Children showing Christmas kindness in times past

The town shops are full of Christmas baubles, cards, sweets and other goodies and local noticeboards are advertising Christmas Bazaars.

This takes me back to my childhood in the 1950’s when I was a Merry Comrade and every year there was a huge Christmas Bazaar, complete with a visit from Father Christmas himself, held in the Northampton Drill Hall and money raised would be spent on Christmas gifts for patients.

The Merry Comrades Circle was a children’s club started in 1932 by the ‘Mercury and Herald’ local paper, headed by Auntie Dick (Bernice Field) and it ran until 1988.

The idea was for the children to think of others less fortunate and raise money to buy treats for patients in Northamptonshire hospitals.

Over the years money was raised by holding Bring and Buy sales, bazaars, fetes and Whist Drives, recycling and selling packets of Christmas cards and gift tags, and holding endless raffles etc.

As a reward for their hard work over the year, the Merry Comrades  would be treated to a visit to the pantomime for a special performance (see top photo), sporting a badge awarded to them if they had raised a certain amount over the year.

I can remember going to the Repertory Theatre in Guildhall Road by coach and seeing Auntie Dick sitting in the Royal Box, wearing a fur coat and waving to the children.

The cast acknowledged the audience of Merry Comrades and invited some onto the stage for a photo to be taken by the Mercury and Herald.

Another way of raising money for the hospital was devised by the Boys Brigade.

I found this article in an Archive scrap book, dated 27.01.38.

I really can’t get my head around what the lads actually did to get to the silver three penny pieces.

I do hope they didn’t have to eat their way through them and risk choking on the coins!

Julia Corps – Volunteer at the NGH Museum and Archive
[email protected]