STILL STRANGERS

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 94, 14 January 1939, Page 4 (Supplement)

STILL STRANGERS

Eighty-one-year-old James Greenland has just discovered that he has been passing his daughter in the streets of the little Berkshire village of Cookham, near Maidenhead, almost every day for 40 years without recognizing her.

Cookham Council, which has given instructions that Greenland must leave the tiny wooden hut which is his home on a focal allotment, says he has a daughter in the village. But “Old Jim,” as he is known in the village, replies he would not know her if he saw her.

“My wife left me more than 40 years ago, and took my baby daughter, then seven mouths old, with’'her,” he declared. “I lost, touch with them. Although she has beep living all these years in the same village, if my daughter stood before me now I would not know who she was.

“About. 20 years ago 1 was at a local fair with a friend when a girl came up and talked to my pal. After she had gone 1 asked him,. ‘Who was that girl?’ "He said, 'Why, your daughter, Minnie!’ We had not recognized one another—and to this day we are still strangers." After his marriage broke up, “Old Jim” lived alone, and .14 years ago took refuge in the but on his little allotment, to try to forget. "It is a shame (hat 1 have to leave, as 1 am not doing any harm here,” Greenland remarked. “I am practically penniless—l have only the money I get. from selling the stuff oil’ my allotment —but I won’t go into any workhouse."