Newspaper Extract
Showmen attend Whiston Parish Church
November 1900We draw our readers attention to the public meeting of the Showman's Guild at Rotherham on the statutes fair on Sunday, the 4th inst. Detailed announcements of the gathering will be found on our advertising columns.
Rotherham and its public men have always taken a lively interest in the well-being of showmen and the education scheme for dealing with child life at the fairs.
It was the late Education Minister, the Right Hon. A. H. Dyke Acland¹, who, when member for Rotherham, so modified the education code of the country as to make it possible for the children of the shows to be admitted to the national schools.
The cruel thing was that under the old code the children were excluded from the schools, and one of the insults of the late George Smith's crude proposals was to punish the parents for the non-education of their children rigorously excluded by law from the primary schools of the kingdom.
It was a petition of the influential Rotherham gentlemen that brought the question before the education minister, and the result was the alteration of the code.
The Hon.Chaplain of the Showman's Guild, Rev. Thomas Horne, was curate of Whiston Parish Church, for about 5 years.
After the defeat of the Movable Dwellings Bill, the show people at Rotherham Statutes Fair made up their minds with one consent to attend the morning service at Whiston Parish Church on the Sunday of the fair week.
When the waggonettes hired in Rotherham to convey the show folk to the little village outside its borders reached the village green, amazement seized the inhabitants. The church warden found a third of the church (and the best seats, too) taken up with a crowd of well dressed people.
The chaplain, who was utterly unaware of the invasion until he saw the Guilds' men and women before him, preached an ordinary sermon. The dear old rector, a great invalid, merely remarked to the curate, "Some friends of yours, I presume, Horne?"
"Yes, a pilgrimage of gratitude," was the reply.
Source:The Showman World
Note: In 1892, Rev. Thomas Horne, Curate of Whiston, and son of a well-known showman, conducted a service in Randall Williams ghost show on the Rotherham Statute Fair Ground. Source
1. In December 1885 A. H. Dyke Acland was elected Liberal MP for the newly formed Rotherham division of the West Riding of Yorkshire with a majority which was one of the largest in the country. In a series of painstakingly researched speeches on education, land reform, and local government reform he established a reputation in parliament as a leading exponent of a new positioning of Liberalism, based on links with the working classes.
