RARE "THANK-YOU”

Greymouth Evening Star, 19 April 1938, Page 8

RARE "THANK-YOU”

WAS WORTH £-5000. For fourteen, years James O’Sullivan, of Carhery Avenue. Bournemouth, was valet., to Lieutenant-Colonel Cotton Edwin Theobold, a. Bournemouth centenarian. who died last November. . Op.ly iij the last month of his life did the colonel ever, say “Thank you” to his servg-pt. But in his will he has left him £5OOO. ’ “He was a man of many peculiarities,” Mi*. O’Sullivan told the Daily Mirror. ’ . “He’appreciated what anyone did for him. but he never showed it. He never said ‘Thank you’, to anyone. He only saying it to me in the last month of his' life, possibly because he realised that- the end was near andhe knew what a burden he had been to me. “For four years I shadowed him wherever he went without his know-' ing it. • — - “He was the most independent man I have ever met, and although he went daily to his club on the Bournemouthseafront and listened to the band in the gardens he. would let no one accompany him. ; “He would not even allow the bus conductors to assist, him to get on the buses and shouted at them if they attempted to touch him. “The conductors used to help me to jump on the same bus without his even knowing it. BUt during the last three years of his life he would never go anywhere without, me. “If ever I was Ipte and apologised, he would forgive me. If I did. not apologise he would shout, at me like a colonel on parade. If he were a couple, of minutes late in getting to bed, he would pull out his watch and say, T am very sorry.’ ” Colonel 'Theobald celebrated his 100th birthday by dancing and tasting his first cocktail. His other be-. quests included £2OO each to EdneyHopbruff, employed at the club pier approach; Henry Heursh, a billiards marker; Henry Ingle, head waiter;| and Leslie James Patterson,- anotheremployee at an hotel. a