Page 69 - WHO'S WHO OF DUDLEY ROTARY

211 Colin Thorold PELHAM (1908-2002) (Elected ~12.1937; left May1938 because he returned to
Australia.) Classification Variety Stores. Manager of the newly-opened
but short-lived New Universal Stores in Dudley Market Place. (It opened
in 1937 and closed the following year.) He was Australian, born in Port
Pirie north of Adelaide in South Australia. He did not shine at school,
passing only in English Literature and Drawing in matriculation exams at
16, but he did win a prize for rifle shooting. At the age of 18 he came to
London as an ‘Advertising Clerk’. He returned in October 1936 as a
warehouseman with the intention of permanently settling in the UK. He
started work with Great Universal Stores in Glasgow but was soon
transferred to London. Days later he became seriously ill and was sent to Devon to recuperate.
Very soon he married a girl from Exeter and they had a baby daughter 10 months later. By this
time he had started work in Dudley but within months he decided to return to Australia with his
family. They sailed in May 1938, never to return. They settled in the suburbs of Adelaide where
Thorold Pelham continued as a store manager in the city centre. From 1949 to 1968 he was with
Myer, Australia’s largest department store, and then with Cox-Foys store until retiring. He tried,
unsuccessfully, several times in the 1940s to be elected to Adelaide City Council. He was also a
regular letter-writer to newspapers, and in 1983 wrote to the Daily Express in London to
apologise for the behaviour of Australian fans at cricket matches: ‘Please do not equate all
Australians with the half-naked slobs among the spectators,’ he wrote.

212 Jonathan (‘John’) Nichol FOULKES (1891-1970) (Inducted 7.2.1938; President 1947-48; died
March 1970 whilst still a member.) Original classification ‘Oil and Colour
Merchant’, later changed to ‘Plumbing Supplies, Distributing’. He was
Managing Director of Timmins & Foulkes Limited, brass founders,
ironmongers and builders merchants of King Street, Dudley. From 1950 the
firm also had a showroom in Stone Street for bathroom suites and
fireplaces. He was born in Liverpool, son of a baker and confectioner, but
the family moved to the Black Country when he was a teenager. He started
work as a sanitary engineer in Wolverhampton, probably with his uncle
Arthur’s firm A D Foulkes Ltd. Arthur had a large builders and plumbers
merchants business in Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Coventry, Walsall and Nottingham, and he
was the Foulkes who joined William Timmins (club member #25) to form Timmins & Foulkes in
Dudley in 1916. Jonathan perhaps started with the firm at that time but following Timmins’
death in 1937 he took charge. His sons Alan and John, Rotary members #374 and #378, followed
him in the business. He played a leading part in the formation of what became the National
Federation of Builders’ and Plumbers’ Merchants and served on its Council. His home was in
Northfield, Birmingham.

213 Henry Noel THOMPSON (1901-1977) (Inducted 7.3.1938; died Nov. 1977 whilst still a member.)
Auctioneer and Estate Agent. Principal of Noel Thompson & Co, auctioneers, surveyors, valuers
and estate agents, based in Wolverhampton Street, Dudley until 1949 and then in Stone Street.
He started in business on his own account in late 1930 having previously been a partner in Shaw
& Gilbert, a firm of auctioneers and valuers in Birmingham. He was educated as a boarder for 3
years at King Edward VI School, Stratford on Avon, where he was captain of a school house,
captain of the rugby 1st XV, member of the cricket 1st XI, and a Serjeant in the Army Cadet
Corps. The latter meant that when the Second World War broke out he enlisted as an officer in
the Territorial Army. He was made an Honorary Member of the club for the duration of the War,
starting as Lieutenant and finishing with the rank of Major. He was released from the forces in
September 1945 and resumed active membership. He retired to Dunsley, Kinver, having lived
in Oakham Road, Dudley for 40 years. Following his death in 1977 his practice was taken over
by David Cariss (club member #411) and became part of Cariss, Noel Thompson.