OBITUARY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25215, 3 May 1943, Page 4

OBITUARY

MRS SIDNEY WEBB (Rec. 7 p.m.) LONDON, Apl. 30. The death has occurred of Mrs Sidney Webb, aged 85 years.

Mrs Sidney Webb, together with her husband, Lord Passfield, wrote many important books on industrial and economic problems, and played an outstanding part in formulating the policy of the Labour Party over a period of half a century. First under her maiden name of Beatrice Potter, she made a thorough investigation into social and industrial conditions in

Britain and contributed to Charles Booth’s monumental “Life and Labour of the People." Her first book was “The Co-operative Movement in Great Britain,” published in 1891, and her last a revision of an impartial study of Russia, “ Soviet Communism—A New Civilisation? ” of which she was the joint author with her husband. All her books were extremely well documented and were the fruits of one of thq most able and, far-seeing minds of the time. With her husband she wrote “ History of Trade Unionism." “Industrial Democracy,” "Problems of Modern Industry,” “The State and the Doctor.” “ English Local Government” (seven volumes), “The Prevention of Destitution,” “A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Women,” “Decay of ist Civilisation,” “ Methods of Social Study,” and others. She served on a large number of commissions investigating social problems. She married Mr Sidney Webb in 1892. When her husband, who held Cabinet posts in both the British Labour Governments, became Baron Passfield in 1929 she declined.to assume the title of Lady Passfield.

MR DAVID HOWIE

Mr David Howie, who died in Hamilton recently in his eighty-third year, was born at Glespin, Lanarkshire, Scotland, and as a youth went to South Australia. He later came to Kaitangata, where he worked as a coalminer. He married Miss Margaret Dobbie, of Kaitangata, and on her death about 15 years ago he went to the Waikato. Mr Howie was interested in union affairs in his younger days, and for some years was president of the Otago and Southland Coal-miners’ Union. He is survived by four sons and a daughter, and there are also 12 grandchildren and one great-grand-child.