Weekly News. — 1890-09-18 (Blandford, Dorset, England)

HUSBAND MURDER IN FRANCE.  A case of husband murder, committed with the participation if a lover, came for trial on Friday before the Niort assizes. On April 2nd last, telegraphs the Paris correspondent of the Daily News, the body of a man was found in the River Sevres. Ills legs were tied together and weighted with a big stone. Another stone was tied to the neck, which was lacerated with; wounds, as well as the shoulders and breast. The body was identified ME that of a man named Drouet, who had disappeared some days before. His wife and a lover of hers were suspected and arrested, and although at first denying their guilt, they were induced, after several days of moral pressure, applied in the French way by a Juge d'lnstruction, to confess. The victim's wile stated that the crime was planned in the middle of March during a visit she paid her lover at Niort, and it was to be carried out the following day. The intended victim was a man lif unusual strength. The wife therefore gave him a soporific, and as soon as it had taken effect, opened the door to her lover, who, with a hatchet, accomplished the crime. The man and the woman washed the body, dressed it, and put it in a bag, which they filled up with bran. They threw it then into the Sevres, and spent the rest of the night putting the room in order. Among the witnoises was a fortune-teller, whom the victim's wife sought three times during three months in order to ascertain her husband's chances ot living. This fortune-teller replied in the first instance that the husband would be killed by accident, in the second that his end was drawina near and he saw portentous omens in the cards, and in the third that his death was at hand, that there would be trouble, the police would be seen, and that she would have another abode. The jury returned a verdict of guilty against the two partners in the crime, who were both sentenced to death.  William Gates, 44, and Thomas Rawlings, Mt, blacksmiths, were killed on Saturday in the A pit of the Tyne Coal Company at Ilebburn-on-Tyne Colliery. They were repairing a pumping-engine in the Hetton seam, when a valve opened, and the escaping steam so severely scalded them that they lied in 15 minutes. Each of the deceased leaves a widow and family.  Two brasses were on Sunday dedicated by the Chaplain of the Fleet in the Dockyard Church at Sheerness to the memory of the officers and men of her Majesty's gunboat Wasp, which foundered with all hands in the China Seas in October, 1887. The brasses, which bear the names of the 80 officers and men who perished have been erected by contributions from the Royal Navy and friends. - •  The effort inaugurated by Messrs. Marinillao nod Co. to do away with the discount system in selling is meeting with success. lu Unease ef Professor Marshall's "Principles of Economies," published under the new arrangement, the sales have not been at all interfered with, and the practice of publishing at a net price may be expected to grow rapidly. The result will probably be a slight increase of coat to the purchaser, but the benefits to the booksellers will be out of all orouortion thereto.