SANDOW STATUE IN NELSON

Press, Volume XCII, Issue 27851, 27 December 1955, Page 12

SANDOW STATUE IN NELSON

“STRONG MAN’S” GIFT TO STAR PUPIL “The Press” Special Service NELSON, December 26. When Eugene Sandow, the famous British “strong man,” was at the Ceak of his fame, he had three ronze statues made of himself in characteristic pose, holding a lifting bar. One of these is in Wakefield, Nelson. Sandow retained one statue, and the other went to thp Paris Exhibition. The statue now at Wakefield he gave to his star pupil, Harold Robinson. Mr Robinson, who lived in Oldham. Lancashire, was an apparently hopeless cripple because of an injury suffered as a child. Sandow took him in hand at the age of about 21, when he could not walk without a stick. Under Sandow’s treatment, he became physically strong and eventually a well-known cyclist and swimmer, though one of his legs was always shorter than the other. The statue Mr Robinson received was recently sent out to his daughter, Mrs C. W. Martin, who came to Nelson with her husband to farm in 1950. In 1937, as Miss Daisy Robinson. st* won the “Miss Britain contest” for the “perfect girl.” Her twin sister, Rose, was runner-up, and this success led to many stage engagements’ for the Robinson sisters. Mrs Martin now has four children. Her twin sister is in Nairobi, Kenya, where her husband, Mr A. D. Arnott, is a bank officer.