Our First President - A E Marlow

A.E. MARLOW

The founding President of Northampton Rotary Club in 1921-22, Albert Ernest Marlow, was born on 11th December 1870.  He was clearly someone of unusual energy and capacity from the beginning, and as he became older he began to take part and came to feature prominently in local affairs in Northampton, his home town.  He was just 24, for instance, when page 3 of the Reporter for Wednesday 6th February 1895 records his reading a paper to the Northampton Young Men's Christian Union on "How to improve the interest of young men in the Churches".

He came from a shoe trade family, and after first working with his father he set up business over a butcher's shop at the top of Overstone Road.  His obituary in the Northampton Independent on 15th July 1922 said that  he started in 1899 the great factory at St James' End, which has been enlarged several times, and also became proprietor of the Mounts Factory and managing director of Messrs John Cave and Sons, Rushden.  At the same time he threw himself heart and soul into public life.

Councillor Marlow, a Liberal, became Mayor of Northampton on 9th November 1904 when still only 33, thought to be the youngest ever Mayor at least of modern times.  Living at the time at Skitterdene, the Avenue, Duston St James', and then having been in business on his own account as a shoe manufacturer for only five years, already he employed 700 people in St James' End, with an annual wage bill quoted on page 3 of that day's Northampton Chronicle as amounting to £35,000 to £40,000 (perhaps about £3 million today).  His official mayoral photograph shows a balding, rather round-faced man looking somewhat older than his 33 years, and wearing a splendid moustache with waxed horizontal points.

The newspaper coverage of Councillor Marlow's Mayor-making was cautiously optimistic about the prospects for an economic upturn in the town during the civic year ahead.  He automatically became President for his mayoral year of the Poor Children's Christmas Dinner Fund, founded in 1882 and still fulfilling a much-felt need following years of economic distress in the town.  (It had been acute during Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee year in 1897.)  An article in the Reporter for Thursday 22nd December 1904 (page 4) began by saying that "Offers of help are forthcoming to an extent very creditable to the charitable impulses of the townspeople.  Apart from the distribution of tickets for Christmas provisions, arrangements are being made for 6,000 children to have certain gifts all for themselves to be distributed to them at two o'clock on Boxing Day at the Town Hall".  The article goes on to list several donations, and hopes that several more will be thereby prompted.  Henry Edward Randall, who had himself been the Mayor in both 1893-94 and 1896-97, and whose birthday fell on Boxing Day, celebrated by giving 6,000 new pennies (c£53.50); Mr W.E. Wren gave 6,000 bags of sweets; the Mayoress (the former Miss Katie Bailey of Frithville, Lincolnshire, who had married the Mayor about ten years previously) gave 6,000 cards; and Mr Alfred Cockerill will, it is expected, extend his usual generosity by giving an orange for each child."  Finally, the report adds that "The old system of giving a dinner at the public halls only enabled about 1,200 or 1,300 children to have a meal, but by the new system of distributing tickets over 2,000 deserving families will be provided with a Christmas dinner.  The demand for tickets is greater than ever this year, and the committee, therefore, appeal to their fellow-townsmen to make the funds proportionate to the need".

During the next seventeen years his name (and sometimes, as printing processes evolved, his photograph) appeared often in the local press, usually in the context of a political or a business initiative of some kind.  He moved to Preston Deanery Hall, and became a County Councillor (being appointed Chairman of the Public Health Committee shortly before he died).  He also served as a J.P. (in addition, that is, to the automatic status as a J.P. which statute conferred on Mayors of boroughs at that time for their mayoral year and the year following).

Then in 1921 A.E. Marlow became the first President of the newly formed Northampton Rotary Club.  The Club's foundation, sixteen years after the movement's beginnings in America, was reported in the Daily Chronicle for Tuesday 31st May 1921 under the headline "Luncheon and High Ideals in Business: A New Organisation".  The paper listed those attending the first meeting the day before, and the objectives of Rotary.  From the beginning the ties between the Mayoralty and the Club were close: the current Mayor William Harvey Reeves, O.B.E. was there that day, as were former Mayors Marlow and Kilby (the Deputy Mayor), two other current councillors and the Town Clerk Mr. Herbert Hankinson, while still more had served on the Council or were related to people who had.  Some were freemasons.  The Chronicle for Tuesday 19th July reported that the Club held their first regular lunch meeting at the Exchange Café on Monday 18th July, by when they had about forty members, and the Rev. Canon Thompson Elliott from the parent Club in Leicester gave a talk on "The Aims and Objects of Rotary".  They left, apparently, having accidentally failed to pay for the drinks!

It is natural to suppose, and is given further proof from newspapers and other archives, that it was through Alderman (as he now was) A.E. Marlow's long experience of local need and charitable distribution that the Rotary Club became so heavily involved in the Christmas collections of successive Mayors for the next ninety years.  Certainly the Club was very active charitably from its start.  On Monday 19th December 1921, recorded page 8 of the Northampton Daily Echo on the following day, Rotarian W.P. Cross gave a talk on the unemployment situation after lunch, the meeting closing at 2.30pm.  On Christmas Day Rotarians W.P. Cross and W. P Hadley, with the local British Legion Secretary Mr R.H. Newbon, took parcels to ex-servicemen in four local hospitals and homes.

Sadly, 1921-22 was the only year of A.E. Marlow's Rotary Club membership; he died suddenly in London on 11th July 1922 aged only 51, shortly after his year as the first Club President had ended.  (He had invited the Club members to his home at Preston Deanery Hall for the following Monday.)  A lengthy obituary appeared in the Northampton Independent (of which he was a director, as well as being managing director of the Northampton Mercury Ltd) on pages 5 and 6 on 15th July 1922.  A week later the Independent covered his funeral and burial in Dallington Cemetery, including photographs, on no fewer than six pages, 14-17, 20 and 21.  Seventeen Rotary Club members were listed on page 16 among the very large number of mourners.

His large grave, on which are inscribed in capital letters "To live in hearts we leave behind, is not to die" and the Rotary motto "Service, not self" also records the deaths of two of his children in infancy in the early 1900s.  His son, Stanley John, was killed leading his men of the 4th Northamptons at Gaza, Palestine on 17th April 1917; his daughter Phyllis Kathleen died aged 37 on 18th April 1936; and his wife Katie, born on 15th April 1871 died long after her husband on 24th June 1964.  She is buried at Mortlake, Surrey.  (He also had three other daughters, named in the obituary, and another son Hector, then at Uppingham School.)

A.E.'s brother John H. Marlow was also President of the Rotary Club of Northampton, in 1927-28.

8/9/09                                                                                                                                                                        Roger Morris