Chapter 15. A Skeleton is Discovered

In June 1841 labourers cutting an alteration to the stell, or small beck, that that marked the boundary between the parishes of Stokesley and Seamer, came across a skeleton lodged in the earth of the bank.

The farmer, John Nellist of Seamer, handed the bones and a flat white button that was found with them to the recently appointed police officer for Stokesley, Charles Gernon.  Policing had become a professional matter, and Gernon, who was paid a yearly salary of £105 [1], had been appointed in place of the unpaid parish constables of the past.

It was quickly assumed that the skull was that of William Huntley, because of a protruding tooth in the lower jaw.  The Stokesley surgeon Mr del Strother examined the bones, and identified them as those of a man who had probably died from violence as the skull was "broken in".  He thought they might have lain in the ground some nine or ten years. 

Two days after the bones were found, Police Officer Gernon went to Barnsley to interview Robert Goldsborough at his house.  Goldsborough had remarried, and was living under his mother's maiden name of Towers, but evidently Gernon had no difficulty finding him.

Gernon questioned him first about Huntley's watch and Goldsborough began to grow steadily more anxious – at which point Gernon produced a moment of high drama, as he later told the court:

I then put the skull on the table, and told him to look at it and see if it was not the remains of Wm Huntley.  When he looked round he said – 'I'm innocent,' and then burst into tears.  He seemed agitated, and said 'I’m innocent.'  He also said they might swear his life away if they pleased, but he never had any clothes, or a watch, or anything else belonging to Huntley.

Gernon did not, however, arrest Goldsborough.  The magistrates put out notices offering a reward of £100 to anyone (except the perpetrator) who might give evidence.  Search was also made for George Garbutt, who had gone poaching with Goldsborough and Huntley to Crathorne Woods on the last day that anyone remembered seeing William Huntley.  Warrants were issued for Garbutt, but no trace of him was to be found. 

Chapter 14. Deaths, Changes & Recession: 1837 to 1842

On 20 June 1837 King William IV died.  It was a personal grief to his daughter Amelia, Lady Falkland, who had lost her sister Sophia in childbirth earlier in the year, but it was also a blow to her husband's career.

Lord Falkland had been made a Privy Councillor on 1 March, but a new reign brought a new Court and there was no hope of future favour.  His new mansion house at Skutterskelfe was nearly complete, but in the event he and his wife and son had only a short time in which to enjoy it before he left the country.  A career in public service was the answer to his financial problems, and on 30 September 1840 Lord Falkland took office as Governor of Nova Scotia, leaving a steward at Skutterskelfe Hall. 

It is not clear whether by 1840 George Brigham was still acting as Lord Falkland's agent.

His old friend John Lee of Pinchinthorpe Hall had died a few years earlier in 1836, and it is said that he shot himself.  Lee was unmarried but for some years before his death had been paying a considerable amount for the upkeep of an illegitimate child, and his estate was left heavily encumbered with debt [1].  Perhaps the personal and social difficulties arising from the Harker and Powell Chancery case also contributed to his unhappiness. 

In December 1841, George Brigham himself died at the age of fifty-one.  His brother-in-law James Dobbin registered the death, giving the cause as "general debility"; the registrar was Brigham's old enemy Thomas Harker.

George died without making a Will, as he had nothing to leave [2].  His eldest son George, who was only thirteen years old at the time, later became a clerk with Messrs Backhouse & Co, the Darlington bankers.  When asked in 1854 if he would act in the still-continuing Chancery case, in his capacity as his father's heir-at-law, he not surprisingly declined. 

The general depression in trade deepened after 1836, and while Whitby dwindled in importance as whaling declined, Middlesbrough grew ever larger.

Chapter 13. Agitation, Ambition & Education

Mr Barlow, now established in his parish, was eager to make improvements to the church in Rudby.  On 2 July 1833, the churchwardens' accounts record that

At a meeting held this day according to Publick Notice Sarah Hebbron was elected Sexton and to have £2-12 per year for doing the duty of a Sexton to attend to the fires and keep the church clean.  The Churchwardens to see about getting the stove in repair. 

It was signed by Mr Barlow, the Middleton farmer Thomas Righton, the doctor Thomas Harker and John Sidgwick the grocer.

Mr Barlow must have been very anxious to have the stoves in working order – the Primitive Methodist chapel, only ten years old and packed with an enthusiastic congregation, would be much warmer and more attractive in the winter.  Unfortunately the stove could not be repaired and had to be replaced at a cost of £18; the result of the ensuing work – including more than £5 to the stone mason – was an expenditure of nearly £65.

Whilat Henry Bainbridge was happy to assist the vicar with this – perhaps in part because Hutton Rudby Methodists still brought their babies to baptism in the otherwise unheated church – the people of Hilton were not so amenable.  For historical reasons Hilton still paid a levy towards the upkeep of Rudby church, and not surprisingly in 1833 they refused to pay [1].  It was not only Nonconformists who found church rates objectionable.

Stokesley may have become a much quieter town during the previous decade, but it was still very much agitated by political argument on the great issues of the day.

Chapter 12. The Aftermath of the Cholera

After a time, however, legends began to gather round the episode.  The combination of a clergyman and a pestilence naturally brought echoes of the well-known story of the plague-stricken Derbyshire village of Eyam, where the parishioners were persuaded by their vicar to shut the village off from the outside world, so as not to spread the infection to their neighbours. 

By the middle of the 20th century the cholera story had distinct overtones of Eyam.  In fact, by some the cholera mound was believed to be a plague mound, dating from many centuries earlier – which may have further confused the issue.

Doctors Lane was by then assumed to be the place where the medical officers coming out from Northallerton halted to discover the progress of the epidemic, coming no nearer for fear of infection.  In fact the name "Doctor Lane" is to be found in a deed of 15 September 1824 [1], and numerous doctors attended the sick, as can be seen from letters and reports – Mr Allardice of Stokesley, Mr Wisker of York, Dr Young of Yarm, Drs Keenlysides and Cock of Stockton, and the "junior aid" referred to by Mr Barlow, which included Dr Crummey. 

Chapter 11. 1832: The year of the Cholera

The year 1832 was one of great political and social upheaval.

The battle for the Reform Bill – witnessed close at hand by Lord Falkland, who was given a peerage of the United Kingdom by his father-in-law that May, and keenly followed by James Barlow Hoy in Hampshire – led to riots in many areas.

The citizens of York burnt the Archbishop in effigy outside his palace when, through a misunderstanding, he voted to defeat the Bill [1].  In the pocket borough of Northallerton there were lively scenes in support of reform, with a great open-air party at Brompton.

When the Bill was finally passed, the change in suffrage necessitated another general election, and in December 1832 James Barlow Hoy stood again as candidate for Southampton, this time successfully.

It was also the year that established Mr Barlow in the affections of his parishioners and made his reputation for posterity.  This was the year of the cholera.

Chapter 10. 1831: Mr Barlow's first year in Hutton Rudby

The area around his new home would have had much to interest Robert Barlow's lively mind.  He had a great interest in the physical world and delighted in technical and practical matters – as can be seen in his decision to design the village school himself, his appreciation of Humboldt's Cosmos, and in the surviving draft of his letter to the Lords of the Admiralty suggesting improvements in warship design.

He cannot but have been fascinated by the Mandale Cut, built in 1810 to take two miles from the distance between Stockton and the sea, and the Portrack Cut, opened only days after his arrival in the village.

He may have been less than impressed by the railway bridge over the Tees, which Isambard Kingdom Brunel described as a "wretched thing".

By the time of his arrival, ninety-five lots in the planned new town of Middlesbrough had been sold – the Revd Isaac Benson had bought two, and two men from Hutton Rudby, the builder Thomas Davison and the yeoman William Scales, had also been among the purchasers.

Mr Barlow's parishioners were people with a keen interest in matters beyond their village, and the arrival of Lord Falkland will have given them a gratifying feeling of being part of the new reign of his father-in-law King William IV.

Chapter 9. Mr Barlow & his Neighbourhood

Robert may have already visited his brother James in Hampshire, but it is possible that he had never set foot in England before his arrival in early 1831.

He was instituted vicar of Hutton Rudby on 3 January [1], and arrived in the parish a short while later [2], a young and energetic man dressed in the usual clothes of a gentleman – it was not then customary for clergymen to wear clerical dress. 

There was no parsonage house at Hutton Rudby.

Mr Grice had lived in Hutton and purchased property of his own in the parish, and Mr Shepherd seems to have rented Hutton House from Lady Amherst.  An earlier vicar, George Stainthorpe, had lived in Rudby "in a house which I farm of the Honourable Colonel", George Cary. 

Accompanied by his wife and possibly one of his spinster sisters to keep her company, Mr Barlow settled into a comfortable house a little way outside Enterpen.  This had previously been known as Suggitt's Grove, and had been the home of Benjamin David Suggitt, the gentlemanly yeoman farmer who had built the Primitive Methodists their chapel.  The planting of an avenue of lime trees had given rise to a new and more genteel name, Linden Grove, and it now belonged to Suggitt's nephew, Dr George Merryweather of Whitby.  Merryweather, who was the inventor of the  Tempest Prognosticator, a device using leeches in jars to forecast bad weather, let the property, with some additional farmland, to Mr Barlow.