John Jackson & Captain Thomas King

If you've come to this blog from reading Chris Lloyd's article in the Darlington & Stockton Times, and you'd like to read in full my blogpost about John Jackson and his uncle Captain Thomas King (1748-1824) - very active in the transatlantic slave trade - it can be found here

Rev Robert Joseph Barlow invents a carriage spring, 1836

I came across this fascinating report quite by accident.  It turns out that the Rev Robert Joseph Barlow of Hutton Rudby (c1804-78) invented a safety spring to make travelling by carriage (and this seems to mean, above all, railway carriages) safer and more comfortable.

His invention was presented to the Whitby Lit & Phil by Dr George Merryweather of Whitby, who owned Linden Grove (now Linden Grange), the house in which Mr Barlow lived.  He was the inventor himself of the celebrated Tempest Prognosticator, a leech-powered barometer.  A model of it may be seen in Whitby Museum.

The Rev George Young referred to is the celebrated historian (a short biography can be found here here on the Whitby Museum website).

The surprising story of Robert Barlow's brother, James Barlow Hoy, and his rise to unexpected good fortune and a seat in the House of Commons can be found in my book Remarkable, but still True: the story of the Revd R J Barlow and Hutton Rudby in the time of the cholera.  His life history begins here at Chapter 7 and the account of his sudden death in an accident while shooting in the Pyrenees is here in Chapter 16.

The Whitby & Pickering Railway was one of the first railways in Yorkshire and George Stephenson was the engineer.  When it opened in 1836 – when it tried out Mr Barlow's spring – it was a single-track horse-worked railway.  Now it is the North Yorkshire Moors Railway and is not to be missed by any visitor to the moors who values heritage steam locomotives and diesel engines, beautiful scenery, nostalgic tearooms, etc, etc.

Hampshire Advertiser, 1 October 1836 

Newly Invented Safety Spring for Carriages 

We take from the Yorkshire Gazette, the following notice of a new Spring for Carriages, the invention of the Rev R J Barlow, brother of our town member, J Barlow Hoy, esq.:- 

A general meeting of the Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society was held at the Whitby Museum, on Monday, September 12, for the purpose of receiving a communication from the Rev R J Barlow, of Linden Grove near Stokesley, on his newly invented patent safety springs for carriages.   

A respectable company of ladies and gentlemen having assembled, John Frankland, esq. was called to the chair, and the object of the meeting was stated by the Rev George Young, A.M. one of the secretaries.  Dr Merryweather, through whom the communication was received, then addressed the company as follows:- 

Mr Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I have the pleasure this day of bringing before your notice an original paper by the Rev Mr Barlow, communicating an invention which, when properly understood and duly appreciated, will, in my humble opinion, rank among the most beneficial and ingenious of modern times.  When I say ingenious, I particularly allude to the simplicity and beauty of the contrivance, and when I say beneficial, I mean not only to express my sense of the increased convenience and comfort of carriages, but also with the great comparative security of life and property, by which travelling will be accomplished when these springs shall have become universal ...

After an introduction full of praise for the invention and its usefulness for the future, Dr Merryweather read Mr Barlow's paper.  The company then examined the "ingenious models" he had provided and they "admired the simplicity and excellence of the invention."

The Revd Young concluded by praising the Spring, which would promote ease and convenience in travelling and "prevent accidents and preserve life"

The speed with which locomotive carriages are sometimes propelled on railroads is truly astonishing, and every practicable plan for rendering these and other carriages safe, as well as commodious, must be of incalculable value

The Spring had been tested by Mr Barlow himself and by the Directors of the Whitby and Pickering Railway, 

who have a coach constructed on the new principle, fully answering the expectations that were formed.  It must have cost the Rev Gentleman much study and many trials to bring his invention to this state of maturity

Mr Young concluded his speech of thanks by suggesting that Mr Barlow be elected an honorary member of the Society, and this was done.

Accidents at the Stokesley Gas Works, 1846 & 1866

I have found two instances of accidents with the Stokesley Gas Works; one is dramatic and potentially tragic while the other must have caused fury amongst fishermen. 

The first gasometer in Stokesley is said to have been erected near the New Mill of Messrs Mease & Blacket on Levenside (now the premises of Millbry Hill); I think a later gas works was built elsewhere in the town.  Until the 1970s gas was made from coal, so advertisements like this can be found:

Durham Chronicle, 18 September 1863 

TO COAL-OWNERS

THE STOKESLEY GAS COMPANY are desirous of receiving TENDERS for the Supply of good GAS COAL, to be delivered at the STOKESLEY STATION.  Tenders to be sent on or before the 30th day of SEPTEMBER, 1863, to the SECRETARY, at Stokesley.

In September 1846 the Agricultural Show at Stokesley was going well.  It had celebrated its 13th birthday with a "brilliant meeting of its members and friends and by a most excellent exhibition of horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry, on Friday, the 11th inst." and beautiful weather promised another successful day:

Yorkshire Gazette, 19 September 1846 

The Cleveland District Agricultural Show 

We understand that the entries for the present show were, on the whole, more numerous than those of the preceding year.  

We believe that the cattle and sheep did not occupy so great a space of ground in the show field, which, as in 1844, was kindly lent for the use of the society, by Col. Hildyard; but in the horses – the beautiful Cleveland bays – so celebrated in our own country and so great favourites with the foreigners who attend our fairs, – there was a manifest improvement, both as regards quality and quantity.  

The same remark applies to the pigs, to the implements, and the poultry.  The latter class combined great beauty and variety, and attracted the especial attention of a large and fashionable assembly of ladies.  We noticed that the show of pigeons was much greater than in former years, and it will be seen that premiums have this year been awarded to the exhibitors of rabbits.  We heard that encouragement to the breeding of rabbits had been objected to by some, principally on the ground that it would lead to trespassing in the turnip and clover fields, and perhaps there may be something in this suggestion; nevertheless we think it may be fairly urged that the interest which will be excited among the rising generation in these exhibitions will sufficiently counterbalance if not outweigh any small inconvenience that may arise in this respect ... 

The day throughout was beautifully fine, and the harvest being all but at an end in this district, the concourse of visitors to the town of Stokesley was immense.  We suppose that at one part of the day there could not be less than from two to three thousand persons in the show field.

"The only drawbacks to the complete success of the meeting" were the unavoidable absence of the year's president Lord Feversham and "the occurrence of an accident, the consequences of which might have been most frightful."

The committee had decided that the dining hall should be lighted with gas – but 

about noon the town was alarmed by two most tremendous reports, resembling those of the discharge of heavy cannon

There had been an explosion at the Stokesley gas works.

It appears that Mr Simpson, the manager, and his son, two persons of the name of Carter, from Sunderland, who had been engaged in fixing the gasometer, which has recently been removed, two labourers named Gray and Caldwell, and some other persons who had been brought to the spot through feelings of curiosity, were mounted upon the top of the gasometer.  The object of those who had business there was either to try the amount of pressure, or to discover if there was any foul air in the tank.  We were told both, but whichever was the object matters not to our purpose, for the result would not have been different.  

In order to ascertain one or both of these facts, a lighted match was applied to a hole in the top of the gasometer, and a jet of light was, of course, immediately produced.  When the necessary observation had been made, one of the men, instead of blowing the flame out, suddenly placed his finger over the hole, and thus forced the flame within the gasometer.  

An instantaneous explosion was the consequence, the gasometer being forced completely out of its place, and the parties being thrown from the top in all directions.  They were all more or less injured, and Caldwell so much so that when we left Stokesley on Saturday, we were told that his recovery was very doubtful.  He was much hurt about the head and back.

I don't know what happened in the end to poor Mr Caldwell, but I haven't found an entry in the deaths registers for anyone of that name in Stokesley for the period from the accident to the end of 1847.

The second incident spared human life but caused enormous damage to fish:

Teesdale Mercury, 23 May 1866 

Wholesale Destruction of Fish 

The river Leven has long been noted as an excellent trout water, but we regret to learn that from Stokesley to where the Leven falls into the Tees, below Yarm, the fish have been totally destroyed.  The water in the gasometer at Stokesley being pumped, the tank having to be emptied, the water through which the gas was purified for years past, about 350 tons, was allowed to flow into the river.  The consequence has been that all the fish are killed from Stokesley to the end of the Leven.  Large quantities of trout and other fish were taken out of the water dead, and dying, on Tuesday last.

This page from the website of the National Gas Museum explains how gas was made from coal in the days before gas from the North Sea, and this one explains how gas was stored in 'gasometers'.

The Mease sisters of Stokesley

A footnote to the story of the linen mills of Stokesley & Hutton Rudby: 1823-1908 and the Mease brothers.

Thomas and John Mease had three sisters: Isabella, Rachel and Mary.  

Rachel and Mary were the youngest children of the family, born in 1807 and 1810.  They spent their lives together in Stokesley, where Mary was the town's postmistress and Rachel her assistant.  Rachael died in 1882; Mary outlived her by ten years.

Isabella was the second child of the family, born in 1794 a couple of years after Thomas.  She was the only daughter to marry.

Leeds Mercury, 9 December 1815

On the 22d ult. at Stokesley, the Rev Robert Pilter, of Pontefract, Methodist minister, to Miss Mease, of the former place

The Rev Robert Pilter was a widower and a highly respected figure in Wesleyan Methodism.  Isabella and Robert had a large family together, and the birthplaces of the children show how frequently they moved about following Robert's calling – Pontefract, Darlington, Rochdale, Stockport, Rotherham, Doncaster, Macclesfield. 

Their eldest child Thomas was the tenant of his uncle John Mease's flax-spinning mill and had an interesting encounter with the men who had come to repossess it following his uncle's failure to pay off his debt to the Darlington Bank (see Hutton Rudby 1834-1849: the Flax-Spinning Mill by the bridge)  He moved to France, where he had a successful business career.

It was in France that his father Robert Pilter died.  According to A Dictionary of Methodism he went to Lisieux for the sake of his health but died there on 27 February 1847.

Isabella and her four unmarried daughters were left in the necessity of earning their own living. 

Four years later, the 1851 Census for the east side of Howard Street, North Shields, shows that the eldest daughter, Mary Isabella Pilter (aged 28) had set up a school in which her mother and sister Margaret (26) worked as school mistresses.  Their brothers William (aged 20, a shipping master's clerk) and Richard (aged 17) were also in the household, together with the youngest sisters Elizabeth and Isabella (15 & 13), who were still at school.

Miss Mary Pilter's notices in the Newcastle papers show that she used her father's name in her advertising.  His reputation must have been of considerable advantage to her in establishing her respectability and in attracting pupils:

Newcastle Guardian & Tyne Mercury, 15 January 1853

Misses Pilter (daughters of the late Rev. R Pilter), gratefully acknowledge the continued liberal support of their friends, and respectfully announce that the duties of their Establishment will be Resumed on Tuesday, January 18th.

Howard Street, North Shields

Three years later she moved the school to a mill-owner's mansion house in an area ideal for middle-class parents in the growing manufacturing towns of Lancashire and the West Riding.  Her advertisement is confident and reassuring:

Leeds Mercury, 18 November 1854

WILLOW LODGE, NEAR SOWERBY BRIDGE

THE MISSES PILTER (daughters of the late Rev R Pilter), beg to announce that they intend to open the above Establishment for a limited number of Pupils immediately after the Christmas vacation.

Willow Lodge (lately the seat of J F Sutcliffe, Esq.) is a most commodious mansion, in a beautiful and salubrious situation, and surrounded by extensive pleasure grounds.  Its proximity to the Leeds and Manchester Railway renders it easy of access from all parts of the kingdom.

The constant aim of the Misses Pilter will be to ensure the health, happiness, and intellectual improvement of their pupils, by granting them every indulgence consistent with a well ordered household, and by imparting sound instruction in English and Continental literature.

For terms, apply to Misses Pilter, Howard-street, North Shields

It seems the proper name of the house was Lower Willow Hall as it was named as such in a notice in the Leeds Mercury of 16 June 1821 ("the Mansion-House of Mr John Sutcliffe, called Lower Willow Hall"). 

The following July, the advertisement in the Leeds Mercury that announced the new term ("the Duties of their Establishment will be Resumed") continued the reassuring theme, so encouraging for nervous prospective parents:

Every attention is paid by the Misses Pilter to the Health and happiness as well as the moral and intellectual improvement, of their pupils ... Mrs Pilter superintends the domestic arrangements ... Terms and highly respectable references on application.

The school flourished – Mary Isabella was evidently an extremely capable woman – and by the 1861 census the four sisters and their mother had 17 boarding pupils from across Yorkshire, Lancashire, Derbyshire and Co. Durham – with the addition of one Mary Pilter, born in France and evidently the daughter of their brother Thomas.

Their advertisement in the Yorkshire Post of 27 January 1868 showed that they kept up with the latest developments in education:

Yorkshire Post, 27 January 1868

WILLOW HALL, SKIRCOAT, Near Sowerby Bridge – The Misses Pilter (Daughters of the late Rev R Pilter) have availed themselves of the Cambridge University Local Examinations as a test of the efficiency of their School, and have great pleasure in referring to the success of their pupils.  All the candidates from Willow Hall passed in every subject in which they were examined.  The NEXT TERM will commence on THURSDAY the 30th instant.

The Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate had been established by the University in 1858 to administer local examinations so that students who weren't members of the University could sit exams at centres near to home.  The aim of the Syndicate was to raise standards in education.  Girls had only been officially allowed to enter for the exams on the same basis as boys in 1863.  With pride, the Misses Pilter announced the following year in the Leeds Mercury of 10 July 1869 that

In each of the last three years a fifth of the whole number of pupils at Willow Hall

had passed and 

Honours have been taken in English, religious knowledge, French, music, and drawing

The 1871 census for Lower Willow Hall Boarding School, Skircoat showed that Isabella and her daughters now had 32 pupils, including Mary Sykes from Stokesley.  Their 18 year old niece Margaret Pilter from France was with them, perhaps as a visitor.

The school was clearly flourishing.  Then, only a few months after the census, tragedy struck the eldest and the youngest sisters.  On 20 April 1871, Mary died aged 48 and a couple of months later

Elizabeth died aged 35.

For a short while the survivors carried on with the school.  But Mary had evidently been the driving force behind the enterprise and it must have been very hard to have the heart to keep going.  Isabella and her daughters Margaret and Isabella sold the school and retired to live on their savings with their brother John Mease Pilter, who had followed his father into the Wesleyan ministry.  By July 1873, a new headmistress was advertising the school: "Principal, Miss Wilson, (late Misses Pilter)". 

Isabella Mease died in 1888 in Wales.  She had outlived all her siblings except the youngest, Mary, who was her junior by 16 years

Thomas Mease & John Wesley's umbrella

A chance find reveals that Thomas Mease of Stokesley (1792-1862) was once the owner of John Wesley's green silk umbrella:

Northampton Mercury, 31 December 1870

Kettering

CORN EXCHANGE, - On Tuesday evening a tea meeting, with a Christmas tree, took place in connection with the Wesleyan Society.  There was also in the room John Wesley's umbrella, with a leather case.  The umbrella was made of strong green silk.  Mr Wesley gave it to James Rodgers, and his son presented it to Mr Thos Mease, of Stokesley, who gave it to the Rev James Everett, of Sunderland by whom it was lent to Mr H Heighton as an attraction on this occasion.  A goodly number was present both at tea and at the sale of the various articles on the Christmas tree during the evening.  The proceeds were upwards of £20, which is to be devoted to the liquidation of the circuit debt.

For Thomas Mease's colourful life, start reading here

Thomas Redmayne of Taitlands

Thomas Redmayne of Taitlands has appeared on this blog before (you'll find him first mentioned in July 2014 and on several later occasions – here and here, for example), because he was married to the aunt of John Richard Stubbs.

(John's early life can be found at A Boroughbridge Boyhood in the 1850s: Introducing John Stubbs.  He became a solicitor in the new industrial town of Middlesbrough and his diaries from 1853 to 1907, though succinct, are of interest to students of Middlesbrough history because of the people he knew.  There are photographs of the diary pages, with some transcriptions,  from here onward.)

I had hoped, when I wrote about the Settle and Stainforth part of John Stubbs' life, that I would find out more about it from a local historian, so I was very pleased to be contacted by Catherine Vaughan-Williams.  And I was even more pleased to find that she was researching the life of Thomas Redmayne.  

Her article on Thomas Redmayne is appearing in this year's North Craven Heritage Trust Journal and should be available online before long.  In it you will find the story of his family, how he made his money, the personal tragedies that befell him and the fine country house he built, Taitlands, which Catherine describes here:

a luxurious country residence 'with spacious drawing, dining and breakfast rooms and nine bedrooms with dressing rooms', lavishly furnished with 'rosewood and spanish mahogany furniture, Brussels and tapestry carpets' and the usual accoutrements of early Victorian fashion. Attics, kitchens, scullery, butler’s pantry, cellars, and outbuildings, stables and coach house with pigeon loft, not to mention fourteen bee boles, completed the establishment. 

Then & Now: Asiatic Cholera & Covid-19

Listening to the news of the coronavirus, it seems timely to look back on another rapidly spreading disease – the pandemic of Asiatic Cholera that reached Hutton Rudby in 1832.  

This was a very frightening pandemic, not because it was terribly contagious – it was noted in 1876 that out of nineteen people drinking from a infected vessel, only five contracted the infection – but because nobody knew how it spread or what caused it and because without treatment it is fatal in half the cases.  Nowadays it is very treatable; the website of Médecins sans frontières explains that it "can be treated simply and successfully by immediately replacing the fluids and salts lost through vomiting and diarrhoea – with prompt rehydration, less than one per cent of cholera patients die."  

The arrival of the cholera in Hutton Rudby was to prove pivotal in the life of the new vicar, the Revd Robert Barlow.  The story of the cholera and Mr Barlow is told in my book Remarkable, but still True: the story of the Revd R J Barlow and Hutton Rudby in the time of the cholera which I posted on this blog in December 2012.

Here are a few excerpts from Chapter 11. 1832: The year of the Cholera to entice readers back to the chapter itself (just click on that hyperlink to get there), with its account of the dilemmas faced by the authorities and the reactions of business interests and ordinary people:

Cholera had always been endemic in pockets of India, but now, perhaps spread by the new conditions of greatly increased trade and British troop movements, it broke out explosively, and soon produced on the minds of the medical attendants the strong conviction that it was a new disease – a most fearful Pestilence.   

It swiftly passed its usual boundaries and spread widely and rapidly along the trade routes of Asia.  An exceptionally severe winter prevented its further spread into Europe, but a second pandemic beginning in Bengal in 1826 spread rapidly across Asia and the middle East. 

By August 1830 it had reached Moscow, and helped by large numbers of refugees from a savage military campaign in Poland, it travelled rapidly along the complex of busy trade routes across Europe.  It carried with it a terrifying reputation, and even though its impact in Britain was far less damaging than had first been feared, it would cause over 31,000 deaths in England, Scotland and Wales in the years 1831 to 1832. 

The British quarantine regulations were developed from those devised to combat plague and yellow fever.

The 31,000 deaths were from a population of 16.54 million (this website explains the figures from the 1831 census).  I think the population of England, Scotland and Wales is now about 65.4m people.

Dr Simpson [who studied the 1832 outbreak] wrote in 1849: 

If quarantine could be strictly enforced, there cannot be the slightest doubt that it would be successful.  The difficulties, however, of enforcing quarantine, between countries where extensive commercial intercourse is constantly going on, would appear to be quite insurmountable.

Internal quarantine was considered:

The Board of Health had considered the possibility of internal quarantine to limit the spread of cholera once it arrived, but it was obviously impracticable.  Given the terrifying nature of the disease reported in Asia and eastern Europe, they recommended local isolation of the first cases and the separation of the sick from the healthy.  This was to be done by a network of local Boards of Health.  The Board envisaged the removal of the sick into cholera hospitals, and thence into convalescent homes, while their contacts would be taken into isolation houses; if all three buildings could be in the same enclosure, this could be conveniently guarded by the local military.  Their homes would be purified with chloride of lime and hot lime wash; the dead would be buried swiftly in ground close to the house for the infected.  Their first circular, published in the press, called for local Boards to be established,

There should be established a local board of health, to consist of the Chief and other Magistrates, the Clergyman of the parish, two or more Physicians or Medical Practitioners, and three or more of the Principal Inhabitants…

The Central Board advised the magistrates to prevent, as far as possible, intercourse with any infected town.  Magistrates and clergy were asked to improve the conditions in which cholera spread:

the poor, ill-fed, and unhealthy part of the population, and especially those who have been addicted to the drinking of spirituous liquors, and indulgence in irregular habits, have been the greatest sufferers from the disease…. 

This circular was published on 20 October 1831 shortly before the news of the first official case of cholera was confirmed in Sunderland in late October. 

Cholera came to Hutton Rudby at nine o'clock in the evening on Tuesday 2 October 1832, when the weaver John Cook came back from Newcastle to his home in the Bay Horse Yard.