A HIGHLIGHT in Keighley’s social calendar for generations were the New Year Conversaziones, commonly called the “Cons”, aptly defined as “a week of social events in connection with an educational institution”. Started in 1875 to celebrate the paying-off of a debt on the Keighley Mechanics’ Institute, they proved so popular that they became an annual fixture.
For a week each January a specially-decorated Municipal Hall was the scene of exhibitions and entertainments, old-time dances, a students’ night, a children’s fancy-dress carnival and a New Year’s ball.
This was young people’s night in 1924 when Charles Briggs’s orchestra seen here in evening dress, played from an on-stage arbour so that “the music might reach the floor rather than be lost in the roof – a fact noticeable in previous years”.
A popular local bandleader for decades, Charles Briggs worked in textiles by day but played nearly every night at the height of the dance season. He died in 1984, aged 93.
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