Anyone for a cup of canal water? Amazed amateur diver Bob Taylor from Croxley Green could hardly believe his luck when he emerged from the canal on Croxley Moor with a silver teapot.

When a friend from the Watford Underwater Club quipped: “Now go down for the milk jug.” Bob dived down and bobbed up again minutes later with just that!

A further search led to a complete set of silver-plated pots and jugs and small pieces of jewellery, all bundled into a pillowcase.

“They were obviously dumped by a burglar who realised they were not as valuable as first believed,” said Bob.

[From the Watford Observer of January 17, 1986]

 

An unofficial colour bar has been imposed at public dances held at Watford town hall. Incidents have occurred in which white army officers have walked out in protest when coloured men came in. Girls also refused to dance with the coloured visitors.

These visitors behaved courteously and no complaint has been made against their conduct.

The chairman of the town hall management committee told a Watford Observer reporter on Tuesday that he was astonished to hear suggestions that a colour bar existed. “For my own part, I should be very sorry to hear that discrimination of this kind took place at any of our Town Hall dances,” he said.

A reporter visited a dance held at the Town Hall on Tuesday in order to ask one of the stewards who is regularly on duty at the dance hall door whether he had received any instructions to keep coloured men out.

The steward replied: “We have never received definite instructions to keep them out but we do know it is now an understood thing that coloured men do not come in.

"Recently there were occasions at a number of dances where coloured men arrived with tickets and went into the dance hall. Ten minutes later, groups of men, mainly composed of Army officers, have left, declaring they had no intention of remaining in a dance hall to which blacks were admitted.”

[From the Watford Observer of January 21, 1944]

 

Two men from Walton-on-Naze who dived fully clothed into rough sea at Walton last summer and rescued a man and 11-year-old Jonathan Beckett, of Watford, were presented with the Royal Humane Society awards by the chairman of Frinton and Walton Council before the council’s meeting on Monday.

The recipients were Mr George Rivers (24), a bus conductor, and Mr Frank Clarke (31), an ambulance driver.

The boy, Jonathan, on holiday at Walton, was playing on the breakwater when he fell in the sea.

Two men grabbed him and pulled him to safety on to the breakwater, but a large wave struck them and they were all washed into the sea.

Rescue was made difficult by an ebbing tide, causing a strong current running away from the breakwater.

When presenting the awards, the chairman said: “Both men acted without regard for their own safety.”

[From the Watford Observer of January 27, 1967]