KIDNAPPED BY TRAMP.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9338, 6 January 1909, Page 7

KIDNAPPED BY TRAMP.

COMPELLED TO BEG WITH A BLIND WOMAN. A remarkable kidnapping story comes from. Blackpool. A schoolboy named Geo. Leach, 12, left home in the ordinary way to go to sohool?one day in June last, and for nearly five months not a trace of him was to be found anywhere. Police investigations were baffled at every turn, and the lad’s parents gave up all hope of seeing him alive again. But the other day, to the great joy of bis mother, the lad returned home. He ‘ was tattered and torn and in a deplorable condition generally “I could scarcely believe my eyes when I saw him,” said Mrs Leach. “He was dressed in dirty, worn-out clothes, much too large for, him* his trousers which were large ones, were tied up with rope, and his old shoes seemed to be big enough for a man. It appears that the lad the day he left home for school was met in the street by a strange man of the tramping class, who asked him to carry a parcel for him. The man got the lad as far as Preston Road, and then forced him to go with him. Hereabouts they were joined by a blind woman, who turned out to be the man’s wife. Youg Leach was now told off to guide the afflicted dame and represent himself as her son. He was also forced to beg. The boy had some wretched experiences on the road, sleeping against haystacks and in stables, and having little to eat- Many a time he was cruelly beaten.. The lad and his captors stayed longest in Newcastle-on-Tyne, where they became quite faaailiar figures in®the streets, young Leach leading his blind “mother”, and the man, watching from :a distance what they received from the sympathetic passers-by. Many a time when he conld conveniently do so, the lad appealed to constables and others in the towns through which tbay-passad to assist him home. But it was in vain. The man always insisted that the lad was his son. Once at Gateshead ‘Leach to escape, bnt twas recaptured and cruelly % ill-treated for Jiis pains. Leaving Tyneside, they trudged northwards, and one day when they arrived at Peebles the lad managed to find the local police station, and in a half-fainting condition told the police his distressing story. After passing one night in a charitable institution, he was sent home to ' Blackpool, where he now lies in a shockingly bruised condition. The lad, who is under the care of a doctor, says he was frequently beaten with a poker, and is very deaf as the result of his treatment.