DUNEDIN NOTES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXII, Issue 13603, 24 November 1904, Page 8

DUNEDIN NOTES.

[From Our Correspondent.] DUNEDIN, November 23. The Oity Council intends proceeding ■with, the Waipori power scheme and discontinuing the Let Stream works, as was predicted would be done when the Waipori Bill was before , Parliament, provided tho Corporation secured the company’s works. Messrs Charles Wilson (Parliamentary librarian) and H. Strong’ (public librarian at Christchurch) are to be asked to examine the twenty-one competitive designs for the Dunedin public library, and indicate which will best carry out the ideas embodied in the preliminary conditions. Thereafter the whole of the plans will bs forwarded to Mr George Bell, at Melbourne, who will be authorised, after consultation with a leading Australian librarian, to confer with an architect of ’repute who will act as umpire and advise the City Council which plans are deserving of the three premiums offered by the city. Mr John, Graham, who died this morning at the Benevolent Institution. of which he has been an inmate for many years, was, in his day, one of Otago's well-known landmarks. He enjoyed the distinction of having been the first man to carry the mails between Dunedin and Invercargill, took an active part in provincial polities, and unsuccessfully wooed the electors on more than one occasion for a seat in the Provincial Council, and in 1871 unsuccessfully essayed to enter the House of Representatives. In 1873 he had the' temerity to oppose Messrs Macandrew and J. L. Gillies for tho Superintendency, when the former owed his reelection to a solid Southland vote. In 1865-66 he made his famous wholesale shipment of cats to the West Coasts and it was always his boast that he and his partner in that jieculiar enterprise raked in many dollars. Mr Graham, also started a meat emporium in Rattray Street in pre-freezing days, when there was a plethora of mutton in the ‘ market, and it was no uncommon thing on Saturday nights for him to sell an entire carcase,of primest quality for half a crown. In later years his lower limbs failed to discharge their normal duty, and he was obliged to adopt a wheeled chair, - and when his infirmities grew on him he took up his abode in the Old Men’s Home at Caversham, where he resided since the beginning of 1886, passing away at an early hour this morning at the advanced age of eighty-seven years.