Aneurin Bevan

Bevan underachieved at school due, in part, to a stammer and left in 1911 to join the other male members of his family down the mine of the Tredegar Iron and Coal Company. His education did not end, however, as he was able to take advantage of local social science courses based on the teaching of the Central Labour College. Also, with the help of Walter Conway of the local Independent Labour Party, Bevan defeated his stammer in public speaking.

Excused military service during the First World War due to nystagmus, an eye disease, Bevan became involved with the South Wales Miners’ Federation and, by the age of 19, he was the chairman of the local Miners’ Lodge. Two years at the Central Labour College in London from 1919 to 1921 studying economics, politics and history completed his education.

After his return to Tredegar, Bevan was only able to find work for ten months during the next five years. Then, in 1926, he started work as a union official just before the start of the General Strike. During the strike, and the continuing pit lock-outs after it ended, Bevan was responsible for distributing strike pay in Tredegar.

Bevan was elected to Monmouthshire County Council in 1928 and, in the following year, he was selected as the Labour Party candidate for Ebbw Vale in the general election. He won the seat comfortably. He used his first speech in the House of Commons to attack Winston Churchill and the pair became lifelong enemies.

Even members of Bevan’s own Labour Party were not spared his outspoken remarks. He criticized Margaret Bondfield for refusing to increase unemployment benefits and his own party leader, Ramsay MacDonald, for introducing means testing.

Always on the left of his party, Bevan joined the Socialist League (originally the Society for Socialist Inquiry and Propaganda) in 1931. Created by G. D. H. Cole, the Socialist League’s members included Clement Attlee, Ernest Bevin, Stafford Cripps, Michael Foot and Jennie Lee (who Bevan married in 1934).

The Socialist League campaigned for a united socialist front against fascism during the 1930s to include all parties of the left, including the Communist Party. It also argued against non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War and the policy of appeasement. Bevan was expelled from the Labour Party in March 1939, along with Stafford Cripps and Charles Trevelyan, for speaking on the same platforms as members of the Communist Party, although all three were readmitted by the end of the year.

During the Second World War Bevan was critical of Churchill and his coalition government, both in parliament and in the pages of the Tribune newspaper, which he edited from 1941 to 1945. Again, he argued against not only the Conservatives but also ministers of his own party.

Following the Labour Party’s landslide general election victory in 1945, Bevan became the youngest member of Clement Attlee’s cabinet as Minister of Health with the added responsibility of rebuilding the country’s housing. If his record on housing was deemed to be slow, though far from a failure, it was only in comparison with the effort he gave to his greatest triumph.

The Beverage Report of November 1942 had recommended wide-ranging welfare reforms including universal healthcare. As Minister of Health, Bevan published the National Health Service Bill and white paper in March 1946 and saw it pass into law on 6 November 1946. The legislation would see the nationalisation of hospitals and medical staff become employees of the state. After almost two years of negotiations with doctors, who threatened to refuse to support the scheme, the NHS was born on 5 July 1948.

Bevan became Minister of Labour in January 1951 but resigned in April, along with Harold Wilson and John Freeman, over the introduction of prescription charges for denture and spectacles. The left of the Labour Party drifted towards Bevan and became known as the Bevanites.

The Labour Party lost the general elections of 1951 and 1955. Attlee resigned and left the party leadership to be contested between Bevan, Hugh Gaitskell and Herbert Morrison. In the first decisive ballot, Gaitskell beat Bevan into second place.

In 1956 Bevan agreed to serve as Shadow Foreign Secretary and in 1959 he became deputy leader and treasurer of the Labour Party. In December 1959 he was diagnosed with cancer of the stomach and on 6 July 1960 Aneurin Bevan died at his home in Buckinghamshire.

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P. T. Barnum

Barnum did not find farm life agreeable but he did have a grasp of mathematics and business that would benefit his later career. After a variety of early jobs he first came to public notice as the publisher of the Herald of Freedom weekly newspaper in Danbury, Connecticut. Unfortunately, this notoriety derived largely from his three arrests for libel.

In 1829 Barnum married Charity Hallett. This was a relationship that would endure for 44 years and produce four daughters. The family moved to New York in 1834 and Barnum’s life as a showman began the following year.

The first curiosity he presented to the public was a blind slave called Joice Heth. Barnum claimed that she was the 161-year-old nurse of George Washington but, when she died in 1836, Joice Heth was exposed as the first of many hoaxes that Barnum would promote during his career.

In 1841 he purchased John Scudder’s American Museum on Broadway, New York. The five-storey museum, renamed Barnum’s American Museum, opened to the public on 1 January 1842 and was filled exhibits such as waxworks and stuffed animals. Over time Barnum shifted the focus of the museum from conventional attractions to more sensational exhibits.

Barnum was not afraid to mix genuine curiosities, like the Siamese twins Chang and Eng, with fakes, such as the Feejee mermaid, and his publicity was prone to exaggeration. His most successful, and profitable, exhibit was Charles Stratton, a dwarf who Barnum promoted as General Tom Thumb. During the 26 years that Barnum owned the museum it was visited by 82 million people.

While on a tour of Europe with General Tom Thumb, a tour that included a performance in front of Queen Victoria, Barnum heard about the Swedish soprano Jenny Lind and decided to take the biggest gamble of his career. Without hearing her sing, and with no knowledge of how she would be received by the American public, Barnum booked Lind to sing at 150 concerts over nine months for $1,000 per performance.

Promoted as “The Swedish Nightingale”, Barnum’s publicity of Lind created so much hype that 40,000 people welcomed her ship’s arrival. At the first concert on 11 September 1850, Lind performed in front of a capacity crowd of 5,000 people at Castle Garden in New York. So great was her success that she was able to renegotiate her contract with Barnum.

After the success of the Jenny Lind tour, Barnum turned his attention to theatre. His newly built theatre produced the plays of Shakespeare as well as contemporary works, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe‘s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In 1855 Barnum published his autobiography, The Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself, in which he revealed many of the hoaxes he had promoted during his career.

But the venture for which Barnum is remembered the world over did not start until he was 60 years old. In collaboration with W. C. Coup and Dan Castello, P. T. Barnum’s Grand Travelling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan and Circus opened on 10 April 1871 in Brooklyn. In true Barnum style it was promoted as “The Greatest Show on Earth”.

In 1881 the circus merged with James Bailey’s Great London Show and became the Barnum and London Circus. The following year the circus acquired Jumbo, a six-and-a-half-ton elephant, who was a popular attraction for the next three years before being hit by a train in 1885.

P. T. Barnum died in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on 7 April 1891 at the age of 80. His obituary was published by one New York newspaper, at Barnum’s request, two weeks before he died so that he would have a chance to enjoy reading it. A showman to the end, one of Barnum’s final acts was to ask after the day’s receipts for the circus.

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George Everest

His mathematical and engineering skills came to the attention of Stamford Raffles in 1814 who requested the presence of Everest in Java to survey the island. With the survey complete he returned to India in 1816 where he took on the task of improving river navigation.

Then came the opportunity to work on the great trigonometrical survey of India under William Lambton, a task that would occupy the rest of his career. In 1818 Everest travelled to Hyderabad to complete Lambton’s work of measuring a meridian arc through India.

Everest was keen to carry out the work to the greatest possible accuracy, but faulty instruments and poor staff made this difficult. Ill health also held him back and he had to stop work in 1820 after contracting malaria for a second time. He returned to work the following year and in 1823, after Lambton’s death, Everest was appointed superintendent of the survey.

Long hours of survey work in the field had a detrimental effect on his already poor health and, in 1825, he became too ill to carry on. Everest returned to England and all work on the survey came to a halt.

On regaining his health, Everest set about improving conditions for the survey. He investigated instruments used by Ordnance Survey in Ireland and redesigned those to be used in India. He also persuaded the East India Company to secure the services of Henry Barrow in maintaining the instruments in India. Scientific interest in the project was raised by Everest’s success in networking and on 8 march 1827 be was elected a fellow of the Royal Society.

Everest returned to the subcontinent in June 1830 as surveyor-general of India and his work on the great trigonometrical survey of India resumed in 1832. The survey took a further nine years to complete, but by 1841 the meridian arc of almost 2,400km had been measured from Cape Comorin on the southern tip of India to the Himalayas in the north.

With the final calculations from the survey complete, Everest retired on 16 December 1843 and returned to England, recommending his colleague, Andrew Waugh, to succeed him. On 17 November 1846 he married Emma Wing with whom he had six children. The two volumes of his record of the survey, An Account of the Measurement of Two Sections of the Meridional Arc of India, won Everest the medal of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Yet it is for the mountain that bears his name rather than his surveying work that he is mainly remembered. When no local name could be agreed upon for Peak XV in the Himalayas, Andrew Waugh decided to name it after his predecessor. In 1856 Peak XV was renamed Mount Everest.

Everest continued to be as active as his health would allow and was knighted in 1861. He served as a manager of the Royal Institution, a vice-president of the Royal Geographical Society and on the council of the Royal Society.

George Everest died at his home in London on 1 December 1866 and was buried in St Andrew’s churchyard, Hove. It is unlikely that he ever saw the mountain that was named in his honour.

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LNER's Mallard by Steve F E Cameron

The result of his trials was the A4 class. As well as a streamlined body shape, the A4 had improvements made to its valves and cylinders, an increased boiler pressure and subsequent changes to its exhaust and brakes. The first A4 locomotive reached a top speed of over 112mph in a demonstration between Kings Cross and Grantham on 27 September 1935.

Soon, other British railway companies were putting streamlined locomotives on the tracks, including the London Midland and Scottish (LMS) Railway’s Coronation class. LMS and LNER drivers competed for the fastest speed record, often ignoring safety in pursuit of glory, until the directors of both companies stopped the rivalry. At that time the 114mph record was held by one of the LMS Coronations.

But there was to be one more attempt at breaking the record. On 3 July 1938 the A4 4468 Mallard pulled a train of seven vehicles, including a dynamometer car to measure its speed, with a total weight of 240 tons. The train, crewed by driver Joseph Duddington and fireman Thomas Bray, left Barkston, just north of Grantham, and headed south.

After passing through Grantham at 24mph, Mallard ascended an incline and had achieved 75mph by the time it reached Stoke Summit. From there it was all downhill. Mallard accelerated down from the summit and quickly exceeded the LMS record. Along one three-mile stretch of track the locomotive’s speed did not drop below 120mph, and for a very short distance the dynamometer car recorded a top speed of 126mph.

Shortly after the record was set, one of the locomotive’s three cylinders overheated and it had to return to Doncaster for repairs. Mallard continued in service after its repairs until 1963. It now has a permanent home at the National Railway Museum in York (although from 23 June 2010 it is on temporary loan to the National Railway Museum’s locomotion site in Shildon, County Durham). The record set by Mallard on 3 July 1938 for the fastest steam locomotive has remained unbroken for 72 years and looks set to endure.

LZ-1 (The First Zeppelin)

After retiring from the army at the age of 52 in 1890, Zeppelin devoted himself, and a large amount of his own money, to creating a working airship. The plans he drew up were submitted to a committee for review in 1894 and the designs were patented on 31 August 1895. US patents were filed on 14 March 1899.

Construction of Zeppelin’s first airship began in June 1898 and was completed in the winter of 1899. It was built in a floating hangar on Lake Constance in Southern Germany that could be aligned with the wind direction to make entry and exit simpler.

Designated LZ-1 (Luftschiff Zeppelin 1), the airship was 128 metres long and 12 metres in diameter. Within a rigid metal alloy skeleton were seventeen cells containing 11,298 cubic metres of hydrogen gas. The airship was powered by two Daimler engines suspended beneath it and connected to propellers. A sliding weight under the hull allowed the pitch of the airship to be altered but no other controls were provided.

Inflation of the gas cells took place in June 1900 with the maiden flight scheduled for 2 July over Lake Constance. The flight lasted just 17 minutes before technical problems forced a landing in the lake. The zeppelin reached a height of 390 metres during its 6-kilometre flight, which ended when the pitch control jammed. Also, a weakness in the metal alloy frame caused the airship to bend, with the centre rising higher than the bow or stern.

Although the first flight of a zeppelin was not a great success, the concept of the design was proved sound. Many other zeppelins were built for commercial and military purposes, some being used for bombing raids during the First World War with LZ-38 being the first to bomb London.

LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin began the first transatlantic flights in 1928 and was joined by LZ-129 Hindenburg in 1936. Confidence in the airships was damaged, however, after the Hindenburg caught fire as it landed at Lakehurst, New Jersey on 6 May 1937 causing the deaths of 36 passengers.

Charles Goodyear

The family hardware business produced a wide range of products, from ivory, pearl and metal buttons to heavy agricultural implements, and was initially successful. In 1830, however, the business failed leaving Goodyear with large debts. This professional collapse coincided with a first period of personal ill-health.

Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, the Roxbury Rubber Company had started to manufacture waterproof clothing, shoes and other products from leather treated with India rubber. Although early sales were good, many of the products were returned after they melted or became sticky in the summer heat. The garments also became rigid in extreme cold.

Goodyear came into contact with the Roxbury Rubber Company in 1834 when he purchased a life jacket from their New York store. Noticing that the jacket’s inflation tube was of poor quality, Goodyear improved the design, made some new tubes and returned to New York to show the store’s manager his work. It was then that he learned of the problems with the rubber and the company’s impending failure.

So began Goodyear’s ten-year crusade to improve the rubber manufacturing process. Unfortunately, before he could start, he was imprisoned as a debtor by one of his creditors, the first of several periods of imprisonment during his life. Undeterred, Goodyear began his experiments in the prison with a small amount of raw gum provided by a friend and the help of his wife, Clarissa, and their children.

His first experiments produced sheets of white rubber by mixing the raw gum with magnesia and boiling it in lime. These sheets did not become sticky but could be ruined if they came into contact with a weak acid.

Goodyear thought he had solved this problem in 1836 by applying nitric acid to the surface of the rubber. He found financial backing and started a business in the abandoned factory at Roxbury to make mail bags for the government. Unfortunately his solution only worked on the surface of the bags and they rotted before they could be delivered.

What was needed was a process that worked all the way through the rubber, not just on the surface. Nathaniel Hayward, a former employee of the Roxbury Rubber Company, had been experimenting by treating rubber with sulphur. In 1838, Goodyear bought the right to use this process from Hayward, and in 1839, possibly as a result of an accidental spill, he found his solution.

While trying to harden the raw gum by boiling it with sulphur, a lump of the mixture fell onto the surface of the stove. The result was vulcanized rubber. Goodyear spent the next five years refining the vulcanization process (named after Vulcan, the Roman god of fire), determining the exact mixture of ingredients and the precise temperature. He and his family spent much of this time in debtors’ prison or relying on the charity of friends.

With new financial backers Goodyear opened a factory in Springfield, Massachusetts, and, on 15 June 1844, he patented the vulcanization process. The patent was challenged, however, and it was not until 1852 that the final case was settled in his favour in the USA. Goodyear was not so fortunate in Europe, losing patent battles in both Britain and France. The failure of his business in France led to his imprisonment once again for debt in Paris.

Although he was recognised as the inventor of the vulcanization process, and despite filing more than sixty patents for rubber products, Goodyear never made any money out of his discovery. The cost of fighting patent infringement cases and the failure of his businesses left him with increasing debts. When Charles Goodyear died in New York on 1 July 1860 his creditors were owed $200,000. But to Goodyear, to have created a process that benefited society was more important than money.

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Arthur Stanley Jefferson was born into a theatrical family in Ulverston, Lancashire, on 16 June 1890. His theatre manager father, Arthur, and actress mother, Margaret, had four other children, three boys and a girl.

After an education at schools in Bishop Auckland, Gainford and Glasgow, Laurel made his first appearance on stage in 1906 at the Scotia Music Hall in Glasgow. The following year he joined the Fred Karno company and by 1910 he was working as the understudy for Charlie Chaplin.

The Karno company toured the USA from 1912 and, when the troupe disbanded in the following year, Laurel worked on the American stage in vaudeville. It was at this time that he took the stage name of Stan Laurel. In 1915 he started working in silent films, and from the early 1920s he starred in a series of short comedies. He first appeared with his future comedy partner, Oliver Hardy, in the 1921 two-reel short The Lucky Dog.

Although Laurel enjoyed some success with these films he drifted towards writing and directing, and it was in this behind-the-camera capacity that he joined Hal Roach Studios in 1925. But when Oliver Hardy was injured in a kitchen accident in 1927, Laurel was persuaded to act again as his replacement in a comedy with Mabel Normand.

Further acting roles followed and Laurel began to be paired with Hardy, starting with Slipping Wives, when their on-screen chemistry became apparent. By the end of 1927 Laurel and Hardy’s partnership became permanent and would produce over a hundred comedy shorts and feature films.

The duo began with a series of silent films including Two Tars (1928) and Big Business (1929). But, unlike some other silent comics, they were successful in their transition to ‘talkies’. Other classic films followed including Hog Wild (1930) and the Academy award-winning The Music Box (1932).

From 1931 Laurel and Hardy starred in their own feature films beginning with Pardon Us. Other features included Sons of the Desert (1933), Babes in Toyland (1934), Way Out West (1937) and A Chump at Oxford (1940).

Although the pair were a team on screen, it was Laurel who wrote and directed most of their comedies during their early, and most successful, period. When Laurel and Hardy left Hal Roach Studios at the end of their contract in 1940, this artistic control was missing in their work for Twentieth Century Fox and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and the quality of their work declined.

During the Second World War Laurel and Hardy travelled to entertain the troops and in 1947 they toured Britain with a variety show. The European-made Atoll K (1952) was their last film together but was not a success. They started a European tour in 1953 before ill-health led to its cancellation.

With Oliver Hardy’s death in 1957, Laurel ceased acting but continued to write. In 1960 he was given an Academy award for being a comedy pioneer. Stan Laurel died in Santa Monica, California, on 23 February 1965, after suffering a heart attack, and was buried at Forest Lawn cemetery in Los Angeles. During his career he had starred in many of the finest comedy films in cinema history.

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Harriet Beecher Stowe

In the early nineteenth century few schools gave instruction to girls in academic subjects, preferring to concentrate mainly on domestic and artistic skills, but Sarah Pierce’s Litchfield Female Academy offered a rounded education. The young Harriet began her studies at the academy, where her father taught religion, before transferring, in 1824, to Hartford Female Seminary, an establishment founded by her eldest sister, Catherine. After completing her education, Harriet stayed on at Hartford as a teacher.

In 1821 the Beecher family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where her father was appointed President of Lane Theological Seminary. Catherine Beecher founded another school in Cincinnati and Harriet taught there until its closure in 1836.

Harriet had always been a keen writer, winning a school essay contest at the age of seven, but in the 1830s she started to publish her work. Primary Geography for Children was published in 1833 and a collection of short stories in 1835.

In 1836 she married Calvin Stowe, a theology professor. Six of their seven children were born in Cincinnati before they moved to Brunswick, Maine, in 1850. Encouraged by her husband, Harriet continued to write. The Mayflower: Sketches of Scenes and Characters Among the Descendants of the Pilgrims was published in 1843 and articles, essays and short stories by Harriet Beecher Stowe regularly appeared in newspapers and journals.

Stowe also started to write about slavery. Ohio was a free state, but just to the south of the Ohio river lay the slave state of Kentucky. Her observations from visits to the south, contacts with fugitive slaves and her reading of abolitionist publications led to the compilation of notes that would form the foundations of Stowe’s most famous work.

On 5 June 1851 The National Era published the first instalment of a tale of slavery. Originally intended as a series of three or four instalments, Stowe wrote over forty. The collection was published in two volumes as Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852 and was an instant success, selling over 300,000 copies in its first year.

Not surprisingly, Uncle Tom’s Cabin divided opinion in the USA. The book was celebrated by abolitionists in the north but was denounced in the south, along with Stowe herself. Details of slavery in the book were disputed so, in 1853, Stowe published a compilation of testimonies and source documents in A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

The success of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in book form and on the stage, enabled Stowe to write full time and led to a visit to England in 1853 and speaking tours of the USA after her family moved back to Hartford when her husband retired in 1864. She continued to write novels, text books and essays on religious reform, family life and slavery, including Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp in 1856.

Stowe’s last novel, Pogunuc People, was published in 1878 and included scenes inspired by her childhood in Connecticut. In 1889 a biography of Stowe by her son Charles was published, written with assistance from Stowe herself.

Harriet Beecher Stowe died on 1 July 1896 at the age of 85. During her career she published over 30 books and many essays and articles. In an era when it was difficult for women to stand up and be heard, Stowe managed to gain a voice through the written word. Whether or not Uncle Tom’s Cabin influenced the American Civil War, as is sometimes claimed, it is clear that Stowe was effective in spreading her message.

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Pioneer 10

This speed enabled Pioneer 10, the first spacecraft to use only nuclear electrical power, to pass the moon after 11 hours and cross the orbit of Mars just 12 weeks later. By 15 July the spacecraft had reached the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter. Safely emerging after 280 million kilometres it continued on to Jupiter, accelerating to a speed of 132,000 kph.

From 6 November 1973 Pioneer 10′s imaging equipment started recording the surface of Jupiter. The spacecraft transmitted over 300 photographs of Jupiter, its Great Red Spot and three of its moons, Callisto, Ganymede and Europa. On 3 December 1973 Pioneer 10 passed within 130,000 kilometres of the giant planet.

Just twenty months after its launch Pioneer 10′s original mission was over. It had already become the first spacecraft to fly through the orbit of Mars, the first to safely navigate the Asteroid Belt and the first to fly past and photograph Jupiter, but now it was instructed to attempt another first.

Pioneer 10 was sent on its way into the outer reaches of the solar system, collecting valuable scientific data as it went. By February 1976 it had passed the orbit of Saturn and then, on 13 June 1983, it passed the orbit of Neptune and became the first man-made object to leave the solar system.

Although its scientific mission officially ended on 31 March 1997, the Pioneer 10 spacecraft is still travelling towards the red star Aldebaran, in the constellation of Taurus, and should pass the star in about two million years. Unfortunately, contact with the spacecraft has been lost. The receipt of the last telemetric data occurred on 27 April 2002 and the final, faint signal was received on 23 January 2003.

Pioneer 10's Plaque

William Heygate Edmund Colborne Butlin (known as Billy) was born on 29 September 1899 in Cape Town, Cape Colony. He was the elder son of William Butlin and Bertha Hill who had emigrated from England soon after their marriage. Butlin’s parents came from different social backgrounds and when the marriage failed Bertha returned to her family in Bristol with her two sons.

Butlin lived with his aunt in Bristol until his brother died. He then joined his mother in her caravan, travelling around west-country fairs selling gingerbread, until she married Charlie Rowbotham in 1911 and emigrated to Canada. Billy was fostered until 1912 when he joined his mother and step-father in Toronto.

A travelling life had left little time for formal education, which for Butlin had begun at the age of eight, but art classes at night school in Toronto brought out his drawing skills. His job as a messenger boy for Eatons department store soon progressed to drawing advertisements. It was while working for Eatons that Butlin had his first holiday experience at the company’s lakeside camp for its employees. This camp was to be a major influence in his later career.

During the First World War Butlin served as a stretcher-bearer amongst the trenches of France for the Canadian Army. He resumed his drawing at Eatons at the end of the war but decided to return to England in 1921. He worked his passage across the Atlantic and arrived with £5 to his name.

With a hoopla stall provided by his uncles, Butlin joined the west-country fair circuit. But trade at the country shows was reducing due to the increased mobility of the public who preferred to spend their summer holidays at the seaside. From contacts made at the Christmas circus at London’s Olympia, Butlin learned of a resort in the Lincolnshire seaside town of Skegness where he established an amusement park in 1927.

The Skegness attractions, including a helter-skelter and haunted house, were expanded with the addition of a zoo, and a second park at nearby Mablethorpe opened soon after. But the turning point in Butlin’s business activities came in 1928 when he secured the exclusive licence to sell Dodgems in Europe and brought the first ride to Skegness.

With the profits from his amusement parks, the licences for Dodgems and Christmas fairs in London, Edinburgh and Glasgow, Butlin was able to realise his dream of opening a holiday camp. At Easter 1936 the first Butlins holiday camp, with accommodation for 1000 people, opened its gates in Skegness. In the following year the camp was expanded to cater for 2000.

The camp was designed to provide all the meals and entertainment visitors could require on a single site at a low price. Campers had full use of indoor and outdoor sports facilities and a swimming pool, entertainment was provided in the theatre and events were organised by the staff, or Redcoats as they were known. Beauty contents were organised from the 1938 season and arrangements for the supervised entertainment of children allowed their parents time to themselves.

Butlin lobbied parliament for the Holidays With Pay Bill, and its passing in 1938 enabled more people to holiday by the sea. A second camp at Clacton opened in 1938, and by the start of the Second World War construction of third camp at Filey was under way.

During the war the holiday camps were used as military bases. The Filey camp was completed for the RAF and two more, at Pwllheli and Ayr, were constructed for the navy. Meanwhile, Butlin worked for the Ministry of Supply tasked with increasing the morale of women in the munitions factories. He turned their hostels into residential clubs by improving their recreational facilities and was appointed MBE in 1944 for this work.

Butlins Ayr (1985)

After surviving an attempt to remove him from the company with the help of small shareholders, Butlin expanded his British business empire. He opened more camps in the 1960s, at Bognor Regis, Minehead and Barry Island, and bought hotel chains. A visit by the queen to the Pwllheli camp in 1963 was followed by a knighthood in 1964.

Butlin retired in 1968, handing over control of the company to his adopted son Bobby, but he took an active role in fighting off a hostile take-over bid from Phonographic Equipment. In 1972 the company was sold to the Rank Organisation for £43 million in a friendly take-over.

During his retirement at Blair Adam House, Jersey, Butlin started new hotel businesses and continued his charity associations with the Variety Club of Great Britain and the Grand Order of Water Rats. Billy Butlin died of stomach cancer at his Jersey home on 12 June 1980 and was buried in the island’s St John’s cemetery.

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