MINER’S SECRET

Evening Star, Issue 23335, 3 August 1939, Page 20

MINER’S SECRET

SPECIAL HOLE IN GLASS EYE CONGEALED SMUGGLED DIAMONDS Mr Godfrey Taylor, a 24-ycar-old London glass-eye maker, has discovered a strange story behind a remarkable order which he received from South Africa. The man for whom the artificial eye was made told Mr Taylor all about it when he visited Loudon the other day. Mr Taylor was asked to send out several artificial eyes, specially modelled with a hole behind each pupil. Now he has -been told that Hie glass eyes were used to smuggle diamonds out of a mine. Mr Taylor told a ‘ Sunday Express ’ representative:— “ Recently the man who had ordered the glass eyes arrived in England on a visit and came to me for an artificial eye without a hole in it. Then he explained. “He said he had been working in a diamond mine for some years where everyone was searched for smuggled diamonds before bo left. • “ No one, however, ever thought of asking him to remove his glass eye. Hence the holes —to hide the diamonds in. “He told me he had now made enough money to retire.” This is only one of the strange stories, which Mr Taylor can tell. He is the fifth generation of Taylors in this uncommon trade, and his great-grand-father made artificial:'' eyes to the order of the Duke of Wellington. Mr Godfrey Taylor works with his mother, who closely guards the secrets, of many famous people whose friends do not know they have glass eyes. She once was visited by two high priests from a Far Eastern temple who wanted eves for their idol. H.er ; husband, Mr Gustav Taylor, once made a glass eve for a lion. Mrs Taylor showed the ‘ Sunday Express ’ representative rows upon rows of cases containing 23,000 glass eyes—all of them lifelike. They can be moved bv the eve socket muscles and the pupils will even dilate in a natural manner.