21.—A great Unionist demonstration took place at St. Andrew’s Hall, Norwich, as a protest against the Home Rule Bill. Colonel Bignold, leader of the Conservative party, presided, and Lord Ashbourne was the principal speaker.
—Died, at Bradenham Hall, Mr. William Meybohm Rider Haggard, aged 76. Mr. Haggard came of a Scandinavian family, and for several generations his ancestors had been Norfolk squires. He was lord of the manor of West Bradenham, a Deputy Lieutenant, and one of the most active magistrates in the county. For many years he acted as a Chairman of Norfolk Quarter Sessions held by adjournment at Swaffham, and afterwards at Lynn, and for a long period was a member of the Committee of Visitors to Norwich Castle. After the passing of the Local Government Act, by which the business previously transacted at Quarter Sessions was transferred to the County Council, Mr. Haggard, like so many representatives of the old county gentry, retired from active participation in public affairs. He was educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, called to the Bar in 1842, and married, in 1844, Ella, elder daughter of Mr. Doveton, of the Bombay Civil Service. Mrs. Haggard was an exceedingly gifted woman, and possessed of brilliant literary powers.
23.—Died, at Cambridge, Mr. Robert Lubbock Bensly, M.A., Senior Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, and Lord Almoner’s Professor of Arabic, aged 61. Professor Bensly, who was widely known as an Oriental scholar, was the eldest surviving son of Mr. Robert Bensly, of Eaton. He was educated at King’s College, London, and afterwards at Gonville and Caius College, where he graduated in the Classical Tripos in 1855, and was elected Tyrwhitt Hebrew Scholar in 1857. After spending two years at the Universities of Bonn and Halle, he returned to Cambridge, where he was appointed Hebrew lecturer at his college, and subsequently became the Senior Fellow. He was an active and valued member of the Old Testament Revision Committee, and was for many years an examiner in the theological and Semitic languages triposes, and succeeded the Hon. Ion Keith Falconer as Lord Almoner’s Professor of Arabic. Afterwards he was appointed University lecturer in Oriental Languages. The closing work of his life was connected with a discovery of extreme importance and value, which he made in company with his former pupil, Mr. F. C. Burkett, of a manuscript found by Mrs. Lewis, of Cambridge, in 1892, in the Convent of St. Catharine on Mount Sinai. A careful examination of photographs taken by her from this MS., which was a palimpsest, revealed the important fact that the nearly obliterated Syriac characters bore a close resemblance to the fragmentary text found by Cureton in 1842, and that the newly-found text comprised nearly all the four Gospels. This discovery led to an expedition in the present year (1893) to Mount Sinai, where the intricate task of deciphering and transcribing the MS. was undertaken by Professor Bensly, Mr. Burkett, and Mr. Rendel Harris. The Professor was well known as the discoverer and editor of “The Missing Fragment of the Fourth Book of Ezra.” He also edited the Harklean version of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and at the time of his death was engaged in preparing other important works for the press.
24.—In a letter to the Press on this date Mr. James Emery, of Stibbard, wrote:—“This is the earliest spring for more than one hundred years in Norfolk. I have this day gathered some hawthorn in full blossom. I have seen more than sixty summers; my father lived to be seventy-four, and he has told me many times he never saw hawthorn in flower by the first of May. Nor have I ever seen it till this season before the first of May.”
25.—The Fletcher Convalescent Home, at Cromer, built by the munificence of Mr. B. E. Fletcher, and endowed by the Earl of Leicester, as an adjunct to the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, was opened by the Countess of Leicester. Mr. Edward Boardman, of Norwich, was the architect. The cost of the building was not disclosed by the donor; the endowment fund amounted to £15,000, which Lord Leicester augmented to £20,000 in February, 1894.
MAY.
5.—The Mayor of Norwich (Mr. A. R. Chamberlin) sent to the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Duke and Duchess of Teck, and the Duke of York and Princess Victoria Mary, the congratulations of himself and the citizens on the announcement of the betrothal of the Duke and Princess. On June 30th the Mayor, the Sheriff (Mr. Russell J. Colman), and the Deputy-Mayor (Mr. G. M. Chamberlin) proceeded to Marlborough House, and presented to the Duke of York a valuable dessert service, the gift of the citizens, with a richly-illuminated vellum containing a congratulatory address and the names of the subscribers.
17.—Died, at Heigham Grove, Norwich, Mr. William John Utten Browne, barrister-at-law, aged 88. Mr. Browne had been for many years an active and painstaking magistrate, and in the early decades of the century occupied a very prominent position in the public life of the city. In 1833 he served as one of the Sheriffs of Norwich, and was elected Mayor in 1860. In July, 1837, he contested in the Conservative interest the borough of Ashburton, Devonshire, and was defeated by Mr. Lushington. On attaining his 80th birthday he was entertained to a banquet by his colleagues on the Bench. Mr. Browne was a staunch Tory and High Churchman.
20.*—“A meeting of owners and occupiers of property at Thorpe St. Andrew was recently held to protest against a proposal of the Norwich Town Council to annex Thorpe to their municipal district. It was resolved that a fund be guaranteed for the purpose of opposing by every possible means any attempt at annexation on the part of Norwich. The sum of £5,000 was guaranteed in the room.”
21.—Mrs. Brown, a woman in humble circumstances, living at Winterton, celebrated her one hundredth birthday. She had been a widow from her 81st year, and was entirely dependent upon her daughter, aged 77, with whom she lived. Mrs. Brown had never travelled further than the neighbouring town of Gorleston.