Death of Nellie Ada Lawton (Wheeler) Bosworth

DEATHS

BOSWORTH – Ada

Beloved wife of the late Neville, and dearest mother of Marjorie, Neville and John, peacefully at a Nursing Home, on December 1, 1980, aged 95 years. Funeral service at Sutton Coldfield Crematorium, on Tuesday, December 9, at 2 p.m. Flowers suitable for hospital, please, to E. F. Edwards Ltd., 31, Gravelly Hill North, Erdington, before 12 noon.

(Birmingham Mail, 3rd December 1980)

Suing Private Eye

Council leader to sue Private Eye

By Paul Johnson

The Conservative leader of Birmingham City Council is to sue Private Eye over two articles which the satirical magazine published about planning applications in the city. Councillor Neville Bosworth is also seeking an injunction to restrain the magazine from publishing the same or similar stories.

They concern two rival applications for superstores in the Small Heath area of Birmingham. One was submitted by Associated Dairies (ASDA) and Birmingham City Football Club for a site on the club’s ground at St Andrews. The other came from the Cooperative Society Ltd, which wanted to build a similar store on a nearby plot.

Against the advice of the city planning officer, Birmingham city planning committee favoured the scheme submitted by ASDA and the football club.

Councillor Bosworth is a director of the football club. He is not a member of the city planning committee and was not at the meeting which discussed the rival applications.

Councillor Anthony Coombs, the son of the football club’s chairman, Mr Keith Coombs, is a member of the planning committee and he voted for the ASDA scheme after declaring his interest.

The West Midlands County Council planning committee later rejected the scheme favoured by the city planning committee and accepted the one put forward by the Co-operative Society.

(The Guardian, 4th January 1980)

Appealing against rateable value

JOHN BRIGHT

Top rate

I hear that Coun. Neville Bosworth, Conservative leader of Birmingham City Council, is appealing against the rates he pays to his own council for his solicitors’ practice in Newhall Street, Birmingham.

The appeal is entered in the Valuation Court lists for November 29 – when panel members will decide whether the £3,000 gross £2,472 rateable, value put on the offices by the Valuation Officer, is fair.

The chartered surveyors who act for Coun. Bosworth, Bailey and Cox, told me last night that they hoped to reach agreement before the case goes to court. It is one of a clutch in Newhall Street awaiting a decision following the 1973 revaluations.

(Birmingham Daily Post, 1st November 1977)

Excellent air link

Birmingham – New York air link ‘excellent’

ALDERMAN Neville Bosworth, Lord Mayor of Birmingham, and his wife arrived at Kennedy Airport on the first eastbound flight of BOAC’s new direct air service between Birmingham and New York.

He said: “This is one of the happiest flights I have ever experienced. Everything was admirable and excellent, and I am very happy over this new service which links New York with the capital of the largest industrial area in Britain, which accounts for 40 per cent of Britain’s exports.”

Alderman Bosworth said he looked forward to a development of air cargo service from Birmingham carrying “everything possible – china, pottery and textiles – because Birmingham is known as the city of a thousand trades. You name it and we have it.”

He said he and his wife planned to visit the New York Stock Exchange. He said they would return home tomorrow.

The new Birmingham-New York service will operate four times a week each way.

(Coventry Evening Telegraph, 28th April 1970)

Security precautions

THREAT TO KILL LORD MAYOR OF BIRMINGHAM

Evening Telegraph Reporter

STRICT security precautions were taken at Elmdon Airport, Birmingham, today, after a threat to kill the Lord Mayor of Birmingham, Alderman Neville Bosworth.

The Lord Mayor was a member of the Birmingham civic party who were among the passengers, including Pressmen and businessmen on the inaugural flight of a B.O.A.C. VC 10, from Elmdon to New York.

Alderman Bosworth received an anonymous telephone call at his home last night saying that two men would kill him at the airport today.

There was also a possibility that the aircraft might have to be diverted to Prestwick, instead of landing at Manchester, where there was a firemen’s dispute at the airport, but it was learned that the aircraft would land at Manchester.

(Coventry Evening Telegraph, 28th April 1970)

Birmingham City football club

Birmingham take-over bid fails

By ALAN WILLIAMS

BIRMINGHAM CITY, second from bottom in the Second Division, have resisted the take-over bid of Clifford Coombs.

Business man Coombs, who has loaned the club £75,000 for the purchase of players, had hoped to become the master of St. Andrew’s, with Stan Cullis and Gil Merrick as his lieutenants.

But the old régime, its finances and prestige boosted by the £50,000 sale of Terry Hennessey and the acquisitions of Neville Bosworth and Doug Ellis as directors, has survived.

Coombs’s move never stood a chance, although Birmingham are playing before their smallest post-war crowds.

Birmingham promise a statement after next week’s board meeting, but vice-chairman David Wiseman said:-

“Mr. Coombs’s terms to join us were not acceptable. But the invitation for him to become a director on the same terms as everyone else still stands.”

(Daily Express, 27th November 1965)

Trustee of the Erdington orphanage

TO THE EDITOR

Orphanage Site

From Ald. Neville Bosworth.

Sir, – May I draw your attention to certain inaccuracies in the report that appeared in The Birmingham Post on Tuesday under the heading “Call to Keep Orphanage Site Open.”

1. A resolution asking the trustees of Sir Josiah Mason’s Orphanage, Erdington, Birmingham, to write into the deeds a restrictive covenant that the land on which the orphanage stands “be permanently retained as playing fields and open space was passed.
2. The resolution adopted read: “That this meeting unanimously urges the Minister to disallow the appeal being of the opinion that the site should be retained as a permanent open space.”
3. Your report says it was agreed to ask that an appeal to be heard on August 1 in Birmingham by an Inspector of the Minister of Housing and Local Government against the City Council’s refusal to grant permission to the trustees to develop the site should be allowed. The word “allowed” ought to have read “disallowed.”
4. I did not say that the trustees would be pleased to see some kind of legal rights written into the deeds which would prevent the Corporation from flouting its undertaking. I emphasised that I was only one of several trustees of the orphanage, but that in the event of the sale of the land for development purposes, I intended to ask my fellow trustees to include provisions which would ensure that houses of a high standard were erected, so as to maintain the character of the immediate area.

NEVILLE BOSWORTH.

54, Newhall Street,

Birmingham 3.

(Birmingham Daily Post, 1st August 1962)

Victory party

Coun. J. Neville Bosworth and Mrs. Bosworth entertained about 200 workers in the municipal campaign to a victory party at Erdington Conservative Club on Friday last week.

Mr. L. P. Davis (ward chairman), congratulated Coun. Bosworth on his victory, and expressed appreciation of the help given by Mrs. Bosworth.

On behalf of the ward a bouquet of red, white and blue flowers were handed to Mrs. Bosworth by Mrs. C. Patison.

Coun. Bosworth, in voicing his thanks for the help received said that there was a total of 250 workers during the campaign.

There was a concert by the Broadway Entertainers, and refreshments were served in the grounds.

(Sutton Coldfield News, 17th June 1950)