War and peace: Town looks to expand

THE year was 1920 and the Great War had been over for two years. Worthing was settling back into a hard-fought-for peace and, compared with the battles fought on Flanders fields, the town’s concerns seemed to be happily trivial.
     That year, Worthing’s Municipal Lending Library packed 106,894 fictional books onto its shelves but the most popular books chosen by borrowers came from the 23,354 non-fictional titles, especially those dealing with travel, biography and history.
     Also in 1920 – and after much argument – Worthing Town Council’s education committee promised to increase teacher salaries by £1,000 in the following year. Not by £1,000 each but £1,000 shared between all the teachers in the town!
     By 1920, Worthing Town Council was becoming increasingly aware that the right kind of publicity benefits a town hoping to expand. Its spokesman proudly declared: “Arrangements have been made for the exhibition in various picture houses around the country of a moving film on Worthing and the surrounding places of interest.”
     Almost apologetically, he added  that it would probably cost £60.
     It was also in 1920 that Worthing councillors and aldermen chose the town’s first woman mayor, though it was not the first time Mrs Ellen Chapman had been nominated. She had been selected for the civic honour back in 1914 but then choice had been vetoed at the last minute because – to quote a member of the all-male mayoral selection committee – “it would be inadvisable to have a woman mayor while the country is in a state of war”.
     The new post-war era brought a new local paper and the first edition of the Worthing Herald appeared on May 15, 1920, giving the town its first tabloid-size local newspaper with stories and photographs on the front page.
     These included a photo of Worthing’s new YMCA, an exclusive story about the imminent transfer of Worthing police Chief Superintendent Pennicott to Midhurst and another about the jailing of a Worthing youth for three months because he stole £2.13s.6d in cash and a watch worth 10 shillings.
     His defence: “I did it to get something to eat.”