FOR THE BLIND.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 75, 30 March 1939, Page 26

FOR THE BLIND.

PUBLIC GARDEN IN LONDON. SIGHTLESS BANKER'S SCHEME. (By Air Mail.) LOXDOX, March 5. A prosperous Xew York banker, Mr. Gerald Hewitt, came to London in 1929 to see Mr. C. B. Cochran, the theatrical promotor. Mr. Cochran was the last man lie ever saw. He stepped out of Mr. Cochran's office into the sunshine of Old Bond Street, crossed the pavement to a lamppost, and then, without warning, everything went black. Mr. Hewitt had gone blind. The shock was so great that it took him two years to master the great tragedy that had befallen him, and to decide what to do with his life. He was then .">B. and was forced to retire from business. It was the loneliness of 'blindness— blindness which he knew would be without end —that made up his mind for him. Coming to live in Tressillian Road, Brocklev, S.E., Mr. Hewitt decided to spend his enforced leisure bringing happiness to other blind people with less money than himself. He has started the only public garden for the blind in London. It lies off the Langdale Road, Greenwich, and when it was given to him by the Drapers' Company it was little more than a refuse dump attached to some derelict property they owned. To-day the garden is a lovely picture of green lawns, rustic seats and the gold and mauve of early spring flowers. A blind gardener was chosen to tend the garden. He has only the dimmest glimmer of sight in one eye, yet he knows every flower by touch and smell, and sows his seeds by the guidance of strings stretched between pegs. More than 1.10 old blind people from neighbouring districts come to sit in the garden, brought there bv their guides.