Making Mayor-y
Last week I watched the Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council Mayor- making ceremony. I also tuned in to the last one, never having witnessed one before. The only idea I had of the process was governed by some historic records which had described how the Mayor should be chosen from the best within the community (women were not included). But these were earlier and possibly better times. By the 19 th Century the whole procedure appears to have fallen into disrepute. It was only after a hard-won fight that Joseph Mayer of Thistleberry (whose father, Samuel, became Mayor in 1833) claimed that his father was part of a ‘new regime’. (Unfortunately, the Minutes of meetings over which his father presided, did not seem to bear this out.) Joseph Mayer went on to produce a pamphlet in 1833 describing these mock ceremonies in unflattering and Swiftian terms, indicating that the closed system needed to change if it was to retain its credibility....