Page 61 - WHO'S WHO OF DUDLEY ROTARY

Road, Dudley, the ground floor now being the meeting place of the Rotary Club. Bill’s wife Gwen
also gave prominent public service, including rising to become National President of Inner Wheel
and Mayor of Dudley.

184 Charles William CLARKE (1901-1957) (Inducted 21.10.1935; membership terminated 26.9.1938.)
Chartered Surveyor. Principal of the firm William Pearson & Clarke, auctioneers, surveyors and
valuers of Priory Street, Dudley from 1935 until just months before his early death in 1957. He
was the son of well-known Tipton mining engineer and surveyor Charles A Clarke and was in
partnership with him from 1922. He took over the established auctioneer’s and surveyor’s
practice of William Pearson (club member #43) on Pearson’s death in 1935. William Clarke was
a bachelor, keen on cricket and fishing, and Vice President of Smethwick Fishing Club, his home
being in Smethwick. He was also a Dudley freemason, member of the Senior Conservative Club
and the Zoo Club.

185 Alderman William BRADFORD, JP OBE (1867-1951) (Inducted 20.1.1936;
left in 1938.) Glassmaker. He was born in the village of North Tawton near
Okehampton in Devon, son of a farm labourer. The family moved to Aston
in Birmingham when he was just a few years old. At the age of 11, nearly
12, he was apprenticed at a local glassworks as a glass blower, the start of
71 years’ association with the glass industry. He moved to Dudley in 1899
and commenced work at Josiah Lane’s glassworks in Park Road (next to
Grange Park), although briefly he worked also as an agricultural labourer!
In Birmingham he had been an active member of his local branch of the
trade union, the National Flint Glass Makers' Society of Great Britain and Ireland, so
unsurprisingly just three months after coming to Dudley he was appointed District Secretary. He
was associated with the union - which in 1948 became the National Union of Flint Glass Workers
- for over 50 years, serving as General Financial Secretary for 27 years, as General Secretary for
15 years, and was a member of the executive council at the time of his death aged 84. He
travelled extensively all over Europe for the glass trade.
He was awarded the OBE in 1918 for his work with the Flint Glass Maker’s Society and also
his services at the Ministry of Munitions during the First World War. He remained with Lane’s
glassworks until it closed in 1932 on the death of Josiah Lane. He then became travelling agent
for the Stourbridge Glazed Brick Company.
In addition to his work and union activities he was prominent in public life from an early age.
He served on many public bodies, including being a Director of the Dudley and District Benefit
Building Society. He was a Conservative member of Dudley Council for 41 years up to his death,
being first elected in 1910, and notable for his ‘working class’ origins. He served as Mayor 1926-
27 and was made an Alderman in 1926. In 1925 he was appointed to the Executive Committee
of the National Conservative and Unionist Association and represented that body on the
Industrial Section of the League of Nations Union sitting in Geneva. He was appointed a
magistrate in 1917 and was for a time Chairman of the Watch Committee, responsible for the
efficient operation of the local police force. He lived in the centre of Dudley all his adult life.

186 Frederick William ANGRAVE (1902-1994) (Inducted 20.1.1936; membership terminated
26.9.1938.) Mechanical Engineer. He was Company Secretary of Lloyd’s British Testing Co.
Limited of Cradley Road, Netherton from about 1935 to 1955. His early years were in Bath but
he was educated in Lincoln, at the Wesleyan School from age 8 to 12, and then at the Municipal
Technical School until he was 16. He returned to Bath and started as an engineering apprentice
with Stothert & Pitt in March 1918 whilst also studying at the local technical school. He was
approved as a Graduate Member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers aged just 18. Five
years later he moved to India and spent two years in Bombay, probably still with Stothert & Pitt
who supplied dockside cranes and harbour equipment around the world. (He obviously did well