THEY did not sing for their supper.

Their evening concerts were a unique way of drawing to the nation’s attention the plight of hundreds of families devastated by the collapse of the tin mining industry.

It was against that shocking background that the most unlikely group of singers was formed to spread the message.

They were the famous Cornish Choir who in 1923 played to packed churches on the Isle of Wight.

Enthusiastically received in the small towns and villages, their tour climaxed at the Island’s capital where they delivered two concerts at the United Methodist Church in Quay Street, Newport.

The choir, who numbered about 30 men, sang with great power and yet with remarkable attention to light and shade throughout their performances blended by religious and Cornish music.

It was during a break in their packed programme that tour organiser W H Barrett spoke of the distress and hardship which had not been of their own making.

“There are 3,000 unemployed, mostly tin miners in the district we represent, making an army of almost 12,000 men, women and children for which we have to provide. In hundreds of instances, men have been out of employment for three years through no fault of their own, and all of them have been out for two years.

“We have endured this hardship for a long time before we were forced to make an appeal even to our own county but in the end the crisis had become so acute we have been obliged to do so.”

He lamented how parents had been forced to sell their most treasured possessions to provide the most basic necessities of life and they had reached the limit of their endurance.

To make a broader appeal, they came up with the idea of forming the choir and in the past 18 months they had toured provincial towns from Land’s End to London, even singing in the Queen’s Hall and the Palladium, and had raised about £20,000.

Their cause had been endorsed by an unlikely source, with the chief constable of Cornwall issuing an appeal on our behalf that they were a needy, deserving and most law-abiding people.

After the Mayor and Mayoress of Newport, Cllr and Mrs Quinton, had entertained them to tea, the choir sang to a packed methodist church with more than 1,000 present, the rooms behind the rostrum and the overflow filled the entrance, so much so that dozens of other disappointed people had to be turned away.

As their Isle of Wight tour yielded considerably more than £200, Barrett believed the worst was over.

“The price of tin is rising. We are out for a month at a stretch, with concerts twice a day – Sundays and week days. It is strenuous work.”