KNOWING THE GREAT ONES

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 13, 16 January 1926, Page 16

KNOWING THE GREAT ONES

A CONSTABLE AT THE HOUSE OF LORDS.

A man who has made it his business to recognise at sight some 2000 of the great ones of England—all the members of both Houses of Parliament and a few hundred more people, including Privy Councillors, Civil servants, and others —is now enjoying a ■well-earned rest (writes a "Daily Chronicle" correspondent). Ho is Mr. George Plank, until recently Constable 145 A, who for fifteen years has talten duty daily in the Peers' Lobby of the House of Lords. He has seen young peers reach middleage, and .middle-aged peers grow old. It lias been his business to know them .all, and it is his boast that his memory has never been found wanting. "I knew over 700 peers .by sight," he said, "and all the 615 member* of tiie Lower House, together with several hundreds more who had the privilege of admittance. I do not think anyone who had jio right to enter ever passed me. Several of the peers attended very irregularly, too, and it was a difficult job to recognise men I had not seen for months. The peers were .great men in jmore than one sense of the word, 1' he continued. "Practically every one of them had a pleasant word to say when he came and went. 1 feel sure that the peer is very much misunderstood. The snobs I have met have been among my own class, but not among them.

"There was one time when we expected a raid from the Suffragettes, but they seemed to be f ondex of the Lower House. I remember, when the Home Rule Bill entered the House of Lords, whispering to one of the most fiery of the Irish Nationalists that his troubles were now over. He'glared at me, and answered abruptly: 'To the devil with, the Homo Bule Bill, we don't -want it!' It was always difficult to understand the politiea. Mii&d after that!"