Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/593

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1899.]

OBITUAKY.

169

to the Irish Bar, 1868 ; Q.C., 1877 ; Bencher of King's Inn, 1884 ; Law Adviser to Dublin Castle, 1879-80; Solicitor-General for Ireland, 1885; Judge of the Landed Estates Court, 1885-96. Married, 1867, Lizzie, daughter of John Watkins Moule, of Elmley Lovett, Worcestershire. On the 29th, at Apley Park, Bridge- north, aged 85, William Orme Foster, son of William Foster, of Stourton Court, a notable ironmaster in Staffordshire and Salop. Sat as a Liberal for South Staffordshire, . 1857-68, and was one of "The Cave of Adullam" in that year. Married, 1838, Isabella, daughter of H. Grazebrook, of Liverpool. On the 80th, at Clifford's Mesne, Gloucestershire, aged 84, Lord Somen, Philip Reginald Cocks, Colonel, Royal Artillery, son of Lieutenant-Colonel Hon. P. J. Cocks. Educated at Woolwich Academy ; entered the Royal Artillery, 1885. Married, 1859, Camilla, daughter of Rev. William Newton. On the 30th, at Westbourne Square, aged 78, Surgeon-General Sir Charles Alexander Gordon, K.O.B. Educated at Edinburgh and St. Andrews Universities; M.D., 1840; entered the Army Medical Service, 1841 ; served with 16th Lancers in the Gwalior Campaign, 1843 ; in the expedition against Appollonia, West Coast of Africa, 1847-8 ; with the 18th Foot in the Indian Mutiny, 1857-8 ; and in China, 1860-1 ; Medical Commissioner of the French Army in the Franco-Prussian War, 1870-1. Married, 1850, Annie, daughter of John Mackintosh. On the 30th, at Solihull, aged 63, Rev. Thomas M'Oane, D.D. Born at Wolverhampton ; educated at Sedgley Park School and Oscott College and at the Theological College, Rome; Head-master of the Roman Catholic School, Birmingham, 1867-72; author of several controversial works.

OCTOBER.

Lord Farrer. — Thomas Henry Farrer, son of Thomas Farrer, a solicitor in Lincoln's Inn Fields, was born in 1819, and educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, where he graduated with a second class in classics in 1840, and was called to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1844. He gave up practice after a few years, and in 1857 was appointed Assistant Secretary in the Marine Department of the Board of Trade, and in 1862 was promoted to be Permanent Secretary. He distin- guished himself throughout a long period of service as an energetic ad- ministrator, a steady reformer, and a stalwart supporter of the rights of his department. In politics he was an advanced Liberal, but above all he was a free-trader of the strictest school, and was not infrequently in his later years described as the last of the Cobdenites. He retired from office in 1886, having been created a baronet in 1883, and in 1889 he was co-opted by the Progressives an Alderman of the London County Council, of which he became Vice-Chairman in 1890. By degrees, however, he fell out of touch with his party, whose tendency towards Socialistic legislation was wholly at variance with his principles of indi- vidual responsibility ana endeavour. He consequently resigned his position, and having been raised to the peerage in 1893 spent much of his leisure in advocating at the Cobden Club, the Political Economy Club and in the public press his views on those ques- tions in which he took a keen interest.

The fallacies of the Fair Trade League were the special object of his attack, and in this and many other contro- versies on economic questions he con- tributed valuable letters, written in clear and uncompromising terms, and always falling back upon the doctrines of free-trade as advocated by its early exponents. He married, first, in 1854, Frances, daughter of Mr. William Erskine, of the Indian Civil Service, and second, in 1873, Katharine Eu- phemia, daughter of Hensleigh Wedg- wood, and he died on October 11, at his residence, Abinger Hall, Dorking, after a short illness.

Hajor-Oeneral Sir W. P. Symons, K.C.B. — William Penn Symons, the eldest son of William Symons, of Hatt, Cornwall, was born in 1848, and edu- cated at Crediton School, and Sand- hurst. He entered the Army 1863, and was gazetted to the South Wales Borderers, then 24th Regiment, but for many years found no opportunity of distinguishing himself. Shortly after his marriage with Caroline, daughter of T. P. Hawkins, of Edg- baston, in 1877, on the outbreak of the Zulu War, he was sent to South Africa, and was employed until the end of the campaign against the Galekas. In 1882 he was appointed to the staff, and employed as Assistant Musketry In- structor in Madras, where he dis- tinguished himself by insisting upon the necessity of teaching soldiers to become marksmen. On the breakin out of hostilities with Burmah in 1!