FORTUNE FORFEITED

Mt Benger Mail, 16 October 1940, Page 3

FORTUNE FORFEITED

SURGEON MAKES PLAIN GIRL BEAUTIFUL When Dr Trevor Harris, a noted New York surgeon, and his pretty ex-wife, Mary Jefferson, recently committed suicide, one of the strangest stories for many, many years was revealed, writes Frank Gray in a London paper. In 1934 Dr Harris was visiting Boston, and when entering the room of his hotel, he discovered the maid, a not-too-pretty girl, dissolved in tears. “What’s the matter?’’ the kindly doctor asked. “Why are you crying?” The girl told him her was Mary Jefferson and; that the other girls in the hotel laughed at her because she was very plain. Special Operation Now, Dr Harris was always willing to help anyone in trouble, and he offered to give the girl a “new face” if she would undergo a special type of operation. Mary was in a difficult position. She wanted to look pretty like other girls—but the fear of an operation made her hesitate. At last, however, she agreed. A few days later Dr Trevor Harris operated. For some time aftsrwards Mary’s face was swathed in thick bandages. At last the day arrived when the girl’s features were revealed, and when Harris unwound the last bandage he gasped. He was looking not an ugly duckling but at one of the most beautiful girls he had ever seen—a girl made beautiful by his skill as a plastic surgeon. Harris fell in love with her —his own creation—and Mary, perhaps in gratitude, fell in love with Harris. A month later they were married.

Shortly after their marriage, Mary, “just for fun,” went in for a beauty competition. She won easily, and the former hotel maid started to live a gay life. In the end Dr Harris divorced her, and In doing so lost a fortune of £25,000. His aunt had left him this sum providing he was not divorced before he was twenty-five years of age. The doctor was divorced, however, on his twenty-fourth birthday.

He lost interest in his work when Mary left him and sank to a low level in one of the many squalid flats on New York’s East Side. One day Mary went to visit him, taking food, new clothes and money. She never left that flat alive. When the ugly duckling who became a noted beauty was carried from the flat, it was to her grave, together with Dr Trevor Harris, the man who lost a fortune when he made Mary beautiful