FAITHFUL SERVICE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22052, 7 September 1933, Page 8

FAITHFUL SERVICE

The intimation that Mr F. G. Gumming has found it necessary, through failing health, to resign the office of general secretary and agent of the Patients and Prisoners’ Aid Society will have been read with regret by large numbers of the public. Against the advance of years there is no appeal, and when it is accompanied by a weakening of the physical powers of the individual there is no escape from the need of the abandonment of activities that have exacted a steady toll upon them. Mr Gumming has served the society for twenty-seven years. Of the quality and fidelity of that service the community has never had any doubt. In the course of it he has made regular visitations to the hospitals for the treatment of diseases of the mind as well as of the body and to the prisons, and there are many hundreds of inmates of these institutions who will remember gratefully his kindly ministrations. As one of those engaged in general social work in the district he has enjoyed a large measure of public confidence. People have felt they could implicitly trust him. They know that, broad though his sympathies are, he is far from being a mere sentimentalist, that he is not incapable of detecting sham, and that- the sturdy sponger cannot impose upon him. This it is, together with the energy which he has exhibited in the performance of his duties, that has made him a very valuable servant of the community. The Patients and Prisoners’ Aid Society has been fortunate in its agents. Mr Torrance was peculiarly fitted for the office which he occupied for many years after the initiation of the society. Mr Gumming has been a worthy successor of him.