AMBULANCE SATURDAY. A BIG COLLECTION.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVI, Issue 107, 2 November 1908, Page 3

AMBULANCE SATURDAY. A BIG COLLECTION.

Quite an army of ladies spent hours and hours on the streets of Wellington on Saturday collecting money for the ambulance fund. Some did excellently, some did well, some did not do very much,' but all did their beso, and the result was a total of £290 17s 4d. The worst feature of the proceedings was that about the lunch hour rain fell heavily, and although the weather cleared up later, the evening turned out wet and dismal, and the receipts fell accordingly. But the energy of the collectors never flagged, and very few of the people who passed by worn allowed to go without being asked for a contribution. Naturally, there were some cases of meanness displayed — in some cases by men who should have known better — and there were also cases of generosity by men from whom little could have been expected. One young man gave a, sovereign by mistake : one elderly man. rich and prosperous, gave 2d. Shops and offices, clubs and publichouses, were invaded by the collectors ; one young lady got behind the counter of a bank, constituted herself a peripatetic "pay in clerk," and took good care that no one passed her without paying in. The following ladies, with, of course, numerous assistants, were in charge of the collecting stations : — Mesdames W. B. Fisher, A. A. Corrigan, J. D. Sievwright, Gyles, Pearson, J. P. Luke, Anderson, Preston, Flux, Barltrop, and J. Sexton, and the Misses Estelle Reere, Bauchop, Coates, and Dick. A big staff of assistants was engaged at the Town Hall in receiving full "'boxes and distributing empty one&, counting the cash, and so on. Mr. J. D. Avery, secretary of the St. John Ambulance Association, was in charge, the lady supervisors being Mesdames S. A. Rhodes and T. W. Hislop. Mr. Dudley Tripe, of the Bank of New Zealand, took charge ot the coin, and, with assistance from various members of the Ambulance Brigad-3, sorted it according to denomination. Refreshments were dispensed by Mrs. Moorhouse and the Misses Rin^-and Helyer. The coins collected numbered 23,000, made up of 4 sovereigns, 9 half-sover-eigns, 1 crown, 229 half-crowns, 282 florins, 1346 shillings, 3009 sixpences, 3362 threepenny pieces. Also there were a number of "mean" contributions, in the shape of safety pins, buttons, nails, and such like. The association hopes to prevail on the Government to subsidise ihe collection £ for & to the extent of £250.