People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, 25 January 1912, Page 37

People We Hear About

The death of Mr. Henry Labduchere, which occurred last week at Florence, will not be regretted by rogues and frauds of all kinds, especially religious impostors, whom he relentlessly exposed. His- wife, who was a fervent Catholic, died in October, 1910.. The Rev. Thomas Gavan Duffy, youngest son of the late Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, K.C.M.G., who was raised to the priesthood recently at the College of the Missions Etrangeres, Paris, has left for the field of his labors, Pondicherry, India. " Mrs. Alicia Needham, the well-known Irish poetess and has handed over to the Bangor (County Down) Library v authorities the library belonging to her late father, Mr. J. W. Montgomery. The collection is one of considerable value, and is highly appreciated. Chief Inspector Kane, of the London Police, ' who retired from Scotland Yard early in December after forty years’ service, was one of the, many Irishmen who have risen to positions of distinction in the London Police. He secured the conviction of many criminals, and, still better, he established the innocence and secured the release of: Adolf Beck## " The Westminster Gazette points out that for the first time since Confederation; there is not ; a Scotsman in the Canadian Cabinet. How Scotsmen; missed -getting even one post is hard to /understand. However,' it is not likely to happen again. ,-•>, By the way itMs interesting to learn that of the eighteen members of the. new Conservative Cabinet seven are Anglicans, five Methodists, four Catholics, one Baptist, and one Presbyterian, Mr. John McCormack, the famous Irish tenor, who left Auckland for Vancouver on Friday, asked a fee of 75 guineas from the Philarmonic Society of Melbourne* for the ‘ Messiah ’ Christmas Night concert. It was more than the society was prepared to pay/ and they were arranging to cry the engagement off, when the Irish tenor came down handsomely by saying he «would sing for a fee of £SO and half the profits of the concert. The Philarmonic agreed,, and Mr. McCormack was handed a cheque for £2do the day after the concert. The society did well, out of the event, but probably regret they did not close with the tenor’s first offer. Some time ago the London Times issued a South American supplement containing a : lengthy article on ‘Englishmen in South America,-/including among these Englishmen, Maurice O’Higgins, • the father of Bernardo O’Higgins, the Liberator of Chile. Maurice O’Higgins was a native ;of - the County Meath. Our contemporary, the Christchurch Press , in the / course of an article dealing with ' the adventurous career of Mr. - Francis McCullagh, the famous war correspondent, has made a similar mistake, and calls him an ‘Englishman.’ Mr. McCullagh was born and educated in Dublin, and was for some years connected with Catholic journals published in Glasgow and Bradford. Later on he was editor of the Catholic Messenger, Ceylon, and from there he gravitated to Siam. From there he went to Japan, and later on acted :as correspondent for the New York Herald during the Russo-Japanese war. He was in Lisbon at the time of - the revolution; and sent to the English papers the most readable and reliable account of the dethronement of the young King. He was expelled from Agadir, and was politely requested by the Italians to * move on ’ out of Tripoli owing to his comments on their methods of warfare.