Hon. W. E. Grose

Untimely Death in Melbourne

TTIHE death occurred on Friday, May 31, A in a private hospital at Melbourne, of Hon. William Ernest Grose, one of the best-known planters in New Guinea, and an unofficial member of the New Guinea Legislative Council.

Mr. Grose had been several weeks in Australia, in an endeavour to assist the Commonwealth authorities in providing sufficient shipping for the removal of accumulations of New Guinea copra. He apparently contracted a chill in Sydney,

and was far from well; and, some two or three weeks later, it was reported from Melbourne that he was severely ill from lung complications, and little hope was held out for his recovery.

Mr. Grose was born in 1893, and he served in the Great War as a captain, in the Seventh Australian Infantry Brigade.

As a captain attached to the staff, he undertook important duties at the end of the war, supervising the embarkation of Australian troops returning from France. In 1921 he went to New Guinea as private secretary to the Administrator; in 1923 he became Superintendent of Police and he was Warden on the newly discovered goldfield in Morobe in 1927.

He then resigned from the New Guinea service and took up a plantation in the Kavieng district in New Ireland, and he had carried on his plantation ever since.

He took a keen interest in the activities of the New Guinea Planters’ Association, and it was in that capacity that he re ceived nomination as an unofficial mem ber of the Legislative Council, and he gave considerable assistance to the Ad ministration in various matters connected with planting interests. His sudden and untimely death will cause a shock to resi dents of New Guinea, by whom he was held in high esteem.