NUDE IN HYDE PARK.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 661, 14 January 1933, Page 1

NUDE IN HYDE PARK.

Man’* Search for Primitive Life in London. (Special to the “ Star. M > LONDON, December 5. The fate of a man who sought the primitive life in London was described at a Westminster inquest on Mr Cecil Barry Dawson, aged 58. of Raphael Street, Knightsbridge, S.W., whose 'unclothed body was found astride railings #at the Kensington end of Hyde Park early last Monday. Mr Henry Hubert Dawson, of Lexham Gardens, Kensington, a retired Army officer, said his brother was retired from the Indian Forestry Service and was a bachelor. He was temperate in his habits, and there was no history of insanity in the family, neither had his brother shown signs of insanity. “ My explanation of him,” he went on, “is this—that for many years he had been very much alone. The Forestry Service in India is a lonely service, and he got into a lonely habit rather. Then he was a theosophist. He used to read a tremendous lot, and was always tremendously introspective. I imagine that his lonely habits rather led him to talk to himself a great deal, and to be always imagining. He was deeply interest in music and art.” Mr Dawson said his brother frequently went out at night and ran about the streets. He thought his brother had been running on the morn ing he was found. Mr Ingleby (the Coroner) : He was naked?—That was part of the idea he had. He used not to feel the cold. He was very healthy and wore no underclothes. He wanted to return to primitive life?—Yes. Dr Robert Hamilton, house surgeon at St George’s Hospital, said Mr Dawson’s was an abnormal brain. The cause of death was exposure and hsemorrhage. Mr Oddie: I think Mr Dawson was probably a highly intelligent man. It may be that he had l got into the park on previous occasions and run about there—as being the nearest thing you can get to a forest, I suppose, in London—in the middle of the night, all alone and, possibly, naked. “ While getting over the railings I think his foot slipped, and he fell, being spiked on the railings. There he was—faint, bleeding, collapsed, and cold, and he remained there until he died from exposure. I don’t think there was anything suicidal in it. I think he was suffering from some curious hallucination, longing for solitude and primitive conditions, including nudity, these occurring in a mind which was undoubtedly abnormal.” A verdict of accidental death was recorded.