Often the most illuminating and vivid accounts of social history are related through personal memory. Mr Stan Dupe, a Chalvey resident, recorded his experiences from his earliest memories up to 1920, in his detailed and fascinating memoirs. His account reveals what it was like to live in Slough as a child, including looking forward to the circus, carnivals, and travelling companies, and in later years witnessing the overwhelming public reaction to Queen Victoria's funeral procession in 1901.

The Memoirs were given to Slough Library in 1961, and are an invaluable source of information on the social history of Slough and District covering the latter part of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

He found a job as an apprentice at the Slough Observer office, where he reported on local elections and covered noteworthy events such as local murder trials. He was also a keen sportsman, joining the Slough Ramblers junior cricket club, and later becoming the Vice-President and a life member of the Slough Cricket and Bowls Club. He was also an opera singer of some note, and performed in many amateur Gilbert and Sullivan productions, and raised a considerable sum for charity singing in a troupe.

Sadly we know little of the events which occurred after 1920, as he concludes, "From 1920 onwards events both social & sporting are pretty green in the memory of most folks in Slough & District, & I must leave it to more capable hands than mine to relate them". He wrote the memoirs whilst in his seventies, for the benefit of future generations who he hoped may find his recollections of interest. They were kept for safe-keeping by the Rev. Eric Perkins before being donated to Slough Library in 1961.