"ICE CREAM KING."

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15646, 27 June 1914, Page 2 (Supplement)

"ICE CREAM KING."

IMPRESSIVE FUNERAL.

Rarely Las the Italian Church, Ilatton Garden, London, witnessed such impressive scenes as those which marked the funeral ceremony of Luigi Fralo, the " King of Little Italy." From a recent Monday evening till eleven o'clock on Tuesday morning, when the special Requiem Mass took place, the body had lain in state, and many hundreds of people visited the church. \

The church was packed on the Tuesday with weeping compatriots, and that they loved the man whose body only was now before them was evidenced by the wreath? heaped about the coffin on the high catafalque, with its burning torches. Lilk-s, roses, and purple orchids were some of the flowers of which the 200 wreaths and crosses consisted.

In spite of the rain which fell as the coffin left tho church, huge crowds watched tho hearse drawn away by a team of magnificent Belgian horses, on one of which a postilion rode. It was followed to the cemetery by a procession of sixty or seventy vehicles, from the conventional brougham to ramshacke carts.

Fralo, who was 57, came to. London 55 years ago with a capital of £10 and hired an ice-cream barow. Then he took a little shop in Eyre Street, off Saffron Hill, in winch he has lived all the time. Later he established an ice-store, and when lit* died was worth £100,000. He was called the "Ice-cream King," and "King ot Little Italy." He was known to every Italian in London, and to the members of the metropolitan police, who were on bests in the Italian quarter, for he was friend and counsellor to everyone. His charity was proverbial.

Mr. Fralo's sense of justice was so recognised, and confidence in him so universal, that family and trade disputes of every description were settled by him without recourse to law. Ho acquired a great deal of property in "Little Italy." mainly for the sake, of playing the part of a generous landlord to his poor compatriot tenants.