LIVING IN A HEDGE.

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 27, 23 April 1927, Page 13

LIVING IN A HEDGE.

HOME MADE OF SACKS. DOG AND CAT COMPANIONS. In a hedge in s ome sodden fields near Burnt Oak, Edgeware, Miss Bessie James has made her home for three years. All around building is in progress; the once deserted fields have been torn up to make way for houses, but Miss James is indifferent, she lives happily beneath the sun and the stars. Frail in build, with very blue eyes, and a very bronzed face. Miss James, who is 62 years of age, said that until about three years ago she occupied rooms in Hendon. “Then,” she said, “I lost my money. All my relatives are dead. JVIy father was a publican—landlord of the Barrel Inn, Hereford, to which town I belong. But I belong to one, and no one belongs to ine, and w’hen my money went I decided to make my home in the open. “The alternative was the workhouse. I tried it, but not for long. I cannot bear to be shut up. I am a country woman, and I missed the open spaces and the wind and the sun and the fields, so with my dog Jim and my cat I have since lived in hedges, moving on from time to time as a hedge comes down, to make way for a house.” Miss James’s homes consist of a sack on which she sleeps and sacks slung between two trees which make a little tent. Here are concealed her few belongings. “I sell rags and bottles when I can,” said Miss James, “and sometimes people give me a few pennies. I often go to the convent at Mill Hill, where the Sisters of Charity give me food. Sometimes I find a newspaper, and then I take it ‘home’ and settle down to read by candlelight. “I live on bread and dripping and tea as a rule. Cold? Oh, dear, no. I slept all through the recent snowstorm, and was surprised to find the ground white all round me when I peeped out in the morning. “Sometimes people say to me, ‘You would be much more comfortable in the workhouse.’ But here I am my own mistress. No one interferes with me, and I have never been asked to ‘move on’. I get attacks of rheumatism at times, otherwise I am in very good health.” A farmer who lives in the district said that some time ago, when he was mowing a field, he nearly mowed Miss James out of it. “I had no idea that anyone was living in the hedge,” he said. “It was a great shock. Since then I have seen Miss James occasionally. She seems quite indifferent to the weather.”