SANDWICH, MASS., Dec. 14 – A bottle containing the following note was picked up on the beach to-day, three miles below Sandwich harbor: “Bark J.R. Humphrey, Bath, Me. We were out in the storm of November 25, and we wrote this to our friends, for when it is found we will be at the bottom of the wild ocean, hoping that you will pray for us and tell your friends.” Signed, John Wilson, captain, Pat Hoey, Tim Lewis, John O’Neil, Billy Cartell. On the reverse side was: “We are all lost.”
[There is no such vessel as the “Bark J.R. Humphrey of Bath, Me.,” or elsewhere, on the treasury department list of merchant vessels. — Ed. Chronicle.]
TORONTO, ONT., Dec. 14. – The newspapers here all treat Representative Butterworth’s resolution looking to a union between the people of the United States and those of Canada, in a hostile spirit, and declare that the people here do not want any political assimilation.
ELMIRA, N.Y., Dec. 15 – Oakley C. Johnson of Hackettsville, N.J., who has been visiting this city for some time, was last night arrested for his peculiar mania for hugging women on the street. He would prowl about after dark, and should he meet a woman alone would hug and embrace her until her screams would frighten him away. He has been shot at several times, but never hurt. He is a finely educated man, and was formerly a professor in the Peekskill military academy.
BIRMINGHAM, ALA., Dec. 16 – In Lamar county on Friday night, a crowd of masked men took Mrs. Jane Johnson from her house and administered 39 lashes on her bare back, and then warned her to leave the county within five days.
A number of piratical oyster boats have been sunk in Chesapeake bay by the Maryland state police steamer McLane. The captain of one of the sunken sloops has arrived at Baltimore, and reported that nine of the men belonging to the sunken vessels were drowned; but other reports are to the effect that only two or three lives were lost.
The yellow fever being over in the south, for the year, traffic between cities and seaports is now unrestricted.
Stephen Connslay, of Concord, walked with Mrs. Caron on the street too often, and had to get a doctor to sew up a hole in his scalp, made by Mr. Caron, who in turn will have to sew up a hole in his pocket book made by paying a $21.62 fine and costs to the city of Concord.
W.H.H. Newhall, a well known ex-member of the Manchester police force, left that city suddenly the day before election. Rumors connect his departure with the absence of a certain woman, to whom he had been devoting attention. He left a family behind.
James Landers, freight brakeman, was instantly killed in the Northern railroad yard at Concord Saturday night.
Snow—wind—dust—rain—frost—hurricanes—mud—zero—cyclones — beastly — well, you know how it is yourself, so it’s no use using any profane words about the weather – Nat.
The railroad commissioners have investigated the accident which occurred at the Boston & Maine station in this city on the 29th of October, and resulted in the death of a person supposed to be James Fitzgerald, and report that no blame can be attached to the corporation, or the employees who were handling the train. A similar report was made in the case of the section man who was killed on the Dover & Winnepiseogee railroad a few weeks ago, and brought into Dover on the cowcatcher of the engine.
The New Hampshire Gazette, December 20, 1888
Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, in a letter descriptive of the Mormon Tabernacle at Salt Lake city, writes: “A glance at the congregation easily corroborated the statement that Mormonism largely recruits itself from the most wretched and ignorant classes of European countries. Some of the heads of those present might well have been termed well advanced on the way back to the gorilla. Vacant countenances, eyes empty of thought were seen on every side.”
NEW HAVEN, CONN., Dec. 19 – The New York express tonight struck a peddler’s team near Williams bridge, grinding the horse and wagon into very small pieces. When the trainman went back with a stretcher to pick up the driver he jumped up and dashed off across the fields as fast as he could run, evidently crazed with fright.
MADISON, WIS., Dec. 23 – Two men fishing in Sugar river, near the little village of Mt. Vernon, about 20 miles from here, on Friday, found a bag containing the head and other remains of a human body sunk in the river. The head was identified as that of William Crist, a young man who had been employed as a cheese maker in the village factory. Investigation resulted in the strongest circumstantial evidence pointing to Joseph Davidson, a cheese maker, as the murderer. Crist lived with the latter, and the motive of the crime was probably to get possession of $400 which the murdered man had in his possession.
BRADFORD, PA., Dec. 23 – Three nitro glycerine magazines near here blew up last night, smashing all the glass in the neighborhood, and demolishing houses half a mile away. Nine persons were injured, two fatally.
LOWELL, MASS., Dec. 24 – John J. Lynch, a drunken brute, quarrelled with his family today. He locked his wife up in a room tonight and told her she would not live to see Christmas. One of her girls and a boy, aroused by their mother’s screams, rushed into the room, when the brute hurled them aside and seizing an axe buried the weapon in his wife’s head. Lynch was locked up. The wound is not necessarily fatal. Later the wife presented a pitiable sight, sitting in a dingy apartment with an infant in her arms, suffering great agony, while she strove to excuse her husband’s act to the reporters. Lynch is a brother to Gen. Butler’s gardener, and is a good machinist, but has done no work for some time, his wife and six children supporting him.
Mrs. John Stone, residing near Albion, Iowa, had her husband arrested Thursday for beating her, sued him for divorce, and drowned herself in the river Saturday night. She was the mother of six children.
Ex-Chief of Police Ditsch of Kansas city, Mo., suicided at his daughter’s grave on Saturday night. He had charge of the funds of the Police Relief Association, and there is a big shortage. Hence these bullets.
A smooth-tongued young man was arrested in New York last week for working the bunco game on a wealthy farmer living near Millingwood, Ont. He got $22,000.
A dynamite magazine exploded at Mt. Pleasant, Ohio, on Sunday afternoon, and it is reported that several men were killed.
Steamer Belgic, just arrived at San Francisco from Hong Kong, brings advices of a terrible fire at Saigon, Nov. 20th. The flames had been extinguished only half an hour when a flood came and swept away embankments and bridges. The double visitation caused great misery.
Mattie King, who keeps a low place in Franklin block, was arrested by the police Monday, and created considerable excitement by her boisterous and frantic efforts to free herself. A male companion was taken into custody soon after, and a third person eluded the officers. If all reports are true it is high time the place was cleaned out, and it is to be hoped this move on the part of the police will be followed by others like it.
Cheeky Thieves
About midnight Saturday night Mrs. Downs, widow of Mr. John B. Downs, who lives on the corner of Water and Hancock streets, hearing a noise in her yard looked out the window, and seeing two men enveloped in waterproofs such as women wear, near her hencoop, asked what they were doing. and received for an answer an invitation to “go to ____!” The ruffians carried off seven hens. It is to be hoped their Christmas dinner very badly disagreed with their digestion. They evidently knew there was no man in the house at the time.
There must be something radically wrong at the railroad yard in Concord, for hardly a day passes without a serious accident occurring there. The People and Patriot of that city says of it: “this is the yard of all others to make cripples and corpses.”
The church at Shaker village, Canterbury, was buit in 1792, and has never been reshingled. The shingles were of heart pine, fastened on with wooden pegs.
The decline in value of hill-town farms in Massachusetts is put at 50 per cent during the last ten years. … The shrinkage in several town values have been from $300,000 to $800,000.
The New Hampshire Gazette. December 27, 1888
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Our thanks to the Portsmouth Athenaeum, holder of the newspapers from which the items above were excerpted. – The Ed.