STREET-SELLER’S ROYAL PATRON

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20930, 8 January 1938, Page 14

STREET-SELLER’S ROYAL PATRON

DIET FADS” BAD FOR BUSINESS” SPECIAL AIR-MAIL SERVICE Many overseas visitors to London, entering Kensington Gardens by I Palace Green, must have noticed a I sweet stall in charge of an elderly white-haired woman. Mrs Wheeler white-haired woman. Mrs Wheelerbread, 65-year-old wife of a naval pensioner, who has sold sweets on this spot for 16 years, told lately how she had been helped by Princess Louise, | Duchess of Argyll, says a special air ; mail correspondent. I Things were not going well, and it i looked as though the stall would have |to close. One day Princess Louise

passed Mrs Wheelerbread's stall. She stopped, asked her how she was doing and heard her story. She finally bought a penny packet of chocolate for 1 6, and has continued to patronise the little stall. Whenever she is going on a hospital visit, she stops there and buys supplies of chocolate and sweets. And every March, on Princess Louise’s birthday, Mrs Wheelerbread goes round to the back door of Kensington Palace, and delivers her birthday present to the Princess—a pot of daffodils. “The Princess is nearing ninetiy, bless her," said Mrs Wheelerbread. “But I hope to be round the back door of her residence at Kensington with my little present next year. "I have been painted for the Academy. Very nice, but I've no

ambition to be famous.” Mrs Wheelerbread is a little grieved about the change in Kensington Gardens. “Nowadays,” she complains, “there are not nearly so many children here as there used to be, and there are many more dogs. At one time there used to be a lot of what I call ‘middleclass children,’ who came in with their parents or by themselves. Those children spent money; they had no nannies with modern ideas about not eating too many sweets. "Nowadays the children who do come stare at the sweets, but the nannies hurry them on. I dare say they go home and eat lettuce and chopped carrots! It’s not good for trade.”