WHO'S WHO—AND WHY.

Feilding Star, Volume VI, Issue 1797, 18 May 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

WHO'S WHO—AND WHY.

1 A MINERS' MEMBERS. | One of the speeches which attracted most .attention during the Com- , mon's debate on the Minimum Wage Bill was that of Mi. Stephen Walsh, a miner's agent, who has represeiitEd the Ince Division of Lancashire since 1906. Mr Walsh has been r--1 pitman himself. 'At about the same time tuat Mr Burt was first elected ' to the House of Commons by iiis fel-low-miners in Northumberland, young Walsh began work below ground as a boy of fourteen in Lancashire, and it was some thirty years later, after learning in a practical manner the conditions of colliery life and tlie needs of bis comrade, when Mr Walsh followed the "Father of the House" to Westminster. Mr Walsh was born at Liverpool. He is President of the ' Wigan and Distriot Trades Council, and a magistrate for Wigan. KEEPER OF THE ARMOURY. Mr Guy Laking, the keeper and secretary of the .London Museum, recently opened at Kensington Palace, j is a Londoner by birth, ancestry, j and residence, as well as by education, i for he is an old Westminister boy.'| .He showed no inclination towards medicine—his eminent father's profession—but a very decided learning towards the fine arts, and eventuai- „ ly he became connected- with Christies'. Keeper both of. the King's Armoury-and oi the Armoury.,of "tl ie Wallace Collection, he is looked upon as a leading authority on armour. \ Mr Laking, who is a member' of the j- Victorian Order, has half a dozen L or 'more foreign orders, and' as the > only son of Sir Francis Laking he is heir to a baronetcy. He is" thirty-six , years of age. - A MINERS' MEMBER. ' 1 The Earl of Hardwicke, who inj formed the House of Lords that he had worked under ground for two \ years as a miner in America, would hold the title of Baron- Morden to- * day, in addition to the others which \ he posseses, but for the fact that his I great-great-grandfather, Lord Chancellor Yorke, declined on his death- ! bed to authenticate the patent of the peerage conferred upon him on his ', elevation to the Woolsack, on which he never sat. : The second son of | ] Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, he at- j [ tamed his ambition to reach the same j high office as his father, but survived ; his appointment by only three days. The present peer; .(says the Westmin-1 ster Gazette) is' not the first oil his family to have seen the rough side of , life. His fatter, who died in 1909, j saw active service as a naval officer . in the Crimea; while his grandfather, j the. fourth Earl, who was also in the Navy, had some exciting experiences in connection with .the suppression of piracy' in the Mediterranean. An earlier holder of the title was the Lord-Lieutenant oi Ireland at the ,time of Robert Emmet's rebellion, and his action, or lack of action, at the time was the subject of cons' de-t----able debate in the Imperial Parliament. . ~ A GREAT LAWYER, Lord Robson, * who has been advocating a better -understanding with-' Germany, was once described by the j late Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman! as "a man whose thoughts are clear! and whoso arguments are cogent." .As a lawyer who became AttorneyGeneral and a Lord of Appeal, he always had tlie courage of his convic- ■ tions, and rumour has it that on ' these grounds he once refused a briet marked £10,000. His lordship has another, arid quite different, distinc- j tion. Always one of the best-dressed . members of his profession, he was i j given the sobriquet of "the Dandy ! Lawyer," and although he has all the 1 intricacies of the law at his fingers' ■• ends, he is far from being a "dry-as-dust" individual. A briliant speaicer, ' with a ready wit, he secured the attention of the House of Commons from ' the day of his entry and all parties willingly agreed that his contribu- [ \ tions to debate showed extraordinary ' power. At the Bar' his arguments •: were always admirably arranged, and * a speech which he delivered during a ; certain libel action was declared by *- the then Lord Chief Justice to be the ] finest ne had ever heard at the Bar. s Lord Robson is a Newcastle man by birth, and as the representative in i Parliament i«.* i.uiith Shields he scor- ] -S-S7e_:_„ ..*?, --j,*- > , •

!ed a great success by getting so im-' poitant a measure as the Halfj Timers' Bill on the Statute Book. WHEN SIR RUFUS ISAACS RAN AWAY. The first love of Sir Rufus Isaacs was not law, but the sea, and just before matriculating at Cambridge he shipped on board the Blan** Athol, a 2000-ton vessel belonging to Greenock, and at that time' loading for Rio de Janeiro. Declining to sign on for more than one voyage, he was obliged to ship as a 'boy, in which capacity he gained so full an insight into the mysteries of sailoring that as soon as the ship reached her destination he promptly ran away. He was caught, however, by the ship's 1 officers, and, as a punishment, was compelled to assist in discharging the coal, and a close watch was set upon him during the remainder of the voyage. A surgeon whom he had been cross-examining once declared that Sir Rufus had been a nightmare to him for several days. "I dreamt," he said, "you had examined me, and I seemed to have nothing on but my bones."