OBITUARY

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 51, 2 March 1937, Page 11

OBITUARY

MR. W. J. WALSH

An old-time New Zealand telegraphist, Mr. W. J. Walsh, died in England on January 23.

Mr. Walsh was born at Melbourne in 1860, and came to the Thames goldfleld with his parents in 1867, the year the field was rushed. Afterwards . the family moved to Wellington. In 1876 Mr. Walsh entered the Post and Telegraph Department at Akaroa, and- he became one of the operators who handled the Blenheim-Wellington traffic in the days when all southern telegrams were transmitted at Blenheim. Later he was postmaster successively at Russell, Dannevirke, Port Chalmers, and Bluff, and for some years he was one of the Department's inspectors. After 35 years' service, he retired on account of ill health, brought on by a heat-stroke suffered when he was passing through the Red Sea about 1910. From the effects of this stroke he never recovered.

Mr. Walsh leaves two brothers, Mr. C. B. Walsh, of Stratford, and Mr. Arthur Walsh, of ..New Plymouth, also two sisters, Mrs. Adelaide Kivell and Miss Hilda Walsh, Auckland. For about eight years the deceased was secretary of the Masonic lodge at Woodville. His son, Mr. William Walsh, was until a few years ago a journalist in Napier, Wellington, and Auckland, and has been for some years official stenographer at Phoenix, .Arizona, U.S.A.