HEARD "BIG BEN."

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 118, 21 May 1938, Page 11

HEARD "BIG BEN."

MEMORY RESTORED. CHIMES PROVIDE LINK. DERBYSHIRE REUNION. (By Air Mall.) LONDON, April 30. Thousands all over the world listen on ;heir radios to the chimes of 'Big Ben" at Westminster. A popular link witfli the Empire's capital, the t>ooming of the famous clock brings happy memories of home to many jeople. To one man in a Salisbury institution the sound of Big Ben striking the hour was the means of restoring his lost memory and the herald of happiness for a saddened home. To one man in the institution life was blank. Day after day he sat staring sadly before him. Who he was, where he had come from, he did not know. Memory had deserted him. His mind refused to go ba-ck further than the hour when he stumbled, footsore and exhausted, at the institution master's ioor. To cheer him other inmates used to persuade him to listen to the radio. One afternoon over the air came the chimes of Westminster, then the deep boom of Big Ben striking out the hour. "My daughter says 'Benny' when she hears that," he murmured. Someone ran to tell the institution master, who gradually questioned him. "Benny— Benny," he kept repeating. Then the man recalled his name. It was Bennett—Leonard Bennett. Then he remembered Jiis wife—and his home in Buxton, Derbyshire. Mrs. Bennett was summoned. And now the family is united, happy again. "We were returning from a holiday, and on Westminster Bridge my daughter insisted on waiting to hear Big Ben strike," Mr Bennett said this week. "She would not come away, so we had to wait with her. I think " that must have impressed it on my mind."