DOCTORS BAFFLED

Evening Star, Issue 23375, 19 September 1939, Page 14

DOCTORS BAFFLED

RUINED BY STRANGE ILLNESS RICH MAN IS NOW PENNILESS A mysterious tropical illness, which has puzzled some of the most brilliant specialists in England, has reduced a once prosperous English trader in West Africa to living in a London Salvation Army hostel on 15s a week from the Unemployment Assistance Board. The former trader is William Hebron, aged 59, a native of St. Helens, Lancashire. Since he first went out at the age of 21, after giving up his original job as a glassmaker to become an importer of African nut and palm oil, he has paid! several visits to West Africa. During the war the price of the commodities in which he dealt soared, and in 1922, in London, he sold out to a big combine, and retired with nearly £IO,OOO. After eight years, however, the inactivity bored lum, and in 1930 ho formed another company, emigrated! to Nigeria, and established his trading post to barter British goods with the natives for nut and palm oil. “ REMEMBERED NOTHING.” The new business became firmly established and Mr Hebron was both prosperous and apparently in sound health when he became a victim of the mysterious disease. “ I do not know how I became ill or what 1 caught. All I know is that I woke up one morning and remembered nothing, save that my name was William Hebron and that I came from Lancashire,” he stated in an interview. “ When I was first ill in 1932 I was taken from my lonely trading post by native bearers to the hospital at Lagos, Nigeria. After lying in hospital at Lagos for over a month, I was shipped back to England by the medical authorities to be treated. My wife and children met me, but I did not recognise them—l did not even know where I was. “ I did not know how my financial affairs were going on or that after five years my fortune had dwindled! away to nothing. “ When I came out of hospital I was just one of the unemployed. My business had gone and my wife had died. I was still sick, and I had! to support myself. “ Eventually I obtained a temporary position as a property assessor with a suburban borough council. Even when doing this work, which I knew very well, my condition affected me in strange ways. “ I could never remember where ? lived at the end of the day. When I left home of a morning I used to say: ‘ This is the house where I live, and this is how I get home to it,’ hut the impression did not remain in my mind.

“ In the evening I always had to he given a slip of paper with my address on it and particulars of the right bus to catch, otherwise I would wander about all night. “ Thank goodness I am getting better now,” added Mr Hebron, who is hoping to find another job.