YESTERDAY IN MELTON MOWBRAY

With thanks to Wikipedia In a local newspaper recently, I came across an intriguing historic report of 'special' court proceedings which had taken place at at my local Magistrate's Court during the time of the 2nd World War.  At the sitting, the evidence played out related to a seemingly trivial confrontation between a frustrated 'traveller' and a group of soldiers billeted in the town. Consequent research of the legislation allegedly breached on that occasion, opened up for me an extremely interesting period of political dissent at the time of the very birth of the Labour Party of Britain as we know it today.  My intrinsic interest at the outset is the Melton Mowbray connection and the part that a few young soldiers played locally at the time of a great world awakening, but in passing, I would like to touch upon the interrelationship of the statute allegedly breached, with the ideals of a nascent political party proposing to represent the working classes and i...

Golden Days. As is well known to almost everybody who knows me, I once spent six years of my now extended life in the small islands of Bermuda ; six of my most impressionable years and very consequential ones in that I was married on 'the rock' and created there my two much loved children.  It is also well known that although we left the island for good in 1969, I, like Sir George Somers - the founder of Bermuda - left a fair piece of my heart behind to maintain tabs with its progress.  In October of this year, Lynn and I will return to celebrate our golden wedding anniversary, a chance for us to have perhaps a last look around at the island I once fell in love with. But this post is not produced as a personal updating, more a moment to draw attention to the forthcoming publication of what promises to be a beautiful new book of sketches which relate to the early days of Bermuda's colonisation which has been put together by Dr Edward Harris and his team at the N...

A Figure of Fun? When Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan sat down to write the 'Pirates of Penzance', the comic aspect of the British policeman - or 'bobby' - as a figure of fun was to be cruelly exposed on the public stage  in an effort to show off the less serious side of law enforcement in Queen Victoria's often stodgy England. Premiered, surprisingly, in New York on New Years Eve 1879, it presented, in the true tradition of the now famous couple, it served to poke yet more fun at so-called respectable civilisation and to take away the rigidity and solemnity of people in authority. I present this musical aside as an adjunct to an amusing newspaper article I recently unearthed in an old local newspaper and which, as a former police officer, entertained me wonderfully for a while.  In 1893 in England, each and every one of the small villages in all the counties had their local constables who would totally rule the roost from sunrise to sunset, ...

Rootling Around the Old Town Circa 1820 - spot the two windmills! Whilst indulging in my very favourite habit of searching the columns of old newspapers - some from as long ago as 200 years, I occasionally venture upon an article or other piece of writing which just jumps off the page to grab my attention.  Such was the case quite recently when, whilst perusing the pages of the once widely distributed and popular Saturday publication known as ' The Graphic, '  (1839-1932) I came across the following short piece by their hunting correspondent whom I can only identify as 'C. H.' As is recognised far and wide the small market town of Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire is long famous for its introduction to the world of pork-pies and Stilton cheese, but before this time the area was to create great celebrity and recognition as the venue for the origins of fox-hunting.  It is generally accepted that in the 1750's Leicestershire man Hugo Meynell was de...