SIR ALEXANDER HERDMAN.

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 127, 3 June 1929, Page 10

SIR ALEXANDER HERDMAN.

Born on 17th July, 1869, Sir Alexander Herdman, a son of the late Mr. Alexander Herdman, bank manager, •was educated at the Otago Boys' High School and at Oamaru. He entered the National Bank after leaving school, but ■while a clerk there he studied law, and was admitted as a solicitor in 1894. He practised -first a! Palinerston North and afterwards at Naseby. His first entry into public life was as a member of the Naseby Borough Council, of which borough he was subsequently elected Mayor. Although unsuccessful in his first Parliamentary candidature, Sir "Alexander Herdman ivas in 1902 elected for the Mount Ida electorate as a member of the Reform Party, then in opposition under the leadership of Mr. Massey. At the following General Election Sir Alexander, however, lost Ms seat —a defeat due mainly to the persona] intervention of the then Prime Ministe (Mr. Seddon) in his constituency. Sir Alexander Herdman was by this time practising in Wellington, where, shortly afterwards, he was join ed in partnership by Mr. E. K. Kirkcaldie, an association which terminated only when the senior member of the firm retired from the-Bar. In 1908 he was elected for Wellington North a seat, which he" retained for the remaining ten years of his political career— and when, in 1912, the Reform Party was called to office, he became Attor-ney-General and Minister of Justice in the first Massey Cabinet; he retained the first of these offices on the formation of the Coalition War Cabinet three '•ears later. On the retirement of Sir m Donniston, in 1918, Sir Alexander dman was appointed to the Supreme ■t Bench. •