The Gas Company
Without any pressure from without, the Gas Company promised to reduce the price from 6/- to 5/- at the end of the year.
Miscellaneous Items
The Sussex Cattle Show was held at Hastings on the 22nd of July, amidst unfavourable weather, the visitors to it not numbering more than 240, and the money taken at the gates being only £38 10s. The dinner took place in a marquee near the Priory farm house (about where Trinity street now is. See discussion on a previous Lean Stock Show at the April Council meeting. page 20.
Cinque Ports Pilots. A Parliamentary return, obtained by Lord Chelsea, showed that the cost of maintaining the Dover and Deal pilot cutters for the previous seven years had been £16,415, and that the sums paid by the existing members of the Fellowship of Cinque Ports Pilots for relief in cases of pilots deaths had been £23, 261.
At a Soirée and Ball held at the Market Hall on the 26th of January, nearly 500 persons attended, the company being chiefly members and friends of the Victoria and Adelaide lodges of Oddfellows and Cinque Ports Foresters.
Carpenters’ Strike. Up to the 25th of February, the Hastings carpenters had been on strike to the number of about 70. They claimed 4/6 a day for best hands, and the masters held out for 4/- a day, to all indiscriminately. The strikers very reasonably contended that by giving the same wages to inferior workmen there was no encouragement to the skilful or ingenious men, nor any inducement to inferior hands to make themselves efficient. It appeared to be a strange contention of the employers, seeing that of later years, the arguments of each side had been mostly in reversed order. The result of this particular strike was that a considerable number of the men obtained employment in London and other places at even higher wages than they demanded at home.
Painters’ Demand. Later in the year – namely, July 6th, the operative painters, to the number of 40, met at the Royal Standard inn, to ask the masters for 4/6 a day.
Castledown House and grounds, were offered by auction sale on the 28th of July, but no one advanced to the reserve price of £4,200, and so the property was bought in. The estate was afterwards sold by private contract.
Building Operations on a large scale were at this time contemplated on the Eversfield estate, the whole of which comprised 400 acres. The plans included new roads, terraces and detached villas, the ground to be let on a long lease.
The Mayor and Corporation attended service at All Saints’ Church on the 7th of August, and sat, for the first time, on a new cushion in the Corporation pew, which cushion cost £3 15s., and was paid for by the said Corporation, personally.
Howard Warburton Elphinstone, grandson of Lady Elphinstone, of Ore Place was elected a scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, on the 8th of April.
Mr. Oscar Thorpe, of Battle, brother to George Archibald Thorpe, of Hastings, was admitted a Fellow of Christ College, Cambridge, on the 13th of April.
Mr. T. H. Cole, of Hastings, formerly of Sidney Sussex College, was, at the commencement of July, created Master of Arts.
