TRAGIC SECRET

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 553, 9 June 1933, Page 7

TRAGIC SECRET

kept by father BRIDE'S MOTHER KILLED FIVE HOURS BEFORE WEDDING CEREMONY C-ONTINUED London, April 12. ' A 22-year-old girl was married in the church of St. Michael's Mill Hill, at 2 o'clock yesterday afternoon, in ignorance of the fact that five hours before her mother, Mrs. Louise Pull, had met a tragic death. The . bride was Miss Kathleen Louise Pull, of Dean's Way, Edgware, Middlesex, and she was accompanied by her father Mr. Frederick Thomaa Pull, who alone of the wedding guests knew that his wife had been killed beneath an Underground train at Burnt Oak Station. The bridegroom was Mr. Allan Wil- ■ liam Auckland, aged 26, of Maitland Park Road, Hamstead. Mrs. Pull supervised. the last detail for her daughter's wedding and then went for a walk. An hour latec news reached Dean's Way that she had fallen under an electric train at 9 o' clock and been killed. Husband at Door A policeman took the news to Dean's Way. The door was opened to him by the dead woman's husband. He was overcome for a few minutes. Then he thought of his daughter's wedding. "Mother would have wished it to go on," he said aftertfrards. He decided to carry on, making an excuse for his wife's absence. So he lcept the secret, while his daughter commented on her mother's non-re-turn. As the hour for the wedding approached, he said: "She will have gone straight to the church," and, after a wait he knew was in vain, he drove straight to the church with his daughter. Till the Last Guest Had Gone He walked steadily up the aisle with his daughter's arm on his, and stood at the altar steps. All through the service he stood there and showed no sign — though xiis hands twitched as he held them behind him. By a tragic qoincidence the viear the Rev. Cyril Bladen, addressed the couple on the fortitude with which eatastrophe should meet. Once of twice the grief-stricken father and husband swayed. After the service he spok'e for a while alone with the viear in the vestry, telling him of the death of his wife. "I did not know until then, of course, how my words to his daughter and son-in-law, and the congregation, must have been tearing the father's heart-strings," said the viear after wards to a "News-Chronicle" reporter. When the wedding guests left the bride's home in Dean's Way they did not know that Mrs Pull was dead. The bride and bridegroom were told only when the last guest had gone. f