TWO INCIDENTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 124, 29 May 1939, Page 7

TWO INCIDENTS.

SYDNEY SENSATIONS

ACTRESS' COMPLAINTS. FAMILY'S NARROW ESCAPE. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, May 26. The man-woman, Annie Payne, who as related by the "Star's" correspondent last week, successfuly paseed herself off as a man for half a century, and was twice married, the second time to a widow, is now in the Reception House. Two other people, both men, who have been sent there this week, were also responsible for a eensational incident.

At the matinee at the Theatre Royal on Saturday afternoon, while the 17-year-old Viennese actress. Miss Katrin Koselle. the "angel" of "I Married an Angeh" was doing a solo dance, a welldressed man walked on to the stage and attempted to take her in his arms. Mies Roselle made a hurried exit. After he had been removed from the stage, the man, wh# was about 40 years of ape, was allowed to go to his city hotel. There he was later found wandering in his pyjamas from bedroom to bedroom holding a picture of the actress.

About midnight on Monday he hired tr taxi-cab and told the driver to "take him to heaven to see Katrin." The clriver took him around various suburbs oiid then about 30 miles to Baulkham Hills, but at five o'clock in the morning. >vlien they had returned to the city, the man was still eager to continue the sparoli and wanted to be driven "direct to Vienna."

The man found his way a£rain three times to the stage door of the Theatre T?g.yal. and Miss Roselle became so disturbed by his persistence that the theatre called in the assistance of the police. Next time the man appeared at

'lip theatre a policeman, under the pre*«xt that he was goinjr to take him to his "angel," persuaded him to enter a taxi-cab and took him to the Reception

House. Later he was charged in the Lunacy Court with being at large while he was deemed to be insane and remanded for further observation.

The second incident occurred at the ( home .of Mr. Richard Hawkine, who conducts a butter business from hie house at Bexley. The parents were having dinner in the evening when their 22-year-old crippled daughter rushed into the dining-room followed by a man who wae smoking a cigar and had what the family took to be a cracker in his other hand.

With his cigar lie lit the wick of the cracker and threw it on the floor, but the daughter put out the spark with her crutch. The man then tried to light two other crackers with his cigar, but Mr. Hawkins rushed at him and knocked them out of his hand. It wae just as well that he did, for the crackers turned out to be sticks of gelignite. This man was also taken to the Reception House.