""Around four years ago we started extensive renovation works and that opened up a couple of attic spaces, where we just found absolute stacks of archive material and letters going back to 1888," explained committee member Jon Riley. "Part of what the archive team found was how important the club was during the First World War, and the history of some of the people running the club at the time.""
""They'd got these fantastic letters and he was so involved in the club, but nobody could find anything about him, apart from a newspaper article that kind of described him a little bit." The newspaper article paid tribute to Mr Manley and said he was the son of a sailor. The information in the article was key to tracking him down. "It told us where he was born and what he did for a living. But that was all we had to go on apart from a couple of electoral rolls where we found him.""
A box of letters was discovered during renovation at Hackney's Mildmay Club, revealing the club's wartime role. About 500 members served in the Great War and around 90 did not return. Archive material dated back to 1888 and included many letters addressed to club secretary Ralph Manley. Manley sent cigarettes, pipes, tobacco, food and regular updates to soldiers in the trenches, and those newly drafted expressed gratitude. Initial genealogical searches did not locate Manley, but a newspaper item provided birthplace and occupation details that assisted further tracing using electoral rolls and census records.
Read at www.bbc.com
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