IN STARVING TOWN

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVI, Issue 3439, 5 March 1932, Page 7

IN STARVING TOWN

ENGLISH HEROINE'S WORK. SAVING THE CHILDREN. An Englishwoman, known simply as "Miss Smith," is the heroine of Steyr, the starving Austrian town where the inhabitants lately became so desperate for food that they even ate their dogs.

Miss Smith organised a corps of self-sacrificing women who did heroic things to aid the underfed, diseased, destitute children. Her work resulted in the saving of many lives, and she and her helpers were working day and night.

A large number of children of this impoverished town whose bankruptcy was caused by the discontinuance of small arms since the warwere compelled by stern necessity to fend for themselves. Many of them for a long time were sleeping out of doors in bitterly cold weather. The result of the terrible conditions was the outbreak of various diseases. Children were found in* the streets in a collapsed or dying condition, and bodies were also recovered from the river.

Then Miss Smith, an Englishwoman, who is stated to be a naturalised Austrian who served as a nurse with the Austrian Army in the war, came forward and organised a body of women who went about succouring destitute children.

They converted their homes into temporary hospitals, and there they devotedly tended hundreds of sick children, and to feed them they were themselves going on very short commons.

"I have never seen unselfishness and devotion such as that of our Miss Smith," one of the women helpers said. "None of us knows much about Miss Smith, except that she has had considerable experience as a nurse, and is said to belong to a distinguished British family."