NINETY-SIXTH BIRTHDAY

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25934, 14 October 1949, Page 9

NINETY-SIXTH BIRTHDAY

MR PETER HERCUS

On October 3, Mr Peter Hercus, who is now at St. Winifrid’s Hospital in Ham road, celebrated his ninety-sixth birthday. Mr Hercus came out to New Zealand from Greenock with his parents when he was about 10 vears old. He was educated in Dunedin, and is one of the oldest former pupils of Otago Boys’ High School. After leaving school he joined the firm of Ross and Glendining, and later, when he moved with his family to Christchurch, he joined the Kaiapoi Woollen Manufacturing Company, of which he became warehouse manager in Christchurch. Latterly he was Christchurch representative of the New Zealand Medical Assurance Society. He has been an active member of the Presbyterian Church, and was interested in the Competitions Society in Christchurch in its early days.

In his youth Mr Hercus spent two years in the Cook Islands with his brother-in-law, the missionary and explorer, the Rev. James Chalmers, who later met his death in New Guinea. The story is told of Mr Hercus that when travelling for Ross and Glendining he always made a practice of keeping his samples with him. On one occasion he had these locked in a shed on the Wellington wharf, and could not secure them in time to take a boat for Lyttelton. Fellow travellers chided him that they would beat him to business in South Island towns, but these same men were destined never to see him again, for the vessel was wrecked with heavy loss of life. It was probably the Taiaroa. which was wrecked on Waipapa Point , (near Kaikoura) on April 11. 1886, with the loss of 34 lives. His samples had saved his life. „ Sir Charles Hercus, dean of the medical faculty at Otago University, is a son. and other members of Mr Hercus’s family are Mrs G. H. Andrew, oi Birch Hili' Blenheim, Mrs E. O. Hercus, of Melbourne, and Mr A. F. Hercus nf Nelson. Mrs Hercus. formerly Miss Proctor, of Dunedin, died about seven years ago, and more recently a daughter, Mrs C. Lyons, also died.