TRAGEDY OF COALFIELDS.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 31 January 1929, Page 7

TRAGEDY OF COALFIELDS.

ABLE MEN OUT OF WORK FOR YEARS NO SMILE FOR CHEERS. LONDON, Jan. 30. There was a most touching incident at Winlaton, where the Prince of Wales went straightway to the cottage of Frank McKay, aged 74, who was to have escorted him through the village. Someone said: “There has just been a death at that house.”

The Prince glanced at the drawn blinds, hesitated only a moment and entered.

McKay was out arranging for the funeral of his wife, who died last night. The Prince saw and comforted-4he weeping daughters and then accompanied them up the stairs, where the dead woman was lying. He asked the cause of her death and one daughter answered, calmly: “Starvation.” The Prince’s face was white when he left the tragic house and f hc did not smile, even when he was cheered. McKay gets the old age pension. He has one son who has been unemployed for four and a half years, another for three years, and a third has been on half-time for eighteen months At the next house, belonging to a miner named Charles Cameron, a child had just been born, making the eleventh. The father has been unemployed for three years. At the village of Pcltonlane, the Prince found the inhabitants in the depth of poverty. There was a dead baby in ori'o room, the father having no money the funeral. The Prince was interested at Highspen in a girl, Catherine Hay, who said that she was going to Australia to-morrow and hoped to make good ami bo able to help her family. “There is a fine human touch in the Prince’s visit to the miners,” said Mr J. R. dynes, when speaking at West Hartlepool. “Nothing lias brought the Throne nearer to the troubles of the poor than this unprecedented act of perhaps the most popular figure in the world.’*