BABES IN THE WOOD

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 118, 21 May 1932, Page 9

BABES IN THE WOOD

MODERN VERSION. CHILDREN FOUND ASLEEP. “The Babes in the Wood,” in a modern setting was enacted in Sydney last week, when tw’o little girls, after being lost .for seven hours, were found under a tree miles away, where they had sobbed themselves to sleep. Betty. 4}, and Poppy, 3, daughters of Mr. and Mrs. H. Porter—who conduct a newsagency at the corner of Bathurst and Castlereagh Streets—were playing in the shop during the afternoon. Suddenly, about four o’clock, they were missed. While police cars and scores of police were searching for the toddlers, and five wireless stations at intervals broadcast appeals to the public to look out for the two little darkeyed girls who were wheeling a perambulator containing a celluloid doll, the “babes” had crossed busy Castlereagh and Elizabeth Streets, wandered across Hyde Park, safely negotiated College Street near the Cathedral, and continued through the streets of Woolloomooloo.

Hopelessly lost, and afraid to tell anyone of their plight, they kept trudging on, pushing their little perambulator, until, exhausted, they sought shelter under a tree in an open space at East Sydney, where they cried themselves to sleep. It was eleven o'clock at night when police officers found them, cold and hungry, huddled together under the tree, and just as they wore, lifted into the police car, torrential rain coin menced to fall. But they were swiftly restored to their grief-stricken parents. Tho mother was almost on the point of collapse. “1 thought they had been kidnapped. said the father. “That horrible thought immediately occurred to my wife and myself, because we have been reading so much about the Lindbergh kiddie. About four o’clock 1 saw them playing in the shop. They must have taken it into their heads to stray off, and how they managed to cross all those thoroughfares without being run over is amazing. My wife was in a dreadful state. T never want to go through such an ordeal again.”