LOOKING every inch like the “aged” folk they were unselfconsciously called in 1929, these veteran members of the Keighley Industrial Co-operative Society ranged from 76 to 86 years old.
On October 12 that year – “Co-operative Day” in Keighley – 1,500 such older members were treated to tea and entertainment. Feeding so many at once posed a problem, so they were distributed between the Temperance Institute, the Sun Street Mission, Oakworth Mechanics’ Institute and Lund Park and Victoria Park Wesleyan Methodist Sunday schools.
The evening entertainment comprised a concert by the Oriana Prize Quartet and a film about the English and Scottish Joint Co-operative Society, which owned tea gardens in India and Ceylon and had sold more than 300,000,000 packets of tea in 1928.
Hundreds of veterans were queuing outside the Municipal Hall an hour and a half before it was due to start, and more than a hundred had to be turned away. At least everybody was sent home with a gift parcel from the Middleton Jam Factory.
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