GENERAL LIVES IN SLUMS

Evening Star, Issue 23678, 11 September 1940, Page 5

GENERAL LIVES IN SLUMS

HE PREFERS PEOPLE THERE Brigadier-general Sir Wyndham Deedes, D. 5.0., newly-appointed leader of the “ Mr Sensibles ” in London — whose job will be to help the Government distribute authentic news and maintain morale in an emergency—is himself as much a man of the people as any of those who will act as his agents. For the last 17 years he has lived in the East End of London, because, as he said, “ I was able to find' there the place and the people 1 like best.” Ho lived with his mother in a 280-vear-old house in Bethnal Green. “ My neighbours are the kind of neighbours 1 like,” he said, “and they are the kind I perhaps couldn’t find in the West End of London.” He is 57, a bachelor. His mother left London last July. Now,, after 17 years, he has just moved into two rooms in a larger house two doors away. Sir Wyndham has persistently championed the people among whom he has lived, and vigorously campaigned for better housing conditions for the poor. About slums he said; “ Historians of the future will write about us, in regard to them, very much ns we write about those who forced children of nine and 10 to work in mines 100 years ago.” For 23 years ho was a soldier. “ I cot in by the back door with a com-

mission during the South African War when I was 17,” he said, “ and took part in four wars altogether. “ I ran a Red Crescent hospital unit while the cholera-decimated Turks were fighting the Bulgars in 1913, and I don’t know quite how the job came to me. In 1916, when attached to General Allonby’s staff, I was put in charge of intelligence in Palestine. I knew nothing about it, of course.”