MIND A BLANK

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 261, 31 July 1937, Page 10 (Supplement)

MIND A BLANK

Beautiful Society Girl Missing Eight Days MYSTERIOUS THREAT London, June 20. While a beautiful 21-year-old society girl is slowly recovering under care from what appears to be loss of memory, a puzzling mystery regarding her awaits an explanation. It is hoped that a specialist’s report will assist in throwing light on what happened to Miss Diana (“Didi”) Battye, during the eight days she was missing. Miss Battye, the fair-haired daughter of Mrs. Leonard A. Hackett, the woman air pilot, is a society photographer’s model, and was to have been engaged shortly to Mr. Michael Asquith, the Oxford undergraduate son of Lady. Cynthia Asquith. Consternation was caused by her unaccountable disappearance one afternoon after leaving the home of her friend, Viscountess Long. In Oxford Square, where she was on a visit. A country-wide search began, Scotland Yard circulating a message to every police station in the ountry. Officers watched the ports, airports, and main-line termini, while others spent days in interviewing people for clues. Their inquiries were complicated by the receipt of anonymous letters before Miss Battye vanished. One of these was typewritten on a half-sheet of notepaper, and was found in Miss Battye’s red handbag, which she left behind at Viscountess Long’s house. “You Have Been Warned? ’ It was dated April 21, 1937, and read: — “You were seen in Brighton last night You have been warned before.’’ Miss Battye, it was ascertained, had been in Brighton on the night referred to in the letter. It was also revealed during the search that on Coronation Day M'ss Battye was attacked in the street by a man and slightly cut over one eye with a razor. In their anxiety to end the search Miss Battye’s relatives and friends enlisted the services of several clairvoyants. including an expert from Paris. As the result of their statements places on the North Devon coast were visited without success. Miss Battye was found early on the eighth day after she disappeared, on the steps of Lady Cynthia Asquith’s house in Sussex Place. Regent’s Park She was sobbing and hysterical, and her crying was heard by a Mr. Searle, who lives next door. He looked out of his bedroom window and saw the girl sitting on the steps. Running downstairs he carried her to the front door of Lady Asquith’s house. She was taken inside and put to bed. Her mother, who had taken a flat in London so as to be able to keep better in touch with the inquiries that were being made, was told, and hurried to her daughter’s bedside. A telephone call was also put through to Mr. Michael Asquith at Oxford, and he came to London by car. By the time he arrived at his mother’s house Miss Battye was sleeping, for, tinder the instructions of a doctor, she bad been given a sleeping draught. Mrs. Hackett stated: “When my daughter was found she seemed to be suffering from loss of memory. “She had obviously undergone a very severe mental strain —and just didn’t seem to remember anything. It was inipossible to-ask her what had happened She was just right out. In a Different Dress.

“She knew me, and I stayed with her because I seemed to be able to keep her quieter than anyone else. She was in a terrible state of nervous upset. “Furthermore, the dress that she had on was a different one from that which she was wearing when she disappeared. It was one which I haven’t seen before, and so far as I know it was not her own.

“So far she has not been able to tell us anything.” Mr. Hackett said his step-daughter remembered everything up to a certain point on the day of her disappearance. “She talks,” he said, “quite normally about the early part of the afternoon. “She remembers well leaving Lady Long’s house and posting a letter to Mr. Asquith. “Then, she says, she was going to a shop in Oxford Street. "She is able to talk about her movements 'up to the time she got to the shop, and she knows why she went there.

“After that, she says, she remembers nothing. Something appears to have happened to her at that point. She does not remember getting back to Sussex Place.”