"RED IKE"

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 120, 24 May 1933, Page 4

"RED IKE"

I Mr. Jonathan." M. Dcnw'ood, cxrbut-1 cher's' boy, poacher, and itinerant singer of ballads/ who at 60 found famo' as the author of "Bed Ike," which became a best-seller, is dead. He died in tho cottage at Cockermouth, Cumberland, where he had been fighting his last illness for more than two years. In his own words Mr. Denwood was ' 'just a , working chap.'' Many years ago, while still living a life of great hardship, he wrote "Bed Ike," tho story of a poacher and a tribe of gipsies in. the Cumberland JTells. He wrote it purely for pleasure and made no effort to get it printed until, in 1929, he came in contact with Mr. S. Fowler Wright, the author, who was shown the book and urged that it should bo published. T^he book was an instant success. The Book Society chose it as its book, of the month, and within a week or two of publication 30,000 copies had been sold. But success had come too late. "I am too ill* and crippled to enjoy the luck and success that have so suddenly come," he, wrote to a friend. . ■} .' . . ' Mr. Denwood at sixteen , wasa butcher's boy and then a tailor's apprentice. When he married he'emigrated to the United States, but for more than 30 years he had been back in Cockermouth, Working in a room iv his cotj tage at his tailoring.