People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, 21 April 1910, Page 628

People We Hear About

Count Plunkett, of Dublin, has been honored with the title of Knight Commander of the Order of the'Holy Sepulchre. The Pope is the head of the Order, which is administered by the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem. February 27 was the seventieth birthday of General Sir Thomas Kelly-Kenny, who since his serious illness has been recuperating at Brighton, where he was visited recently by the King, who took tea with him. The gallant officer entered the army as ensign in 1858, and since 1902 has been colonel of the Queen’s Royal West Surrey Regiment. Sir Charles Santley, the famous baritone singer, attained hisjseventy-sixth birthday on February 28. As long’ ago as 1857 Sir Charles made his first appearance in Lon don, and two years afterwards he achieved a notable success in the opera, ‘ Dinorah.’ He was created a knight in 1907. At his residence at Carlton Hill, Maida Vale, he received a number of congratulatory messages. His many friends will be glad to learn that he is in excellent health. Mr. Pete Curran, the Labor M.P. for Jarrow, whose defeat at the recent election was so closely followed by his death after a surgical operation, was born of Irish parents at Glasgow. He began work at the age of ten, attending to a steam hammer. At twenty he became associated with Labor movements in Scotland. In 1889 he obtained employment at the Arsenal of Woolwich, and about that time became associated with the Gas Workers’ and General Laborers’ Union. In connection with trade unionism he held many offices in his time, and was a regular attendant at the Trade Union Congress, where his opinions always carried weight. He was a staunch Home Ruler. He was buried with all the rites of the Church. Sir John Dickson-Poynder, who succeeds Lord Plunket as Governor of New Zealand, is the sixth baronet, the baronetcy having been created in 1802. He was born in 1866, and was educated at Harrow and Oxford. He succeeded his uncle in the baronetcy in 1884, and married, in 1896, Anne, daughter of R. H. D. Dundas and Catherine Anne, sister of the second Baron Napier of Magdala. Sir John Dickson-Poynder was elected M.P. (Conservative) for the Chippenham Division of Wilts in 1892, and went over to the Liberals in the 1900-1905 Parliament. He was for six years a member of the London County Council. Sir John Dickson-Poynder served as a lieutenant in the Royal Scots’ Regiment, and as a major in the Yeomanry. He served in the South African war, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order. Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, Canada’s ‘ Grand Old Man,’ has placed his palatial Montreal residence at the disposal of his Grace the Archbishop, in view of the coming Eucharistic Congress. Lord Strathcona never does things by halves. Catholics, the world over, will hear of his deed and generosity, and more well-deserved fame will be added to the lustre of the undying renown he has won for himself throughout the full extent of the Empire. Nor did he refuse to swell the Congress fund by one of these fullhearted, purse-swelling gifts for which he has become famous along all lines of charity, endeavour, and philanthropy (says the True Witness). True, Lord Strathcona has grown to know, love, and admire our Archbishop, and to cheerfully recognise the grandeur of the Church and the earnestness of her ministers and children. With all other Catholics, then, we offer him the humble tribute of our thanks and esteem and heartfelt admiration. The Earl of Crewe, who leads the Liberals in the House of Lords, is 52 years old, is the son of the late Baron Houghton, the fajnous ‘ Dicky ’ Milnes, the writer and politician, and succeeded his father in the baronetcy in 1885. He was created first Earl of Crewe in 1895, and was assistant private secretary to the Secretary for Foreign Affairs (Earl Granville) in 1883-4; he was Lord-in-Waiting to the late Queen in 1886, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1892 to 1895, and has been Lord President of the Council since 1905. He has literary ability, and had published in book form a collection of verse, and articles on Ireland. He has a library of 32,000 volumes, and owns about 25,000 acres of mineral lands in Yorkshire and Staffordshire. He was married twice—first in 1880 to a daughter of Sir Frederick Graham (she died in 1887); then in 1899 to Lady Margaret Primrose, who is many years his junior, a sister of Lord Rosebery. There is no heir to the earldom.