Brighouse & Rastrick Gazette. — 1888-02-18 (Brighouse, West Yorkshire, England)

FIRTH'S PORTMANTEAU.  On Saturday, before Justices Mathew and A. L Smith, the case of Firth v. North Eastern Railway Company, came up upon appeal from a decision of the county-court judge at Leeds. It was an action brought by Mr. J. B. Firth, lately member of Parliament for Chelsea, and at present Gladstonian candidate for Dundee, to recover the value of a portmanteau and its contents, lost while the plaintiff was travelling on the railway. The county-court judge gave judgment for the plaintiff for £l2, and from this judgment the defendants appealed. The plaintiff and his wife were travelling from Hull to Leeds when the portmanteau was missed. It contained, among other things, a quantity of manuscript of a new book, written by Mrs. Firth, with photographs of scenes in Russia and other parts of the continent which the plaintiff and his wife had visited. On the arrival of the train at Leeds their luggage was deposited by the company's servants on the platform in the usual way. Thu carriage of the plaintiff's father-in-law was waiting for the travellers outside the station, and the plaintiff took with him from a heap of luggage on the platform two portmanteaus which lie supposed to be his own. Finding when he reached his friend's house that one of the portmanteaus was that of another traveller, Mr. Marsden, he drove back to the station to find his own, but it was gone, having been stolen. The county-court judge entered judgment for the plaintiff, on the ground that in his opinion the portmanteau had been stolen before the expiration of a reasonable time within which the plaintiff might secure it after it was placed on the platform. It was now argued on behalf of the defendants that there Was no evidence on which the eounty-court judge could so hold.—Mr. Justice Mathew was of this opinion, and the appeal must be allowed.—Mr. Justice Smith concurred, and the appeal was accordingly allowed, but without costs.  Lord Randolph Churchill states that it is his intention, in moving for a Royal Commission to inquire into the working of the Metropolitan Board of Works, to propose that it be empowered to take evidence on oath and to enforce the production of documents. Female passengers landing from the White Star steamer Germanic at Queenstown were searched by a female searcher. This is the first occasion such action has been taken. A few small packages of tobacco were found. Mrs. Hull, of Bedford, went to London to consult a physician as to a cancer in her throat. Just as she alighted at Bedford Station lei her return journey the cancer burst,and the unfortunate lady succumbed. In the action brought by Patrick Barrett, of Ballinasloc, against Mr. Balfour, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, for alleged slander in his Manchester speech, the trial of which has been remitted to the recorder of Dublin, El has been lodged in court as sufficient to satisfy the plaintiff's claim for damages. I The dead body of an elderly woman named Mrs. Sarah Powell, who has been living with her brother, a farmer, at Wem, near Shrewsbury, has been found in a pit in the vicinity of the farm. The occurrence took place in the neighbourhood of the recent murders that created great consternation throughout the community. Messrs. Macmillan and U. will shortly issue a volnme of poems by the late Principal Shairp, of Se Andrew's and Oxford. They consist mainly of pieces published in magazines or left in MS., and represent Shairp's later work, although a few poems from the Ivolume "Kilmahoe" are included. The book bas been edited by Mr. F. T. Palgrave.