Edward Fletcher Cass


Edward Fletcher Cass was a British miner, banker and authority on Lancashire folklore, industrial archaeology and the arts who was President of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, Folklore Society, Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society and Society for Folk Life Studies.

Career

Mining and banking

Cass was born in Manchester in 1937. He attended the Central High School before starting work in a pharmacy and then as a coal miner at Bradford Colliery, Manchester, where he formed an attachment to the National Union of Mineworkers and became friends with Jim Allen. From there he moved to William Deacon's Bank, where he became a bank manager and studied part-time at the Manchester College of Commerce. He was later elected an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Bankers.

Academia

Cass continued his studies with an MA at Manchester Polytechnic with a thesis on ‘A Local Newspaper and Its Community: Literature and The Cotton Factory Times, 1885–1937’ and then studied his PhD at Edge Hill University on "The Cotton Factory Times, 1885–1937: A Family Newspaper and the Lancashire Cotton Community".
He was a Research Fellow of the National Centre for English Cultural Tradition at the University of Sheffield and then a Research Fellow in The Elphinstone Institute at the University of Aberdeen. Cass was involved with The Folklore Society as a Council Member then President and vice-president and was also involved in The Society for Folk Life Studies first as Council Member then Honorary Secretary, vice-president and President and was awarded their Coote Lake Medal for ‘outstanding research in folklore’.

Other activities

Cass was Chairman of The Portico Library where he was also a curator of exhibitions, Secretary and Trustee of the National Museum of Labour History later the People's History Museum, Treasurer and President of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, President of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society and was also involved with Manchester's Cornerhouse and Museum of Science and Industry. He also collected material relating to folklore, plays, chapbooks and literature. Much of this was donated to the Folklore Society and is now on deposit at the University of Sheffield. A collection of about 600 books of fiction and poetry relating to Lancashire is at Chetham's Library, Manchester.

Select bibliography

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  • with M. J. Preston and Paul Smith), "The Peace Egg Book: An Anglo-Irish Chapbook Connection Discovered" in Folklore.
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