PERSONALITIES

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 7084, 5 December 1929, Page 6

PERSONALITIES

SOCIAL SERVICE OFFICER.

Tor a man of his years—he has seen 71 winters—Frederick Aisher, charitable aid officer for the Palmerston North district, displays a tremendous amount of energy. It is 27 years now since he first took up the work of dispensing 'sustenance to the hungry, clothes to the comparatively naked and stem refusal to anyone he considers a ‘sponger’. Tor the man who thinks he can deceive Aisher into parting with the public’s pence, when it is not deserved, might as well strike a rock, with a magic wand for water. His heart is big for those in distress but of iron for the “professional,” who seeks money ostensibly for food but really to be squandered in another way. “Fred,” is a well-known figure in the' district and has been a resident of Palmerston North sines 1888. Por 20 years prior to that he lived in .Wellington and landed in New Zealand as a boy of 10 years from Australia. His native country is Ireland but ho remembers nothing of the Emerald Isle, ho having left its shores as a baby.

Earl Jellicoe, formerly GovernorGencral of New Zealand, will celebrate his seventieth birthday to-day. It will be with pleasure that tho many friends of Mr. W. W. Wilsher learn of his continued progress toward recovery from an illness that has kept him an inmate of the Palmerston North hospital for tho past three weeks.