FRIEND OF SAILORS

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 4 November 1933, Page 5

FRIEND OF SAILORS

BARONESS AIDS 300,000 MEN A little Swedish baroness, who went to London as a runaway bride in. a windjammer, celebrated her 40th anniversary as fairy godmother to London seamen recently. I he godmother is the Baroness Emma Leitonhjelm, and since 1893 she lias kept “open house” for homeless sailers. More than half a million have found shelter beneath lier roof. The romance began in Gottenberg, Denmark, in 1888, where the baroness first met Baton 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 ißtle 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, as she puts it, ‘‘ to knock some sense into their silly heads.”