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The Cyclopedia of New Zealand [Canterbury Provincial District]

Mr. W. H. Bush

Mr. W. H. Bush is a native of Great Dunmow, Essex, England, and was born on the 24th of January, 1834. Dunmow is famous for several notable things. It has in its neighbourhood the beautiful ruins of a great Augustinian priory which was founded in the year 1104. Then there is the unique Dunmow Flitch of Bacon, which was instituted in 1244 by Robert Fitzwalter, who must have been a humourist with a fine old English talent for hearty laughter. The charter of his quaint and curious endowment sets forth that “whatever married couple will go to the priory, and, kneeling on two sharp pointed stones, will swear that they have not quarrelled, nor repented of their marriage, within a year and a day after its celebration, shall receive a flitch of bacon.” It cannot now be stated with certainty whether Robert Fitzwalter intended merely to provide periodical diversion for the monks and the good people of Dunmow, or to establish statistics of striking suggestiveness to the social philosophers of all ages and countries; but it is matter of history that no couple claimed the flitch until 1445, exactly 201 years after its institution, and up to the year 1757 there had been altogether only five presentations. The flitch remained unclaimed from 1757 till 1855; but between 1860 and 1877 four awards were made, there were three in 1891, and there have been others since then. Dunmow has more serious claims to be remembered in connection with the invention of the lifeboat. Henry Greathead, boat-builder, of North Shields, is generally credited with designing and building the first lifeboat about the year 1789, and the improvements that followed had, in the main, his boat as a starting point. But four or five years before Greathead's invention was heard of Lionel Lukin, a coachbuilder of Long Acre, and a native of Dunmow, designed and fitted what he calded an unimmergible boat for saving life in cases of shipwreck. He took out a patient for this boat in November, 1785, and is said to have saved some lives by its means. In any case, his share in so notable an invention as the lifeboat is in itself enough to immortalise Dunmow, and Mr. Bush is not the only native who is all the prouder of his birthplace on Lukin's account. Mr. Bush, who is well known in Christchurch, and the oldest local surviving member of the guild of house decorators, arrived in Lyttelton by the ship “Glen-tanner” on the 3rd of October, 1857. Probably no man living is better acquainted than he is with Christchurch, and the human side of the history of its people. For a long time he devoted himself to the work of collecting photographs of the pioneer and pilgrim settlers of Canterbury, and he presented his collection to the Christchurch Museum in January, 1895. Since then it has attracted, and must continue to attract and interest, visitors to the Museum. Mr. Bush is the father of Miss M. E. Bush, pianist and vocalist, whose notice appears in another section of this volume.

Standish and Preece, photo,Mr. W. H. Bush.

Standish and Preece, photo,
Mr. W. H. Bush.