Page 32 - WHO'S WHO OF DUDLEY ROTARY

85 John Whitmore GARRATT, Lieut.Col. (1867-1942) (Elected 5.11.1923;
Resigned 19.11.1928.) Colliery Proprietor. He was a director of Messrs.
Garratt & Co. of Cradley Heath, owners of coal and fireclay mines and
brickworks, and of the Old Wharf Saw Mills, Stourbridge. He qualified as
a solicitor in 1891, starting with Warmington & Co. at Cradley Heath
before setting up his own practice in Wolverhampton Street, Dudley in
1894. However his father, Job Garratt, was a wealthy coalmaster and
owner of numerous collieries at Himley, Netherton, Cradley Heath and
Halesowen, so after his father’s death in 1908 Whitmore Garratt turned
his energies to running the family firm. He resigned from the Rotary club in 1928 because of the
pressure of business, there being great ‘distress’ in the mining areas at the time. He was a
member of the South Staffordshire Mines Drainage Commission from 1909 and its Chairman for
many years, and was similarly involved with the South Staffordshire and East Worcestershire
Mine Rescue Association from the 1920s.
He had a long association with the Worcestershire Volunteers, which he joined at the age of
18, and subsequently the Territorial Army. He assumed command of the 7th Volunteer Battalion
of the Worcestershire Regiment, with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, in 1910, and held the post
when war broke out in 1914. Subsequently he commanded the 3rd-8th Battalion of the
Worcestershire Territorials, and saw action with them in France and Belgium. He was wounded
at Nieppe near Armentières in April 1918.
Whitmore Garratt was a member of Dudley Golf Club when it opened near Holly Hall in 1906;
in 1921 he registered a patent for an anti-theft device that locked the gear lever of motor
vehicles; in 1928 with the Earl of Dudley he promoted the new Coventry Greyhound Stadium;
and in the 1930s he was a Commissioner of Income Taxes. At the outbreak of the last war he
had the dubious distinction of being the first Dudley resident to be prosecuted for allowing light
to escape through his house curtains at night. Although he protested that the treatment was
entirely un-English he was fined £1 and told that all offenders, whatever their position, must be
prosecuted. He is buried in St Thomas’s churchyard, Dudley, and there is a memorial to him in
the church itself.

86 Francis Milton DUDLEY (1893-1964) (Elected 19.11.1923; membership terminated 6.4.1936.)
Carriage & Motor Body Builder. Proprietor of F M Dudley, coachbuilders and repairers of Tower
Street, Dudley - ‘Commercial motor bodies and horse-drawn vehicles built to customers’
requirements’. He also traded as ‘Dudley Mews’, suppliers of carriages and limousines for
weddings and funerals, and from the 1930s, as funeral directors. The firm was started by his
father. Milton joined straight from school and became sole proprietor after his father’s death
in 1919. In 1938 he moved the business to Tipton Road but stopped coach building about 1950
to concentrate on the business of F M Dudley Limited, Funeral Directors, based at Castle Garage,
Netherton.

87 Arnold Turner STEVENSON (1875-1953) (Elected 19.11.1923; resigned 4.5.1925.) Incorporated
Accountant. He practised on his own account from soon after 1900 until his death at the age of
78 in 1953, at first from an office in Castle Street then later in Union Street. For 30 years he was
Secretary of Dudley & District Chamber of Commerce and for much of that period Treasurer too.
He also held positions in the Dudley Conservative Club, Golf Club, Amateur Operatic Society,
Horse Show Society, Stourbridge Harkaway Club (for steeplechase racing), and the Wesley
United Methodist Church, Wolverhampton Street. In 1901 he won the first annual Dudley
Tennis Championship Cup. In his younger days he was also well regarded in amateur dramatic
circles. He lived in Himley Road almost all his adult life.