People and Their Doings.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20625, 28 May 1935, Page 8

People and Their Doings.

Mr W. H. Cooper Owed His Civic Record in Part to a Wide Charity : The Origin of Colonel Roscoe Turner’s Picturesque Uniform : Ireland in London.

THE SMALLEST of the achievements during King George’s reign has been accomplished in the world of aviation. The pioneer air mail flight from Hendon to Windsor was made in 1911, the year of the King’s coronation. Commander Sir Walter Windham, one of the best-known veterans of aviation, in 1909, sent the first letter carried by air. and in 1911, under Government supervision, founded the first air mail. That earlier Ilendon-Windsor service operated over a distance of 20 miles, compared with the 20,000 miles of route now flown over by Imperial Airways and its associated companies. The machines then in use were driven by single engines of 50 h.p., and had a maximum wing span of 30ft. To-day the big mail , aeroplanes are driven by four engines capable of more than 2000 h.p., and have a wing span of 130 ft. The Ilendon-Windsor monoplane of 1911 carried a pilot—Gustav Hamel—and a bag of letters weighing 23Jlb. The air mail of tp-day can lift a load of more that three tons. In the Hendon-Windsor days 40 to 50 miles an hour was considered a prodigious speed. To-day 175 miles an hour is not held to be out of the way. The mails sent by air from England last year were by far the largest ever, totalling approximately 6,000,000 letters. & 9 9 TRELAND has come to London Town. The village and Round Tower of Ballydainty are just around the corner from Piccadilly Circus. The High Commissioner for the Irish Free State has set up a little exhibition in Piccadilly House, Jermyn Street, that presents a delightful microcosm of the Irish scene. Killarney, Bantry Bay, and the blue Atlantic as it rolls off the Kerry coast are here in a charming illusion of paint and paste up. A village street, with a cottage industries display, a “ Holidays in Ireland ” house and a dairy counter, all complete, keep the little fairy scene anchored to earth. This is the real Ireland, with butter and eggs and holidays and homespuns next door to Tir na n’Og.

r pilE PICTURESQUE UNIFORM which Colonel Roscoe Turner has made famous is said to have been designed to obtain an interv »ew with Al Smith when he was

ever known. “ All the news that’s fit to print ” came to mean in his hands an immense expenditure on the news services, including the heaviest of foreign cable bills and a policy of printing public documents in full, on a scale never attempted in any country. No reader alive could go through a whole issue of the New York “Times.” & & & M R , W. 11. COOPER, who has reached his 90th year and is now living in Gippsland, Victoria, had a great record in civic life in Christchurch, and if a wide charity could command respect he had well earned it, for when he was a butcher in Armagh Street, in the early days before cheap refrigeration, he gave a tremendous lot of meat to the poor late on Saturday nights, never attempting to keep it off the market for the sake of gain. Mr Cooper was always a well dressed man, and five years ago, when a member of the “Star” staff ran into him most unexpectedly on “ the Block ” in Collins Street, that resort of the fashionable w’orld, he had his linen laundered and stiffened to perfection, and even at his 85th year he was so well turned out that he looked like a well-preserved man not far past his seventies. The health of Christchurch was toasted in “ pony beers ” at one of the most famous shrines in Collins Street. 32? 32? CIXTY YEARS AGO (from the “Star” of May 28, 1875) Wellington, May 27.—Arrived—Barque Kingdom of Italy, from London, 137 days out. She had to put back twice to Portland through stress of weather and was three weeks in the Channel. She brings a general cargo but no passengers. Wellington, May 27.—The Colonial Bank is opening a branch in London. Yesterday a branch was opened at Palmerston under the charge of Mr Burton. Pedestrianism.—A match to run 300 yards for £lO a side has been arranged between young Delaney and W. Pentecost.

still Governor. The first time he called on Al Smith he was refused admittance. He returned to New York, and his protesting tailor made him his cream doeskin breeches, sky blue tunic and cap to match, with a doublewinged “ R.T. ” on the belt, left breast and cap. When he returned to

Albany to see Al Smith he simply walked in w ? ith no bother at all. This regalia has been called jokingly the “ Roscoe Turner Home the “ Roscoe Turner Grenadiers ” and the “ Roscoe Turner Centurians,” but in spite of his decidedly comicopera flair in dress—he sometimes appears in a lion-skin coat—he delivers the goods. He is likely to leap into the news again shortly, for he proposes to quarter the globe this year, flying round the Equator, and later at right angles to it over the North and South Poles. ’J’HE DEATH OF ADOLPH S. OCHS, the famous proprietor of the New York “ Times,” removes almost the last of the elders who controlled the great dailies of the Atlantic States during the age of American newspaper expansion. Of this epoch Mr W. R. Hearst is now the sole survivor, says the “ Manchester Guardian.” Mr Ochs’s achievement, tried by any standard, was extraordinary. In 1896. when he went to New York from Tennessee, the “Times” was in the depths. He made -t not only the richest and most powerful morning paper in the United States but the biggest daily assembly of world news