Stories from The Luton News: Thursday, September 28th, 1916.

Sunday's was a glorious morning for the Volunteer manoeuvres, and there was one of the biggest musters of the local Corps recently seen at Luton Hoo. Sixty-four recruits took the oath of allegiance.

Mr Cumberland Brown was in command, and the occasion was made the more memorable by the pleasing announcement at the end of the drill that Lord French, Commander in Chief of Home Forces, proposed coming to inspect them on the second or third Sunday in October.

[The visit eventually took place on October 29th and the inspection was held in Wardown Park, a sore point that would be made when ex-servicemen were banned from holding a memorial service in the park in 1919.]

• Former Luton resident Henry Edward Hansell, a temporary barrack wardman at the Victoria Street depot in St Albans, died of his injuries after jumping off a moving lorry in St Peter's Street on Sunday afternoon. The vehicle reversed over his legs and he was taken to Bricket House Hospital, where he died. Hansell had been in charge of a fatigue party of men of the A.S.C. moving goods between the L&NW Station and a riding school. At an inquest yesterday, a jury returned a verdict of accidental death.

• The continuing toll of war was affecting more families in the Luton area. Deaths recorded included Pte Thomas James Swain, of the Grenadier Guards; L-Cpl Joshua Dyer, of the Royal Sussex Regiment; Pte Sidney George Peters, of the Loyal North Lancs regiment;

• An inquest jury returned a verdict of accidental death on Tuesday on two-year-old Winifred May Dickens, of 3 Harcourt Street, Luton, who died after running in front of a tram in Ashton Road after fetching a halfpennyworth of sweets from a shop across the road. Tram driver Grenville Lawrence Towers, who had sounded warnings and tried to stop the vehicle on a steep gradient, was exonerated from any blame in the death. The tram company agreed to help meet funeral expenses. The girl's father was serving with the 1/5th Bedfords in Egypt.

• The parishioners and friends of St Saviour's Church have for some time past been contributing to a memorial to the 23½ years ministry in Luton of their late Vicar, the Rev J. C. Trevelyan. The memorial will take the form of a beautifully carved oak chancel screen which has now been erected in the church. A special dedication service will take place on Sunday, when the Rev Trevelyan will pay a special visit to preach.

• Another effort is to be made to further the cause of war saving in Luton and, with the Mayor as President, a new committee has been formed to centralise the work of war loan investment in the town. A meeting of the South Beds War Savings Committee (as it was then constituted) was called for Tuesday night in the Town Hall to consider the Council's resolution appointing the committee to be the local war savings committee.

• At the Luton Borough Police Court yesterday a man named William Burnage, of 24 Chobham Street, was summoned for ill-treating a horse by working the animal in an unfit state on September 20th. The animal, which was attached to a four-wheel furniture van, had matter oozing from three sores on its shoulder and both knees were swollen and tender to the touch. The defendant had several previous convictions against him, including cruelty, and was said by Chief Constable Teale as ought not to have charge of a horse. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 21 days imprisonment with hard labour.

• Yesterday, wedding bells rang out at the Parish Church for the wedding of Miss Olive Cumberland, daughter of Mr Hugh Cumberland and the late Mrs Jeanie Cumberland, of 'The Lynchet,' Hart Hill, and Lieut-Col Charles Algernon Stidston, from Plymouth, now commanding the 2/3rd North Midland Field Ambulance stationed in Ireland. Miss Cumberland is a sister of Mrs R. Durler, of of the Commandants of the Wardown Hospital, and was associated with the hospital as a V.A.D. nurse. While his unit was in Luton, Lieut-Col Stidston's unit had charge of Wardown Hospital and it was there he met his future wife.