Whit-Monday was a time of parades for many organisations. The Whit Walks were still very popular with Sunday schools in many parts of the country until Whitsun was replaced by the Spring Bank Holiday.
The Whitsun Parade was not confined to Sunday schools; the photograph shows the preparations for the annual Whitsun parade of the Foresters mutual benefit society.
The Foresters formed their parade in the Market Place, outside the Australian Hotel (The Old Bell), where William Wilcox (or Brother Wilcox) was the landlord. You can see from the cutting from the Warminster Journal, that a good time was about to be had by all.
When the Sunday schools paraded, a girl who had regularly attended Sunday school and church for a year would be selected as the May Queen. To be the May Queen was greatly to be desired by young girls, but the May Queen had to be dressed in suitable fine array, and this was an expense that few parents could afford. Disappointed young girls was an unfortunate part of the Sunday school Whit Walks.
The date of our Foresters photograph is likely to be between 1887 and 1889. Some of the ladies are wearing dresses with substantial bustles. The bustle began to take on rather large proportions around 1885 and tended to get even larger until they were suddenly no longer the fashion in 1889. At Whitsun, a lady in Warminster in 1889 could not have been aware that her best dress was “so yesterday”.
The quality of the photograph also suggests a great advance in photographic technology has occurred since the 1880 photograph of the Sunday schools, taken from the same position.
Sometime around the change of year from 1890 to 1891, William Wilcox changed the name of the Inn from The Australian Inn to The Old Bell. William died in January 1897, and his widow became the licensee. In April 1897, the license was transferred to Thomas Humphrey.
Pictured above: Foresters Whit Walk. Right: Foresters notice from the Warminster Journal
