RICHARD Faull was born in St Ives in 1858; his father was a plumber and ironmonger employing one domestic servant.

Aged 23 he was living in Reigate, Surrey, working as an ‘Ironmonger’s Assistant’, and became superintendent, teacher and secretary of the Methodist Sunday School. In 1883 Richard arrived in Liskeard, having purchased the ironmongery business from the recently deceased Henry Lucas, at 3 Fore Street. He became a trustee of the Methodist Chapel in Barn Street and secretary of the Band of Hope, and in 1887, aged 29, he married 38-year-old Jessie Firks.

Fowey has always been popular with tourists; in 1901 Richard and Jesse were holidaying there at the St Katherine’s Hotel, along with thirteen other guests. Staff living in the hotel were two Chambermaids, a Parlourmaid, a kitchen maid, a cook and a boots, with more staff likely to be living locally. Back in Liskeard, Richard had moved his business to 1 Market Street and had taken a lease on the nine-roomed Henry Rice designed 7 Dean Terrace.

The early 1920s was an eventful period in the Faulls’ life; Richard retired from ironmongery and sold his business to John Goldsworthy, he resigned as honorary secretary of the Cornwall Masonic Charity Association after 13 years’ service, and Jesse, after 38 years of marriage, died aged 76. Then, two years after Jesse’s death, 68-year-old Richard married for a second time, in the Wesleyan Central Hall in London, to 41-year-old Edith Rossiter, daughter of an old friend of Richard’s from Reigate.

Five months after the wedding Edith received a summons for obstructing the highway by parking her car for 40 minutes 12 feet from the pavement. Her defence was that someone had told her it could be left there while she stopped to look at the view, she was fined £1. The magistrate read a letter from Edith in which she ‘wrote very highly of the policeman’s courtesy when he spoke to her’. At the time Edith was Cornwall’s representative on the National Executive Committee of the British Women’s Temperance Association.

Richard Faull died on May 28, 1938, aged 81, and left £673,000 in today’s values to Edith. He was chair of the Passmore Edwards Cottage Hospital Committee and a life member of the Royal Institution of Cornwall. In his newspaper advertisements he often referred to himself as the ‘People’s Ironmonger’.

When Edith Faull was elected ‘Alderman of the Borough’ in 1949, she was the first lady ever to hold the office. The following year she became mayor of Liskeard for the 1950/51 term, representing Liskeard at the Festival of Britain in London. During WWII Edith was a night driver with the Women’s Voluntary Service and organised a group providing clothing for the troops. She was a founder member and a president of the Liskeard Ladies Bowling Club and leader of the Liskeard Darby and Joan Club since its inception in 1949. Edith was also a school governor and held offices in the local Methodist and Temperance groups. She died in 1956 aged 71.