CORRESPONDENCE CLUB

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23001, 2 October 1936, Page 14

CORRESPONDENCE CLUB

FOR EMPIRE CHILDREN

LIVERPOOL MAN’S PROPOSAL (From Our Own Correspondent) (By Air Mail) LONDON. Sept. 5. A correspondence club between children in New Zealand and England is contemplated by Mr Stamford Botley, of Liverpool, who is to arrive in Wellington on November 25 by the Ruahine. Mr Botley is to make a month’s tour of the Dominion, and during that period he hopes to broadcast in the children’s hour. The subjects he proposes are: “The Motherland,” “Old and New London,” and “ Epitaphs in English Churchyards.” In his broadcast Mr Botley proposes to invite boys and girls over 12 years of age to write to him, telling him about, their school and home life, their pets, ’ hobbies, and other interests. Then, on his return to Liverpool, he proposes to hand the letters to English children with the suggestion that they should write to their New Zealand cousins and establish a correspondence friendship. It will be a most effective manner, he considers, of strengthening the bonds of kinship and Empire. Mr Botley also proposes to take pictures and a set of lantern slides so that he may lecture in schools in Lancashire upon his return. In visiting New Zealand Mr Botley is fulfilling a life-long ambition of travelling right round the world. He retired this year from the Liverpool City Technical College, where he has been instructor in “ carriage building ” since 1901, in addition to a number of special subjects. Mr Botley can remember the days in 1897 when, as a member of the firm of Messrs Hooper and Co., in London, he saw Queen Victoria's carriage being lr 'lt for the Diamond Jubilee procession. Two years later, in Liverpool, he watched the first motor car in process of construction.

Mr Botley has a personal interest in visiting New Zealand; he will see the grave of his eldest sister in Dunedin.