Digest of stories from the Beds & Herts Saturday Telegraph: June 1^st, 1918.

At the meeting of the Luton Borough Prisoners of War Parcels Committee yesterday morning, 52 parcels to prisoners were despatched.

In addition to the 52 who are now permanently on the books, the Committee are making efforts to secure the transference from regimental depots of a number of other prisoners, and within a few days it is expected that something like 80 will be on the books of the local Committee.

Messages as to the quality of the parcels are regularly received, and they are invariably pronounced 'good' and 'very good'.

Yesterday the accounts which the Committee were called upon to pay totalled £121 odd, and much more money is necessary.

• For a long time Mrs Manton, of 14 Chapel Street, has been in anxiety as to her son, Pte Percy Walter Manton (Beds Regiment), who last summer was reported as missing. She was recently greatly relieved to hear news of him, although it was to the effect that he was a prisoner of war in Germany. Pte Manton had joined up three years ago and had been in France nearly two years. Before the war he worked for J. W. Green Ltd.

• On Wednesday the Luton Borough Tribunal were dealing with greengrocers and fruiterers, and when H. G. MacManus was called for there appeared a big bronzed sailor man in the garb of H.M. Navy uniform. He explained that he was on 28 days' leave and had appeared before the Tribunal as his wife had been pestered in the two years he had been in the Navy in the belief he had not answered his call-up papers. The Town Clerk apologised to the former greengrocer as the recruiting office at Bedford had not passed on relevant information about him.

• Luton, Dunstable and Leighton branch railway line has lately become notorious owing to the practice of travellers who seek to evade payment of the railway fare. At Dunstable Sessions on Tuesday, in prosecuting an errand lad named Victor Sharp, of Houghton Regis, for travelling without a ticket from Luton to Dunstable, the solicitor to the Great Northern Railway Company explained that the company were obliged to bring the case as there had been quite an epidemic of such offenders. The lad pleaded guilty and was fined £1, including costs.

• A distressing story was told at an occasional Borough Court yesterday, when William Simpson, aged 37, a soldier from Northumberland in the R.A.M.C. stationed at Blackpool, was charged with attempting to commit suicide by cutting his throat and wrist with a razor. Simpson, a patient at St George's Hospital, London, had been wandering since Tuesday. He was found on the tailboard of a slow goods train at the Midland Railway station covered with blood. Owing to his condition, the magistrates agreed that the man should first be taken by ambulance to be admitted to Wardown Hospital for treatment. His condition was so grave, however, that he was removed to Napsbury Military Hospital.

• An accident occurred about 2.15 yesterday afternoon in Upper George Street. Miss McCachen, of Chester Road, Dunstable, was driving a pony and trap when a tramcar driven by Patrick Grogan had all but passed her when the pony stumbled and fell. The wing of the trap was caught by the end of the tramcar and overturned. Miss McCachen was thrown on to the pavement, but fortunately escaped with only a bruise or two.

• There was excitement on the Moor on Thursday evening when a large number of munition workers were hurrying across owing to the sudden collapse of a Dunstable girl in a very hysterical state. The young woman was got into a motor car and removed to the infirmary. In the meantime a baby had been born. It is stated that the child had no separate existence, and an inquest is not deemed necessary.