SPEECH RESTORED BY CRICKET.

Northern Advocate, 7 October 1913, Page 3

SPEECH RESTORED BY CRICKET.

DUMB BOY SHOUTS

LONDON, August 30

After being dumb for 10 years, a Leeds youth found the power of speech restored to him during the excitement of a cricket match. Not less remarkable than the occurrence itself was the boy's conduct in concealing the restoration of the gift of speech from all around him until he had written a letter to his mother telling her the joyful news.

The youth, Frederick Dennison, 19, the son of a miner, went with some inmates of the Invalid Child-

ren's Society of Leeds to join a Boy Scouts' camp at Harewood, near the city. A cricket match was arranged, and Dennison, while batting, in his excitement to "steal" a run, found himself trying to shout, and even thought he heard his own voice. Much puzzled, he stole away to seme woods when the match was over, and there in solitude he found that his voice had really been restored to him. For a long time he remained talking to himself among the trees, now shouting with -delight, and then almost crying with the joy of the thought of how pleased his mother would ;be. "Then," says Dennison, "I went back to camp, and without letting anyone else know what had happened I wrote to my mother. I could hardly sleep at night for thinking that I cquld speak again." Next day Dennison surprised the Scoutmaster by suddenly speaking to him. There is no impediment in th-a lad's speech, and the voice seems to gain strength day by day. Dennison became dumb after a bad attack of influenza 10 years ago. A doctor predicted that he would probably regain his speech, even after a lapse of years. Several similar cases of recovery of lost faculties by shock of excitement have been recorded in recent years. Last February a young man st Ashford, Kent, recovered both speech and hearing by the shock of his sister's death. A Birmingham labourer, who lost his speech during a fit, recovered it after another fit six week later. A young man in Croydon Workhouse, who had been dumb for seven years, recovered his speech through the explosion of a soda-water syphon. Five months ago the Daily Mail recorded the case of a Manchester girl who recovered her sight while weeping bitterly at a gi aveside.