HISTORY
questions to determine what it was the guest did. If they asked ten questions with ‘no’ as the answer, they ‘lost’ and the guest won a cash prize. not only did this appearance, (standing next to the housewives’ favourite eamonn Andrews) make Dorothy look clever and allow her to have fun shopping on a visit to London – it also helped launch a new television service in Dartmouth. John Pullen, who was trying to launch the new Dartmouth Aerial tV service in the town, had seen his first public demonstration of the service go wrong when vital parts had failed to turn up. With the BBC broadcast in February 1955 coming up, he realised he had a second chance.
He rigged up a tV in the Market
square and when the broadcast went out, the place was packed and rang to cheers and a round of applause when Mrs Holwill ‘beat’ the panel when they couldn’t work out what she did. (Although, in all honesty, I think I’d have struggled with her mime, which included going down a ladder, as she had to go onto ships and submarines that visit the harbour apparently).
Mayor Dolly Holwill giving Freedom of Entry into the Borough of Dartmouth to the BRNC - February 1956
the Chronicle hailed her
appearance with the memorable line: “Fortunate Dartmouth, to have a Mayor like Mrs Dorothy Holwill. there she was on Monday evening for the whole country to see. How the Panel and its Chairman eamonn Andrews responded to her friendliness. no pomposity with the Mayor of Dartmouth.” she also was the mayor who led the decision to give the Cadets of
“For centuries it has been a male preserve, but Mrs Holwill has shown us she can come up to and even surpass the men in energy, tact and initiative.”
the Britannia royal naval College the Freedom of the Borough in early 1956. the cadets marched through the snow-laden streets and were met by a beaming Dorothy, resplendent in her Mayoral gown, with not the barest hint that the cold might be bothering her. When she stepped down after
two years as Mayor in 1956 her friend Bob Middleton (who served as mayor himself) said: “For centuries it has been a male preserve but Mrs Holwill has shown us she can come up to and even surpass the men in energy, tact and initiative.” she was not done with leading
the town, however: she returned in 1962 to the role – and brought not a little drama with her. It is said in the world of local
newspapers that the only thing that trumps something dramatic happening to the mayor is a big fire – so the editor of the Chronicle must have thought all his Christmases had come at once in February 1963 when Dorothy stood too close to the fire in her nightdress and caught alight. she was left with burns to her arm and no eyebrows, but nothing worse. When she stood down in the
May of that year, the Chronicle left everyone in no doubt- its headline read: “Goodbye Dolly – What a year and What a Mayor”. she was one of a kind. she died in 1982 and is buried in Longcross Cemetery – the town will, truly, never see her like again.•
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