KING'S JUBILEE EVENT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22131, 10 June 1935, Page 12

KING'S JUBILEE EVENT

FLORAL DANCE IMITATED ALL TOGETHER IN MAYFAIR GAY AND FESTIVE THRONG Here is the story of an incident of the King's Silver Jubilee night in London that Mayfair and the East End will talk about as long as memory lasts. A large house in Mayfair had a celebration ball. A few people in the street outside heard the strains of the dance band. They began to dance and were joined by other couples. When the number of dancers had grown to about 20 they could hardly hear the band inside the house at all. So they shouted up for the windows to be opened.

The windows opened, and the dancers inside the big house looked out. "Play louder," shouted the crowd from the street. "All right," came the reply. The band was brought on to a balcony, and the people in the street were happy. Then the doors of the house swung open and the revellers from inside came trooping out. They seized partners in the crowd and danced round the island site on which the house stands. For an hour they celebrated together, the ■ people from the ball and the people j in the street. ! Titled ladies danced with hawkers j and debutantes stepped out with solI diers; men from Mayfair showed new j stops to shopgirls from Clerkenwell. Yes, it all happened at Sunderland House, in Curzon Street. The ball was organised by the Young Women's Christian Association. Earl Howe was ona of the crowd attracted to the scene; Lord Crewe came from his home opposite to watch the fun. And this is what Earl Howe told an Evening News representative about it: "I have never seen anything like it before. I happened to be passing and watched the dancers in the street. They shouted up for the band to come out, and it was not long before hundreds of people were fox-trotting round the house, and many of them had come from inside. It was great fun. They chaired a policeman down Curzon Street —everybody there was having the time of their lives." The crowd chaired an old flower seller and persuaded him to dance with a lovely girl in shimmering evening gown who had come from Sunderland House.

The "jam" was terrific, and a taxicab which was unable to get through waiii seized by a score of men, some in evening dress and others in their everyday clothes. They lifted it from thei ground and turned it round the other way, so that it could "escape." Mrs. I. C. Stokes, president of the Y.W.C.A. London branch, one of the organisers of the ball, said: "The guests seemed to regard it as the normal thing to do. They had been asked to play for the crowd outside, and they asked the band to do it; then it seemed the logical thing to join in th«i fun in the streets."