THIS Lady Bountiful, speaking to two rather woebegone children and a small dog, was – perhaps not surprisingly – a politician’s wife! She was Mrs WC Anderson, whose husband was Keighley’s Labour candidate at a parliamentary by-election in 1911.

Sir John Brigg, Liberal MP for the Keighley Division since 1895, had died that September.

The resulting by-election was described as short, “keen and interesting” – it was all over within a month.

By tradition Keighley was a Liberal town, but on this occasion the Liberal candidate was challenged by both Conservative and Labour. The intensity of interest was demonstrated by a public debate in the skating rink, attended by an astonishing 8,000, between Liberal Stanley O Buckmaster, KC, and Labour’s William C Anderson.

They made a contrasting pair. Buckmaster had taken silk in 1902, while Anderson, with his “good Scottish day-school education” supplemented by evening classes, was an organiser for shop workers and chairman of the National Independent Labour Party.

The King’s Council found himself up against the “popular platform appeal” of an experienced trade unionist with a voice of “remarkable carrying power”, and the meeting broke up in disorder. “Irresponsible youths” and “rather excitable persons of every shade of political opinion” were blamed.

Nonetheless, the election results showed Keighley Liberals still in control, for the time being at least: SO Buckmaster (Liberal) 4,667; WM Acworth (Conservative and Unionist) 3,842; WC Anderson (Labour) 3,452.