People and Their Doings.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19134, 29 July 1930, Page 8

People and Their Doings .

A Christchurch Man Who Read His Own Obituary : The Inver-

cargill Seat, A Reminiscence : Some Canterbury College Celebrities.

MEN WHO HAVE READ their own obituary notices were the subject of a special article in yesterday’s “Star,” which recalls a very notable instance in Christchurch. Mr Frank A. Cook, the founder of the well-known grocery business of Christchurch (with which, however, he is no longer connected), had the pleasure while lying ill at “The Limes”, of reading his obituary notice in the columns of the old Christchurch “Evening News.” The mistake occurred through the hasty acceptance of a rumour. Mr Cook’s father had died a little while before, and the fact that he himself Was in hospital provided a dangerous conjunction of news from which somebody jumped to a hasty conclusion. Mr Cook, who still laughs heartily over the incident, met an old Christchurch journalist, Mr Mort Davie, a little time after the incident, and upbraided him, jocularly, not on the inaccuracy, but on the brevity of his obituary notice. But that was due to the fact that the “news” of his death was received just before going to press.

® ® ® PROFESSOR PERCIVAL, who has been A appointed Dean of the Faculty of Science at Canterbury College, has had a most interesting life. He is a Yorkshireman, and spent his early days on a farm, but since then he has been a sailor and has even toiled in a gas-works. He took up engineering, and when the war came on spent part of the time- helping to build submarines and battleships. He is an expert scientist and is at the present time making biological investigations in our streams and rivers on a subject that has never been explored in New Zealand before. Following the conference of the Acclimatisation Societies last September, committees were set up in the different centres for the purpose of doing research for the improvement of fishing, with Professor Percival as Director of Research. As biologist of this society he does a great deal of important work that is purely honorar3 r . e*? sS? sS? 'VTISS ANITA LOOS is going to Vienna x on a strange mission. She is going to buy a niche in the wall of the Government cemetery where her ashes can be placed in an urn after she is dead. “London is the best place in the world that I know to live in,” she said, “but there is no place in the world like Vienna to die in. The only thing in Vienna that 1 like is the cemetery, and that fascinates me. “It is a series of walls with niches, and I am going soon to pick out my niche. I know I am not much over thirty, and I do not feel like dying, but I want one of those niches before they are all gone.” Up Up Up TN THE LAST few of the fifty or more years he worked in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington, Mr Oldfield Thomas, the distinguished scientist, who

died last year, found the long flight of steps to his study an increasing trial. He hinted that a lift would be useful, but was told the Treasury had no money for it. When he died he left £I2OO in his will for the construction of a lift in the west central tower of the great building, and it was opened recently by Mr Lansbury, First Commissioner of Works. 3$ 9

M R , VINCENT WARD'S candidature for his father’s seat, Invercargill, sets the mind running on what happened after

Mr Massey’s death in 1925. Mr J. N. Massey, the Reform leader’s son, declined to become a candidate if there was' to be a contest, and he did not stand for the by-election, or the general election of 1925. He was a candidate, however, in 1928, and won the seat, Franklin, by a very narrow margin.

If Mr Ward' is returned for Invercargill he will complete an interesting link in the chain of New Zealand’s most notable Prime Ministers, because Mr Seddon was succeeded by his son, Mr T. E. Y. Seddon (although he is not now in Parliament), and Mr Massey was also succeeded by his son.

JYJENTION by Mr E. J. Bell in his lecture on the City of London of the Great Fire, recalls the conflagration which literally set the Thames afire. Known as the Tooley Street Fire, and ranking as second in magnitude to the Great Fire, it broke out at the wharves adjoining London Bridge on June 22, 1861, and burnt and smouldered for six weeks. Fed by the highly inflammable contents of the warehouses, the fire travelled for a quarter of a mile along the south bank’ of .the Thames. The bu rning oils and fats spread oyer the water and numbers of small craft lying at anchor were destroyed. In the course of the fire fighting, many were injured and some killed, among the latter being the chief superintendent of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade. The damage was estimated at £2,000,000. §IR MART.IN CONWAY, the famous traveller and explorer, who on two occasions, in the Himalayas and the Bolivian Andes, climbed to a height of 23,000 feet “’tends to give up his seat in the House of Commons at the end of the present Government. It has long been an open secret that Sir Martin did not see eye to eye with the 1 ory leaders on many important issues, and he is now looking forward to complete freedom from political preoccupations. vSir Martin is seventy-three years of age. lie has set out to walk round Garda Lake, m 1ta13% after which he will continue to \ emce.

gIR WILLIAM ALLARDYCE, a former Governor of Newfoundland, whose death has been announced, had spent fortypine years in the* service of the British Government. For nearly half this time he acted in the capacity of governor in various parts of the world. lie was Governor of the Falkland Islands for ten 3-ears, of the Bahamas for five years, of Tasmania for two 3'ears, and of Newfoundland for six 3-ears. In addition he did valuable work in Fiji. As a 3-outh of eighteen he took charge on one occasion of the island of Rotuma for a 3'car, owing to the Commissioner’s illness. © & © GOOD STORY is told of Colonel James Ilargest, who has been selected to contest the Invercargill seat in the interests of the Reform Part3'. It happened in September, 1918, and the Second Battalion of the Otago Regiment, which he commanded, was being relieved at Metz-en-Coutue. Battalion headquarters were situated in a quarry where there was a corrugated iron lean-to and a sixt3’-foot dug-out. Shortly after dusk the relieving battalion commander arrived with his medical and spiritual advisers. the talk concerned the war going on outside, and gradually it turned to the German’s playful habit of placing booby traps in unsuspected places. Suddenly a spark like a fuse ran across the floor. Immediately the’-e was a rush, and a struggling mass of colonels, padres and doctors heaved themselves through a very narrow door. When calm was restored without any untoward event, Colonel Hargest decided to go to his billets in a safer village. 32? $2? |~)R R. s. ALLAN, who has been appointed lecturer in geolog}' at Canterbury College, and will take up his duties next February, has a brilliant scholastic record. He was a pupil at Otago Boys’ High School from 191 Gto 1919, and matriculated at Otago University in 1920. In 1923 he secured the degree of Bachelor of Sc’ence, and in the following year Master of Science with first-class honours in geology tie also won the Sir Julius von Haast prize. In 1925 he won the 1851 Exhibition science research scholarship, and in 1927 he gained the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in geology at Cambridge. This year he was national research scholar in geology.

eg? I\TR ARTHUR ST JOHN ADCOCK, a distinguished novelist, journalist, and editor of the "Bookman,” who died suddenly at his home in Richmond, Surrey, at the age of sixt>--six, was to have been a lawyer, but at twenty-nine he took the bold decision to abandon this career and live b> r his pen. He was a many-sided writer, and used his pen equally as a delicate satirist, a bitter critic, or to present tragedies. His best-known books were “From a London Garden,” "East End Id\'lls,” “Admissions and Asides,” and "The Divine Trag-