SOLVING A MYSTERY

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXXII, Issue 12528, 13 April 1935, Page 9

SOLVING A MYSTERY

CROYDON’S ‘PAPER JACK' DEATH BFAEAI.S IDENTITT. 1 a per Jai-k. i ni> mystery or Ci oy (ion. London, with his paper f;iiment. is dead, bur his storv is .a mystery no longer. i'or 1-3 years, the residents of v royilon had ip-awn used rn ‘Paper Jaolv s quaint figure. bare-armed, sliorkvs. clad only in newspapers anj brown paper tied about him with string. Nobody know who he was. tie was net a hoggar. and refused proudly offers of, food from eharitablo_ strangers. ]> !lt . actually ho was never hard up. hi one of the many tag Jack <-a-uied on top or his paper costume svere found his money and his personal papers. Those papers proved he "as Arthur Eill's Pi-coco. son of a wealthy estate agent, educated at Oxford, where lie had Taken a degree and a. much-travelled man in former days. Pi’Oece had married a very beaut iful woman. Some time after his mar ilago he was seized with a mania for the outdoor life. He began to live entirely in the garden of his house at Biggin Hill. Tie insisted that his wife do likewise. She did lor a time, but eventually she felt she could not continue, and the marriage was dissolved. Proece then took to the outdoor life in earnest, after selling his property at Biggin Hill Proece vanished, to reappear as “Paper Jack.’’ but to be identified as his true srtf only when a car accident ended his picturesque, career. Proece was an architect and surveyor by profession. During the war he -worked in a Government, department dealing with ciphers and codes One of his .eccentricities was nerer to use a towel after washing Ho preferred to walk outdoors and lei the sun dry him. His former,wife >s happily re-married to an accountant) and has two children^