Derbyshire's Own E-Book

Anton Rippon

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 282

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2006

Beschreibung

Did you know that Derbyshire can boast at least three Nobel Laureates and numerous Olympians? This book features more than 100 of the most interesting and influential people of Derbyshire from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century.

Leseprobe

DERBYSHIRE’S

OWN

NICOLA RIPPON

To the people of Derbyshire, past, present and future – Derbyshire’s Own

First published in 2006 by

Sutton Publishing Limited

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2013

All rights reserved

© Nicola Rippon, 2006, 2013

The right of Nicola Rippon to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUBISBN 978 0 7509 5324 5

Original typesetting by The History Press

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Richard Arkwright

Anthony Babington

Olave, Lady Baden-Powell

Michael Thomas Bass

Alan Bates

Herbert Beetham

Ronald Binge

Steve Bloomer

Jack Bodell

James Bolam

Catherine Booth

Kirk Boott Snr and Kirk Boott Jnr

Phoebe Bown

James Brindley

Vera Brittain

Tim Brooke-Taylor

Paul Burrell

Jedediah Buxton

Barbara Castle

Francis Legatt Chantrey

Thomas Cook

John Cotton

Lara Croft

George Nathaniel Curzon

Timothy Dalton

Erasmus Darwin

Joe Davis

Denny Dennis

John Dexter

David Dixon

Norah Docker

William Duesbury

Peter Fidler

John Flamsteed

Charles Fox

Henry Garnett

Fred Greaves

William Gregg

Judith Hann

William Harcourt

Bess of Hardwick

Alison Hargreaves

Reg Harrison

William Howitt

Charles Hudson

Robert Humpston

John Hurt

Michael Knowles

Eric Lander

Harold Hutchinson Lilly

Robert Lindsay

Kevin Lloyd

Terry Lloyd

John and Thomas Lombe

John Claudius Loudon

Arthur Lowe

Ellen MacArthur

Fiona May

Andrew Melville

Godfrey Meynell

William Mompesson, Thomas Stanley and the Villagers of Eyam

Ted Moult

George Newnes

Florence Nightingale

Philip Noel-Baker

Maurice Oldfield

John and Lucretia Oldham

Reg Parnell

Joseph Paxton

Joseph Pickford

Joan Rice

Samuel Richardson

Jacob Rivers

William Roache

Richard J. Roberts

Robert Robinson

William Bradbury Robinson

William Roe

C.S. Rolls and Henry Royce

Jane Rossington

Anna Seward

Tracy Shaw

George Clarke Simpson

Samuel Slater

John Smith

George Sorocold

Herbert Spencer

Constance Spry

George Stephenson

Harry Stevens

Charles Stone

Harry Storer

Jedidiah Strutt

William and Joseph Strutt

Bob Taylor

Gwen Taylor

Jimmy Thomas

Percy Toplis

Alison Uttley

Matthew Walker

Barnes Neville Wallis

Joan Waste

Julia Watson

Ron Webster

Vivienne Westwood

The Wheeldon Family

John Whitehurst

Audley Bowdler Williamson

Henry Wilmot

Joseph Wright

Peter Wright

Principal Sources

Acknowledgements

Picture Credits

Preface

To produce the definitive list of notable people with Derbyshire connections would be an impossible task, one to which this book makes no claim. Missing from these pages are, for example, wrought-iron smith Robert Bakewell; writer Robert Bage; Samuel Plimsoll, inventor of the ship’s Plimsoll line; Fred Stanley and William Burton, screenwriters from Hollywood’s silent era; Don Shaw, a modern playwright; Olympic medallist weightlifter Louis Martin; darts champion John Lowe; former Blue Peter presenter Simon Groom; any number of Derby County footballers and Derbyshire cricketers; and artists Dame Laura Knight and Eileen Cooper. The case for their inclusion, and for that of dozens of others, can be argued just as strongly as for those who do appear. This work attempts to provide a broad sample of the talented, the innovative and the remarkable, whose lives have, in one way or another, been touched by the county of Derbyshire. If it provokes debate about who should, or should not, be included, it will have served its purpose for that alone. Chronologically, it begins with Bess of Hardwick (born 1521), and ends with Dame Ellen MacArthur (1976). Hopefully, the selection will throw up one or two surprises. More than anything, it aims to stand as a testament to the rich seam of Derbyshire folk, famous and, occasionally, infamous.

Introduction

From the barren limestone hilltops of its north-west, and the millstone grit of its centre, to the lush green undulations of its southern extremities, Derbyshire is a county as striking and diverse as any in the United Kingdom. Likewise its sons and daughters, who have populated this county for at least the last 13,000 years, have made their marks in a wide and varied range of disciplines.

They have been inventors and scientists, artists and performers, musicians and writers, athletes and entrepreneurs. Most have achieved celebrity, a few notoriety. Many others have gone largely unnoticed, their contributions no less significant than the achievements of those who have risen to international fame. Seemingly disparate, they all have something in common, be it measured by birthright, residence or achievement: they are all people of Derbyshire, and they are all deserving of greater recognition.

Derbyshire folk are, by nature, modest, unpretentious and largely unwilling to draw attention to themselves. As a result, many people featured in these pages are little known outside their field of achievement; many are not recognised for their Derbyshire roots. That is an injustice that I hope this collection may begin to correct.

Nicola Rippon

Derby

2006

Sir Richard Arkwright

Industrialist

Richard Arkwright was born in Preston in December 1732, but it was in Derbyshire that he made both his home and his mark. Often erroneously credited with inventing the factory system – that had been pioneered six decades earlier in Derby by the Lombes (q.v.) – he improved and developed it to remarkable and widespread effect, opening up the British cotton industry. He was the first great industrialist.

A natural entrepreneur, Arkwright established a successful wig-making business when still a young man. While travelling, he met John Kay, a clock-maker from Warrington whose partner, Thomas Highs, had designed a new cotton-spinning machine. Lacking financial backing, they had been unable to develop it further. Arkwright arranged for Kay to build prototypes so that he could secure funding, then employed Kay and other craftsmen to improve the design. Within months, it was Arkwright’s spinning frame that was being marketed.

There are various accounts of how Arkwright persuaded Kay to hand over his, and more crucially Highs’s, invention. The most damning was somewhat substantiated by a patent investigation several years later which uncovered allegations of copious amounts of alcohol, considerable deceit and the complete exclusion of Highs. However it was acquired, Arkwright used the innovative machinery – which not only produced stronger thread than existing designs but also required less labour – to great effect in his first mill in Preston. In 1769, seeking funds to expand his business into Nottinghamshire, Arkwright was introduced to Jedidiah Strutt (q.v.) and Samuel Need.

After some experimentation, it was decided that the machinery would best be powered by water-wheel and, in 1771, the three men opened their large factory mill next to the River Derwent in Cromford, Derbyshire. Cromford, however, was a small village with a tiny population. Realising he would have to draw his workforce from a wide area, Arkwright enlarged the village and built dozens of workers’ cottages.

In 1774, Arkwright and his partners managed to persuade the government to remove prohibitive import duties on raw cotton, enabling further expansion and greatly increased profits. By the time Need died in April 1781, several rights disputes with rival manufacturers were bubbling away and Strutt, having become nervous of the continued, unchecked expansion, dissolved the partnership.

The ambitious and confident Arkwright, however, had been the driving force and his interests flourished, his fortune grew, and he expanded into Lancashire, Staffordshire and even Scotland. Even the revoking of his patents in 1785 by the Court of King’s Bench, which had heard testimony from Kay and Highs, among others, accusing Arkwright of stealing their inventions and passing them off as his own, did little to dent the success of his business and, the following year, he was awarded a knighthood.

Richard Arkwright died in 1792 at Cromford, leaving an enormous fortune equivalent to several hundred million pounds today.

Anthony Babington

Executed for Treason

The notorious Babington Plot to assassinate Elizabeth I and install Mary, Queen of Scots on the English throne was the construct of Anthony Babington, who was born at Dethick Manor, near Matlock, in October 1561. Repeated changes between Anglican and Catholic monarchs, and persecution of one, then the other, denomination led many families like the Babingtons to worship secretly. Outwardly Protestant, yet privately Catholic, the Babingtons held extensive lands throughout the country; it was at their Derby town house, Babington Hall, that Mary, Queen of Scots lodged for a night in 1585.

Anthony Babington had served as page to the imprisoned queen and, although still a child, had formed a deep attachment to her. Historians speculate that, by the time he married Margery Draycot in 1579, he was already a devoted courtier. Between 1580 and 1582, Babington studied for the Bar in London, where his wealth and charm put him in contact with a social elite of secret Catholics who wanted a Catholic monarch on the English throne.

In 1582, the Babingtons returned to Derbyshire to take up formal residence at Dethick. In 1585, Babington travelled throughout Europe, where he met with many of Mary’s supporters, some of whom were plotting to depose Elizabeth. He returned to England carrying important documents for Mary. The following year, he and a Catholic priest, John Ballard, formulated the plot that bears Babington’s name.

Their intention was to assassinate Elizabeth, dismantle her government and, with the help of King Philip of Spain, install Mary, Queen of Scots as England’s new monarch. They were unaware that Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth’s secretary and protector, was using two of their number as double agents. Able to intercept all the conspirators’ letters, Walsingham allowed the unsuspecting plotters to formalise their plans.

In June 1586, Walsingham intercepted a letter from Babington to Mary that would unequivocally implicate him. ‘We . . . will undertake the delivery of your royal persons from the hands of your enemies . . . For the dispatch of the usurper . . . six noble gentlemen, who for the zeal they have to the Catholic cause . . . will undertake the tragical execution,’ he wrote. Now Walsingham had enough evidence to arrest the conspirators.

Ballard was captured in August and quickly gave up his secrets. Babington, meanwhile, applied for a passport to leave the country, but Walsingham’s men were already on their way to arrest him. He fled to St John’s Wood, then to Harrow, where he was captured. While his home was searched for evidence, Babington admitted his guilt and revealed that Mary had written him a letter acknowledging the plot. It was sufficient proof for Elizabeth to rid herself of her rival for good.

Babington and his co-conspirators were held at the Tower of London, where they were found guilty of high treason and condemned to death. Although he pleaded for his life, and even offered £1,000 for his pardon, Babington was put to death on 20 September 1586 at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Mary was executed the following year.

Olave, Lady Baden-Powell

First World Chief Guide

Olave St Clair Soames was born the daughter of a brewery owner at Stubbing Court, near Chesterfield, in February 1889. She enjoyed the outdoor life and was fond of all manner of sports, including horse riding, hockey and boating.

In January 1912, Olave met retired soldier Lieutenant-General Sir Robert Baden-Powell, the founder, five years earlier, of the Boy Scouts and, in 1910, of the Girl Guides. She was delighted to discover that they shared the same birthday – 22 February – although he was fifty-five and Olave only twenty-three. Within days the hero of Mafeking and the tomboy from north Derbyshire were falling in love. Their engagement that September and marriage in October startled society, but Olave’s enthusiastic involvement in the Scouts and Girl Guides soon allayed any concerns that they were not suited.

Although discouraged from involvement by her sister-in-law, Agnes, Olave received her warrant as County Commissioner for Sussex in 1916 and, in 1918, became Chief Guide. As the popularity of Girl Guiding quickly spread worldwide, Olave was presented with her own Guide Standard.

The Baden-Powells made sure no one was left out. The Lone Branch was established for girls who, often because they lived in remote areas, were unable to attend regular meetings; Post Guides was begun to enable girls with disabilities that prevented them from attendance to receive their company ‘meeting’ via letter. Guide companies were established in approved and reform schools, orphanages and rescue homes.

In 1930, Olave was appointed World Chief Guide – a post she would hold for the rest of her life. Two years later, she received the Grand Cross of the British Empire. The ‘Mother of Millions’, as she became affectionately known for her guidance and nurturing of young women, received countless more awards in a life dedicated to young people. International awards came from Poland, Finland, Haiti, Malaysia, Panama, Chile, Peru, Lebanon, Japan and Luxembourg to name but a few. In 1973, Olave was awarded the Food and Agricultural Organisation’s Ceres Medal.

After Lord Baden-Powell died in Kenya in 1941, Olave returned to Britain and devoted herself to fulfilling her late husband’s wishes of expanding Guiding and Scouting worldwide. As soon as she was able after D-Day, she travelled to Europe, determined to revive the various national associations. From 1942, Lady Baden-Powell travelled around the world five times, visiting 111 countries and making more than 650 flights.

She died peacefully in her sleep in June 1977. The Queen, herself a former Guide, commented: ‘Olave Baden-Powell will always be remembered for her unique contribution to the Guide Movement throughout the world.’ Hundreds of tributes were paid from around the globe, but it would be in the millions of girls and women for whom she had worked so tirelessly and in whom she had helped to build self-confidence, a sense of community and an awareness of responsibility, that her spirit would survive.

Michael Thomas Bass MP

Philanthropist and Brewer

Although Michael Thomas Bass was neither born in Derbyshire, nor lived in the county, his contribution to the town of Derby during thirty-five years as its MP was outstanding. Using the wealth earned from his family’s brewing business in Burton upon Trent, 11 miles down the road, he provided much for the welfare of local people, and for the working class generally.

Born on 6 July 1799, Bass was educated in Burton and Nottingham. Upon leaving school he joined Bass Brewery, the business founded by his grandfather, William Bass, in 1777. As an officer in the Derbyshire Yeomanry, he assisted in putting down the Reform Bill Riots, although he was later to declare his support for the Reformists.

In 1848, Bass, who always supported the rights of working people, agreed to stand as the Liberal candidate for Derby, and was elected to an office he held until 1883. He worked tirelessly in Parliament and, although the brewery dramatically increased its profits during his tenure, it was not at the expense of his workers; Bass was a model employer. In 1870, he supported the railwaymen who campaigned for shorter working hours, and in 1871 he funded the new Associated Society of Railway Servants Union. Bass also established the Railway Servants’ Orphanage in Derby, providing for the children of railway employees killed in industrial accidents.

In 1871, Derby Borough Council, which had made several aborted attempts to open a library for the townspeople, was offered the use of the Town and County Library, then occupying a large town house in the Wardwick. Bass, however, paid for purpose-built premises nearby. Designed by Knill Freeman, the resulting red-brick confection cost £25,000 and, in 2006, still served its original role. Appropriately, a statue of Bass, moved from the Market Place, stands outside. The library opened in 1879 and housed the combined collections of the Town and County Museum, the Mechanics’ Institution and the Derby Philosophical Society, and a selection from the library of the Duke of Devonshire. A new museum was also provided to display artefacts previously housed at the Athenaeum, and a new ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie Room’ lined with some of the panelling from Exeter House was opened.

On the occasion of its opening, a poem was composed, part of which read: ‘A Library and Museum, with Tower high risen;/By M.T. Bass MP was given;/To God be the praise that inclined his heart;/To do this Town so noble a part;/. . . For this new Library so freely given;/May be steps to lead us nearer to heaven.’

In 1867, Bass provided Derby with its first public park since Joseph Strutt’s (q.v.) Arboretum. Bass’s Rec, as it is affectionately known, is now used as a site for visiting funfairs and circuses. In 1873, open-air swimming pools were opened in the park.

Bass remained a modest man, unlike many of his contemporaries, refusing baronetcies and a peerage. He died at his home in Rangemoor, Staffordshire, in April 1884.

Sir Alan Bates CBE

Actor

Alan Bates came to prominence in the ‘kitchen sink’ dramas of the 1950s and ’60s, although his striking presence and malleable face could lend themselves to a wide range of genres and characterisations.

Born in Derby on 17 February 1934 at the Queen Mary Nursing Home, not far from Farley, the family home on Derwent Avenue in Allestree, Bates attended Herbert Strutt Grammar School, Belper. Cinema and theatre visits with his mother fired in him a passion for acting, and by the age of eleven he had chosen his path. His family sent him to voice coaching and acting lessons and he joined the local Shakespeare society. He earned a scholarship to RADA and, following graduation and two years’ National Service in the RAF, made his stage debut in 1955 at Coventry, with the Midland Theatre Company.

He joined the English Stage Company, based at London’s Royal Court Theatre, and, in 1956, starred as Jimmy Porter in John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger. The play established the ‘angry young men’ of 1950s and ’60s theatre, and the role propelled Bates to stardom in both the West End and on Broadway.

In 1960, he took his first cinematic feature role in Osborne’s The Entertainer with Sir Laurence Olivier. This was followed a year later by the charming Whistle Down the Wind, in which Bates played a fugitive criminal mistaken by local children for Jesus Christ. Roles in A Kind of Loving (1962) and The Caretaker (1963) established him as one of the most gifted and acclaimed leading actors of the time. Bates appeared in many of the most popular films of the 1960s, such as Zorba the Greek (1964), Georgy Girl (1966) and Women in Love (1969). In the latter Bates performed one of the most memorable and controversial scenes in British cinematic history – wrestling naked with Oliver Reed. In 1968, an Oscar nomination came, for his performance as the Russian Jew jailed for a murder he did not commit in The Fixer. Over the next three decades, Bates’s films included The Three Sisters and The Go-Between (both 1970), Michael Winner’s version of The Wicked Lady (1983) and Prayer for the Dying (1987). Bates also appeared in numerous television plays, in particular the Play for Today series and, in 1978 and 1994 respectively, in the television adaptations of The Mayor of Casterbridge and Hard Times. In 1990, Bates’s talents were appreciated by a new generation when he played Claudius to Mel Gibson’s Hamlet in Franco Zeffirelli’s film.

Bates remained in demand and, through a career that spanned six decades, featured in dozens of television and theatrical productions and over fifty films. In 2001, he completed what was to be his last high-profile film role of butler Jennings in Gosford Park for Robert Altman.

In 1995, Bates received the CBE. He was knighted in 2003. He died in London in December 2003, aged sixty-nine, after a long illness. Modest and self-deprecating throughout his life, Bates retained his Derbyshire connections. He had a home near Ashbourne and attended performances at Derby Playhouse. Alan Bates eschewed the world of celebrity but was, undoubtedly, a star.

Herbert Beetham

World Billiards Champion

Herbert Beetham, former world amateur billiards champion, three times English title holder, and, for decades, one of the greatest names in the game, belied the stereotype of a champion of the green baize. For the silver-haired Beetham honed his skills not in the seedy, smoke-filled twilight of pre-war billiards halls, but in the quiet sobriety of St Thomas’s Church Institute in the Pear Tree district of Derby.

Born at 80 Havelock Road – factory house of White’s Brothers, the family soft drinks manufacturing business that he ran for years – in April 1909, Beetham was educated at Derby Municipal Secondary School, the predecessor of Bemrose School. None of his family was particularly interested in billiards, but his father played a little on a small-sized table and it was here that young Herbert discovered a natural talent for the game.

Even then, he did not begin playing seriously until he was nineteen, but progress was rapid. In 1932, he entered the English billiards championships and three years later reached the final, where he was beaten by thirty points. Beetham reached the final again in 1946, and again lost. He appeared in the 1952 and 1959 finals, and yet again finished runner-up. Then, in March 1960, he took the title for the first time, beating Reg Wright of Leicestershire in the final. ‘It was,’ he said later, ‘a wonderful moment in my life.’

But there was an even greater triumph just six months later, when he travelled to Edinburgh in a bid to become the first English world champion since Walter Driffield’s victory in Calcutta in 1952. In the world final Beetham met the Irish champion, W.J. Dennison, and although he was 100 points down at one stage, pulled back to win by 1,173 points to 845.

Beetham retained his English title in 1961. The following year, he was invited to defend his world crown in Perth, Western Australia, but could not prevent Australia’s Robert Marshall from taking the title for a record fourth time. In 1963, Beetham won his third and final English title, and two years later bowed out of the Derby Institutes League, finally playing for the Wallbrook Institute after St Thomas’s disbanded.

He continued in the local knockout event for many more years, as a member of the Beaconsfield Club in Green Lane, and in 1977 reached another English final. He was a founder member and the first president of the Derbyshire Billiards and Snooker Association, and was Derbyshire’s representative on the Billiards and Snooker Control Council.

Herbert Beetham died in Derby in April 1992, at the age of eighty-two. His funeral was attended by a great crowd of old friends, including many representatives of the world of billiards, and one tribute in the trade press summed him up: ‘Herbert Beetham achieved great things in the world of billiards – he became a champion. He achieved even greater things in the wider world – he became a much-loved man. No gathering of billiards enthusiasts was complete without Herbert Beetham’s kindly presence. Something in all of us has died with him.’

Ronald Binge

Composer

One of the finest and most respected British composers of his generation, Ronald Binge created the ‘Mantovani Sound’ and composed some of the most popular and familiar musical pieces of the twentieth century. His ‘cascading strings’ effect, inspired by sacred cathedral music, became his signature style, yet the diversity and versatility of his work gave him universal appeal.

Ronald Binge was born on 15 July 1910, at 83 Darley Street, Derby, but spent his early years living in Westbury Street and later at Wiltshire Road in Chaddesden. As a young chorister Binge was given piano lessons by the organist of his church. Later he mastered both the organ and the accordion. In 1920, Binge’s father died from war wounds and young Ronald had to supplement his income from his job at Barlow & Taylor’s department store by taking a job with the orchestra at the Cosmo Cinema on Upper Boundary Road. Aged just seventeen, and fascinated by the variety of music he was called upon to play, Binge studied the techniques of arrangement and composing.

In 1932, inspired by his successful summer season with the John Russell Orchestra in Great Yarmouth, Binge moved to London, where he found work with café and dance orchestras. When he began working with orchestra leader Mantovani, a unique musical style was born. Their first collaborations, ‘The Moon Was Yellow’ and ‘Hands Across the Table’, were recorded in January 1935.

During the Second World War, Binge ran the choir at an RAF station in Blackpool while Sidney Torch, the famous theatre organist, ran the orchestra. After the war Binge returned to Mantovani and, in 1951, his lovely arrangement of ‘Charmaine’ propelled the orchestra to international fame. Binge was also working as an arranger and orchestrator with the BBC’s eight light orchestras, and scored more than fifty television and cinema films including Desperate Moment (1953) and Dance Little Lady (1954).

Having established his reputation with Mantovani, Binge began to work independently, and one of his most popular and enduring pieces, Elizabethan Serenade, for which he won an Ivor Novello award, topped the popular music charts in Germany and South Africa. Lyrics were written and translated into six languages. Sailing By was another hit and was eventually adopted by BBC Radio 4 to precede the nightly shipping forecast and closedown. Other Binge favourites include Caribbean Calypso, Dance of the Snowflakes and the ever-popular, and extremely pretty, The Watermill. Between 1955 and 1963, Binge had his own radio series on the BBC Light Programme, for which his own composition, String Song, provided the theme.

In the 1970s, Binge produced a series of albums, one with the Wimbledon Girl Singers, whose voices were used like a string section, and another for the Aldershot Brass Ensemble, which included his Duel for Conductors that had been commissioned by the BBC and first performed at the Royal Festival Hall. Binge’s passion for music was lifelong, and he chose to spend his last days composing a piano and horn piece for his doctor’s young son. Ronald Binge died at Ringwood, Hampshire, on 6 September 1979.

Steve Bloomer

Football’s First Superstar

Of all Derby County’s famous names, it is that of a Victorian hero which echoes around Pride Park Stadium today, evoking a response from those three or four generations too late to have seen him play. Steve Bloomer’s domination of late Victorian and early Edwardian football was unequalled. He was one of the ‘faces’ of Phosferine Tonic, endorsed his own ‘Bloomer’s Lucky Goal Scorers Perfegrippe’ football boots, and, some twenty years after his retirement, his image was used aboard the Queen Mary on a mural depicting famous English figures.

Born in Cradley, Staffordshire, in January 1874, his family moved to Derby in 1879 and he attended Pear Tree and St James’s Road Schools. He quickly established himself in junior football, scoring as many as eight goals in a match. At fourteen he joined Derby Swifts, who played on Chester Green, and later Derby Midland, but his registration was transferred to Derby County when the Rams absorbed Midland. He was registered as a professional in April 1892, for 7s 6d a week.

Bloomer’s slight frame and pale complexion belied his tremendous skills. He was two-footed and quick over both short and long distances, with an excellent first touch, accurate passing, tremendous shot and remarkable tactical awareness. He was a man of idiosyncrasies and passions. He had a habit of pulling his stockings up over his knees, and his exuberant goal celebrations – turning a cartwheel, jumping in the air and whooping – would have rivalled any of today’s players.

He scored twice on his Rams debut, at Stoke in September 1892, although both goals were originally credited to another player. Inevitably he became a target of brutal defenders and endured plenty of injuries. His career at Derby was punctuated by a four-season (1906–10) hiatus when he played for Middlesbrough. Top scorer for the Rams fourteen times and Football League top scorer five times, Bloomer played 525 League and Cup games for Derby, scoring 332 goals. He scored eighteen hat-tricks and holds the record of most goals (six) in a game.

His England debut came in 1895, at the Racecourse in Derby. He scored in each of his first ten internationals and finished with twenty-eight goals in twenty-three games. He captained England once, in 1902 against Scotland at Ibrox, an occasion remembered for its tragedy, rather than its football: twenty-six fans were killed when part of a stand collapsed.

Bloomer retired, aged forty, in 1914. He took a coaching job in Berlin, but three weeks later war was declared and he found himself interned for the next four years. After the war, he worked for the Rams as a coach. Between 1923 and 1925 he coached Real Irun, with whom he won the Spanish Cup.

Steve Bloomer, who suffered recurrent bronchitis in later years, died on 16 April 1938. His funeral procession route was lined with thousands of onlookers and the service, at Derby Cathedral, like his games for the Rams, played to a full house.

Jack Bodell

British Heavyweight Boxing Champion

In the late 1960s and early ’70s, Fleet Street reporters and television camera crews often clogged Newhall’s High Street. They gathered to report on the preparations of heavyweight boxer Jack Bodell at his training base at the Royal Oak Amateur Boxing Club.

John Geoffrey Bodell was born on 11 August 1940, in Newhall. After leaving Newhall Secondary Modern School, he started work as a miner at Church Gresley Colliery, where he began boxing. By 1961, he had won the National Coal Board and the Amateur Boxing Association’s light-heavyweight championships three years in succession.

Turning professional in 1962, Bodell won the Midlands light-heavyweight and heavyweight titles. Of his first forty fights, he tasted defeat only six times and, although he lost in three rounds to the Italian, Piero Tomasoni, at the Royal Albert Hall in June 1966, in the months that followed he stopped American Bob Stallings (in seven rounds) and beat Ray Patterson (over ten) and Sonny Moore (also over ten).

His only professional appearance in his home county came in 1965, but the fight, at Derby’s King’s Hall, proved a huge disappointment for local fans: Benito Canal, the Spanish champion, little known outside his native land, appeared ill-prepared and unenthusiastic, and Bodell won without breaking sweat.

In June 1967, at Wolverhampton’s Molineux ground, Bodell met Henry Cooper for the British and Empire titles, but was stopped in the second round by one of boxing’s legends. In 1968, he beat both Brian London and former Welsh champion Carl Gizzi (in only the second of the scheduled fifteen rounds). Victory against American Roosevelt Eddie Jnr followed, after an astonishing incident in the first round when Eddie was disqualified for hitting Bodell while he was down on the canvas.

In March 1969, Bodell faced Billy Walker at the Empire Pool, Wembley, emerging victorious in the eighth round by technical knockout. Two more victories – by a second-round knockout against John Jordan in Mayfair, and on points against Jose Roman at Nottingham – and Bodell was ready to contest the British title again. Not against Cooper, who had vacated it, but against Gizzi, whom he beat on points over fifteen rounds. Bodell was champion for only five months, however, after which Cooper regained the title from him. Bodell won his next four fights and, in September 1971, met Joe Bugner, for the British, European and Commonwealth titles. After fifteen bruising rounds, it was Bodell who stood victorious in the Wembley ring.

But his reign was short. In November, looking for a chance to fight Muhammad Ali for the world title, Bodell faced Jerry Quarry and was sensationally knocked out in only sixty-four seconds. The following month, he lost his European title to Jose Urtain in Madrid and, in June 1972, only nine months after his greatest victory, his career came to an inglorious end with defeat in two rounds by Danny McAlinden at Birmingham. Jack Bodell was Derbyshire’s most successful boxer. He remains one of south Derbyshire’s favourite sons.

James Bolam

Actor

Best known for his role as Terry Collier in BBC Television’s The Likely Lads, James Bolam became one of the country’s favourite lead character actors after starting his theatrical career in Derby. James Christopher Bolam was born in Sunderland on 16 June 1935, but in the late 1940s his widowed mother moved to Derby, where, at Bemrose School, he became involved in drama productions.

In August 1951, Bolam began training as a chartered accountant with Lings in the Wardwick, where, former colleagues remember, he entertained the office with his mimicry. He joined Derby Shakespeare Company and appeared at Derby Playhouse, leaving Lings on 30 June 1955 to do his National Service, after which he enrolled at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.

Bolam soon established a flourishing theatre career, working at the Royal Court with young actors like Allestree’s Alan Bates (q.v.), and was regularly cast in the gritty northern dramas that became popular in the 1960s, appearing in both A Kind of Loving and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, as well as the Miss Marple thriller, Murder Most Foul. Bolam’s first television appearance came in an episode of The Odd Man for Granada in 1963, and small parts in The Four Seasons of Rosie Carr, and, in 1964, Noel Coward’s Present Laughter, quickly followed.

The Likely Lads