Sir Will'""' Martin.

The Committee of Management, the Staff of the Institution and the many friends of the Life-boat Service in Scotland, learnt with very deep regret of the death of Sir William Martin, on September 12th, at the age of sixty-eight. It was only last year that he retired from his position as the Institution's Organiz.ing Secretary in Scotland, and so brought to an end a work of thirty years for the Life-boat Service. It began in 1893, when he carried out, with great success, the first Life-boat demonstration in Glasgow, for the Life-boat Saturday Fund. The procession which passed through Glasgow that day, and which included two Life-boats, was nearly two miles long, and the demonstration raised a sum of nearly £3,700. Out of this sum was built the Steam Life-boat, City of Glasgow, which was launched in the following year. Mr. William Martin then became secretary of the Glasgow Branch of the Institution and of the Glasgow Life-boat Saturday Fund, and then of the Life-boat Saturday Fund for the whole of Scotland. At the end of 1910 the Institution decided to take over the whole of the work of organization and publicity in connexion with the raising of funds. The Life-boat Saturday Fund, which had largely carried out that work since 1891, was therefore absorbed, and Mr. Martin was appointed its Organizing Secretary for Scotland. In that year the Scottish Branches numbered 56, and when Sir William Martin retired last year they had increased to nearly eighty, gether, in his thirty years of Altowork he was responsible for helping to raise about £150,000 in Scotland for the Lifeboat Service.

Sir William Martin was an admirable speaker and lecturer, clear, forcible, humorous, and it was largely by speaking and lecturing that he extended the appeals of the Institution in Scotland.

After his retirement he spoke occasionally for the Institution, and one of his last, if not his last lecture on the Lifeboat Service was to an audience of 400 boys and girls at the Perth Academy, in the summer of last year.

Although his chief work, and the work by which he was widely known in Scotland, was for the Life-boat Service, he took an active part in politics, in the municipal life of Glasgow, and in social and philanthropic work; for six years he was a member of the Corporation of Glasgow; and at the General Election in 1918, was adopted as Liberal candidate for Iiinlithgowshire, but later withdrew his candidature. He was a Fellow of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries, and atone time Chairman of the Scottish Society of Literature and Art; and it was in 1919, in recognition of his many public services in Glasgow, that he was knighted. At his funeral, the Institution was represented by Mr. P. W. Gidney (Assistant Secretary) and Sir Godfrey Baring, Bt., Chairman of the Committee of Management, by Commander Drury, O.B.E., B.N.R., the Inspector of Life-boats for Scotland, while the Glasgow Branch was represented by Lord Maclay, its chairman, and Mr. Leonard Gow, J.P., its honorary secretary and treasurer..