Page:Men of the Time, eleventh edition.djvu/1100

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WALKER.

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paedia." It will, when completed, probably occupy about ten large octavo volumes of some 700 pages. The sixth volume is in progress. This work was described in the Times as one of " national impor- tance." Mr. Walford is a prolific writer on subjects outside his im- mediate pursuits, as may be seen by reference to the pages of the Journal of the Statistical Society, the Journal of the Institute of Actu- aries, the proceedings and volumes of the Social Science Association, the "Transactions" of the Library Association, Notes and Queries, and the annual volumes of the Royal Historical Society. He is a mem- ber and on the council of the Asso- ciation for the Reform and Codifi- cation of International Law, and took an active part in the proceed- ings of the Association in London in 1879, when he produced his paper on the " Hanseatic League." He has also attended and taken an active part in the various Inter- national Statistical Congresses, and in the International Society of Literature. He published the " History of Famines " in 1879, and has contributed to the new edition of the " Encyclopedia Britannica " an article on the same subject. More recently he published a popu- lar " History of Guilds," 1880 j and " Fairs, Past and Present : a Chap- ter in the History of Commerce," 1883. He has at the present time in course of preparation the " Cyclo- pcedia of Newspapers, and of Period- ical Literature Generally," a work of vast magnitude, and much needed. Mr. "Walford is Vice- President of the Royal Historical Society, and one of the editors of its transactions ; also Vice-Presi- dent of the Library Association, and a contributor of many papers to its transactions. He has formed one of the largest private libraries in Great Britain, It is very rich in Insurance Literature — in fact, it is unique in that branch. It is likewise rich in Statistics, and in

Antiquarian Literature, and it con- tains a special collection of works on Stenography. Mr. Walford was one of the founders of the Short- hand Society, and its first Presi- dent, being also re-elected in the second year of its existence. He is a Fellow of various learned societies in America, and frequently visits the United States. For many years he has been a considerable con- tributor to various Insurance and other Journals.

WALKER, Geoeoe Alfred, whose denunciation of the pesti- lential graveyards of London mainly led to the passing of the Extramural Interment Act, was bom at Nottingham, Feb. 27, 1807. He became a licentiate of the So- ciety of Apothecaries in 1829, and a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1831. He studied for a long time at the Aldersgate- street School, and in 1835 at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. His pro- fessional education was afterwards pursued for a while at Paris. While sojourning in the French capital he visited many of its prin- cipal cemeteries for the purpose of ascertaining their condition, his attention as a youth having been frequently arrested by the sight of shocking mutilations and upturn- ings of human remains in the graveyards of his native place. Settling down at last, in 1836, in London, he found time in the midst of his energetic practice of his profession from his surgery at 101, Drury-lane, to carry on, with purse and brain, with tongue and pen, his resolute labours as a practical philanthropist. His way of life lay, like Allan Woodcourt's, among the squalid streets and pestilential alleys and foetid back slums of a densely peopled neighbourhood, festering in the midst of which were several of the most revolting gravepits in the metropolis. One of these, close by the Strand, the notorious Enon Chapel in Clemen tV lane, he contrived eventually.