HMS Aboukir, Hogue and Cressy

I've only just caught up (two years late) with reading this excellent book on the sinking of HMS Aboukir, Hogue and Cressy on 22 September 1914 by a single German U-boat.

Stuart Heaver's 'The Coal Black Sea' is a vivid account of the disaster, with plenty of naval detail (the author was a navy officer himself) to engross those interested in the sea, and a full account of Winston Churchill's role and the political spin that followed the losses. 

Not to be missed by anybody interested in the First World War.

Klaudie Bartelink's poignant film about the cruisers, with amazingly beautiful footage of the wrecks, can be seen at

https://www.dutchmaritimeproductions.com/portfolio-item/live-bait-squadron/

Charles Dickens' elder sister Fanny

This is an article from my blog The Engineering Hopkinsons.  It is set in Manchester and it's called 

'Henry Burnett & Fanny Dickens at the Rusholme Road Chapel'

The unaccompanied hymns at the Chapel (see The Rusholme Road Chapel & the Rev James Griffin) had always been plain and hearty, led by a rudimentary choir.  But at the beginning of the 1840s two musicians, fresh from London and the stage, had joined the congregation and, as their contribution to church life, formed a new and inspiring small choir to lead the singing.

They were Henry and Fanny Burnett, the two young people mentioned in the chapter 'Becoming a member of the Rusholme Road Chapel'.  Theirs was a world beyond John Hopkinson's imaginings.  He was 59 when he first went to the theatre in 1883 and seemed to his son and daughter-in-law to be fairly baffled by it, while his wife dared not tell his sister Elizabeth, "she would have been so shocked."  

Henry and Fanny Burnett came to Manchester after the baptism of their second son in London in the middle of May 1841.  Three or four weeks after settling in, they were walking along the Rusholme Road one Sunday evening when they saw the lights of the Chapel and the people going in.  They followed and were shown to seats.  Something – they could never say exactly what it was – impressed them deeply with the earnest wish to come again.  At the end of the service, Fanny had turned to Henry and said, "Henry, do let us come here again: if you will come, I will always come with you."  He was quite taken aback because she had never said anything like this before.  

For him, a Nonconformist service was a coming home.  He had been an acclaimed and successful operatic tenor, trained in music from an early age – at the age of ten he had stood on a table to sing a solo in the Brighton Pavilion to the Court and seen the old king George IV, gout-ridden and wrapped in bandages.  But though his father had been persuaded by a friend that the boy's voice was too good to be wasted, that he could make an excellent living from it, it was reluctantly because theirs was a Nonconformist family.  Henry had lived until the age of seven with a pious grandmother and aunt and their early teachings left a lasting impression on him.  And so his success in the world of music had become less and less fulfilling.  He was, as Mr Griffin wrote in his memoirs

gradually coming to feel the emptiness of worldly pleasure, and to yearn in his "secret heart" after more substantial satisfaction

In the end, he could no longer bear the contradiction between the life he was leading and what he felt to be right.  He decided to leave the stage and make his living from teaching.  He and his wife were advised that Manchester was the place to go, as music was highly appreciated there.  

Fanny Burnett wrote to Mr Griffin in these early days that 

I was brought up in the Established Church, but I regret to say, without any serious ideas of religion

but of that evening in the Rusholme Road Chapel, she said 

More or less all through the service, I seemed in a state of mind altogether new to me; and during the sermon it was as if I were entering a new world.

Her old world had been very different.  She was the elder sister of Charles Dickens.  In the Rev James Griffin's description of her new life in the chapel we can see the distinctive world of John Hopkinson and his family.

Fanny Dickens, 1836

Fanny (1810-48) and Charles (1812-70) were born in Portsmouth, the first of the large family of John Dickens, a pay-clerk in the Navy Pay Office, and his wife Elizabeth Barrow.  

In 1822 John Dickens was posted to London where Fanny was one of the fortunate children to get a place at the newly established Royal Academy of Music at its opening in March 1823, where she studied piano and singing.  The fees were 38 guineas a year, which wasn't cheap – as is recorded in A History of the Royal Academy of Music (1922), one of the committee members wrote to another, "we find that there are a great many schools where children do not pay so much". 

At this point, her parents' Micawber-like attitude to money, their habit of living beyond their means, caught up with them.  In September 1823, to save school fees and boost the family finances they sent their bright little 11 year old boy Charles to work in Warren's boot-blacking factory at Hungerford Stairs, an experience which Michael Allen has shown lasted for one year and which certainly marked him for life.  (His argument is to be found in this article on the National Archives website).  

Introducing John Hopkinson & Alice Dewhurst

Last year I began a new blog called 'The Engineering Hopkinsons'.  

Alice Dewhurst of Skipton was the daughter of John Dewhurst of the Bellevue Mill.  (Readers may remember buying the familiar Dewhurst sewing thread)  

In 1848 she married John Hopkinson, millwright and engineer of Manchester, and they had a large family.  Three of their four sons were engineers:

John Hopkinson FRS was a noted physicist, electrical engineer and professor who died untimely with three of his children in a climbing accident in the Alps.

Edward Hopkinson, engineer and MP, designed the first City & South London Railway's electric locomotives

Charles Hopkinson was a consulting engineer.  With his nephew Bertram Hopkinson and Ernest Talbot, they worked on the electrification of the Newcastle upon Tyne and Leeds tramway systems

Sir Alfred Hopkinson, John and Alice's second son, was the only one to follow the arts rather than the sciences.  He was a lawyer, academic and MP

Albert Hopkinson, the youngest son, was a general practitioner and influential teacher of anatomy.

This is the first article on 'The Engineering Hopkinsons' to give readers an idea of the story that follows:

Introduction

On Monday 7 February 1848, four days before his 24th birthday, a young engineer called John Hopkinson wrote his first and only letter of proposal of marriage

My dear Miss Dewhirst,

I wish to ask you one question, one which I have never proposed to any other, soliciting for it a patient consideration, because your answer may possibly affect your own happiness, and is to me an object of deepest concern.  Most respectfully yet most anxiously I ask, Will you be mine?

He had come to know Alice Dewhurst – in his anxiety, he misspells her surname in his carefully written letter – when she came to Manchester on visits to her married sister Ellen.  From the start he had been attracted by her "intelligence, unaffected piety, and genuine worth."  Admiration and esteem had become love, "deep and fervent."  He had never spoken to her about it because, as an apprentice and then an employee of Messrs Wren & Bennett, Millwrights & Engineers, he wasn't in a position to look after a wife.  Now he was a partner in the firm.  Casting aside formality, he wrote

I do love you.  I am yours devotedly.  Dearest let me call you my Alice and the future shall bear witness to the fervency of my gratitude.  

His proposal wasn't made lightly – deep feelings, long thought and prayer lay behind it.  His closing words were 

In tendering to you my warmest affections and in soliciting a return I have taken council of my own heart, but not less have I sought direction from God.  To His guidance I commend you, confident that in His hands the result will be right even though it should blast my most fondly cherished hopes – for He is wiser than men. 

Ever am I 

Yours very sincerely

John Hopkinson

That Friday, on his birthday, he visited her at her parents' home in Skipton and they were engaged.  They were married seven months later in the Zion Chapel in Skipton.  They remained a devoted, loving couple until John's death in 1902.

"That Tiresome Lady Architect": Mrs Annabel Dott

Five years ago, on Thursday 21 February 2019, I published here the first of my pieces on the redoubtable and remarkable Mrs Annabel Dott, woman architect and builder.  I first came across her when I read the entry for Goathland in a copy of the old Harmsworth's Universal Encyclopedia, Volume 6:

Goathland.  Parish and village of N.R. Yorkshire, England.  It is 8 m. S.W. of Whitby, on the N.E. Rly.  Here is a cottage colony for disabled officers.  Goathland Moor lies 2 m. S. of the village, and is noted for its cataracts.  Pop. 519.

I had never heard of the cottage colony for disabled officers and I was intrigued.  In the end, I found I had written twelve posts after the introductory one, which is called Mrs Annabel Dott & the Goathland Homes for Officers.  On the way I encountered other Dott enthusiasts.

And now two of them, Lynne Dixon and Dorothy Reed, have written a wonderful book

I'm afraid the cover looks a little bent - that's because I had started reading it greedily before I remembered to photograph it.  I recommend it highly!  Buy it from Brown Dogs Books.

19th century solicitors in Middlesbrough, Stockton and Darlington

In the second half of the 19th century when Middlesbrough – Gladstone's "Infant Hercules" – boomed from a farmhouse to an important industrial town in the space of decades, solicitors played a significant part in the business and private life of the borough.  

Among the solicitors of Middlesbrough, Stockton and Darlington were firms that, in 1990, amalgamated to make the present firm of Messrs Jacksons.  Their history up to the Second World War is set out below.

Their history up to 1990, together with deeds and documents relating to the constituent firms of Messrs Meek, Stubbs & Barnley and the Meek family, have been deposited at Teesside Archives.

The dates in brackets after the names of practitioners are the dates of admission as a solicitor.  I have set out some brief biographical details at the end of each section in which a solicitor first appears.  They come from a variety of backgrounds and from across the country. 

JACKSONS, MONK & ROWE

1876 Gilbert Benjamin Jackson (1876) first practising as Solicitor and Attorney at 42 Albert Road, Middlesbrough

1878 Gilbert Benjamin Jackson and his brother Francis Henry Jackson (1872) practising as Jackson & Jackson in Middlesbrough, Loftus and Saltburn

1892 Jackson & Jackson practising also at 61 Lincoln's Inn, London

1896 Gilbert Benjamin Jackson and Francis Henry Jackson with James Bell Stothart practising as Jackson, Jackson & Stothart at 23 Coleman Street, London and at Middlesbrough

1899 Philip Henry Monk (1898) with Jackson & Jackson in Middlesbrough and subsequently in London.

1901 Loftus practice sold to Henry Hoggart

1904 London office sold to Elwell & Binford Hole

1906 Philip Henry Monk a partner in Jackson & Jackson

1907 Gilbert Benjamin Jackson, Francis Henry Jackson, Francis's son Basil Jackson (1905) and Philip Henry Monk practising as Jackson & Jackson in Middlesbrough

Name of firm changed to Jackson & Monk

1920 Death of Basil Jackson from war wounds

1930 Death of Francis Jackson

1931 Retirement of Gilbert Jackson

1933 Herbert Edward Rowe (1928) partner in Jackson & Monk with Philip Henry Monk

1938 Firm became Jacksons, Monk & Rowe

(1989 Jacksons, Monk & Rowe merge with Cohen, Jackson with firm name of Jacksons)

Letters home from a travelling salesman: 1817-42

Anyone researching the life of a commercial traveller in the early 19th century may be interested in letters now deposited at North Yorkshire County Record Office.  

Among the papers of John Leslie ("Jack") Mackinlay of Pinchinthorpe Hall near Guisborough and Simonstone Hall near Hawes were letters written by his great-great-grandfather John William Nicholson Storr.

John William Nicholson Storr was born in 1781 and he married Elizabeth ("Betsey") Maine on 30 December 1816 at St Mary Magdalene's, Bermondsey.  The first of the letters was written the following August, when Betsey was staying in Margate, and the last of them dates from January 1842, with John describing a North Sea passage.  These are loving letters home, often written over several days, from a travelling salesman, recounting his news, his journeys, accounts of Betsey's family, and instructions for the home.  

The list below gives the date on which John Storr began his letter, the address to which he sent it, and a little excerpt from the letter:

• 31 Aug 1817:  to Mrs Jno Storr, at Mrs Fosters near the Jolly Sailor, High Street, Margate, Kent from Chester.  Betsey has gone by sea from London to Margate for a holiday:

"My love My dear Betsey.  I have just returned from walking on the Walls of this City, it being here a very fine day, I have only known the want of the Company of my Wife to have participated in my observations of this Curious Ancient City, and to have enjoyed the pleasure of Her expressing the delights I know she would have felt beholding the distant View of the Welch Mountains … My dear this City contains the Antientest [ancientest] looking Houses I ever saw and is all together the strangest place I ever saw … I am sorry to hear that you was so very unwell on your passage … pray Betsey do not bathe if you find yourself inclined at all to be unwell, as it will do you great injury ..."

Carrying coal by donkey

"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.

Durham Donkey Rescue

Court cases reported in
The Cleveland Repertory, 1 June 1843
Richmond and Ripon Chronicle, 2 June 1866
York Herald, 7 July 1866

The Cleveland Repertory and Stokesley Advertiser was a Stokesley newspaper launched by printer William Braithwaite in 1843