A DISTINGUISHED PHILANTHROPIST

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1715, 11 January 1905, Page 14

A DISTINGUISHED PHILANTHROPIST

"Quinton Hogg.” By Ethel M. Hogg. Archibald Constable and Co., London. S. and W. Mackay, Lambton Quay, Wellington.

Quinton Hogg’s was a charming personality. He lived to do good and accomplished much that is at once praiseworthy and honourable. The late Mr Quintan Hogg founded the Polytechnic in London and devoted his whole life to the service of young men in the great metropolis. Quintin was the fourteenth of the sixteen children of Jaines, afterwards Sir James Hogg, Bart., a barrister who spent twentyfour years in India, where lie was soon making £15,000 a year, and who became Registrar-’General of the High Court of Calcutta. • After making his fortune in India, Sir James returned to England, entered Parliament as a conservative supporter and personal friend of Sir Robert Peel. Quintin was born in 1845. He was sent to a school in Berkshire where the small boys were bullied. When he went to Eton, he was fonder of sport than of classics; but he had a strong religious bent and became deeply interested in the religious wellbeing of his fellow Etonians. At Sunday afternoon gatherings of the boys he introduced magazines and a Bible lesson. His contemporaries declared “they would not have stood this innovation from anyone else.” He left Eton in 1863, and chose rather to travel for twelve months than go up to Oxford. He, however, entered a tea-merchant’s and gave up the idea of travelling. Subsequently he joined the sugar firm of Bosanquet, Curtis and Co., and in the sugar trade he ultimately made his fortune.

While yet learning business habits in a tea-shop, Mr Hogg took an interest in the ragged waifs of London. He met two little urchins in Trafalgar Square one Sunday morning, and asked them what they knew about God. “Why, that’s the chap wot sends us to ’ell,” said one of the youngsters; and so his life work began. He spent nights in the streets picking up waifs, and with the present Lord Kinnaird started the Polytechnic school, the history of which is as romantic as many of the lives of those who have received the benefits of having shared its privileges and advantages. It has made hundreds of intelligent lads, and the work that Mr Quintin Hogg did for the poor boys of London must -awaken in all better thoughts of our humanity, The book contains innumerable testimonies to the good name and philanthropy of Quintin Hogg, but so many of them are not necessary to add to the reputation ol‘ so estimable a character. To personal friends many details of a life are doubtless interesting, but to the general reader they become wearisome. This is the only fault of an otherwise delightful biography.