Society Report
Posted by admin on 01 Jul 2009 at 01:48 am | Tagged as: Home - Newsletter
As a Society it is always gratifying to be able to support other local organisations and this quarter we have been able to help quite a few. We were able to loan photographs and also lay on a display for the British Legion on their Charity Day at the White Horse, loaned our boards to the local Scouts Group for their 40th Anniversary, supplied our boards and all of our GW photographs to help Great Wyrley LHS launch their new society, and together with Mike Belcher I gave a talk to the St Andrews Monday Club on Family History (where we were embarrassed by being paid). And after an entertaining talk by Joan Lockley at the April coffee morning we donated £50 to her Hedgehog Rescue Fund.
Recent events that have proved successful have been the Arboretum trip, which we subsidised, and fully sold out, as is the trip in August to the ‘Back-to-back Houses’ in Birmingham and our last speaker Terry Carter who gave a demonstration and talk on ‘Medieval Music’ was quite exceptional.
The re-cataloguing of our Documentary Archives has been started and will prove to be a real boon to our members seeking connections with their family trees. Also for family historians I’ve been informed that all pit fatalities can be found on www.cmhrc.co.uk and for local accidents at the Cannock Library.
One of our members has donated an extensive range of photographs from previous generations of her family that include many Hawkins, Pearson, Hitchens and McCulloch photographs and they will be kept as a separate and complete collection. We have also been given a well preserved 1½d token from the old Nelson Inn by Eric Fowler who turned it up in his allotment behind the WMC and Mick Drury has kindly donated a copy of his latest book ‘Hutment Communities’ which is very relevant to this area and is an excellent read.
Finally another character and ‘Bonker’, Viv Bruton, suddenly passed away recently. She will be badly missed but her memories of Cheslyn Hay will carry on through her humorous poems some of which she recited on our DVD ‘Walk Round the Bonk’.
Trevor McFarlane
Dear Trevor,
Thank you for the information you gave me about the Corfield family- it was my great grandfather you found.
I was at the Great Wyrley LHS meeting you addressed and found your talk provoking. My mother was born in 1907 opposite St Mark’s Church. In 1911 she had her arm amputated, having been run over by one of Gilpin’s trains. She often talked of how kind Rev’d Edalji was at that time and later that year when her mother died. She saw George when he visited from London and never once suggested that he had been guilty.He was released from prison in 1906- two years before Conan-Doyle started his meddling. How often at that time was someone sentenced to 7 years hard labour released after serving only 3? The maimings continued when George was in custody,hence the prosecution referring to the Wyrley Gang.
I don’t think that Rev’d Edalji could have influenced the decision about the sale of the Church School as I would have thought that to be a matter for the Bishop of Lichfield. i will try to find out more about Parochial Church Councils, etc.