1882 : The March
Easter Festivities – Rothwell Times, Friday April 14th 1882
The Rothwell Temperance Band marched out of the town on Good Friday about 10 o’clock to fulfil their first public engagement in connection with the Grand Band of Hope demonstration at Leeds. Their playing on leaving Rothwell was greatly praised and it is evident we have a likely band of teetotallers.
Under the heading 'The Temperance Band’ in the Rothwell Times of May 5th, a poem of nine verses was printed, of which the following are the most interesting:
V3:
Last Christmas as you all well know,
We had the one Brass Band,
Now you see we have got two,
And one 'tis said won’t standV4:
They say that water cannot
Blow a note so clear
But that is false!
I know a man
That’s proved it many a year
Subsequent verses yield the information that this man was called Emmanuel, a shoemaker by trade who played “on his old tenor tram”.
He can be confidently identified as Emmanuel Hampson who kept a boot and shoe shop in Commercial Street and played the trombone in the Temperance Band. His youngest son, Throp, composed a setting of “Abide with Me” which received some acclaim.
By October 1882 a converted Match Factory in Holmes Square was opened as a Temperance Hall which was to be rented for Band practices.
On the opening day the Band headed a procession through the town, and the lord mayor of Leeds entered the building to the strains of the “Hallelujah Chorus.”
