Sam Galey
Sam Galey’s name was on the list the Billy Bennington made of all the dulcimer players he could remember.
There turn out to have been several generations of the Galey family in Norwich called Sam, so it’s hard to be sure which one Billy might have meant.
They were a musical family – an earlier Samuel (1840-1896) was a drummer with the West Norfolk Militia from an early age, who ran the White Lion pub in St Martin-at-Oak for a while and then had a paid position in the 1st Norfolk Regiment. The next Samuel George Galey (1862-1912), who had a complicated personal life, was also a professional musician and publican – at the Beehive in St Benedict’s. The next generation Samuel George Galey (1881-1941) also entered the army (he was a sergeant in 1911) and in 1939 he was recorded as working as an insurance agent, so there is no proof he was a musician.
The jury is out really as to which of the later two Sam Galeys is the dulcimer player remembered by Billy Bennington, but he had a good memory for things early in life, so it could well have been the one known to have been a musician, who died before Billy Bennington reached his teens.
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