BRAVEST GIRL

Greymouth Evening Star, 11 June 1927, Page 9

BRAVEST GIRL

A TERRIBLE ORDEAL. LONDON, April 20. “Agreement has been reached in the case, your Honour. Defendants have undertaken to pay the girl £6OO compensation.” Behind this matter-of-fact statement made in a county court at Lutton today, there is a story of a girl who has gained for herself the reputation of being the pluckiest girl in all Bedfordshire. Her name is Vera Hunt, and she lives at Clarendon Doad, Luton. She is to receive the £6OO for the loss of her right hand, which had to be amputated after an accident, in which it was caught in a machine at a hat factory, and burnt when the machine caught fire. Throughout her terrible ordeal she never made a murmur, although, according to one of the medical men who attended her, “she must have suffered the agony of hell.” Vera Hunt is a slim, blue-eyed girl, eighteen years old, and still wears her hair/ in unshingled curls. When I saw her at home to-day she shyly told me she did not want to say anything about her conduct —but all Luton is talking about it. She was wearing a gold wristlet watch, which had been presented to her by her old workmates. The girl had been employed at the factory of Messrs Dillingham and Sons one month only as a learner in the hat-making trade at the time of the accident, on New Year’s Day, 1925. For five minutes she was held a prisoner, while to add to her suffering the machine caught fire. A workman ■ who dismantled the machine told me that although she could not restrain her tears, not a sound passed the girl’s lips while he was releasing her. When stimulants were brought she declined them, and suggested they should be given to the girls about her who had fainted. Unaided she walked down the four flights of stairs to the ground floor and entered the waiting ambulance. “This is my 12,000 th case,” Mr. 11. W. Lathom, who conducted the girl’s case in the county court, told me, “and I have never met such a plucky girl. It was epic heroism.” , With stoical patience Vera is now training her left hand to do the work of two. She can already write quickly and neatly, knit with four needles, paint cleverly, make artificial flowers and embroider. Her one regret is that she cannot now sit for the pianoforte examination for which she was preparing on the morning of the accident.