This Is Your Life: Elizabeth Wilde

Grimsby Evening Telegraph article: Elizabeth Wilde This Is Your Life

Grimsby Evening Telegraph 23 April 1956

DID NOT REALISE SHE WAS ON TV

THE story of the courage and faith of Miss Elizabeth Dixon (now Mrs Arthur Wild), formerly of Winterton - which was told in the Evening Telegraph last June - was retold to millions of viewers in last night's BBC TV feature, This Is Your Life.

But Mrs Wild (59), who is able to walk again after 26 years, did not know that she was appearing on television until the end of the programme.

At her home in Pinner, Middlesex, today Mrs Wild said: "I am still dazed by the whole thing. I had no idea I was appearing on television. When they said I would be presented with a book of pictures of myself and my friend I said 'what pictures?'"

"It was not until then - at the end of the programme - that I realised I had been speaking to millions of people."

She said she was asked to go to the studios "to meet a few people."

"Incurable"

Nearly nine years ago Mrs Wild hobbled on crutches down the steps of Louth County Infirmary. Doctors who had told her "You are incurable. You cannot hope to walk properly again," watched her go.

Mrs Wild, who was crippled after a fall, never stopped believing she would walk again. And in 1955 following an operation in Royal Sussex Hospital, she took her first faltering steps. Only six months later she WALKED down the aisle of a London church to marry Mr Wild, a 59-years-old retired railwayman.

Among the people appearing in the programme were Sister D Morton, formerly of Louth Infirmary, now matron of a children's nursery at Grimsby, and Bertie Taylor, who was four years old when he met Mrs Wild.

Read to him

He was a patient in Louth Infirmary while she was there, and she used to read to him and the other children.

Bertie is now at a farm school.

Will Mrs Wild revisit her home town? "I hope to go back to Louth, where I was in the infirmary for seven years, and to Winterton, but it won't be this year because I am not really strong enough yet," she said.

Mrs Wild's mother, the late Mrs Charlotte Welch, lived at 52, Park-street, Winterton.

Evening Telegraph article: Elizabeth Wilde This Is Your Life

Evening Telegraph 23 April 1956

'Telegraph' Teleview

FORTUNATELY I missed last night's This is Your Life, being occupied elsewhere. Did you enjoy it? I hear Eamonn Andrews had a difficult course to steer amid the hugging and kissing and weeping and sermonising.

But he has only himself to blame. If he takes part in this sort of programme, this is the sort of thing that is bound to happen. And the sad thing is that many viewers lap it up without any feelings of embarrassment.

Evening Sentinel article: Elizabeth Wilde This Is Your Life

Evening Sentinel 25 April 1956

LOOKING AND LISTENING - By "Sentinel" Critics

Eamonn Andrews is Supreme as M.C.

UNPREDICTABLE things can happen in parlour games and in such programmes as This is Your Life. They impose a heavy test on the ingenuity and tact of the master of ceremonies. In this role Eamonn Andrews is supreme.

We had a good example of this on Sunday night. The subject of This is Your Life was an elderly woman who had been made to walk again after a spinal accident had kept her a helpless invalid for more than half her lifetime.

This programme, with its sustained element of surprise, sentiment and drama, makes the strongest of appeals and shows Eamonn Andrews at his best. Sunday's show was particularly moving, but could well have got out of hand without firm, tactful handling.

One admired the gentle, discreet manner in which Mr. Andrews cuts short the flood of reminiscence and emotion which family reunions after a long absence always bring. On Sunday, for instance, an 83-years-old uncle began to read from an enormous manifesto and appeared well set to monopolise the rest of the programme. Mr Andrews' intervention was done in a most kindly manner without causing the least offence to the old gentleman or embarrassment to viewers.

Littlehampton Gazette article: Elizabeth Wilde This Is Your Life

Littlehampton Gazette 27 April 1956

Her fairy story was told on television

Mrs Beth Wilde, the Wick woman who spent 26 years in and out of hospital and finally regained the use of her legs, was featured in the BBC television programme This is Your Life on Sunday.

Mrs. Wilde used to live in Lyminster-road, Wick. She damaged her spine and lost the use of her legs when she was 32. Doctors said she would never walk again, but she refused to believe them. Eventually she began to walk with crutches.

Her future husband, who had lost touch with her for 30 years, searched Sussex hospitals for her and found her at Chichester.

They were married at Willesden by her uncle, an 81-year-old minister. "Just like a fairy story," Eamonn Andrews told viewers.

On the television screen on Sunday nurses from Chichester and Arundel described how cheerful and brave Mrs Wilde had been in hospital.

One of the "still" pictures shown was taken by Littlehampton Gazette photographer Leslie Roberts last May when this paper first told her story.

Littlehampton Gazette 27 April 1956

Television publicity

LITTLEHAMPTON is in the news, visually speaking.

Television viewers, who looked in on the BBC programmes in the last fortnight, have heard the town mentioned on three separate occasions. Is this a small town TV record?

The first was when Mr John Wingfield, son of the chairman of the local council, challenged - and beat - the panel of What's My Line? as a crab dresser.

On Sunday viewers saw Mrs Beth Wilde who, before her marriage was Miss Dickson and had lived first at Woodbine Cottage, Rustington, and then in Lyminster-road. She appeared in This is Your Life. Incidentally one of the "still" pictures of Mrs Wilde which were shown to viewers was taken by Littlehampton Gazette photographer Leslie Roberts.

The Advertiser article: Elizabeth Wilde This Is Your Life

The Advertiser 28 April 1956

NOTES, NEWS AND VIEWS by "QWERTYUIOP"

Beth Dixon's Life

We began to display greater interest in Beth Dixon when it was revealed during the TV This is your life programme on Sunday that she was Lincolnshire born and that she had been in several Lincolnshire hospitals.

We pricked up our ears when Eamonn Andrews said: "You spent 7 and a half years in Louth hospital" - and then recalled the story of her courage and faith following a spinal injury which crippled her for 25 years.

Nearly nine years ago Miss Dixon, now Mrs Arthur Wild, hobbled on crutches down the steps of Louth County Infirmary. She never stopped believing that she would walk again and last year, following an operation in Royal Sussex Hospital, she began to put one foot in front of the other.

Six months later she walked down the aisle of a Willesden church to marry Mr Wild, a retired railwayman and an acquaintance of earlier days who had sought and found her in hospital.

Among the guests at the wedding were Mr and Mrs Arthur Moody, of 63 Grimsby Road, Louth, who visited her regularly while she was at Louth.