INSANE WOMAN’S ORDEAL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23364, 2 December 1937, Page 9

INSANE WOMAN’S ORDEAL

LOST IN BUSH TWELVE DAYS GARTER ROUND PUPPY’S NECK CLUE TO DISCOVERY (From Our Own Correspondent) SYDNEY, Nov. 23. Weak and emaciated, a 37-year-old woman, who had been missing from a mental asylum at Morrissett, south of Newcastle, for 12 days, was found in the bush not far from the asylum. She had had nothing to eat except fruit and vegetables, eaten uncooked, which she had obtained from orchards and gardens during her wanderings, but she was not in a dangerous condition when taken back to the asylum. But for the woman’s love of animals, she might never have been found. A young puppy belonging to an orchardist living near where she was found strayed away and apparently played around the woman. When the puppy > came home at night he had round his neck a garter of the type used by women patients at the institution. During the afternoon the puppy’s owner had seen a number of signs in the dense scrub indicating that someone had been using improvised beds of grass and branches, and the garter round the dog’s neck convinced him that the woman, for whom hope had been practically abandoned, was somewhere in the neighbourhood. The puppy’s owner organised a search party, and they took the puppy with them. He led them to a spot in the scrub, and the party came unon the woman lying under a tree. They first saw her feet sticking out from a clump of bushes They thought she was dead, knowing how long she had been missing, but the searchers found that she was sleeping. When awakened, the woman spoke a few unintelligible words, but as she was in such a weak condition, she was not allowed to talk too much. From the condition of her shoes and clothes, it was evident that she had wandered many miles through the dense bush since she left the asylum. Because of the woman’s mentality, it was impossible, even after she had recovered, to get from her any account of what she had been doing. All that was definite was that she was glad to be back in the institution, from which she had escaped by climbing over the fence of the exercise yard. A native of New Caledonia, she had been an inmate of mental asylums for 10 years.