Vraniurto.
It is rumoured that Sir John Yarde Buller, M.P. for the Southern division of Devon, and "the pattern country gentleman" of the Chan- cellor of the Exchequer, is to be raised to the Peerage.
The Rev. G. E. L. Cotton, M.A., late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Assistant Master of Rugby School, has been elected Head Master of Marlborough College, Wiltshire.
There was a fatal accident, last Friday afternoon, on the Aylesbury branch of the North-western Railway. As a passenger-train was approaching hing the junction with the North-western main line at Cheddington, the engine left the rails, broke from its tender, dashed through a hedge, and fell over on its side in a field. The driver retained his place till the locomotive turned over : he was only stunned. The tender, break-van, and two foremost carriages, left the rails on the opposite side. George Allen, the guard, was thrown off by the sudden stoppage, and he died in a few minutes. The carriages were somewhat damaged, but the passengers suffered only from fright and bruises.
The branch consists of a single line of rails. It is a dead level, and per- fectly straight.
A Coroner's Jury was empannelled on Saturday, and sat that day and on Wednesday. It was proved that the speed of the engine was regular and proper ; and that if the disaster was attributable to anything but pure and unaccountable accident, the inferior order of the line might have had some bad influence. However, Captain Galion, Government Inspector, said that " the line appeared to him generally in good order." It was made when light engines were used, and heavy engines are not used on it to this time. The engine is supposed to have jumped at some uneven joint in the rails. dicThet Jury deliberated for more than an hour, and returned the following ver-
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" We find that the deceased, George Allen, came by his death by accidentalcircum- stances, in consequence of the engine of the train of which he was the guard jumping off the line of the Aylesbury Railway. The Jury think, that owing to the clay sub-soil the rails and sleepers require constant attention and care, and that it appears from the evidence that there is not in places sufficient ballast above the clay ; that the bearings are too far apart, the Jury considering that there should be another sleeper under each rail. That no satisfa :tory reason appeaang in the evidence for the engine getting off the rails, the Jury are unable to come /o any other conclusion than that there was some defect connected with the rails or the sleepers in the neighbourhood of the accident."
Mr. Thomas Haughton, a " mining-agent" to the Earl of Ellesmere, one of the passengers who suffered by the railway collision at Donnington, has since died. His thigh was fractured, and there was a severe contusion on the chest, fatally lacerating internal organs. After an inquiry lasting many hours, a Coroner's Jury returned a verdict of " Manslaughter " against Joseph Thompson, the man through whose ne- gligence the engine moved untended from a shed at Shrewsbury, and then ran into the train—fourteen miles from Shrewsbury—in which the deceased was seated. A collision in the "{Baby tunnel of the North-western Railway has caused the death of a workman. A. ballast-train, conveying a number of labourers from Birmingham, entered the tunnel : some time after, a coal-train followed on the same rails : there was no intimation of a train being in the tun- nel. When near the centre, the driver of the coal-train perceived the other train stopping just ahead ; he shut off the steam, reversed the engine, and, with his stoker, leaped off. There was a great crash. Many of the labourers who were seated in the trucks were thrown out, and more or less hurt : one, named Williams, was jammed between some of the carriages ; his back was broken, and he died soon after he had been conveyed to Coventry.
Mr. George Thompson, an iron and coal master at Miners, near Wrex- ham, has been killed on the branch railway which traverses his estate. Mr. Thompson, eighty-three years old, was crossing the rails on a pony, when a train dashed up and struck the pony. Mr. Thompson died after six hours of unconsciousness.
Five men have lost their lives, and seventeen others have been badly burnt, by an explosion in Bunker's Hill colliery, Bilston. A man went down to feed the horses on Sunday, and negligently left open an air-door, which stopped the ventilation ; when the workmen entered with candles on Monday morning the accumulated gas exploded. A skip was descending full of work- men at the time, and all but one were blown out of it by the explosion. The disaster was increased by the explosion of two casks of gunpowder.
Three men have been badly burnt by an explosion in Lietty Sheakine colliery, Aberdare. It was their own fault ; for they had taken a naked candle into an old working necessarily charged with gas.
Anne Begg, a woman of forty, living separated from her husband at Gates- head, has been subjected to the criminal violence of nine men, who assailed her at night on the road between Newcastle and Gateshead : some talked of murdering her. Two men were arrested, and identified by the woman ; and subsequently, the Police took five more; but when they were brought before the Magistrates, on Tuesday, the Police announced that the prosecutrix had been missing since the preceding morning. The prisoners were remanded for a week, that the mystery of the woman's disappearance might be cleared up.
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