This follows the post Stokesley 1823-1834: the flax-spinning mill behind the High Street
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| 1960s aerial view looking towards the New Mill buildings (now Millbry Hill country store). |
James and John Blacket
Some accounts (such as the Wikipedia page for Edmund Thomas Blacket) state that this was James Blacket senior, who was a Wesleyan draper in London, clearly in a good way of trade and widely respected. He was born in about 1786 in West Smithfield and married Margaret Harriet, daughter of the Rev Edward Ralph; I suspect this was the Rev Ralph who was the minister of the Independent congregation at Maidstone.
Other accounts (for example, the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol 3, 1969) suggest that Thomas's partner was James Blacket senior's son James. I rather think this is the most likely, for two reasons. Firstly, that it seems unlikely that James senior would risk his standing and his large family's financial future in a speculative endeavour in the far-off North Riding, where he wouldn't be able to keep an eye on proceedings and with a man he can have known only slightly. Secondly, that I haven't been able to see any sign that James senior was affected when the Stokesley enterprise failed, as will be seen later. James senior continued in his prosperous business as a draper. Notices in the newspapers show that he was for several years in the 1840s one of the auditors of the Hope Life Assurance Company, and notices in the London Gazette show that he took his son Frank William Blacket into partnership in the drapery business in Islington and West Smithfield, before finally retiring at the end of 1856 before his death on 28 November 1858.
On the other hand, I expect James senior helped to fund his son's venture in the hope of setting him up in a good way of business. One wonders, given his growing family and the number of his enterprises, how much of the money that Thomas Mease put into this new undertaking was borrowed.
James Blacket junior was born, as recorded in the Nonconformist Registers, at 85 St Margaret's Hill, Southwark on 21 December 1808. So he was sixteen years younger than Thomas. At the beginning of 1832, Thomas was 40 and James was 23; James would have been very much the junior partner.
Thomas was now a significant figure in Stokesley, with the Paper War and the polemic against tithes and the Corn Laws to his credit, and the spinning factory and the grocery and drapery business. The Poll Book of 1834 shows that he owned freehold houses and land, occupied by himself and tenants, while his father John owned and occupied his own freehold house. Their houses were Number 42 High Street and the house next door, and were described in the auction notices in 1838 (for example, the Leeds Mercury, 26 May 1838) as
Thomas was now a significant figure in Stokesley, with the Paper War and the polemic against tithes and the Corn Laws to his credit, and the spinning factory and the grocery and drapery business. The Poll Book of 1834 shows that he owned freehold houses and land, occupied by himself and tenants, while his father John owned and occupied his own freehold house. Their houses were Number 42 High Street and the house next door, and were described in the auction notices in 1838 (for example, the Leeds Mercury, 26 May 1838) as
Two substantial Freehold dwelling-houses situate in the North Row of the Market Town of Stokesley aforesaid, with a Four-stalled Stable, Granaries, Coach-House, and other Out-offices, and a good Garden well stocked with Fruit Trees, behind the same, late in the several Occupations of Messrs John Mease, the Elder, and Thomas Mease. The above Premises are well adapted for a wholesale or retail Business.
It seems likely that the "substantial" house next door to Number 42 was the one immediately to the east, described in Buildings of Stokesley as "a double fronted house of some distinction" obscured from view for us by the fact it is now divided into two shops: "Behind the two shop fronts lies the clue, an attractive doorway which led to an elegant hall and staircase. The upper floors with their large canted bays on three levels made a handsome town house for a man of means."
I don't know – and I don't know if it is known – how the Blacket family came to meet Thomas Mease. It may somehow have been through their shared Wesleyan Methodism or because both Thomas and James senior was in the drapery business. However it came about, both James junior and his brother John were established in Stokesley by the spring of 1832.
That May, John Blacket "of Stokesley" married Elizabeth Stephens in the parish of St Matthew's, Brixton. John was then 24 years old (he was a year older than his brother James) and a solicitor. He went into partnership with William Garbutt and William Fawcett of Yarm in the Stokesley office of the practice. Again, it is probable that his father must have helped him buy into the practice and set himself up. John and Elizabeth's first son, John Stephens Blacket, was born in Stokesley on 16 April 1833 and Mrs Mary Mease, Thomas's wife, was present at the birth alongside Dr Allardice. A second son, Edward Ralph, was born in spring 1835 and a third, William Russell, in spring 1837 – Mary Mease was present then, too.
John and James Blacket soon became part of the town, and in particular the life of the Wesleyan chapel. John Blacket's sons were baptised by the Wesleyan minister, Robert Newton. The Durham Chronicle of 25 November 1836 report of the "Half-Yearly Meeting of the North Riding Association of the Independent Ministers and Congregations" held at Stokesley in October shows that James Blacket was in the Chair.
Notices in the York Herald (19 December 1835) and the Northampton Mercury (25 February 1837) tell the story of James' sadly brief married life in these years. He married Hannah Nunneley of Market Harborough at the end of December 1835; in February 1837, little more than a year later, she died at the age of 24.
Thomas Mease & the Broughton Bridge Bleach Mill
Thomas Mease and Mary Mellanby, meanwhile, now had six children and he was still looking outward to new possibilities for improving his business. In 1818 he had been eager for a canal to link the River Tees to the Durham coalfields; the Durham Chronicle of 6 May 1836 shows that he was in the list of County Subscribers to the South Durham Railway which was to link the Clarence Railway to the collieries in Weardale. He had been giving his occupation as "manufacturer" since at least 1827 when his son Joseph Mellanby Mease was baptised.
He was also in the bleaching business, possibly from his early days in linen manufacture. Operating your own bleach works saved the cost of sending your unbleached, brown linen elsewhere. Thomas was a partner in Messrs Benjamin & John Claxton & Company, operating a bleach mill with a steam engine of 16 Horse Power at Broughton Bridge. (Broughton Bridge is outside Stokesley, on the left of the road going towards Great Broughton, about 200 metres past the turn-off onto Ellerbeck Way, the entrance to the Industrial Estate. The Bleach Mill was sited on Broughton Bridge Beck, which becomes the Ellerbeck; this flows through the Industrial Estate on its way to the Leven.) The road from Stokesley to Great Broughton runs from the top left of the O.S. map 1888-1913 shown below, and obviously Old Beach Mill means Old Bleach Mill!
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| O.S. map 1888-1913, reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland from their website |
Bleaching linen in the traditional way had been a lengthy process but experimentation with chemical methods had speeded things up enormously. This saved money and time – and sorted out the perennial problem of people stealing the linen while it was laid out on the bleach grounds. I believe it also dealt with the increasing problem that the rise of industrialisation and the growing number of factory chimneys meant that it was becoming hard to find somewhere where linen could be laid out to bleach for long periods without being spotted by soot. There is a description of the bleaching process – which was far from environmentally friendly – in the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica and in The Archaeology of Improvement in Britain, 1750–1850, by Sarah Tarlow
I haven't been able to find a description of the use of the steam engine in bleaching in the 1830s, but I think it may have been used, for example, to power the beetling engine. Traditionally, linen had been given a smooth and shiny finish by being pounded over the stones of a riverbed with wooden blocks, but a machine had been invented in 1736 to do this much more effectively and quickly (see this explanation). We know that the Broughton Bridge mill had beetling equipment as it features in the auction sales notices in 1839.
Thomas's partners in this business were Benjamin and John Claxton. In Baines' Directory 1823, Benjamin Claxton had, like Thomas, been listed among the grocers & tea dealers and linen & woollen drapers. He left that trade and with John Claxton – possibly a much younger cousin or brother – became a Linen Bleacher at Broughton Bridge and at Easby. (This can be seen from his description in a notice in the London Gazette of 6 February 1838). He must be the Benjamin Claxton born c1785 in Yarm who appears later in the Kildale census of 1841 and the Easby census of 1851 as a bleacher.
The partnership between Thomas and the Claxtons may have begun at the very start of his manufacturing enterprises and must certainly have been in place in 1830 when he and his sister Rachel were witnesses at the marriage of John Claxton and Mary Ann Geldart, both of the parish of Stokesley, on 16 March 1830.
(John Claxton and his wife Mary Ann can be found later in the 1851 census in London. John was born in about 1806 in Yarm, and Mary Ann in Sunderland. The Bishop's Transcript of the Sunderland registers shows that she was born on 2 February 1804, the daughter of William Geldart, butcher, and Hannah Fleck; Pallot's Marriage Index 1780-1837 shows that William and Hannah were married in Marske by the Sea and that Hannah was from Upleatham.)
So Thomas was a very busy man, perhaps a little too busy and rather over-stretched – and his timing was unfortunate because, as the 1830s went on, the linen industry came under increasing strain, particularly from the competition with mechanised cotton production.
Thomas Mease goes bankrupt
By the summer of 1837 the Mease and Blacket partnership was not going at all well. On 1 August the London Gazette carried a notice that the partnership was dissolved and that James Blacket would carry it on alone.
Thomas Mease goes bankrupt
By the summer of 1837 the Mease and Blacket partnership was not going at all well. On 1 August the London Gazette carried a notice that the partnership was dissolved and that James Blacket would carry it on alone.
The wikipedia page for Edmund Thomas Blacket states that the Blackets ended the partnership "as they were unhappy about certain financial matters, and by March 1838, the issue was in Chancery", citing John Walker Ord's History & Antiquities of Cleveland (1846). However, this is not stated by Ord, who confines himself to a tactful mention of "manufactories" which were established by
men of sufficient enterprise and ability, and prosecuted with ardour and determination; but whether from the cost of coals, the remoteness of markets, the expense of carriage, or the unpropitious state of trade at the time, it was found necessary to close the speculation, and the buildings and machinery were accordingly put to the hammer [ie sold at auction]
We can make a good guess at why James Blacket parted ways with Thomas Mease when we find that four months later on 1 December 1837 Mease was made bankrupt.
This must have had a shocking effect on the town. Apart from the debts around the town that Thomas could not pay, the factory behind the High Street was still fully equipped (as can be seen from the auction notice a few months later) and was probably still in operation; the employees would be out of work. If the grocery & drapery shop was still a going concern, those working there would be unemployed. The trustees of the Methodist Chapel found themselves embarrassed for funds because Thomas had donated an organ but hadn't paid the cabinet maker who installed it (cf The Methodist Chapels of Stokesley 1765-1994, T Berry).
Others went down with Thomas. By the spring, the York Herald was reporting on 28 April that
The Commissioners under the bankruptcy of William Stephenson of Stokesley, linen manufacturer and grocer, sat today at Ludley's Hotel, Stockton for the proof of debts, and choosing assignees. It appeared that Mr Stephenson's bankruptcy was occasioned by his accepting accommodation bills for Thomas Mease, late a flax-spinner at Stokesley, to the amount of upwards of £5,000.
((It is notoriously tricky to establish current equivalents, but the Bank of England historic inflation calculator puts £5,000 at nearly £560,000 in 2019. There is a useful explanation of bills of exchange here)
Mr Stephenson's fate must have caused a great deal of ill-feeling in the town.
When the affairs of Thomas Mease and William Stephenson went crashing about their ears, they could go bankrupt – they qualified because they bought and sold goods for a living. It was an expensive process, so they would need friends to rally around, but they avoided imprisonment for debt (see this article in the London Gazette online)
When Messrs Benjamin & John Claxton & Company went under in Thomas Mease's crash and the Claxtons were unable to pay their debts, they became "insolvent debtors". They seem to have been in London when the crisis came, as the notice in the London Gazette of 6 February 1838 shows that at first they were both lodging at Number 7 Falcon-street, Falcon-square in the city of London. I think this may have been a sponging-house where debtors could be temporarily confined. John Claxton's next address was given as No 347 Rotherhithe-wall in the county of Surrey. Then, after a notice that the creditors would be meeting at the offices of Garbutt, Blacket & Fawcett in Stokesley on 20 April 1838, John disappears from sight. He and Mary Ann went on to live in London, where he was in 1851 a coal merchant, but by 1861 they had moved out of the city to New Brentford, where he describes himself in the census as a Commercial Clerk.
Benjamin's position was worse. The addresses given for Benjamin in the notices in the London Gazette show that, after being with John at Falcon Street, his next address was Number 6 Soley-terrace, Pentonville. Then the London Gazette of 26 June 1838 shows that he was "lately discharged from the Fleet Prison." So he suffered the fate of Charles Dickens' father and his great creations Mr Micawber and Mr Dorrit, and found himself in the horrid conditions of debtors' prison – and of the notorious Fleet Prison at that. He was finally able to return to Cleveland and to work as a bleacher again; the parish registers of Ingleby Greenhow show that he was buried there on 20 October 1864 at the age of 79.
This notice from the Leeds Mercury of 26 May 1838 shows that not only was Thomas Mease's property up for sale, but also his father's – perhaps to pay for the bankruptcy and raise money for Thomas's family:
STOKESLEY, - By Messrs Appleton and Farrow, on Tuesday, the Nineteenth Day of June, 1838, at the House of Mr William Naylor, the Sign of the Golden Lion, in Stokesley, in the County of York, at Three o'Clock in the Afternoon, either in the following or in such other Lots as may be agreed upon at the Time of Sale, and subject to the Conditions to be then produced:
Two substantial Freehold dwelling-houses situate in the North Row of the Market Town of Stokesley aforesaid, with a Four-stalled Stable, Granaries, Coach-House, and other Out-offices, and a good Garden well stocked with Fruit Trees, behind the same, late in the several Occupations of Messrs John Mease, the Elder, and Thomas Mease. The above Premises are well adapted for a wholesale or retail Business.
Also all that extensive Flax and Tow Spinning Mill, conveniently situated behind the said Dwelling-Houses, late in the Occupation of the said Thomas Mease, comprising a capital STEAM-ENGINE, 28 Horse Power, with Two Boilers complete; Nine Spinning Frames, containing 406 Spindles; Two Double and Two Single Carding Engines; several Drawing and Roving Frames, Shafts, Wheels, Drums, and other Requisites. Also a Counting-House and several Warehouses contiguous to the same. The Mill is sufficiently large for containing Four Times the Quantity of Machinery.
Lot 2. All that capital FREEHOLD BLEACH MILL, with the Water Power and a STEAM-ENGINE, 16 Horse Power, and all other Requisites for carrying on the Bleaching Business on an extensive Scale, and Two Closes of excellent Grass Land, situate at Broughton Bridge, near Stokesley aforesaid, containing together, by Estimation, 13 acres and 2 roods, or thereabouts, be the same more or less, late in the Occupation of Messieurs Benjamin and John Claxton and Company.
Immediate Possession may be had of all the Premises (except the House lately occupied by Thomas Mease), and if the same be not sold they will be let.
Tenants were found for the houses on North Row (the High Street) but, perhaps unsurprisingly given the economic conditions, buyers could not be found. In September there was another attempt to sell the machinery. On 14 September 1838, the Durham County Advertiser carried a notice that Flax Spinning Machinery was to be sold by auction on 3 October 1838 "in the Thread Warehouse, adjoining the New Mill, at Stokesley" and that "Part of the above Machinery has never been in use, and the rest of it is nearly as good as new. All the Frames are constructed for Hot Water Spinning, on the newest principle."
But it seems that there were still no buyers. On 5 October 1838 the Newcastle Courant advertised the Spinning Mill "with the Steam Engine, Twenty eight Horse Power and Machinery, ... If the Premises be not sold or let for a Spinning Mill, they will be let as a Flour Mill, for which Purpose they were heretofore used" and the Bleach Mill and Grounds were all "to be sold or let with immediate possession."
Still there were no takers. There was another try in May 1839. The Durham County Advertiser of 10 May 1839 carried the notice of an auction to be held at the Golden Lion (nowadays called Chapters) that would include, as well as the freeholds of the houses (Mr Strother the surgeon occupying one and Mr Taylor the druggist the other), the remaining property in separate lots:
Lot 3 All that Extensive Building, lately used by Thomas Mease, a Bankrupt, as a Flax and Tow Spinning Mill, with the Out-Offices attached thereto, situate behind the said Dwelling-Houses
Lot 4 All that Four-stalled Stable, with the Saddle Room, Granaries, & Coach-house, adjoining the last Lot
Lot 5 A freehold dwelling house and building, lately used as a Bleach Mill, immediately adjoining a good Stream of Water, with the Mill Dam and Race and 2a 2r 21p of Land, siuate at Broughton Bridge, near Stokesley aforesaid, late in the occupation of Messrs Benjamin and John Claxton and Company
Lot 6 A close of grass land, adjoining Lot 5 and containing 5 acres
Lot 7 A close of grass land, adjoining Lot 6, and containing 8a 2r 11p.
A possible sweetener was offered:
Two thirds of the Purchase Money of each of the above Lots may remain on Mortgage, if required.
Meanwhile, in the Spinning Mill another auction was to be held "without Reserve" offering the steam engine from the flax-spinning mill behind the High Street (28 horse power). At the Bleach Mill, all the equipment was to be sold:
A Steam Engine, 16 Horse Power, a Water-wheel, two Wash-Mills and Shafts, Metal Pump, three Lead Pumps, Boiler, Bars and Starching Kettle, two Souring and one Booking Tub, Crane, Shafting and Wheels, two Beetling Engines, one Dutch Calendar, Press, five Tables, Leaden Retort, two Cisterns & Pan, rolled Iron Pan, two broken Metal Pans, and all other the Bleaching Utensils.
In the meantime Thomas and his family had been continuing to live in Stokesley, occupying (as can be seen from an advertisement in the Durham Chronicle of 9 November 1839) a
Freehold Mansion-House, substantially built of Brick and beautifully faced with Free Stone, suitable for the residence of a genteel family, eligibly situated at the west end of Stokesley aforesaid and late in the occupation of Mr Thomas Mease, Flax Spinner.
Next door to it was the
Freehold Shell of a Mansion-House, adjoining to and built in the same style ... This Shell may, at a trifling expense, be completed and rendered fit for the reception of a large family.
Adjoining the Shell were three lots of Garden Ground suitable for building plots. I don't know where these houses stood.
It seems likely that it was soon after this that Thomas went with his family to live in France, either because it was cheaper or because he couldn't immediately find the funds to pay his way in Stokesley. He may in fact have made the move more than once. His son Joseph Mellanby Mease (1827-1928) at the end of his life spoke to a journalist (Leeds Mercury, 14 September 1927) about travelling by stagecoach to his school in Doncaster, and said that it was while he was at school that his parents went to live in Paris. He went to join them there when he was about fourteen, travelling by paddle steamer from the Thames to cross the Channel to Boulogne, and thence by "an old fashioned diligence" to Paris, "which took him 24 hours". The journalist reported that his father was then English representative for "Blood's Bank" but I can find no bank of that name.
The Blacket brothers leave Stokesley
All this time the Blacket brothers had remained in Stokesley. Now John Blacket decided to make a career change. The London Gazette of 6 August 1839 carried the notice of the dissolution of partnership between him, William Garbutt and William Fawcett. He appeared in White's Directory of 1840 not as an attorney but as Receiver General of Crown Rents for the Northern District. In effect, he was now a member of the civil service; the profits from the monarch's Crown Estate were surrendered to Parliament in return for a fixed civil list payment in 1760. That year, John moved his family to 20 South Street, Durham (according to the autobiographical note in Durham University Archives for 94 letters written from India where his eldest son John Stephens Blacket was with the East Indian Railway as a surveyor during the period of the Indian Mutiny here)
At the time of the 1841 census, John and his wife were with his parents at Grecian Lodge, Brixton Hill, Lambeth but within months they had left for Ireland. He was described as the "new agent of the Bessborough estate" in newspaper reports in the last week of November 1841 when he was sworn in as a magistrate of the County Kilkenny. He and his family lived at Balline House (also spelt Ballyne, Bolline, and now Belline), Piltown. This was the house always occupied by the Earl of Bessborough's agent and a photograph of it can be seen here. He died there on 4 February 1881.
The three boys who were born in Stokesley were John Stephens Blackett (1833-1922) who became a Civil Engineer and Land Agent; Edward Ralph Blackett (1835-93), who was a doctor who was a surgeon in India before practising in Suffolk, where he is remembered today for having been (wrongly) suspected of writing an anonymous satirical novel about his neighbourhood and as an amateur artist; and William Russell Blackett (1837-93), an Anglican clergyman who "held for some years an important educational position in India under the Church Missionary Society, and has served as a member of the Indian Government Commission on Education" [The Graphic, 12 September 1891] and was principal of the Home and Colonial Training College. All of them spent time in India.
James Blacket must have been hoping to ride out the economic difficulties but he was struggling to make a go of the New Mill. In Lambeth in early 1839 he married again. His new wife was Sarah Ralph, presumably a relation through his mother, and he brought her back north to Stokesley. In White's Directory 1840 he is listed as a Flax spinner and Patent Thread Manufacturer. Unfortunately within a very short while his business failed and he was made bankrupt on 15 December 1840.
James also had a warehouse in Leeds – we do not know whether this was part of his attempt to make a success of the business, or whether he had been operating this warehouse when he went into partnership with Thomas Mease – and on 20 March 1841 the Leeds Mercury carried a notice that the yarns, tow, threads, linens etc that was his stock in trade in Leeds were to be sold by auction. At the same time, "the machinery and effects of Mr James Blacket, a Bankrupt" were to be sold at the New Mill in Stokesley – the machinery was described as valuable and "nearly new and upon the most improved Principles". Even the Mill Clock was listed in the advertisement. It is interesting to note that the New Mill buildings were not put up for auction and I don't know who owned them either before or after Blacket's bankruptcy. Later on in the day, after James Blacket's machinery was sold, "the Proprietor" of the New Mill was offering spinning frames and other machinery for sale; it seems that whoever had bought the mill buildings was not going to attempt to carry on the flax spinning business. It was afterwards a steam-powered flour mill for many years.
So steam-powered flax-spinning in Stokesley came to an end and the effect on the town must have been very great – according to the Parliamentary Gazetteer of England & Wales 1845-6, the flax-mill had employed 139 hands in 1838.
By the spring of 1842, James and Sarah had moved to Newbury, Berkshire, where their eldest son Walter James Blacket was born. Five years later Sarah died, leaving James once more a widower, and this time with three little boys. He was now a bookseller & printer and by 1851 he employed four hands. In that year he married for a third time, to Mary Pashley. The wedding, according to the Nottinghamshire Guardian of 26 June 1851, took place at the Independent Chapel, Worksop and Mary was the daughter of the late Mr Pashley of Worksop, wine and spirit merchant.
James's son Walter followed him into the business and by 1871 was evidently very successful, employing six men and five boys. James died on 19 May 1877.
In the last few years of his time in Stokesley, James had been joined at the mill by his younger brother Edmund Thomas Blacket (1817-83). Unsurprisingly – it was only a small market town – Edmund met Thomas Mease's daughter Sarah and the young couple fell in love, much to the annoyance of both families. The Blackets may well have blamed Thomas for profligacy or carelessness with money or deceiving them as to the prospects of the venture, while the expense of James's bankruptcy and the loss of the family's investments in his business – which perhaps lay behind John Blacket becoming a land agent – must have made relations between the two families increasingly bitter. Finally Edmund and Sarah married in Wakefield on 27 April 1842. Their parents boycotted the ceremony. Some weeks later they left for Australia where Edmund became a well-known architect.
It is said that before leaving home, Sarah engraved her name with a diamond ring on the window of a Mease family house in Stokesley, and apparently also in a family house in Hutton Rudby and that the window was last seen during the Second World War by a member of the Australian family, who was staying with Jennie Mease in Hutton Rudby while on leave. Unfortunately we don't know where these windows might have been found.
A final note on the Blackets – the family in England took to spelling their name with a final double 't' and this is sometimes to be found applied to the earlier Blacket generations.
Thomas Mease & his family after 1847
In the summer of 1847 Thomas and the family were living in Hutton Rudby. This can be seen from a report in the Leeds Intelligencer of 21 July which shows that Thomas was one of the jury at the trial of Patrick Reid for the Mirfield Murders at the Crown Court, York Castle. Once more Thomas was taking part in high drama. Reid was accused of the murder of Mr and Mrs Wraith and their servant Caroline Ellis and the case created a huge sensation. People flocked to York in the hope of seeing the trial and the newspaper reported that "hundreds of persons were excluded for want of room." It is probably better remembered today because of the drawing made by Branwell Brontë of "Patrick Reid turned off, without his cap." It is shown on this website, with an account of the case and the explanation that Branwell's drawing was in fact a self portrait.
On 5 May 1849, old John Mease died in Stokesley at the age of 82. He had been a widower for many years, as his wife Isabella had died on 1 January 1825. Thomas was evidently back in Stokesley that summer, and possibly even back in one of the houses that he and his father had once owned. An auction notice in the Yorkshire Gazette of 8 September 1849 includes a dwelling house "now occupied by Mr Thomas Mease" on the North Row. Next door, to its west, was a house with a "Capacious Building attached, now used as a Warehouse, Gighouse and Stable" and the two houses shared a yard. The house occupied by Thomas and his family was very comfortable, having "Dining and Drawing Rooms, Library, Two Kitchens, Cellar, and other requisite Offices, with Four Bed Rooms, and an Attic."
Two years later, by the time of the census of 1851, Thomas was 59 years old and now described himself as an "agent for the sale of Linen Yarn". He, Mary and their daughter Isabella now lived in the West End of Stokesley some five households away from John Hepburn Handyside, the doctor. The announcement in the Yorkshire Gazette of 27 January 1855 of the death of his daughter Jane at the age of 21 shows that they had moved again, as he was named as "Thomas Mease, Esq, of Hutton Rudby".
The 1861 census records him, now a "Mineral Agent", at Bank Bottom, Hutton Rudby. This must be Leven House, or its precursor. His wife Mary was with him and two of their children: Thomas Turnbull Mease and Isabella Mease. Both were unmarried and Thomas was described as "son of agent variously employed."
Thomas Mease died in Hutton Rudby on 16 July 1862 at the age of 70. Mary stayed in the village, and died there two years later on 25 February 1864.
Perhaps the loss of his parents was a tipping point for their eldest son, Thomas Turnbull Mease. His younger brother Joseph Mellanby Mease became a very well-known and respected local figure, but Thomas junior lost his way, as can be seen in a report that appeared in the York Herald of 17 December 1864. Thomas, "corn miller, Hutton Rudby" was in gaol for debt, at the suit of Messrs Garbutt, corn factors, Hartlepool, for a debt and costs amounting to £32 10s 5d. Altogether he owed about £80 and had £14 assets in book debts. He attributed his losses to small profits, falling off in trade, and heavy expenses in working the mill.
He never recovered from this. The 1871 Census finds him lodging at 7 Nelson Street, West Hartlepool, and working as a labourer in a sawmill. The census of 1881 finds him lodging at 12 Grace Street. Now aged 60, he worked as a Day Watchman. He died aged 75 in early 1896.
Isabella married Francis Morritt, a Whitby-born hay merchant of Halton near Leeds, at Hutton Rudby on 5 November 1868. She was 45, though they tactfully entered her age in the parish register as 30, and he was half a dozen years older than she. He was a widower and his youngest child was five. She died less than three years later on 14 October 1871.
Joseph Mellanby Mease lost his arm in 1860 and lived until 1928, a much celebrated centenarian. The story of how he lost his arm and his reminiscences in later life can be found here and here.
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| Joseph Mellanby Mease |
Many thanks to Judy Kitching and Malcolm McPhie for the aerial view of Stokesley. There are more to be seen on the Facebook page of the Hutton Rudby & District Local History Society.
