ENGLAND’S OLDEST SOLICITOR.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1084, 10 April 1913, Page 4

ENGLAND’S OLDEST SOLICITOR.

Mr Frederick Halsey Janson, the oldest solicitor in England, celebrated his xooth birthday on February Sth, and received congratulatory deputations from the Daw Society, the Lowtonian Society, and other bodies of which he is a member. “One of my first recollections,” said Mr Janson, “is when I was at a Quaker’s school at the age of seven hearing the bells tolling for the death of George 111. in 1820. My first theatre, too, I can remember. I was about ten when I went to Drury lane, and sat through three or four hours of ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ and at the end came a pantomime In which Grimaldi, the famous clown, took part.” Admitted a solicitor and attorney in 1835, Mr Janson remained in active practice until 1900, His name is still on the rolls. His firm, now named Janson, Cobb. Pearson and Co., is believed to be the oldest in existence, and has a continuous set of records from 1732. When he was a young man, Mr Janson used to smoke a good deal, but he gave up the habit, and for some years he strongly objected to young men smoking in his house- When well over seventy he took to tobacco again, and enjoyed his afterdinner cigar, but a lew years ago he discarded the habit.