SHAM DEAF MUTE

Hokitika Guardian, 14 March 1927, Page 4

SHAM DEAF MUTE

THE HAGUE, January If). The mystery of the man who has represented himself to he an American subject, an ex-soldier in the British Army, and incidentally a deaf mute, and who has been for five months m hospital in Rotterdam, has not yet been entirely solved. It is impossible to elieck all his statements, and the authorities here fear that he may still be romancing.

It is clear that the strain of keeping up the pose has been too much, and ho stated to a police officer that he would not go through the experience again for a fortune.

The discovery of the role he was playing was made by observing that when the Hungarian counsel spoke to him in the Magyar language he always had a nervous attack. Last Sunday a doctor wrote on Ids tablet, “ You can speak and you can hear,” and this made him so angry that he sprang out of bed and attacked the doctor. He made a written statement to the Hungarian Consul, the gist of winch is as follows:

He was horn in February, 1896. at Tiszakeszi, in Hungary. His father was a railway worker of drunken habits and his mother was a consumptive. At the age oi 10, he escaped from an institution and went on foot through Luxembourg to Paris. Later he was repatriated and again sent to an institution.

On the outbreak of the war tie was sent to the front. He served on tlie Rumanian and the Italian fronts, being wounded several times and suffering from shell-shock. Early in 1918 he was confined in an asylum as a dangerous lunatic, but later in tile year was discharged as cured. Returning home he was with his mother when she died and lie buried her with his own hands. Condemned by the Reds, with five of his friends, to be shot, lie escaped and started business as a pig dealer. Later he took to stealing, and was sentenced to 21 years’ imurisonment.

He went to Vienna, where a film actor advised him to act as a deaf mute to induce charitable persons to send him to his brother in Rio de Janeiro. He learned to make deaf and dumb signs with his fingers and for a year did not speak.

Before lie reached the Dutch frontier and was taken charge of by the British Consul lie wandered over Austria, Czeehn-Slovakia. Poland and Germany. Should the present inquiries prove satisfactory, it is probable that lie will be sent to Rin de Janeiro to act for the films.