LOST FAITH IN WOMEN

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 586, 12 February 1929, Page 4

LOST FAITH IN WOMEN

MAN’S BROKEN ROMANCE ' TWENTY YEARS’ BAN Behind the death o£ Mr. Edwin Jones, 63, a chemist, of Bramley Road, North Kensington, London, is a tragedy of a broken romance that changed him from one of the most popular and wealthy members of his profession into an eccentric recluse. Twenty years ago, when Mr. Jones, who was an Oxford graduate, was at the height of his career, he fell in love with a beautiful girl. A short time before the marriage, however, he saw his fiancee talking to a man in Bloomsbury, and this fact changed his whole life. He lost ail faith in women and swore that he would have nothing more to do ■with them, a vow which he kept until his death. The tragedy is that probably the conversation between the girl and the other man was entirely innocent. After making his vow, Mr. Jones gave up his shop in Sloane Street and started a small chemist’s business in North Kensington. He furnished the rooms above it with odd pieces of furniture and lived there alone. Friend of the Poor Mr'. H. Johnson, manager of the public house next door to Mr. Jones’s shop, told a Press representative that he had watched him gradually going to pieces for 12 years. "He allowed no one to go near his rooms,” added Mr. Johnson, "though he was always quite friendly and willing to have a chat over the counter of his shop. “Known as ‘Old Teddy’ by all the people round here, he was generally beloved, for poor people would go to him for his advice and medicine, for which he would charge either a copper or two, or nothing at all.

“He could talk on almost any subject, was well travelled, well read and altogether a most interesting, intellectual and lovable personality in spite of his eccentricity and shabbiness.”