BLACK BABY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 September 1938, Page 6

BLACK BABY

TO BE MADE SOLE HEIRESS. A black baby, £iyen out of gratis tude by its mother to a missionary and his wife for saving its life, has been made their sole heiress. This was revealed at Liverpool when Mr and Mrs I. W. Sherk arrived in the liner Duchess of Bedford on the concluding stage of their 40,000 miles holiday tour. Mr Sherk has for 32 years been a missionary in Northern Nigeria among the three-quarter of a million Mahommedan population of Mupes. Mrs Sherk, since her marriage 25 years ago, has lived with her husband among the mud huts of the Mupes. She stated in an interview: “When we started our holiday a year ago we felt a great anxiety about our little girl Azetu, or Betty as we call her. When she was a baby we found her dying of starvation when her mother was ill, and my husband and I nursed them both back to health. The mother’ of the child was so grateful that she gave the child to us, and we adopted her as our only child. “Now she is six, and a bonny little girl. We adore her. When we started our voyage our thoughts were so much with Betty in the native compound of Jebba, more than 300 miles from Lagos, that we sat down in our cabin on the ship and made a will in her favour. “We wanted to be sure if anything happened to us that she should be given a good education till she reached the age of 21. "It is our intention to ensure that our little Betty has a real chance in life.”