RESTORES LOST MEMORY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 28 January 1939, Page 15

RESTORES LOST MEMORY

ENGLISHMAN’S ILLNESS RESTORED TO PARENTS AFTER TWO YEARS IBy Air Mail-Own Correspondent] LONDON, 24th December. An Englishman who lost his memory while working in America, and was given up as dead by his parents in Cheshire, has regained full possession of his faculties —thanks to a game of cricket. In the summer of 1936 Tom Mathias, son of an English Rugby international, was in the United States. He was attacked by malaria for the fifth time. 11l and worried, Tom Mathias wandered from State to State, from job to job. He had lost his memory. One day he played cricket with other English “exiles.” During the game he talked to a business man from Nottingham. They discussed England. The Nottingham man was puzzled by the vagueness of his new friend’s recollection of places. Dimly Tom Mathias remembered Nottingham. He said that he thought his mother came from that city. More questions, and he remembered his mother’s maiden name, then knew foi certain that she was a Nottingham woman. The Nottingham man remembered her. The rest was easy. A letter to Mrs Mathias in England, and the mystery was cleared up—which inten-. sive rearches by the police, wireless broadcast appeals throughout the American continents had failed to solve. Tom Mathias came home for Christmas.