There are many people in past years who have served the community and are often forgotten when they have gone. They are rarely remembered in public places, except perhaps the odd street name, yet we still benefit from the work they did. Such a man was Frederick Henry Sones who died on Friday 13th April 1934 at the age of 62. 

Typical of the tributes was this from the Stamford Mercury newspaper: "It is with profound regret that we record his death because not only Bourne, but the country of Kesteven has lost a gentleman with a fine public record. He was a man of many parts and unbounded energy who devoted a large portion of his time to public service and was identified with innumerable organisations throughout a wide area."

Mr Sones was a local man who was born in the town on 13th December 1871. He became a qualified accountant who spent every spare moment on his public work for the church and the community and his deep and abiding interest in education was instrumental in the founding of the present Bourne Grammar School in September 1920. His most prominent work was in connection with Kesteven County Council and Bourne Urban District Council, being a member of both authorities. In fact, he had been re-elected for a further period of three years on the county council only a month before his death. 

For almost thirty years, Mr Sones acted as the Collector of Rates for Bourne UDC until he resigned the post in 1929 when he was elected a member of the authority. His experience in accountancy and money matters was then utilised by the committees dealing with financing and rating, and gas and water, and he was also one of the council's representatives on the local ambulance committee. Since 1921, he had been the income tax collector for the urban district, succeeding Mr Arthur Wall. He was also secretary of the General Johnson Lodge of the Manchester Unity of Oddfellows and had been secretary of the Bourne and District Liberal Club since its formation in 1903. For many years too, he had been secretary of the Rutland and Stamford Divisional Liberal Association and had acted as agent during a number of local and Parliamentary elections as well as assisting with similar work in neighbouring constituencies. He was one of the representatives of the Bourne Friendly Societies Joint Committee on the Bourne United Charities and was a past chairman of the Charity Trustees. Frequently, he was one of the deputation on the trustees to the Charity Commissioners and indeed, his last public act was in connection with this body because on the Thursday and Friday prior to his admission to hospital, he had visited the Leytonstone Estate in London with other members of the Bourne trustees. 

At the time of his death, he was vice chairman of the Higher Education Committee on Kesteven County Council, having played a prominent role in educational matters for Bourne. He was also a manager of the council school in the town and was appointed county council visitor to the schools both in Bourne and Dyke. During the years following the First World War from 1914-18, he was an energetic worker for the establishment of Bourne Grammar School and was subsequently a governor and then vice-chairman of the governors, a position he held until his death.

Mr Sones was also a member of the North Fen and Dyke Fen Drainage Board, a director and chairman of the Bourne Corn Exchange Company, a member of the South Kesteven Guardians Committee and county council representative on the Rauceby Mental Hospital Visiting Committee. During the Great War he was a member of the Local Defence Volunteers, an early version of the Home Guard, and he also served at the Voluntary Aid Detachment Hospital that was established in the Vestry Hall and adjoining National School in North Street where wounded soldiers brought home from the trenches were sent to convalesce. His other offices included that of local district secretary of the Royal Oak Benefit Society and in 1931, he was elected to serve on their general committee while in June 1933, he became vice president and in accordance with the general custom, would have succeeded to the presidency later in 1934, which was the highest honour the society could bestow. He was a member of the Volunteer Training Corps and one of the local secretaries organising celebrations for the coronation of King George in 1911, an original member of the Bourne Juvenile Employment Committee formed in 1922 and from 1916 he was assistant secretary of the National Association of Corn and Agricultural Merchants.

In the year 1919-20, when over £700 was raised for the new wing of the Butterfield Hospital in Bourne as a memorial to those who fell in the war, Mr Sones was honorary secretary to the Bourne Permanent Peace Fund. He was also a member of the executive committee when Bourne made a special effort at the time of the building of the War Memorial Hospital at Peterborough and was a prime fund raiser to help with the local hospital at Bourne.

Despite these wide ranging activities, Mr Sones was also a freelance journalist and the Bourne correspondent for both the Stamford Mercury and the Grantham Journal, contributing weekly news reports to both publications as well as providing a regular service of the more important news items to two London news agencies, the Press Association and Central News and to a large number of provincial newspapers in the Midlands including the Yorkshire Post and the Sheffield Telegraph. He was also a proficient shorthand writer and took the official transcripts at the Kesteven Quarter Sessions which then alternated between Sleaford, Bourne and Stamford. He also had a spell as a businessman and for ten years was a partner in the firm of Messrs Tolly, McCann and Company, feather merchants of Billingborough.

The former Congregational Church in Eastgate, now the United Reformed Church, to which Frederick Sones devoted 46 years of his life, as Sunday School teacher and later superintendent, and fulfilling many other offices. When he died, the church remembered his work at a memorial service attended by a packed congregation

But above all, Mr Sones was a devout congregationalist and had maintained a lifelong connection with the church and Sunday School in Eastgate, being a former church secretary and was a deacon at the time of his death. For some 46 years, he had been a Sunday School teacher and later superintendent of the school as well as being instrumental in organising annual collections for the Claremont Mission in London, the last of which took place the day before his funeral. He was a former president of the Bourne and District Free Church Council and also of the Lincolnshire County Congregational Union and the year before his death, he had been elected a life member on the executive of the county union. 

His death was unexpected. Early in 1934, he returned to his home at Rutland Cottage No 1 North Road from a trip to London with the trustees of the United Charities, and noticed that his right foot had swollen where a sprig from the sole of his shoe had punctured the flesh. He was already suffering from diabetes and the wound turned gangrenous and blood poisoning set in and on Tuesday 10th April, he was rushed to Peterborough War Memorial Hospital. His condition was so serious that an immediate operation for the amputation of the leg was necessitated the same afternoon but he failed to rally and died three days later. He left a widow, Lizzie, who died on 18th November 1953 at the age of 83, and a family of three sons and two daughters. Their youngest son, Flight-Sergeant Frederick Ryland "Roy" Sones, a bomb navigator with the Royal Air Force, died on 4th June 1943 while on active service in India where his plane crashed on take off.
 

The Sunday School's joint honorary secretary Mr John Robert Arnold gave the address in which he remembered both the work and warm personality of Mr Sones during a moving euology in which he said: 

See also     Reg Sones     Kath Cox     The United Reformed Church

For a history of Rutland Cottage see Thomas Hinson

Go to:     Main Index    Villages Index