Mr. Joseph Palmer, J.P., for upwards of forty years a well-known figure in Christchurch, and a local Director of the Union Bank of Australia, Ltd., comes from an old Bedfordshire family. He was born in London in 1829, educated in England, where he entered the service of the bank in London, and was sent out to Sydney in 1850 as clerk. The vessel by which he travelled completed the passage in three months, being the quickest voyage on record that year. Soon after his arrival in New South Wales, Mr. Palmer was sent to Adelaide, to which he sailed in the forty-ton cutter “Louisa,” which took one month to do the trip. He continued in the bank at Adelaide till 1856, when he was transferred to Canterbury, as manager at Lyttelton, then the sole branch in the provincial district. Mr. Palmer opened the office in Christchurch shortly after his arrival, and rode over the Bridle Path twice a week to superintend it until his permanent removal to Christchurch about two years later. For a great many years prior to 1800, Mr. Palmer was chief officer of the bank in New Zealand; in the latter year he retired from the service, and has since filled the office of a local director in Christchurch. Mr. Palmer has been closely associated with local institutions, having been for very many years a member of the Canterbury Agricultural and Pastoral Association, of which he is a life member. He has long been a member of the Christchurch Chamber of Commerce and Jockey Club. Mr. Palmer is a member of St. Michael's church vestry. He holds a sent on the local board of directors of the Alliance Insurance Company, and is a director of the Christchurch Gas, Coal, and Coke Company. Mr. Palmer was married in 1856 to a daughter of the late Sir James Hurtle Fisher, of Adelaide, and has four sons and four daughters.