Launceston Examiner (Tas. : 1842 - 1899), Saturday 18 July 1868, page 2


BOTH ENDS. A ruffianly young chimney-sweep, named Boutright, aged about twenty, has been fined five pounds at Marlebone Police-court for a most disgraceful assault upon a respectable young woman. She was standing at the gate of her house, when the sweep, in full professional gear-that is to say, black from head to foot-presented himself before her, and thrust his unseemly person close upon her. She requested him to move away, whereupon the vagabond took off his cap, which was full of soot, and flung it in her face, nearly blinding the poor girl by the outrage. The ruffian could not pay the five-pound fine imposed upon him, and in default he was carted away in the congenial " Black Maria," or prisoner's van, to gaol, there to undergo two months' imprisonmnent and hard labor. The close approach of the Derby Day curiously reminds us how extremes inay sometimes meet. Some years ago a gay young blood of the aristocracy amused himself while returning from the Downs by flinging bags of flour over the inmates of passing carriages. That was one end of the social scale. On Saturday it was a "cad" of a sweep who threw a capful of soot over a young woman. That was the other end of the scale. Which is the lower we wonder?