A BENEFACTOR

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 51, 23 November 1928, Page 10

A BENEFACTOR

THE CAREER OF MR. W. H. BAILEY The late Mr. Walter Henry Bailey, who made such handsome benefactions to the Wellington City Council for public swimming baths, to the Massey Agricultural College, and to Dr. Barnardo’s Homes (over £sooo.each), was 78 years of age, when he died on November 10. He was married for the first time some six months ago. The late Mr. Bailey, who was a Londoner, arrived here from England by the ship Cartvale in the year 1874. He was a carpenter and joiner by trade, and soon got to work, and found his feet when he settled in Wellington. It was during the late ’seventies that he. as a speculative builder, erected a row of houses in Binham Street (off Ingestre Street), which are still there today—after fifty years—a monument to his tradesmanship and the good heart timbers which alone were used in those days.. Mr. Bailey was a natural economist. As soon as. part of the first house was made habitable he lived in it, aiid during the daytime worked on its completion. With the mortgage money raised on that one, he went on with the next, and so on, but with a native shrewdness, he allowed the rents to pay the interest and principal aud retained the ownership right up to the time of his death. But it was not out of city property that the late Mr. Bailey acquired the bulk of his riches. When, in the ’eighties, the Kiwitea block —then an area of native bush—was opened up for settlement, Mr. Bailey secured a section of some 300 acres, and went on the block himself, cleared it, and broke it into farm land. He not only did that, but he also took over another adjoining block from a shipmate (Mr. G. Reid, of Austin Street. Wellington), broke that in, and added it to his es tate. Through bad times, Mr. Bailey’s city estate helped to keep up the payments, and in good years the money came in freely from these good lands. He was able to hold on right along, and to sell out well in 1922, after which he came to reside in Wellington—in one of the houses he had built fifty years before.