Two weeks ago, I devoted the Nostalgia column to the events of VE Day as described in the Watford Observer of May 11, 1945.

Well, exactly ten years earlier, in the paper of May 11, 1935, all the talk was about another rare celebratory event – King George V’s Silver Jubilee.

So important was it, especially with the storm clouds of Nazi Germany gathering across the Channel, that the Watford Observer had an eight-page supplement full of pictures and news from the day.

The main paper that week also included a column called It Seems to Me by H.L. Gee. A comment piece, “H” (I’m guessing the name is a pseudonym for someone whose initials were HLG) tries to sum up all the things that had happened since the King came to power in 1910.

Sadly, the first decade of his reign was, of course, hardly a happy one.

“It is probably true,” Gee writes, “that the last 25 years have been the darkest in the history of England, perhaps the most tragic in the history of Europe, possibly the most momentous in the history of the world.”

Reason to celebrate then... He goes on: “The story of the reign of King George V could be told as a tragedy, but here we choose to tell it as an epic of achievement, progress and splendid heroism. Let us look back over the shining 25 years.”

And so he looks on the bright side, pointing out “more people are living in decent houses and healthy, open surroundings today than ever before” which are a throwback to  the Victorian days of “too much eating and drinking and too little fresh air and exercise.”

Not only that, but other improvements included “new powers of healing” (X-rays, radium, radiant heat) and a revolution in education (“wider and more comprehensive today than ever before”).

Also, “the old antagonisms between religion and science have been forgotten; new and larger and deeper conceptions of life and the universe have filled our minds; a frankness in religion has sprung up since the war; the masses are scrapping the grave-clothes of formal observance and feeling their way (perhaps uncertainly as yet) to the spirit of a Risen Christ.”

Among the great achievements between 1910 and 1935, he lists stainless steel and the wireless (which had proved itself to be “more than a new amusement”). Cinema and “the still imperfect television” too, he said, were likely “to go far towards establishing a new mental outlook and towards abolishing whatever is parochial in us”.

Then there’s the League of Nations (the first international organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace, founded in 1920 as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War). “We dream still of world unity – and dreams and visions are more lasting than foundations of steel and concrete.”

He continues: “Nor must we neglect to recall the splendour of youth in our own day, a manhood and womanhood as fine as any in an earlier age, perhaps finer. Healthy, vigorous, frank, enquiring, there is splendid possibility in modern youth.”

Among the landmark events of this period were Alcock and Brown’s first non-stop flight across the Atlantic (“a journey of over 1,900 miles in less than 16 hours”) and Leigh Mallory who in 1924 “scaled the last pinnacle of Mount Everest and vanished in the clouds, his bones now buried in eternal snows, his brave, manly, heroic spirit a challenge to youth still.

Gee then details the tragedy of Captain Scott and the “Titanic” (both 1912) before “the horror and the shame” of the Great War. “Nothing can be said for it except that it gave the world for all time the supreme chapter of heroism and sacrifice in all the long history of greatness,” he wrote.

Finally, he pays tribute to the monarchy itself. “We have seen thrones totter and fall,” he writes. “We have seen the English Royal Family endear itself in the hearts of a great people.... True, the last 25 years have been bitter but who will deny they have also been glorious?”

Onto the Silver Jubilee itself. In Watford, the celebrations lasted from morning until nearly midnight. There was a “magnificent” carnival procession through crowded streets and events all day in Cassiobury Park. In fact, as the paper reported: “It was a well-organised celebration, carried through with wonderful good humour and happy co-operation.”

“The spirit of the Jubilee,” the report notes, “was set by an impressive, united Thanksgiving Service in the Park, not unlike that which greeted the end of the war in Europe. “About 7,000 people” attended, the paper reports, a figure described as “the biggest crowd ever seen in Watford at a religious service”.

The town knew the Silver Jubilee was coming, of course, and some months before the event, the council set up a committee to work out a programme of events, paid for by “the product of a penny rate” which, at that time, was somewhere in the region of £2,000. In today’s terms, that equates to more than a quarter of a million pounds.

“A handsome illustrated souvenir, compiled by Mr G.R. Bolton (borough librarian) was presented by the Corporation to each child. The scholars of the elementary schools also received a book of 12 penny vouchers redeemable at the stalls and amusements. Vouchers issued by the Bushey Urban District Council were acceptable by Watford and vice versa.

“The High Street and other business areas were profusely decorated and there was not a street in the town where flags and bunting were not to be seen.

“In the evening the floodlighting of the Peace Memorial Hospital was greatly admired and the old mill in Cassiobury Park was very prettily illuminated.”

The procession proved very popular, as they tend to, with the streets lined by an excited flag-waving public.

I won’t list all the floats here (although the Watford Observer did at the time) but I will highlight some of them.

“An unprogrammed personage appeared in a quaintly garbed figure familiar on the Watford football ground” (although that’s all we have so what that was is anyone’s guess.) “The Scammell fire engine looked very smart,” we’re told. And behind it was “Fireman Aldous, an ex-fireman 77 years of age, wearing heavy leather hat (200 years old) and coat, with the Watford parish manual fire engine of the 18th Century.”

Other highlights included “Watford’s Jubilee Quintuplets” – “an amusing tableau on a horse-drawn vehicle, representing a perambulator with three girls and two boys, father driving and mother with him in front, and doctor and nurse walking on either side – a very successful effort.”

Among the individuals in fancy dress were Charles I, Nell Gwyn, Charlie Chaplin, “The Bisto Kids” and others.

The last lap of the 2,215-mile 15-day relay ride of cyclists around Great Britain conveying a Jubilee message to the King was opened by the Mayor at a ceremony at Cassiobury Park Gates. The cyclists came from Windsor and Amersham and Rickmansworth.

“At 1 o’clock a team of cyclists of the South Bucks District Association arrived at Cassiobury Park and handed over to the Mayor the vellum containing the Jubilee message for his Worship to add his signature to that of every Lord Mayor in England and Wales, and those of the Lord Provosts of the four Scottish cities and nearly 100 mayors and provosts of the principal towns en route.

“After the mayor had signed the Jubilee message with special ink carried by the cyclists, he said how very pleased he was to send forward the vellum conveying a message of congratulation and good wishes to the King.”
And so the Hertfordshire cyclists left on their “historic ride”.

“When they reached Barnet, they handed the message over to the London Metropolitan District Association of the Cyclists Touring Club to take it to the London HQ and on to Buckingham Palace.”

Meanwhile, the May Queen Festival took place. Staged by scholars of Watford Alexandra School [one of the predecessors of Queens’ School, Bushey] some 120 children took part. Displays of physical exercises formed part of this, in which the boys “leap-frogged, wheel-barrowed, cart-wheeled, jumped the vaulting horse, marched and wheeled in various formation, and jumped through hoops, leaving one in no doubt as to the enthusiasm of the instructors or the enjoyment of the boys,” the report says.

Then came the folk dances and songs, including such well-known ditties as “Oh no, John”, “Dashing Away With the Smoothing Iron” and “I’m 17 Come Sunday” (which all sound a little dubious, if you ask me).

There was much more than that, of course. The “antics of the clowns vastly amused a large crowd” including, it seems, a routine where they “cracked bad eggs over each other’s heads”. Perhaps you had to be there.

As always seems to be the case, the day ended with fireworks. “The display concluded with a set piece featuring their Majesties and carried out in lines of brilliant fire with the dates 1910-1935 followed by the words ‘God Save the King’.” Now that I wish I’d seen!

But it wasn’t all good news. A footnote to the Watford Observer’s coverage notes: “There was such a rush of customers, some public houses completely sold out their stock of beer”.