The Sun.
London, England, 1868-09-29 00:00:00

DETENTION OF _A CORPSE FOR RENT.

Upon Mr. Patterson taking his seat on the bench at
Greenwich Police-court on Monday, a poor woman made
application under the following circumstances. The
applicant said that her husband had left home
for Birmingham to seek work. At the time of
leaving they occupied a room in the house of Mrs. Billups, a
midwife, at Deptford. On Tuesday last a child, seven
months old, died, and the corpse had been coffined. The
goods she had in her room had been sold to a person who
allowed her the use of the same until her husband could
repay the money advanced, and as she owed 30s.
rent, and her landlady (Mrs. Billups) had threatened
to distrain on the articles of furniture, on Friday
last she removed some of them to another house. When
the undertaker went for the corpse with a
hearse the landlady would not open the door, and
afterwards told the relieving officer that she would not
allow the corpse to be taken away. Mr. Patteson in-
structed Inspector King to see Mrs. Billups, and to inform
her there was no pretence for detaining the corpse for rent
due, and that it was to be given up, her remedy being upon
the articles of furniture left in her house.

Sir James Fergusson will not leave England for
South Australia till November.

The army worm has appeared in portions of
Georgia, and is doing serious damage to the late cotton
orop.

Sir Frederick Halliday has, we (Scotsman) un-
derstand, been appointed a member of the Indian Council
—an appointment which is, of course, incompatible with a
seat in Parliament.

A clerical candidate for a lectureship was called
upon to preach before the trustees. In order to show his
cleverness he chose for his text the single word " but." He
thereupon proceeded to show that no position in life is with-
out opposite trial, and illustrated his text by many passages
from Scripture, Naaman was a mighty man, but he was
1 leper, &c. When the candidate came down from the
pulpit the senior trustee politely remarked, " Sir,
you gave us a most ingenious discourse, and we
are much obliged to you, but we don't think you will do
for us."

Some days ago at a Dumfries fair a young woman,
too obviously "from the country," was sten standing with
a very perplexed air at the pillar letter-box in Nith-place,
in front of the Mechanics' Institution. She was observed
to knock several times on the top of the iron pillar, pos-
sibly expecting that some communication would be thrown
open from the interior for the transaction of business, but
obtaining no response she passed round to the opposite
side, and, raising the cover of the slit in which letters are
placed, she applied her mouth to the aperture and called
out loud enough for the amazed bystanders to hear, ",Can
ye let me hae a postage stamp?"

On Saturday a singular accident occurred at the
.Cricket-road Coalpit, near Sheffield. This is a new colliery,
and the headgear having been fixed, the temporary "logs,"
used in the sinking of the shaft had to bo taken
down. The rope was fastened to it, and after passing
over the headgear was attached to a "crab" more than
a hundred yards off. A dozen men were stationed at
the crab to regulate the descent of the "legs," but when the
timber, weighing about two tons, was partly lowered it
overcame the resistance of the men, and the two arms of
the crab were whirled round with great velocity, throwing
off and striking the men, one of whom, Richard Binns, was
killed almost instantly. Four or five others were more or
less injured.

A further discovery of coal (says the Nottingham
Guardian) has been made in the neighbourhood of
this borough. A geologist and colliery engineer, who
has been making a professional survey of Old D.
ford, finds that the coal ke3MS extend under lands
now occupied by buildings, and that the minerals
therein are of great value. This quite upsets the theory of
coal not lying on tho east side of the valley of the river
Lee.. A few years ago coal was found, and is now being
obtained by the Duke of Newcastle front his pits at Shire
Oaks ; and more recently the Nottingham Waterworks
Company have been sinking for water adjoining to Bulwell
Forest, and found coal.

A correspondence is published in the Eastern
Morning News between Mr. Norwood, M.P. for Hull, and
the Treasury, with regard to the County Courts Admiralty
Jurisdiction Act. Mr. Norwood, who is the author of the
Act, asks when the Lord Chancellor intends putting it
into operation. To this question Mr. Nicoll makes re-
ply on behalf of the Treasury :—" Soon after the
passing of the County Courts Admiralty Jurisdiction Act
1 received directions from the Lord Chancellor to write to
the Judges of the different circuits in which there wore
seaports, and request them to forward the names of the
courts in their respective circuits which, in their opinion,
should be appointed to have Admiralty jurisdiction, and
to state the districts which should be assigned to them.
Upon the return of the Lord Chancellor to town, these
answers will be considered and a scheme proposed. Whether
the scheme will be published before submitted to her Ma
jesty in Council in the shape of an order I do not know, but
I think it likely that it will be."

CRICKET IN AMERIcA.—TIie New York Herald
thus discourses on the visit of the "All England Eleven"
to America :—" In regard to their success in winning
matches on their tour, there is but little doubt of their
being victorious in every contest, though their task is not
the comparatively easy one that the ' eleven' of 1859
had. Previous to the advent of the former ' eleven,'
considerable curiosity was manifested in this country
to see the celebrated All England Eleven play, Then
cricket, as a field sport, enjoyed a popularity it
does any means, one cause of this change
being n
the fact by
that we now have what we did not then
possess, viz., a national game of ball ; one too, which,
in the quickly-played, lively, and 'exciting contests it
yields, and in the manly attributes of pluck, courage,
endurance, activity, and judgment required to play it skil-
fully, rivals any game or sport now in vogue—cricket,
according to the opinion of the large majority of our
oitizens, appearing, by contrast, a tedious and uninterest-
ing game. That a different and more favourable condition
of things for the interests of cricket would have existed
had our resident English cricketers observed a less exclu-
sive and more liberal policy of action in the government
of their clubs, we have not the least doubt. But instead
of this being done, an English exclusiveness has marked
the government of the leading organisations, while no
encouragement has been afforded young players, or the
least effort been made to Americanise the game, by ridding
it of the tedious and annoying delays incident to as
practised in this locality."

There appears to be no doubt as to the popularity of the
King or Prussia in Northern Germany. At Hamburg
he has received a welcome so hearty, that it took him quite
by surprise. At Altona, in Holstein, he was equally well
received.

Charles XV., King of Norway and Sweden, as the
Norwegians say—King of Sweden and Norway, as
the Swedes say—is just now visiting his Norsk capital.
The beautiful fjord is gay with flags and bunting, and the
rather ugly Greek building which does duty as a palace,
and is generally left to the care of one sentinel, is alive
with guests. The Norwegians are, though the founders
of our proudest nobility, the most democratic people in
Europe. They have abolished nobles in their own
country, and they hire a king at so much a
year, who opens for them the National Assembly,
the Storthing, which is really their sovereign. King
Charles, nevertheless, always receives a hearty welcome
at his triennial visitations. He is probably the hand-
somest sovereign in Europe, and is remarkable for his
bonhomie as well 'as literary talent. This last quality is
shared by his wife, a member of the Dutch Royal Family,
and a firstrate linguist. Their only child, the Princess
Louisa, does not inherit her father's good looks, but is
decidedly plain. She is now betrothed to the Crown
Prince of Denmark, brother to the Princess of Wales.
The Daily News appears to have a superfluity of corre-
spondents. One has just been travelling north from
Madrid to St. Sebastian ; another has been travelling
(special) south to Madrid. Writing on the 25th and the
26th, they seem to have heard rather less of the insuims
tion than we heard. All the telegraphs were then in
the bands of the Government, who would not allow any
but favourable information to be transmitted. Conse-
quently, the cOrespondents were so little able to appreciate
the gravity of the:insu rrection, that they did not apprehend
it would lead to the abdication of tho Queen, much lele to,
any_auto tikedynutyt