LONDON SLUM ROMANCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20288, 22 June 1929, Page 3 (Supplement)

LONDON SLUM ROMANCE.

BOY'S BRILLIANT CAREER. A womau staying with her little boy in a London slum twenty years ago; a kindly woman doctor who adopted them; the boy, after a brilliant career at school and university, now an officer in the Indian Civil Service. These were the central figures in a romantic story related at an inquest at Southwark, England, on Marion Carleston, widow, aged 53, who died from injuries received in a fall. Dr. Selina Fox, medical superintendent of Bermondsey Mission, said that Mrs. Carleston had been in her service as housekeeper for 22 years:—l met her in a slum, starving, with her son, a tiny tot," said Dr. Fox. " They were living in ono room, the only furnituro being a bed, a broken chair, and a,basin. I took the poor woman into my service as housekeeper, but having two houses I did not know when she received any letters. "At the London County Council school the boy was so exceptionally clever that I paid for his education at another school, where he obtained a scholarship. I went on paying, for' his books and he ultimately wont to Cambridge, where he passed all his examinations and came out ninth a year ahead of his time. He entered the Indian Civil Service, and he is now in India, and I have cabled to him .to inform him of his mother's death." Medical evidence was given that Mrs. Carleston's death was due U) syncope, following a broken femur, and the.coroner recorded a . verdict of '' occidental daatli.