Pictorial Memories

 This blog’s function is to research history from the era of CTR. However, from time to time, material of a more recent nature has been offered. Some photographs from private sources came to light on the death of the original owners, and the current owner gave me permission to publish them several years ago on a now defunct blog. To my knowledge, all the people in the photographs have now passed away, so the material is being reproduced here.

The photograph below is the earliest and advertises the talk Government and Peace. This was relayed by wire from America to Britain in 1939 and the venue here was Bristol.

 

The next two photographs are convention pictures that date from 1946.

 

 The next photograph is from the same era as the convention photos. The Consolation magazine changed to Awake in 1946 and the Watchtower magazine changed from large format to its present page size in 1950, so the photo fits between those years.

 

And now for some pictures of people. The description will be under the photographs.

 

The group photograph is Molly, Margaret and Glen Howe. Howe became a very famous legal advocate for the witnesses in Canada. He married Margaret from Portsmouth where this photograph was taken. I personally visited Molly on several occasions. Molly and Margaret first contacted the current owner of the pictures in 1950 with the witnesses’ message. As one might say, the rest is history.

 

This is a photograph from the 1950s of Pryce Hughes.

Hughes became Branch Servant in Britain in 1942. The previous Branch Servant, Bert Schroeder from America was deported - with the witnesses’ view of war and with a name like Schroeder it was perhaps inevitable at that time. Pryce Hughes replaced him, although he was in jail as a conscientious objector at the time. He remained Branch Servant until the 1960s, when as an older man he became Bethel Home Servant. You nearly always found him in the garden when visiting the British headquarters that had moved to Mill Hill, London, in the late 1950s.  I met him on a number of occasions.

 

This is a photograph of Phil Rees.

Phil Rees was very well known in Britain for decades. In Australia during the last war he was involved in the Society’s activities when they were under ban. I believe he married the branch servant’s daughter, and not long after the war came to Britain where he worked as Factory Servant at the headquarters in Craven Terrace and then Mill Hill for many years. One of my claims to notoriety was when Phil Rees actually mentioned me by name in a District Convention talk in 1977. People turned to those sitting next to them and said “Who...?”

 

This photograph dates from a British convention in 1958, and will have been taken in the convention office. On the left standing, and holding the American 1958 convention report, is Eric Courtney. Next to him, seated and poring over a typewriter, is Tony Byatt. At the back of the picture is Jim Robbins.

Jim Robbins and his wife stayed at our home for a week in the 1950s. Eric Courtney was a well known district servant in his day covering the 40s, 50s and into the 60s. I conducted several special schools with him in the 1970s, and ultimately attended his funeral.

As a young teenager, Tony Byatt went around the second-hand bookstalls in London in the early days of the Second World War with Bert Schroeder, the Branch Servant. As noted above Schroeder was deported in 1942. He was later involved in the setting up of the Gilead Missionary School in America. Decades later in the 1980s I was there when Bert and Tony met up again and reminisced at length. I used Tony Byatt’s personal library on a number of occasions for various writing projects and when he died I was left some books in his will.

So although the photographs are not mine, I do have a personal interest in several of them. With thanks to the present owner for making them available.