Engaged.—Cyril Hume, 23, author of Wife of the Centaur (reviewed in TIME, Nov. 12) to Miss Jane Barbara Alexander, 23, of Manhattan.
Divorced.—Princess Catherine Alexandrovna Obelensky Meletsky from Serge Prince Obelensky. She charged infidelity. She was born at St. Petersburg, 1878, a daughter of Tsar Alexander II (grandfather of the last Tsar) by his morganatic wife, Catherine Princess Dolgoruki, whom he married in 1880, one month after the 'death of his official wife, the Tsarina Maria Alexandrovna.
Died. Rear Admiral John Crittenden Watson, U. S. N., 81, retired. He served under Admirals Farragut and Dewey, was representative of the Navy at the coronation of King Edward VII of England. He was often called "the man that lashed Farragut to the rigging," because, during the battle of Mobile Bay, he thus safeguarded his commander, who insisted upon remaining in the rigging for a view of the battle.
Died. William Allan Pinkerton, 77, "The Eye," whose estate was estimated at between $15,000,000 and $20,000,000, in Los Angeles. His father, Allan Pinkerton, who founded Pinkerton's National Detective Agency in 1852, "saved the life" of President Lincoln in Baltimore on his way to Washington to be inaugurated, by taking him off the Presidential "special" and sending him through Baltimore on a preceding regular train. During the Civil War, the elder Pinkerton put William, then 15 years old, in the U. S. Secret Service, later sent him to Notre Dame. In 1884, on the death of his father, William, with his brother Robert, took over the business. By 1911, his name was so great that he was called to London to guard King George V at his coronation. He always scoffed at tales of romance in "detecting" and ran his business with method and thoroughness. Intimately connected with the Theatre, he covered the walls of his office with photographs of famed actors and actresses. He delighted to repeat the remark of a visiting English detective: "These are, I suppose, representative American criminals."
Died. Sherman Cuneo, close friend of the late President Harding, whose biography, From Printer to President, he wrote, head of the Information Service of the Prohibition Enforcement Bureau, from accidental asphyxiation.
Died.—Mrs. Rupert Hughes, 39, second wife of the novelist-playwright, in whose plays she sometimes appeared, at Haiphong, China, suicide, probably the result of a nervous collapse following her experiences in the Japanese earthquake.
Died—Thomas George Lord Shaughnessy, 71, Chairman of the Canadian Pacific Railway, director of a wide range of enterprises from banking to horse racing, in Montreal, of heart failure.
Died. John Revelstoke Rathom, 56, editor and general manager of The Providence Journal and The Evening Bulletin and President since 1922 of the New England Daily Newspaper Association. (See page 22.)