THE BENDIGO QUARTZ KING.

Evening Post, Volume LXXI, Issue 68, 21 March 1906, Page 7

THE BENDIGO QUARTZ KING.

LATE MR. LANSELL'S BEQUESTS. [press association.] (Received March 21,. 9.53 a.m.) MELBOURNE, This Day. The late Mr. George Lansell, the Bendigo Quartz King, has bequeathed £2000 to churches and hospitals, £50 to each manager, and £5 to each miner in his private mines, and £10 worth of mining shares to a number of old residents of Bendigo who arrived prior to 1857. AN INTERESTING CAREER. Mr. George Lansell was a remarkable man in many respucts. In the sixties he had a soapworks up from View Point, and the malodorous refuse used to float down the channel opposite the Post Office, Public Library, and front entrance to the Camp R-eserve, now known as Rosalind Park. The City Council of Sandhurst, as Bendigo was then called — it has since reverted to the old familiar name, so dear to the early digger — determined to put a stop to the nuisance, and frequent prosecutions ensued, till the fines at length went as high as £50. Nothing daunted, Laneell stuck to his soapworks, all the profits fiom which went into shaft sinking on the celebrated Garden Gully line of quartz-reefs. The same determination which he brought to bear in his fight with the City Council was shown in getting down below the barren strata which separated the second and third opening out of the saddle reefs of Bendigo — a formation remarkable from the fact that it is repeated at a depth of 4000 ft as clearly as it was near 'the surface. Lansell visited California in the "seventies," and was so much struck with the work performed by the diamond drill that he offered to put £1000 down to procure one if the Government or the mining community found the balance, with the result that a drill was soon secured, and many others were purchased afterwards. It was largely owing to Lansell's pluck, energy, and enterprise thab Bendigo did not become a deserted mining camp. In the quartz boom, of '70, '71, '72, Lansell was reputed to have made at least a quarter of a million — some pub it up to half a million eteYling. He was a good employer, always paid the highest current wage, and expected and got a quid pro quo in the shape of the ! most efficient labour. When he once I proved the worthiness of a mine man- | ager, battery superintendent, or even a common miner, Lansell stuck to him to the last ; and when some of these men lit out for themselves, his capital was generally placed behind them. He was a liberal subscriber to the Bendigo School of Mines, the Hospital, Benevolent Institution, Mechanics' Institum, and, indeed, all other public institutions, and in his stand-up fight with the Sandhurst City Council he had such a large amount of public sympathy that the Council eventually compromised with him. ' Lansell is sometimes credited with introducing the eight-hours' day amongst the Bendigo miners, but he was by no means the first in that respect. The honour belongs to Colmann and Tacchi, two Germans of the Hebrew persuasion. Both went to Germany ; one of the partners lost all his gold in wheat speculations, and afterwards returned to Bendigo, where he kept a tobacconist's shop. Lansell spared no money in equipping his various mines with all the very latest machinery. In his No. 180 Mine, now to a depth of over 4000 ft, the miners, working in their pelts, have jets of water sprayed on them, and everything possible is done to secure the health of the men, and lessen the degree of temperature in the mine ; but the working life of a man in the 180 Mine or the New Chum' Railway Mine does not, at the outside, exceed five or six years. Yet men brave it all, and these deep-level mines are never known to have any difficulty in securing experienced miners to geb the gold from the right leg and the left leg of these saddle reefs, whose formation closely resembles that of the ordinary bushman's saddle.

To-night Messrs. Thomson and Brown will hold an auction salo at their rooms, Iluntor-strcot, at 8 p.m., when tho firm will offer, on behalf of various Vendors, tho following properties:— Two business sites, Lower Cuba-streot (at tho back of tho Opera House) having a frontago of 63ft Bin to Cuba-street ; a 22-roomcd dwelling in Rintoul-slrcct, at prosont known as "St. Helens Hospital," tho section having a frontago of 55ft by a dopth of 180 f t; a 7-roomed residence on ono floor in Stokcs-stroDl, land 40ft by 134 ft; also a 7-voomcd residonco in tho same street, land 35ft by 134 ft; a 5-roomod villa in Harpor-stieet, tho section having a frontago of 30ft by a large depth of 185 ft; two sections of land in Kolburno Extension, boing Nob. 431 and 4^2, having a frontago of 40ft by a depth of 125 ft; a business block of freehold land in Petotio, boing sections 48, 49, and part 50, having a frontago of 76ffc lOin to Jackson-stroet, 110 ft to Victoria-street, and 110 ft to Potone-street, tho whole surrounded by a close boarded fonco ; 5 sections in Parkvalc-road, Karori, each "having a frontago of 66ft by a depth ranging from 372 ft to 310 ft; 3 building- sites in Halton-streot, Karori, each having a frontago of 42ft by a dopth of 140 ft; and ft now 4-roomod villa in Duncan-torraco,. Kilbirnie, the land having a frontage of 50ft by an irregular dopth of 115 ft. ,' When other lips and other hearts With flattering vowsjalluro, Remember that your truost friond Is "Woods' Groat Peppermint Curo. When frosty stars gleam overhead, And earth'B in wintry moods, 4-nd cold attacks in throat and head, Then you'll remember Woods. — Advt. Ladies' tailor-made skirts (complete), at 30s, 355, 425, to measure, a specialty. Nodino and Go., 30/ Wollington,-terrace.— .Ajdjtt, r