MR. ELLIOTT HOLLIER.
“ W. C. WOOD.
“ G. J. ENGLAND.
I am, Fellow Ratepayers,
YOUR WELLWISHER, AND ALSO A LOVER OF TRUTH.
Dudley, March 1856.
May 27th, 1856. After twelve days trial in London, William Palmer, Surgeon, of Rugeley, Staffordshire, was found guilty of poisoning his racing companion, Mr. J. P. Cook, at the Shrewsbury races. Palmer poisoned poor Cook with strychnine for the purpose of robbing him of a large sum of money which Cook had won at the races. Palmer was hanged at Stafford Gaol for this dastardly offence on June 14th following; the murderous wretch maintained the most callous indifference to all around him to the last. He was well known in Dudley.
May 29th, 1856. This day was kept as a general holiday throughout the country in commemoration of the Peace. Old Dudley Castle, which had “braved the Battle and the Breeze” for upwards of 800 years, was illuminated with a grand display of fireworks.
Died, August 19th, 1856, Thomas Badger, Esq., of the “Hill House,” Dudley. This genial, but blunt and frank old gentleman, was one of Dudley’s worthiest sons; his familiar figure daily moving in our midst, secured the esteem of all good people, and his quiet and unostentatious benevolence has gladdened the hearts of widows and orphans, when none were allowed to witness the tear of the giver. Mr. Badger (like a great many more of our Dudley worthies) began life in very humble circumstances, and rose step by step until he became Chief Magistrate of this Borough. He was for a lengthened period (along with his brother, Isaac Badger) very extensively engaged in the glass trade, the nail trade, the coal trade, and iron trades of this district, and it is not too much to say that Messrs. Badger Brothers at all times exercised the most potent influence upon the industries of Dudley and neighbourhood. As a large employer of labour, he was much respected by all his workpeople, and a cordial feeling always existed between the head of the firm and the numerous employes both in the ironworks and collieries. In religion he was a sound Churchman, and in politics he belonged to the Tory party, but Mr. Badger was not a rabid politician, for he had the honour of once being requested to stand as a Candidate for the Borough of Dudley, on Independent principles, but he declined the honour. He was a most shrewd and active Magistrate for many years, and as Mr. Badger lived through perilous times his decisions on the Bench were always tempered with a wonderful insight into the human character, accepting Mercy and Justice as his motto. His personal friendships created a halo of kindly feeling and generous sentiment amongst a large circle of personal friends and acquaintances, which will be long remembered in Dudley, and his death, at the ripe old age of 75 years, was universally regretted. A marble monument in St. Edmund’s Church records his numerous virtues.
Died, suddenly, August 23rd, 1856, Mr. Joseph Pitchfork, Master for 30 years of Baylies’s School, Tower Street. Mr. Pitchfork was a man of very deep and extensive intellectual acquirements, and a more kind-hearted and genial soul never lived. Through his assiduity and zeal, for he was a real lover of his work, his educational training in Baylies’s School has bequeathed to this town and locality some of the foremost and most eminent commercial men in our midst, and it is a source of great pleasure to the author of these lines to witness and observe in his walk in life so many evidences of the estimable teaching of the late Mr. Pitchfork. So soon as his lamentable death became known, the following letter was issued, and a public meeting was convened at Baylies’s School Room, expressing condolence and sympathy with Mrs. Pitchfork and her family. A Committee of upwards of 60 gentlemen, many of them old pupils, was formed “for the purpose of raising a fund in grateful recognition of his valuable services rendered to the cause of education.”