Officially Dead Man Protests About Own Death Notice

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 19, 1 August 1949, Page 7

Officially Dead Man Protests About Own Death Notice

The New Zealand Gazette is the official arbiter whose pronouncements are normally accepted withr out question. ( If the Gazette announces that a man is a Supreme Court judge, then he is a Supreme Court judge. If it states that Corporal Blank has been promoted major-general, Corporal Blank can put up the appropriate badges of rank immediately. Mr S. E. Dwight, of 189 The. Esplanade, . New Brighton, is more than dubious, however, as to the infallibility of the official organ. Recently the Gazette announced that he was dead. Mr Dwight maintains that he is not dead. Either the Gazette or Mr Dwight is in error, and Mr Dwight is sure that he is not.

What happened was this: Mr Dwight is a member of the Avon Licensing Committee. On the death of a member of this committee recently, Mr N. W. Comber was appointed to the vacancy “vice S. E Dwight, deceased,” explained the Gazette.

The sequel as far as Mr Dwight was concerned, was a busy weekend at the telephone. Relatives and friends rang up in scores*., and Mr Dwight had to explain to them all that he was, in fact, alive. “When I called in to the local on my way home one night, everybody wanted to have a drink with ‘a dead man’,” said Mr Dwight. “AH I got out of the mistake was a lot of trouble—not even a wreath, not even a little posy.”