YESTERDAY IN MELTON MOWBRAY

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, ...

Who Walked Around in my House? I recently had reason to peruse the Conveyance Deeds of my family home over a small social and boundary issue which had cropped up in the neighbourhood.  In a quiet moment and with my deeds so infrequently exposed to day light, I chose to read again through the legalese of the pompously worded document. Little of much interest arrested my attention, but one astonishing fact did jump from the document to catch my attention was the price paid for the house, a standard three bedroom, pebble-dashed dwelling which had changed hands for the princely sum of 270 English pounds when it was first purchased on the 22nd day of September 1927 - more than the cost of buying a new front door today! to buy a new front door for the house would cost me twice that today!  I do know that today I would get around £200,000 This fact was to lead me to become curious as to who, just a few years after the end of the Great War, had paid out this then princely su...

An Olympian Ordeal During my frequent browsing of the old newspapers which were once local to my home area, it is the occasional ' eureka ' moment, like the excitement of finding an elusive 'bargain' at a church fête jumble sale or Sunday street market, that so seems to make this whole thing of research so worthwhile. Such was the case recently when I stumbled across the following little gem, almost hidden at the bottom of column 2, page 8 of the Grantham Journal, a fastidious and serious broadsheet which served to cover its neighbouring market town of Melton Mowbray in some detail. My personal joy of the piece almost certainly relates to the fact that I was myself once a police officer and that I know that the astonishing accomplishment of village bobby, P.C Watson, of 100 years ago would certainly be recognised as an heroic feat by any serving officer of today's police service.  But there is also an irony, seemingly missed by the writer as he explains the...