AN EXTRAORDINARY CASE

Evening Star, Issue 19924, 21 July 1928, Page 5

AN EXTRAORDINARY CASE

WOULDN'T KNOW WIFE GUT KEEN TO JOIN HER JAMES J. DWYER’S AMAZING STORY. An extraordinary case of loss of memory, with a Now Zealand significance, has come under notice (states a Sydney message), when James Joseph Dwyer, an Imperial ex-Service man, with a wife and family in Dunedin, New Zealand w - as discovered after a lapse of maybe nine years. Dwyer is still suffering partial loss of memory. In fact, ho still skates that if his wife walked into the room he doesn’t think ho would know her, and tho intermittent recurrences of memory in the past year were so worrying him that ho contemplated suicide. “If I hadn’t met tho secretary of the Returned Soldiers’ League, I would have gone over Tho Gap,” is his comment. i * He has been gravely affected with shellshock. , That is obvious. His hands and arms tremble at times in a manner reminiscent of the trembling of some men who have been on long drinking bouts. Yet, to his knowledge, he has never touched a drop of drink in his life. Dwyer disappeared from Wellington, New Zealand, many years ago. He says himself that it was in 1920, or maybe earlier. He can remember saying good-bye to his wife, and, as far as memory serves, the picture left on his mind is that it was snowing at the time, and his wife was standing in the doorway of a cottage, with one of the children in her arms.

What prompted him to come to Sydney he does not recall- but in one of the short spasms of clarity he found himself in this city._ After that there is a lapse of another three or four years, and then he found himself in Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, where ho was under treatment for muscular atrophy. “ Recollection, just the beginning of it, came back to mo in the hospital. I can remember them using an electrical battery on my leg and arm, and perhaps I might have been better had I remained there longer. But foi some unaccountable reason I left before the treatment was complete.” From references in his possession it would seem that he travelled all over New South Wales after that trip to hospital, for he possesses credentials from all manner of places where he had found work as a cook. But ho has no recollection of any of them. hr some of them ho was chef, in others assistant cook or kitchenman. He doesn’t know why he left some of the places where lie must have been drawing a good salary. Perhaps ho thinks it is because lie is overcome with shaking firs duo to muscular trouble, which, in turn, is duo to war disabilities and not, as some of his employers might have thought, to addiction to drink.

He remembers nothing of his war services. Ho found the medallion of a returned soldier sewn on his coat when ho left the hospital in 1924; but had never had reason to approach the State authorities until recently, when ho saw tho secretary of the Returned Soldiers’ League in one of his clear patches. Taking tho case up, tho secretary has established that the Dwyer who disappeared from Wellington and tho man who came to consult him are ono and tho same. In recent years Dwyer’s disabilities have become so evident that he was forced to apply for a slow’ workers’ permit, and is, in consequence, in reoeipt of only £2 a week at the position he tills at present. “ But 1 am going back now,” he His appearance is scrupulously clean, his clothes neat but inexpensive, and his shoos well shined. Ho is about sft 2iu in height, has clearcut features; but the eyes of indeterminate colour behind gold-rimmed spectacles appear to see little. Ho tjiii.hs lio is about forty-seven years of age, and know’s that his wife and liimself are Irish. Ho can remember William and Mary, two of his children, and thinks there are throe others. . At the outbreak of war bo was cook to Lord Derby’s Comrades, :l e King’s and Liverpool Regiment. [Dwyer arrived back in Dunedin on Thursday night. The local R.S.A. has the case in hand, but for obvious reasons cannot make a statement at present,]