GREAT AUSTRALIAN CHURCH-BUILDER A title earned by the Most Rev. Dr. Michael Kelly, Archbishop of Sydney, who died on the 8th inst., was that of " Michael the Builder."
His Grace, during a long pastorate, had set many churches, schools, convents and institutions on Australian coil; this was the material building, but there was also the great work of spiritual building in the souls of his large flock.
Only a short illness preceded the death of this, the oldest Archbishop in the Empire, if not in the entire Catholic world. Ninety years ago, Michael Kelly was born at Waterford, and St. Peter's College at Wexford gave him part of his education; as a young priest, also, following his ordination at Enniscorthy In 1872, he worked in his native country as a member of the Diocesan Missionary Body for Ferns, until appointed in 1891 as Rector of the Irish College in Rome, where he ruled for ten years.
The year of his appointment saw him honoured by Leo XIII with the title of domestic prelate.
Dr. Kelly left Rome for Australia in 1901, to become titular Archbishop of Achrida and Coadjutor to Cardinal Moran, of Sydney. On the Cardinal's death in 1911 he succeeded as Metropolitan.
His reign of nearly thirty years saw, among events on the larger side, the meeting of the International Eucharistic Congress at Sydney, with St. Mary's Cathedral as the chief devotional centre. In 1926 Pope Pius XI created him a Papal Count and a Bishop-Assistant at the Pontifical Throne.
The late Archbishop has been buried in his cathedral in a tomb of his own design. He is succeeded by the Most Rev, Norman Gilroy, D.D., who for the past three years has been Coadjutor.
Major W. W. Bisson
WELL-KNOWN CONSERVATIVE AGENT
A conspicuous friend of veteran soldiers, Major Walter William Bisson was buried with military honours at Wolverhampton Cemetery on Friday last, March 8. The coffin was covered with the Union Jack, and a firing party
sounded " Last Post " and " Reveille." Major Bisson was formerly agent for Wednesbury Conservative Association, and possessed a large circle of Catholic and non-Catholic friends.
A Requiem Mass was offered at the Church of SS. Peter and Paul, Wolverhampton, and among the congregation were representatives of the South Staffordshire Old Contemptibles' Association, Wednesbury Conservative Association, Dariaston Primrose League, Darlaston, Wednesbury and Tipton Old Age Pensioners' Societies, Wolverhampton National Reserve, Wolverhampton West Conservative Association, and Darlaston and Wednesbury Conservative Clubs.
Mr Richard J. Conroy
LECTURER IN SPANISH AT BIRMINGHAM UNIVERSITY The death of Mr Richard Joseph Conroy in the General Hospital, Birmingham, on the eight of March 7 removes from the higher scholastic circle of the city one of its brightest ornaments. For some time he had been lecturer in the Spanish language and literature at Birmingham University. A native of Galway, he was educated at Galway University, of which he was a graduate, and afterwards at the University of Salamanca, in Spain.
He later spent a period in South America, where he held a teaching position at Valparaiso. On returning to this country after the Great War he was appointed lecturer in Spanish at Armstrong College, Newcastle-on-Tyne, now King's College. After holding this appointment for a few years, he came to Birmingham, where he was the first fulltime lecturer in Spanish, and did much to encourage Spanish studies.
For a period Mr Conroy served on the Senate. His death from meningitis followed a short illness. He leaves a widow and two children.
Mr B. G. Coldwell
SON OF WELL-KNOWN CATHOLIC PUBLISHER We regret to announce the death on Saturday, March 9, at the early age of 35, at his home in Harrow, Middlesex, of Mr Bernard George Caldwell, son of George E. J. Coldwell, the well-known Catholic publisher.
Mr Coldwell, who leaves a widow and four children, was closely associated with his father in the firm's bold publishing policy in regard to books on philosophy and the liturgy. The interment followed Requiem Mass at the Church of Our Lady and St.. Thomas of Canterbury, Harrow, on Wednesday last.
Dr. P. MacDiarmid
WELL-KNOWN LIVERPOOL ORTHOPZEDIC SURGEON Requiem Mass for the repose of the soul of Dr. Peter MacDiarmid, 0.B.E., a member of the Liverpool Medical Institution for many years, was celebrated in the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, Catherine Street. Liverpool, by the Rev. Benedict Cain on Tuesday last. The interment followed at Yew Tree Cemetery.
During the last war Dr. MacDiarmid was colonel-in-charge of a hospital specialising in orthopmdic cases, and was awarded the O.B.E. for the services he rendered.
Mgr. Hanisch, C.M.M.
AFRICAN MISSIONARY BISHOP
We regret to announce the death of Mgr. Emmanuel Hanisch, C.M.M., Vicar Apostolic of Umtata, near
Bloemfontein, South Africa.
Mgr. Hanisch, who was born in Altonnitz in the Archdiocese of Prague in 1882, belonged to the missionary order of Marianhill. He has only ruled the vicariate for three years, being consecrated bishop in April, 1937.
Sir Michael O'Dwyer
LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR OF THE PUNJAB, 1913-1919
We regret to announce the death under tragic circumstances of Sir Michael Francis O'Dwyer, G.C.I.E., who was shot dead at a meeting in the Caxton Hall, Westminster, on Wednesday, March 13. He was 75.
Sir Michael O'Dwyer. who passed fourth into the Indian Civil Service at the age of 20, served continuously in that country from 1884 until 1919; holding successively the following important posts: Revenue Commissioner Frontier Provinces, Acting Resident at Hyderabad, Agent to the Governor General in Central India.
For the last six years of his service -1913-1919-he was Governor General of the Punjab during the difficult years of the Great War.
Sir Michael, who was born at Barronstown, Co. Tipperary, Ireland, was educated at St. Stanislaus College, Tullamore, and Bernal College, Oxford. His family had been settled for centuries in Barronstown, and he was one of 14 children of John O'Dwyer and Margaret, nee Quirk.
He married in 1896 Mlle. Una Hord Castres, daughter of M. Hord Castres, of France, who worked untiringly with him in India and was awarded the D.B.E. In recognition of her services for the women of India.
Sir Michael, who belonged to the number of brilliant Irishmen who have left their names permanently enrolled in the history of British India, was regarded as one of the finest administrators we have ever given that country.
He will be chiefly remembered for his able governorship in the Punjab; courageous, resourceful, and quick to act, he did magnificent service to the Allied cause in the Great War. The martial races of the Punjab made a larger contribution to the flow of Indian troops recruited for the various theatres of war than all the rest of India put together.
The disorders which broke out in various parts of India in the spring of 1919 were especially severe in the Punjab, and were made the more dangerous there by the emergence of the Third Afghan War. While Mr Gandhi called only for "passive resistance " to the "Rowland Acts," there was something akin to insurrection in the Punjab.
In April, 1919, there came the incident at Amritsar, and when General Beynon telephoned to the Lieutenant Governor at Labors a brief account of that action, O'Dwyer, without waiting for fuller information, promised his full support. From that attitude he never swerved.
In 1924 he brought a libel action against Sir Sankaran Nair, a member of the Government of India, who alleged in a book that Sir Michael was responsible for "atrocities in the Punjab." He was successful. The Judge in that action, in summing up, said: " Subject to your judgment, speaking with full deliberation and knowing the whole of the evidence given in this case, I express my view that General Dyer, in the grave and exceptional circumstances, acted rightly."
J. L. P. Wharton Hewison
A SUSSEX PUBLIC WORKER
By the death, on the 7th inst., of Mr J. L. P. Wharton Hewison, Bexhill-on-Sea loses an active townsman who far many years past had
given his energies to divers good works, prominent among them being that of Ratepayers' Associations. He was a past member of the Bexhill Town Council and of the East Sussex County Council, the only Catholic on those two bodies.
John Leonard Patrick Wharton Hewison, son of a clergyman, was born in 1875 and was educated partly in England and partly in Canada. Seeking Anglican Orders, he was admitted to the diaconate and in 1898 was helping at St. Simon's, Bristol; but his views were too " Catholic " for authority's taste, so that it was not until 1903 that Dr. Gore, then Bishop of Worcester, gave him the full orders which previously had been refused. As a " priest " Hewison held curacies at St. Jude's, Birmingham, and at St. Augustine's, Stepney, both of them churches widely known on the "High " side.
Anglican activities, however, had not a great many years to run. In 1912 Hewison was received into the Catholic Church by the late Fr. Bede Jarrett, 0.1'., and in the following year wrote his brief apologia in the booklet on Certainty and Confusion. As a Catholic layman he threw himself with ardour into the work of the Guild of Our Lady of Ransom, becoming for a time its secretary and editor of the Second Spring.
Mr W. McAuley
LEADING AMATEUR GOLFER One of the leading amateur golfers in Britain and second son of a famous veteran Irish Rugby international, Mr William McAuley, surgeon dentist, has died at his New Cross, London, home of pneumonia following a brief illness.
Mr McAuley, who was in the forties, and a bachelor, had practised in London for over twenty years. In the Great War he was a captain in a Welsh regiment.