Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 July 1911 — INDIANA STATE NEWS. : [ARTICLE]

INDIANA STATE NEWS. :

FORT WAYNE Charles Clark many years keeper of a resort in this city, paid a fine of $5,600 and was sentenced from two to fourteen years in the penitentiary on pleading guilty to having bribed Chief of Police Benjamin F Elliott. The fine was paid in cash and the sentence was suspended, by the court. This is an outcome of the exposure of the police graft in this city which was made early in the year and which resulted in a general tear-up of the police department, the resignation of the chief, a captain, and several patrolmen, the indictment of the chief for accepting a bribe, the indictment of all the Inmates of disorderly resorts and the effectual closing of the “red light” district. The indictment of Elliott for accepting a bribe was quashed and a new indictment charging him with perjury was returned a few weeks later by a special session of the grand jury. The exposures disclosed that Clark and others had made costly presents to the heads of the police department.

LAFAYETTE—President Stone of Purdue university has divorced from his wife, Victoria H. Stone. The custody of the minor child, Henry Stone, is given to President Stone. The divorce was granted on the ground of abandonment President Stone confirmed a report that his wife has withdrawn from the world, including a separation from her husband and family, to pursue a mystic teaching, supposed to be imported from India, known as the philosophy of Yogi. The last heard from President Stone’s wife was when she, was in Germany, but it is reported she lias gone to Kabakon, South Sea to join a colony of the new cult. The Kabakon colony was founded several years ago by August Englehardt and numbers less than one hundred persons. They live almost entirely on cocoanuts.

FORT WAYNE—Uniting in an organization which has for its chief object making horse stealing more perilous and the detection of thieves more certain, many sheriffs of northern Indiana, northwestern Ohio and southern Michigan organized the TriState Sheriffs’ association Sheriff H. B. Wilson, of Vant Vert. O„ was elected president and Sheriff A. M. Reichelderfer, of Fort Wayne, secretary. The organization is the plan of the two officials to bring at least fifty county sheriffs in the three states into an organization. Each sheriff will organize his own county, obtaining trustworthy representatives in each City, town and village, as well as through the rural districts which are now connected with a network of telephone lines. INDIANAPOLIS A suit to break the will of Alfred Burdsal, who died April 2, 1911, leaving nearly all of his estate, valued at about $1,000,000, to the departments of public health and public parks of the city of Indianapolis was brought by his widow, Mrs. Emma Bryan . Burdsal, in the probate court. Mrs. Burdsal alleges that her husband was of unsound mind when he executed the codicil, about fifteen days after the will was made, and that the Instruments were unduly executed. It is also declared that the health and park boards have no corporate existence, and therefore are not capable of taking a bequest or legacy or of being the beneficiaries of any •trus.. EVANSVILLE William E. Hatter, living at Dale, has twin boys, four years old, who have developed a faculty for handling figures. The boys can add, subtract and multiply with speed and accuracy. Only a few common school graduates are more proficient in mathematics than these boys. Mr. Hatter may permit the boys to go on the vaudeville stage. COLUMBUS Homer Percifield, two years of age, was found in a cherry tree when his mother missed him from the house and went to look for him. He had climbed to the top of a fourteen-foot ladder and from there had grasped the limbs and pulled himself to the topmost branches of the tree, where he was enjoying his fill of cherries. MICHIGAN —One of the men who was drowned in the wreck of the barge B. D. Marshall has been identified as Martin R. Donahue, whom his brother, Thomas Donahue, a Chicago mail carrier, had not seen for twenty-five years. The resetnblance of the body to a photograph taken thirty years ago resulted in the identification.

BRAZlL—William J. Ward, about seventy years old, editor of the Clay City Reporter for many years, committed suicide by hanging himself with a rope on the back porch of his home at Clay City, south of here. Ward was the veteran editor of the county. Recently he was compelled to give up his paper on account of failing health. INDIANAPOLIS edged at the office of Governor Marshall'. tbat he has employed a detective to Investigate the recent whitecap outrages in Monroe county. The governor is determined to break up the whitecap gang If sufficient evidence can be obtained to brin'g about convictions of the active participants. . INDIANAPOLIS The Indiana supreme court has affirmed a judgment for $15,000 damages in favor of Robert E. Lynn and against the Big Four Railroad company for. an injury reccved at a street crossing in Terre .Haute. PRINCETON William W. Medcall, fifty-seven years old, one of the best known criminal lawyers of southern Indiana, died unexpectedly at his home here of heart disease; His health had been failing for some time.