MUST NEVER SHOW ARMS

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 June 1937, Page 13

MUST NEVER SHOW ARMS

FIRE SCARRED FOR EVER. This is the story of Moira, 13-year-old schoolgirl whose ambition was a dancing career. Through a schoolroom lire mishap she will always have to be in the full-sleeve clothes and the old-fashioned bathing-dress. And in the High Court. London. Mr Justice Hilbery approved a settlement of .£ 1.000, to be invested for Moira as some compensation.

Suing through her mother, Mrs Eileen Maude Collett, of Endsleigh Gardens. Ilford, Moira brought an action against Clark’s College. Ltd.

Mr .1. D. Cassels, K.C., said she was a pupil at the college and in December. 1915, she was in the headmistress’s room, where there was an unguarded gas lire. The headmistress told Moira to adjust another girl’s dress, and in moving round her dress caught tire, and she was seriously burned. She now had a scar on the back of her neck and disfiguring scars on both arms and on the thighs. She would no longer be able to wear a short-sleeved dress, and for bathing she must, either wear a very oldfashioned type of costume or be prepared to put up with people's stares. Moira, he added, liked ballet dancing, for which she had had special lessens. But a dancing career must necessarily be closed to her for ever. She would be permanently shut out from any career which required a personal appearance in which the arms showed.

Clark's College, added Mr Cassels, were prepared, in addition io the £ 1,000. to give her free education till she was 16.