Category: meetingreports
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August 2024 meeting: Tales of a Custom Officer Part 2
This was the second visit from our guest speaker, Brian Topping, who is a retired customs officer and had more stories and information about his career. He told us about the many roles and responsibilities of customs officers, carried out every day. These are often connected with other authorities, who give customs officers the power… Read more
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July 2024 meeting: Lady Killers
Unfortunately our original guest speaker was unable to join us. But Michael Astrop, the vice chair of our branch, stepped in at short notice and presented ‘Lady Killers’. Michael told us about five cases of homicide where the accused was female and, after each one, he asked his audience whether they thought she was guilty… Read more
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June 2024 meeting: the Victorian era - a Legacy of Antiques
Our guest speaker Sheila Antrobus set the scene by describing the enormous differences between the population during Queen Victoria’s reign. The Queen and her consort, Prince Albert had nine children during their marriage, five girls and four boys. All of these children would have been brought up mainly by ‘wet nurses’ and other servants, educated… Read more
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May 2024 meeting: So you want to be a pirate?
The guest speaker at the May 2024 u3a Todmorden Members Meeting was Chris Helme, who presented ‘So You Want to be a Pirate’. He began by telling us how this particular talk came about. Chris had once thought of giving up public speaking, after cruise ship audiences didn’t like talks about his local area, and… Read more
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April 2024 meeting: Medieval Churches of West Yorkshire
This month's guest speaker was Dave Weldrake. He began by describing how Christianity was introduced by the Romans around the year AD312, when the Roman emperor Constantine had made Christianity the main religion of Rome. This is evidenced by the discovery of Christian mosaics in Roman Villas in Britain around this time. Dave said that… Read more
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March 2024 meeting : Crippen - A Case of Mistaken Identity?
This month's guest speaker was Dr Julian Somerville who spoke about the case of Dr Crippen. Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen was born on the 11th of September 1862, in the United States. At the age of 21, he qualified as a doctor. While working at a New York hospital, Crippen stitched a wound sustained by… Read more
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February 2024 meeting: Does Colour Exist?
The guest speaker was Professor Stephen Westland, Professor of Colour Science and Technology in the School of Design at the University of Leeds. His main interest is colour, and his approach to studying colour spans some quite diverse areas such as design, science and technology, and machine learning. He began by answering the question posed in… Read more
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January 2024 meeting: Murderous Anaesthetists
This month's speaker was Alan Kershaw, who retired from a career in Anaesthesia in 2017, having worked in South Yorkshire for 25 years. He began by reminding us that practising medicine is a dangerous business, as is anaesthesia. He said that death, and the methods of trying to prevent illnesses and injury leading to death,… Read more