WITH the exception of Liverpool no Station Branch contributes so much each year to the Institution's revenue as Eastbourne. With a population of over 60,000 inhabitants, and a large number Instituof summer visitors, it has opportunities which only a few other Station Branches enthushare with it, but it has made the most of these opportunities, and has more than earned the high place which it holds.

There are in fact o t h e r towns, though not among t h e S t a t i o n Branches, with four or five times E a s t b o u r n e ' s population which collect less.

No one has contributed more notably towards givi n g Eastbourne this outstanding position among the Institution's 800 Branches than Mrs. A s t l e y Roberts, now the President of the E a s t b o u r n e Ladies' Life-boat Guild, and a Lifeboat worker for many years. Her enthusiasm, her great organizing ability and above all her personal charm, have done wonders for the Branch.

She first became associated with the Service in the days of the Life-boat Saturday Fund, and when the organization of the Fund was taken over by the Institution in 1910 she and a number of other ladies who had been working for it became members of the Branch Committee. In 1912 a separate Ladies' Committee was formed, and Mrs. Astley * The last article in this series appeared in The Lifeboat for June, 1924Roberts was elected President. That position she still holds, and she has been ever since the moving spirit in the j magnificent work which the women of j Eastbourne have done for the Instituof tion. In 1921 she took up the idea of the Ladies' Life-boat Guild with enthushare siasm, and, as the Guild President, has ASTLEY ROBERTS.

boat Guild, Eastbourne.

Holder of the Gold Brooch now enrolled nearly 230 memb e r s. Nowhere in the country is t h e r e a better o r g a n i z e d and more enthusiastic body of workers.

It is to the task of organizing the Annual Life-boat Day to which Mrs.

Astley R o b e r t s has given her chief attention, and the steadily increasing figures are eloquent of the success of her work.

In 1910, the last year of the Lifeboat Saturday Fund, that Fund collected nearly £73, while the revenue of the Branch itself was £87, received from annual subscribers.

In 1911 the Life-boat Day, organized by Mrs. Astley Roberts and the other ladies who had just joined the Committee, raised nearly £71, and the total revenue of the Branch was £196. From then onwards the revenue of the Branch rapidly increased, and the appeal has been carried steadily further afield in the country round Eastbourne.

By 1915 the revenue had been more than doubled, and the collection, organized by the Ladies' Committee, was more than three times as large as it had been three years before. Three years later, in 1918, it reached the magnificenttotal of £601. Thus, at the end of only six years, Life-boat Day alone collected in Eastbourne a sum three times as much as the whole Branch revenue in 1912.

1918, the year of victory, was an excep- tional year elsewhere as well as in j Eastbourne. The following year there was everywhere a decline. But since ! 1919 Eastbourne Life-boat Day has always raised more than £500, and this year it has beaten the record of 1918 by raising £609.

Altogether in the fifteen years since the Eastbourne Ladies' Committee was , formed, with Mrs. Astley Roberts as its President, the Life-boat Day has raised nearly £6,500.

Although the chief increase has come in the work of the Ladies' Life-boat Guild, the general revenue of the Branch has also grown in a notable way. Last year the Collecting Boxes alone, at the Boathouse -and elsewhere, contributed £200, and for the first time the total revenue of the Branch exceeded £1,000.

Only twelve other towns raised over £1,000, but, with the exception of Oxford, | they were all very much larger than ! Eastbourne.

Mrs. Astley Roberts has not been content with making Life-boat Day such I a conspicuous success. Since 1924 she has found a new outlet for her energy and another way of helping the Institu- tion by organizing Life-boat Balls.

They, too, have proved so successful that "Life-boat Ball" will probably become as well established an annual event in Eastbourne as Life-boat Day.

This year, in fact, there have been two Balls, and at the second Mrs. Astley Roberts arranged a special dance in which the dancers represented all the nations which have Life-boats.

Mrs. Astley Roberts herself would not wish any record of her success to the Life-boat Cause to be published unless some reference were made to those who for many years have worked with her— to the late Honorary Secretary of the Branch, Mr. A. E. Infield, to the present Honorary Secretary, Mr. Alexander Robertson, who, since his appointment three years ago, has devoted himself with the greatest energy and success to the work of the Station, and particularly to the task of attracting Eastbourne's many visitors to the Life-boat House, and above all to Mr. Mark Hookham, who has been a member of the Branch Committee since 1908, and for many years acted as Honorary Secretary of the Life-boat Day, receiving in 1923, as a small mark of the Institution's grati- tude, its Record of Thanks and Gold Pendant.

Mrs. Astley Roberts herself received the Gold Brooch in 1917. In 1924 she was elected an Honorary Life-Governor of the Institution, and when the Inau- gural Ceremony of the Eastbourne Motor Life-boat was held in 1922 it was felt that to no one else did the honour of naming the Boat more fitly belong..