Image: William Kirkpatrick Riland Bedford was president of the Sutton Coldfield Institute. His rectory – pictured here – was sadly demolished in 1936 (ref 339)
Reproduced with the permission of Sutton Coldfield Library
During the early decades of the nineteenth century there existed no literary, scientific, philosophical or musical societies in Sutton Coldfield. Those educated inhabitants – and they were a small proportion of the population – who wanted to talk about books or listen to performances of music did so in the privacy of their own homes or their friends’ homes. The first cultural society to be established in the town was a Musical Institute. Founded in 1843, this society proved to be short lived. It was funded by subscriptions; these subscribers and their friends also attended a ball each winter to supplement its income. Each month the Musical Institute put on a public performance at the town hall. At these events about fifteen musicians presented a programme of pieces that were popular at the time – such as the now little-performed ‘Overture to the Caliph of Baghdad’ by Boieldieu. The musicians were all local and amateurs and the standard of playing was not of the highest. Amongst those who took part was Joseph Oates, a physician and, in 1845-6, warden of the corporation, the self-elected body that governed the town. Oates would play solos on his tromba cornuta, an improved version of trumpet on which he had taken out a patent. This instrument, however, was not widely adopted.
A more lasting cultural society was the Sutton Coldfield Institute, which began meeting once a month in the early 1850s. At first the Institute provided only lectures. These were, however, on an impressively wide range of subjects – in 1853, for example, crowded audiences at the town hall listened to discourses on American slavery, the poetry of Sir Walter Scott and heat and the thermometer.  The lectures were delivered by leading figures in the town and clerical friends from Birmingham and Tamworth of the rector William Kirkpatrick Riland Bedford – such as the Revd. E. Spooner and the Revd. E. Harston.  Educated at Westminster School and Brasenose College Oxford and rector from 1850, Riland Bedford played a prominent part in the affairs of the Institute.  He lived in a thirteen- bedroom, early eighteenth century house in what is now Rectory Park.  Riland Bedford himself talked about historical subjects, including the long bow on which he became a self-taught expert. These lectures were ‘events’ in the town and achieved great popularity amongst the Sutton middle class.
Over time the Institute changed the format of its monthly meetings. Lectures gradually began to be replaced by readings from novels, dramatic performances and music. The administrative side of things was looked after by an honorary secretary – Joseph Hughes was one of those who took on this role and he was rewarded with a silver cup.  In February 1859 John Bennett, formerly of the Theatre Royal in Birmingham, read in its entirety The Merchant of Venice. Particularly popular were readings from Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers and Nicholas Nickleby and from Richard Harris Barham’s Inglesby Legends. These stories enabled the readers to give humorous presentations.
From the mid-1860s members of the Institute were involved in arranging a series of penny readings at the town hall. These were intended for the working people of Sutton and, at one meeting, the chairman ‘alluded to the usefulness of these amusements in elevating the ideas of the labouring classes …’ The readings were interspersed with music – with the young women who played the pianoforte being particularly singled out for praise.   In 1866 William Joyce Page’s readings and comic songs went down so well that he was called back for encores. The Institute also managed to attract some of the most notable local lecturers of the day. In 1867 George Dawson, the minister of the Church of the Saviour, who was described by Charles Kingsley as ‘the greatest talker in England’ came to Sutton to hold forth on Vanity Fair. That year his friend John Alfred Langford, a self-educated poet, also put in an appearance to read a number of poems – his rendering of Tennyson’s ‘Northern Farmer’ in the dialect of the area greatly amused the audience.
Prominently involved in organising these penny readings was Matthew Wilson. He had arrived in Sutton in 1845 to take up the position of headmaster at the largest of the corporation schools. Subsequently he set up a private school called the Anchorage House Classical and Commercial School, which moved locations several times. Wilson was very actively involved in the public affairs of the town. He is one of a number of Sutton’s ‘forgotten Victorians’ whose stories deserve to be told.
This article is based on reports in Aris’ Birmingham Gazette and the Birmingham Daily Gazette.
Stephen Roberts, December 2020