I am sure you will be glad to know that I have now passed my final examination and have just been admitted a member of the Royal Corps of Naval Constructors. My official appointment is that of Assistant Constructor in one of the principal Government Dockyards, where I have been on probation for the last twelve months or more. The final examinations were held last July in London and occupied more than three weeks, with an exam, almost daily. I feel that I owe you a debt of gratitude for pleading my cause at the time. My father had spent his all on me while I was at the college, and he being a toolsmith with seven children, you can well understand that what he had by him he could ill afford on me. My father and the others of the family desire to join with me in this letter of thanks and gratitude to you. Mention has already been made of how Crooks and the Poplar Labour League originated at the Dock Gate meetings the scheme for a technical institute for his native borough. So many times was this project delayed that he often told his Poplar audiences he feared he would go down to posterity as the man who talked of an institute that never came. It was not until the early part of 1906 that the institute was opened. There is a reference to it in the annual report of the Poplar Labour League for that year:-- Some years ago the League mooted the idea of a technical institute for Poplar. Mr. Crooks took it up and carried it to official quarters, never letting the subject drop, until it stands at last an accomplished fact. A School of Marine Engineering and Nautical Academy has recently been opened in Poplar. A handsome building has been erected in High Street, and in it will be taught seamanship and navigation, marine engineering and naval architecture and propulsion, general mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, pattern making, carpentry and woodwork, and theoretical and practical chemistry, physics, and mechanics. Nothing more appropriate could have been built in Poplar. It is mainly due to the tireless efforts of Mr. Crooks that it exists, and it will stand as a monument to him. But Poplar boasts a greater monument to its Labour Councillor. He was on the L.C.C. Bridges Committee during the making of Blackwall Tunnel. In its day the largest subaqueous tunnel in the world, its construction involved years of anxious labour.