Search for Herald staff
Calling all journalists – past and present – who have worked on the Tamworth Herald, a proud winner of the Newspaper of the Year category at the Midlands Media Awards in 2015 and 2016.
Your memories are wanted by Birmingham Press Club member Chris Hills, editor of the Tamworth Heritage Magazine (THM), a popular online site which chronicles the history of personalities, institutions and landmark events which have made headlines over the years in the Staffordshire town.
Chris (pictured) said: “The Herald has been a major part of Tamworth life for 157 years and following Annette Witheridge’s recent article for THM I thought I would try to contact as many people as possible who worked there. Not just journalists but any member of staff.
“There must be a myriad of stories out there – and it would be a pleasure to record them before the memories fade away,” he added.
Chris has already heard from a journalist who was at one of the Herald’s competitors who has promised to write about the time when Tamworth had more than just one newspaper.
He’s also on the lookout for any photographs of the Herald’s newsroom or printing presses.
“With the pictures I have so far you might be forgiven for thinking the Herald operated out of a pub bar!” he said.
The 8-page broadsheet Herald was first published on Saturday, 8 August 1868 – and one of its articles certainly reflects how times have changed. Headlined “Spoilt Women,” and quoting the Saturday Review, it says: “Like children and all soft things, women are soon spoilt if subjected to unwholesome conditions. Sometimes the spoiling comes from over-harshness, sometimes from over-indulgence: what we are speaking of today is the latter condition – the spoiling which comes from being petted and given way to and indulged till they think themselves better than everybody else, and as if living under laws made specially for them alone.
“Men get spoilt too in the same manner; but for the most part there is a tougher fibre in them, which resists the flabby influences of flattery and exaggerated attention better than can the morale of the weaker sex.
The spoilt woman, it goes on, “is the one who calls her husband from one end of the room to the other to put down her cup, rather than reach out her arm and put it down for herself; who, however weary he may be, will bid him get up and ring the bell, though it is close to her own hand, and her longest walk during the day has been from the dining-room to the drawing room. It is not that she cannot do these small offices for herself but that she likes the feeling of being waited on and attended to. It is just for the vanity of being a little somebody for the moment.
“Unlike the Eastern women, who wait on their lords hand and foot, and who place their highest honour in their lowliest service, the spoilt women of Western life knows nothing of the natural grace of womanly serving for love, for grace, or for gratitude.”
Chris can be contacted via email at Editor@tamworthheritage.org.uk
