A LONG CHAIRMANSHIP

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3800, 26 August 1936, Page 2

A LONG CHAIRMANSHIP

Sir John Manners’s chairmanship of the London District Messenger Company must be almost the longest chairmanship on record, writes the London correspondent of the Manchester “Guardian.” Sir George Manners, who was 76 last June, has held the position for 46 years. It was a benevolent interest in boy welfare which brought him in 1890 into the company, then only recently founded by . an American, Charles Tweed Russell, on an Amierican model. He had been impressed by the smart appearance of the uniformed boys in their pillbox hats and by the value of their employment to themselves as much as to a London where telephones (at £2O a year) were too dear for general use, and the hansom cab and the steam underground train were the swiftest public conveyances. There were only six boys then. They became nearly 700, reduced

since then, by the spread of the telephone, to 340, but they still play a useful part in London life. His faith in the character-forming value of the employment has been justified by results, for many of the boys have done well in later life.

The tasks entrusted to district messengers have included delivering a dog in Constantinople, sitting up with sick persons, paying bills in Paris, taking a bottle of medicine to Aix-les-Bains, and buying penny toys for :> foreign potentate. The boys have often proved useful in the conviction of people who have sent them to banks with forged cheques.