FRIEND OF SAILORS
BARONESS AIDS 500,000 MEN. A little Swedish baroness, who went to London as a runaway bride in a windjammer, celebrated her fortieth anniversary as fairy godmother to London seamen recently. The godmother is the baroness Emma Leitonhjelm, and since 1893 she has kept ‘‘open house” for homeless sailors. More than half a million have found shelter beneath her roof. The romance began in Gottenberg, Denmark, in 1888, where the baroness i first met Baron Eric Leitonhjelm, captain of a windjammer. Her parents forbade her to marry him, so the couple ran away to England. They intended to return to Sweden, but when the little baroness saw the appalling conditions''that obtained for sailors near the docks she refused to leave London. Each of the seamen visiting the baroness receives supper and breakfast. The little baroness is something of a martinet. Every night she gives the men a "good-night lecture,” trying, is- she puts it, “to knock some sense into their silly heads.”
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Greymouth Evening Star, 7 November 1933, Page 10
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164FRIEND OF SAILORS Greymouth Evening Star, 7 November 1933, Page 10
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