A GIRL’S HOAX.

Manawatu Herald, Volume LI, Issue 4455, 22 May 1930, Page 4

A GIRL’S HOAX.

10,000 REPLIES TO A LETTER. A recent Capetown message states: Twelve thousand letters, postcards, illustrated papers and parcels have arrived during- the past fortnight from England in response to a. short letter inserted by a South African girl in the London, Daily Mail. The letter read: ‘“For the last nineteen years my sister and I have been living on a lonely, God-for-saken farm in a forgotten corner of' South Africa, and we would be grateful to anyone who would he kind enough to write us a letter or a postcard once in a while. ((Miss) Kathleen Punt, Mud River, P.O. Box Mamro, Malmesbury, South Africa.

When the first hatch of letters arrived at the little “one-man” post ofli|cc at Mamve three men had to he ,-ailed in to work for three and filial f hours sorting the.mail matter. The following week the mail was heavier and beyond the capacity of the Mamie men.

The parents of the “lonely South African girl,” Kathleen Punt, are well-known in Mamlesbury, where they do much entertaining. Kathleen has many companions, for she attends a school at Ellerslie, Sea Point. She is a popular and vivacious girl of 17. A lIOAX. She wrote the letter as a prank, ami was at first delighted with the number of people she “took in” by her hoax, but when the second week’s mail arrived she was frightened. >She has received many proposals of marriage. She has not been able to open all her parcels of expensive drapery and sweets from her would-be benefactors in England.

The post office has stopped send higher mail out to the Mamve post onree. It is now handled in the circulation branch of the General Post Office.

Kathleen’s parents are making every effort to prevent her from being distracted from her studies, for she is to take her matriculation examination at the cud of this year. She is Jiving with a relative a I Sea Point.