Last week I pondered on the young William Mellor who lived in Chorlton from 1911, was a well respected book binder and calligrapher, exhibited with the Clarion Guild of Handicraft and was Secretary of the Northern Art Workers Guild.
He enlisted in 1915, was gassed and demobbed four years later and disappears from history.
All of which set me off on the search for this interesting man and on the way introduced me to his father.
He was also a bookbinder and back in 1911 lived next to his son on Clarence Road ** in Chorlton.
Now I have to admit that I passed William Mellor senior over in the hunt for the younger William and that was a mistake.
He was an equally intriguing man and also presented a puzzle. In 1911 he described himself as a secretary which I took to be a reference to his work for the National Union of Bookbinders and Machine Rulers, which in turn led me to link him with W.R. Mellor who was a City Councillor and magistrate.
And here not for the first time the research got complicated because a William Mellor of Stanley Grove in Chorlton died in 1925 and this seemed to rule out W.R. Mellor who died nine years later.
It was an easy enough mistake to make particularly as both had wives with the same name.
And here I have to thank my friend Lawrence who fired by the mystery dug deep and discovered that, “William Mellor snr, is I think the William Mellor (W.R.Mellor) who was the secretary of the Manchester Trades Council. He retired from that post in September 1929, and was also a Councillor.
He was very active in the strikes of 1911 and the General Strike and is mentioned many times in the book
To Make That Future Now, by the Frow's.
He lived in Clock Alley, a street absorbed by the CWS buildings on Corporation Street, left school at 10, becoming a bookbinder, and was active in the National Union of Bookbinders and Machine Rulers before WW1.
The Manchester Guardian has his death notice, on March 2, 1934 when he was living at 115 Birch Hall Lane, wife of Mary. Manchester Crematorium, funeral arrangements M&S Co-Op Funerals.”
So there you have it, in the course of exploring the life of young William Mellor we now know more about his father.
And I rather think I want to know more. He was according to a colleague, "a man of kind disposition, humane feeling with a strong sense of justice. Always he gave offenders the benefit of any doubt there might be in their cases, and whenever possible extended to them a helping hand.""****
He "represented the Moston Ward in the Manchester City Council, was a member of the Labour Group in the council and sat on the Baths, Housing and Public Health Committees and was the founder member of the Tenants' Defence League. He was originally in the bookbinding trade but later became connected with trade union work, and was at one time secreatry of the Manchester and Salford Trades Council."*****
Picture; Manchester & Salford Trades & Labour Council, agenda 1911, courtesy of Lawrence Beedle.
Research thanks to Lawrence Beedle
* What happened to William Mellor?
http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/what-happened-to-william-mellor.html
**William Mellor and his wife Eliza lived at 1 Clarence Road in 1911 and his father and mother at 3 Clarence Road, now renamed Claridge Road, both have now been demolished.
***Frow, Eddie & Ruth, To Make That Future Now, 1976
****Manchester Guardian, March 3, 1934
*****Manchester Guardian, March 2, 1934
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