NEW ZEALAND D.C.M.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3736, 31 December 1927, Page 3

NEW ZEALAND D.C.M.

PAUPER’S DEATH IN SYDNEY.

FOUND IN BOARDINGHOUSE

Sydney, December 23

A man past middle-age, who served with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force during the war, was found dead in a cheap Sydney boarding establishment during the week. He was about to be given a pauper’s funeral when, first the Returned Sailors and Soldiers’ League, and later a relative, whose attention had been caught by the publicity given to the man’s lonely dealth, came forward with money to pay for burial.

The New Zealander was Driver Sidney Wade, 50 years of age, one time share-farmer, lighthouse keeper, ship’s engineer, well-driller, and, during the war, a member of the Field Artillery. He had 1 been a boarder at a Pitt street residential chambers for fourteen days. Obviously a sick man, a maid who had taken him to be sleeping at 9 o’clock one morning returned at 2 o’clock and found him dead. He had twopence -in his pockets. He owned a tin box, which contained, when opened by the police, a mass of papers mostly referring to his war experiences with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. A copy of N.Z.E.F. Orders, dated 30th April, 1918, recorded the issue of the Distinguished Conduct Medal to Wade in the following terms: “For cqnspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty during lengthy operations, he showed the greatest courage and skill.under all conditions in pushing forward and delivering rations.” Other papers showed that he had belonged to a Queensland lodge, and a cancelled will in the back of his military identification book was apparently made to btnefit a sister living at Leeton, New South Wales.

Arrangements were first made by the police to provide what is pathetically known as a pauper’s burial for Wade—that is, the cost of the funeral was to bo borne by the State. But when it was discovered that Wade was a, soldier, the police communicated with the Returned Soldiers’ League, which has standing instructions with the police to tell the league of any ease in which “a soldier member of the great Empire family should die without leaving the means for a proper burial.” Penniless soldiers from all parts of the Empire who have died in Australia have been saved from a pauper’s grave on a number of occasions by these instructions. But in Wade’s case, hardly had the league begun preparations for Wade s funeral than a nephew of the dead man went to 'the police and immediately arranged for the funeral at his expense.