THE “SILVER LADY”

Evening Star, Issue 20196, 8 June 1929, Page 17

THE “SILVER LADY”

HELP FGR OUTCASTS “ MOVE-ON ” TRAGEDIES “ Five hundred men each night walk through the streets of Loudon hopeless, homeless, and starving. They cannot even sit down to sleep, they .aremoved on. They have not a penny piece with which to buy a bed or a cup of tea. It is terrible.” ~.k The speaker was the “ Silver Lady ’ —otherwise Miss Betty Baxter—who tries every night to lighten the hardship of the down-and-out (says the ‘Sunday Chronicle’). Every day Miss Baxter feeds SoO destitute people at her canteens, and at night drives round the Thames, Embankment with a bag of silver giving money away to men and women who would otherwise have to sleep in the open air.. • ,*■ ‘•MOVE ON” ORDER. ‘‘The down-and-outs are composed of all classes, i have spoken to ex-majors in the war, schoolmasters who have fallen on evil times, and business men. who at one time knew what it was like to drive round in their own cars,” Miss Baxter told a Chronicle 5 . representative. “1 shall be going round to-night, to ' see them. ... 1 cannot resist their call. •‘ Side by side these men huddle together on benches or in doorways until the order. ‘ Move on, please,’ sends them scurrying away to find fresh haunts.” Jn one evening alone Miss Baxter has given coffee to more than a IUO men. Sometimes their, hands are so cold that they cannot hold the cups! FROZEN IN SLEEP. .- Directly she left school Miss Baxter felt the urge to help the down-and-outs. She has been doing it for seven years, but has always shunned publicity. Her grandfather, the Rev. Michael Baxter, started helping destitute people many years ago ; she is carrying on his work. She is now making a film of the work with the aid of Mr Norman Lee, with a view to raising funds for her work by its sale. ■ ■ “Hero is an example of how the.se men and women have to suffer,”.she said in conclusion. “ During all the nights when snow lay on the ground there were over a TOO men sleeping compulsorily in the open air. I. myself, with my thick coat, was freezing. Heaven knows how those poor wretches felt.”