sat opposite to her,
but she never went near him. He, however, charged her
with having robbed him of a £5 note, a sovereign, 15s. or
165., and a purse. She protested her innocence, but she
was detained, and stripped in the presence of defendant,
another man, and the landlady, but nothing was found
upon her. When the policeman arrived he insisted on
her being taken into custody, and the officer, after cau-
tioning the deferidant, did so. She was locked up for
three days, and the note was afterwards found by the pro-
secutor.—Damages £5O.
MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT ROCHDALE.-Mr. Stevens, the
chief constable of Rochdale, received information of a dar-
ing robbery in the town. A servant girl in the employ
of Mr. Wrigley, builder, stated that after Mrs. Wrigley
had gone out to take her usual walk, while she was stoop-
ing in the kitchen to pick up the brush, two men came
behind her and threw over her head a handkerchief, and
threatened to murder her with an axe if she gave an
alarm. They took her down into the cellar and
tied her hands to an iron bar, and cautioned her that if
she made a noise they would bury her in the coal. For
upwards of an hour she remained in this position. The
young woman was found tied up in the cellar, and the
cash-box had been taken out of the drawers upstairs, and
broken open with an axe, but strange to say the £BO in
gold and notes which had been placed in it had not been
removed, and nothing has yet been missed from the house.

It is stated that Mr. Gordon Whitbread, of the
Chancery Bar, who is at present the principal secretary
of the Lord Chancellor will succeed the late Mr. H. R.
Bagshawe, Q.C. as Judge of the Clerkenwell County
Court. Mr. Whitbread was called to the Bar in 1840.
A gentleman named Greg, an exhibitioner of
Balliol College, Oxford, attempted suicide by cutting his
throat on Port Meadow on Friday. He was taken to the
infirmary and lies in a dangerous state. Over study and
disappointment are said to be the causes of the act.
The Solicitors' Journal states that a peculiar feature
in the entertainment at the Inner Temple, was that the
whole company after dinner smoked with great solemnity
in the withdrawing room, in compliment probably, to the
Prince of Wales, as inheriting the harmless penchant of
his relative, the late Duke of Sussex.

Intelligence has reached New York from Cuba
that General Rodas has issued a proclamation declaring
free all slaves of insurgents, as well as' slaves who have
served the Spanish troops as guides or voluntarily aided
the Government in repressing the rebellion. It is reported
that there are only a few scattered bands of insurgents
still in arms.

The North British Daily Mail states that the man
Chalmers has been fully identified by several witnesses as
the person who is believed to have murdered the Braco
tollman. Two youthful witnesses from Glasgow were
algo confronted with the prisoner, and acknowledged that
they had seen no one who was " liker" the man wanted
for the Stockwell-street outrage.on a little girl.

A painful sensation has been caused in Bombay by
an accident that occurred to a picnic party at Bandora
Hill, two or three miles distant. ,An omnibus carrying a
number of the party came against the parapet of a deep
well and upset, and two ladies (Madame Vmay and her
niece, Miss Phillips) were thrown from the top, sheer into
the well, and drowned. A number of others were bruised,
none seriously.
Major-General Gallway Byng Payne, Colonel
Commandant of the Royal Marines, died at Torquay on
Thursday. He entered the army in 1831, and served in
Spain during the Carlist war of 1838-39. During the
Russian campaign he commanded a battalion of Marines
at the defence of Eupatoria, and the 2nd Battalion of
Sir Colin Campbell's (Lord Clyde) Brigade, in camp near
Baidor.

The Chair 'of Medicine and Midwifery in the
University of Edinburgh, vacant by the death of Sir J.
Y. Simpson, Bart., is already solicited by numerous
candidates. The most favourably spoken of are Dr.
James Matthews Duncan, Dr. Alexander Keiller,
Dr. Alexander Simpson (a nephew of Si James), now
professor of midwifery in Glasgow ; and Dr. J. G. S.
Coghill, late of Shanghai, and formerly assistant to the
deceased professor.