SECRET OF A SILENT HOUSE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3294, 12 August 1911, Page 10

SECRET OF A SILENT HOUSE.

BOY ENTERTAINS FRIENDS WHILE HIS MOTHER LIES DEAD.

Neighbors at Portcawl, Glanmorganshire, of a Mrs Richardson, who, with the exception of her nine-year-old son, lived alone in a 'house, noticed that the place was unusually silent for some days. The boy, too, took to stopping out late at night, and spent money freely. Asked how hie mother was/ he eaid she seemed better than she had been, and explained, his possession of the money by saying that liis father had sent it.

The other day he invited a number of liis playmates into the house, but would not allow them to enter one room, saying this mother was sleeping there. This and the non-appearance of Mrs Richardson caused the neighbors to inform the police, who ■ next day entered the house and found Mrs Richardson dead' on a couch. A doctor said the woman had been dead six days. At the inquest the boy, Leonard Richardson, told the coroner that his father worked' in the Rhondda Valley, and had not seen his mother for a fortnight. The neighbors had questioned him as to liis mother’s health, but he did not like to' tell them she was dead, and said she was asleep. The last time he saw his mother alive was to the day before Coronation Day. She then gave hi in her purse and told him that when she was dead he was to write to his father and his grannie and hand to purse to whichever should arrive first at the house. Later the same day, when the milkman came, he went to his mother and tried l to f waken her to ask if she would have some milk, but she was dead. He' then wrote to his grannie in Yorkshire, and also to his father at a house in Rhondda at which they had lived before his mother removed to Portcawl. He did not know hio father’s address. The boy also said that after his mother died lie had some other boys in the house, but took them into the front room not into the kitchen, where his mother lay dead on; the sofa. At bedtime lie slept on another couch in the kitchen. “Death from cancer” was the finding of the jury.