A Long Expected Party

[davem]

This is taken from the recent book 'Black Diamonds', http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0...pf_rd_i=468294 about the Wentworth family, one of the richest families in Britain. This is a description of the 21st birthday party of the eighth earl:

The projected cost of the celebrations was £8,000 - more than £350,000 at todays values.

Shortly after lunch, on New Year's Eve in 1931, the day of Peter's birthday, the gates to Wentworth Park were opened.
The guests arrived early, in one-pony traps, farm carts & on foot. Some came on bicycles....Miners from the outlying pit villages had transport laid on for them...To discourage gatecrashers, the Estate officials had insisted that lapel badges be sent out with the 15,000 invitations. Moments after the Park gates were opened, so great was the crush that the Fitzwilliams' outdoor servants gave up trying to filter the crowds. The uninvited - miners & their families from all over the district - had come regardless, as (the Earl) knew they would....

The fireworks were spectacular. 'The setting occupied several hundred yards along which dim diminutive figures hurried with torches,' the Sheffield Daily Telegraph reported.

At the opposite end of the line, mythical jugglers began throwing up balls of fire to left & right in pastel shades of green, pink & pale blue, & then followed a fireworks boxing match that created unbounded amusement, rousing the hearty cheers of the crowds. Wonderfully realistic were the firework dovecotes, to & from which fiery pigeons winged their way across the park. The finest art of the pyrotechnician was surely embodied in a remarkably life-like picture in fireworks of the personality of the day, Lord Milton. ....The most wonderful spectacle of all was the concluding number, an air and sea battle in which the attacking airship was brought down in flames....

"ay, that party were a treat,' Ralph remembered. 'Everyone had a good time. Too good. At the end of the night, there were that many drunks, all laid out in the Park asleep. They were all over the grass. They fetched some horses & a flat cart & tipped them out on't road outside the gates....

Every employee enjoyed a day's paid holiday, plus a special birthday gift of a brand-new ten shilling note...

(The eighth earl died in 1948 in a plane crash, along with Katherine 'Kick' Cavendish nee Kennedy, sister of Jack & Bobby)

Gatecrashers from all over the neighbourhood, drunks carried off on carts, a spectacular fireworks display & 'presents for all'