3-053-792 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Opening of the new townhall at Bradford: sketches in the streets, 1873. 'Bishop Blaize; Smiling Plenty; Bradford Lasses; Wool Sorters - "Checquer Brats"; Lamplighter; A Motley Crew; Gateway, Lister Park; Quarrymen; Brewer; Medea objects to a wetting; Beefeater; Equerry; Butchers; Almost too much for him...municipal and popular festivities [including a] great trades procession...[starting] at Lister Park...It was a perfect moving exhibition of all the elements which go to make up the business life of the town, special prominence being, of course, given to everything connected with the worsted and woollen manufactures...Then came the representatives of forty-five trades - some on horseback, some on foot, some in carriages...[The] first trophy was a large canopied effigy of Bishop Blaize, their patron saint, the founder of [the wool-staplers] trade...Several lorry-loads of the women and girls employed in the weaving, with shawls over their heads, were heartily cheered...Last, but not least, came an imposing group of Jason and Medea carrying off the Golden Fleece...The weather, so promising in the early noon, changed when the procession was well on its way, and it was exposed to a drenching rain...All went past the front of the Townhall'. From "Illustrated London News", 1873.