90th Anniversary Club History Report
Written by the President for the 90th Anniversary
ROTARY CLUB OF NORTHAMPTON
1921-2011
THE NINETIETH ANNIVERSARY
The Rotary Club of Northampton met for the first time in an “ordinary meeting” on Monday 18th July 1921. The Club had been formed earlier that year following events described in the Northampton Daily Chronicle for Tuesday 31st May under the headline “Luncheon and High Ideals in Business: A New Organisation.”
Northampton, the paper said, “has a new organisation which promises to be of much interest and importance.” It described Rotary’s origins in Chicago, the success of the existing Club in Leicester, and the invitation to lunch that Councillor C.W. Phipps had issued to a number of business and professional men. The first meeting (at which there were nine present plus a couple of visitors from the Midland Rotary District), was on 12th April 1921 at the Grand Hotel. Those present having approved the proposal to form a new Club, on Monday 30th May there was a second lunch. Mr A.E. Marlow presided over the formal establishment of the Club. Others listed in the paper as present – the Club minutes say 21 members were there – were the Mayor (Councillor W. Harvey Reeves); Councillors F. Kilby, C.W. Phipps (the interim Secretary) and D.P. Taylor; Lt.-Col. John Brown, a doctor whose name is obscured, H. Hankinson (the Town Clerk), W.L. Holland, A.C. Boyde, Dr. Harries Jones, M.B. Fullerton, W.W. Hadley, John Dickens, P.H. Stevens, Sidney Adnitt, W.P. Cross, J. Blakeman, and Mt Bassett-Lowke. There were several listed apologies. Officers were elected, with A.E. Marlow the first President, and they decided to affiliate to the British Association of Rotary Clubs. They also adopted a formal Club constitution, printed later by Pillans and Wilson of 86 Hanover Street, Edinburgh, and fixed an annual subscription of two guineas, with one guinea as a joining fee.
The first ordinary meeting was indeed duly held at the Exchange Café on 18th July, and lengthily reported in the Daily Chronicle on the following day. (Many early meetings were reported in the local press.) Weekly lunches were to start from the second Monday in September; there were some forty members, nearly all present on this inaugural occasion. The principal speaker was Canon Elliott of the Leicester Club.
Five objects were quoted: to encourage high ethical standards in business and professions; to increase the efficiency of each member by the exchange of ideas and business methods; to stimulate the desire of each member to be of service to his fellow men; awaken the interest of each member in the public welfare and to co-operate with others in civic, social and industrial development; and to further international goodwill.
The Leicester Club apparently had eight committees, including those for education, public charities, and the Royal Infirmary. “It is no part of the Rotary movement” the paper noted “to set up collecting agencies for charitable movements, but part of its duty is to inform and interest its members in all that concerns them as good citizens; and this often results in substantial aid to charities and in public service generally.”
This meeting was evidently a success, though in the confusion of a new process members left without paying for their drinks! This was reported at the Club Council meeting on 9th September (recorded in the Club archives), when it was resolved that the Club should pay the bill.
The first Charter Meeting of the Club – and so its official birthday in formal Rotary terms – was on 1st February 1922, bringing the ninetieth anniversary into 2012. That day the new Club was elected into the British Association of Rotary Clubs as Club no. 1073.
Perhaps it is worth adding that a dozen or so years after our Club’s formation, at the District Council meeting at Melton Mowbray on 9thApril 1934, it was recorded that “The statement has been made that that Rotary is growing old, and unless something is done to replace wastage with new blood, and to attract young men, then the movement will soon cease to have any vitality.” So we have been warned!
18th July 2011
