Sodom and Gomorrah Comes to Cobham

Disgraceful Scenes in Cobham

In May 1938, The Times reported on a Charity Commission investigation that was taking place into dances at Cobham Village Hall. The official inquiry took place within the hall, where 300 local inhabitants gathered for the hearing, seemingly in rather a feverish mood.

The inquiry had been launched following complaints from a Mr Daly, Church Warden. He had asserted that the “goings on” at the hall “rivalled the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah.” The shocking scenes that he had been subjected to included:

· A drunken couple falling over a heap of coal

· A woman with her head on a man’s breast

Mr Daly went on to assert that “there was no cuddling in my young days…I thought I was in France.”

Both the clerk to the trustees and the caretaker said that they had seen nothing. The licensee stoutly defended the sobriety of the people of Cobham and said that though local folk were a “merry and bright” people, there was never any drunkenness.

Mr Cooper, who organised dances at the village hall, insisted that they were respectable. He began to say that they were “so respectable that my daughter…” but his words were drowned out by the uproar in the hall.

Mr Daly’s complaint was not upheld.

The former den of iniquity

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