Leek and the 1918 flu pandemic

 

 

 

 

The last hundred years has seen 4 major flu pandemics, the 2009 outbreak follows pandemics in 1968, 1957 and 1918.The present swine flu outbreak has dominated the news media with increasingly hysterical reports of the potential impact of the disease. There are dreadful forecasts of the potential death rates from the disease. Local have responded to the crisis as well and are full of information on what to do if you are feeling unwell and where to collect the tamiflu drug should you or your family require it. Conjecture and rumour are flying. I heard a woman on Macclesfield railway station confidently assert when reports of the intial Mexican outbreak began circulating in April that it would not affect her as it was only poor people who were susceptible to the illness. As I walked through Leek yesterday I saw a poster outside a health food store in town advertising an herbal preparation which it assured readers could combat the virus.

 

 

As a consequence of this interest I thought I would carry out a little historical research into the major flu epidemic of 1918 - the Spanish Flu outbreak which proved so devastating to communities all around the world to see if there were any lessons to be learned. The pandemic of 90 years ago was caused by a deadly virus H1N1. Unusually most of its victims were healthy young adults; usually flu affects the very young or the elderly. It lasted from March 1918 to the summer of 1920 although the outbreak in the context of Leek was at its severest between October 1918 to January 1919. It was truly global killing people in remote communities in the Arctic and remote Pacific islands. It is thought anywhere between 50 to 100 million died and that a third of the worlds population- around 500 million- became infected. It was described as the "greatest medical holocaust in history" and may have killed more people than the medieval Black Death. In the UK it killed 300,000 people and in the US 750,000.

 

 

The illness was especially devastating in Africa and India where 17 million died. Entire villages were wiped out in Greenland and Alaska and 1 in 4 of the populations of South Pacific islands perished.

 

 

It was called "Spanish flu" because it was thought to have originated from that country. The disease is actually thought to have started in China, mutated in the US and arrived in Europe via the French ports. The main spreaders were Allied troops who were engaged in the last battles of the First World War. It is within that conflict that the virulence of the pandemic can perhaps be explained. Massive troop movements and close proximity and poor hygiene helped to increase transmission, this coupled with the privations of 4 years of war suffered by soldiers and civilians fatally weakened immune systems. Some historians have argued that the flu helped to tip the balance in favour of the Allied Armies as the illness hit the German and Austrian Armies first and the death rates in Germany were higher than in Britain and France.

 

Another factor that increased the occurrence of the illness was travel. Shipping made it easier for travellers to spread the illness to even the most remote communities and this, of course, is before the advent of global air travel. Those countries that escaped the worst of the pandemic were those such as Japan which put in place the most strict quarantine laws.

 

There are some similarities with the present Swine flu outbreak in that the first outbreak during the spring of 1918 was a mild "herald" form of the disease. The deadly second wave began in August in the United States and France and at this stage the virus mutated and spread helped on by very sick soldiers being sent on crowded trains to field hospitals. The scene was set by the autumn of 1918 for the H1N1 virus to begin its deadly work.

 

The space in the Leek Times for October 1918 are largely taken up with reports of the coming victory in the Great War but what is noticeable is that the reports of soldiers dying in the war increasingly mention influenza and not German bullets or shells.

 

Gunner Brunt of Upper Hulme dies of the illness, the report of his death tells rather tragically that he had served on the Western Front for 4 years and at the end of the war he had hoped to resume life as a farm labourer. Privates Ralph Vernon of 39 Broad St and Percy Osbourne of 10 Fountain St succumbed to the virus as does Sergeant Vigrass.

 

As the autumn progressed the Chief Medical Officer Dr McClew informed a local council meeting that more people had died of flu in the last month than the previous three months combined and that the illness had killed over 20 people in Leek. It is noted that Norton and Brown Edge are particularly badly hit. As a precaution all local schools are closed and remained closed for several weeks.

 

 By November the Leek Times offers its readers helpful advice in a 6 point plan

• Go to bed on first appearance of the symptoms

• Stop in bed until all aches are gone and if attacked don’t be alarmed.

• Keep cheerful and don’t worry

• Take best food you can

• Ventilate room well

• Avoid all excesses.

However by the middle of the month all reports of the progress of the epidemic are swept aside by news of victory as the German Army agrees to a laying down of weapons. The news is ecstatically received in Leek. Churches put on special services to thank God for deliverance and for the final victory. An editorial in the Leek Times opined on the conclusion of the war to end all wars.

 

"Right has vanquished might, civilisation has conquered barbarism and outraged humanity may now hope to see the day dawn when man shall no longer hate his brother man"

 

But there is always room for more prosaic considerations a correspondent from South Portland Street complains that reduced street lighting has lead to gloomy streets in the town.

 

More deaths are later reported in the paper such as Sergeant Oultram of Broad St sometime superintendent of Leek Public Baths.

 

The newspaper also carries adverts for various cures for the disease such as Blades Pine Cure at a shilling a bottle. It advisers purchasers to avoid the flu by inhaling the concoction from a hand kerchief. Those who wish to avoid the illness are advised to take Peps Preventative medicine- it seems to cure everything.

 

The early years of the 20^th century also see a growing appreciation of the role of women and the Leek Times reflects this trend with its own women’s page. It is written by Margaret Osbourne who clearly finds the pandemic trying.

 

 

" It is rather hard luck that the influence epidemic should have broken out just now and that we have a torrent of good advice from doctors on how to avoid influenza and at the same time very little opportunity to take that advice".

 

 

She cites the problems that the modern woman of 1918 has in following such advice

"rationed food, rationed fuel and trains and omnibuses full to bursting, we may as well ask for the moon".

 

 

But still deaths are reported that edition reports that the epidemic has killed a well respected employee of Brough, Hall and Nicholson George Howarth of 75 Shirburn Rd who leaves a wife and family. Mr Howarth was 38.Howarth’s death is typical of the age that many citizens of the town were dying. The ages of the dead were often in the 20s and 30s.

 

 Modern day research carried out on the bodies of the 1918 epidemic preserved in the permafrost of the Arctic have concluded that the H1N1 virus killed as a consequence of an over reaction of the body’s immune system which explains its virulence and the predominance of young adult victims. The strong immune systems of people in their 20s ravage the body, whereas the weaker immune systems of babies and older people cause fewer deaths. Another theory is that older people may have had some immunity developed from surviving an earlier influenza pandemic of 1889- the Russian flu outbreak.

 

December 1918 saw another 24 deaths in the town caused by the virus but at this stage the aggressiveness of the plague seemed to be running its course. One explanation for the reduction in the death rate is that doctors got better at treating the illness while another view is that the virus changed again into a less lethal strain.

 

  Other news in the town was equally grim; a warehouseman named Bratt who lived in Picton Street ran amok and attacked his wife and children with a hammer before cutting his throat with a razor.

 

On a lighter note town magistrates heard a case of disorderly conduct involving 6 youths in Derby Street who were arrested for signing "Auld Lang Syne" and forcing pedestrians into the road. Rev Parker who at on the bench aid that 5 of the youths belonged to the Boy Scouts Movement and he asked his colleagues on the bench to leave punishment to him as their Scoutmaster.

 

What lessons can we draw from the modern outbreak and the one 90 years ago? Well certainly today we have many advantages. In modern Britain we have an NHS, information systems such as the Internet, better diet and up to date drugs to fight the present H1N1 virus.

 

 

In 1918 however Britain had been at war for 4 years, civilians were used to putting up with hardships such as rationing, the experience of being surrounded by death and also to obeying orders. This meant that when doctors said stay at home, patients listened and were not likely to panic. People in 1918, and this is born out by the low key reporting in the Leek Times of the influenza epidemic, displayed a understated stoicism. They gritted their teeth and got on with it. Is this true of today when government help lines are besieged by the "worried well" and websites crash overwhelmed by queries? And when there is a fear of loosing your job how many people will ignore the advice to "isolate" themselves to reduce the risk of spreading the disease if they feel that an absence might result in an individual making themselves a likely candidate for redundancy?

 

 

As happened in 2000 over the petrol shortage panic is as infectious as any virus and how will people react if the pandemic does result in shortages? How will the "I want it now" generation "respond to rationing and restrictions? Perhaps the old fashioned virtues of stoicism and community spirit need to rediscovered, but whether we have time is of course another matter.

 

 

 

We're All In This Together

Having a 6-year-old daughter gives you an insight into childish tastes and fads. Top of the list as far as she is concerned is the films and characters in the "High School Musical" series. One of her favourite songs from High School Musical 1 is sung as the finale "Were all in this together" which coincidentally is the slogan of the Conservative led Government.

By this they mean that the hardships that many people are enduring at the moment are being equally shared between the powerful and the powerless, between the rich and the poor. But are they? 2011 will see the rise in VAT, cuts in services on which people on low incomes are most heavily dependent and job losses, which will swell the numbers of the unemployed of Leek.

I was talking to a couple in a local supermarket before Christmas. The husband was self-employed. His wife had a job with the local council, which was under threat. His business was failing and despite his best efforts he had not earned anything for months. The bad weather had not helped. He had tried leafleting in the affluent parts of Cheshire to try to drum up some business but to no avail.

He and his wife had tried everything and they were running out of possibilities.

I felt very sorry for them, as they both looked tired. He told me that they had little sleep and they discussed little else. They had tried to keep the enormity of the situation away from their children. Their greatest fear was that they would lose their house. They felt very guilty.

I’m pretty sure that this story could be replicated elsewhere in the area.

The notion that the rich are bearing equally all the harshness that the present cutbacks are causing ordinary people is patent nonsense. For example high-rolling bankers many of whom are due to collect multi-million pound payouts, have brought forward pay day to the end of December rather than wait until March as usual in order to avoid new government and European legislation.

And at the other end of the social scale?

Just before Christmas the independent organisation the Institute of Fiscal Studies calculated that the Governments plans to slash spending would push nearly 1 million more people into poverty. It will also lead to an increase for the first time in 15 years to a rise absolute poverty for 200,000 children nationally. Cuts in housing benefit alone will force many people further into hardship. A crude extrapolation of these figures to Leek’s population means that 2012/3 will mean that around 300 Leek residents and their children will find themselves destitute.

All in this together?
　
　

Leek pubs- is time about to be called?

"When you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves for you will have lost the last of England" Hillarie Belloc.　
I am delighted that the Roebuck in Derby St has opened its doors after being closed for a number of months. It used to be often said, and I haven’t checked this that there existed at one time 52 pubs in Leek. One for every week of the year. Sadly over recent years the number of boozers in Leek has been reduced so the return of an old stalwart like the Roebuck is to be welcomed. I think a moment’s pause is called for as I reflect on those Leek pubs that have gone to that great brewery in the sky. The Sea Lion with its very pleasant character, the vast Talbot –, surely something could be done with such a magnificent building and gothic clock tower, the quirky Earl Grey very much a throwback to the past in its ambience. And the list goes on the White Lion, Bulls Head, the Park and others have all had time called in recent years.

You see I have a long-term interest in the pubs of North Staffordshire. I owe my existence to a beer shortage in my father’s favourite pub in 1948, which led him to meeting my mother in the pub she frequented with her parents- the Glass Barrel in Copeland Street in Stoke (long gone). All the pubs that my grandfather was a regular such as the Globe, Rose and the Phoenix in Liverpool Road in Stoke no longer exist. As a child I remember going into the Red Lion in Glebe Street to collect a programme for the Stoke v Real Madrid centenarian friendly in 1963. The Red Lion was pulled down and rebuilt at the Tram Museum at Crich in Derbyshire. I was used to pubs from an early age. I was weaned on the publican’s apron.

The situation in Leek and Stoke for that matter is reflected nationally in truth the pub was in the long slow decline from its late Victorian peak. In 1900 there were over 99,000 licensed pubs a figure that had fallen to 75,000 by 1950. That figure is around 40,000 although it also including clubs. Nationally 53 pubs close every week many of them country pubs.

Pubs face a battle for their existence a combination of alternative social activities, cheapness of alcohol from supermarkets; smoking ban, high rents and the recession have reduced their numbers greatly. Is the end nigh?
Of course one should not be too gloomy and efforts have been made by local publicans to make their beer houses welcoming. The "Blue Mugge" hosts the very popular Tuesday night discussion group; the Wilkes’s Head has regular music sessions, and the occasional happening such as the long remembered night of the 14 Elvis Presley impersonators. The Swan is the meeting place of the local writing group and active Comedy Club. The Cock has proved very popular with blues enthusiasts. The Cock and the Roebuck now have on tap Joule’s beer the taste of which sets off a remembrance of things past and rumour has it that a Titanic Brewery outlet is to open in the town.

Perhaps it is too early to sound the death knell for the pub but when a pub closes consequences inevitably follow. The people who would have worked there will have lost their jobs. Locals who will have lost a favoured bolt hole. The choice of local people will have been diminished because there is nothing like a well used pub. The community will loose out and everyone will feel it.
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Love on the Dole

 

 

 

 

One of the aspects of using the public computers in Moorlands House in Leek is that you are right by the information point for people who are looking for work. Overhearing conversations from claimants and staff is regrettably all too easy. For instance there was a woman from Waterhouse who was looking for a work as a Carer in a Nursing Home, but faced insurmountable problems with her childcare. A man who did not want to go to Hanley because he did not like the Potteries and was of the opinion that a service ought to be provided in Leek. Incidentally the staff at Moorlands House thought the man’s objections amusing, so much for confidentiality in your dealings with staff on the Job Centre desk. In time in the next few months there will be others visiting the job centres in Hanley or using Moorlands House perhaps never having had to apply for benefit before. In a local supermarket I spoke to a local man employed by the City Council who was accepting his fate in the New Year with resignation. A woman who worked for the cash strapped SMDC whose husband had lost her job last year was less sanguine and angry at the senior management.

 

Currently there was a slight rise locally in the number of people claiming the main unemployment benefit- Job Seekers Allowance. The figure stands at just over 1100. Of course this only part of the story as there are many others in the area of working age on some form of benefits. It is a laudable aim of Government to get people into work, but there are two problems with this approach. Firstly are there enough jobs for people to apply for? Recent research indicates that 5 unemployed people are chasing 1 jobs . I would hazard a guess and say that the proportion is far higher in North Staffs A search for Leek jobs on the job centre plus and those in a 10 mile radius in mid December reveals just 7 jobs mainly cleaners or labourers on minimum wage. Some of the vacancies advertised are miles from North Staffs with curiously jobs in Peterborough and Cambridge cited as being local jobs. Many of the jobs are part time as well which brings me to the second problem. None of the jobs on offer indicate anything like a Living wage and therein lies the central problem. It is not primarily an issue about benefits being too high, the problem is wages are too low. Over 6 million people are in work poverty- myself amongst them

 

As proof of my view that benefits are not too high consider the value of Job Seekers Allowance at £65.45 a week. The value of unemployment benefit/ job seekers allowance has fallen in relation to average wages since the late 70s- then it was 22% of average earnings and now it is 10%. It is hardly living a life of Riley on £65 quid !!

The late Robert Freeman

I used to know the father of Robert Freeman the man whose murder was reported in the Sentinel with the result of the trial. Two men were found guilty of his death and are currently awaiting sentence; a third was found guilty of manslaughter. This terrible case is compounded by the killing four years earlier of Robert Freeman’s sister Julie. Both deaths were drug related.

I last saw David Freeman, Robert and Julie’s father nearly 40 years ago. We were both pupils at Carmountside High School on the Abbey Hulton estate in Stoke from 1966-71. We were also members of a group of lads " The Birchfield Mob that included David and his brother Robert, the Reeves brother’s, Eric Robinson, "Danny" Kaye, myself and others whose names whose names now elude me.

We used to be activity that might have led to an ASBO now although in reality in did not stretch further than trespassing, apple scrumping, annoying adults and kicking a football around an oval in Eaveswood Road. Typical laddish things. David and I were in the same class and I tended to hang around with him and the others. David was very good with his hands in metalwork and woodwork. He was industrious a good sportsman and from memory thoughtful and quite considered. He could stick up for himself.

The Freeman family were like many others on the Abbey Hulton estate. Hard working, companionable, family centred. This was the Abbey Hulton that I knew in the years before DC- Drugs came.

I can probably date when hard drugs made its first appearance on the streets of Abbey Hulton. I was working on the Abbey as an Education Welfare Officer in late 1981. The first heroin -related death was of a young man named Harvey who was found dead in a shed. He probably died of hypothermia as temperatures that winter were frequently below zero.

I think heroin appearing on the streets and the massive growth of unemployment during 1980-1 is no coincidence. You destroy a set pattern of how people are expected to lead their lives on a council estate like Abbey Hulton or Chell Heath or Bentilee or anywhere else and something came to occupy that vacuum. We have been playing the price ever since.


The irony is that areas like Abbey Hulton were quite socially conservative areas and my peers at High School were very disdainful of the drug culture in the early 70s. I bought a copy of a Stones album into the 5th year common room once and some made dismissive comments about Mick Jagger's cannabis habits.

All that began to change scarcely a decade later and drugs have wrecked havoc destroying lives and undermining communities ever since.

I witnessed the desolation that that involvement in drugs can cause on Wednesday 6th September 2000.

I remember the date very well. I was working in Tameside for the mental health organisation Mind and in the late morning a youth called at the office to say that there was something wrong with his friend who lived opposite the offices in Ashton
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Another worker and I went over the road and entered a very run down flat. On the stairs there was rubble and in a first floor room we found his friend slumped on a settee.


The TV was on and a can of beer on a small table beside him. The man was dead, very grey and purple in the face. A small syringe was sticking in the back of his right hand.


On the walls of the decaying room were an England Football scarf, a poster of the film "Trainspotting" and pictures of the dead man whose name was Terry McGuire and a small child, his daughter.


McGuire was in his late 30s. Evidently McGuire who had been out of Strangeways Prison a few months. He had died from a toxic batch of heroin that had killed many users in the North West that autumn.
It seems that the dealers mix the heroin with all sorts of rubbish including brick dust.

Currently we have a situation where it is the dealer who chooses price, purity, cutting agents as well as business location and operating hours. And these dealers certainly are not asking minors for ID, nor are they encouraging their customers to moderate or abstain from drug use.

Sooner or later national politician will have to grasp the nettle of decriminalisation and legalising drugs. I'm of the opinion like former Labour minister Bob Ainsworth drug addiction is a public health issue rather than a criminal one. Mr Ainsworth deserves credit for starting that debate. Because unless we realise that we need a new strategy to tackle drugs fundamentally decent families like the Freeman’s will continually be burying their children
　

Closing Leek's Tourism Centre would be folly

Leek is in a very fortunate position for a town of 20,000 in terms of media coverage. How many towns of a comparable size can boast the positive publicity that Leek has received in the last 12 months from the national media? The Times opined last February that "Leek, known to the locals as the Queen of the Moorlands, might be the ideal base from which to explore this beautiful part of England, but it is also a town that you will be glad to return in time for tea". About the same time the Guardian journalist drawn by the Sir Gawain legend remarked "Leek is quite everyday – pleasant, with a strange touch of the northern mill town about it for one so south. Yet even here there's a flash of magic: around the summer solstice" and many visitors to the town have remarked to me the attractiveness and charm of the town. The folksinger Johnny Coppin at the Christmas event at All Saints last weekend called the place a " little bit of Old England".

And yet the District Council is about to make the foolishly short-sighted proposal to review with the intention to remove the Tourist Information Centre from the Market Square and house it in the council offices. This in enacted would be a very ill judged suggestion.

Leek stands on the edge of a national park. I cannot think it conceivable that other towns of the same population that stand on the edge of an area of outstanding national beauty would consider such a proposal. In my view Leek should be increasing its efforts to attract visitors to the town to those unique qualities that make Leek an interesting place to come to. Its history, its association with people like Oscar Wilde, William Morris, Tolkein and John Betjeman. It’s good food and great pubs. Its buildings and character remarked upon by many writers. Its location between the white and dark peak landscape.

 The potential for development with the Staffordshire Hoard being based partly in Stoke, the matter of the James Brindley the great canal builder tercentenary in 2016 and the Churnet Valley railway developments. All these and more could a great springboard to attract people into the town. But all we get is retrenchment, retreat and resignation when what is wanted is renewal..
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In praise of the local eccentric

One of the qualities that the English take pride in as being an integral aspect of the race is eccentricity, if not in oneself at least admiring eccentricity in others. Dottiness, I think, many of us would say, is the salt and pepper of national life. Everyone likes a character, fortunately I think Leek is the sort of place where in the past the idiosyncratic are at least tolerated and at best embraced by the local community. But first what do we mean by the eccentric?

In the 1930s the Derbyshire born writer Edith Sitwell wrote a book on English Eccentrics and in her view the eccentric was someone who was unafraid of what others may think of them. A sort of innocence surrounds the true eccentric. The first rule in being an oddball is that they do not recognise their actions as being strange. It follows that the person who calls themselves eccentric cannot truly be so called, the eccentric believes what they do as being perfectly normal.

Lord Bath perfectly articulates this perception in a recent comment to a French journalist,
 Eccentrics have often been found amongst the ranks of the aristocracy. The reason for this is simple, the aristocracy had enough money to hide a quirky member of the family on the estate and allow them to potter about harmlessly, the oddball poor especially in the past were simply locked away in the county asylum.
English Eccentrics continues a number of examples of the odd behaviour of the landed gentry such as Jack Mytton a squire in the neighbouring County of Shropshire who set himself alight with brandy in order to cure a bout of hiccups, or Lord Berners who painted doves’ different colours on his Cotswold estate.

And we faced up to our greatest danger in 1940 when the fate of the nation was in the hands of an eccentric in the form of Winston Churchill. The Historian A J P Taylor wrote "We were led to victory by a sardonic old fellow who wore funny clothes and drank wine at breakfast".

Perhaps the eccentric label is often applied loosely and too frequently. It is easy now to view with amusement the babblings of erratic pseudo scientists and flat-earthers, as well as those we have dubbed UFO obsessed, but that was the same fate suffered in their respective days by Galileo, Freud and Charles Darwin. It would be easy to classify the Wright brothers, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford as eccentric because they all held to some wild-eyed theories or suffered from bizarre conduct or belief, but their serious accomplishments far outweigh their peccadilloes. In fact, their touches of madness may have sparked their genius.
　
Recent medical research which questioned a number of people whose behaviour could be thought as unconventional came up with a number of conclusions. Eccentrics tend to be longer living and healthier than everyone else as they suffer less from stress. They tend to visit their GP less than the normal. They are more curious about the world and of a higher intelligence. The unconventional have a good mischievous sense of humour and have little regard for themselves often being strangely dressed and untidy; there spelling has a tendency of being highly individualistic. They also are very talkative and are frequently opinionated.

 Eccentrics are also greater hoarders and collectors and they tend to be fixated once they stick on something.
I was thinking on this when I saw a picture of Ralph de Tunstall Sneyd dressed as a Druid in Wetton during the 1920s. There was also a picture of him with a large sword in the Hall in Winchester wherein is kept the Round Table. Sneyd is holding the broadsword reverentially. He bought the sword down with him on the train- try to attempt a similar feat now and see how far on the Rail network you would get. When Sneyd died the local paper carried a tribute to a man who was regarded as being generally odd.


In religion he was eclectic. He was a devout Catholic…he was a Theosophist and a follower of the remarkable woman Madame Blavatsky... a true Buddhist… A reverent Druid… he spoke seriously about the lost word.
Sneyd’s belief system seems to be all encompassing

As I said at the onset the area warms to its characters and perhaps over the years there has been a democratisation as far as the eccentric is concerned and the type is no longer simply confined to landed estates and stately homes.

My favourite eccentric in Leek in recent years was Mr Sydney Smith who I first met a few years before he died in 2004. I made the error of getting caught up in a long conversation with him. It involved him quoting from memory large sections from a PG Wodehouse novel and a conviction that one of his cats had returned from the dead. He also had rather strange opinions on radio waves. It took me a long time to get away, but I did not begrudge him his ability, to use a beloved Wodehouse phrase, of "collaring a conversation". Mr Smith certainly did wear the mantle of eccentricity as indeed did the aforementioned Ralph de Tunstall Sneyd, and it is to the poet and collector of Onecote I return.

I was drawn by the sheer strangeness of Sneyd’s actions take for example his Druidic ceremonies held in Wetton during the 1920s. Sneyd wanted to establish an English equivalent of the Gorsedd in Wales- a meeting of priests and druids. The interest in alleged ancient religious practices had attracted people for centuries previous to Sneyd’s interest.

The druid first starts to appear as a stock literary figure, an ancient British priest and philosopher-seer, in the sixteenth century. Inigo Jones the artist included in one of his masques a druid portrayed as a bare legged, long-haired, bearded figure in a shaggy tunic, wearing an oak garland and carrying a phial and dagger. This was apparently based on a contemporary description of ancient German statues thought wrongly to represent druids.

This was to become the standard visual representation of the druid, right down to the present day. Despite attempts to link them with the monuments such as Stonehenge it seems that they have nothing to do with it representing a religious movement which came into existence 1000 after Stonehenge had been built. Modern Druidism owes its existence to a reaction against the Industrial Revolution, the first Gorsedd was held on Primrose Hill in London in 1792 and it was conducted in English. This reality meant nothing to Sneyd as he believed himself to be a reincarnation of the 7^th century Welsh poet Taliesin. Sneyd believed that he in turn would be reincarnated as a goat.

The ceremony was first held on the 14^th September 1926 at Wetton when crowds of onlookers, including representatives of the national press saw flags depicting dragons and St George billowing out over the Peak countryside. The bards were clothed in green, but towering over them at 6 feet 4 inches was the imposing figure of Ralph with a shock of white hair dressed in a long red robe and carrying a broadsword.
If an interest in paganism was not enough there was also Ralph’s earlier fascination with Theosophy which lead to an invitation to, as far as I am aware, the only speaker at the Nicholson Institute ever to have a national day proclaimed after him as well as appearing on a national stamp.

The Theosophy Society was founded in New York by Madame Blavatsky a controversial figure together with Henry Steel Olcott an American journalist. The Society developed in response to the interest shown in the Victorian period with spiritualism and Eastern religions .Throughout her involvement with Theosophy Madame Blavatsky had to defend herself against allegations of fraud and of being a charlatan. In 1887 she had to leave India hurriedly after being exposed as a hoaxer during a séance. Sneyd who was fascinated with the occult met Blavatsky in 1889. He fell under the spell of the movement and arranged that Olcott give a talk on Theosophy at the Nicholson Institute in November 1889.

Olcott was a very interesting man who was the only Yankee journalist to attend the execution of John Brown after the failed uprising at Harper’s Ferry- an event which was one of the sparks of the American Civil War. He was also a member of the board of inquiry set up after the assassination of President Lincoln. He later moved to Ceylon or Sri Lanka as it is now known and was one of the instigators of the Buddhist Nationalist revival which fuelled the independence movement. He is commemorated on a Sri Lankan stamp and the death of his death 19^th February is honoured by the lighting of candles. Olcott was one of the first people to promote an interest in Buddhism in the west.
　
Sneyd also passes another test of the eccentric, the fascination with collecting things. It is recorded that he had over 700 Buddha’s at his house at Onecote where we kept in a barn that he had restored around which he built battlements in the First World War "to keep the Germans out". And there were the Egyptian Mummies one reputed to contain the body of Ptolemy Philadelphus II-the grandson of Anthony and Cleopatra. Sneyd’s treatment of these artefacts was unusual annually the mummies were taken outside to be revarnished, a practice which would cause conservationalists apoplexy today.

He went on to see the Second World War end and the return of a Labour Government- an event that as a Tory of the old school he must have loathed. He is regarded with affection with older residents of the area who remembers his strange unworldly ways such as spreading mustard on to teacakes. He died in 1947 and was buried in a monk’s habit. On his coffin was the great sword that he carried up to Thor’s Cave twenty years before.

Another individual who expressed an interest in reincarnation was the Cheddleton born Sybil Leek, the self proclaimed "Queen of the Witches" who was a contentious figure and a colourful one as well: her trademarks were a loose fitting cloak, hoods and a pet jackdaw called Mr Hotfoot Jackson and a snake named Sashima. She claimed to be the reincarnation of the Burslem witch Molly Leigh. Sybil maintained many things in her life for example that she had a friendship as a child with HG Wells. Lawrence of Arabia was also it is alleged a house guest as indeed was the aforementioned Edith Sitwell who must have recognised a fellow eccentric. Even Sybil’s birth date was the subject of some argument. She gave the date as 22^nd February 1922, while others now set the date at 5 years earlier
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She was interested in paganism and witchcraft from an early age and was on good terms with Aleister Crowley- the supposed most evil man in the World and a great self publicist and fraud. There is a story that Crowley and Leek visited Burslem to seek out Molly Leigh’s grave- a jackdaw perched on Leek’s shoulders. After the war Leek went to the United States and became a media star appearing on TV shows and becoming something of a celebrity. She claimed that she was also guided by the spirit of Madame Blavatsky and therefore made as much an impression in death on Sybil as she had made on Ralph de Tunstall Sneyd in life. She met and married a man named Brian.

During the Second World War she declared that she drew up a horoscope chart that encouraged Rudolf Hess- Hitler’s deputy- to attempt his ill fated flight to Scotland in 1941.
Sybil was also involved with a number of American celebrities including the then Governor Ronald Reagan who maintained an interest in clairvoyance throughout his life. She also had a friendship with the writer Robert Bloch best known for his novel Psycho.
　
She also believed that she could predict events and scored an undoubted hit with a prediction she made in the early 70s.

"There is one menace to the career and potential of George Wallace"- the candidate for the American presidency in 1972," Leek asserted in her Astrological Guide to the Presidential Candidates.

"The nearer he gets to his goal, the greater the danger of political assassination. Yet he is likely to transform this danger into an asset, for if an unsuccessful attempt is made on his life, he could turn it to winning many thousands of votes throughout the country."

Written in early 1971, these words were of more interest to horoscope buffs than to political ones. But when Arthur Bremer, nearly 18 months later, fulfilled the prophecy and shot Wallace, crippling the former Governor of Alabama some political pundits and poll watchers decided to take a closer look at what is written in the candidates' stars.

Not that Leek's peeks into the future always proved entirely accurate. She once predicted, for example, that in 1970 President Richard Nixon would become embroiled in a saucy sex scandal that would jeopardize his renomination by Republicans, nor did she predict Watergate which really did bring Nixon down.

She died in October 1983 after a long battle against cancer

Are eccentrics such as Sneyd, Leek and the rest under threat in this age of conformity and targets when individuality is frowned on certainly the eccentric behaviour chronicled here? I think it is probably the case. I blame the Government.

The aggressive promotion of conformity at the heart of the government's 'respect' agenda is bad enough in its own terms. It offers no sense of even trying to work out what we are as a society, and where we want to go. The culture of uniformity really means can be summed up in the grim philosophy: 'Be whoever you want to be - but behave, or else'.

When we shut ourselves off from authentically unconventional people, we lose an important way to put conventional wisdom to the test. When we fail to nurture and cherish eccentrics, we rob ourselves of great joy. The "town character" is becoming less of a fixture and wide-spread conformity is allowing fewer and fewer exceptions.
　"Me eccentric?" Not in the least, said the noble Lord, I am merely an individualist. In Lord Bath’s eyes, Le Figaro man at Longleat records, "it’s the rest of the world, marching in the opposite direction, that is a bit strange".