ANOTHER heavy loss has fallen on the Institution by the death of Mr. Edgar H.

Johnson, F.C.I.S., of Manchester, the District Organising Secretary for the North of England.

He was taken ill last spring, but after a short rest appeared to be better, and continued his work. Then, in September, his doctors advised that he should have three months' complete rest. It was characteristic of him that he refused to take it until he had personally put everything in order in the Manchester Office. Shortly after his sick leave began he got rapidly worse, and was compelled to return home. He died on 30th October, in his fifty-fifth year.

Mr. Johnson had been in the service of the Institution for thirty-one years. I In 1897 he was appointed an Assistant Organising Secretary under the Lifeboat Saturday Fund, and when that Fund and its organisation were taken over by the Institution in 1911, he became Organising Secretary for the North of England. He brought to the work a splendid energy, an infectious enthusiasm and exceptional ability as an organiser. Throughout the great towns of the industrial north he made the support of the Life-boat Service a civic duty. Wherever he went he was successful in obtaining not only the help of many honorary workers, whom he inspired with his own enthusiasm, but the support of those who were the leaders of the town's life. Some idea of his success may be obtained from the fact that when he took up the work of Organising Secretary, the North of England was contributing a little over £13,000 a year, that this had increased to nearly £31,000 in the year 1926-27, and that in the Institution's Centenary Year it was nearly £45,000. During the twenty years from 1908, the North of England, largely through Mr. Johnson's personal efforts, has contributed to the Institution over half a million pounds.

Among his most notable achievements was the organisation of the wonderful Life-boat Thanksgiving Service held on the 4th May, 1924, in the Royal Exchange, Manchester. Never before [ had the Exchange been used for any but the commercial purposes for which it was built. When Mr. Johnson first ! proposed that it should be the scene of a religious service, the idea was laughed at as impossible. But Johnson was one of those men who do not recognize that word. The Thanksgiving Service was held—as he had planned it. It was held in the Royal Exchange—where he intended it should be held ; and the Manchester Evening News wrote of it: " The miracle of the largest congregation Manchester has probably ever known, of all creeds and beliefs, drawn into this Temple of Finance to thank the God of All and of all things for the bounty of 60,000 lives saved in the course of a hundred years." Another remarkable achievement was his organisation of a three-days' bazaar, by which the Manchester and Salford Branch aimed to raise £10,000, and ultimately raised £12,000, as a special Centenary Gift to the Institution to build a Life-boat to be called after the Branch. Both these two enormous pieces of organisation were done at the same time, and in the midst of the work of the whole of the North of England, in what was the busiest year that the Institution has ever known.

But even his work for the Life-boat Service was not enough for his tireless energy. He was the originator and guiding spirit of the Manchester Crimean and Indian Mutiny Veterans' Association, which looked after some 200 men, and he took a prominent part in the organisation of the Special Constables in Manchester.

During his thirty-one years of work as a Life-boat Organiser, Mr. Johnson became a well-known and much loved figure all over the North of England.

He will be greatly missed by all the Lifeboat workers in his District and by all who knew the devotion, the ability and the unwearied good humour which were the mark of all his dealings. The Institution has received nearly 80 letters from honorary workers in the North of England, expressing their deep regret at the Institution's loss and their own.

There could be no more touching tribute to Johnson's character than the unanimity and emphasis with which these workers in his district speak of his unfailing helpfulness and kindliness.

His colleagues had for him affection display. Three days after the Manchester Bazaar, he wrote to the Secretary of the Institution : "I have the honour to hand you cheque for £10,000 to cover the cost of a Motor Life-boat, which shall operate from Ramsey, in the Isle and esteem, a complete confidence that whatever he undertook, however difficult, would be well done, and an unbounded admiration for the perfection— that word is scarcely too strong—of all his work. It was done always without fuss, without any waste of words or correspondence, above all, without any of Man, and which shall be named the Manchester and Salford." The cheque was enclosed, and that was all. He never wasted time in telling people how hard he had worked, or how many difficulties he had overcome. He knew that a good thing done would be spoilt by words. He could talk, and talk fluent!}7 and well, when argument and persuasion were required, but no one knew better when to be laconic. That letter shows more clearly than anything else the artist he was at his work, and the reason why it was a delight to his colleagues. It was so well done that even the strain of it on him was concealed.

He continued to work long after a man of less courage and enthusiasm would have given up, and there can be no doubt that his devotion to the Lifeboat Service shortened his own life.

To show what his colleagues felt, we cannot do better than quote from an appreciation which appeared in the Manchester Guardian from Mr. George F. Shee, the Secretary of the Institution, who wrote it from an experience of over twenty-seven years in the organisation of two great national movements, the Lifeboat Service and the National Service League. " In that time," he wrote, " I have known a large number of firstrate organisers, but I can safely say that I have never come across one who combined in himself more completely the very exceptional qualifications which go to produce that rare entity. Energy, enthusiasm, devotion to the Cause, a standard of duty which subordinates to that Cause every private interest and convenience, the power of infusing into others the spirit of devotion which animates himself, tact, judgment, and power of dealing with all classes : these represent a group of qualities which are rarely found in one and the same man.

They were embodied in Mr. Johnson ; and he added to them a keen sense of humour which carried him through many difficulties, and smoothed away with a smile the inevitable frictions incident to the organization of a large body of voluntary workers. The Institution seldom, if ever, has had in its service a man who brought to his work a finer combination of qualities of head and heart." At the funeral the Institution was respresented by Sir William Priestley, J.P., one of its Vice-Presidents and the Chairman of the Bradford and District Branch, and by Mr. George F.

Shee, M.A., Secretary of the Institution.

The coffin was carried by six men of the Blackpool Lifeboat Crew.