An interesting case has been decided at the Mixed Court in connection with the recent fire in the Miller Road, Hongkew. The fire which originated in an empty house was proved and confessed to have been started by the occupant of the adjoining tenement who had a policy with the Meiji Fire Ofice for Tls. 2,000 on his furniture and clothing. This. Chinaman appears to have been one of an enterprise ing family of five brothers who have been living for the past few years on the spoils from the insurance companies. The chiefinstigators have unfortunately escaped, Woo Fong-ping and Woo Tsze-leong; but the remaining brothers Chow. Yuen-chang, Woo Tsze-may, and Woo Al-yuen were arrested, together with the native broker Vu Sun-chao, who had been in the habit of introducing the business to the insurance company" and who doubtless received a share of the results. Their mods operandi in each ease was as follows:—Through the broker, one of the brothers would approach the insurance company and under different names on each occasion obtain policy covering furniture and clothes borrowed for the occasion and located as far from the town water supply as possible. The furniture, ete., would gradually be removed and in the course of a few w cks the fireballs would ring an alarm for a fire in this house or the adjacent one and before the arrival of the fire brigades all traces of foul play would have been obliterated, and although in some of these fires fraud was suspected, no evidence could be obtained to bring the matter home. In this inst fire the " ting " has been oubwitted, the police were promptly on the scene of the fire and discovered sufficient evi ence to warrant the detention of the occupant of the house and little by little learned enough to charge the individual with the crime of arson, whereupon he confessed, implicating the whole of his brothers and the broker. The two ringleaders have escaped and will be careful not to show themselves in Shanghai again. 'The sentence meted out to the other four is three years' hard labour and to receive 100 blows at six monthly intervals. This is the best ease for years, and the sentence of the Mixed Court Magistrate should have a decidedly deterrent effect on other would-be fire-raisers. of the skiu,—No case of disease of the skin, be its nature what it may, has failed to be benefited when these potent remedies have been properly applied. In scrofulous and scorbutic affections they are especially serviceable. Scurvy and eruptions, which had resisted all other modes of treatment and gradually become worse from year to year, "have been completely cared by Holloway's eooliny Ointment and purifying Pills, which rent out the disease from the blood itself and leave the constitution free from every morbid taint. In the nursery Holloway's Ointment should be ever at hand; it will give ease in sprains, contusions, burns, scalds, and infantile eruptions, and may always safely be applied by any ordinary attendant. 42
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.