SACRIFICED BRILLIANT CAREER TO AID YOUTH.

Shannon News, 21 May 1929, Page 4

SACRIFICED BRILLIANT CAREER TO AID YOUTH.

STORY OF CHARLES YOUNG.

DID GREAT GOOD

DEEDS IN SECRET

D One of tlio most beautiful of lives lias just been, ended. The story of 'Charles Edward Baring Young, who loved boys, in a London paper. If you had seen him in tho street you would have thought he needed help, ” a /friend' says of him, "so shabby did he look with his, worn coat and frayed trousers. ”

One would not have thought Mr., Young could have been to Lton, or guessed that in his youth people said he might have been a Cabinet Minister. Least of all would one have dreamed that he had given away a million pounds. Tho handsome, shabby old man guarded his secret'from the world so woll that when he died only a lew friends know what a wonderful story had ended. At last the truth is creeping out. Charles Baring Young was born witli all the gifts that made him sure of tile world’s favour, aristocratic birth, ■wealth, good looks, and a brilliant mind. If die had been ambitious lie would certainly have become one of the great figures of tho. day, perhaps Prime Minister. But while he was at Eton he had begun‘to feel for the poor and sorrowful. He worked with Mr. Quentin Hogg, the father of the British Lord Chancellor and founder of tho Regent Street Polytechnic. Mr Young entered Parliament, but he felt that he could v help the needy better in another way. Retiring to Ins beautiful estate at Daylesford, in Worcestershire, near the Oxfordshire border, he founded a unique thing—a charity which was kept a secret. He -took three houses in Fitzroy square, where (3(3 homeless boys could bo received, and then he built the Kingham Homes on Kingham Hill, in Oxfordshire, eight houses for 30 boys each, where the waifs could grow up in country air and learn almost any trade they chose. This, benefactor built costly workshops and employed Highly-skilled >n'structors. He laid out 500 acres, as an

agricultural school for boys who preferred farming, and bought a huge tract ’ of bind in Canada for those who .wish ed to settle there. He also founded two factories to give the boys employ ment in later yeads. He endowed the homes richly. They never appealed to the public for money; it all came from one man, who forbade his friends to speak of it. He spent money on these homes, and on all the enterprises connected with them, a,s if they had been his yacht, or his racehorses, or his business, or his hunt, or his shooting box. Mr Young was happy to the end. Only two or three clays before he pass-„ ed away, he was listening-to the boys ‘ flinging hymns at his open window. "Lot them sing ou," he said; " I could listen for hours ’ ’ He himself had written a hymn, and, with the help of his' sister, prepared a volume of 1200 hymns. , Tho faith of Mr Young was very simple: he believed in the Word c" God as plain men understand it. The chaplain of the homes, who knew him well for many years, has said of him that he never swerved a hair’s Lveadth to the right or left from what he believed to be right. One who knew Mr Young declared that "ho was the most lovable man I havs ever known ’ ■ and described how, though he had three or four cars at liis country house, ho would insist on the same' old ‘ ‘ growler ’ ’ meeting him when he returned from a visit to London. He wore an old hat, faded green, and promised his wife a thousand times to buy a new one. He kept a piano factory and an iron foundry going at a loss in London to help to give boys work.