"There are those yet in Cleveland who can remember coals being conveyed into the country across the backs of donkeys."
wrote John F Blakeborough in his newspaper column on 14 May 1904. Two Hutton Rudby men were, he said,
"perhaps the principal coal carriers in Cleveland."
John Fairfax-Blakeborough (1883-1976), as he was later always known, was at the beginning of his career as a well-known journalist and author. Like his father Richard, he had a great interest in North Riding history, tales and dialect, and he had a column called 'By-Gone Cleveland' in the Northern Weekly Gazette. This cheery weekly paper, with its household tips and Children's Corner, was popular with Hutton Rudby families who must have been particularly interested in this story.
The older villagers will have known all about the two men concerned and they will have recognised a mistake in the names. Blakeborough gives the names as George Dickenson and John Bowran, but they were actually George Dickinson and John Bowman.
They were "ass-colliers" by occupation and they were married to sisters. John Bowman had married Margaret Best, daughter of papermaker Martin Best, in 1838. George Dickinson married her sister Ann in 1840. The two families lived near each other on Enterpen until the Bowmans moved round the corner onto South Side.
Before the railways came, Blakeborough explained, coals were brought into Cleveland by donkey all the way from Durham, a two days' journey. After the Stockton & Darlington Railway opened in 1825, the coals were brought from the Durham coalfields to Yarm.
"They had droves of donkeys, and all in a line about twenty or thirty of these would start away for Yarm in charge of one or two men, and headed by a pony as their leader. At each side of them was a bag resting on a pad, so that when the bags were filled the weight would not rest on the unprotected backs and produce a sore. Each animal carried 16 stones of coal, and the mules 24 stones."
(Mules can carry much heavier loads than horses or donkeys, cf The Donkey Sanctuary's explanation.)
The 16 stones of coal – 2 hundredweights (102kg) – and the 24 stones for the mules were accurately measured out at Yarm at the start of the journey. People in Hutton Rudby thought that by the time the sacks reached them, the bags were mysteriously lighter and they got short measure.
When they reached journey's end at Hutton Rudby, George Dickinson and John Bowman turned the donkeys out on the village green. In the morning they would round them up and start back for Yarm. If they had to stop somewhere else and spend the night away from home, they didn't hesitate overmuch before turning the animals out into someone else's field. They could be on their way before anyone detected them because they had their leading pony well trained. They could summon it with a "peculiar blowing noise" and it would make for the gate, all the other animals following behind, and the procession would be on the road in no time.
A couple of newspaper reports show that this didn't always work. In fact, it was always rather risky.
On 20 May 1843 John Bowman had been working with Joseph Richardson, an older collier who lived on South Side. William Hugill, a tenant of Lord Feversham, had found their donkeys grazing on his farm in Bilsdale and had gone to the magistrates. The charge was that they had "wilfully and maliciously consumed the grass" in William Hugill's fields "by depasturing a number of ponies, mules and asses therein." They were fined two guineas plus costs.
Towards the end of their careers John Bowman and George Dickinson were caught out twice in a matter of weeks. In May 1866, P.C Smith found them letting 6 mules and 3 asses stray on the highway for three days. George was fined 5 shillings with 9 shillings costs, and John 5 shillings and, for some unexplained reason, 18 shillings expenses. At the beginning of July the animals had been found on the highway again and the two men were again up before the Bench. Unsurprisingly, the fines were heavier – four times heavier. George had to pay £1 plus costs of 8 shillings and sixpence and John was fined £1-2s-6d (one pound two shillings and sixpence).
George died three years later, in his late fifties. John outlived him by eight years, dying aged 72 in 1877.
Court cases reported in
The Cleveland Repertory, 1 June 1843
Richmond and Ripon Chronicle, 2 June 1866
York Herald, 7 July 1866
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