The story that follows was reported in the Yorkshire Gazette and the York Herald on 10 April 1841 – two rather confusing and sometimes conflicting versions, which I have melded into one, with additional research into the people concerned.
On Thursday 11 February 1841 a young man called Frederick Sawbridge Wright Cator was on his way from the University of Durham to Stokesley, where his father Charles Cator had been Rector for the past six years. Frederick must have been coming back to a sad household because his mother Philadelphia Osbaldeston had died at the Rectory nearly six months earlier on 29 August – anyone who encountered him on the way would have realised he was in mourning because of the crape band on his hat.
The story starts when Frederick reaches the Cleveland Tontine Inn. The Inn was nearly forty years old at this point. It takes its name from the way the money was raised to build it. Gentlemen of Cleveland decided that a coaching inn at the spot where the Stokesley road met the new turnpike road from Yarm would be desirable for the neighbourhood and very convenient for travellers. They raised a subscription of some £2,500 using a financial instrument called a tontine. This was rather like an annuity fund crossed with a wager as to who would live the longest. Each man received a dividend from the fund and whenever a man died his share fell back into the common fund. This meant that the survivors received ever bigger dividends, profiting in effect from the deaths of their friends and neighbours.
Mr Scarth of Castle Eden must have designed the new coaching inn to impress, as the Revd John Graves in his History of Cleveland (1808) says it was built "on an extensive and elegant plan". A couple of years later (according to Pevsner's The North Riding) stabling was added for the mail-coaches which now ran from Sunderland to The Crown at Boroughbridge, a celebrated coaching inn with its own library for the amusement of travellers. There the Sunderland mail-coach would link up with the London coaches.
The Tontine's foundations were laid on 13 July 1804 and on the same day a letter was sent from the principal inhabitants of Cleveland to the Postmaster General asking for an improved postal service – they were clearly intent on improvements for the neighbourhood. They wanted a daily service between Thirsk and Guisborough and their request was granted.
The newspaper accounts say that Frederick Cator reached the Tontine Inn from Durham in a gig, but they don't say how he travelled the eight miles from the Tontine to Stokesley. I wonder if he journeyed from Durham in the mailcoach and was met by somebody from the Rectory in a gig – a light, two-wheeled sprung cart, like the one shown here.
There was no room for his luggage, so he left his trunk at the Tontine. His father was a well-to-do man in a rich living and was remembered by his descendants, according to this fascinating account of the Cator family, as "a very extravagant man" – which is presumably why, at the 1851 census, the household included two lady's maids, a cook/housekeeper, a housemaid, a kitchen-maid, an under-housemaid and a butler. Frederick's trunk, however, was not new. It had previously belonged to his now married elder brother George Albemarle Cator and the initials "G.C." were picked out on it in brass nails.
Inside it were packed: 6 shirts, 8 handkerchiefs, 3 night shirts, 3 pairs of stockings, 4 pairs of lamb's wool stockings, 1 satin waistcoat, several other waistcoats, 5 pairs of trowsers, and "a great many other articles of wearing apparel".
It was left to be picked up by the carrier Thomas Tate, who took goods twice a week between Stokesley and Thirsk, where you would find his waggon at the Red Bear on the north side of the market place. Tate's driver John Dale was due to arrive at the Tontine that evening.
John Dale was a married man aged 37, born in Helmsley. He lived with his wife Hannah, who was born in Wass, in Silver Street, Stokesley, with their three young children, Sarah aged 9, John aged 7 and Mary aged 5. He duly arrived at the Tontine at about six or seven o'clock on that dark February night. He was given two items to load onto his waggon for Stokesley. There was a box to be delivered to the boots at the Black Swan Inn – that is, to the lad employed to clean guests' boots and other lowly tasks – and also the trunk which he was told was to go to young Mr Cator.
The boots got his box – but Frederick was not to see his trunk again for nearly three weeks. One hopes there was someone at the Rectory whose clothes fitted him.
When the trunk hadn't turned up after a week, the people at the Rectory took all the steps one would expect. They sent a manservant to speak to John Dale, who said he'd never had the trunk. Then they asked the Stokesley police to make enquiries with John Dale's employer, Thomas Tate. Lastly they had handbills printed and distributed around the area, asking for information about the trunk.
Constable Edmund Charles Gernon went to call on Thomas Tate. He was a man of about 44, born in Bagby, and he lived in Back Lane, Stokesley with his wife Mary and young daughters Margaret and Ann.
Gernon found John Dale there. As he questioned the man, Dale grew more and more uneasy and distressed. Observing his alarm, Gernon asked,
"Why are you so agitated?"
Dale replied,
"I feel as if a fellow would knock me down."
Finally he said he had actually lost the trunk. His shaky position was made much worse by the discovery that, though Mr Tate had given him a book in which he was to record the items he was picking up and dropping off, there was no record of Mr Cator's trunk in it. This looked worryingly like deliberate theft.
Either in response to the handbills or because of the rumour and gossip in Stokesley and the neighbourhood, someone came forward who had seen John Dale on his way from the Tontine. The Yorkshire Gazette described the witness as "a boy called Foxton" who was with his father, "a fisherman at Staithes". The York Herald writes of a man called Foxton and his son, both fishermen at Staithes. I can't identify them – unless the reporter has misheard and it was William Foxton, a fishmonger living in Hinderwell, with one of his sons, Joseph or George. (The presence of fishermen in this story is fascinating and must show the continuing importance of the coast in Cleveland life)
The Foxtons were travelling that evening in the opposite direction to John Dale, going from Stokesley to the Tontine, and had seen Dale but said that they hadn't noticed any trunk in the road. The boy had a longer story to tell. At the top of Wilkinson's Bank (I don't know where this is), he had loosed one of the horses from his father's cart and gone back to Stokesley (we don't know why) leaving his father to carry on alone to the Tontine. On his way he met with Simpson Adamson, a 31 year old fisherman, who was walking beside his own cart.
"Hello, have you only got here?" shouted the boy, to which Adamson made no reply. The boy went on towards Stokesley. A little further along the road, he came up with John Dale's waggon and went past him – he could see that Dale had a lamp lit at the front of the waggon, so he must have seen Adamson as he went along even though it was such a dark night.
So Constable Gernon asked John Dale if he had met with Adamson on the road, and he said that he hadn't. Which can only have added to the police's suspicions.
On Thursday 25 February, another of the Stokesley police officers, named as Bartram or Bertram in the newspapers – I think it was James Barthram – had been sent to Thirsk to summons Simpson Adamson to appear before the magistrates on some petty offence under the Highway Act. Two days later, Adamson came to Stokesley and at ten o'clock in the morning met Constable Barthram "at the house of a Mrs Reddington". I can find nobody of this name, but I think it probably means they met at the George & Dragon, the pub in the Market Place kept by Mrs Elizabeth Pennington.
Adamson had heard about the handbills and the lost trunk, and that John Dale had been arrested the day before. He asked Constable Barthram, "What are you going to do with Dale?" and was told that he was to be brought up before the magistrates. A couple of hours later Constable Gernon saw Adamson, who complained,
"What a shame it is to bring me so far on such a frivolous charge as this."
Gernon made no reply and Simpson Adamson then said,
"I have got something else."
"What is it?"
"They are going to prove that Dale was drunk the other night, but I met him and am going to prove differently."
Perhaps drunkenness was thought in Stokesley to be the reason that Dale hadn't noticed Adamson on the road – and had lost the trunk.
But when Dale was brought before the magistrates, Adamson was seen to be whispering to him and after a few moments he called out, "I found the trunk." His story was that he found it at the top of Wilkinson's Bank. This would mean that the Foxtons had missed it in the dark as they went past in their cart – perhaps Adamson had seen it because he was walking.
The constables immediately obtained a search warrant and took it to Thirsk where they enlisted the help of Constable John Little and went to search Adamson's house. There they found his wife Sarah – and the trunk. The brass nails with George Cator's initials had been pulled out but letters addressed to Frederick Cator in Durham, undeniably identifying the trunk as his, were still inside. Some of the clothes were not and one of the night shirts, which had been marked as Frederick's, was found to have had the name washed out. The initials G.A.C., which had been embroidered on a handkerchief which had evidently once belonged to his brother George, had been picked out.
John Dale, Simpson Adamson and Sarah Adamson were sent to be tried at the North Riding Quarter Sessions at Northallerton on Wednesday 7 April 1841. The charge against Dale and Simpson Adamson was larceny. This was a serious matter and they would see the people who came up before them for larceny sentenced to some months in prison, often with hard labour and frequently with a whipping, while those who had previously been convicted of a felony were sentenced to terms of transportation.
The prosecution case was that Dale and Adamson were in it together. If Dale, when he put the trunk onto his waggon, intended to steal it – that was larceny. Anyway, the Adamsons must have known, from the letters and the name marked in the clothes, to whom the trunk belonged and so they must have had a "felonious intention" when they kept it all the same.
Sarah Adamson was charged with receiving stolen goods and had elected not to be tried with her husband. Only the trial of Simpson and John Dale seems to have been reported – the press interest lay in the fact that it was a carrier who charged with stealing, a thought that would send a shudder down the spines of every reader who entrusted their goods to one of the many carriers plying their way between towns and villages.
A "great number" of witnesses were examined and they gave Dale a previous good character. Mr Bliss had been instructed for John Dale and he kindly agreed to act for Adamson as well. He did a good job for them – he addressed the jury
in an eloquent speech, arguing that the trunk had been lost from the hinder part of Dale's cart, the night being extremely dark, and also that it was possible Adamson had found the trunk, and had detained it, expecting a reward would be offered for its being given up.
As to the names on the linen, Adamson could not read them.
The jury found both these hapless men Not Guilty. And Sarah Adamson, too, was later found Not Guilty.
And so Frederick Cator got his trunk back and recovered his shirts and silk waistcoat.
We don't know how modishly the young gentleman liked to dress – perhaps he was quite dapper, like the man depicted here (from an illustration on Victoriana.com). More examples of the clothes of the period can be found on the wikipedia page on fashions in the 1840s.
But anyone choosing to make a shirt like one of Frederick's can do no better than to consult page 142 of The Workwoman's Guide by A Lady (1840). They will find the illustrative plates which they will need for cutting out their fine linen or lawn at the back of the book.
And what happened next to the people we have met in this story?
Looking in the 1841 Census, taken two months later on 6 June, I can see that John Dale had, unsurprisingly, lost his job. He was working as an agricultural labourer. Simpson Adamson, still a fisherman, had left Thirsk for Middlesbrough, where he – but not his wife Sarah – was in the household of William and Jane Adamson, who were in their early twenties. William was a seaman and may have been Simpson's younger brother. Thomas Tate prospered – by the time he died in 1871 he was not only a carrier but a farmer of some 40 acres.
Constable Edmund Charles Gernon was only at the beginning of his career – he was a young man in his twenties. He was to have an eventful year because that June he would find himself at the beginning of the story of the skeleton thought to be the remains of the missing William Huntley of Hutton Rudby. I think Gernon was probably from Ireland. His wife Rachael is buried in Stokesley. She had died in July 1838, two months after giving birth to a boy whom they named after his father. Constable Gernon left Stokesley a few years after these events to join the police in London.
The Revd Charles Cator remarried in 1849 and brought his bride, Miss Amelia Langford of Hyde Park Gardens, home to the Rectory. They were both 63 years old. I rather think her money must at least partly explain the comfortable living recorded in the 1851 Census. They both died in Stokesley in 1872.
Young Frederick Cator, who was twenty at the time his trunk went missing, was shortly to leave Durham University and go to Haileybury College for three years. This was where young gentlemen destined to serve the Hon. East India Company were trained. His record there shows that during his fourth term he was awarded the third prize for the Telugu language. In 1843 he was sent out to India to be a Writer (one of the junior clerks). His record of service shows that he was progressed to Assistant and was posted to Tirunelveli (then called Tinnevelly) in Tamil Nadu; and in 1852 to Madurai (then known as Madura) and to Guntur (then called Guntoor) in Andhra Pradesh.
Was he coming home on leave, or going back out to India, when he left the ship at the Cape of Good Hope, to die in Cape Town on 11 February 1854? We don't know.
York Herald, 20 May 1854
At Cape Town, Cape of Good Hope, February 11th, Frederick Tawbridge [ie Sawbridge] Wright Cator, H.E.I. Company's civil service, Madras Presidency, and fourth son of the Rev. Charles Cator, M.A., Stokesley, Yorkshire
He was 33 years old. His possessions in India were duly inventoried for auction. The inventory, in the British India Office Wills & Probate Records, captures the life he left behind.
The first page lists his china and tableware, beginning "One handsome Dinner Service Blue and Gold". The word "handsome" is either underlined or deleted, it's hard to tell which. He had "One Common set (crockery)" and nothing of this is omitted, even the extra cover for his white curry dish. On the next page, his furniture is listed – there's a "Large Easy Chair" and a "Grasshopper Couch" , the equipment such as a "Camp Table (3 pieces) and "3 Camp chairs (mahogany)", that he needed for his journeys around the country, and his "Double barrel fowling piece". A page full of pans and cooks' knives and "2 Spits" also lists 3 garden rakes, 2 bird cages, a Dove Cot and 16 Pigeons, ending with "1 Lot of antelope skins".
His books take 4 pages to list and include The Family Shakespeare, poetry (Byron, Cowper, Pope), classics such as Plutarch's Lives, dictionaries and grammars (Latin, German, Hindustani, Tamil...). He followed developments in science, owning Lyell's Geology (1830-3), books on natural history, botany, Herschel's Astronomy. He kept up with affairs in the UK and in India, taking Fraser's Magazine, Blackwood's Magazine, the New Monthly Magazine, the Edinburgh Review and the Quarterly and Calcutta Reviews. He had a copy of his father's published sermons
The inventory ends with 5,500 Bricks (good) and 1,590 Tiles, so he evidently intended some building work. I wonder if he was going home to marry.
There were also "6 Poodle Dogs". These will have been the Standard Poodle, used as a gundog.
His goods were sold and the prices recorded. Captain Allan bought a lot of the household china. The Revd W Snyder paid £1-4s for Cator's Sermons, which will have saved him some work preparing his own, perhaps. Captain Farewell paid £3-8s for a Map of Hindustan and Rahim Sahib paid £1-5s for a map of England & Wales and a map of Durham. The proceeds came to £703-0s-3d.
Mr Bance paid £2 for one of the poodles. No mention is made of what happened to the other five.
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