OBITUARY.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXII, Issue XXIV, 11 June 1904, Page 49

OBITUARY.

AIR JOHN KINO. The death of All - King not only removes from our midst a well-known street figure, but a man who, during a period of more than four decades, has filled so many public appointments that it would be difficult to enumerate them in precise chronological order. The late Air John King was born at Boyle, County Roscommon, Ireland, in 1841. He came to the colony in the late fifties of last century. He was then quite a youth, and in the early sixties joined the Auckland municipal police force under the late Commissioner Naughton. Mr King was early stationed at Papakura, and besides doing police duty acted as lion, secretary of the Papakura Agricultural Association. About the time Air King returned from Papakura, near the close of 1864, a wholesale robbery of valuable gold jewellery took place from All' R. Beek’s premises, near the Savings Bank, in Queen-street. The haul the burglars secured amounted to nearly £6OO. As neither trace of the plunder nor the perpetrators could be found here, Mr King assumed the role of a detective, and was despatched to Brisbane, where he arrested both, a male and female prisoner and secured a portion of the stolen goods. He proceeded from thence to Melbourne, where, with the assistance of the Victorian police, he arrested another prisoner and recovered more of the stolen property amounting in all to between £350 and £4OO. 'The prisoners were brought here, some time in Alarch, 1865, and duly convicted. On his return from Australia Air King was appointed Provincial Relieving Officer, and during the. quasifamine that followed the native war, and the slump that followed the removal of the scat of Government from Auckland, he, in conjunction with the late Air Chas. Haselden, opened a temporary soup kitchen in the premises known as the “Old Alill,” in Official Bay. where the poor received relief in the shape of soup gratis. He was about this time appointed Inspector of Weights and Aleasures, which position he relinquished to become Inspector of Lunatic Asylums under the statute of 1868. In the early seventies Air King betook himself to Coromandel, where he acted a 1 agent

for the "Daily Southern Cross" and "Weekly Newa” nawspapers. He was here also instrumental in establishing a local newspaper. Returning to Auckland in the late seventies, Air King became secretary to Sir George Grey’s Central Committee, which at that time manifested considerable political vigour. He was for some time in partnership with Mr T. Whewell, and pursued the calling of a financial agent. He was several times appointed chief census enumerator and collector of agricultural statistics for the Auckland Provincial District. He was for a brief period a sub-agent for the Government Life Insurance Department, and has more recently been engaged as Registrar of Electors and Returning Office, combined with Deputy-Registrar of Old Age Pensions. When in the capacity of a constable he was instrumental in apprehending two different notorious gaol-breaking prisoners—lsaac Robinson and Fred. Plumber. The latter he took singlehanded. Although in the execution of his duties as a member of the force he could be both bold, grim, and rigorous, there was another, and much more admirable, side to his character, as in the capacity of Relieving Officer and Deputy-Registrar of Old Age Pensions he exercised many little disinterested acts of kindness to a class of the community from whom no possible favour could have been expected in return. The late Mr King was both a kind and considerate husband and an indulgent father, on account of which his death is ail the more sincerely regretted. Il is remains were interred at Waiokaraka (Onehunga) on Thursday, and although the weather was in the superlative degree inclement, a considerable number of friends followed his funeral cortege to the grave.