Page 80 - WHO'S WHO OF DUDLEY ROTARY

247 Doylah TANFIELD (Snr), JP (1886-1960) (Rejoined as an Additional Active Member 22.12.1941
after having been a member 1924-26 - see #93; resigned 20.7.1943.)
Income Tax Consultant. Senior Partner in Wall & Tanfield, chartered
accountants of Wolverhampton Street, Dudley. He started in 1909 in
partnership with William Wall as ‘Wall and Tanfield’, accountants,
auditors, estate agents and insurance agents, with offices in Colmore Row,
Birmingham and Priory Street, Dudley. When Wall retired in 1912 he
continued to practice in the same name. The Dudley office moved to
Wolverhampton Street about 1920 and the Birmingham office closed
about 1940.
He was a Liberal member of Dudley Council 1924-30, a magistrate from 1939, and a lifelong
member of the King Street Methodist Church. For two decades from the mid 1920s, as honorary
secretary of the Dudley & District Hospital Sunday Committee, he helped raise large sums for
local charitable institutions. He was also secretary of Dudley Chamber of Commerce 1947-59, a
keen supporter of Dudley Cricket Club, being chairman 1936-46, and then Vice-President of
Worcestershire county cricket club. He was the son of Thomas W Tanfield, a founder member
of the Rotary Club (#38), and father of Doylah ET Tanfield who joined in 1941 (#243). He lived
on Stourbridge Road, Dudley until 1927, then in St James’s Road, and from 1952 in The
Broadway.

248 Seymour George Rooke KEATE (1893-1959) (Member of Bury St Edmunds
club from 1939; elected 8.6.1942 after attending as a visiting Rotarian for
some months; left 7.1946.) Postmaster of Dudley from early 1942 until
July 1946 when he became Head Postmaster of Plymouth. He was born in
Taunton, Somerset, son of a Post Office clerk, but the family moved to
County Durham when he was 7 because his father was appointed
Postmaster of Spennymoor. On leaving school at 15, Seymour started as
a ‘Learner’ at the nearby Ferryhill post office. A year later he transferred
to Stockton on Tees as a sorting clerk. He stayed at Stockton post office
for the next 28 years except for a period of military service during the Great War when he was
a Sapper in the Royal Engineers, seeing action in France from April 1915. Up to the age of 34
he was still a sorting clerk and telegraphist but then promotion opportunities came along: he
rose to be postal superintendent of the combined Middlesborough and Stockton areas, then in
1936 he was appointed Postmaster of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk before coming to Dudley 6 years
later. At Bury St Edmunds he was a founder member of the Rotary Club in 1939 and its first
Secretary, and as Lieutenant Keate was a valued member of the Home Guard Post Office
Platoon.

249 James McDougal TAIT (1872-1949) (Elected 29.9.1942; resigned 12.7.48 because of bad health.)
Classification Cigar Distributing. General Manager and head of the receiving
and buying department of A Preedy & Sons, wholesale and retail
tobacconists, based at 84/86 High Street, Dudley. He retired in May 1946
after more than 60 years in the tobacco trade and 38 years with Preedy’s.
He grew up in Newcastle upon Tyne where he became a tobacconist’s
assistant on leaving school. In his early 20s he moved to Middlesborough
and held a similar job before coming to Dudley in 1908. He was a prominent
local freemason and a long-time churchwarden at St Thomas’s Parish
Church. For some years he was President of the Dudley Institute. As a
younger man he was a keen singer, having been a member and for a time treasurer of the Dudley
Male Voice Choir.