Page 16 - WHO'S WHO OF DUDLEY ROTARY

firm as Works Manager before 1911, having been born and served his apprenticeship in London.
He lived in Grange Road and was a Dudley councillor (1931-34), before retiring to Harborne,
Birmingham.

35 Francis Charles BRIGGS, MBE MICE MIMechE (1889-1984) (‘Original
member’ joined 28.6.1922; President 1930-31; retired on 30.4.1954 and
made a Past Service Member. Left on moving to Sidmouth c.June 1954 and
joined the Sidmouth club within weeks.) Gas Engineer. He joined The
Town of Dudley Gas Light Company c.1916 and by 1921 was Engineer and
Manager. This merged with the Brierley Hill District Gaslight Company in
1931 to become the Dudley, Brierley Hill and District Gas Company. He
was appointed Managing Director at its inauguration and eventually also
Deputy Chairman. In June 1949, following nationalisation of the gas
industry and merger of the private and municipal gas companies, he was appointed manager of
the Wolverhampton and District Division of the West Midlands Gas Board. In the same month
he was made an MBE for services to his former company. He was President of Dudley and
District Chamber of Commerce 1937-39 and Chairman of Dudley and District Boy Scouts
Association 1938 and 1939.
He grew up in Walthamstow, East London, and started his career with the local gas company.
On coming to Dudley he lived at Bath Street just yards from Dudley Gas Works until 1928, then
moved to St James Road. Following his retirement from West Midlands Gas, probably around
1954, he moved to Sidmouth, Devon.

36 George Ernest ASHURST (1877-1962) (Associate ‘Original’ member, joined 3.7.1922; resigned
1.5.1933.) Company Secretary of The Town of Dudley Gas Light Co., later the Dudley, Brierley
Hill & District Gas Co. from 1919 until his retirement in October 1946. He was Vice President
(1932-41) and then President of the Midland Counties Mutual Benefit Society until 1948. (The
MCMBS was a large Friendly Society, offering sickness, old age and death cover and savings bank
and mortgage facilities.) He was a Fellow of the ‘Chartered Institute of Secretaries of Joint Stock
Companies and Other Public Bodies’. He lived in Wellington Road, was a member of the Dudley
Castle masonic lodge (Worshipful Master 1923-24), and for many years a churchwarden of St
James’s Church, Eve Hill. He was born in Liverpool and before coming to Dudley was Chief Clerk
of Birkenhead Gas & Water Department.

37 Joseph Makepeace FORSTER, BA MLitt (1879-1966) (‘Original member’
joined 3.7.1922; resigned 20.6.1927 but rejoined 10.5.1937 - see #202.)
Educationist. Principal of Dudley Training College (for Pupil Teachers) from
1913 until his retirement in June 1946. Outside of College he assisted the
Workers’ Educational Association as a literature tutor and was connected
with King Street Congregational Church. He lived in Dibdale Street off
Himley Road, Dudley. He came to Dudley from Exeter where he was
Professor of Education at the Royal Albert Memorial College (forerunner of
Exeter University) from 1909, and before that ‘Lecturer in Education and
Master of Method’ at Armstrong College, Newcastle on Tyne.
He was born in Durham in 1879 but at the time of the 1891 census his widowed mother
evidently could not cope with five sons so Joseph was sent away to be a resident scholar in The
Crossley and Porter Orphan Home and School at Halifax. This was a charitable grammar school
established by Royal charter for the education and training of orphans. He must have been
prodigiously clever because at age 17 he was at the Pupil Teachers’ Centre, Newcastle, and by
private study he gained a First Class BA degree in English and French and a BLitt from London
University in 1906.