WHEN "BEING ON A REGISTER" MEANT SOMETHING ELSE...

May 30th - 1936

"FAILED TO KEEP REGISTER - GRANTHAM LANDLADY FINED"

These days, when it comes to "being on a register" in relation to crime and justice, the news would usually relate to a sex offender, or someone who may be on some kind of terrorism related list. However, on quite a few occasions, it seems as though that certainly throughout the 1930's, one of the prime methods that detectives would use would be to trawl through the registers held by the numerous boarding houses that had sprung up in Grantham.

I'm uncertain which law was in place at the time; there is a handy guide to relevant hotel and hospitality related law in place now at https://dip9shwvohtcn.cloudfront.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Policy-Operations-Health-Safety-Guide-UK-Health-and-Safety-Regulation-Chart.pdf , created by the British Hospitality Association, but most of that is relatively modern.

It turns out that poor Mrs Hilda Lee, the landlady of the boarding house at 12 Launder Terrace, Grantham, was in breach of the law of the day, requiring her to note down all residents that stayed in her guest house. Detective Bramhall was on the trail of a fraudster, and was therefore trawling the registers of the town's boarding houses. He asked Mrs Lee if she had seen the suspect, to which she said she did, where upon inspection, he did not appear at all in the guest book of the establishment. She had remembered his surname, but not the forename.

Unfortunately for Mrs Lee, she had been previously warned by my great-grandfather a few months before for failing to keep her book up to date, and she was therefore summonsed before the court, pleading guilty. The magistrate, who was also the mayor (a change of hats, one supposes), told her that she had made a "very great mistake" in not keeping the book up to date, and fined her an absolutely whopping £100 - a small fortune in those days.

ELSEWHERE IN THE NEWS: GRANTHAM FOR THE FASCISTS? - POLICY OUTLINED IN OPEN-AIR MEETING

A news report that The British Union of Fascists (Grantham Branch) had invited Colonel Crocker (retired) to address crowds of people in the heavy rain about the policies of the "Black Shirts". The news report makes it plain that many people from the town interjected their speeches to make points of their own, such as "Germany and Italy put their men in uniform and send them to slaughter people. It is about time we put you out and put a stop to you".

The article went on to say that the main points of the speaker was "Britain for the British", a promise to reduce the amount of foreign trade deals in order to prioritise British agriculture and farms, and to "keep out the foreigners". Crocker finished his speech with, "Hitler represented the party of only the small man, but he won".

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