SMALL statistics can be poignantly expressive of community spirit.
During Keighley’s collecting drive towards the Spitfire-Hurricane Fund in 1940, four girls living in Gladstone Street – Marjorie Gott, Brenda Holmes, Jean Cannon and Hilda Scales – put on a little concert of songs, dances, recitations and a short play, inviting these neighbours.
They raised 15s 6d, whilst Mrs Gott gave a “pie tea” which brought in another 13 shillings.
Other contributors included comedian G Hunt, who raised six shillings at the Grapes Inn, Mrs Doris Naylor who raffled a cushion for 12 shillings, and “a few friends” whose pennies a week made £1.
A rather derisory collecting box at the White Horse Inn, Ingrow, got 7½d.
Such sums, though modest by modern standards, eventually reached £11,600, which bought both a Spitfire and a Hurricane and left something over for the RAF Benevolent Fund.
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