1956-01-14 — Page 6

Pare 8

WELL, WHAT D'YOU KNOW!

THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, JANUARY 14, 1956.

CATS CAN MAKE SOME PEOPLE GO BLIND

U

NTIL the outbreak of World War II, the books of the Port of London Authority showed B.h Item of £2. 68. 6d. weekly for half-a-hundredweight of horse-ment, The meat was shared by 35 cats, whose job was to destroy vermin.

These dock ents were rather wild, but they did a great job for the P.L.A. Unfortunately, modern rat-entching devlees have. made the redundant. and pussies are now Even the cold shoulder around the London docks

Elsewhere, however, ents are still proving seful. No one knows just how many there are in the world, but in Great Britain alone, no less than 300,000 stray or unwanted cats are destroyed

Yel painlessly each year

Wis it

estimated, that the survivors saved the before the war, country some £4 inlion year by destroying rets and mice

RABBIT-KILLER

Stme eats have proved effective és rabbit- 4 deadly as myx motors. One terrible tabby of Basingstoke, in Hampshire, used to kill and carry home two young wbhils overy day, und He never killed anything else, Vat them himself apart Iron

few Krvy squirrels, which the farmers were glad to see the back of.

But not everyone has a good word for cuts. Sme peopli positively dread them. They suffer from releurophobia. Iterally, a fear of

WHVOL

cats

צי ורוז !!

**talle

The of

these ***

unfortunate people is so bad that some have been known to suffer lockjaw

bibudness, hysterical convulsions and even seasickness! They know instinetively when a cat is near them, even if they cannot set of heas i Oddly enouch, these people who are allergic to domestic cata ST quite unaffected by the big members of the cat family, such as tigers and leopards.

DRUG ADDICTS

Cata themselves have Where bad momenta. As well as being on the receiving end of missilea thrown at night by trate huiseholders, they are also drug oddiels Valerian, a wild plant frum which a drug is made, is mild to drive cats crazy The roots have a remarkable attem CHE cats. producing to them a kind of intoxiention The peculiar, pungent odour of the Valerian plant altracta ents from miles around

With such a potent stimulus available. 11 makes one wonder if Valerian was used by ent

nobblers in the days when cat racing was a popular pastime. 11 was a highly favoured sport In 19th century Belgium, and in one suburb of lege, cat races were an annual event of the local carnival. Cat races have also been held In Great Britain during the present century.

Our own pets would probably have put up a poor show in the cat classics. We feed them so well that most of them sit around dreaming of their dignißed oncestors, the Kafr cats of Ancient Egypt.

ENOUGH TO MAKE A CAT LAUGH

-

Britain's fine old wild eat hos almut

exreot ic the deer forests of the appeared, Scottish Highlands.

But what we may have lost in liveliness, we have gained in variety, by scientific breeding. Cat lovers have a wonderful choice of coloured y.ད

They come in white, black, blue, cream,

thly. sandy. silver. brown. and dozens of

bleruled x1e Ther are long-haired cats, Short-Paired cufs and even--lp México--a hadr- It matastrosity. That enough to make a ent Taught

There

ehinchillas, Perslona, Angora. Human, Abyssiniam, Indious, Maltese. Shumese 1+ Bo of other famous free is, including whitte ents that are quite dif, and the Manx valety that has no ta]}

Pencaps the worst national disaster which ever overtok mir feline friends befell them in threat Britain after the downfall of Napoleon. It was known as the "Cat Hoax of Chester

"INFESTED BY RATS"

A MURDERER IS WALKING FREE

THE

KILLER AT THE POND

T was four o'clock in muddy edge he had lobbed it houses, street lamps, and perhaps

the morning. Outside too near. the station at Potters

but

It was raining now, the pond Bar a lone signal was swollen

Fuppoling He light shone green. In 20 there was a dry summer. minutes the express from tries to remember what

pened. Did golf balla font? Newcastle would tearing out of the binck countryside on its way London.

Come

to

In a connell house beside the four main tracks that The station a run out of woman slept fitfully, waking every now and again to wonder what had become of her husband.

bours

He watched for a long time, at least it seemed

Jong time, but nothing happened. If It didn't come up now he would

have to belleve It never would.

The other things seemed to

all had be all right. They

unk, and sight in the middle of the pond. He got up and started to walk away, but for overni gards he walked back words

ט

Fawn from the body, hud beis

e policeman.

He started to run, deross the tracks, up the other side and into the geometric pattern of streets of

the council housing catate. As his boots hit the Arst pavement thero came the Express roar of the Tynesider due to Lamidon at 1.35 m.

Wherever he went no me Paw him. To this

burned till day no ano can say who be whe. But s he reh up Trom the railway tracks he must have pissed under the bedroom window of a who was later to re- Women

member that night and will always remember it so jơng tươ she lives.

Sunday morning, alx months later, Coll and Pat,

One The pond looked quite whocent but he didn't trust It was three

I no longer reced 10 0. dawn; it was November 19, good idea but it was too late.

be turned and started to run, 1947. around

a long striding, loping run. The guilty run of a big strong man, strong enough to break a men's skull open.

A Bhails were distributed in $ Helty inling that the island of St Helena, to wharh Napeleon had been banished, was lufested by rats The Government it said, had decided * Bột H file of cars to the island and offered Palxteen shillings for every athlete full-grown tomcat, ten shillings for every adult female puss and half a crown for every thriving kitten.

An address was given at which the cats were to be delivered, and hundreds of inen, women and children, laden with eats of every descrip hon, streamed into the city.

But the reception place turned out to be an There was pandemonium when empty hous the houx was discovered, and hundesh of cats were discarded by their trate ownLTS.

(COPYRIONT)

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That night the moon had been

lan- a conspirator's tern on the scene of a brutal crime. But the good people of Potters Bar were not to know of it for several months to come.

Over the rullway tricks from the council house the golf course stretched away into a vanishing perspective of shadow and dis- terling drizzle.

IN

ZIG-ZAG ROUTE

He made for the rallway Unes. They were about 300 yards away but the roule he took was much longer, down the eighth fairway, along a hard track, up another fairway, and on to the second fre His ide of keeping to the faleways to mix his footprints with those of the golfers had made his night's work much harder.

Startling Real Life Story By VALENTINE

two 14-year-old schoolboys, set cul to look for lost golf bells.

That Sunday they made for the le pend on the side of the seventh fairway, they found no balls but the next morning were in all the

Three times he had visited the pond, a zig-zag route across the course, nearly a mile each way a remote

the each time corner of

and the things he course, near the 7th hole, a carried were awkward, one of man crouched beside a weedy them was very heavy. The way their names

pond and winted and. Jo the pond wits mostly uphill. newspapers, watched to see if the thing the grea was wet

anki

slippery would appear. It it

At last, and for the last time, would

be a litle too far in he came to the point in the for in to reach. He had

middle of the second fairway meant to

throw it right into where the rallway fence was the middle as he had the other broken. He stopped to get his things. But in his carefulness wind. Over the tracks was the not to g b. bools near the danger

Zone. Rows of council months

U.S.

the

1: did

What they had found Wax som white hand and arm rising from the mud near the edge of the pond. The pond was giving up the grisly steret it had held in its muddy bottom for six

CHILD DELINQUENCY

SHOCKS

A GERMAN

By NORMAN LINDHURST

Frankfurt. permitted to do whatever they There is also a certain amouni of juvenile vandalism In

wig on

causes inconvenience to grown-

and

0

ΟΠ

a much smaller scale than in The U.S."

Such

several

crom

the

Inspector

Senttérbi deep In the mud and using new methods that were found the several dia- even he did not know would membered parts of a man's body. work, Superintendent Cherrill,

the A man, but what man? Even of

fingerprint bureau, his age was vague, somewhere managed to get one nearly between 18 and 50 was the perfect print and first Baresment. What did he identifying whorls look like? The murderer had corrupted bits of flesh. done his work well. The head,

Meanwhile Chief Perry Law was making compll- it was little more cated experimenta with photo- than a charred skull

graphs. After making a vast number of In the same way as anger managed to superimpose a blow- enlargements be been prints had

destroyed.

up from an old photograph of but a thumb.

And for six Welch on to a carefully angled months the pond had been work-

skull. photograph of the

The ing its putrefying alchemy on two matched and in composite the flesh to destroy whatever became one.

"From my tenis other evidence there might have with theso photographs I am convinced the skull in the pond could be that of Welch," was his verdiet,

been.

And yet from these pathetic moins the police were to per- form a miracle of identification.

Who could it be?

No pondered this question harder or with more foreboding than a

Ine

-

THE VERDICT

heavy-eyed, plump. nervous PLASTER_csts

were made of the feet found in the pond and fitted into boats left behind

boyond

woman in mumber 93, Cron- borne Crescent, the council house Jn the edge of the hous- by Welch. ing eslate "overlooking the four

It was determined, main lince to the North The doubt, that the body had been house the murderer must have dismembered with a hacksaw passed when he ran away from and the head had been partially The noise of the Newcastle ex- burned before it was thrown in press early on the morning of the pond. November 10, six months before.

hed

A

Two months went by. An- it had been the afternoon other inquest was adjourned and before that she had found a still another two months passed. reap of paper On the table Then, on November 18, 1948, when she came back from a

exactly one year after Albert visit to the theatre with her Welch

disappeared, son, Vernon, who was 15. The

coroner's jury accepted the proof scrap of paper was short note of Identity submitted by from her husband, and all it police and gave the verdict that said was "Phyllis, I have gone Albert Welch, a 45-year-old rail- for a wnik, Shan't be in for toe. way signals atter. had been --Albert,"

murdered by someone unknown.

And from that day to this Albert Welch, her husband, was never seen silve-except by his murderer.

BIZARRE PUZZLE

WH

THEN Welch went so did his ration book and identity

the

Mrs Welch said she did not bebeve the remains in the pend were those of her husband. When asked about her husband'a hands she told the coroner, "They hands.

were workingman'” There were cuts on the fingers and calloused palms,”

Another witness, Edward Cor

card Life : No. 93 had been nell a workamate and friend of

for from happy. Albert was rest.

Albert Welch, said, “Ha handa

less ond morose--even his work. were always effeminate, He mates called him "Snakey," wore gloves at work."

Vernon Welch was very much

his mother's boy: his father showed him no affection. There had been talk of Albert Welch getting, another job, abroad, or Et least away from Potters Bar, So perhaps he had wandered

off.

With little love lost between them, Phyllis Welch went on looking after her home and her son, resigning herself to the fact that ber husband had walked out on her.

neighbour, Mr

A next-door Stanway, knew the family well. be He had served 25 years in the

WIDOW BY LAW

evidence, so long and paint- Y this and the mass of other

takingly prepared by the police, the coroner's jury were con- vinced that the Potters Bar pond victim was Albert Welch,

Bal not so his wife.

The inw had identified Welch's remains and given a verdict of murder by a person unknown, and to this day that person is

still unknown.

Phyllis

Littmann has a short, sharp remedy for juvenile delin- quents." Give the child a task, something to live for, and he or she will keep out of trouble."

ACCESS TO GUNS

an interest could sports, if the teenager is police force and advised her to And the widow, sulted for sports, several educatell the police her hubsand was Welch? She refused to accept tional procedures een be com- missing. This she did next day, widowhood,

when, in che pleted

step--physical and then she got a job.

December, the police finally training, Idealism, healthy" am- billon and the abikty to saci1.

For a weak the police were pathetic remains of what they give up their claim to the der his own interess for the | récovering bits of the body common cause, as for instance, from the pond. In St George's said was her husband she re io n football gomb,"

Hospital, at Hyde Park Comer, used to attend the funeral. Dr Donald Teare was working

The law made her a widow, Easy access to Brearms is 14 hours a day to solve a bizarre and if that be wrong only the Littmann's main explanation for jig-caw puzzle,

murderer could of capital the high paterntage

And

RECENTLY the US State wish, even if it is obvious that

Department invited what they are doing is wrong or Germany, he admitted, "but Frankfurt's police president, ups. hard-boiled Dr Gerhard "In an American railroad Littmann, to visit America. train, children wet as if there no one else around, and It was a deluxe journey that was

Americans provided Dr their parents won't even dream them to order," tha of calling Litmann He went every- where and saw everything at polles chist commenttecks the

Littmann the American taxpayer's

ex evil influence"

American pense. Hospitality

com.es films,

televisión. lavish scale, and it was obvious In Littmann's opinion, it is not the idea was

DT to impress Littmann with American crime the individual sadistle film or

which leads crmic control and police methods, particularly the way America youngster to crime.

"Eust

If crime, horror, temor handles its juvenile delinquency and suffering are all he sees in problem.

his everyday entertainment, one TOO INDULGENT

cally

"how envisage gradually he can no longer Now Dr Littmann is back in discern between good and evil. Germany--and what he has to Then the brutal blinding or rny about his American visit killing of a man seems bolls down to a slashing attack thing quies that it is of said that in West Germany a joyes of a pathologist the result

normal to him.**

eimes in the U.S. Littmann Seen through the penetrating confirm it. on Just the very things the Litmann Americans hoped ho would Httle importance whether the double licence is required to looked remarkably like a man the case is still open, and some- One day we shall know, fot praise..

horrer shown in fiction or

carry a gun, but in Americx named Welch, reported missing where a man Hves in fear of one thing, Dr Littmann in real life stories.

is a man's constitutional right six months before in Potters every range face that comes asserts that American parents In Germany, Littmann main- to be armed.,

to his door.. are breeding the world's largest tains, juvenile delinquency 13

of juvenile delinquents, less of a problem than it is crop "Herr Doktor" phrases it dip the U.S.

can

some-

In

Bar,

"Some states' have tried to

Twice an inquest was held circumvent this constitutional and twice it was adjourned. The police were sure the remains were those of Albert Welch

lomatically, of course, but the **If teenagers band together provision by introducing regls gist of his views is that indul- in West Germany. It's mostly tration of firearms, but the gent American parents are pro- to steal cars or to go on small trouble is that only the honest ducing adolescent monsters. looting forays, but hardly ever people and not the criminals re-

Littmann found that, in many for the exécution of a major gister their guns," American familles, children

are crime,"

MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN

SHOULD BE HERE JUST ABOUT

ANY SECOND NOW THE CLAY CAMEL LL COME AND THEN

I WONDER IF.MANDRAKE HAS CAUGHT THE CLAY CAMEL YET--I'M SO NERVOUS-~ OK,OFAR--THE BELL

(COPYRIGHT)

MECCENGEAL WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE? WHERE C MANDRAKE

During the ruing weeks the experts at Scotland Yard per- formed a miracle of identica Hor. After a long, long time,

By Lee Fall and Phil Davis

WHAT

HE SENT ME FOR YOU, YOU ARETO GO TO TENTH AND,

PIRE-

HE SAID

ILL GO

I WAS TO AT ONCE! THIS WAIT

HERE.

change it--or

(COPYRIGHT)

Next Weak: The Woman With A Secret. Who Was Murdered Among The Tombstones.

TALK

ABOUT

MAGIC!

Admiral