LOSS OF MEMORY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 October 1938, Page 7

LOSS OF MEMORY

ENGLISH GIRL’S ORDEAL. FOUND 700 MILES FROM HOME. Looking fit and well, a golden-hair-ed, Eton-cropped girl, hatless and wearing a camel-hair coat over her green dress, boarded the London train at Wick, in the extreme north-east of Scotland, to begin the 700-mile journey to her home at Chaldon, near Caterham, Surrey. She is Miss Catherine Ball, aged 21, who almost a week before was found wandering with bare feet at Freswick, Caithness, a few miles south of John o’ Groats. The girl, wearing only a few flimsy clothes, was taken to hospital in an exhausted condition suffering from loss of memory. IN CROFTER’S HUT. She had left her home in Surrey 48 hours earlier. When a crofter at Freswjck gave her shelter he provided the only contact she apparently had in the 700 miles distance from her home. Realising the girl was lost and ill. the crofter ran for help and to notify the police, but in his absence Miss Ball left the hut. A police patrol overtook her later on the roadside and drove her to hospital in Wick. She was able to say who she was, and her parents, a London solicitor and his wife, were notified. They set off at once for the North of Scotland. Meantime, in the hospital, Miss Ball slept peacefully for some hours, but soon after dusk, when the ward was unattended for a few seconds, she climbed through a window and dashed off. Nurses saw her and raced’ over the hospital grounds in pursuit, but soon Miss Ball, running in the direction of the open fields, was lost in the night Highland mist. Police were notified and went from house to house in Wick and got together 60 searchers. Carrying torches and lanterns, the searchers moved slowly through the fog over fields and marshes to the cliff edges, then joined hands to keep the wandering girl from falling over the cliffs. GRATEFUL PARENTS. After a three-hour hunt two policemen found her at midnight, lying wet and exhausted by the roadside a mile from the hospital. She was wearing only a flimsy nightdress. Her feet were cut. When she was taken back to the hospital a nurse was posted to keep watch at her bedside. Mr and Mrs James Ball, the girl’s parents, when they arrived in Wick from Surrey, took their daughter from the hospital, where, after a night’s sleep, she was stated to have recovered, to stay with them in a local hotel. Next morning they boarded the train with her to begin the long journey to London. Before leaving. Mr Ball expressed his appreciation of all that had been done for his daughter. “I thank the people of Wick and district for all they have done for us. One could not meet kinder people anywhere especially when one is in trouble,” he declared: