Mancon 1

Mancon 1 was a one-day convention held October 5, 1952 at the Waterloo Hotel, Hightown, Manchester, UK. The guest of honour was John Russell Fearn and it was chaired by Dave Cohen with Eric Bentcliffe, Frank Simpson, Sid Klepper, Bill Jesson and Sandy Sanderson.

Preparations

Plan for the convention were in place before the London SF Con of May 31–June 1, 1952. At least one bulletin was issued for 'The Manchester Science-Fantasy Convention', also referred to as 'The "Mancon" 52' which latter name seems to have won out. It's unclear when this was produced but seemingly they didn't have a date for the convention itself at this point. A date was however fixed by the time the convention was advertised in Space Diversions #2 (August 1952). Membership of the Society was 1/6 (or 25c). This advertisement also announces the 'The Mancon Awards' for fan writer and fan artist to be presented at the convention, although reports make no mention of any presentation so presumably the idea was abandoned.

Venue

The Waterloo Hotel is variously described as being in Hightown or Cheetham Hill. It had been used as a meeting place by the Nor'west Science Fantasy Club since 1951. It was seemingly still operating as a pub into the twenty-first century but was reported closed in 2010 and permanently closed in 2015 and converted to flats.

Attendees

There is seemingly no published membership list. John Roles estimated attendance as 'about eighty'. The following are either mentioned in contemporary reports or appear in photos. Attendees were mostly from Manchester, Liverpool and Bradford and other northern towns and cities.

This is a work in progress. Names are being checked to see if they're here under variants.

• Pete Ackroyd
• Mal Ashworth
• Eric Bentcliffe
• Marjorie Broadbent
• John Brunner
• Freda Busfield
• Peter Campbell
• Geoffrey Clay
• Mrs Clay *
• Dave Cohen
• Lewis Conway
• George Ellis
• Frances Evans
• Fred Fairless
• John Russell Fearn
• Douglas Firth
• Terry Jeeves
• Bill Jesson
• Leslie J. Johnson
• Dick Jones
• Eric Jones
• Sid Klepper
• Geoff Lewis
• Frank Milnes
• Jim Mooney
• Stan Nuttall
• D. Peter Ogden
• Tom Owens
• Derek Pickles
• Marjorie Pickles
• Mavis Pickles
• Ken Potter
• Frank Richards
• John Roles
• J. Michael Rosenblum
• Sandy Sanderson
• Ina Shorrock
• Norman Shorrock
• Frank Simpson
• Paul Sowerby
• Donald Towers
• Mr Towers *
• Harry Turner
• Brian Varley
• Norman Weedall
• Betty White
• John White
• Tom White
• Taffy Williams
• Dave Wood

Names marked * are believed to be family members of other attendees and not necessarily fans themselves per se.

Rob Hansen's Then Volume 2 Chapter 2 reports:

MANCON was held on 5th October 1952 in the concert hall of the Waterloo Hotel, the venue for the Manchester group's regular meetings. The con attracted around 100 fans and brought about the fannish resurrection of Harry Turner. Guest of Honour was John Russell Fearn who screened a film he had produced and starred in, with Peter Ogden, titled 'Black Saturday' and based on his story 'Black-Out'. (Ogden later published ERBANIA, and moved to Florida.) Other items included '1966 And All That', a play by Frank Simpson; 'Fear', a play by the Lancaster Group (Wood and Potter); a talk on fandom by Mike Rosenblum; a quiz between teams from the Liverpool and Manchester groups; and a display of 'Future Fashions' by Frances Evans. It was apparently a reasonably successful con but the fact that no London fans bothered to show up was taken as a deliberate snub by Northern fans, salt rubbed into the wound the North/South split was fast becoming. Protestations from the London Circle that no snub had been intended and that Manchester was too far away were treated with derision by Northerners, who regularly travelled down to London for the national convention.

• Conrep by Paul Sowerby in Post War (Winter 1952).

____

---

first	Mancon	Supermancon
	1952

This is a convention page. Please extend it by adding information about the convention, including dates, GoHs, convention chairman, locale, sponsoring organization, external links to convention pages, awards given, the program, notable events, anecdotes, pictures, scans of publications, pictures of T-shirts, con reports, etc.