TERRIBLE ORDEAL

Evening Star, Issue 20472, 1 May 1930, Page 16

TERRIBLE ORDEAL

THREE WEEKS IN A VAULT Tlio terrible ordeal ol' a man who existed for three weeks without food or drink in a vault, from which lie could not lind the way out, has been revealed at Wctherby, Yorkshire (says the ‘Sunday News’). Emaciated and semi-conscious, ami able to gasp “Water, water,” a man of 06, named Thomas Speck, was carried on a stretcher from the crypt beneath the parish church of St. James. On New Year’s Eve ho went into the vaults for warmth and fell asleep. When ho woke up it was quite dark. Ho tried to find Ins way out, and since then he remembers nothing. Children from a school near by had said: 11 There is a man under the church,” but no notice was taken of their talk. It was thought that what they had seen was the shadow of a man outside the ventilators. Then a man, working at night in tho vaults, declared that ho had “seen and heard something,” but it was not until two days later that Mr Fred White, who looks after the church clock and the heating apparatus, took an acetylene lamp and made a search. Speck had evidently entered tho vaults at tho cast end of tho church, but ho was found at tho opposite end on a ledge, wrapped in a mackintosh near the hot-water pipes. Ho was hurried in an ambulance to the workhouse infirmary, where, when he had recovered a little several hours later, ho told tho story of his terrible ordeal to Dr Hargreaves. His condit'on is quite consistent with his story, for his tongue is raw for want of water, and ho is reduced to a skeleton and very feeble. Speck, who is of Austrian origin, has a college education, and was at one time a successful commercial traveller. Although ho had been missed at bis lodgings, no one associated him with the noises beneath tho church.