NAMING THE NAMELESS.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 8, Issue 92, 17 April 1916, Page 6

NAMING THE NAMELESS.

WITH S.M. FOR GODFATHER. A MAGISTERIAL BAPTISM. The family rite of naming a baby devolved on Mr., F. V. Fraser, S.M., in the course of his magisterial duties, the unprotesting subject to the operation being the infant that had been found, about three weeks ago, abandoned on a section adjoining Mount Eden Road. His Worship had the assistance and advice of Mrs. Hutchinson (matron of the Door of Hope), Miss Jackson (manageress of the Mount Albert Industrial School), and Mr. A. Herbert-Jones (Charitable Aid Board Relief Officer), who, attended the baptism. As absolutely no information was at hand concerning the child's parentage, there was a world-wide range of fancy before his Worship in the matter of name, but he decided to pursue the reasonable course of making the name bear some relation to the circumstances, and decided that the foundling should be known to the world as Oliver Eden — a delicate allusion* in the Christian* name to the Mayor of Mount Eden, in which suburb the child was found, and the surname more definitely commemorative of the borough associated with the little fellow's nativity, in the more difficult problem of fixing a" birthday for the foundling, his Worship was guided by the statement of a doctor at the time of the discovery on March 20 and the expert opinion of the ladies present at the baptism, with the result that March 9 was decided on. Then came the prickly point of religion. His Worship, after some considerable discussion, decided to settle the matter by chance. Fixing on eight of the principal denominations in the community, he put slips of paper bearing these in a hat, and th e first slip drawn destined that the' child should be brought up in the Church of England religion. Thus named and catalogued acording to civilised rites, the little Oliver Eden was handed over to the care of the State, per medium of the Auckland Industrial School, to be converted into a good and true citizen of New Zealand.