The king is dead. Long live the king!
Postcard from 1910 shows Dudley proclaiming George V in front of a crowd of townsfolk
OUR thanks to Wolverhampton reader Josie Hickens for sending in the photograph at top right, which has been in her family since before she was born. Josie tells us:
“I’ve had this old postcard copied, and it’s over a hundred years old. It dates back to when my mom was in service in Solihull.
“She worked as a cook, and she was the eldest of five.
“She married Frank Hensman around the start of the First World War, and they were great parents to us all. We didn’t have a lot, but I never thought of my childhood as ‘deprived.’ My family were hardworking, as most people were then. Poor but happy.
“We lived in a house in the centre of Hillman’s factory [at the top of Trindle Road, in Dudley] where my dad and many other of my relatives worked.”
The postcard, which shows the proclamation of King George V at Dudley on May 10, was sent by Josie’s mother to Solihull, and the date of the proclamation fits in with when she worked in service.
“I’m not sure how long my mother worked in service, and there’s no one around I can ask now, of course. But it would have been around 1910 or 1911, as my parents got married in 1914. I was born, the youngest of five, in 1931.”
We think we recognise a couple of faces among the assembled local dignitaries in the picture. Just to the left of centre, with dark beard, looks like F.W. Cook, who had been mayor a couple of years previously, and whose memory lived on for many more decades in the High Street shop that bore his name. In 1910, it just so happens that the mayor was Joseph Hillman, of the family who owned the factory which emplyed Josie’s father – he may well be the one reading out the proclamation.
In the top hat just to the right of the main group is, we think, the 3rd Earl of Dudley, who is shown in a formal portrait here.
Finally, does anyone recognise the venue? It would presumably have been the Town Hall, the predecessor of the modern-day Council House. The current building was opened in 1928 by the Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, but prior to that the site had been occupied by the town’s ‘second’ Town Hall, which had been built in 1860 following the removal of the original medieval one from the Market Place.