1930s: Henry Royce is mourned

Anton Rippon looks at 1933, the year Derby hosted the Royal Show for the fifth time.

Derby's Morledge in 1933, showing the new Open Market, which was opened that year, and beyond it the new Bus Station

As the Derby Evening Telegraph of July 5, 1933, commented: “No other town or city in the country can say as much.” The writer was referring to the fact that the Royal Show was being held in Derby for the fifth time.

Long before it settled on its permanent site in Stoneleigh, Warwickshire, the Royal Show was taken around the country. And nowhere in the realm could boast of staging it more times than Derby.

Alas, what the writer could not know was that this was also the very last time that the town would be so honoured.

The first Royal Show had been held in Oxford in 1839. It first came to Derby in 1843, to Osmaston Park, where all subsequent shows in the town were held. Of course, that Osmaston Park bore no real resemblance to the one we know today, off Osmaston Park Road. This park belonged to the Wilmot Horton family and stood where the Ascot Drive industrial area is now situated.

It had been purchased by the Midland Railway in 1888, to house the new Carriage and Wagon works, but a large part was retained for a showground.

The Royal Show returned in 1881, 1906 and 1921. Now, in the early years of the 1930s, it was back once more. And how Derby celebrated in the sunshine and temperatures of 85 degrees.

King George V and Queen Mary at the Royal Sow in Derby in 1933

Thousands cheered as King George V and Queen Mary were driven through the streets in an open-topped carriage. As the Telegraph put it: “The old borough of Derby lived today a story which might have been lifted straight out of a book of fairy tales when, beneath a canopy of blues skies, amidst a blaze of colour, and with stately pageantry and splendour, the King and Queen paid their official visit to the Royal Show at Osmaston. ”

The report continued: “Derby gave their Majesties a Royal welcome as they drove through the heart of the town in an open semi-state coach drawn by two magnificent greys, along a route lined 10, 20 and 30 deep with cheering citizens, past cottages and mansions, and offices and shops, and works, every window of which was framed with eager and smiling faces.

“From Allestree to Alvaston, the Royal route was gay with flowers, flags and bunting…

“There was a festive spirit even about the early business buses into the town this morning. Many of the ‘world’s workers’ were missing from their places and instead there were girls in gay dresses …The majority of Derby men wore buttonholes ranging from a pink or a rose to a tricolour rosette.”

The King and Queen had arrived in Derby by car from Chatsworth. At Derwent Park they exchanged the internal combustion engine for real horse power and then swept on into town, down Queen Street and into the Market Place, where thousands of people were held back by police, soldiers and members of the British Legion.

The band of the 5th Battalion, Sherwood Foresters, played the National Anthem and then the Royal couple were on their way again, up St Peter’s Street, The Spot and down London Road before arriving at the showground at 12.50pm, where they met members of the Royal Show committee and toured the exhibits.

In the same year, Derby’s wayward youth would have been less of a problem if cinemas had been allowed to open on Sundays. And better lighting was needed to prevent people from “cuddling and canoodling” at the pictures.

That was the view of the Chief Constable, Colonel Horatio Rawlings, when he addressed a luncheon held in the town by the Derbyshire branch of the National Council of Women.

He told them: “I believe I am correct in stating that cinema proprietors in Derby have no desire to open on Sundays. Personally, I think that is a very good thing, although I should not oppose cinemas opening from, say, 8pm to 10pm, so long as the shows were of the right type.

“For this reason, there are many young people who wander about the streets on Sunday, who will not go to a church or chapel, and it would be better, especially on wintry nights, if they had some place to go where they could see plays or films of educational value.”

He listed the sort of films he would like to see – “delightful travel films, news, sport, nature and certain advertisements which showed the manufacture of certain commodities cannot be rated too highly” – but blamed films showing “sumptuous conditions, which could not be kept by king or emperor,” for making discontent “which might breed a rebel spirit against the social order”.

Rawlings spoke of some films which in the last year had been rejected by the censor: “One wonders that human beings would descend to such a state of moral degradation as to place themselves in such situations for the purpose of having a photograph taken. Most of these films were Continental; some were American.”

Colonel Horatio Rawlings inspecting his police constables in later years

Censoring films was another difficult matter in the 1930s, according to Colonel Rawlings: “It is ridiculous to expect that an official should be placed at the door of a cinema to ask the age of suspected youthful persons.

“There is an onus on the parents and I think that a good many parents do not exercise their power.”

As an instance of the way in which local control in Derby sometimes ran counter to the feelings of the police, Colonel Rawlings explained that he had voted against one particular film being shown, but that there was a majority for it.

The voting had occurred after the local body controlling cinemas exercised its right to see a film privately after the censor had given his decision and to judge for itself whether it was fit for public exhibition.

Said Rawlings: “The film had no educational value – and probably did some harm.” He did not tell us what it was.

Derby’s chief constable was also concerned about courting couples.

“I have a strong objection to seeing people cuddling and canoodling in the cinema. It annoys me to see people making fools of themselves in the audience. It is all right on the stage, but the free entertainment annoys me. Light would obviate that type of thing.”

The 1930s produced some often bizarre court cases in Derby, none more so than in March 1933 when a dispute over a will ended with three of the protagonists being “roped in” to a Mickleover house while the police were called.

That month, husband and wife, Herbert and Leah Palmer, and Arthur Perry, who lived at Lord Street, Allenton, were up before Derby County Police Court, charged with breaking and entering the house of a bus cleaner, Joseph Bayliss, at Alma Cottages on the main Derby-Mickleover road.

It was the result of a long-running dispute. The court heard that in 1915, Mr Bayliss, who was in the Army at the time, had married. Four years later, he and his wife split up and, in 1920, he moved in with a Mrs Green, who had recently left her husband. Herbert Palmer was Mrs Green’s son, and when she died in 1932, Mr Bayliss had produced a will which showed that his common law wife had left everything to him.

Palmer, however, claimed that there was an earlier will and produced a letter from the Derby solicitors, Flint, Marsden and Bishop, containing a copy of this which showed that her son was also a beneficiary.

Bayliss duly gave Palmer a fur coat once belonging to his mother and there he thought the matter had ended. But, while he was visiting Leeds – after first giving a neighbour the keys to look after his cat and parrot – the Palmers and their friend, Arthur Perry, broke into his house and removed some furniture.

The neighbour who had been entrusted with the key got her husband to rope the door, with the Palmers and Perry still inside. When PC Sharpe of the local constabulary arrived, he arrested the trio.

Not surprisingly, the five magistrates hearing the case soon tired of the nonsense and dismissed it.

The same month, another case – this time involving some stolen parsley – was also dismissed by Derby magistrates.

Horace Smith was accused of stealing parsley belonging to Arthur Turner, of Chellaston. Smith had been spotted digging up the herb on Mr Turner’s allotment.

He admitted all, pleaded that he was a married man and had been out of work for 12 months, and promised “to go straight in the future”. The magistrates sent him packing after he renewed his promise not to reoffend.

Henry Royce

Other events in 1933 included the death of Sir Henry Royce, who passed away at his Sussex home after a long battle with cancer. He told his nurse of his one regret: “I might have worked a little harder.” Yet he had been a workaholic before anyone had heard of the word. He died at West Wittering, near Chichester, on April 22, aged 70.

Royce had modestly described himself as a “mechanic” but, of course, he was probably the greatest car and aero-engine designer the world has ever known.

The firm he founded with the Hon Charles Rolls, an aristocratic motor racing pioneer, moved to Derby in June 1907, bringing with it 80 employees. Rolls died in a flying accident in 1910 and, by the time Royce – he was created a baronet in June 1930 – also died, Rolls-Royce was one of Derby’s biggest employers.

The works’ flag over the Nightingale Road factory fluttered at half-mast after his death was announced.

Also in April 1933, the results of the 1931 Census were announced. That year, the borough of Derby was home to 142,403 people. The first census, in 1801, showed Derby’s population as 11,663, and Derbyshire’s as a whole stood at 161,576; the 1931 figure was 757,374 for the county. The largest percentage increase from 1921 to 1931 was that recorded by Alvaston and Boulton Urban District: 108.3 per cent. Of course, boundary extensions over the years have now put the population of Derby itself at around a quarter of a million.

In April there was also much interest in the wedding of Royal Naval electrician Royston Towle, whose parents lived in Clarence Road, Derby, and Mildred Petty, whom he had met while serving in Bermuda.

The bride was flying 3,000 miles from the island in the Atlantic to be married at Rosehill Methodist Church on Normanton Road. When the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII and later still the Duke of Windsor, visited Derby in 1928, he had recognised Royston’s father, a veteran of the First World War who had been the Prince’s naval instructor.

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