In the Public Eye

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 120, 16 November 1929, Page 30

In the Public Eye

Sir W. A. Waterlow. The: election-of-Sir, William Alfred Waterldw as -Lord Mayor of the City of London took-place at the Guildhall on Saturday, 28th September, and last Saturday, 9th November, he was officially installed into office in succession to . Sir Kynaatou

Studd. A few minutes , before Sir William was elected Lord Mayor in September, he had given up his office as Sheriff, and the election immediately following his' Shrievalty is a record for 187 years. The Lord Mayor-elect . .was

[ born on 23rd April, IS7I. He 'was educated' at Marlborough and in Germany, and-in bis early teens was articled to a firm of solicitors. He w'a- admitted 'to the bar in 1896. On joining the firm of Water low Brothers and Layton', Ltd., he sub sequently became sole managing director, remaining as such until 1920. Many large contract- were carried out by this firm for the Government during the war period, and in recognition of these services Sir William was created K.B.E. in 1919. In 1920 the firm was amalgamated with Waterlow and Sons Ltd., and he continued for a few years with the amalgamated firm, occupying for ,a short time the chairmanship, but the new associations were never congenial' to him, and, being left without any of his former colleagues, he resign ed from the board in November of last year. .Ho joined the Corporation .of London as a common councilman in March, 1914, and was subsequently chairman of the City of London Schools Committee and the Law and City Courts Committee; In 1922, on the death of Sir Edward Cooper, he was elected Alderman of. C6r:ihill Ward, and he had served in the office of Sheriff during the present year. In 1913-14 ho was President of the London Master Printers' Association, and from 1914 to 1916 of the. Federation of-Master>Print ers of Great Britain. As president of the~ Federation in 1914 h6 headed a deputation of-printers Ho Leipzig, returning, only just before the outbreak of the war. He has .been JusticeTbf the"P,eace for the,. Gore division of Middlesex since 1918, and is president 'of the Eoyal Commercial Travellers Schools at Pinner, in which neighbourhood he lived for many-years. During the war Sir William was an active member of the city of London^ National Guard, in which he held a commission. He married in 1904 Adelaide Hay, daughter of Thomas Gordon, of Edinburgh, and has two sons. General C. G. Dawes. Nearly 300 years ago there went out of Sudbury, Suffolk, England, William Dawes, a builder, to make a newhome in the wilderness. On Ist October, the Mayor, aldermen, and burgesses of the Borough Sudbury combined to welcome back

the most illustrious descendant of this pioneer. General C. G. Dawes, American Ambassador to the Court of St. James, spent the day in the ancient town and received the honorary freedom of the borough. The sentiment proper

for the occasion was simply expressed by the Ambassador: "I have received an invitation from the Mayor of Sudbury to go there and receive the freedom of the town. It is where my people came from. That appeals to me, aid it is upon the lines of such a human call we want to develop.'' The Ambassador's connection by descent, with this little Suffolk borough is an interesting one, and is directly associated with the great exodus to New England which ■ forms so important a place in the history of Sudbury. There, the penal laws of 1624 were most rigidly enforced against' Puritan and Separatist. Hunted on the Sabbath day by the bishops of the diocese, denounced by courtiers as a pestiferous sect, indicted, fined, imprisoned banished by their fellow-townsmen' yet the Puritans could not be suppressed. As a result of the persecution the great Puritan emigration ,-to New England was projected. One of these parties, 800 strong, had as 'its leader John Winthrop, of Groton, near budbury, the emigrants being collected from Sudbury, Assington, the Waldinsnelds, and Groton. In this party was William'Dawes, a stonemason, who was born m Sudbury in 1620. He arrived in New England in 1635, and settled at Bramtree, Massachusetts, of which he became a freeman in 1646. He married Suzanna, daughter of John and Suzanna Mills.of that place, and moved to Boston in 1652, buying an estate in what was called Sudbury street. There the family .lived for five generations, the house being pulled down in 1775. William Dawes died in the year 1704 at the age of 83. From this family General Dawes is directly descended. Of the father of William Dawes little is known, but he appears to have gone to America about 1628, but immediately returned for some reason unknown ,^ c o 7es woro undoubtedly a very old Sudbury family, for, the baptismal records at St. Gregory's "Church, Sud™YA for 1593 contain an entry that Matthew, son of Jacob Dawes, was baptised there. Xiord MoyniSan. Lecturing on "Surgery, Ancient and Modern," this week at Leeds, Lord Moynihan discussed some remarkable surgical operations which had taken place a thousand years before Christ He instanced the- case of the Pharaoh

of the time of Moses, whose viscera had been found ;so well preserved, with a vessel springing from his heart, that a well-kno^wn surgeon was able to compare it with that taken from a man recently dead. He also said that the pro-

fession of medicine had always been closely associated with religion ana magic. His attention had recently been called, he said, during the course of the lecture, to the "Step Pyramid," at Sagarrah, the oldest stone building in the world, with two lines of black hieroglyphics in the passage leading to the side chapel. Australian troops during the war left their names and initials scribbled on various columns of the altar in the temple. One wrote: "I am the only survivor of my company. I fought on Gallipoli. ■■ John Smith,-1917." Thus does history repeat itself, said Lord Moynihan,; for a, hieroglyphic : just uncovered in the same place read: "1 am 'thei only survivor of my. company. I fought in a punt and I came to worship at the temple of my fathers." The name and date, about 1250 8.C., followed. Lord Moynihan is better known as Sir Berkeley Moynihan. He is a famous surgeon, of Irish descent, whof

was born at Malta in 1865, and educated partly at Berlin. During the Great War he was consulting surgeon to the British Expeditionary Force. In 1917 he was lent on special service lo the United States Army Medical Service Corps, and towards the end of the war he was responsible for the great .orthopaedic work at the General Hospital, Beckett's Park, Leeds. He won,the. gold medal for the Mastership of Surgery at the University of London, and is now President of the Koyal College of Surgeons. For many years he has been active in the campaign against cancer. Viscount Gort, V.C. One of tho greatest difficulties to be faced at any English function is that ,of - precedence, and every person of rank has his or her place according to a carefully thought out locus standi. Holders of the Victoria Cross, howover, ' •• : are-all considered

to be equal, and precedence does not enter into the honour, so that at the dinner recently ..tendered to holders of the Cross by the Prince of Wales it became necessary to devise some means by which guests could be seated

•'•.'" without giving any cause for jealousy. Tins was done by balloting for seats, which were numbered from the right and left of the Prince of Wales, who was chairman. Viscount Gort VC probably considers himself lucky because he drew the marble which placed l.him at the right-hand of Royalty while Sergeant W. Burman, V.C., would be equally delighted at drawing the seat on the left. And so it went ri°-ht round the tables until a place was found for every guest. Lord Gort has been a Grenadier Guardsman ever since he turned to soldiering as a young man, and-a few years ago was chief instructor of the Senior Officers' School at Sheerness. He has had a dazzling military career for, a man who is only 43 years old. His decorations—V.C. D.S.O. with two bars, M.C., M.V.0., and mentioned nine times in dispatches' dur- ' wg-the Great War—indicate the spirited nature ■of his soldiering. His V G was won in September, 1918, and was awarded for—as the gazette notice said—'' most* conspicuous bravery, skilful leading, and devotion to duty" during the attack of the Guards' Division across the Canal dv Nord, while in command 'of the Ist Grenadier Guards. Although wounded ho went across open ground to'obtain the assistance of a tank, and was wounded again, this time seyerly. After lying on a stretcher for a while he insisted on sitting up, and personally directed the further attack, which-ended in a triumphant victory. Viscount Gort succeeded his father, the fifth, viscount, in 1902. He was educated at Harrow and Sandhurst, arid entered the Army in 1905. His h.ome is one of the most beautiful and historic castles in the Isle of Wight known as East Cowes Castle, and it was here that he was born and spent imost of his boyhood, with the consequences that he is a wellknown yachting figure arid a prominent member of the Royal Yacht Squadron. General Sir Tom Bridges^ The guest of honour at the "Authors' Club Armistice Day dinner in London last Monday evening was LieutenantGeneral Sir Tom Bridges, who was Governor of South Australia from 1922 to 1927, and who visited New Zealand

in the early; part of last year." During 'the course of Ms speech at the dinner, in explaining why men of the Dominions rallied to the Mother, Country during the Great War, ho said: "The war was an ■ adventure for the men of the Dominioria, similar

to the colonisation efforts :of their forbears. .. . These men are. very different from the gloomy fellows found in a majority of latter-day war i...novels." Sir Tom Bridges, duringthe five years he was" resident in Adelaide as Governor of South Australia, was one of the most popular State Governors Australia has ever possessed, and he has an enchanting personality.- He is now fifty-eight years old, and during that period has crowded in many experiences of peace and war. He was three time's wounded during the Great War ; taking a prominent part in the trench fighting in Flanders, from whence he was seven times mentioned in dispatches. His name will always remain associated in the minds of those who took part in the war and in the thoughts of those who knows something of the happenings of those dread days, by hearsay only, with the famous "Tin-can Band," of which he was the acknowledged inventor and leader. This band, a humorous fellowship of the trenches, did much to raise the morale of the troops when there was depression in the British ranks because of the losses at the Marne. Ho commanded the 19th Division during this period, but this was by no means his nrst experience of war, for he held a command during the Boer War, where he had learned that humanity in its most tempestuous moments requires something to laugh at, and the Great War gave him an opportunity to put this idea into practice. Four years prior to the Great War he was military attache at The Hague, while previous to that he was attached to the Embassie ß- at Brussels, Copenhagen, and Christiana. Sir Tom entered the Army in 1892, was promoted to captain in inno'. SaW ™Service in Somaliland from }% At i 9o4 ' and was made a major in the 4th Dragoon Guards in 1908, rising to his present rank of Lieutenant-Gen-eral during the Great War. He was head of the Military Mission with the Belgian Army, Military Member of rr° T-t *B^ ffur Mission to the United States m 1917; ; .head of IQIR Mlssion to America in IJIB, and Commander of the British Mission to Smyrna in 1920. In addition to his British honours, he holds the following foreign decorations: Legion of Honour, Order of Leopold, Croix de Guerre, Order of Couronne, and- fhe American Distinguished Service Medal.