Sam Peel
David Saunders reviews an account of a remarkable life
It is exciting to come across a new book that tells a remarkable story of a Quaker life. Sam Peel: A man who did different is a biography written by his granddaughter, Susan Wild, and was recently published by the Wells Local History Group. Sam was born in Stapleford, Hertfordshire, in 1879.
Apprenticed to the printing trade, Sam found employment in Eastbourne, where he met his future wife, Annie, and promotion took him to Cambridge. He encountered Quakers there. He and Annie married in Wymondham’s Wesleyan chapel in 1905. A few years later Sam’s health deteriorated and they went to recuperate in Wells-next-the-Sea, Norfolk. This proved to be life changing not just for Sam but for the people of Wells and Norfolk!
Times were hard, local jobs involved back breaking manual labour, wages were low, housing was overcrowded and insanitary, families large and the men took solace in the many pubs. During this period Sam’s health improved. He and Annie, encouraged by Cambridge Quakers, became Friends and wardens of the Meeting house at Wells-next-the-Sea.
Sam was to make a huge impact in the area. By 1912 the Monthly Meeting minutes referred to the need to enlarge the Meeting house – to accommodate the people who attended his Sunday evening fellowship meetings with a twelve piece ‘orchestra’! He also spoke to crowds of four hundred on the quay.
Sam Peel was a visionary but was practical with it. He identified with the Quaker emphasis on social justice and peace and believed the test of true faith was how a person lived their life and treated others. Cambridge Quakers bought him a motorbike to assist his pastoral visitation and he established a Sunday School. It attracted a hundred children.
So began a life of active service and campaigning dedicated to improving the lot of the people of Wells and Norfolk. Susan Wild’s book details the many causes that Sam Peel took up: overcrowded housing, low wages, excessive drinking, unemployment, lack of education, poor public health and many more. He became first a member, and then leader, of the local Urban District Council. He was later chairman of Norfolk Education Committee.
Sam was a radical through and through and used the tools of democracy and local government to make a difference. He was determined, and persistent, and like the early Quakers was not afraid of becoming unpopular – in his case with slum landlords, local employers and publicans – in righting what he saw as wrongs. He endured threats and physical violence; but he persevered and his legacy – of new housing, improved public health, better care of the elderly, proper education throughout Norfolk and, in Wells itself, the provision of a library, telephone, gas and electricity – is second to none.
He was a conscientious objector in the first world war. He started one of John Reith’s wireless discussion groups for working men and the Wells group, the only surviving one, continues in the Meeting house to this day.
We have to thank Susan Wild for putting into print the inspiring story of her grandfather’s amazing life – a life lovingly lived for others and one that changed for the better the living conditions of working people in Norfolk. It was fitting, as the father of Norfolk County Council, that (alderman) Sam Peel’s last public act was to open the new secondary school that still bears his name. Its motto is, appropriately, ‘Learning To Make The Difference’ – just what Sam did with his life!
Sam Peel: A man who did different by Susan Wild is published by Wells Local History Group. It is available from the Quaker Bookshop price £12. £2 goes to Homes for Wells. ISBN: 9780956916730.
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