Stories from the Beds & Herts Saturday Telegraph: January 29th, 1916.

A supplement to last night's London Gazette contained the names of officers and men whom General Sir Ian Hamilton desired to bring to notice in connection with the operations in the Dardanelles.

Luton people will be glad to know that Lieut-Colonel Edgar W. Brighten, of Lansdowne Road, Luton, commanding 1/5th Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment, is included among those whose service are recognised in this way.

As will be remembered, Lieut-Colonel Brighten was gazetted to the command of our Territorial Battalion in the spring of last year. He had then been unofficially in command since January, and his promotion when gazetted was dated from January. He has therefore been in command of the Battalion for a year, and in letters which men of his Battalion have sent home he has been highly praised for the way he led them during the terrible days in August last, after the Battalion landed at Suvla Bay.

The rank and file are, as a rule, not inclined to praise their officers unless they really deserve it, but in all the letters we have seen since the Battalion went into action - and they are very many - we have seen nothing but expressions of the very highest regard and admiration for his courage and skill.

[On the following Wednesday, Lieut-Colonel Brighten was appointed by King George V to the Order of St Michael and St George].

• An alarming incident occurred in George Street about dinner-time today when Albert Giddins, a young fellow living in Langley Street, fell down dead. We learn that he was engaged in the straw trade and enlisted, but was discharged from the Army on medical grounds. His wife today had gone to Toddington, where he father is ill. There is one child. A report has been submitted to the Coroner and an inquest will be held in due course.

• At last night's meeting of the Luton Chamber of Commerce if was agreed to take part in a joint advertising scheme with other Chambers. Secretary Mr T. Keens said several Chambers got out their own year books, but the printing firm were proposing to issue a register of British manufacturers and merchants, and it was proposed to include up to 20 Chambers. It was commercial venture by which the Chamber stood to get some revenue but incur no financial responsibility.

• A proclamation was issued in London today calling up Derby groups from 10 to 13 (single men born between 1885 and 1888).

• Evidence of a character that reflects unpleasantly on the mode of life of a certain class of people in Luton was given at the Borough Sessions this morning when serious charges were preferred against three women as a result of observations kept by police on a house in Gaitskill Row. A widow with seven children was summoned for keeping a disorderly house at which soldiers were visitors on several successive days while the property was under observation. She was sentenced to two months hard labour. Her daughter was placed on probation for six months and bound over in the sum of £5, and another woman was given 14 days hard labour. The court was told there had been complaints about the house from people living in the neighbourhood.

• On Monday morning the Luton to Letchworth motor-bus collided with a street lamp in Tilehouse Street, Hitchin. The drive blamed the accident on a skid on the greasy road surface. The same bus had smashed another street lamp a fortnight earlier.

• Although spectator numbers were below pre-war levels, the largest crowd of the season turned up for Luton Town's home match against old rivals Watford, their first senior opponents of the 1915-16 campaign and since the Blues were excluded from the London Combination. The match was a benefit friendly in aid of the Comforts Fund of the Footballers' Battalion, but was played with the customary intensity. The result was a 3-1 victory for the Town, Roe scoring a second-half hat-trick before Watford replied five minutes from time. Roe's first goal was Luton's 100th of the season.