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restore the original position and having failed to do so, resigned. Fooks became town clerk and engineer. When in 1893, the council reduced the wages of borough workmen to 6s a day, a satirical observer described Fooks as ‘Our engineer, clerk, returning officer, rate collector, registrar of dogs, superintendent of the domain, librarian—Sundays and weekdays—for which services he only receives a pittance of £200 a year’.^[1]

In 1895 the council launched another retrenchment scheme, only to find that it could not dismiss C. W. Purnell from his position as borough solicitor. A second measure, the reduction of the foreman’s wages by 2s a week, produced a sarcastic letter from that official on the subject of his unpaid overtime work. Again in 1898, when the borough overdraft was almost at its limit and the council was locked in legal argument over water, it dismissed both the labour gang and the foreman, Alfred Spicer. Spicer had occupied the position as ‘executive officer of the engineer’ for fifteen years, without giving rise to a single complaint. He was still fit, well and energetic, but now suffered for his freedom of speech a few years before. Another man was later appointed in his place.

This skinflint policy continued throughout the depression, even in those years when the town was described as ‘prosperous’; but the attitude of influential members of the council varied from time to time. The behaviour of Hugo Friedlander and David Thomas is particularly worth describing. The former served longest as mayor in this period when mayors were elected annually. He occupied the chair for six and a half years and was a councillor for over three more. The latter was councillor or mayor for over fifteen years before 1903; only Richard Bird exceeded this record. Moreover, his two years as mayor were highly successful. Newspapermen did not fail to make the pun that the portly Thomas filled the chair ‘in a way that leaves no room for dissatisfaction or anything else’.^[2] In 1882 Hugo and Rudolph Friedlander only just failed to persuade their fellow councillors to consider another high pressure water scheme. Later, Hugo’s support for improvement declined. In 1892, when he was mayor, the Guardian described his policy as showing ‘a chronic acute desire to reduce the overdraft’ at the expense of necessary drains, channels, lighting and repairs to the roads. Thomas made the same criticism in the Borough Council chambers. Yet in the following year, the latter was chiefly instrumental in giving all the workmen four weeks’ notice. Moreover, in 1898 he supported Charles Reid during the