Playing a good tune with the Oldham P.S.A. Orchestra ..... sometime around 1913

 I am looking at this picture of the Oldham P.S.A Orchestra, which I think dates from sometime around 1913.

Now I had come across the P.S.A. or the Pleasant Sunday Afternoon Brotherhood back in the 1970s in Ashton Under Lyne.

They were what they said they were an organization designed to provide a pleasant afternoon with a Christian slant on a Sunday.  

The first seem to have sprung up in the mid-1870s and their first national conference was in London in 1906.

Over the years I have written about them and now I have come face to face with a group of them.*

So far, I have yet to track down the Oldham orchestra, but it will only be a matter of time, although it will involve a trawl of local newspapers for the period.

That said I have come across a reference in the Manchester Guardian for 1896 for a meeting in Manchester of the Federation of P.S.A. Organisations in the Lesser Free Trade Hall at which “selections were given during the evening by the United P.S.A. Orchestra, conducted by Dr. H. Watson and Mr. Rushton gave the solo ‘For Behold the Darkness,’ with Mr. R.W. Cunliffe accompanying on the organ”.**

The romantic in me wonders if any of the men in the photograph attended that evening, while the historian in me has made note of the name on the card, which is a G E Rowland of Oldham.

In 1911 a George Rowland was living with his mother and two sisters at 80 Market Street, Shaw in Oldham.  The family ran a greengrocer business, and it is just possible that selling and perhaps even producing picture postcards was a side line.  

If so, he must have been a busy chap given that at 21 he was working for the local Co-operative Society in their Grocery and Provision department.

And that just leaves me Dr. H. Watson Mr. Rushton and Mr. R.W. Cunliffe  who may prove promising leads.

There will be more, but sadly not yet.

Location; Oldham

Picture; the Oldham P.S..A Orchestra, circa 1913, courtesy of Tony Goulding

* The Pleasant Sunday Afternoon Brotherhood https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Pleasant%20Sunday%20Afternoon%20Brotherhood

**Federation of P.S.A. Organizations: Meetings in Manchester, Manchester Guardian, November 16th 1896