Mr. Richard Molesworth Taylor, J.P., ex-Member of the House of Representatives for Christchurch City, hails from London, where he was born in 1835. He arrived in Auckland by the brig “Heather Bell,” in 1846, and received his education in the Colony. He went to Victoria in 1851, and had some six years' experience on the diggings of that Colony and New South Wales. Returning to Auckland in 1857, he served in the Militia for a short time, during the Maori War, and subsequently became a Government contractor for several years. In 1869 he settled in Canterbury, and was engaged as a general contractor till the year 1886. Mr. Taylor was elected a member of the Sydenham Borough Council in 1884, and also a member of the Christchurch Drainage Board. Subsequently he gained a seat on the Waimakariri River Board. At a by election in May, 1886, Mr. Taylor was returned to the House of Representatives for Sydenham, and re-elected at the General Election in the following year. In 1890 he was returned as one of the members for Christchurch City, but suffered defeat at the General Elections of 1893 and 1896. For a short time during his parliamentary history, he retired from the membership of the Christchurch Drainage Board, but was subsequently re-elected to a seat on that body. Mr. Taylor was married in 1887 to a daughter of Mr. S. F. Gray, of London.