ON ST. HELENA

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21186, 5 November 1938, Page 20

ON ST. HELENA

PLIGHT OF INHABITANTS A former governor of St. Helena has been writing of the plight of the inhabitants of that island and protesting their great loyalty to Britain, says the “Manchester Guardian.” A similar story was told in the House of Commons by Miss Eleanor Rathbone just before the recess, and she, who never shoots her arrows into the air without having some objective, suggested that the Royal Commission which is to visit the West Indies should call at St. Helena on its way. That, she was told, was impossible, but no alternative proposal was made by the Government. St. Helena, which every schoolboy knows to have been the last home of Napoleon, has other claims to attention which are less well known. The island was uninhabited when it was discovered by a Portuguese in 1502, but from the time of the first settlement, made by the East India Company in 1659, the language of the people has always been English, and the general character of the community is that of a rural and not very prosperous English country. The four thousand inhabitants have their Scouts and Guides, their branch of the Ancient Order of Foresters, and their gaol, which received nineteen prisoners in 1936. The chief exports—lily bulbs, fibre, tow, and rope —are being fostered, but their value is not much more than half the value of imports. An attempt is being .made to improve the housing in the capital, Jamestown.