Stockton Herald, South Durham and Cleveland Advertiser. — 1879-12-20 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

THE HERALD.  the year commenced than the suicide of Mr Gay Herbert, the late landlord of the George . Hotel, was brought to light. In August there w,ail another case—that of Mr Samuel Fenny; aid fa September it will bevemembered that a man named George Bates leaped from the Royal Charlie steamboat, and died from the effects of his. immersion in the river.  1879 h as likt-wise been prolific of remarkable ,* cases" both iii the criminal and civil courts of Stockton. Prominent among the criminal cases was 'The Great Systematic Swindle," in which Rickard Swann and Joseph Mears were charged with obtaining, by false pre. tences, subscriptions from many of the principal residents. Much to the disgust of all who had been doped, the rentals escaped upon a pare technicality. A.nother notable case wee that in which a bankrupt poulterer was charged with attempting to defraud his creditors by removing some of his goods and chattels to the house of a fellow tradesman. Sere, too, the encased escaped, as the evidence was insufficient to support the charge. The "Outrage by a South Stockton Cabman," the case " Periary by a Billingham Publican," and the forgery of names to a municipal nomination paper, all help to make up • good round number of prosecutions, although the cases mentioned by no means exhaust the list. In the civil Court the principal case has been that of " Adams versus the Corporation." Tile action was brought to recover £lOO as compensation for damage alleged to have been done to Mr Adams's residence in consequence of defective main drainage. After a most wearisome trial the plaintiffs got a verdict, though for a much smaller amount than they had claimed.  From a metacirolooical point of view the year '79 does not present a very pleasant picture. An intensely cold and generally dreary winter was followed by one of the wettest summers ever recorded ; and now we are in the midst of" the coldest weather that anyone in Stockton can remember." It was regarded as a very unusual circumstance last Christmas that there had been fourteen days of continuous skating before the genial break on Christmas Day. Bat this year there were more than "fourteen days," skating before we reached even the middle of December. The November of 1878 was the coldest which had been recorded since 1851 last; November was still colder, and December colder still.  In closing this brief retrospect of the departing year, we must not omit to mention an all-important event in connection with the staple industry of Stockton and the district. 1879 will long be marked as a" redletter day "in the history of Cleveland, for it is during the past twelve months that the great problem of making steel from Cleveland" pig" has been solved by one of our local firms. The various changes to which this may eventually lead can hardly be adequately conceived at this early stage of the discovery; yet it does not require any great stretch of imagination to foresee that Cleveland mast by-and-bye become one of the chief steel-producing districts in the world. At the present moment Stockton is participating largely in the benefits of the recent revival.in the iron trade. Several of the large works which had laid idle for many months have now been re-started, and others will no doubt commence operations at the beginning of the new year. The year 1880 will therefore be entered upon with far brighter prospects than the year 1879. We can only trust that there may be a full realisation of the sanguine expectations which have been created by the present revival.