Woman Hides From Husband 24 Years

Lives Life of Strictest Seclusion in Mysterious "House With the Green Shutters."

LONDON, England, May 20. -- A dilapidated dwelling in the quaint little village of Midhurst, Sussex, surely will be known as the "House with the Green Shutters." Altho a woman has occupied the house for twenty-four years, very few of the 1,000 villagers knew she lived there. She was almost as completely hidden from the world as if she had dwelt in a wilderness.

The secret was revealed only when she died recently. Years and years ago, when she was 30, she married a man younger than herself. Soon she regretted the step; suddenly she disappeared. Undoubtedly, her purpose in hiding herself was to deprive her husband of any claim on her money, which was her own.

So well did she seclude herself that her husband believed her dead -- until she died. Learning of this thru the law's channels, the applied for letters of administration to her estate.

Closest Kin Not Informed.
Even the woman's closest relatives did not know her whereabouts for years. She had not even told her sister. "If ever you need me put an advertisement for a cook in certain newspapers," was her only message when departing.

Years passed. Every day the wife without a husband must have studied the advertisement columns of the newspapers she had fixed upon. The call came in 1896. The woman answered it and went to the "house with the green shutters," to her sister. There, too, lived their brother, but, unknown to him, this secretive, lonely woman entered the house. Unknown to him she occupied a room there. He and the sister died. The woman in hiding dwelt there until her last day. No one ever saw her out of doors.

The weather-beaten house is really two houses made into one. The two front doors have remained locked and bolted for at least twenty years. And all that time the ground floor windows have been barricaded by the heavy green shutters.

"She was a complete puzzle to us," said a neighbor of the mysterious double house. "We knew she was there, but for years and years we never saw her. She never put her face outside the front door.

Her Wants Were Few.
"When the war broke out and my husband joined up she became friendly," said the neighbor woman. "Occasionally she would put her head out of the back door and inquire about the war. She did not seem to know anything of what was going on in the outside world.

"How she lived is a mystery. Once a week a little boy would call at the house to run the errands. Her wants must have been very few, for the boy seemed to buy very little. On very rare occasions a bag of coal would be delivered.

"In the depths of winter I've seen her hands swollen up with cold, but she never complained. Her clothes were old and ragged and her appearance suffered from general neglect.

"Only once she confided to me:

"'If only some one knew I am living here my plans would be upset.'"

--The Saturday Blade, Chicago, May 22, 1920, page 2.