Regional press photographer Horace Wetton has retired after 42 years of taking pictures.
He was deputy picture editor at the Sentinel, Stoke. Here, his colleague Alan Cookman looks back at a remarkable life spent capturing the moment with style.

Horace Wetton, (right), joined The Sentinel in the depths of the harshest winter on record.

It was so cold that Trentham Lake froze to a depth of 2ft and the foolhardy drove their cars on to the ice.

And the freezing conditions were indirectly responsible for Horace getting his very first picture in the paper at the age of just 15.

“Tom Woodward, the chief photographer, told me to get my coat and bring my camera, although I probably wouldn’t need it,” says Horace. “Then he drove us to the Etruria gasworks, gave me a shovel and told me to load up his car with coke.”

But the queue for coke was so long that Mr Woodward told Horace to take a picture of it — and it duly appeared on an inside page.

His first page one picture was published during the Mary Walton murder inquiry, for which Gwen Massey was later charged.

“The body of Mary Elizabeth Walton was found in a car near Mow Cop castle and I was dropped off there and told to wait for the Army to come with metal detectors to look for the keys to the car, a Mini estate.

“It was absolutely freezing and I remember two policemen sitting in their nice warm car watching me freeze to death. Eventually a lady across the road took pity on me and offered me a cup of tea. It was the best I’ve ever had.”

When the soldiers arrived, Horace took a dramatic picture of them searching for the keys with the ruined castle in the background. “The boss was really pleased with it and they used it on the front page,” says Horace.

The son of a pottery industry labourer, Horace joined the paper on the last day of 1962 straight from Cannon Street Secondary Modern School, Hanley. “My mother was really proud but dad thought taking photographs was a cissy’s job,” he says.

He had no experience in photography but elder brother George was interested and an old friend, Trevor Slater, later to become picture editor, was already on the staff.

“On the first day, I swept the floors and spent most of the first week in the darkroom learning to develop and print plates or accompanying other photographers on jobs.”

Horace was the first Sentinel photographer to go on the National Council for the Training of Journalists course at Wolverhampton.

Of the 30 students, he was one of only two with a plate camera, all the others having gone over to film.

“I was asked to bring enough plates for 300 exposures and I could hardly lift the case.”

When Horace started, a photographer had only 12 plates — that’s 12 shots — per job. “Now, with digital cameras, you can take as many shots as you like but in those days you had to be on the ball and be prepared to make snap decisions, especially if you were covering a football match, for example.”

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