Mystery and magic of One Of The People

Then his columns in the Wellington Journal & Shrewsbury News abruptly stopped. One Of The People mysteriously disappeared.

Who was he? That's something Shrewsbury's Richard Tisdale would dearly love to know.

Richard is writing a book about the newspaper correspondent who went behind the scenes of how people lived, what they thought about the politics of the day, and the workings of the courts.

There was even some investigative journalism into the sensational tale, which made national headlines, of a young servant girl from Weston Lullingfields called Emma Davies who appeared to be the focus of supernatural happenings, with the correspondent noting in passing that "the villages of Weston and Weston Lullingfield (sic) are, perhaps without exception, the quietest and dreariest it was ever my chance to pass through."

This correspondent originally began writing under the name One Of The Crowd but quickly changed that. Among his columns was a whole series devoted to how the poor lived in Shrewsbury. In another he told how he went up to the top of Lord Hill's Column, to find the statue already ravaged by time - and that was in 1884.

His story has intrigued Richard, 35, who works for BBC Radio Shropshire as the breakfast show producer.

"I've just got a real passion for history - we have in the family. My dad Allan Tisdale has taken our roots back hundreds of years in the family history.

"I signed up to the British Newspaper Archive which has papers dating back to the 1700s and found lots of interesting and amazing stories which seemed a waste to let go. I started a blog about it and then I came across this columnist who worked for the Wellington Journal & Shrewsbury News.

"I have no idea who he was by name. He only referred to himself as One Of The People, but in the 1880s he wrote a weekly column about places he visited and the people he spoke to. It's beautifully written and sheds a fantastic light on the everyday goings-on in the lives of ordinary people.

"He visits a pub in Shrewsbury and talks to the drunken members of the militia about the politics of the day. He does a column on the family of deaf and dumb children living in Frankwell and being failed by the education system.

"He does one about spooky goings on at Weston Lullingfields - a story which made national news - so, as a sceptic, he goes to find the truth after the dust has settled.

"He visits the police courts and quarter sessions across Shropshire and describes the people, their crimes and how they're dealt with. And a fisherman complaining that there aren't as many fish in the river any more."

By reading the columns, Richard has got a sense of what sort of person One Of The People was.

"I would assume he is well educated, a liberal, certainly in the old sense. His writing is beautiful, so distinctive, and I think he believes in social justice.

"He was somebody who could talk and interact with anybody. He must have had the gift of the gab, being able to go in and talk to all walks of life.

"What happened to him I have no idea. I have found no other reference to him. I'm still searching. It would be amazing to know who he was."

Richard's book, on which he is still working, will naturally be called One Of The People, and will include some of the best columns from around the county and put them in historical context.

"I have a publisher, The History Press, interested it already. Ideally I would love to have it ready for Christmas, but I think it's going to be just past that."

Meanwhile he is posting interesting stories from Shropshire newspapers in the Victorian era on his blog, newsfromthepastblog (https://newsfromthepastblog.wordpress.com/).

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