PUBLIC SERVICE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 228, 28 September 1935, Page 2

PUBLIC SERVICE

THREE NOTABLE WOMEN. The world is the poorer for the death recently of three notable women, who might well serve as models to a new generation. Viscountess Pirrie was the president of the great shipbuilding firm of Harland and Wolff, of Belfast. On her husband’s death she assumed this unique position, which was specially created for her. It was no sinecure, as there were few details of the great concern which she did not study and understand. Withal, she was a most “feminine” personality. Her marriage was singularly happy, and on her “golden wedding” anniversary in 1929, she made a donation to the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast, of a thousand guineas. This hospital was built largely through her efforts, and besides her other works she found time to collect for its funds over £250,000. Her business acumen was such that her husband was said never to make a business decision without first consulting Lad-y Pirrie. Ono of her houses was the famous Lea Park, at Godaiming, which was beautified by the “crooked financier” Whitaker Wright. The beauty of its grounds was fabulous, and included many small lakes, some with billiard rooms and conservatories underneath them.

Another famous woman who died recently was the Hon. Dame Eva Anstruther. During the war she organised a, system by which books were dispatched to the troops, and soldiers on leave used to call at her library in London and tell her how much pleasure her books had given them when they were read in the trenches. Tn this way she created a vast undertaking which had no little share in keeping up the morale of the troops during the deadly tedium of days of inaction under fire.

An American woman of note recently dead was Airs. Harriet B. fiquiers, a veteran of the Boxer Rising at Peking in 1900. She was the wife of a former American diplomat, .and her courage and hard work on that occasion did much to help the refugees who flocked into the grounds of the British Legation. Later on Mrs. Squiers organised, with her own funds during the war, the hospice of St. Vincent of Paul, where so many British casualties were treated.