GREAT MEMORIES.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 35, 20 November 1937, Page 8

GREAT MEMORIES.

IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. Perhaps there is something in the House of Commons air which stimulates good memories, says the ‘ 'Manchester Guardian.” Recently there occurred the retirement of Police Constable George Skinner, whose modest claim is that he could remember the face and name of every M.P. in the last four Parliaments. His proud achievement is, however, matched by another man (too modest to broadcast his name) who carries in his head about two thousand addresses belonging to some six hundred M.P.’s. It is his job to redirect, when the House is not sitting, some six thousand letters a day addressed to M.P.’s at the House of Commons; and he does it without having to refer to the written record. He disclaims any possession of an outstanding memory, and asserts that the mere writing of the names and addresses fixes them firmly in his mind. As a matter of fact, he does little actual writing himself. When the post comes in, three men at a table redirect the letters as fast as the fourth man (the man with the memory) can recall them from his cerebral pigeon-holes. But even those feats are nothing compared with the record claimed for “Memory” Woodfall, a House of Commons reporter of the eighteenth century. Note-taking being then forbidden, Woodfall attended the debates on behalf of his journal and memorised the speches. “He would sit” it has been said, “in the House of Commons gallery hour after hour with bis eyes closed, and then, without taking a single note, return to his office and write sixteen columns of word-for-ward report.” The statement is, as Huckleberrv Finn said of some of those in “Pilgrim’s Progress,” “interesting but tough.” But Woodfall, who was not troubled with modesty, himself asesrted that every speech he had ever heard was laid away on its proper shelf in his mind for reference when required.