STRIPPED AND TARRED

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19992, 8 November 1927, Page 7

STRIPPED AND TARRED

A BRUTAL ASSAULT EVANGELIST’S REMARKABLE STORY. (A. & N.Z.) MELBOURNE, Nov. 7. The police are investigating a remarkable story told by Pastor Evan Thomas, the Welsh evangelist and faith healer, belonging to the Pentecostal Church, Richmond, who has recently been holding meetings at Warragul.

Mr Thomas states that three men accosted him in the main street of Warragul and asked him if he were a faith healer. On receiving an affirmative reply they told him that a woman was seriously ill at Nilman, and requested him to go and see her. Mr Thomas joined them in a car, but just after passing Nilman, he declares, he received a heavy blow on the bead. He remembered no more till ho recovered consciousness in a paddock. He had his clothes on then, but apparently he again lapsed into uncon sciousness, for when he again became conscious he found that he had been stripped of his clothes. Another version of the story says that a passing motoring party found Mr Thomas in a paddock stripped, blindfolded, covered with tar and hands bound with barbed wire which had cut into the flesh. They brought him into Warragul.