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Friedlander chaired a farewell banquet and addressed Thomas as ‘dear friend’. The latter admitted that he and the Friedlanders ‘fought like Kilkenny cats in business matters’, but told his audience how much they owed to their local merchants who stood by them, especially in 1879, ‘sometimes to the straining point of their own bankers . . . Had it not been for [Friedlanders] many of you sitting round these tables with smiling faces would have been in a far less prosperous condition than you are today.’^[1]

In 1886 it was said of Thomas Bullock that ‘he has built . . . more largely and widely than any other individual in the county’.^[2] But almost all the construction except his remaining memorial, the Arcade, belonged to the earlier period. In 1873 he erected a group of cottages called ‘Bullock’s Town’ probably behind the present Post Office site, the Union Bank and the Bank of New Zealand, and later there were several stores, an auction mart and a horse bazaar. He appears, during the period under review, to have confined himself to putting up one more large grain store, and to the construction of the Arcade between Burnett and Tancred Streets in two sections in 1882 and 1891. He maintained an extensive business as a land and estate agent and money lender until the 1920s.

Probably Bullock held a seat on more boards of directors of local concerns than anyone else even Friedlander. However, he was most especially associated with the gas company being its chairman from the beginning until 1919. This body was formed late in 1878 and began to supply gas in August 1879 to thirteen consumers and seventeen street lights. The number of household consumers rapidly increased. John Lewis Cawsey, works manager of the Christchurch Gas Company, became the first manager. After ten years, this son, J. C. Cawsey succeeded him and remained in charge for twenty years. Joseph Ward, the ex-schoolmaster, was appointed first secretary and held the position until 1901. He was succeeded by Arthur Otway Pilbrow, a well-known sportsman.

A brief account of the three flourmills in the Ashburton area, with their tales of failure and changes of ownership, provides a useful comment on the times. Only one of these mills served more than the immediate locality. This was the Canterbury mill, just north of the town, which the Saunders Brothers sold in 1880 to Charles Wesley Turner. ‘Pious’ Turner, more generally known as a Christchurch shipowner of speculative habits, who went bankrupt twice for large sums, held the mill until 1892. His manager, David