In placing the following pages before the attention of the inhabitants of Dudley and its vicinity, I am actuated by the desire that the memories of the past generation, with all its fierce struggles for social and political predominance, and its efforts to promote local progression, may be faithfully portrayed in the mirror of its own doings, reproducing many forgotten scenes and events enacted in this Borough, which to the writer of these pages, and many others, afforded then as it will afford now a fund of amusement and reflection, such as is only to be obtained at the fountain of memory and observation.

The fact of being myself the collector of this large pile of printed information for the last 40 years, emboldens me to chronicle the Events and Curiosities of Dudley in such a succession of past years as will at once convey to my few remaining contemporaries a lively recollection of once stirring events, which the present generation of active public men in our midst may perhaps deign to learn therefrom a lesson of experience and profit. These curious events having been written at the time they occurred, removes the historian out of the region of fancy and speculation, giving a clear and unbiassed insight into the ways and doings of the past generation of our active townsmen.

When this history of events began, Dudley was comparatively a small country town, separated from Birmingham by the Horseley Fields and Bromwich Heath; it was governed by a Court Leet of the Manor of Dudley, which body annually elected a Mayor and High Bailiff, &c. There was also in force a “Local Town Improvement Act,” of some considerable date, administered by townsmen of property and position in the town; but this Commission always fought shy of any Sanitary or Drainage improvements, but contented itself by levying town rates up to a very circumscribed area in the town. Periodically, as the funds accumulated, important improvements were occasionally made in the Market Place, by buying up and removing entirely what was then known as the Old Middle Row, of all descriptions of tenements and old and dilapidated buildings, resulting in our now possessing the most spacious Market Place in the county. Both Bush Street and Upper Vicar Street, leading into King Street, were widened by this local Authority. The town rate varied from 1s. to 2s. in the pound annually, but is now extinct.

My book closes with the Life and Trials of Dud Dudley, whose narrative I have printed in its entirety. If ever a public inventor deserved some public recognition for his inventions as “the first Artificer in Iron made with Pit Coale,” that man was the renowned Dud Dudley, who lived and died in our midst.

The Ironmasters, Coal Masters and inhabitants of Dudley and its district could not perform a more enduring and graceful act than by placing an iron column in our midst to commemorate the inventions of Dud Dudley, the great Ironmaster.

C. F. G. C.