BOY'S HEROISM

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21456, 24 April 1935, Page 11

BOY'S HEROISM

FATHER AND MOTHER FALL FROM CLIFF SON CLAMBERS TO SHORE (U2rtTED PttSSS A.BSSOCIATIOK —31 TELEGRAPH—COPYRIGHT.) (Received April 23, 7.5 p.m.) LONDON, April 22. A 15-year-old boy's heroism when his parents fell over a 400-foot cliff marked a holiday tragedy at Port Isaac, Cornwall. Major Robert Hemphill, D.5.0., aged 47, a former Irish _ Rugby international, with his wife and three children, was rambling by the cliffs. In an attempt to photograph a buzzards nest, he climbed down a part of the cliff which crumbled, and the Major fell to the rocky beach. Peter saw his father fall and shouted to his mother, who approached the edge to look for her husband, and immediately disappeared. Peter ran to a lookout hut, smashed the window, climbed in and telephoned to the coastguards. He then clambered down to the shore and found his father dead, afloat on the rising tide. ' His mother was unconscious, and Peter cut her dress to enable her to breathe more easily.

Then he dragged in his father's body and climbed the cliff to seek help, for which his sister Sheila, 13, had already gone to a farm two miles distant, leaving her younger sister at the cliff top. Coastguards brought Mrs Hemphill to the top of the cliff, but she died in hospital.