Mexborough and Swinton Times December 23, 1938

Mexborough Couple’s Golden Wedding on Christmas Day

Christmas Day will have extra significance for Mr. and Mrs. John Pepper of 48, Cross Gate, Mexborough, for they will then be celebrating their Golden, Wedding. They were married at St. Nicholas’ Church, Newport, Lincoln, by the Rev. F. H. Tarrant-Turner.

Mr. and Mrs. Pepper are looking forward to a happy family gathering, and hope to have all their six surviving children, and their grandchildren, to join in the celebrations. Both are 70 years of age, but while Mr. Pepper’s health is well nigh perfect, his wife is unable to leave the house.

They came to this district 33 years ago, when Mr. Pepper, a native of Lincoln, was transferred from the railway at Grimsby to Mexborough. He came on a fortnight’s relief work, but stayed. He retired in 1933 after spending nearly 50 years on the footplate, 37 of them as driver. Before he and his wife moved to the old folk’s bungalow they now occupy, Mr. and Mrs. Pepper lived for many years at 6, Auckland Road.

Mr. and Mrs. Pepper have two sons, both on the railway, and four daughters, two of whose husbands are also engaged on the line. Their eldest boy was killed in the Great War.

Mr. Pepper has had an eventful life, starting work at the age of six, when he spent the summer picking potatoes and doing other farm work, and went to school during the winter. He worked in a brickyard between the ages of 14 and 20, and then decided to take up work on the railway, a decision he has never regretted. He started at Grimsby in August, 1888, and was transferred to Mexborough in 1906.