BISHOP’S SACRIFICE

Hawera Star, Volume LI, 30 March 1932, Page 5

BISHOP’S SACRIFICE

GOLD AND SILVER MEDALS

SURRENDER IN GOOD CAUSE,

Miss Gertrude Tuokwell, the daughter of an old Radical parson still remembered by many who heard him as boys, had the late Bishop Gore: as one of‘her friends. She has sent to . ihe Times” (London) a story qf the bishop when Canon of Westminster and chairman of the Christian Social Union. She says : In these years we were fighting ior the sufferers in certain specially dangrous trades —notably those attacked by lead-poisoning in china and earthenware, in which trade, at that date the ravages were terrible. But the fund we drew on for exhibition, agitation and relief was exhausted and I went in despair to Canon Gore. The canon tenanted a house m Little Cloisters, and many of us will remember that austere study with its matted floor and crucifix on the wall above the desk at which he sat. I told my need for £IOO. Certainly, he said, we should have the proceeds of an offertory. He preached for us, as lie alone could preach, himself came to take the. offertory and sent us £IOO. Time passed and I went again. But I had been forestalled. The offertories he could bestow were promised. He bent his head over the desk and thought. Then suddenly opened a drawer and laid before me his school trophies: medals of gold and silver. These he said he would sell for the fund, but, belonging to a brotherhood which had all things in common, he must first ask leave.

Protest was useless. I had come for a sermon, not a cherished possession? but before Canon Gore left for an autumn holiday somehow tliose medals had been coined to fill our coffers. Whenever I reflect that, owing to the legislation which our agitation made possible, the 400-odd cases of leadpoisoning in china and earthenware Iliad been reduced to 14 in 1920. I pay tribute to the bishop’s sacrifice of his cherished boyish prizes.