By connecting with the Port Chalmers power instead of continuing the present installation northwards from Rothesay a big gap of road between the latter place and Burkes, near which there are no houses, will be eliminated, and a saving be thus made in the erection of poles, placing of wires, etc.
• Ottawa: A remarkable case of justice was dealt with in the court at the City of St Thomas a few days ago.
A young man of 17 had been convicted of a criminal assault on a girl of 13, and the judge gave the father the option of whipping his son in the court room or of having him sent to the penitentiary for a flogging.
The father took the first alternative.
He went out and purchased a rawhide, which is rather a severe instrument, and with this he laid heavy blows on the young man's bare back. At the fifteenth stroke the boy fainted, and thereupon the doctor who was present declared that the sentence of the court had been fulfilled.
• Berlin: In several German cities street-washing machines driven and operated by storage batteries are in operation. The machine employed is a 3-ton vehicle equipped with a 40-cell battery giving 200 ampere-hours at the five-hour discharge rate, with travelling speeds of four, six, and nine miles per hour. It carries a heavy tank of water, brushes, and rotating rubber scrapers.
There are 24 of these machines at work in Berlin at present, with six special charging stations, and each machine covers 18 to 25 miles per day, and costs less to operate than a horse-drawn machine.
• Exciting scenes occurred in Berlin the other evening, when the police made a sudden descent upon a women's poker club. The affair had some extraordinary features. But for the husbands of the women by whom the club was patronised the existence of this gambling den might never have become known to the authorities. The men whose wives were nearly always to be found at the club, instead of at their homes, not unnaturally got tired of this sort of thing. It was not only the way in which the women were neglecting their many little domestic obligations that annoyed their husbands. That was bad enough but what aroused more indignation among many of the men was the discovery that their frauen had been using for stakes the money given to them for housekeeping purposes. The husbands therefore determined to have the poker club wiped out, and this was accomplished easily enough, for they had only to acquaint the authorities of its existence, and the police would do the rest.
When the club premises were surrounded the women were seized with panic, as they nearly all belong to good families, and naturally dreaded the exposure that would follow.
Gambling was in full swing at the time of the raid but the police found little money in the bank, a circumstance that was attributed to the fact that it was near the end of the month, and that the women's monthly allowances were about exhausted. - ODT, 9.10.1912
• COPIES OF PICTURE AVAILABLE FROM ODT FRONT OFFICE, LOWER STUART ST, OR WWW.OTAGOIMAGES.CO.NZ
