Mr. William Thomas Henry Strange-Mure, who is a retired Civil Servant, comes of an old British family, whose descent can be traced for hundreds of years. His grandparents were representatives of the English, Scotch, Irish, and Welsh people, and he himself was not born on English soil, but in the territory of the Nizam of India. The great-grandfather of the subject of this notice—Sir Robert Strange—the celebrated engraver, fought in the Jacobite rebellion in the disastrous battle of Culloden in 1746. It is related in the memoirs of this successful student of art that in seeking refuge after the defeat, he fled to the house of his lady love, who hid him beneath her ample skirts, and pursued her spinning, singing merrily, while the royal troop searched the house, and thus he escaped. It is hardly surprising that Sir Robert eventually married the charming girl who had thus risked her liberty in befriending him. Mr. Strange-Mure's grandfather was Sir Thomas Strange, Chief Justice of Madras, his grandmother being a daughter of Sir William Burrows, an Indian Judge, and his father Colonel Strange, of the Second Madras Cavalry. Mr. Strange-Mure was born on the 7th of March, 1834, at Aurangabad, India, and accompanied his father when very young on a visit to his uncle, an officer of the Seventh Madras Cavalry. Before the visit ended the camp was attacked. The little boy, left with the sergeant of the battery—while his father acted as A.D.C. to the General—was seated on a small pony, when a shot cut the man who was standing beside him in pieces. On the return of Colonel Strange after the battle, which is known as that of Kurnoul, he found his child uninjured, although spattered with blood. In 1840 Mr. Strange-Mure was sent to England to be brought up by an aunt, who had married Mr. Philip Mure, distiller, of three Mills Distillery, in the East End of London, whose name he took after his death. At the age of eighteen he commenced to manage the distillery, which he conducted-for twenty years. He was interested in the volunteer movement, being Lieutenant-Colonel of the Fifth Essex Volunteers; he is still also a justice of the peace for the County of Essex. In 1871 Mr. Strange-Mure came out to the colonies, arriving in New South Wales, where he spent about two years on the Gulgong Diggings. He page 773 afterwards was successively on sheep-stations in the Young District as bookkeeper and accountant, and as accountant under the Supreme Court in Sydney, in which city he remained about ten years. On the 12th of January, 1874, Mr. Strange-Mure was married to a granddaughter of the late Mr. Henry Bragg, of Wellington, and has seven children surviving—five sons and two daughters. In December, 1883, he removed to New Zealand, and has since resided in the Capital City. For about five years Mr. Strange-Mure was employed in the office of the Government Insurance Department; afterwards he was in the office of the Government Printer, and later on in that of the Registrar-General. After his mother's death in 1895 he retired from the Public Service, having inherited a competency.