Constable Hughes Retires

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32313, 3 June 1970, Page 30

Constable Hughes Retires

Constable Henry Leonard Hughes, of Christchurch, will retire today. Constable Hughes, slim, almost white-haired, dressed in black boots, blue issue trousers, a sports coat and a hat, has been riding his bicycle around Christchurch issuing summonses and executing warrants for more than 16 years. Constable Hughes was born in Hokitika and after attending St Mary’s primary school worked in the town for an uncle loading railway timber waggons on contract He also worked at a timber mill at Three Mile, just out of Hokitika. Rugby has been a great love in his life: he played his way up through the grades of Hokitika’s Excelsior Club and represented West Coast as a wing forward between 1929 and 1935. After leaving the West Coast he worked for about five years in a Christchurch timber yard before seeing, about 1941, an advertisement which said the police wanted men. He applied and was sworn in as a constable on January 5, 1942. Apart from a few months at Lyttelton he has served the whole of his time at Christchurch. For more than 20 years he has been a member of the police Rugby team committee. However, for Christchurch, Len Hughes means a policeman on a bicycle delivering summonses. “I’ve worn out one bike but the new one I have is a

beaut . . . there are a few miles left in it yet,” he said. In his job he has become so well known that people expecting a summons have been known to call at his home while he was off-duty to collect it Life has not been so easy. His cycle has been hoisted to the top of the flagpole at the central station and has disappeared many times when left in the station yard. “Delivering maintenance summonses, those are the worst” he said yesterday. “They know you’re coming and they run away from you. Traffic and police summonses are not so bad. You get to know the people. In this job you’ve got to bend a little. I’ve never been attacked but then I’ve helped a few.” His most difficult job

was when he had to serve a summons on a person who climbed down three ladders into sewer mains and Constable Hughes had to go down after him. “If 1 had a chance to live again I’d do exactly the same things but I’d join the police sooner than I did,” he said. A long-service police officer in Christchurch yesterday had 'only praise for Constable Hughes. “He would know more about where people can be found than any other policeman in Christchurch. He’s going to be hard to replace.” Chief Superintendent G. S. Austing, on Len Hughes’s last day as a constable, will present him with a clasp and star for 28 years of service. The day after he retires is his sixty-first birthday.