The Warwickshire Herald. — 1892-01-21 (Birmingham, West Midlands, England)

OLD FACE GONE.  Travellers from Paddington Station by the evening trains will remember a tall•hatted, redcoated, old gentleman, who for many years has superintended the despatch of the mails sent from London br The Great Western Railway. He seemed part of the platform furniture as much as the clock or the bookstall, but the place which knew hint so long knows hint no more. Ile has retired from active duty on a modest pension, and the controller of the London Postal Service, thinking Is' ought not to depart unhonoured and unsung, has il a little booklet which contains an account of some of his experiences as a trail guard more than 40 years ago. Once while acting as guard of the Exeter mail, his driver, who was not quite sober, tell from the box and was killed. Mr. llclibs, our hero, tried to stop the horses, who had started off at a gallop. but was unable to recover the reins, and in climbing back to his seat tumbled from the roof of the coach with no worse results that, a sprained ankle and a few bruises. He was picked up by another coach, on which he travelled io the next stage, when he resumed his journey, for the runaway horses had taken the driverless coach on without injury. Durfig iamb of Ibz,2 Mr. Hobbs found him.,If in a serious predicament. He had dis• mounted front the coach on a dark night and : %tided into the water up to his armpits to find the road for the driver, to whom he called to follow him. The driver came on accordingly, but did not stop to pick Mr. Hobbs up, and he remained three floors in the water, afraid to move, lest he should iiet out of his depth. At last,by a desperate effort. he struggled on to Gloucester, where he was put to hetwean warm blankets. Another time, in ..ending the road over Plinlimmon,coach, horses,  ca,engers, driver, and guard fell 601 t. down a preire in a terrible snowstorm into a snowdrift. The .:is-ungeri u ho were inside were cut by the broken '.glass, and two of the horses were killed, but,owing to the depth of the snow, the driver and guard -•escaved with a severe shaking. These incidents do not exhaust Mr. Hobbs's experiences. He ascribes free.iom from injury to his careful observation of lather's advice, -Never to injure his own health by drinking other people's." He left the road in IZ;i4, alien tbe Gloucester and aberystwith coach ccascii running, and, after acting as a mail guard on the Great Western Railway for seven years, was tatione at l'addington in 1861. where he remained until his recent retirement.  A locksmith and ex-convict, named Johann lEssen, who was in gaol at Posen awaiting trial, : thlAs according to the 'lady t'aromiele corre,pondent at Derlimjust made a daring escape from gaol after murdering, a warder named Frankowski. At 1 o'clock in the morning, as Frankowski entered Bison's cell, on his usual round of inspection. Nissen, who was lying in wait for the warder, give hini a fearful blow with an iron bar taken from the ticelstead,and killed him on the spot. The prisoner then stripped his victim of his coat, cap, keys, and other things, and passed unsuspected through all the gates, even those at which military sentinels suer, tooted. No trace has been discovered of the At the (Mester County Police-court, on ue• day,Jagies Nield,timekeeper on the Manchester Ship Canal, in Cheshire, was committed for trial on the charge of obtaining money by false pretences, and falsifying the books of the Ship Canal Company. It was the duty of Nield to enter on the book; the names of all men working in a certain gam:. entered the names of two men named Davies, ly one of whom existed.He induced a carpenter mini ...a Chubb to draw the fictitious Davies's inm v January 2nd, but the matter was discovered on :I.e 9th. Bail was granted.