Page 5 Advertisements Column 1

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12419, 14 November 1903, Page 5 (Supplement)

Robert Harding Mihvard, the Birmingham family solicitor who died so soon after his discharge from Parkhursb Prison, was for nearly forty years a leading figure in the Midland metropolis. Alvvards well dressed, of ruddy face and portly figure, he looked the genial embodiment of professional success. He was much addicted to doing things "in style," and considered himself, and really was, in bis way quite an arbiter of local fashion. When a Royal Prince— Duke of Connaught, or Prince Arthur, as he was then called—came down to Birmingham in the late sixties or early seventies to open the Royal Agricultural Show, Milward was a very prominent member of the Reception Committee. "I was another," writes a Birmingham correspondent of M.A.P., " and I remember that he absolutely insisted upon the Luncheon menu being written m French—a proposition which "rather staggered us, until the genial Mihvard readily undertook to do the French rendering himself. The luncheon was a success; but a member of the Prince's suit afterwards remarked to me, jokingly, that we ought not to have tried to make our Royal guest pose as a cannibal! And he pointed to an item m the menu—' petites patissieres' (little confectioner girls), which was evidently intended to ho 'petites patisseries' (small pastry cakes). Whether poor Milward or the printer was answerable for the fatal substitution history sayctk not."