Not the Heat

Dogged to the end, some Londoners stuck rigidly to their bowlers and black jackets. But as the mercury climbed ever higher & higher, bared braces began to appear here & there. The Hon. Mr. Justice Birkett of the King's Bench Division permitted counsel to remove their wigs, while at Westminster the members of Britain's Board of Trade took bathing suits off the ration list ten days ahead of schedule. "The sun," said one official, "melted our resistance."

Many another staunch spirit was equally unstarched last week. In a quick one-two, Britain's July temperatures had shifted from the coldest since 1901 to the hottest on record at Kew Observatory. On shadeless Dartmoor, escaping Convict Maurice Patrick Murphy gave up the chase and called to his pursuers: "This way, boys, it's too hot for hikin'." While police in radio cars patrolled seaside resorts, pleading with parents to keep their children out of the sun, two prize pigs at an agricultural show in Lyndhurst dropped dead after winning a ribbon apiece.

Some Londoners tried to keep cool by lying, sweaty and scarlet, on the shores of Hyde Park's Serpentine. Others sped for the seashore, where thousands slept on the beaches. Steve Raynor, a waiter from tropical Jamaica, changed his coat three times and gave up. "It's too hot in England," he said.

At the Olympic Games, a Boy Scout bearing the national standard of Chile fainted dead away from the heat. And at the practice field where the Olympic athletes themselves were warming up, India's six foot three-inch Gurnam Singh panted and pined openly for his native Patiala (where the temperature hits 120DEG). Said Singh: "In England 90DEG is equal to 112DEG in India. It's the terrible humidity."

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