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Show NO LONGER NOON IN STRAND Violent Remedy Applied to Clock That Fooled Londoners for Ten Years. London. For ten years the clock of St. Mary-le-Strand has looked due west past the Savoy and Cecil hotels and on the Charing Cross announcing to all that the hour was exactly 12 o'clock. A couple of days ago the lands of the old clock were removed and a familiar feature of the Strand has thus been lost. The rector's wife explains that people peo-ple passing down the Strand about, noon have been deceived into thinking that the old clock was a trustworthy timepiece, and the result has been "Innumerable letters of complaint from all kinds of irate people who have lost, trains or missed appointments. appoint-ments. This has gone on for years, until at last a clockmaster offered to take away the hands and leave the dial blank but not misleading." The reason why St. Mary-Ie-Strands' clock pointed to the same hour for ten long years is simple enough. There was no money to defray the expenses of keeping it in order Up to eleven or twelve years ago the vestry looked after It, but when (he Westminster city council took over the vestries the clock's income was stoped. Private generosity kept It going till 1902. Then it stopped, and except for three hours in 190S it. has never gone since. Its short resumption of labor was duo to the enterprise of an organ blower who one day climbed the tower, wound up the spring, and after a struggle managed to get the pendulum pendu-lum to swing. To the astonishment of the verger, the rector and people in the Strand, the old clock recorded the hours of one, two and three, and then stopped. Next day It was put back to twelve, and there it remained till a couple of days ago. j |