PERSONALITIES OF THE WEEK.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 184, 6 August 1927, Page 8

PERSONALITIES OF THE WEEK.

Mr. John Sylvester Brigham was born to official life, for his father, Mr. J. McCrae Brigham, was for many years secretary and treasurer of the Auckland MR. Harbour Board, a man JOHN SYLVESTER of striking personality, BRIGHAM. and one whose mind was made up. The Town Clerk was born in Auckland, and ardently believes that it is to have a splendid future. For six years in his earlier life, Mr. Brigham was with the Bank of New South Wales, and thereafter was local secretary for the Thames Hauraki Goldlields and Austin Friers Syndicate. Twenty-seven years ago he joined the staff of tho city treasury. He succeeded to his preseut position when Mr. Wilson retired. The most remarkable advance In Auckland history has taken place during Mr. Brigham's occupancy of his present position. "Anglican" says: We old-timers often notice, wrong information abdut different alterations around tho city. Your chronicler, under the illustration of ST. PAUL'S the above edifice, states CHURCH that it was demolished when the present church was built, thus forgetting that it was replaced by a wooden building on the site of the old school, corner of Short Street and Eden Crescent, which was in use for a considerable timo before the present building was erected. Then the wooden building was acquired by the Sepulchre parish and is now doing duty as a Sunday school or hall in Burleigh Street at the re;'.:- of t'; ; Sepulchre church. ■licfcrei!-.- to the British Prime M'n'.-.ler, Mr. Stanley Baldwin, on his sixtieth birthday do not include any regarding his hobbies. Aa he is the possessor of a A STATESMAN'S fortune of £7,000,000 HOBBIES. (from a bit of an engineering business belonging to the family) he is able to gratify his love for cherrywood pipes, and may be sometimes seen at Chequers or at any of his numerous homes sucking the stem "of a lonp churchwarden. But his greatest hobby is to do a bit of good to anybody who hasn't got seven millions, and to try to keep, it dark. Individuals, of course, having found that the Prime Minister has come to the rescue of somebody or other have assumed that he has done it for political purposes, for if a publicman was fresh from heaven it would be said of him by enemies that he was a robber. In a reference to some of his residences it was shown that at his London house (not No. 10, Downing Street) there were thirty-seven servants. At Astley Hall, near Stourpoit, where he dodges tfbout when off duty in old clothes and an extremely old pipe, he looks a good deal like any other cocky, and talks learnedly of cows, fowls, pigs and* other rural subjects. Lord Dawson of Penn, the Kind's physician, swung a blade in the House °of Lords for the masses who do not see eye to ««,«». ~~ e 3 e with the dr vs. He is WET OR DRY ? angry with those people who defame their own by talking about "tho drunken masses." He made inquiries in a great group of popular restaurants and found that 75 per cent of the diners took no alcohol with tlirir meals. Of sixteen hundred hospital patients in the artisan and labouring classes ninety per cent were either total abstainers or moderate drinkers. It was, said the great physician, an outrage to call Britain a nonsober country. Here is his opinion. One may disagree, of course: "It was not likely that fermented liquors could ever be banished from civilised countries. They could be made too readily. There was hardly a country where the materials for making them could not be found. Potatoes, pineapples, and many other things could all be put into a pot and turned into alcohol—poor liquor, truly, but certainly alcoholic liquor. Let health lectures be eiven throughout the country—not lectures given by fanatics who were always preaching the evil of this or that—but lectures by people who would talk about the value of open windows who would say what the benefits of alcohol really were, and who would teach the people when alcohol was good and when it was bad for them."