NEW LORD MAYOR

Taranaki Daily News, 17 November 1926, Page 11

NEW LORD MAYOR

LONDON’S CIVIC HEAD. TWIN DAUGHTERS AS DEPUTYMAYORESSES. For the first time in the history of | London there will be at the Mansion House during the next mayoral year two young women with 'equal right to deputise for the Lady Mayoress and to share her duties on occasions. They are the I'B-year-old twin daughters, Margaret and Elizabeth, of Sir Rowland Blades, M.P., who has been installed as Lord Mayor of London (for tlie civic year beginning on November The Misses Blades are at present at school in Paris, but they are to return home when their father goes to the Mansion House. When Lady Blades, their mother, is absent from London they can both claim to be entitled to act in her stead. The new Lord Mayor will be the first holder of the office also a member of Parliament since the late Sir Charles A. Hanson, who was M.P. for Bodmin, was at the Mansion House in 1917-18. Sir Rowland Blades was senior sheriff of the City while Sir Charles Hanson was Lord Mayor. Sir Rowland Blades, who has a third daughter aged 10, and whose 14-year-old heir is at Winchester College, represents the Epsom division of Surreyin Parliament as a Conservative. His wife is a very active political worker in the constituency, and she is president of the Women’s > Conservative Committee. Al] the ancient observances were kept in Guildhall at the ceremony of the Lord Mayor’s election. The Common Crier of the City called, on those present not of tlie Livery to depart on “pain’ of imprisonment,” a sweet yet pungent odour pervaded tlie Common Hall when, as a reminder of the days of plague, the floor was strewn with sweet herbs, and the members of the Court of Aidermen and each of ther-high officers qf the City, in accordance with the custom of centuries ago, carried a posy of old English flowers,