OBITUARY

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 58, 6 September 1934, Page 13

OBITUARY

LORD DEVONPORT

(Received September 6, 11 a.m.)

LONDON, September* 5.

, The death is announced of Lord Devonport, for many years chairman of tho Port of London Authority, at the age of 78.

Up to 1925 it was impossible to think of the Port of London Authority without linking with it the name of Viscount 'Devonport, who was chairman from its foundation in 1909 until sixteen years later, when he retired. Lord Dovonport took up the task to which1 he devoted practically his whole energies on March 31, 1909; ho relinquished it after ceaseless effort to. improve and still further to extend the gigantic enterprise entrusted to their care. Though it is well.known to the officials and members of the Authority, tho public generally can have no conception of the intimate degree to which Lord Devonport was bound up with the fortunes of the' Port of London Authority. The earnestness with, which he entered upon the task of guiding, the new body which came into being following the buying out of the old dock companies by the Government, for ultimate transference to a public body,'may be gathered from the fact that Sir Hudson Ewbanke Kearley, M.P. for Devonport as he then was (he was made a baron in 1910 and a viscount in 1917), gave up his. political career, for at tho time that ho was asked to take up tho chairmanship of tho Authority he was Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade. As' Pood Controller ho was to tome into touch again with Parliament during 1916-17, but, apart from that war service to tho country, ho relinquished all idea of political life when lie became tho first chairman of the Port Authority. .