Leicester Secular Society

THE FIRST SECULAR SOCIETY IN THE WORLD - FOUNDED 1851

History

Leicester Secular Society

(before conversion to a limited company in 2007)

Presidents and Vice Presidents 1889-2007

The following lists of presidents and vice-presidents was compiled by Fred Lee in 2000 and is Appendix A in his draft thesis "Secularism from the Victorian Age to the Twenty-first Century; The History of the Leicester Secular Society."

Year	President	Vice-president
1889	Sydney Gimson	none recorded
1899	..	William Wilber
1900	William Wilber	Sydney Gimson
1901	Sydney Gimson	Wiliam Wilber
1914	..	E. Pinder
1916	..	W. H. Scott
1921	..	T. Cater
1922	..	F. J. Smith
1923	..	E. Harry Hassell
1938	..	..
1939	E. Harry Hassell	A. J. Essex
1940	..	J. Cooper
1943	..	J. Abbott
1945	..	J. Cartwright
1949	G. A. Kirk	..
1951	..	L. Croxtall
1952	..	J. Cartwright
1957	..	L. Hall
1973*	A. Davis	..
1974	..	L. Croxtall
1976	..	John O'Higgins
1977	..	Peter Miller
1980	Peter Miller	L. Croxtall
1982	..	D. G. Parsons
1984	..	Anthony Barron
1985	..	D. G. Parsons
1986	..	Paul Harding
1987	Rupert Halfhide	..
1988	Paul Harding	Rupert Halfhide
1989	..	B. A. Wood
1990	..	Lyn Hurst
1992	..	B. A. Wood
1993	B. A. Wood*	none elected
1994	Frederic S. Lee	none elected
1994	..	Bob Hall
2000	Lyn Hurst	Michael Gerard

[Former] Rules of the Leicester Secular Society

These Rules have been superseded by the Memorandum and Articles of Association as indicated above. They are presented for historical interest.

Rules of Leicester Secular Society (as amended in 2001)

* Notes: (a) From 1973 the election of officers seems to have been moved to the mid-year so the dates of end of one presidency and start of another are given as the same year. (b) When I [George Jellis] asked Woody Wood to confirm these dates he denied that he was ever President, so there seems to have been some confusion in the 1990s. [Interviewed in 2013 for the For Truth's Sake lottery funded (All Our Stories) project, Woody explained that he regarded himself as a caretaker president as he only served one year].

Limited Company 2007 - ...

On 26 June 2007 Leicester Secular Society became a Company Limited by Guarantee, Reg.No.06292639, with its registered office at Secular Hall.

President and Chair

Year of election	President	Chair
2007	Lyn Hurst	Eleanor S. Davidson
2008	Allan Hayes	Michael Gerard
2009	Allan Hayes	Mike Burden
2010	Emma Chung	Mike Burden
2011	Michael Gerard	Nick Matthews
2012	Harry Perry	Nick Matthews (retired Feb 2013) Eleanor Davidson (co-opted)

Current Officers of the Society are:

President:	Harry Perry
Chair:	Eleanor Davidson
Treasurer:	Anu Kapur
Company Secretary:	Kate Housden

Memorandum and Articles of Association

As a Limited Company, the rules and constitution of the Society are embodied in legal documents - the Memorandum and Articles of Association. These are not fixed for all time so for historical interest we include past versions alongside the current one here.

Year	Comment
2007	Prior to October 2007 M&As on formation of the company
2009	Prior to November 2009M&As as revised following EGM 7 June 2009
2010	Changes to M&As were adopted at the AGM, 7 Nov 2010.

Sources of Historical Information

Sources of information relating to the History of Leicester Secular Society are widely distributed. The purpose of this section is to draw together the various sources known to us, so far.

First we give more details of the items available, complete or in part, on this website.

Gould 1900: A History of Leicester Secular Society, by F. J. Gould, 1900.
Gould 1923: The Life-Story of a Humanist, by F. J. Gould (published by Watts & Co, London 1923). Extracts are available here; the book is in the LSS Library.
Gimson 1932: Random Recollections of the Leicester Secular Society, with Digressions. Part I 1932 (pages 1-24).
Hawtin 1972: A Century of Progress: The Story of the Leicester Secular Society, by Gillian Hawtin, 1972.
The Five Busts: Photographs of the five busts on the front of the hall; from the CD-Rom A Walk Round Leicester produced by Max Wade-Matthews.
Trust papers: Reproductions of some documents relating to the Leicester Rationalist Trust.
Biographies: See above for a series of short biographies of various people with connections to the Secular Hall. The information comes mainly from books in the Library or from the Internet.

Records Office: There are some records of the Society which were deposited at the Leicester Record Office, Wigston, in 1968. The following list can also be viewed on five microfilm rolls kept by the Society, made in 1981.

An historical introduction by Edward Royle, University of York, 1981, with the title: Religion, Radicalism and Freethought in Victorian and Edwardian Britain.
F. J. Gould: History of Leicester Secular Society, 1900.
G. J. Holyoake: Address on the death of Josiah Gimson 1883.
Minute Books of Leicester Secular Society 1852-1855, 1877-1885, 1885-1902, 1902-1943.
LSS Nomination Book 1885-1901.
Visitor's Book 1924-1943.
Registration of Subscriptions 1915-1917.
Scrapbook: LSS Documents 1842-1908.
Scrapbook: Thomas Ensor 1908-1910.
Newspaper Cuttings 1899-1909 (five volumes).
Records of Secular Hall Company 1873-1905 (five lists of shareholders and three cash books).
Also available at the Records Office, but not on the microfilm are:
Sydney A. Gimson, Random Recollections of the Leicester Secular Society. Part I 1932. Part II 1935.
Photograph Album 1890-1977.

There are other records in the British Library and at the Bishopsgate Institute Library, both in London. Details to be included in due course we hope - if you have such information, please let us know! Contact details on our home page.

This inaccurate representation of Secular Hall is from a framed ink drawing, undated and by an unknown artist.

Leicester Secular Society

History

On this page

History of the Society and of Freethought