Special Edition

City Editor John R. Heron of the Toronto Star is a man with a good heart, prime news sense and a taste for old anecdotes. Last week he combined all three with dramatic results.

In Toronto's East End one cold, wet evening last fortnight a young stenographer walking home from work passed a woodsy ravine. From the shadows a man leaped out on her, bashed her skull with a rock. Then he dragged her back into the shadows, raped her, left her to die. Within 24 hours police arrested a 25-year-old filling station attendant named Harry O'Donnell, charged him with the crime.

Investigation revealed that, three days before the murder, Suspect O'Donnell's wife Edith had gone to an East End maternity hospital, borne a 7 1/2-lb. boy, their first. Before her husband's arrest she had read of the crime, expressed violent loathing for the criminal. When news of O'Donnell's capture was smeared over Toronto's front pages, her nurses trembled. Weak of heart and exhausted by childbirth, she was in no condition to bear the shock of revelation. For two days attendants handed her newspapers with whole pages torn out. She grew curious, protested. It was then that City Editor Heron remembered an old story of how a newspaper eased a British statesman's dying hours by printing for him a one-copy edition omitting reference to his incurable disease.

When the last copy of the Star had rolled off the presses that afternoon, Editor Heron had the forms for two pages broken, cut out Suspect O'Donnell's name wherever it appeared, inserted new leads, new headlines. After the usual 400 copies of the new edition had been run off and destroyed,* a single copy was sent to Mrs. O'Donnell at the hospital. Meantime jailed Harry O'Donnell had been required to write his wife a note telling her that he was ill of influenza, would be kept abed for a week.

Each day thereafter happy Mother O'Donnell got a one-copy edition of the Star, a loving note from her husband. Meantime commendatory letters, telegrams, telephone calls by the hundred poured into the Star's office. Its 40 advertising solicitors were welcomed everywhere with new warmth. Its business manager declared that the good deed had won the Star more goodwill than any other event in its 43-year existence.

At last week's end, after eight days of this kindly deception, Mrs. O'Donnell had recovered her strength and was ready to take her baby home. That morning her physician and the grey-haired head nurse walked solemnly into her room, told her that she was not going home, that she would be taken somewhere outside Toronto for a time. Then they gave her a sedative and, while the nurse held her hand, the physician told her the whole sorry tale. When it was over, white-lipped Edith O'Donnell looked once at her baby, stared up at the physician, cried: "Doctor! Doctor, will the boy--my baby--will he be like that?"

When, in Chattanooga last week, Central High School beat Notre Dame High School at football, the Chattanooga Times printed a one-copy edition with an eight-column streamer announcing that Notre Dame had won, sent it to James Patrick ("Bubber") Byrne, 18, Notre Dame's crack halfback, a few hours before he died of blood poisoning.

*First copies are blotchy. Presses, which turn out 800 copies per minute at full speed, are run slowly until pressmen have adjusted ink flow and distribution.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.