Littered With Loafers

Bedfordshire County Council 1897. Samuel Howard Whitbread is seventh from left in the second row from the front, and George Payne is tenth from left in the same row [CCV33/65/1]

2nd September 1914, Leighton Buzzard: A public meeting was held in the Leighton Assembly Room tonight to consider forming a committee to deal with any distress arising as a result of the war. Mr George Payne, the Chairman of the Leighton Buzzard Urban District Council, chaired the meeting and read a letter he had received from Mr Samuel Howard Whitbread, the Lord Lieutenant of Bedfordshire. Mr Whitbread asked that such committees should be formed to work with the County Committee for the relief of distress. He also requested that subscriptions should be collected for the Prince of Wales’ National Relief Fund and the Bedfordshire Branch of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Families’ Association In response to the letter Mr Payne put forward a proposal for a committee as requested. Mr Ernest Saunt, however, stated that the time had come for some very plain speaking and that he had never lived in a place so “choked with charity” as Leighton Buzzard. In his opinion “Leighton Buzzard was littered with loafers”. He considered it a disgrace that men wanted to be paid a bonus to do their duty and had heard a man say that “he did not care if the Germans did come to England, he had nothing to lose; let the ‘nibs’ do the fighting, the people who got the money out of it”. In his opinion nobody would make money out of the war as once the fighting was done Europe would be ruined for a quarter of a century. He would only have anything to do with the committee if he was absolutely satisfied that relief was going to the right people “instead of it getting into the hands of the usual cadging crowd”. The Chairman reassured Mr Saunt that only genuine applications would be considered and the constitution of the committee was approved.

Source: Extract from Leighton Buzzard Observer, 8 September 1914, WW1/RD5/4/1