The Sub-Committee therefore appeal with confidence, upon this ground, to all those who recognize the importance of General Education to all Classes, and who, feeling that the question has long been decided whether Education is to be general or not, are anxious to render it as sound and comprehensive as possible.
Some of the neighbouring Towns of smaller population, and of less manufacturing importance than our own, are already in possession of Mechanics’ Institutions affording all the advantages proposed by this; and when the extent and character of the population of Dudley, and its position as the Centre of a great Manufacturing District are considered, it must be acknowledged that it possesses ample means for the establishment of an Institution that shall be at least equal to any in the neighbourhood.
To ensure this, general support alone is required, and therefore the Sub-Committee venture to solicit your individual patronage and active assistance; at the same time they have much pleasure in announcing a Donation of Fifty Pounds from the Right Honourable Lord Ward, with an Annual Subscription of Five Guineas, and also a Donation of Ten Pounds, and an Annual Subscription from John Benbow, Esq., M.P.
(Signed) on behalf of the Sub-Committee,
ELLIOTT HOLLIER, Mayor.
Dudley, February, 19th, 1848.
Died February 12th, 1848. Mr. John Allen, who held the office of Parish Clerk in St. Edmund’s Church for the lengthened period of thirty-seven years. Aged 86 years.
1848, February 22nd. A sanguinary and destructive Revolution broke out in Paris, which lasted six days, ending in the abdication and flight of Louis Phillippe, King of the French, and his family to England, wherein he afterwards died. A Republic was established on the wreck of this criminal revolution.
On the 25th of February, 1848, a large and influential meeting of all classes of the inhabitants of Dudley was held at the old Town Hall (Mr. Elliott Hollier, the mayor, in the chair), “for the purpose of petitioning the Legislature against the Income Tax, and in favour of a Property Tax alone.”
The following placard issued by our old Chartist leader, (Mr. Samuel Cooke), gives the public a pretty good notion of his views on this European calamity.