To
Barts doctor finds
a new smoke
to reconcilo a craving for Leigarottes with the burden of the tobacco tax has been a most pressing personal problem for 54-year-old Dr Geoffrey A. Harrison, chemical pathologist at St Bartholomew's Hospital, E.C.1.
Now he has solved itat least to satisfy himself. After hundreds of experimenta he has found thn a good smoking mixture can be made from the untaxed leaves of carrots and wild water-mint blended with the fluff of bulrusher.
"It tastes Bne, is smooth to intule, does not irritate the eyes, and la not objectionable to my wife--a non-smoker." he told me.
For the pipe smoker Dr. Harrison has devised a fragrant mixture of dried pench and willow leaves.
Ile began hin experiments tho day after Mr. Hugh Dalton an- nounced his "Gasper" Budget last April.
1 First he tried the dried leaves of
a rock-rose bush growing in his gorden.
"They tasted like frlar's
Latsam," he writes In a report of
expert. his
ments pub-
Haised in the
Chemical Pro-
ducts Journal,
by
Then he made CHAPMAN
a "cake" by PINCHER
folding up
rhubarb Joves and leaves
pressing them
in a vice. "I chain-smoked three pipefuls and got a bad pain in the stomach, so I did not try it neat ngain," he says.
Smoking the leaves of lamatoca and beetroot made him feel nicht. Poisto leaves gave him a headache.
The to Dr. Harrison's recipe for the cigarette mixture:-
Strip the carrot leaves of slalky matter, tind spread
SIDE GLANCES
THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH, SATURDAY, MARCH 13, 1948.
ESCAPE TO THE SUNSHINE
By Galbraith
COFEL 140 NY NEA SERVICE, ING,'T, M. NEC, L. #. PAT. OFF.
"When we talked it over and decided to come down here on our honeymoon, it slipped my mind how crazy ho was
about golf!"
M
with
BERNARD WICKSTEED
What a 4d, bus ride!
ANY people think of the Empire as a collection of wide open spaces, but the Rock of Gibraltar, where I called the other day, is so narrow that you can cross it on.foot in a quarter. of an hour.
It is the smallest, the nearest, and perhaps the oddest colony
long, which is less than a mile, yet Franco keeps 2,000 troops there to guard it. This workta out at about one man to every two feet.
It is not quite so crowded on tho Rock itself, but there are 27,355 people living in its 1% square miles, most of them in a 'compact aren the 'size
of an English village.
Before the war people were living
for
Even the Gibraltar apes have Army
t.
ration books
in the whole Empire. In area to a room. Then, when it looked.
as if Gibraltar might be besieged for it is about twice the size of the fifteenth time in its history 17,- Hyde Park, and you can get 000 of the inhabitants were evacua- from one end to the other in a ted to Britain, Madeira, and Jamaica. bus for 4d.
About 2,700 of them are still in exile. There's no water except what The Government. won't allow them
back because there is nowhere they catch when it rains, there them to sleep. are no fields and no hedges, and
New homes are being built, but with your hand. the only cow in the colony died last August.
they are taking just as long materialise na in Britain. The cow belonged to the ad blocks of flats to house 300 families miral in charge of the dockyard. are planned. They will cost £2 He had a parrot once, but that's 000,000, and the first of them will dend, too. Come to think of it, not be ready for another year.
The Rock is riddled with tunnels He feeds the animals on sweet the Navy itself doesn't look any
To help pay for all this the Go- and storage chambers of different potatoes, onions, nuts (monkeys for a party of the use of), oatmeal and Army too strong in these parts nowa- vernment has organised a lottery, kinds. During the war days.
There are three draws every month sappers making a tunnel came across biscuits which they are able to cat £3.000. The cave with a lake In It 120 feet because of their exceptionally strong The frontier between Gibral- and the top prize is.
alternative was the introduction of long. A man fell in some time ago teeth. tar and Spain is 1,300 yards Income tax. which Gibraltarians and his body has never been found.
ONE OF OUR SHIPS
IS
MISSING
by SIDNEY RODIN
have so far escaped. They hope the system will continue, because buy- ing a lottery ticket is more fun thàn Alling in incoine-tax forms.
Gibraltar became British in 1704, when an admiral captured it as an afterthought.
He had been sent to Inke Barcelona, and having failel he thought he'd better do something, so he took Gibraltar instead.
Men of Ice Age
You may not use a quarter he Indents for their ration headlights either, but to offset this money on Army Form N 1514, and the wrong direction up a one-way audited by a major and two cap- no one seems to mind if you go in his accounts (on Form SF 10) are street, providing you do it back- lains. tvards.
Ape legendi
.
At
The apes roam about the Rock all day, but report for thelencals at 09.00 hours and 10.00 hours daily. one time there were only five left, and the enemies of Britain who CIMILAR happenings have given had spread the story that when the rise to the story that there is a Instape left Gibraltar the British tunnel from Gibraltar to Africa. It would
to rub their go, too, began
That Was when would have to be some tunnel, be- hands with glee. Cruse the Straits are nine miles Mr. Churchill font his famous war- across at their narrowest, and the time signal that the ape strength water is 1,500 feet deep,
was to be brought up to 24 and Legend says the famous Gibraltar maintained at that until further apes, reached the Rock by this route, notice. Under Captain Fitzgerald though how they did it without the number has been brought to 18, THE first people who ever lived on oxygen masks and Bash-lamps no- and if all goes well there will bo the Rock, were called Neander body has explained. Nowadays 25 by the end of the breeding sea-
the pack gre son this summer, thai men. They inhabiled the ninen reinforcements for during the Ice Age. The fossilised brought from Africa by air.
Here are a few more notes from the British akull of one of them was found, In In homes all over "I Mrs Hill said to me quietly:
These are the only apes at large this
the Empire. The part of RIEF messages appeared in
are being a quarry 100 years no. and the the newspapers recently listen to every B.B.C. news, I buy Isles the same dramas
I get up at played out as in the homes of Mra brain cavity was so smail that scien- in Europe, and they are all on the almond trees are now in blossom. on Ane days fists thought at Arst it belonged to ration strength of the British Army, butterfiles come, out saying that the British every evening paper.
seven to fetch a morning paper from Hill, Mrs Hides, and Mrs Ballard.
spent an afternoon with Captain all the year round, and there are ship Samkey (7,219 tons), at the newsagent although
we have
Ten of the Samkey crew are from an idiot.
John Fitzgerald, who has the in centipeds six Inches long. Scotland, 25 of them from London
Since then fosallised
remains teresting litle of "Officer 1/c Rock American-built, Liberty vessel, one delivered.
dread each knock at the door, and the Home Counties. There are similar people have been found in Apes He got the job because he The main street is called. Main
d., and the first men from the Midlands and from Germany, Czechoslovakia, Palestine, had once looked after some camels Street, posinge is "I cannot sleep since owned by the Ministry of Trans- port, has not been heard from message, from the shipping company the North of England..
Pnd Jersey. So even they were on the Northwest Frontler, and his phones are free. At sunset they since she radioed that she was a few days ago saying 'anxiety' is
Meanwhile the suspense tightens, idiots they got around lot.
The modern
C. O. said he was just the man to fire a gun which scares the life out also Gibraltarians passing north of the Azores, in fell.
although it may yet be some ume
the like to get around, and for that pur- t
take charge of the apes on Gibral of you and there is Very little before Lloyd's will pronounce
You know how it is in the twilight. the stormy mid-Atlantic, on
"David was so cheerful, for this Samkey lost. "She may still turn pose they have 1,100 privately own- January 31.
was to have been a short voyage up," the Shipping Committee say. ed motor-cars. As they can drive Army.
The Rock and he said he was going to bring What can have happened? Why right round their pocket-size colony The apes get a ration allowance me some food home about March 19 should a modern ship with two In a few minutes they do most of of £6 16. 8d. per ape per annum.
in Spain Albert Dock on the morning of -5lb. of sugar, 6ib. of tea, 5lb. of radio sets and emergency sets in her their inctoring activity has been There's a story that a former officer IE sediments from
B
The Samkey left the Royal them Saturday, January 21, bound for out on paper to dry. "After two | Cuba, where weeks slice them up. Than to every ten parts by bulk of currat leaves, add one part of the dried plant tenves of water-mint (a common round ponda), and one part of buirush fluff.
Without the fluf the mixture sparks like a bonfire.
A ninch of dried rhubarb lent will counter any carroty taste.
"Do not use garden mint instead af wild water-mint-its smoke is nauseating," says
butter, some tinned fruit and per- lifeboats keep so strangely silent? she was to load haps a bright shawl.
Other men might go ashore to 7.000 tons of sugar a week's get drink, but David always goes to ration for more than 31,000,000, get 'stores' for us. people in Britain.
Just lately this
Tocal
which the THE
Rock of Gibraltar is formed were laid down 100,000,000 years
Sinco then there have been a number of ups and downs.
Just now the Rock is sinking, but It is likely to last another 100,000,--
timo 000
the years, by which evacuees still in Britain will have
get home or not. given up caring whether they ever
In the local pubs, and at closing The New Zealand Shipping Com- cut down because it is illegal now in charge used to spend this money pany, who manage her, belleved the lo
drive a car in Spain between
ago. elght me the apes came down from the and Saturday explanation may
bo that sho had midday 071
Rock and corried him home. Monday morning. o'clock on run into a storm area where severe
If your car is more than 18 h.D. radio interference occurs, thus pre-
you aren't allowed to use it on Wed- venting her sending out messages.
There was only one radio opera-nesdays either. for on board. It is possible he was
Both main radio sets taken ill.
The Samkey was short of and She should have reached Cuba galley-boy, and he wanted our elder boy, Ivor, to take the job. But Ivor on February 11.
Is 14 and now has to stay on at school, so he couldn't go. I am so I do not want either boy to #ind. go to sea."
We have read that on board were a crew of 43 Britons, and that hope has not yet been abandoned that they may all be safe.
Donkeyman Hill gels £25 10s. 6d. a month for his part in salling the Samikey.
Dr. Harrison. We know that Portishead At the other end of London, Mrs "And never try blending the mix- ture with tobacco. The result is wireless station, near Bristol, Hides was working, as usual, in a
jam factory. awful.".
has been calling constantly--to- After six months' trial Dr. Harl-establish radio contact with the
prefers son now mixture to tobacco. But there is one srag,
sailed a
A day or two before the ship
wavy-haired, six-foot, hat his home-made Simkey wherever she may be less ind in blue macintosh and grey
And we know that Portu-pin-stripe sult-"he was always
"smart boy"-left Mrs. Hides' home guese planes from the Azores in Cobbold-road, Shepherd's Bush, the mighty W., to spend a little time with his Mearched wastes heaving and roaring for sweetheart Joyce, before joining the thousands of miles north and Samkey as a deckhand. west of those islands.
"It takes me an hour to roll 20 of these cigarettes and I need 50 a day. "But is my spare time worth only 35. 4d. an hourt
"That is a question I still have to settle."
*
FOOTNOTE: Newspaper office ratings of the Harrison Mixture ranged from "First_rate" to "Awful. but better than nothing."
man.
JESTS AND
JEERS
across
FOR SUGAR
THREW UP JOB
Monkey nuts
There is a law against tooting your horn in Gibraltar. If some- were kept one gets in your way you have to business-like. He keeps un ape
yell or bang on the side of the car Ale and an ape account book.
in the same compartment. Heavy this weather may have damaged compartment and put the sets of action.
out
1
I
IN A STORM?
Master mariners with whom have spoken are more dubious, Some fear that the Samkey may have been caught on the edge of оле of those whirlwind storms which occur in this area.
If that happened the Samkey might have been overwhelmed by mountainous waves,
Others, are critical of the Minis- try of Transport In sending the Samkey out in ballast. They failed to find a cargo for her.
If I
CAPTAIN FITZGERALD is more
Once
were
by CLAUD MULLINS
Home Secretary
methods for dealing with offen- It the new Bill
THE
HE Criminal Justice Bill of Institute for the Scientific Treatment But Judges are reasonable men and 1947 will make many useful of Delmquency, a nonomelal, body that would accept reforms if Parliament
can draw on the services of many were convinced of the necessity. improvements in our present expert doctors.
So eminent a Judge'as Lord Wright passes without has proposed the amalgamation of ders. But it contains some
giving power to pay for treatment, the smaller Assizes. There is much serious defects and there is at courts will no longer be able to use opinion in the legal world to support least one grave omission.
the services of individual doctors such a reform, though I admit that Only State mental hospitals are like it is in a minority. But if the Home Of the defects the most notable is ly to be available and I fear that Office always waits for judicial un- that courts will have no power to offenders will refuse to go there. animity, the only reforms that wo
shall got will be petty ones. Mrs Illdes was in white overalls broke up with the loss of all 39 opay for the medical treatment of Thus
those offenders who need it in order
a devastating blow will be and heavy clogs when I met her. her crew when she got out of con-to-be-ablo-is refrain from repenting struck at psychiatrie treatment of She turns sugar into syrup for the trol and was driven on Porthcawl their offences.
offenders while they remali" at "work": jam-the last sugar she was using rocks last April. She also was in
and at liberfy: came from Cuba.
He was 20-year-old Dick Illdes, who although he rarely saw the sen Immersed in the problems of as a child in London, threw up his A Liberty ship in ballast is said our own living, we have little job in a butcher's shop because he to be difficult to manage in heavy time, perhaps, to think much burned with sea fever, and so got weather, about the 43 men silent amid aboard his first ship at 10. the storm of the ocean.
Nor of their families waiting
news.
The Samtampa, a sister vessel,
I talked to the people whose
ballast.
The Bill of 1838-0 proposed in- husbands and sons have gone to
directly to give courts this right: She is a widow, and the £3 fetch that cargo of sugar so
In recent years it has been ex- Probation committees were to have week she earns is needed to help tremely rare for a ship the size of power to pay the necessary fees when that life in Britain may go on. look after three other sons who live the Samkey to disappear without an court made a probation order con-
David Hill, the donkeyman of at home-Frank, 17, a tailor; Ray- last warning message. the Samkey, is a 28-year-old mond. 15, a carpenter's apprentice;
and 11-year-old Edward, cockney sailor, and cockneys, strange as you may think it are
"I must keep working." this little London weman said, "if only A wolf is a very miss-informed among the finest sailors afloat.
to stop thinking about Dick. He He kissed, his wife and two never worries about storms, and he
like fo think I young sons goodbye.on the wouldn't morning of January 24 at his worrying. pre-fab home in Clever-road,
The girls may take the New Look to the benches, but the men look the same old way.
will
Though cocktail parties are always crowded, there seems to be alway room for one borë,
Sign in a local chemist's window: "We Dispense With 'Accuracy."
An opportunistis one who goes ahead and does what you always, in- tended to do.
•
Some women don't care whose means they live beyond.
People who want to get even with others aro usually at odds with themselves.
Sergeant: How many successful jumps must à paratrooper make ba- foro he graduates?
Recruit: All of them, I fancy.
·
was
oho
Experts on both sides of the At- iontie are trying to find out why 80 of them bave lost their propellers at
sea since mid-1946.
condition."
py
blind.
THE provision of time for full inquiry after verdict is, I would day, the biggest reform needed by our THE omission in the Bill is any system of criminal Justice. Without taining "n provision requiring the power to compel all courts to Justice must in countless cases he
submit to mental adjourn cases after guilt has benn probationer ta A PUZZLE
treatment." "Mental" treatment was established in order that full inquiries, Without it courts like the Old
Liberty ships recently,
There has been criticism of the defined as "any, trentient designed police, social and, where necessary, Bailey and London Sessions will have
to cure or alleviate his mental medical, can be made before
in their calendars men with over 20 sentence is given. Clause 23 of the previous convictions, Bill gives come courts the power to would have been able
Thus physiciant
A few of these hardened criminals and psychiatrist adjourn after conviction and before
to combine sentence, but the fact that all may have been incurabló from the their afforts, and both would have metropolitan magistrates, and some beginning. But most could have been been paid from public funds.
others, have been doing this fur put on the right road if, after their many years indicates that courts carly convictions, full inquiries hadi A representative of the American
have long possessed these powers.] been made and sentences passed with Bureau of Shipping said in London recently: "It is believed that a criti-
full knowledge, with medical treat- But why stop at giving power la ment for those shown to,need it. cal vibration occurs when the pro-ECONDLY, under the new health adjourn? Why not insist upon it in peller blades, are rotating at "full
If from this year onwards all our plan mental treatment is likely all courts?· to be given to offenders, mainly in The reason why the Home Omen criminal courts.could be obliged by The Liberty ships were mass-mental hospitals.
Is so timid about this is that it law to adjourn cases for full inquiries, produced in wartime for a war job,
involves the Judges. Many Assizes the powers proposed by the Bill to As one who has sent for mental are only held, at long intervals and pass heavy sentences on persistent and they did that job admirably."
treatment at least as many offenders last only for day or less and, there offenders could be made temporary But following rudder follurca
as anyone on the Benchi, I am con- fore, cases cannot easily be ad- only. In 20 years there, should be
very few of them, about 500 of them have had their vinced that many of those willing journed.
So if I were rudders replaced or reinforced.
lo receive treatment will refuse to,
Home Secretary The Home Office rubs to earth as I would tell my advisers not to bu go to mental hospitals. There is a Hope for the Samkey st per-widespread dread of such hospitals soon as any reform affects Judges, so timid. sists, and Mr. Robert Cleland, of irrational, but very real His mother said: "Every morning fourth engineer
Kirkintilloch, Scotland, father of the the Hill family. David is one rring up the London office of the offered £200 towards the cost of an on board, has of six brothers who all left Lon- shipping company, but they can tell air search because he is "desperate them that there was no question of don's dockland, their birthplace, me nothing." to follow the sea from boy- hood...
"The sca is his fo. His Canning Town, from which you ambition is to become an officer. Of could almost see the grey upper course, I wish he had slayed on at the butcher's shop, but someone has works of the black-hulled Sam- got to do the job Dick is doing." key lying in the Royal Albert Dock less than two miles away.
· LEFT BEHIND He left in his "tidy suit," William Frank Ballard, aged 23, carrying wooller and thin under- of Wensley-rond, South Yardley, wear and dungarees in a small Birmingham, is a leading able sea- suitcase, for David Hill takes man in the Samkey, in which he pride in his personal appear has served for two years,
He is the only member of his family over to go to sea, and hou served in the Merchant Servico since.
ance,
Such a goodbye was nothing he was 18. new for Mrs Hill, or for any of
1
At a seamen's hostel I met Noll McNell, a young AB. from the Islo of. Barro, Outer Hebrides.
McNell should have been in the Samkey, but overstayed his leave with an ount in Kendal,
SHE WAITS David himself made a "plerhead lump" at the age of 16 to get signed on aboard his first ship, and has McNell was smiling, but not, as been torpedoed and shipwrecked in you might have thought, just be two wors.
cause he was on dry land. He was Like his brothers he has always pool to join another shio bound for coma back. There has always been looking forward to going to Liver news-except this time.
Now Zealand,
power.
for news"..
Probation ofcers and I could persuade our people to go for treat- ment just because we could assure
Insanity, which is something that Could the crew of the Samkey, it the generailty of people fear because she had broken up, have taken to trouble is no more disgraceful than they do not understand that mental their lifeboats, and landed on one of a group of Uny uninhabited islands measles or cancer.
on her course?
Even that is possible...
·But until the Atlantic' yields her secret, until this new mystery of the sea is solved, all that oficials in Lendon can say : "One of our ships is missing."
At the South-western court In Landon, wo, wore able to persuade scores of people to scok psychiatrie treatment because we could offer the services. of (1) an individumi“ doctor, trained in psychiatry, who saw them Jin his ordinary surgery, or (2) the
DAB ̈& FLOUNDER
by
WALTER
FORT YOU