LETTERS TO ‘OMNIBUS’
100 years … from when?
If one looks at any celebration of a jubilee, whether of twenty-five, fifty or a hundred years, it is invariably taken from when the subject actually commenced operations - “opened for business” if you like. I say “invariably” because I am not aware of anything otherwise.
To take just one famous example, the centenaries in the Isle of Man were all taken from the dates of opening for business. In September 1993 we celebrated the centenary of the opening of the first part of what became the Manx Electric Railway in September 1893. There was no thought of celebrating the centenary in 1987, yet 1887 was the year that the organisation was formed to build the line. Whenever one sees references to centenaries (and currently we are seeing a series of tramway openings in the first decade of the 20th century), they are ALL taken from the dates of opening for business - NOT from when the organisations were formed to build and operate those systems.
This has implications for the proposed marking of the centenary of the Birmingham & Midland Motor Omnibus Co. Ltd. In short we all have it wrong, and when Midland Red marked their Golden Jubilee in 1954 they, too, had got it wrong.
An explanation is clearly required, and I can do no better than to quote my friend and recognised historian Peter Jaques. The Kithead Trust, of which Peter is a founder-director, is the repository of many transport archives, recognised by, among others, the Ministry of Transport. It was chosen by the National Bus Company as the repository for their archives when that organisation was being broken up under privatisation. Using the original papers from the time as his source, Peter wrote to me on the matter of the BMMO centenary, and I quote verbatim from his letter. It reads:-
… I notice that you have mentioned the centenary of the founding of Midland Red. In the hope of avoiding confusion over the next year or so, it is perhaps worth putting on record once more that the only thing which happened on 26 November 1904 was that a company named The Birmingham and Midland Motor Omnibus Co. Ltd. was registered. The company was formed by the directors of the Birmingham Motor Express Co. Ltd. (BME) as a means to solicit additional capital. A prospectus was issued inviting the public to subscribe up to £60,000 and a provisional agreement was made to sell the BME assets to the new company. The prospectus stated that allotment would not be made if less than £40,000 was subscribed and as the actual sum contributed was well below this amount, no allotment was made, no purchase of the BME took place and BMMO did not trade, the only shares issued being £500 to each of the original subscribers, a total of £3,000.
In the summer of 1905, agreement was reached between the BME and the British Electric Traction Co. Ltd.’s subsidiaries whereby a merger of the omnibus sections of the City of Birmingham Tramways Co. Ltd. and the Birmingham & Midland Tramways Ltd. with the Birmingham Motor Express Co. Ltd. took place. The conveniently dormant BMMO was used as the vehicle (no pun intended) for the merged businesses, shares in the BMMO being issued in exchange for the various assets and goodwill contributed.
Although the transaction was backdated to 1 June 1905 (no doubt, a convenient half-yearly point) all the agreements were signed and shares issued on 21 July 1905. As the plans could have been amended or the merger called off at any point up to that date, 21 July 1905 has to be the true date on which BMMO began to operate. This seems to be a more appropriate date on which any anniversary might be commemorated by those inclined to do so.
It is clear from what Peter has adduced from the records of the time, that the actual date when the company “opened for business” was 21 July 1905, and if we are to observe the age-old convention on when to celebrate an anniversary of any event, then our celebrations must be centred around 21 July 2005. Quite apart from being the correct time to hold our celebrations it is also a much better time of year than dreary, dank old November!
Stan Letts
Oldbury
Malcolm Keeley replies:-
As always, we owe a great debt to those who have the patience to dig deeply to discover historical facts and check out long established details. We were sufficiently dubious about the importance of the 26 November date to act on two suggestions, which, I believe, came from Stephen Richards. Firstly, that late autumn weather is often awful so the annual Midland Red day should be earlier in the calendar. Secondly, that the Midland Red centenary is too important to entrust to one day when it might rain!
We have therefore been advertising centenary year celebrations, which begin with our September route tour to Banbury. This is followed by the 10 October event day when we hope to create the greatest ever line-up of Midland Red types. 2005 is still being considered, as it will be heavily influenced by whether our Heritage Lottery Fund application is successful, how quickly the HLF make their decision and the builders handle the job. Our aspiration has been to open the additional hall, linking it to the centenary celebrations, on Spring Bank Holiday 2005, which is as close to 1 June as possible whilst remaining in Museums and Galleries Month to help along the publicity. It would seem that Peter Jaques has found us an escape route if the project slips by several weeks!
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