Page 75 - An account of the Lodge of Nine Muses No. 235. 1777 to 2012UGLE

Lodge of the Nine Muses 75

haste in promotion is difficult to account for. Another instance occurred in 1861,
when Bro. Oakley was installed as W.M.; he was initiated in March 1858, and
served as J. W. in 1859 and 1860. The Lodge cannot have been in a very healthy
state, for though the numbers rose to eighteen in 1862 they afterwards rapidly
declined to eight in 1868 and 1870.
The officers may have felt themselves inexperienced, for Bro. Henry
Muggeridge, not a member of the Lodge, was called in to install the W.M., Bro.
W. H. Thompson, in February 1865, and he took the chair and performed a
ceremony at the next meeting in March also.
Bro. Muggeridge was a familiar character in Masonry about that time as a
kind of professional practitioner. He was Preceptor of the Stability Lodge of
Instruction from 1851 to 1885; his knowledge of the ritual was comprehensive,
and he was always ready to undertake a ceremony or conduct a Lodge of
Instruction, charging a fee for his services. He seems to have been generally
looked up to and was an honorary member of many Lodges, including the Nine
Muses, to which he was elected in 1873. In 1878 the Lodge “subscribed £5. 5.
towards a testimonial to Bro. Muggeridge”. His death was reported to the Lodge
in April 1895, as having taken place on 10 March in his eighty-fifth year, and
again on 14 February 1899; the news was received on both occasions “with great
regret”, and on the second apparently without surprise.
Other signs of decline soon appear; the November meeting in 1866 was
dropped, and in May 1867 only two members turned up.
Two members only attended at the installation night, on 1 February 1868, but
five visitors saved the occasion, one of whom, Bro. W. H. Absolom of the Mount
Moriah Lodge, took the chair and performed the ceremony.
The April meeting in 1871 was abandoned, and in March 1873 there were
present only a P.M. in the chair, the S.W., Bro. Radford (the Tyler) as J.W., the
S.D., and Bro. Carlyon-Simmons, who held the posts of Treasurer and Secretary
together. How the Lodge managed without the Tyler or an I.G. it is hard to see,
even if the obliging Secretary-Treasurer also doubled the parts. The Master-elect,
Bro. Heseltine, who was absent at the February meeting, was somehow installed
under these curious conditions.