Mother Wants Twins In The £l00,000 Marathon

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18763, 20 July 1935, Page 10

Mother Wants Twins In The £loo,ooo Marathon

PANADA is beginning to place bets on the strangest race in .history. Bookmakers in Toronto are now offering odds in the famous Stork Marathon which, under the will of Charles Vance Millar, a lawyer-sports-man and humorist, provides a prize of £IOO,OOO for the Toionto mother who brings into the world* the greatest number nf children in 1(1 years from October, 192(1. With IS months to go, Mrs Matthew Kenny, wife of an obscure unemployed Canadian living in a tumbledown cottage on the outskirts of Toronto, leads the field and is a two-to-ono favorite.

Mrs Kenny, who .has given birth to three pairs of twins and lias nine of her 1-1 children • still living, is confidently knitting a 'double set of tiny garments in anticipation of more twins in December. At the same time she is making a desperate fight to keep her last-born alive to make doubly sure that she-wins the prize. Closest Rival.

Marion, bom last December, is pale and thin, and Mrs Kenny cannot afford specialists for her. “I do everything I can for her,” she said. ‘‘l go without clothes to buy her cough medicine. ”1 hope she will live to help me to get that prize so that 1 can make it up to her.” New competitors are appearing in the field. • The nearest rival is Mrs Ambrose Ilan-is.on, who has had eight children bora .since 192(1, and has just given birth to her ninth child. The baby, Paul, is her eighteenth child, but only nino of them have been born within the time limit. Mrs Harrison is of British extraction. She is going- to have another baby, not because she wants to win the marathon, but because she likes babies.