BOER War veteran Theo Feilden, a member of one of Blackburn’s oldest families, celebrated his 89th birthday in 1952.

Born in 1863, he was the eldest son of Lt Col Montague Joseph Feilden, who twice served the town as its MP.

Despite his age, he was still editor-in-chief of a publication dealing with events throughout the British Empire.

Mr Feilden was also a founder of the Empire Trade League and became its director general.

It was said that during the Second World War, many of its members, scattered throughout the Empire, discovered and frustrated a number of Nazi plots.

At the end of the war, he was sent to Germany, as an honorary colonel, to report on post-war conditions and was injured while helping to round up black marketeers.

During the First World War Mr Feilden helped organise a fleet of taxis which were accredited with saving Paris, an incident which gained legend as ‘the taxis of the Marne’.

When he was sent back to England because of his age – he was 51 in 1914 – he enlisted 2,000 motor vehicle volunteers and was later thanked by Lord Kitchener for his services towards recruiting.

The legend of the taxis of the Marne followed a decision by the French military authorities in early September 1914, to dispatch emergency troop reinforcements from Paris, in a bid to stop German forces breaking through against beleaguered forces outside the capital.

Six thousand French reserve infantry troops were ferried to the front in a fleet of Parisian taxi cabs – some 600 in all.

The tactic worked, for at the subsequent First Battle of the Marne the German forces were thrown back.

Paris was saved, although it was regularly bombed by aeroplanes, zeppelins, and later by German long-range siege guns.