BANKRUPT PORTER

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 296, 6 March 1928, Page 13

BANKRUPT PORTER

NEVER RECEIVED A TIP LONELY STRUGGLE A porter who never received a tip has filed his petition in bankruptcy. That is part of the pathetic story lying behind a notice appearing recently in the “London Gazette." The notice was simply that a receiving order had been made against Thomas Pritchard, of Station House, Cwmyglo, Carnarvonshire, described as "a porter in charge of a railway station.” Cwmyglo is a little station of one platform lying in the lap of the Snowdon range. It is on the single tourist line from Carnarvon to Llanberis, the Chamonix of Wales. But "few tourists and no tips descend at Cwmyglo," as Porter Pritchard, with quaint humour, told me. “The tourists," h© said, "mostly go on to Llanberis, put up at the hotels there, and then go up Snowdon.” This conversation took place in Pritchard’s modest little parlour after the toiling, puffing train had set me down at the rain-drenched station. Rather frail-looking for a porter, with intellectual features, his paleness emphasised by an abundant mass of dark hair, he told me his story in the tones of an educated man. “Nothing But 111-luck" "There has been nothing but illluck for me for a long time," he said. “Continued ill-health in my family has been my main trouble. lam only 38, but I married young—when I was 19—and I have five children. The youngest, a boy aged six, has been lame through infantile paralysis since he was four. My wif© has been ailing with asthma for 3 2 years, and owing to constant expense I am afraid I have not been able to make ends meet. But I have never had a tip since I came here.” Pritchard confessed to having been always ambitious and studious. From the elementary school he had gone to work in a quarry at 14, and by going to evening classes had won first-class certificates in quarrying and mining. He also produced with pride a bronze medal awarded him in that subject by the City and Guilds of London Institute.