To the Editor of the Daily Post.
Sir,—There is a paragraph in your edition of to-day respecting the banquet last evening, given by the town to the Earl of Dudley, in which the writer is facetious, regarding the indignant treatment to which it was proposed to submit the gentlemen of the Fourth Estate, and their noble protest against such treatment. Doubtless your sense of what is just and fair will admit a statement on the part of the committee of that dinner.
On Wednesday up to four o’clock 111 tickets had been sold—bought and paid for. The Mayor had been requested to reserve four for various parties, and six were kept for the invited guests, making in all 121. On Wednesday evening four more were issued, making 125; and on Monday evening, when the committee next met, a list of a dozen applications could not even be considered. Besides this 125, it was expected that some few guests might be present, and there were at least three (Mr. Melville, Mr. Campbell, and another); and careful and accurate measurement of the room had given as a result the utter impossibility of putting more than 128 into it. Where then, I ask, could the reporters be accommodated at dinner, being, as they might be, some six or eight? Arrangements were made for their dining, and as soon as space could be obtained, by the absence of the waiters, a table was placed for their accommodation in the centre of the room. We were perfectly willing to treat them as well as circumstances would allow, but we could not do what was palpably impossible.
I have only to add that a full report of the banquet shall be forwarded to you for Saturday’s Journal. The committee would have been best pleased to have a professional report; but in default of that must do the best they can to preserve a record of that portion of the events of the day.
I am, Sir, yours faithfully,
ONE OF THE COMMITTEE.
[Our reply to this is that there were only two papers represented, our own and the Wolverhampton Chronicle. The committee should have reserved two places for those reporters, no matter what the demand was. That is a prime article in the creed of all public dinner-giving committees, and a wise one we think.—Ed. Daily Post.]
Shortly after these civic proceedings were accomplished, the noble Earl laid the Foundation Stone of the Blind Asylum in the Tipton Road, which was built at his Lordship’s entire cost, as a home and maintenance for those unfortunate miners and stone quarry men, who are constantly losing their sight by explosions in his Lordship’s extensive mines. In consequence of these sightless men refusing to avail themselves of this charitable hospitality, this noble structure was tenantless for some years, until it was so liberally given up by the Earl of Dudley to the Trustees appointed by the late Joseph Guest, Esq., “for the purpose of founding a hospital in Dudley,” which has since that time been of incalculable benefit to the working classes, and now assumes vast usefulness as our renowned “Guest’s Hospital.” The following ceremony took place on that occasion:—
ELEVATION OF LORD WARD TO AN EARLDOM.