Weekly News. — 1891-08-13 (Blandford, Dorset, England)

MEMBER VF PARLIAMENT'S PRIVI LEGE.  In the London Bankruptcy Coart,on Friday,before Mr. Justice Williams, an application recently made to the learned judge for the committal of Mr. F. Wootton Isaacson, M.P., for contempt of court, was heard. A sequestration order had been made against the estate of Walter Armstrong, of Weensland, Hawick, and London, and the Trustee of the estate beitig desirous of examining Mr. Isaacson, obtained leave to hold a private sitting, making the London Court auxiliary to the Scotch Court for the purpose. Mr. Isaacson, however, raised various objections to the order, and pleade 1 privilege as a member of Parliament. The matter was accordingly reported by Mr. Registrar Giffard to the learned judge.—His lordship stated that Mr. Isaacson was duly served with a summons to be examined in certain bankruptcy proceedings. He attended upon the summons, and by his attendance waived any formal objection to the procedure. The objections which Mr. Isaacson raised to the jurisdiction were of a technical character, and would be overruled by the court. His lordship, however, understood that Mr. Isaacson had made an affidavit, in which he expressed his willingness to be examined in the event of his objections being overruled by the court. That being so, the question which remained was whether Mr. Isaacson could successfully plead privilege as a member of Parliament in bar to an order for his committal. The question had arisen in a case decided by Lord Brougham, and the objection appeared to be well founded. Was the application made in order to punish Mr. Isaacson, or was it anything more than an attachment for the purpose of enforcing the order of the court ? He thought that a committal if ordered was in the nature rather of a civil than a punitive process. As a result, however, of the examination of the authorities,it was clear that the order for committal which had been applied for against Mr. Isaacson— he being a member of Parliament—could not be made. The motion would, therefore, be refused with costs.  A curious ending to a trial for murder is reportedfrom Cahors, Gambetta's birthplace. A landowner, named Piganiol, had had a difficulty with his father-in-law about the payment of his wife's dot. He had not wedded empty-handed, having accumulated a sum of £3OO in gold, which he had, out of boastfulness, handed to the father-in-law, one Molime. The old man not only kept the money, but refused to hand over his daughter's dowry. This led to unpleasantness and high words, in the course of which Piganiol took up a pickaxe and drove it through his father-in-law's skull. The jury seemed to approve of this summary mode of settling family quarrels, as they acquitted Piganiol.  The Austro-Hungarian Consul in Jassy,M.Emerich Pietschka, has shot himself in his office. This is the second Austrian CoiLsul in the East who ha committed suicide within a fews weeks. In both cases fits of melancholia were the cause.  At the Pavilion Theatre, Whitechapel, on Saturday night, during the performance of a piece called "The World," in which a mimic ship is blown up, two men named Frederick Chappel, aged 22, and Francis Figg,ins, aged 39, scene-shifters, were shockingly burnt about their faces and hands by the explosion.