AMAZING FAMILY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23281, 25 February 1939, Page 2 (Supplement)

AMAZING FAMILY

Descendants of a Famous Preacher

"\/[OST amazing family anywhere around London lives at Carshalton, Surrey. For over 100 years every girl in the Whitfield family, descended from the famous preacher, George Whitefield, of Whitefield's Tabernacle, has been born on a Thursday, and every boy on a Friday. What is more, no member of the family has died or been taken seriously ill except in November or February. Doctors cannot explain these phenomena, nor can the Whitfields themselves. I went in search of the wonderful Whitfields to see for myself« proof of these strange records, writes a special DASH THROUGH FOG DISTRESS AT LIGHTHOUSE DOCTOR ANSWERS CALL ILLNESS OF HEAD KEEPER GOON after a distress signal was observed flying from Lismore Lighthouse, in the Sound of Mull, a doctor and relief keeper were speeding to the rescue from Oban, Scotland, nine miles across the Firth of Lome. The trip was made through fog in a small open motor-boat. . . Donald McDonald, the principal keeper, was found to be suffering from a severe cold, and his assistant, Alister Budge, had been tending the light and looking after the sick man alone. The relief keeper was landed to aid Budge. McDonald was 'treated on the lighthouse. Budge's distress signal was seen through the fog by the Mull mail-boat Loehinvar, steaming between Oban and Tobermory. The mail-boat hove to and sent a small boat to investigate tho trouble. . ; Stretcher Carried Lighthouse officials at Oban were then notified, and Dr. Andrew Curric. medical officer of health for the town, was approached. With the relief keeper ho set out, carrying a stretcher. One of the lighthouse officials, in an interview afterwards, declared, "It was not thought advisable to bring Keeper McDonald to the mainland. "Lismore Lighthouse has no wireless communication, but each day one of the men in the lighthouse service climbs to a high hill above Oban and scans the lighthouse through a telescope to see if all is well. "To-dav, because of the fog, the distress signal, a black cask hanging from the tower, could nob be seen from the mainland." ltecontly, S.O.S. signals have been sent out by Eddystone, Longships (near Penzance), Muckle Fugga (Shetland Isles), South Bishop (Pembrokeshire), and Flannan Isles (Hebrides).

correspondent of Reynolds Isews. 1 found the oldest member of the family, silver-haired Mrs. Whitfield, as lively at 86 as most women are at 40 —she thinks nothing of a five-mil© walk—so that sh6 looks like reaching the ago of her mother (99) or her grandmother (100), unless she sets up a new longevity record herself. Half an hour with members of the Whitfield family made me feel that 1 wouldn't put it past her for this or any record. (Sorry, Grandmother Whitfield talks so racily, and the habit is catchm|he reached down the family Bible, and there, sure enough, were,entries of births, first a girl (Thursday), then a boy (Friday), for a century, Eliza, Ada, Laura, Vera. Mabel, grandmother, mother, daughter, Thursday arrivals; Benjamin, George, Jack, Frank and the rest —all Fridav gifts. "The records go further back than that," she said, "but we haven t got the proofs. . "My youngest daughter, Minnie, who died in Canada, was the only woman ever to have three sets of twins in succession," she added. Arrival of Twins One set were boys, born on a Friday: another were girls arriving like good Whitfields on a Thursday; and the third, a girl and a boy, kept up the record ov entering this world on a Thursday night and Friday morning respectively. Then I was introduced to the youngest member of the famiy, great-grandson Leon Michael,-who gurgled at me as though serenely conscious of having upheld the family record by arriving two months ago on a Friday, in defiance of the doctor, who prophesied his arrival for the following Sunday.