LXXXVII. La provocation
LXXXVII. Provocation
French and British politics, a Rimini insurrection, and the Canton fire disaster dominate this issue.
- A fire in a Canton theatre on 25 May killed 1,257 people and wounded 2,000, with so many victims disfigured that relatives could not identify them for burial.
- At a Dublin rally of some 5,000 people, Daniel O'Connell warned that France and England were secretly fortifying against each other, and that the Oregon Question would perpetually set America and Britain at odds.
- About a hundred Spanish and Piedmontese refugees landed near Rimini on 24 September, stormed the fort of San Leo, freed political prisoners, and seized the town before retreating at the approach of papal troops.
- The Court of Cassation quashed a Rouen judgment that had charged railway contractors Mackenzie and Brassey over 108,000 francs in octroi duties on raw tunnel-excavation debris, ruling that mixed earth not prepared for construction could not be taxed as building material.
- Dr. Jacques-Joseph Moreau of the Hospice de Bicêtre took hashish himself to study its effects, reporting that it made him hear colours, see animated portraits leap from their canvases, and feel his body grow to enormous size.
- Violin dealer Charles Husson of Mirecourt was fined 100 francs and barred from using the 'Claudot' trade-mark after the Commercial Tribunal ruled that affixing a dead maker's name to cheaply made instruments constituted fraud.
- Fraudster Adolphe Sinval forged subscription lists bearing the names of Carlotta Grisi, Mme Stoltz, Adolphe Adam, and Eugène Scribe to beg money from leading Parisian artists, claiming variously to have broken his arm, his leg, and his right leg.
- A new public washhouse opened in the London parish of Saint Pancras offers baths in common pools entirely free of charge, with private cabinet baths available for one penny each.