Plight Of Fat Men In Britain

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28259, 23 April 1957, Page 6

Plight Of Fat Men In Britain

[From the London Correspondent of “The Press”) LONDON, March 26. Big men and fat men have never been popular in London’s double decker buses where the seats are small and close together, but the plight of big men in railway compartments has been emphasised by an outsize traveller in a letter published in “The Times” this week. He writes that it has long been his misfortune to earn the hostile glances of fellow-travellers in the second class, four-a-side corridor compartments of Southern Region trains. • To remedy this he invested in a first-class season ticket to work. This enabled him to sit in a three-a-side compartment with arm rests preserving the breadth of his seating area. He now complains that in rush hours he is requested to put up the arms rests to allow four-a-side seating. “What am I to do?” he asks. “It is hardly fair for every outsize passenger to have to follow G. K. Chesterton’s example and buy two tickets. “Unlike Chesterton, I am nowhere near double the size of the normal male, and it is easy to imagine rancorous arguments with sceptics about the right to occupy two places.”