—At the Parliamentary bye-election for North-West Durham, due to the retirement of Mr. Lt. Atherley Jones, K.C. (see Jan. 1), Mr. Aneurin Williams (L.) was returned by 7,241 votes; Mr. J. O. Hardicker (U.) obtained 5,564 and Mr. G. H. Stuart (Lab.) 5,026.
—The liner Monroe, plying between New York and Norfolk, Va., was run down by the s.s. Nantucket; forty-one persons in all were drowned.
—Explosion in a coal mine at Achenbach, Westphalia; twenty-two men killed, seventeen injured.
31. The German sailing ship Hera was wrecked off Falmouth; of the crew of twenty-four nineteen were drowned.
—Strike of elementary school teachers in Herefordshire; it was settled February 25.
31. The official return of pauperism for January, 1914, showed that the total number of paupers had dropped from 33.8 per 1,000 in 1874 to 17.5 in 1914, and that of outdoor paupers from 27.5 to 10.3 per 1,000. Indoor pauperism, however, had risen since 1874 from 6.3 to 7.2 per 1,000, this being due largely to the greater use of workhouse infirmaries. Between 1906 and 1913 the total number of paupers over seventy had fallen nearly 75 per cent., and of outdoor paupers over seventy nearly 95 per cent., owing mainly to old-age pensions.
FEBRUARY.
2. First performance in England of Wagner's Parsifal at Covent Garden Opera House. (See post, Pt. II., Music.)
—Announcement that the anonymous lady who had promised 25,000l. to lay out Shadwell Park in memory of King Edward was precluded from giving it by "severe and sudden financial misfortunes."