Obituary

. SIR EVELYN MURRAY

FORMERLY SECRETARY OF

X THE POST OFFICE

Sir Evelyn Murray, K.C.B., secretary of the Post Office from 1914 to 1934, chairman of the Board of Customs and Excise from 1934 to 1940, and heir-presumptive to the Dukedom of Atholl, died yesterday in London at the age of 66.

He took pp his 'duties as secretary of the Post Office within a few days of the outbreak of war in 1914 in succession to Sir Alexander King, and had the difficult task of reorganizing that great department to meet the unpredictable needs.of a major war. One of the mnost urgent claims on his attention was to devise means to keep. the machinery going sminoothly while allowing men to join the sera vices, which they did to the tune of some 75,000. Inevitably there had to be some curtailinent of direct'services to the public so that the increased needs of the Government for speedy communication could be met: With the end of the war, the secretary had the equally difficult task of finding posts for returning employees, but here he was helped by.the increasing public demiand for new services and in particular for a greatly expanded telephone service. The remainder of his tenure of office at the Post Office was marked'by continuous and successful expansion of all services, and the smoothness and efficiency of this expansion was due in no snmall measure to: Murray's gift for organization. He published a historical and statistical account of the Post Office in 1927.

George Evedyn Perberton Murray, the son of the Right Hon. Sir George Mdurray, P.C.; G.C.B., G.C.V.O., D.S.O., a descepdant of the third Duke of Atholl, was born on July'25, 1880, and educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford. He' entered the Civil Servkce in 1903 as an examiner of the Board of Education and two years later was appointed private secretaqYtoLord Crewe,thenPresident of the Board. He remained private secretary under successive presidents until 1909 when he was appointed a Commissioner of Customs and Excise. .In 1914, at the early age of 34, he attained the secretaryship of the Post Office, an office which his father had held in his distinguished career. .After his longr tenure of the Post Office, Sir Evelyn, who had been made a C.B. in 1916 and a K.C.B. in 1919, retired from the chairmanship of Customs and Excise in 1940 under the age limit.

He married in 1906 Muriel, daughter of the late Mr. Philip Beresford Hope. His son, Lieutenant-Colonel G. A. Murray, who was killed in action in Italy in 1945, married in 1930 the Hon.: Angela Pearson, daughter.of the second Viscount Cowdray. There were three sons of the marriage,