This folder contains personal reminiscences by two of the founder members of Thames Valley MM.
Cyril Smith's files are copies of his typewritten autobiography. On the final page of the text Cyril wrote, "I am grateful to my younger daughter, Margot, for her suggestion that my story be word-processed, to my elder daughgter, Jennifer, for her help in the final arrangement of material, to Sue Scott, of Codsall near Wolverhampton, for processing and printing it, and to Ruth (Databasics) for binding it. October 1987, C.D.Smith"
Jim Brooks' files are scans from 9 hand-written notebooks kept by him from the beginning of TVMM in 1952 until 1983. The first page of the first notebook is headed "LOG OF THAMES VALLEY MORRIS MEN and clearly predates the typed log books produced by Cyril. Cyril obviously relied heavily on Jim's notebooks particularly for the early years, but they are not exact copies partly because Cyril and Jim did not necessarily attend the same events. Also, as the years went by, Jim participated less and Cyril more. Nevertheless it is clear that Jim's notebooks were one of the main sources for Cyril's Log Books. Cyril arranged for the typed logs of the first 25 years to be bound by Alison Bailey in the late 1970s, which may have been when he finished typing the log, relying on JIm's notebooks and his own memories.
This folder contains the early logbooks of Thames Valley typed by Cyril Smith and covering the years from 1952 to 1988, followed by logbooks for the later years put together retrospectively by John Elkins using surviving paper and computer records.
Photographs from the Thames Valley collection have been included in the text for many years by John Walsh.
From 2015 the then squire and bagman - the two Johns - revived the writing of logbooks as events occurred. Their logs are included here, and the log is now once again being kept up to date.
John Elkins
July 2020
