DETAINED BY POLICE

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 148, 20 March 1934, Page 9

DETAINED BY POLICE

Englishwomen in Austria London. March 9. The Vienna police detained Mrs. C. E. Waddington, a close relative of the Earl of Harewood (the Princess Royal’s husband), and Miss E. Leacock. while they were distributing money at Florisdorf, recently the scene of the heaviest fighting in the Vienna riots. The Waddingtons’ child attended a kindergarten in the Rudolf-platz, and a teacher at the school gave Mrs. Waddington the names of families in dire distress. The police questioned her for three hours, and asked why she had distributed money among Socialist children, Mrs. Waddington replied that it was for charity, irrespective of party. Both were released. The correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph” in Vienna says that the police, in a three-hours’ cross-examina-tion, tried to make Mrs. Waddington and Miss Leacock admit that they were distributing trade union money or were working for the Quakers. Mrs. Waddington and Miss Leacock, when liberated, made a strong protest to the British Minister, who is taking up the matter with the Austrian Government. Mrs. Waddington said that the police only shrugged their shoulders when she asked why so many men had been shot after capture in the recent riots. The police still regarded her with suspicion, she said, and had a dossier about her which was nearly all inaccurate. They were particularly anxious to implicate the Quakers, she said.