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feature - Percy R Salmon FRPS
feature
Percy R Salmon FRPS
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(Fellow of Royal Photographic Society)
Percy ‘Peepbo’ Salmon retired to Melbourn after an illustrious career as a photographer and journalist, and lived at the Cross, where he had a birds eye view of village comings and goings, hence his nickname. He spent much of the following 20 years writing a weekly column for the Royston Crow. In March 1933 the Crow wrote about ‘Peepbo: ‘our Melbourn correspondent, with his pithy pars, his fun and sobriety, his pathos and humour, and his faithful recording of village happenings, has caused his weekly column to be looked upon as a leading feature with our readers, yet few realise he is anything but the inexperienced scribe he would have folks believe’.
Percy R Salmon was born in 1872 in Waterbeach into a family of farmers and market gardeners. His father was W. Salmon, subsequently of Cambridge Borough Police, and a nephew of Superintendent C. Salmon of Cambs County Police. His first lessons were given by his grandfather who had a night school at the farm, teaching adults who were keen to learn. Very soon he, like his father and uncle before him, escaped to Cambridge where he started taking a close interest in photography. He joined the Cambridge Camera Club and won the Club’s Silver Cup in 1894. He made a speciality of country life pictures, and the photograph which won him the cup was a picture of a girl at a farmyard well. This was Miss Eliza Dickerson of Little Abington, whom he married 9 years later. He still had the photo on the wall when he and his wife retired to Melbourn in 1934. Percy Salmon was a prolific journalist and wrote under the pseudonym of both Richard Penlake and L. Tennant-Woods. He travelled extensively in Italy, the Middle and Near East, sometimes disguised as an Arab and wrote a number of books on these countries.
In 1899 he was travelling in Palestine and on St George’s Day visited the tomb of the Saint. Several locations are suggested for the tomb, but he favoured Lydda, which is on the Jaffa to Jerusalem Road about twelve miles from Jaffa. St. George was a soldier in the Roman Army in Lydda and was tortured and killed when he refused to worship idols.
He went out to Egypt with Kitchener during WWI, lived in Jerusalem, then travelled through Lebanon, Asia Minor, Turkey, Greece and Italy and a newspaper correspondent and photographer. In 1915 he published an article in ‘The Star’ entitled ‘Our Enemy in Gallipoli’, at that time the Germans were the rulers in Constantinople. In 1917 he wrote in the ‘Daily Express’ ‘Wounded Officers in France – when and how visits may be paid’. (Application had to be made to the War Office in Whitehall, open day and night, and usually only one visitor was permitted to travel.)
Before retiring to Melbourn the Salmon’s lived in Hither Green, Lewisham, SE London.
He was a Freemason, and was elected to the ‘Pen and Brush Lodge’ in London, restricted to journalists and artists, where in January 1917 he became Worshipful Master.
He was sub-editor of Practical Photography from 189296, Editor of Photographic News from 1901-05, of Year Book of Photography 1901-05, and Active Editor of Photographic Dealer from 1906-09. He spent several years with Cassel & Co Ltd, publishers, in the Editorial Department.
His publications included ‘All About Photography,’ ‘Wonderland of Egypt’, ‘Home Portaiture,’ ‘A Photographic Expedition to Egypt, Palestine Turkey and Greece’.
Four years after his wife died in 1950 he left Melbourn to live with his widowed sister-in-law in Histon, after completing 60 years of journalism, 20 of them for the local press.
His interests were numerous, and his cuttings contain information on cooking, the best ways of catching mice, a test for ghosts and many more!
Many of the photographs in ‘A Glimpse into Melbourn’s Past’ and ‘Pictorial Melbourn’ were taken by Percy Salmon. Most information was taken from an album of newspaper cuttings donated to the History Group by Terry Dash. Ann Dekkers
Age Ring; Coton Countryside Reserve; Barnwell Leper Chapel; Bourn Windmill plus various wildlife sites and historic buildings. Key achievements include protecting sites such as Grantchester Meadows, the Gog Magog Hills and Wandlebury Estate from development and helping to establish the Cambridge Green Belt in the 1960s. CambridgePPF has a growing membership, which makes a vital contribution to the cost of conserving, managing and developing its sites. With its HQ at Wandlebury, the charity has a mix of busy full and part-time staff and is run by a Board of Trustees together with Advisory Committees staffed by dedicated volunteers. For more information about the charity and benefits of membership: www.cambridgeppf.org Cambridge Past, Present & Future Wandlebury Ring, Babraham, Cambridge, CB22 3AE 01223 243830 development2@ cambridgeppf.org
Be cautious of traders who call at your door
Advice from Trading Standards In the last 5 years it is estimated that £1 million has been paid to rogue traders by older residents living in Cambridgeshire. In most cases the rogue trader will have called at the customer’s door offering to do work on their house or garden, and will have overcharged for unnecessary and shoddy work.
These are serious crimes, in some cases costing the customer their life savings and often leading to them being fearful in their own homes.
At Trading Standards we would like to make you aware of the telltale signs of rogue traders to help you avoid them. We would also urge you to pass this advice on to elderly friends and relatives.
Rogue traders typically:
•Call at the door offering services such as replacing a loose roof tile, roof or
gutter cleaning, gardening, house maintenance, jet washing, driveway paving and tree felling. • Engage with the customer to win their trust e.g. claiming to have been before, claiming they are working up the street etc. They will seem very friendly and chatty. • Start with a small job such as gutter cleaning and then claim further work is needed. This subsequent work will not be quoted for and will run into thousands of pounds. • Make fraudulent claims e.g. moss growth on a roof causes severe damage and needs to be washed off, painting a roof is necessary to protect it. • Fail to give you written notice of your right to cancel which is required for most contracts agreed at home. • Use intimidation to extort money and often take the customer to a bank or cash point to withdraw cash (a criminal offence). • Return again and again demanding further payment for bogus reasons e.g. claiming that VAT has not been paid.
If you think rogue traders are currently at your property, are in the vicinity or are due to return, please contact the police on 999. If you think rogue traders have done some work for you but have left, contact our advice partner, Citizens Advice Consumer Helpline, on 08454 040506 for advice.
In terms of finding a trader you can trust, seek recommendations from friends and family where possible. Alternatively, use a trader on our Buy with Confidence approved trader scheme who will have been thoroughly checked by us. To find an approved trader visit www.buywithconfidence.org.uk, call the Citizens Advice Consumer Helpline (above) or visit your local library, where staff will be able to look up traders on the scheme for you. We would always recommend getting three quotes to ensure the price is competitive.
At SBC we have been working with Cambridgeshire Community Reuse and Recycling Network (CCORRN)’s Community RePaint scheme and we would like to offer you occasional information from CCORRN about any special offers or good news stories about the Community RePaint scheme. Cambridgeshire Community RePaint was launched in January 2011 and involves the collection of paint from household recycling centres which is then sorted and any reuse-able paint is offered for sale at low cost (significantly less than it would cost from a DIY retail supplier). For example, the RRP of 2.5 litres of Crown or Dulux coloured emulsion is currently £17.99 whereas the CCORRN price for the same product is just £4.00.
There are many benefits of the Community RePaint scheme including:
Prevents reuse-able paint from having to be disposed of (which is expensive and not very environmentally friendly)
Low cost paint is made available to all and particularly benefits community groups and those on low incomes
Provides employment and volunteering opportunities at CCORRN (developing real work-related skills and boosting the confidence of the volunteers, making them more employable).
Community groups, charities and schools can apply for the monthly award of ‘Get Painted’ which gifts up to 240 litres of paint to improvement projects, breathing new life into tired buildings (which often enables them to increase participation in and usage of the community’s facilities).
Community buildings and homes can be well-maintained for less, building relationships and developing a sense of community cohesion.
Visit the website www.communityrepaint.org.uk for more information.
