BORN ON STEAMSHIP.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 255, 27 October 1937, Page 22

BORN ON STEAMSHIP.

LIFE SEARCH FOR PARENTS.

FIRST TEX YEARS AT DURBAN.

(■Special.— By Air Mail.)

LOXDOX, October 9.

After a lifetime spent searching for newe of his parent*, an elderly greyhaired man, now penniless, this week sought admission to an institution at Hillingdon, Middlesex. He produced a death-bed confession of hi.* aunt, the only evidence he had of his birth. Written on notepaper, it wa« worded as follows: —

I confeee that Charles is not my eon. I took him when he was a boy and his name is Carlos Bernardo Welstone. He was horn on the steamship Carlos de Larrango on June 12, 1888. (Signed) •Fane Lewis."

"Because T cannot prove who T am I have been refused the old ajre pension," he said. "My aunt wrote this confession when she told me about my mother and father. T T p till the ajre of 10 T was in a-convent school near Durban. I never knew how T pot there, and cannot remember having a name. Then T came to England and my aunt 'mothered , me. She called me Charles Booth, and T have always kept that name. But when she was dying she .said my parents were Spanish and that my father mw a wealthy sea captain who owned his own ships. She snowed me their photographs.

"Since then T Tiavp spent my whole life tryinjr to find nut something about them. T have heen to everv port and city in Spain and have advertised in newspapers all over the liFbrld.

"But my searrh has ended. T was too ill to rarry on and fcecause T rould jret no pension t wa« utarvinff. T ho[>e to opend the rest of my days in here."