Frank Quick, Mayor Of Newport 1927 - 1928


Photo reference number: 2285

Photo and text from Johns's Newport Directory 1928.

The Mayor Of Newport

Councillor FRANK QUICK,J.P., Mayor of Newport, 1927-8, was born at Bristol on April 22nd, 1877, and was educated at Russell Town School and Barton Hill Board School. He started to work at the age of eleven, and subsequently entered the service of the Great Western Railway Company at Bristol as assistant signal linesman. Here, in 1898, he became associated with trade union work for the first time, and became a member of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, now the National Union of Railwaymen.

Early in 1903 he came to Newport, and in 1912 he had become secretary of Newport Branch of the National Union of General and Municipal Workers, and this was followed by his appointment, about 1914, as organiser of the same Society for the South Wales district, a position which he still holds.

He first became associated with Newport Trades and Labour Council about 1912, and was President in 1917.

He served as Chairman of Newport Labour Party in 1924 and 1925, and has represented the National Union of General and Municipal Workers at the Trades Union Congress and National Labour Party Conference for several years. He has also attended the biennial conferences.

During the war he offered himself for military service but was rejected on account of physical disability. He, however, served on Newport Food Control Committee, and took part in a great deal of administrative work.

He was elected to Newport Town Council as a representative for the Crindau Ward in 1919, and is a member of the Watch, Public Works, Health, Waterworks, Market and Baths, Housing, Finance and Housing (Joint), Finance and Housing (Joint Sub.), General Purposes, Maternity and Child Welfare, Infantile Health, Distress, Education, Elementary Education, Secondary Education, Salaries and Wages, Buildings, and West Usk Bye-laws Committee, is Deputy Chairman of Parks and Cemeteries Committee, is a Visiting Manager of the Education Committee, represents Newport Corporation on the Board of Governors of Welsh National Memorial Association, is on the Council of the Welsh National Memorial Association, and is a Town Council representative on Newport Harbour Commissioners.

He takes a great interest in the work of the Welsh National Memorial Association, and serves on the Finance Committee and House Committee of Cefn Mably Hospital and on the House Committee of Talgarth Sanatorium. He was made a Justice of the Peace in 1925.

For some time he was a local preacher with the Wesleyan denomination, and for ten years was Assistant Superintendent of the Junior Department, Shaftesbury street Wesleyan Sunday school, where he did much useful work.

Mr. Quick has devoted himself to the Labour cause, is a ready speaker and possesses the gift of quickly seizing the essentials of an argument or a situation.

In 1900 he married Miss Emily Evans, of Bristol, and they have four daughters and one son. Mr. Edwin Frank Quick is now in his third year at Bristol University ; Miss Amy Quick, B.A. (Birmingham) is a teacher at Belle Vue Central School, Newport, while Olive, Doris and Freda Quick are at Newport High School for Girls.

List of Newport's Mayors