AN UNAPPRECIATED NAME.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 22, 9 January 1911, Page 11

AN UNAPPRECIATED NAME.

• LOOK AT THE LOONEYS.” Gladesville or Twickenham ?—that is the question which is just now responsible for much activity in the minds of prominent citizens of Gladesville, the trouble being that to the ordinary person Gladesville suggests a mental hospital rather than a flourishing suburb. At a meeting ol tiio Progress Association the other night the matter was brought up for discussion, and many opinions were given for and against the proposal to change the name of Gladesville. Mr Dakin, with others of the chief citizens, came to the meeting in great indignation. Only that day tlie> were travelling homeward on a crowded Gladesville tram, when someone : shouted, “Look at the Looneys!” These and similar remarks, said Mi Dakin, were most embarrassing. Other residents at the meeting who were on the tram at the time sadlj nodded their approval, and wore agreed that it was indeed very, very disturbing. There was no knowing where it might end. Small boys, particularly in Pyrmont, had taken to waiting for the ladesvflle trams for no other purpose than to hurl these rude and unwarrantable remarks at the passengers. When they saw a Gladesville tram coniing they shouted with glee, the bolder ones pointing At the passengers and making the remarks complained of. The small boys conception of dignified sanity was very clouded, and all the outward appearances and demeanour which go to distinguish a citizen in his right mind from one who is not counted as nothing. “The name must be altered,” said a member of the Progress Association, “and altered quickly; lot us call it Twickenham. There are such names in the locality as Henley, Putney, Chiswick, Abbortsiord and Woolwich, so that Twickenham would fit in very nicely.” Others present did not see any reason for altering the name. It helped to keep the district select as most people were afraid to settle there. They did not want the place over-crowded, and they didn’t want the hospital removed either. “To hear some people talk,” somebody declared, “one would think there was a dangerous lunatic at every corner; it was the most picturesque spot out of Sydney, and the hospital one of the best-managed in the Commonwealth.”

The general desire of the meeting, however, was that the name should be altered, and the matter is to come up for further consideration at another meeting of the association.