End of season celebrations on the menu in early ’30s
HERE’S a match you’re unlikely to find listed in any historic fixture records – Wolves versus Beatties’ Restaurant.
It sounds like an almighty mismatch, but all was not what it seemed.
The event which took place on the evening of Thursday, August 4, 1932, was actually a meal laid on in the team’s honour, with the menu not only laid out in a football theme, but actually printed on a ball-shaped booklet.
The reason for the celebratory slap-up meal was that Wolves had been promoted from the Second Division, finishing as champions, just two points above Leeds United.
Their promotion was a momentous occasion. The club, one of the founders of the Football League, had been relegated from the top flight in 1906 and spent the most of the intervening years in Division Two, with a brief drop to Division Three (North) and several seasons with no league at all, during the First World War.
In 1931-32 however a corner was finally turned, and they would stay in the top flight Second World War aside, until the midnineteen-sixties.
The rare, novelty menu is part of the collection amassed by Wolves’ retired historian Graham
Hughes, and we’d be surprised if there are any others still in existence. Graham’s copy, as you can see from our pictures, has been signed by all the players, and there are several names among them that you may recognise.
Players
Tom Smalley, John Ellis, Cecil Shaw, Fred Pincott, William Smith, Les Heelbeck, William Bryant, John Dowen, Wilf Lowton, Alf Tootill, and Dickie Rhodes are on there, and many more names we can’t identify, which may well be those of staff.
The early thirties were hard times, with one war in recent memory, another which would loom before long, and a global recession in between. All of which makes the offerings from Beatties’ kitchen look all the more impressive.
The ‘First Half’ kicked off with Mock Turtle Soup, Sole a la Doree, Supreme of Sweetbreads, and a roast chicken dinner. To follow was coffee, cheese and biscuits, and Maraschino Ice Pudding, The Second Half saw a toast to the successful team, proposed by A Beattie Esq., followed by musical performances from soprano Miss Clarrie Roberts, comedy from Mr Jack Kirkland, and ‘Character Studies’ by Mr Carrington Bailey.