Cardiff Searchlight Tatoo re-enacts Battle of Waterloo
Lone Ranger rides in to traffic chaos, railway posters prove too steamy, boy’s tunnel walk terror and much more made the news 62 years ago this week
The Lone Ranger, Clayton Moore, the television cowboy who always wears a black mask, caused chaos in Cardiff this afternoon.
Hours before he was due to arrive at the Cardiff store of Messrs, James Howell, Ltd, thousands of people, mainly children, thronged into the street to see him.
The heavy Thursday afternoon traffic in St Mary Street was practically paralysed as the children overflowed the pavements on to the roadway.
Police reinforcements were rushed in to try to clear a passage for motor vehicles, and they had a difficult task on their hands.
The Lone Ranger was late, evidently held up in the traffic, and when he arrived the crowd for a quarter of a mile radius was as dense as any for a Royal tour.
In James Howell’s, a switchboard operator described the crowd there as being like one at a “free fight”.
“The place is jam-packed with people all over the departments and they are even sitting on the stairs. There is hardly any room to move.”
Inside the room the Lone Ranger was to make his appearance, children and adults jostled and pushed to get near the platform.
When the Lone Ranger finally arrived he gave them an old Indian greeting – “Faithful friends”, twirled his six-shooter, thanked all “you wonderful boys and girls”, apologised for being late and fought his way out of the door.
The event for which some had waited nearly three hours was over in five minutes.
Strip-tease girls have gone off the rails
British Railways have banned New Theatre and the Prince of Wales Theatre posters from their Cardiff hoardings – posters advertising their shows next week.
At the New Theatre is the “Strip Tease Peep-show”. At the Prince of Wales, “Femmes de Paris”, a French film.
Today, an indignant Mr Reg Phillips, manager of the New Theatre, accused British Railways of “prudishness” and says that never has he known of a similar ban.
The palaver began yesterday when the New Theatre posters were being put up on the hoardings.
They came to the notice of Mr W R Peacock, the British Transport Commission’s advertising chief in the area. And as soon as he saw them, he knew they wouldn’t do, not for British Railways.
So Mr Peacock promptly made a call to the New Theatre and told them the posters would have to stay down.
Today, Mr Phillips was at a loss to know why they were too brazen for British Railways.
“About 100 have gone up and I haven’t had any complaints about them,” he said.
On the posters are the silhouettes of two girls seen through a keyhole.
A fly cost man his life
Just as a 40-year-old, steel erector foreman from Rumney, Cardiff got off the pillion seat of a motorcycle combination to remove a fly from the driver’s eye, he was struck by a car.
The man Arthur Austin, was dead on arrival at St David’s Hospital, a Cardiff coroner’s jury heard today.
The driver Mr George Cummins, of Llanrumney, Cardiff, said that at about 8am on July 18, he was driving along Cowbridge Road, when a fly got in his eye. He could not get it out and asked Austin to do it.
He pulled into the verge. Austin got off and was standing alongside him. Next thing he saw was Austin rolling down the road.
A saloon car stopped a short distance ahead.
Boy’s Severn Tunnel walk ‘a miracle’
Railwaymen in South Wales and the West Country are today discussing the incredibly dangerous feat of a 16-yearold Cardiff boy who found his way through the five-mile long Severn Tunnel in a bid to reach home.
The boy absconded from the nauti
cal school at Portishead, Bristol. And made the nightmare walk through the tunnel, under the Bristol Channel, as a shortcut – an 80-mile saving on the 120-mile round-the-round journey to Cardiff.
A British Railways spokesman at Temple Meads, Bristol, commented: “To walk through the Severn Tunnel is a very scary experience and is not one I would want to undergo myself.”
He added: “The atmosphere is most depressing and the floor of the tunnel is usually wet.
A member of the tunnel repair gang said: “It must have been the most terrifying two-hour ordeal of the boy’s life. It’s a miracle his nerve didn’t crack after the first hundred yards. It is a very frightening place in the darkness. If trains passed him it’s a miracle he was not killed.
“He would have been unable to tell when the trains were approaching because there is always a loud roaring noise in the tunnel. It takes an experienced man to know when a train is coming.”
SOME 47 years ago, the Cardiff Searchlight Tattoo played host to a re-enactment of the famous Battle of Waterloo.
Prior to the spectacular event, Emperor Napoleon, played by Sergeant-Major William Griffiths, and the Duke of Wellington, portrayed by Corporal Alick Ruddick, met in Cardiff’s Bute Park.
Meeting on August 4, 1973, the two discussed the outcome of their renowned 1815 battle accompanied by their respective aides, Sergeant Mick Blakey and Corporal John Champion on horseback.
The Tattoo started in 1963 and quickly grew to become one of Britain’s most popular events, providing an outstanding spectacle of entertainment with military bands, mock battles and parades.
Over the years, spectators were treated to entertainment at the sevenacre ground from The United States Third Air Force Band, a demonstration of modern battle techniques by 41 Commando, The Royal Marines, as well as the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards, whose presentation of the Ceremony of Trooping the Colour was the first of its kind since before World War II.
The continuing expense of the Tattoo was raised partially from civilian takings and by guarantees made by the Corporation of the City of Cardiff.
The Cardiff Searchlight Tattoo came to an end in the late 1980s after 25 years of entertaining thousands of spectators.