Diary of Rev Edward Stevens

Saints Simon and Jude. Not very good congregations to day. Several boys and girls absent from Choir but at Church. Attended choir practice this evening.

I lay in bed all day in order to get rid of a cold which has troubled me more or less all the week. Rosa took Clothing Club for me.

Lay in bed till mid-day with my cold when I got up to dinner. Weather extremely dull and Novemberish, but not cold. Sent £5.5s to Clergy Pensions’ Fund. Wrote all afternoon and evening.

Cold better, came down at 1 pm. William Lamb called for Poor Rates for self, Town Estate and School. He said that the Radicals here held a meeting in the Mission Room on the 23rd about the Parish Councils Act. They had Mr Whitehorn there and tried to keep the meeting a private one but John Lamb of Sibford Ferris and one or two other Conservatives heard what was going on and went up. Joseph Alcock was in the chair. Some feeling appears to have been shown against the presence of Conservatives. The Radicals appear to have desired to select the most prominent members of their own party to form the Council, but did not carry it out. Mr Whitehorn told them in reply to a question that recipients of “dole charities” would be disqualified for Councillors.