A Real Socialist

Horowhenua Chronicle, 21 February 1914, Page 4

A Real Socialist

PATHETIC STOUY Ol< HIS LIVE. Thomas Cadley, otherwise known as Thomas Trenton, was a Socialist, who even in death carried out his principles. He died on December 20th, leaving property valued at £9UO, and left to the tenants who occupied his' three houses the places they were living in. His own nouse he directed should be sold, and alter certain charges to an old tenant and a friend who once nursed him when he was ill, the balance equally divided among the other three tenants.

Cadley, or "Tommy" as he was familiarly known, was an ideal landlord, lie let his houses at the smallest rental at which he could himself reap a livelihood from, and if any tenant required ' anything he had only to mention the matter to Tommy to get it. _ JNTo man was better known on the Yarra Bank where Melbourne's

Socialistic orators gather, than Cadley.

In the moro vigorous Jays of his Yarra iiank career, Trenton carried the red nag for "Comrade JUemniing,"' and it used to be one of his proudest boasts in the ueigbourhood that he was "'Fleninaing's Lootenant."

Although he lived alone for the last seven years, for some years previously he resided with Percy liarnes, another old character, who, when he died, was found to be worth. .£soo, of which he left £80 to Trenton.

However, never seen to smoke, Trenton would take a glass oi ale on occasions, but was never a regular customer of hotels. In his bouse, which was meanly furnished, when he died there was a number of old books, which, with the exception of a dozen liibles, did not appear to have been very much usea. But on any question of the Holy Writ Trenton was almost infallible, and it was the marvel of his acquaintances that in that direction alone "one small head could carry all he knew."

At the time of the railway strike in 1902, Trenton spoke against the strikers and the railway workers generally, and one day a tenant who had' friends in the service, learned that some of the strikers' sympathisers had arranged to duck Trenton in the Yarra itiver on the next Sunday. Trenton listened. He was not a young man, and \m decided that a ducking was not compatible with his mission in life. He did not speak that Sunday, nor ever again in public. Trenton at one time held a good position in the boot factory at Fitzroy, but left it in 1870, when an illuminated address was presented to him by the employees on his retirement. For thirteen years after that lie did a few odd jobs and a little labouring work. He hi\d about iJ-'MU in the bank at the time of the bursting of the boom. One day while rending ;i newspaper, the thought n>me to him that his money might be in jeopardy. He rushed down to " the