DUCHESS MOBBED.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 49, Issue 200, 10 June 1929, Page 6

DUCHESS MOBBED.

CHILDREN’S CARDEN PARTY. CLIMB OVER GARDEN WALL. LONDON, May 27. The Duchess of York was so tumultuously received by 6500 Edinburgh school children whom she had invited to a garden party at Holyrood Palace that she was forced to run for safety. The Duchess gave explicit instructions that the children should have the utmost freedom, and even be permitted to do somersaults on the lawn if they wished. Their behaviour was at first most restrained, and-they formed in sections to receive refreshments, yielding to the marshallingof a detachment of Edinburgh high constables, a picked body of business men assisting at such functions. When the Duke and Duchess of York appeared the children abandoned themselves wholeheartedly to their hero worship, broke their ranks and dashed across the lawn, chased by their teachers and the morning-coated high constables.

The Duchess was immediately swallowed up in the huge crowd, and the ladies’ suite was also lost. The court officials were frantic. The Duke and Duchess temporarily escaped by climbing the wall surrounding the garden, but the children rushed on, sweeping away the band of the Scots Greys and the kilted Cameron pipers. They clambered over the rock garden in an effort to follow the Royal pair, but officials finally forced a patli through the cheering mass, along which the Duchess ran, smiling and waving her hand. She dived in the palace door as the young loyalists overcame the escort.