Barry Dock News

BARRY AND PENARTH LOCAL BOARDS AND THE PARISH COUNCILS ACT. THE Official Circular issued last week by the Local Government Board, explanatory of. the provisions of the new Local Government (or Parish Councils) Eng- land and Wales Act is an interesting document, for it is calculated to remove a considerable amount of doubt and mis- understanding which seem to exist in the public mind as to how and when the Act will become operative. The principal feature of the circular, so far as it applies to the Barry and Penarth Local Boards, is that which applies to the annual election of members, which, in ordinary course, would take place in April, but which, under the new order of things, will not take place this year, inasmuch as Urban and Rural District Councils will take the place of all Urban and Rural Sanitary Authorities, and parishes in any rural district will be represented # on the Board of Guardians by the persons elected as Rural District Coun- cillors, guardians as such being only elected in parishes in urban districts. The first elections, under the new Act, of I Guardians and District Couucillors will be held on the 8th of November nexJ:, or on such later date or dates in the year 1894 as the Board may fix, and the persons elected will come into office on the second Thursday next after their election, or such other day not more than seven days earlier or later as may be fixed by or in pursuance of rules made by the Board in relation to their election. Upon the day on which the first guardians or urban or rural district councillors elected under the Act come into office, the persons who are then members of boards of guardians or urban or rural sanitary authorities will cease to hold office but until that day the persons who, at the passing of the Act, were guardians or members of urban sanitary authorities for districts other than boroughs will continue in office notwithstanding any want of qualification, as if the term of office for which they were elected expired on that day, and except for the purpose of filling casual vacancies, or of electing additional guardians, where the number is increased, no further elections will be held. Hence the guardians and members of urban sanitary authorities who would have gone out of office in April next but for the passing of the Act, will continue in office until November, and will then retire, and the elections which would otherwise have been held in April will not take place. No further steps, therefore, will be taken with a view to any such election, so that a good deal of disappointment is naturally felt amongst intended candidates and others in consequence of the fact that the contests which it was intended should take place in April have been thus in- voluntarily postponed till towards the close or the year.

GOOD FRIDAY. Friday next being Good Friday, and consequently a general holiday, adver- tisers and correspondents would much oblige by sending their communications, if possible, a day earlier than usual, so as to secure publicatic^n.—ED.

The Christian Com- monwealth recently is THE SALVATION ARMY seemed to suffer a A MOVEMENT OF THE good deal of concern PAST IN WALES ? as to whether the Salvation Army movement in the Principality was a thing of the past. In the strictly Welsh-speaking districts we agree with a North Wales contemporary that such is the case, but in localities where Anglicism has taken firm hold upon the language of the people this great revivalistic movement fairly holds its own. Dealing with General Booth's Social Scheme, the Carnarvon and Denbigh Herald declares the opinion that Wales did its part and did it well considering the way the Principality has .,been neglected during the past year or two by the Salvation Army. It contends that the leaders of the Salvation Army appear to completely ignore the Wels work, and states that from reports received from North and South Wales it would seem that the purely Welsh forward movements of both Calvinistic Methodist and the Wesleyans will soon supplant the Salvation Army in the Principality unless the local leaders of the Army can manage to show a little more com- mon sense, tact, and enter more into the feelings of the people to whom they have been sent. It appears that of late the Salvation Army has been led in Wales by English officers, who have failed to commend themselves to the Welsh people, and a number of the best corps in North Wales have ceased to exist. Experience has demonstrated over and over again that the English and Welsh work must be carried on separately in Wales, but General Booth has failed to make this discovery, and the Army is rapidly becoming a movement of the past. The members of .the Penarth Local PENARTH LOCAL BOARD Board seem deter- AND THE mined to secure for BARRY RAILWAY COMPANY, their constituency the privileges of through trains and interchange passenger tickets between Penarth and Barry. The board have been agitating in this direction for some time, the negociations with the Barry and Taff Vale Railway Com- panies reaching a crisis a fortnight ago, when Mr W. Mein, the secretary of the former com- pany, wrote to the Penarth local authority stating that, in consequence of the fact that only a few passengers availed themselves of the Taff Vale trains between Cadoxton and Penarth, coupled with the fact that fully 20,000 persons were carried over the Barry Railway every week, the Barry directors could not see their way clear to make the arrangement proposed by the Local Board. The latter, however, are not satisfied, and have, consequently, instructed their clerk to prepare a case for submission to the Railway Commissioners, in the hope, it it stated, of forcing the hands of the Barry Company to grant the facilities asked for. 1.. r One of our Cardiff contemporaries seertif THE PROPOSE]) COUNTY inclined to ridicule the COURT FOR BARRY. idea that Barry needs a County Court. At j the same time it is j candid enough to "admit that it would be a J convenience to the commercial and trading community to be supplied with an institution J of this kind. Sometime last yen- application was made in a similar direction by the Local Board, but hitherto without success, and the Chambers of Trade, the Grocers' Association, and other bodies representative of the general i public of the district, have now again taken the matter up, and have determined to urge upon the Local Board to once more resort to an appeal to the proper quarter. "But," says the Western Mail, the Lord Chancellor is I likely to be greatly influenced in his decision by the practicability of the proposal without in- creasing expense and without depriving Cardiff of any of that share of attention which it receives from the judge at present; Logically, we see but very little in this. The idea, to our mind, is practicable if only from the point of view that a community of fifteen thousand persons has sprung up at Barry within the past few years, and is, therefore, entitled to the same consideration as is already paid, to localities containing even smaller populations. The arguments set forth by our contemporary were surely not those which influenced the Lord Chancellor when he granted an occasional court from Pontypridd to the Rhondda Valley sometime ago. There are hundreds of plaints from the Barry district at every sitting of the Cardiff Court, and all that the trading com- munity of Barry ask for is that under the circumstances public convenience may be con- sidered to the extent, at least, of holding a sitting of the County Court in their midst, say, every two months. A question which has engaged the atten- THE MORALITY OF OUR tion of the Ministers' DAUGHTERS. Fraternal Association in the Barry district for some time past is one which we are disposed to draw public attention to ourselves this week, in the hope that this may have the effect of minimising to some extent an evil which, we regret to find, is gradually becoming more and more apparent in our midst. We should be sorry to suggest that the large number of young women-in most cases, however, mere girls-lend them- selves promiscuously to the companionship of the middy section of our floating popula- tion for any but the most chaste purposes; still, there cannot be any doubt that the matter is one which calls for serious attention on the part of parents and others who are responsible for the moral well-being of these girls. Night after night, Holton-road and other streets in kac uitttwni ttlliCUly (Kliited Yritili the frivolous class named. Many of these girls at one time were members of different Sunday schools in the district, but who, since they have taken up this wayward habit, have apparently fallen off from the paths of recti- tude and decorum. The members of the two organisations referred to, therefore, are, we think, fully justified in the attitude of concent they have taken up. and we trust, in the interests -of decency and virtue, this otherwise respect- able class of girls will refrain-from a habit which, there is reason to fear, points them the way to social indifference, if not to moral degradation and ruin. Amongst the attrac- tions for the Easter THE COMING JTANCT holidays in the Barry DJtESS FOOTBALL district the fancy dress MATCH AT BARRY. football match which is to be played at the Castle i Farm Ground, Barry, by I members of the enterprising Barry Town Association Football Club should rank among the first. The match, which will be played by one eleven dressed as ladies, and the other in various comic costumes, is sure to create much fun, and promises to be well worth seeing. The teams will meet at the Ship Hotel at 10.45 a.m., and proceed to the ground, where, at 11 o'clock, the ball will be kicked off by a promin- ent local gentleman. The arrangements are being made by the hon. secretary, Mr Percy Haigh, and as this sort of match is somewhat, a novelty, and the charge for admission only threepence, ladies free, there should be a large attendance. Our attention has been drawn to an unfortunate BARRY ISLAND PROM state of things which A PUBLIC CON- exists amongst the resi- VENIENCE POINT OF dents of Barry Island. VIEW. There are already on the Island two or three dozen houses either occupied or about being occupied thereat. Amongst these is the Marine Hotel and other valuable property, for which, of course, heavy rates are being paid, so that whatever municipal con- veniences are enjoyed by the general community of the Local Board district, the residents of the Island are certainly entitled to a fair share. On the contrary, however, although gas has been laid to the Island for a considerable time, not a single public lamp has been erected, neither does the scavenging cart visit the place at all. This being so, our readers may natur- ally anticipate the degree of inconvenience ex- perienced by the inhabitants of the Island. So seriously is this the case, in regard to the want of street lamps, that in several instance* children attending school are obliged to be boarded at Barry in order to avoid the necessity of going home after dark. The same difficult is felt by most of the families in connection with attending places of worship on Sunday- It is only reasonable, therefore, to ask the Local Board to place this matter amongst tbØ subjects requiring prompt and urgent consider" ,¿ atiou. i j