Basingstoke and Deane’s Mayor, Cllr Dan Putty, was guest of honour at the inaugural meeting of the 45th year of continuous operation of the Probus Club of Basingstoke.
Newly installed Probus Club President, Stephen Thair, welcomed the mayor who joined the members for lunch and then gave an outline of his background in moving to Basingstoke from his native Mauritius. He worked for the NHS until he retired but became socially active and over 25 years acted as a governor in four schools, he was a JP for 32 years and is the current councillor for the Hatch Warren & Beggarwood ward of the Borough council being elected many times.
It is custom and practice for all mayors to support charities during their year of office. Cllr Putty selected two local good causes, North Hampshire Prostate Support Group, because of his own experiences of this condition, and the Hants & IoW Community Fund, which makes small donations to many deserving cases.
The club made a donation to the mayor’s charity appeal.
Cllr Putty was previously the mayor in 2013 and recalled his visit to the Probus Club when their meetings were then held at Sandford Springs Golf Club at Kingsclere. Shortly afterwards the Probus Club moved to the Test Valley Golf Club near Overton for their business meetings and lunches.
The Probus Club also have a social pub lunch, which includes wives and friends, on the fourth Thursday of most months at the Queen’s College Arms on the Aldermaston Road at Pamber End.
The speaker at this meeting was member David Wickens whose topic was ‘Lord’ George Sanger, who, in his day at the latter part of the 19th and early 20th century, was described as Britain’s greatest showman.
Coming from a showman’s family and being born in Newbury, it was his father who gave him the moniker of ‘Gentleman George’ due to his sartorial elegance. Following a fall as a trapeze artist he started out as an independent travelling showman. He progressed over the years from having peep shows and magic lanterns, being a magician, animal trainer, circus proprietor with elephants, camels, horses and acrobats and married a lady who was a lion tamer.
He progressed into permanent building in London while continuing with travelling circuses and had many European tours and partook in several royal parades in support of Queen Victoria. He built premises in Margate, Kent, which ran for many years only being demolished in 1961 to make way for the Dreamworld entertainment complex which exists to this day.
Taking legal action against Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West circus he noticed the judge referred to his opponent as the Honourable William Cody so he decided that he would elevate himself and became ‘Lord’ George Sanger. He lost the case.
In 1903 he presented a statue of Queen Victoria to the town of Newbury insisting it be positioned in the marketplace over the spot where his father once had a stall. Today the statue is positioned in the town’s Victoria Park.
He sold up in 1905 and retired to Park Farm in East Finchley where, in 1911, he was murdered with an axe by a disgruntled employee, Herbert Cooper, over suspicion that he had stolen fifty pounds. There was a well-publicised manhunt with the miscreant committing suicide on the railway. However later investigations indicated a different scenario of an altercation between two former employees that George Sanger tried to intervene, slipping and falling, killing himself in the process.
In his will, written two years earlier, George Sanger left fifty pounds to the same Herbert Cooper.
The funeral of ‘Lord’ George Sanger became a public spectacle, initially in London and again in Margate with a large procession through the town to be buried next to his late wife.
From humble beginning and with no education George Sanger had made himself probably the most successful showman ever seen in this country, the like of which will probably never be seen again.
Probus Club of Basingstoke 
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