Crossroads and Characters
3. THE VILLAGE BELLRINGER.
In late Victorian times, the newspaper and the telegraph were standard means of communication in larger centres. In villages like Dunning the bellringer or town crier - often as in Dunning connected with the local post-office - was being displaced as the bearer of important public tidings. This photograph of the 1890's looks as if it might have been posed to capture a tradition slipping away. The children in the photograph would certainly have been familiar with newspapers for by 1844 a public reading room had been set up, and Dunning was receiving a considerable number of newspapers regularly. Dunning was in fact quite a literate place by this era. A Dunning Literary Society existed in the 1880's if not earlier - some material in this book comes from an historical talk given to that group in 1889. In 1909 a library was added to the village hall, and Dunningites had become prodigious readers.
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