OBITUARY.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XL, Issue 9206, 7 October 1891, Page 2

OBITUARY.

DEATH OF EIGHT HON. W. 11. SMITH. [per press association.! London, October 6. — The death is announced of the Right Hon. W. H. Smith, First Lord of the Admiralty, aged 66 years. Mr W. H. (Smith, who had been ill for some time, suffered a relapse, and a London physician was summoned to Walmor Castle, where the hon. gentleman died. The Right Hon. William Henry Smith, M.P., was born in London in 1825, and was educated at the Grammar-School, Tavistock. He afterwards entered the well-known firm of newsagents, booksellers, and publishers in the Strand, as a partner. Since 1868 he has sat in the House of Coinraons as member for Westminster, the Strand. His dates of official service are :—1874WL877,: — 1874WL877, Financial Secretary to the Treasury; 1877-1880, -First Lord of the Admiralty ; 1885-6, Secretary of Slate for War ; 1886-91, First Lord of the Treasurer. Mr W. H. Smith was an '- honorary D.C.L. of the University of Oxford, and a Magistrate for Hertfordshire. His efficient conduct of the naval businesaof the nation during Lord Beaconsfield's premiership was universally recognised. Mr Smith was not only a successful man of business, an energetic mernbor of his party, and a statesman of merit ; but he was also one of the loaders in the Evangelical religious world, taking a keen interest in all matters of philanthrophy, or where the moral and spiritual iuterests of tho people were conenrned. It will bo familiar to most readers how, when the right hon. gentleman was First Lord of , the Admiralty in the lato Lord Beaeona- ! field's administration, he was playfully satirized in Messrs Gilbort and Sullivan's celebrated comic opera " Pinafore." He j was, we may add, a Member of the Council of King's College, and at one timo a prominent moinbor of tho London School Board. Ho was one of the first examples of a London tradesman finding a seat in a cabinet of the British Government.