Hull Daily Mail [UK]
29 August 2015
[…] The urban legend of the little boy from Hull who
died after choking on a piece of chewing gum was used as a cautionary tale by
parents across the city.
Now, the true story of the 12-year-old, who died in
1933, has been uncovered – and far from the grim tale that has been bandied
around school playgrounds for decades, it tells a tale of a mother's heartache
at losing her son.
The search to get to the truth started when Mike
Covell, who runs Amazing Hull Tours, browsed the Facebook group Hull The Good
Old Days.
There, people had posted about a little boy whose
grave, a stone representation of him wearing his school cap, with his left hand
leaning on a pillar, was inscribed with a rhyme about the perils of chewing
bubble gum.
It apparently read: "Chewing gum is nasty,
chewing gum is dirty, chewing gum wrapped round my heart and brought me to my
grave." […]