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Ernest William Bold, 1951-1952 and 1963 - 64 Ernest William Bold was born in Taunton, Somerset, in 1907. He was the son of an engineering fitter who moved his family to Ettingshall in 1910. Bold was educated at St Saviour's Church of England School until the age of fourteen,and for two years also worked part time as a lather boy for a local barber. On leaving school he became an electrical apprentice. He later joined his father at Thompson's Boiler Works, training as a storekeeper, until a depression in the trade made him redundant. Between periods of unemployment Bold sold brushes door-to-door and worked for Dudley Bakery. During the Second World War he worked for Bilston Fire Service. At the end of the war he returned to engineering, representing a local firm in charge of sales. A member of the Primitive Methodist Chapel since a child, by the age of seventeen he had become their resident organist; and it was his organ tutor, Joe Hateley, a lay preacher and the Labour councillor for Coseley, who encouraged Bold to join the Labour Party. He was elected to Bilston Council in February 1943 and became the town's youngest mayor in November 1951. It was during his term of office that the Bilston Borough Council Youth Mayor and Mayoress were first introduced, remaining part of Bilston's local government until its amalgamation with the Borough of Wolverhampton in 1966. Bold was elected mayor for a second time in 1963. Smallshire,
JL 1986: Pioneering in Black Country Local Government 1850-1950.
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