SLUM TO UNIVERSITY

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 690, 15 June 1929, Page 16

SLUM TO UNIVERSITY

UNUSUAL TALENT i To the generosity of a London i j woman doctor a young man, who is ! making for himself a brilliant career ; i in the Indian Civil Service, owes his | j great chance in life. | Twenty-two years ago Walter [ : Carleston was living with his mother j j in a room in which the furniture tVas j a bed, a broken chair and a basin, j In this miserable home Dr. Selina | Fitzherbert Fox, then a young medical woman who had been qualified for | only a few years, found the child and c his mother, starving. From their room in the slums Mrs. Carleston and j her baby were taken into Dr. Fox’s t own home. Mrs. Carleston became r her housekeeper, and for 20 years Dr. Fox shared with the mother her pride ' in the son. Mrs. Carleston died in Guy’s Hos- t pital, as the result of injuries received in a fall. At the inquest, held yester- ] day, Dr. Fox told the coroner tha t she r I had cabled to India to inform Mr. j | Carleston of his mother’s death. - j “Mrs. Carleston was with me for 22 t | years as my housekeeper, and she became a most dear friend to me. I ; miss her greatly,” said Dr. Fox. t Brilliant Career i: “Her son went first to an L.C.C. t school. He showed such remarkable a talent, however, that I decided to send r him to St. Oiave’s, Southwark. He p obtained a scholarship there. I went ( t on paying for his bows, and ulti- 0 mately he went to Cambridge, where h jhe won another scholarship. He 1 came out ninth in the examination r list, a year ahead of his time, and ?- then decided to go into the Indian j Civil Service. ; 0 1 “He has fulfilled all my expecta-1 a tions of him. Moreover, he is a real | a all-round boy, interested in games, ! b good at football, cricket and tennis, ° j but is not so keen about games as he ” | was about Latin and Greek. He was ,V very fond of his mother, and knowing ”, J that he would not be able to get leave V: 1 for five years he was anxious that she s< should go out to live with him.” ~ Dr. Fox, who is superintendent of j ir the Bermondsey Medical Mission in | ~ Grange Road, was at one time gover-! nor and medical officer of the women’s I convict prison at Aylesbury, and she i was also medical officer of the Lady Kinnaird Memorial Hospital at Lucknow.