They say you should avoid meeting your heroes

There is a certain mystique about the stars of the sporting world. In some respects it is now just too much information to know that they have a private life but the media world are wholly obsessed with exposing and exploiting the new levels of celebrity which go hand in hand with sporting elitism.

I grew up to respect a sports star for their prowess in their chosen discipline and not for dancing skills, nocturnal or extra marital activities or fisticuffs with the paparazzi. My childhood sporting heroes were mainly footballers and I would avidly collect the small sixpence and then post decimalisation 2.5p packets of collectors cards. The earliest I recall were for the 1970 World Cup in Mexico and I did, through careful conservation of my pocket money manage to fill the complete album from the double spread of the England team, Banks, Astle, Hurst, Ball, Thompson, the Storey Moore brothers, amongst others through to the best of the National teams of Brazil, Italy and West Germany. 

I clearly recall the TV series on the BBC of 'Superstars' where the main personalities of the day were pitted against each other in a sort of modern decathlon of events. The mix of stars could not be replicated today on the basis of contractural obligations, health and safety and insurance cover. Footballers were humbled regularly by athletes, boxers, judo players and motor racing drivers. The popularity amongst viewers was immense,with around 10 million at its peak, only topped by the respect earned by the season winners or best underdogs.Kevin Keegan increased his stock and standing considerably by going on to win his heat, bloodied and bruised after a bad fall in the cycle road race event.

In pursuit of my own favourite football stars I had been caught up in the collecting frenzy and progressed from the World Cup to the English First Division in the 1970-71 season. The album, half A3 in size, cost 2 shillings and sixpence or using the metric conversion table on the inside back cover as a subversive educational medium for the transition, 12.5 new pence. Teams in the top Division included Huddersfield Town and the frequently up an downers in the promotion and relegation stakes of Blackpool, Burnley,Crystal Palace, Derby, the mighty Leeds and West Ham. The drawback in successfully filling an album was the large number of swaps that were inevitably accumulated. In the hubbub of the busy school playground there was the atmosphere of a stock exchange trading floor, the hot picks being clamoured for and the less fashionable players being hawked around by increasingly desperate collectors. With the skill of a currency trader the poorer card propositions would be bundled up in an attractive selection or perhaps with the sweetener of a prized marble or the offer of a kiss from a reluctant girl friend. Perhaps the modern concept and idea for the concealment of toxic financial debt in a basket of securitised assets originated in the very same school yard bun fight. 

I have never gone as far to idolise or stalk a particular personality but opportunities did arise in my later teens and early 20's to see, at close quarters, some of my heroes. I graduated from footie to cycling in the early 1980's. The English speaking riders were just starting then to muscle in on the dominant french, belgian, spanish and italian led european circuit. I was in the crowd in Nottingham in 1983 or so when the aussie Phil Anderson lapped the whole field during the Kelloggs town centre race series.Mingling in the crowds before the race were the megastars of Jan Raas and Stephen Roche. I was able to resoundly slap Sean Kelly on the back after his second place finish in Newcastle city centre in The Wincanton Classic and vowed never to wash the hand again. Johan Museeuw, the Belgian star chatted easily with an exchange student from his home country whom we were hosting at the time of the Leeds Classic event. The World Champion track rider, Hugh Porter was a regular commentator at local cycle races and when I participated I was regularly mentioned in actual name or number on the frequent occasion of my tactical withdrawals after falling off or getting shelled out of the back of the race. 

This mingling, albeit indirectly with my heroes, was only topped by my meeting and short conversation with Barry Hoban. Prior to the modern day phenomena that is Mark Cavendish he had been the most successful of British riders in the Tour de France between 1965 and 1978. As a contemporary of Tom Simpson he was on the race at the time of that rider's death and out of respect Barry Hoban was allowed to win and dedicate the next stage. I was calling in at my local bikeshop when I recognised the healthy and tanned faced Hoban in conversation about purchasing trade goods with the proprietor. I was introduced as a supporter of the local cycling scene and was duly proud of this acknowledgement in the presence of such a cycling icon. I was understandably pumped up at this stage and asked for a meduim sized cycling jersey as I was planning a trip out on my racing bike at the coming weekend. Mr Hoban commented that perhaps I would be better off getting a large size . I was immediately deflated and head down scuttled away red faced, clutching a large jersey, not wanting to make a scene, or frankly, start a fight with a pensioner.

Me and the Tour de France have history

Those who have only known me in more recent years may regard with surprise the fact that in 1984 I was at the peak of fitness and stamina as an athlete and racing cyclist.

I accept that my weight and girth now would probably buckle a lightweight bike frame and, yes, I did recently get overtaken by a small girl on a pink bike on my ascent of a steep hill but she did only come out of one driveway, pass me and then immediately go up the next so it doesn't count as full humiliation. I would have shouted something at her for inconsiderate cycling but I was either eating a mars bar or just a bit out of breath, I cannot clearly recollect which.

I was quite late into competitive cycling after being more of a runner and footballer, the catalyst being purchase of a Carlton Pro-Am 12 speed racing bike from the proceeds of a holiday job in 1981. A beautiful ice-white frame with good wheels and components within that price bracket. It did serve me well and was converted for cyclo-cross. 

My collection of bikes steadily grew with the 1982 custom built Langdale by Brian Green from Nottingham which is still in regular use, a Dave Marsh winter frame which saved me from serious injury in a head on crash with a car and oddments of bits of bikes which one day could be aggregated into something a bit special. No distance is too much for an athlete in prime condition and in 1984 I set off with my younger brother to stay with our sister who had an au-pair position just to the west of Paris. 

We caught the train from Hull to Dover and then rode the short distance to Newhaven for the ferry to Dieppe. Landfall in France was at 4am but in July the gloom and mist rapidly lifted and we were soon climbing out of the town heading south. Navigation relied on a Michelin map sheet covering from Edinburgh to Cannes so it took half a day to travel less than an inch which was a bit demoralising. Breakfast was at Rouen, I think, and I cannot today work out which route we took or hazard a guess at the actual mileage as compared to the linear distance scaled from the map. 

Some 12 hours later we reached our destination. We did split the return journey over 2 days using a much more suitably scaled roadmap. The trip coincided with the cycling fest which is the Tour de France and I was keen to see the race and my heroes namely Sean Kelly, Robert Millar, Bernard Hinault and Laurent Fignon amongst others. I crudely translated a french  guide to Le Tour and Stage 4 would be passing within reasonable cycling distance of where we were staying. 

For credibility I took off the panniers, racks and mudgards from my bike and wore my heavy, and subsequently wholly unsuitable, woollen club jersey which had Trent Valley CRC in large white flocked letters but with the core colours being akin to the French National colours. Again time elapsed and distance covered is now a faint memory and I have never attempted to locate where I eventually came across the stage route which from my now extended Tour library was from Bethune to Cergy Pontoise. None the wiser there. I was early enough to see the freakish caravan of publicity cars and promotional vehicles but was not handed any samples or merchandise as a) I was not a child b) I was obviously English in wholly unsuitable cycling apparel and c) I did not hold out my hands as I was dumbfounded to have acheived by objective of witnessing the race. 

Soon the official cars appeared down the long open country roads and the wining and dining crowds moved closer to the roadside. Behind a swarm of lead motorcycles and precariously mounted press photographers was a small cluster of 3 riders ,Barteau and Le Guillox , both French and cheered and applauded and the Portuguese Ferreira- cheered and tolerated. 

These riders contested the finish some 17 minutes ahead of the main peleton with Barteau retaining the yellow jersey well into the second week as a national hero. I readied my small 35mm camera for a series of rapid shots to record my attendance at the Tour. The main field of some 190 riders, not counted at the time, coasted past and I had time between shots to glimpse the imposing and influential  Hinault, the diminuitive figure of Millar and the bulk of Kelly. 

The flash of team colours, the sound of the racing tyres on the tarmac and the shockwave of embrocation fragranced air from the mass of cyclists I will never forget.

Back in my pitiful bedsit in Lincoln I viewed my photographs from the trip. The ferry, breakfast at Rouen, I think, bike rides and moped rides with my younger brother and sister, obligatory Eiffel Tower and Paris views, house where we stayed, a few local sights including Chartres Cathedral and some where I was evidently a bit drunk. 

The roadside photos of the race were very disappointing particulary as I had imagined magazine quality and posed shots. 

The 35mm camera was intended for stationary monuments and not to catch 30mph riders. The last photograph however made the whole trip most memorable. 

The clearest most dramatic picture was the money shot.

I considered syndication to cycling magazines worldwide. I had the perfect photograph of the upper spectacle frame, forehead, blond locks and very distinctive trademark headband of my particular hero, Laurent Fignon. RIP 1960-2010.

Twist and Stick it

There were far more important issues afoot in the United Kingdom in the summer of 1891 but the attention of the nation was firmly focused on a legal case which was being heard in London. 

It had everything to enthral the wider public as well as divide the loyalties and allegiances of the Ruling and Upper Class around whom the litigation revolved. 

It was known as The Baccarat Scandal. 

The main influential character was not actually the accused person but in the personage of HRH The Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII. 

The event behind the case was a house-party at Tranby Croft, the mansion of the Wilsons, shipping magnates just outside the City of Hull. Those assembled represented the elite of nobility and the nouveau riche who used Tranby Croft as a convenient base to attend the horse racing at Doncaster with, amongst the runners, a mount belonging to the Prince of Wales in action. 

After sumptious dining until 11pm on 8th September 1890 the keen gambler HRH suggested that the guests play the card game of Baccarat. It was a spontaneous decision causing, no doubt, the Wilson's domestic staff to panic and a few small tables were hastily put together and draped with cloths. 

Baccarat, a points based game similar to 21 or Pontoon had been regarded dubiously by the authorities for its gambling connotations but with HRH as Banker and a General taking on the role of the croupier no questions would dare be asked on the grey area of legality. 

One of the players was, by contemporary accounts, the handsome, womanising, witty and yet arrogant and rude Sir William Gordon-Cumming. Aged 42 he was a lieutenant colonel in the Scots Guards and a long time acquaintance and close friend of the Prince of Wales. They had travelled up to Yorkshire together. 

The Baccarat game was taken up by the hosts, another couple and yet more aristocrats and pillars of society. There was a modest bank of £100 and although the women took a few shillings worth of counters the menfolk were more ambitious in terms of stakes and potential winnings. 

Sir William won, over a couple of after dinner sessions on 8th and 9th of September the sum of £225 (£20000 today) but those present around the table were far from happy about his playing practice. 

As the house party was coming to an end Sir William was made aware that five of the players had made statements to others that he had cheated at cards and had defrauded the Bank. 

The basis of the claims were that Sir William had regularly placed a larger stake on the table after his cards had been declared using subversive and underhand means in order to accumulate a higher amount of winnings. Furthermore, if the hand of cards was against him he was withdrawing, in the same clandestine way, a portion of his stake. 

The magnitude of the scandal might be difficult to appreciate in a modern context but at the time it was huge and with massive ramifications by association for the future king and the honour of the ruling classes. 

In order to prevent the allegations from being known beyond the walls of Tranby Croft Sir William was approached and confronted with an ultimatum. His accusers, for their guaranteed silence wanted a virtual admission of guilt and also an undertaking that he would give up playing cards for the rest of his life. 

Under pressure from his own allies he reluctantly signed the document but later retracted and took out an Action for Slander which involved hosts Mr and Mrs Wilson, the Lycett Greens and Mr B Levett. 

Sir William referred to his slanderers as no more than a parcel of boys and claimed in his action the sum of £5000 from each named party. 

On the day of the court hearing there was a clamour for ticketed seats in a room otherwise crammed to capacity with Counsel and around 60 to 70 junior barristers. In cross examination Sir William vehemently denied the accusation of cheating although he did comment that he had been a bit distracted in his normal Baccarat gaming by the impromptu tables and covering cloth which had made putting forward his counters awkward. The surface was uneven and he had used a sheet of paper over the cloth to help his playing. 

There was quite a robust exchange in the legal questioning. 

Sir William accepted that he could see the cards held by those closest to him but this did not in any way influence the level of his stake. In answer to Counsel he also said that he did not keep counters in his pocket. 

His notoriety but also popularity was seen as a positive factor in the proceedings and the case was very much in the balance. 

That was until HRH Prince of Wales was called to the witness stand. 

His presence was the first of a member of a royal family since 1411 and all in the court listened intently to his evidence. Although he had not seen any signs of cheating he did state that he thought Sr William was guilty. Further doubt on the character of Sir William came from HRH's comment that he had asked for a white line to be drawn on the card table to separate the players from his role as Banker. 

In his summing up of the main issues in what was seen as shamelessly supporting the opinion expressed by HRH the presiding Judge swayed the Jury to find for the five defendants in the action. 

Punishment for Sir William was swift with his dismissal, the very next day, from the army and he was a social outcast for the rest of his life. 

The role of the future king should not go unnoticed. 

He himself was exposed to many scandals with his mother Queen Victoria frequently chastising him for being part of a "fast racing set" of gambling and philandering. The legal case should really have been heard in a military court and an unblemished record in service may have resulted in a lower level of sanction but Sir William may have been swayed by advice from his friend HRH to bring a Civil Action.

They were known to be thick as thieves and Sir William's house in Belgravia was regularly used by the future King for his assignations. It was a rumour that HRH had on one occasion returned unexpectedly early to London to find one of his mistresses entangled with his friend. They may even have had at one time or another the intimate attentions of Lillie Langtry, Sarah Bernhardt and Lady Randolph Churchill. 

You can come to your own conclusions about whether there was an element of royal revenge and vindictiveness contributing to the downfall of Sir William. 

Knobs and thingummyjigs

I have not spoken this particular word for some time. 

I suppose that in certain social situations and amongst those who would consider themselves either experts, enthusiasts or just collectors it would be mentioned frequently. It is a word synonymous with the spirit of scientific and commercial co-operation. 

It is Bakelite. 

To those of a certain generation, and from which in my 6th decade I would actually exclude myself, anything made or fashioned in Bakelite still holds a certain style, mystique and appeal. I do come across it on a periodic basis in residential properties of the halcyon period of its production and availability in such things as electrical socket and light switch facings, drawer and cupboard knobs, casings of older audio and visual appliances and as part of objets' d'Art and other miscellanea. 

Bakelite has claimed its place in human history as the first synthetic plastic and amazingly this was in the first decade of the 20th Century. 

There had been earlier experimentation and production of substitutes for increasingly scarce natural resources. A shortage of ivory caused enough concern amongst the manufacturers of billiard balls to announce a competition to find a replacement. 

Two brothers in 1863, the Wesley-Hyatts found a way to combine natural compounds of cellulose nitrate and camphor into what became celluloid. 

Bakelite, in being synthetic represented a major innovation due to the hard work and not without disappointment and set-backs of Leo Baekeland (1863 -1944). The entry in his laboratory notebook at the time of his discovery reads  

"I found tube broken perhaps in irregular expansion but the reactions seems to have been satisfactory because the resulting stick was very hard and below where there was some unmixed liquid A there was an end (?) of solidified matter yellowish and hard and entirely similar to the product obtained by simply heating A alone in sealed tube. This looks promising and it will be worth while to determine in how far this mass which I will call D is able to make moulded materials either alone or in conjunctions with other solid materials as for instance asbestos, casein, zinc oxid (sic), starch, different inorganic powders and lamp black and thus make a substitute for celluloid and for hard rubber"

Bakelite

The properties and uses of Bakelite illustrated its versatility.

Bakelite could be moulded and very quickly, which was an enormous advantage in mass production processes where many identical units were produced one after the other. 

Bakelite was a thermosetting resin—that is, once moulded, it retains its shape even if heated or subjected to various solvents.

 Bakelite was also particularly suitable for the emerging electrical and automobile industries because of its extraordinarily high resistance (not only to electricity, but to heat and chemical action as well). It was soon used for all non-conducting parts of radios and other electrical devices, such as bases and sockets for light bulbs and electron tubes, supports for any type of electrical components, automobile distributor caps and other insulators.

Along with its electrical uses, moulded Bakelite found a place in almost every area of modern life. From novelty jewellery and iron handles to telephones and washing-machines impellers, Bakelite was seen everywhere and was a constant presence in the technological infrastructure. The Bakelite Corporation adopted as its logo the mathematical symbol for infinity and the slogan, "The Material of a Thousand Uses," but they recognised no boundaries for their material.

The Achilles heel was however colour. The pure Bakelite resin was an iconic amber, and it could take other colours as well but unfortunately, it was quite brittle and had to be strengthened by "filling" with other substances, usually cellulose in the form of sawdust. 

After filling, all colours came out opaque at best and often dull and muddy. 

In my own experience I have only ever seen the mass produced black or dark brown incarnations . 

It would be inevitable that consumers who demanded greater choice and range of colours and finishes would ensure that Bakelite was replaced by other plastics that shared its desirable qualities, but could also capture the imagination of the new market trends amongst an aspirational and increasingly wealthy. 

Many examples of Bakelite products have however survived and to become sought after for their pioneering desirability, functional beauty and sheer collectability. 

Abandon Chip twice cooked

Another favourite and brought to mind when passing the location of the former football ground now a supermarket just yesterday in the pouring rain...... 

Statistically it must be a sporting record.

I would be interested to hear to the contrary.

Scarborough Football Club, one of the oldest club sides in English Football founded in 1879 played for 120 years before suffering their first ever relegation.

It had been a modest start with a group from a cricket club in the North Yorkshire seaside town upping stumps in pursuit of another out of season sporting activity to keep limbs and minds active. The next 8 years were as part timers in local leagues and in 1927 the club turned Professional and was accepted into the Midlands League.

The inter war period represented the halcyon days for football at all levels in the country with good levels of support, both in feet on the terraces and monies in the club bank account. The 1937 to 1938 season saw a record attendance at the Seamer Road sports ground of 11,162 against Luton Town in the FA Cup.

In the 1970's Scarborough FC had some adventures in the same competition and also found themselves playing in the Anglo-Italian Cup where there were victories against Udinese and Parma.

Progress in the lower leagues had been slow but methodical and as Champions of the Conference Division in 1987 under Neil Warnock's managership Scarborough became the first team to reach the mainstream English Football League by such a tortuous route.

The Fourth Division then, or League 2 as it is now known, represented the big time for the club and town. In a pioneering sponsorship a major employer, McCain, famous for its oven chips, purchased the naming rights for the football ground and team shirts and Seamer Road became the McCain Stadium.

The small ground of capacity 6,408 was located on the south side of Scarborough on the western edge of a main approach and nestled below steep valley sides including the local landmark and occasional motor bike racing circuit of Olivers Mount.

A famous 3-2 win over Chelsea in the League Cup in 1989 gave the club a giant-killing reputation and there was another good run in the FA Cup in the 1992 to 1993 season before being knocked out 1-0 by Arsenal who were eventual winners over another proud Yorkshire Team in Sheffield Wednesday. The forays into the inter-league competitions were a bonus although the club's time in the lowest division was not without it's high points including just losing out in a promotion to Division Three after losing to Torquay in a Play-off.

The circumstances of Scarborough's first ever relegation in 1999 have gone down in football folklore although for the wrong reasons and in favour of another team. The final day of the season saw Scarborough at home to Peterborough United with rivals for the drop, Carlisle playing Plymouth Argyle. At the end of the match at the McCain Stadium and as it stood in  both games at 1-1 there was a pitch invasion by the Seasiders in celebration of surviving a twelfth season in the Football League. This was shortly to turn to despair as in Cumbria, in the last kick of the game the Carlisle goalkeeper, Jimmy Glass, in a legendary exploit came up the full length of the pitch and as a corner kick swung in he scored the matchwinner, saving his own team but pushing Scarborough out of the top flight.

It proved to be a very slippery slope and within a few years Scarborough FC were in dire financial crisis. It was hoped that the Stadium site could be sold for a housing development with the proceeds expected to clear the accumulated debts of £2.5 million as well as providing a surplus to fund a new ground farther out of the town. A old Covenant in the Deeds for the football ground dedicating its use for sporting activities only was an obstacle too big to surmount, any prospects of a last minute salvation foundered and in June 2007 the club ceased to exist.

The title of this blog is taken from a Fanzine for the club showing a sense of topical but black humour.

I drive into Scarborough on a regular basis and the sight of the abandoned and derelict former Stadium site is a poignant reminder of the fortunes of a football team and serves as a salutory warning to those clubs just about keeping their heads above the mire of financial meltdown.

Down to Earth

This is another favourite from 5 years ago...................................

In a farmers field in the East Yorkshire Wolds of the UK there is a small monument to mark the spot where a meteorite fell in 1795. It just missed an agricultural worker whilst toiling amongst the root crop but the rare fragment was seized by the landowner and shamelessly hawked around the country for material gain for many years thereafter.

There have been , it is thought, only 24 official meteorite falls in the British Isles and so finding a meteorite quickly means it can be preserved before it gets weathered by the Earth. Who knows how many fragments just go unnoticed after surviving the fiery extreme temperatures of the upper atmosphere.

The biggest meteorite to hit the UK landed in a small village in Leicestershire one Christmas Eve. Fifty years on, the search for its highly valuable fragments is far from over.

The last thing Percy England expected on Christmas Eve was for a 4,000,000,000-year-old meteorite to put a hole through his brand new Vauxhall Viva.

There had been no warnings of the shower of rocks. The meteor plummeted through the Earth's atmosphere on a cold December afternoon in 1965. It could have hit Leicester but instead broke up over the nearby village of Barwell just after sunset.

The pieces found scattered across houses and streets on Christmas Day sparked a frenzied meteorite hunt. The fragments are still being studied by the Natural History Museum. They are also highly sought after by collectors. In 2009, a 2lb (0.9kg) piece made £8,000 at auction.

People are being encouraged to bring any meteorite pieces that they might have squirreled away to the anniversary event this year. "It would be brilliant if they could," says Dan Kendall, curator of the National Space Centre. But their stories of what happened are just as valuable, he adds.

Most recollections of the meteorite strike start - appropriately enough for Christmas Eve - with a bright light in the sky. It was followed by a sonic boom.

When a meteor travels faster than the speed of sound it creates a shock wave, explains planetary scientist Leigh Fletcher from the University of Leicester. In 2013, the shock wave from the Chelyabinsk meteor in Russia was picked up by scientists more than 9,320 miles (15,000 km) away in Antarctica.

In Barwell, the booming sound was heard by Fletcher's mother-in-law. She was taking a dog for a walk in a cow field when she heard a tremendous crash. A group of carol singers set out across the village soon after and felt something crunching under their feet as they went.

At one point, 26-year-old Rosemary Leader picked up a piece of the rubble to examine it under the light of the street lamp before throwing it away. "I was out carol singing, I didn't want to carry a lump of rock around," she says.

A few people didn't notice anything amiss until Christmas Day. The first thing Percy spotted was the hole through the bonnet of his new car. Other people had woken up to find similar holes in the tarmac, windows and roof slates.

Within a few hours the news had filtered out that a meteorite had crashed over the village.

"My dad immediately got on to the insurance," says his son Trevor. "They came back saying it was an act of God. So the next thing he did was to write a letter to the insurance company which began 'Dear Mr God'."

Percy was never paid. But others managed to cash in during the next month. The news took a few days to break properly. As soon as it did the town was flooded by meteorite hunters.

Museums offered money for fragments of the space rock. "There was a bit of a gold rush, really, in Barwell," says Kendall. Even the astronomer Patrick Moore joined the hunt.

About 97lbs (44kg) of meteorite was recovered. "When they put it back together, it was about the size of a Christmas turkey," says Kendall. It's rare to recover so much of a meteorite in a place like the UK.

The mud and vegetation makes them hard to spot, explains Natasha Almeida, assistant meteorite curator at the Natural History Museum.

It's even rarer to see a meteor fall and then actually find it afterwards.

"You've basically almost got a time capsule," adds Kendall. The Barwell meteorite, he explains, is older than the Earth itself.

But the Barwell meteorite is special for another reason. A pebble was found inside one of its fragments. "It has characteristics of different types of meteorites," says Almeida, who is studying some of the Barwell pieces.

"There could have been another body that formed, another asteroid, that smashed into pieces and after a bit of that was incorporated into the asteroid that the Barwell came from."

The pieces that were recovered might slowly be revealing their secrets. But there are thought to be plenty more still missing.

"There are an awful lot of people with their little bits of meteorite tucked away somewhere," says Margaret Pickering. Her husband was lucky in the hunt all those years ago. "We do have a little bit of meteorite," she adds.

Margaret says she will bring it to a celebration of the crash landing . The village has changed a lot since the 1960s. Many of the fields littered with meteorite no longer exist. But "there are probably lots of pieces still there waiting," she adds.

The largest Barwell piece will be returning to where it fell half a century ago this December. It's value has not been disclosed but then again some things are just, by their very story, priceless. People are being encouraged to bring any meteorite pieces that they might have kept to the anniversary event.

Dr Fletcher suggests that every story and piece of the meteorite connects Barwell to something much bigger.

He said: "It's the debris from the birth of our solar system. It's no wonder people keep a piece of it tucked away in a box."

 

Source document in BBC News Magazine

Red Hot in Hull

This in an interesting story from The Hull Packet Newspaper in March 1858. 

It has a lot of social comment as it involves the status and influence of one of the main industrial families of that era and the plight of the ordinary working man. 

The main protagonist is Mr George Reckitt, one of the three sons of the founder of the Reckitt Empire, Isaac Reckitt and who would, upon the death of his father only four years on become promoted to the Board to take the fledgling company into its halcyon days of production and early profitability. 

The Reckitt name has strong philanthropic associations in Hull due to charitable work and in particular the establishing of early twentieth century social housing by George's brother, James in the leafy district of Garden Village in the East of the city. 

On a March afternoon the aspiring George was walking along the western side of one of the dock basins, Princes Dock. 

It was a very mixed area just on the southern fringes of central Hull characterised by poorer calibre artisan dwellings, commercial premises, timber yards and, following its acquisition in 1845 by C and W Earle, a thriving and very bustling Junction Foundry and Engineering Works. 

His reasons for being in a rather dodgy part of town may have been worthy of question. 

He was just passing alongside the walls which bounded the Foundry, quite imposing brick markers of some nine, ten or eleven feet high when he felt something on his person. An object had fallen from somewhere above him and the shock of it had caused him to involuntarily take evasive action and make a sprightly avoiding manouvre. 

It appears that Earles, a very well known and respected company of Shipbuilders and Repairers were working on a vessel close to their outer wall and quayside of the Dock. 

Gathering his composure George Reckitt then saw a piece of glowing, red hot iron of a hefty 10 to 12 pounds in weight take the same trajectory as the earlier object and hit the ground on the very spot that he had just vacated. 

Within seconds the head and shoulders of a boy popped up over the top of the wall.

George recounted to the lad what had evidently been a narrow escape from injury or worse by the molten fragment to which the youth rather meekly replied " The man below should have told me". 

Perhaps lesser figures in society will have felt that a verbal complaint was entirely sufficient to bring about a conclusion there and then to the chain of events but George wanted his day in Court and the matter was brought before the Hull Magistrates within a matter of days. 

The clout of the Reckitt dynasty will no doubt have hastened the legal process compared to mere mortals who will have had a prolonged wait for any chance of justice. 

The residing official said that given the good character of Mr Earle, the business owner and originator of the red hot fragment he had no doubts that he would be keen to have an example made of those responsible for the near-accident. 

Giving evidence the now community minded George expressed his desire to prevent anyone else from risking injury and that although he knew not the name of the boy he would certainly recognise him in any subsequent identity line-up. 

The Police were directed to give all necessary assistance to try to find out the name of the boy so that he should be brought to the Court and, on the case being proved, duly punished. 

I am still trying to find out what happened subsequently and will get back to you soon, if possible.