SOCIAL LIFE.
A wake, held in mid October,
existed by 1826. (fn. 24) Its origin is not known; Harborne, Smethwick's mother parish, held its wake in
September. (fn. 25) In the 1870s wake fetes were held on
the Galton Grounds, a piece of open land behind the
Swan in Oldbury Road. (fn. 26) By 1908 land adjoining
the Moilliet Arms at Six Ways was used for a wake
fun-fair. (fn. 27) In its heyday the wake lasted two days or
more; by 1950, however, it had become 'a rather
emasculated survival'. (fn. 28) By the 1860s there was also
an annual Cape Fair, held on the first or second
Monday in September. (fn. 29)
There was bull-baiting at the 1826 wake. (fn. 30) In
1835 it was expected that the chief attractions at
that year's wake would be bull-baiting and prizefighting; (fn. 31) about that time a newcomer to Smethwick found that the only pastimes were bull- and
bear-baiting, dog- and cock-fighting, 'and other
low games'. (fn. 32) Bull-baiting and cock-fighting were
held on open ground at Bearwood Hill between the
Red Cow and the Sow and Pigs. (fn. 33)
A wooden theatre in Grove Lane, visited by
itinerant companies of actors, was converted into
a Salvation Army barracks in 1881. Nothing more
appears to be known of it or of another makeshift
theatre which about then stood at one end of Windmill Lane. (fn. 34) The Theatre Royal in Rolfe Street,
built to the designs of Owen & Ward of Birmingham, was opened in 1897; it seated almost 3,000
and was claimed to be one of the largest theatres in
the country. (fn. 35) It was closed in 1932 when its proprietors went bankrupt, was subsequently reopened for a few months for boxing matches, and
was eventually demolished. (fn. 36) The Smethwick Empire in St. Paul's Road, built in 1910 to the designs of
George Bowden & Son of Smethwick, was intended
for use both as a theatre and as a cinema. (fn. 37) By 1930
it was being used solely as a cinema. It was closed
in 1957 (fn. 38) and by 1971 had been converted into
shops. The Windsor in Bearwood Road, built in
1930 to the designs of H. G. Bradley of Birmingham,
had a stage; but it was designed primarily as a
cinema and was opened as such. (fn. 39) For 16 years stage
performances were rare. In the winter of 1946-7,
however, there was a season of pantomime followed
by several weeks of variety, and from the autumn of
1947 until 1957 the Windsor was run as a variety
theatre. It then housed a professional repertory
company until 1960. The building subsequently
became an ice-skating rink and was still in use as
such in 1971. (fn. 40)
The first purpose-built cinema was the New Cape
Electric Theatre (later the Cape Electric Cinema),
Cape Hill, built in 1911 to the designs of Oakley &
Coulson of Dudley. (fn. 41) By 1917 the town had six
cinemas (or seven if the Empire be included). By
the early 1930s there were eight, five of them owned
by a local man, Edward Hewitson (d. 1936), whose
family retained its connexion with the cinema industry in Smethwick until 1970. (fn. 42) Seven cinemas
were open in 1940 and six in January 1956. (fn. 43) By
1964, however, the Princes in High Street, a Hewitson cinema of 1930 designed in a derived artnouveau style by H. G. Bradley, was the only
English-language cinema still open. (fn. 44) It was closed
in 1970. (fn. 45) In 1971 there was no commercial cinema
showing English-language films within the area of
the pre-1966 borough; at the reopened Princes and
the Beacon, Brasshouse Lane, Indian and Pakistani
films were shown.
A subscription library and literary institute was
maintained at Cape Hill by the mid 1850s. Its leading
patron was John Henderson of the London Works,
and his bankruptcy in 1856 left it in debt. A public
appeal in 1858, however, enabled it to re-establish
itself in a room at the Greyhound, Rolfe Street,
where it reopened in 1859 as Smethwick Library
and Literary Institute. It moved in 1862 to premises
at the corner of Union and Cross Streets, and in
1871 to some rooms in the local board's public
buildings. The town adopted the Public Libraries
Acts in 1876, and a public library was formed in
1877 when the Institute transferred its books and
other property to the local board. The library remained in the public buildings until 1880, when a
free library and reading room was erected on an
adjoining site to the designs of Yeoville Thomason
of Birmingham. Before the First World War a reference library and a junior library were established.
Open access was introduced in 1922-3; as a result
more people used the library and a larger building
was needed. The public buildings were no longer
used by the council, and in 1928, after extensive
alterations, they were reopened as the public
library. (fn. 46) In 1966 the building became the central
public library for the county borough of Warley. (fn. 47)
The Smethwick Telephone was founded in 1884
by a group of Smethwick men who formed the
Telephone Newspaper Co. Ltd.; several were active
members of the local ratepayers' association, and
it has been suggested that the Telephone may have
been established to propagate the association's
views. In 1886 or 1887 the Telephone's proprietors
sold it to F. D. Perrot, curate of Holy Trinity
Church. The newspaper had originally been printed
in Birmingham, but by 1887 it had a Smethwick
printer and in 1888 Perrot opened offices and a
printing shop in Rolfe Street. When he left Smethwick later in 1888 he sold the Telephone to James
Billingsley, at that time the only reporter employed
by the newspaper. Billingsley, who moved the Telephone to larger premises in Regent Street in 1890,
then to new offices in the same road, and finally, in
1908, to offices in Hume Street, remained proprietor
and editor until his death in 1943. (fn. 48) His daughter,
Kathleen M. J. Billingsley, then became one of the
few women newspaper proprietors in the country
and was managing director and editor at the time
of her death in 1962. (fn. 49) In 1963 the Telephone became the Smethwick Telephone and Warley Courier
and in April 1966 the Warley Courier and Smethwick Telephone. It was subsequently acquired by
the West Midlands Press Ltd. and in October 1966
merged with that firm's Warley News to form the
Warley News Telephone. (fn. 50)
From 1890 to 1895 and again from 1906 to 1949
the proprietors of the Weekly News, an Oldbury
newspaper, published a Smethwick edition entitled
Smethwick Weekly News, printed on the Weekly
News presses. (fn. 51) Seven issues of a weekly Smethwick
Globe appeared in 1895 before it was incorporated
with the Midland Sun, a Birmingham newspaper. (fn. 52)
Another weekly, the Smethwick Advertiser and Three
Shires Indicator, was published for a few months in
1909 from an office in Hume Street. (fn. 53)
Smethwick Cricket and Athletic Club may date
from 1835 and certainly existed in 1840. By the mid
1870s, as Smethwick Cricket and Quoit Club, it was
playing on the Broomfield ground, which was still
its home in 1971. (fn. 54) Cricket and football were marked
by the influence of local employers. Thus in the
1880s Harry Mitchell formed a cricket team at the
family brewery at Cape Hill (fn. 55) and helped to promote a football club there (Mitchells St. George's), (fn. 56)
while Nettlefolds raised a works football club and
organized sports meetings. (fn. 57) From 1894 Mitchells
also held annual athletic sports at Cape Hill, with
open events as well as races for its employees. They
proved to be highly popular and still drew a crowd
of 2,500 in 1908, even though several years of compaigning against 'the gambling element' had reduced attendances sharply. (fn. 58)
In 1899 Henry Mitchell presented the local
Volunteers and the town with a drill hall, the adjacent Broomfield cricket ground, and a small park
(now Harry Mitchell Park) as a memorial to his son
Harry (d. 1894). After a public meeting in 1900 to
discuss methods of making use of the gift the Smethwick Recreative and Amateur Athletic and Gymnastic Association was formed to promote and
organize sport and leisure activities in the borough.
Mitchell laid out the park as a recreation ground
and provided gymnastic equipment for use in the
drill hall. The hall was used by the Volunteers and
subsequently by the Territorial Army until 1967
when, with some adjoining buildings erected by the
army during the Second World War, it was handed
over to the borough. Since then it has been developed as the Harry Mitchell Recreational Centre,
which provides indoor sports facilities. (fn. 59) Hadley
Playing Fields, Waterloo Road, were opened in
1962; they include a stadium which has been used
for Midland athletic championships and is the
annual venue of a large Sikh sports festival. (fn. 60)
Thimblemill Baths in Thimblemill Road are among
the largest in the Midlands and in the 1950s were
used for international swimming matches. (fn. 61)
The first friendly society to be registered (though
not necessarily the first to be formed) was the
Smethwick Union Society, registered in 1836. The
first societies were without national affiliations; but
there was a lodge of the Manchester Unity of Odd
Fellows by 1841, and a lodge of the Loyal Wolverhampton Order of Odd Fellows was registered in
1845. (fn. 62) In 1876 there were 27 registered friendly
societies, including several lodges of Odd Fellows,
two lodges of Free Gardeners, a lodge of Modern
Masons, and nine courts of the Ancient Order of
Foresters. (fn. 63) William Caldow (d. 1892), a Scot who
moved to Smethwick in 1841, became known as the
'Father of Forestry' in the Midlands for his work
on behalf of the Order of Foresters in south Staffordshire and north Worcestershire. (fn. 64)