A small sheaf of receipted bills, which had survived by chance in the offices of Meek, Stubbs & Barnley, has given me the material for this sad story.
It was on the afternoon of Tuesday 23 January 1877 that a jury met at the Talbot Hotel in the High Street of South Eston. They had been called by deputy coroner James Dent to inquire into a death.
Some 25 years earlier, ironstone had been discovered in the Eston Hills. Before the ironmaster John Vaughan and his mining engineer John Marley found that first thick seam on 8 June 1850, Eston was just a little village. With the opening of the Eston Ironstone Mine, men began to pour in from across the country, and soon terraces of housing were thrown up and the little enclaves of South Eston, California and Eston Junction came into being.
The inquest on that January afternoon in 1877 had been called because of the death of James Scaife. He had come to Eston from Nidderdale. Born to linen weaver Thomas Scaife and Esther Metcalfe on 11 November 1831, he was baptised at the Pateley Bridge Wesleyan chapel. By the time he came to Eston in the early 1860s, he had been at work for more than 20 years.
When he was 9 years old, living with his family at the Little Kiln Hill Milestone near Glasshouses, he and his 12 year old sister Ann were working in one of the Nidderdale textile mills. When he was 19, the family was living at Crags, near the Blazefield quarries, and he was working with his father as a gardener. Mining was a local industry, but he hadn't chosen to work with his brother-in-law Henry Calvert, Ann's husband, who was a miner in one of the Nidderdale coal mines.
In the 1861 census, James was 30 years old, living on his own in Pateley Bridge and driving a carrier's cart. By the late summer of 1863 he was in Eston and had married a young widow with 3 small boys.
Elizabeth Fielding was born in 1828 to John and Jane Fielding in Skirbeck, a village on the east coast of Lincolnshire near Boston. In the summer of 1848 she married Richard Earley, who was a few years her elder, born in 1820 to Charles and Mary Earley at Kirton in Holland, a few miles to the south of Boston.
In the late 1850s, Richard moved to Eston to work in the ironstone mines, bringing Elizabeth and their little boy Richard. It seems that Elizabeth had already known a good deal of grief in childbearing – after more than 10 years of marriage, Richard was her only surviving child.
There will have been familiar accents around them in their new home because a good many Lincolnshire men came to work in the Eston mines. William Pett, a 41 year old platelayer from the same village as Richard Earley, was lodging with them in 1861. He was probably an old friend or relation of Richard's, and they had called their new baby after him – little William Pett Earley was only a month old at the time of the census. By then, the family was living at 71 William Street, South Eston. It was one of the streets that led off the High Street towards the moors.
Nearly all the men in William Street worked in Bolckow, Vaughan & Co's Eston Ironstone Mines – from the 10 and 12 year old boys who were Door Keepers, to the 13 year olds who drove the horses, to the labourers and engine fitters and, most of all, the many miners themselves. But it was always said in mining rushes that the best way to make money was not to be a miner but to supply the miners and people were drawn to Eston for exactly that purpose. At the top of the street was Mrs Wheatcroft, butcher and publican, next door was the grocer George Brayshaw and a few doors down from Number 71 was the Miners' Arms – there were plenty of places to drink in Eston.
Then, on 10 December 1862, Richard Earley was killed by the fall of ironstone in the mines. He was 41 years old and Elizabeth was heavily pregnant with their third child. The inquest recorded an accidental death and Richard was buried on 14 December at
St Helen's church in Eston.
Early in the New Year, Elizabeth gave birth to another son and named him John Henry. The outlook must have been fairly bleak – how was she to raise her three boys? James Scaife came to her aid. They married in the late summer of 1863 and 18 months later their daughter, Esther Jane, was born.
James Scaife was then 34 years old. He had worked hard all his life and he had ambitions for a better, cleaner, safer future. By 1871 the family was living in West Street, South Eston – it ran parallel to William Street – and, while James was almost certainly working as a miner together with his eldest stepson who was by then 15, he and Elizabeth had started up a grocery business. They also had 4 lodgers, miners born in Lincolnshire, Lancaster, Co. Durham and Norfolk.
How large their house was, I can't tell – most of the houses in West Street seem to have been 2 bedroomed cottages and many, if not all, of them were owned by Mr Marley – probably John Marley, the mining engineer who found the ironstone. His tenants petitioned the Eston Local Board in 1886 begging the Board to do all in their power to prevent Mr Marley from "from erecting one privy to every four houses, as he is doing at the present time". (The Surveyor was able to persuade him to erect one privy to every two houses). But at the ends of the street were quite sizeable houses. William Horner's butcher's shop on the corner of West Street and the High Street was a large property, with a slaughterhouse behind it. The Scaifes seem, from the census, to have lived at the other end of West Street, nearest the hills and not far from the corner with Guisborough Street. Next door to them was a Cheshire man, John Turner, who was a grocer and draper.
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| Looking along West Street, Eston towards the hills: c1900 |
Perhaps the competition with Mr Turner was too much, because by the end of 1876 they had given up on the grocery business and James and Elizabeth were running a newsagents' and stationer's shop from their house, which James owned himself. But the income from the newsagency wasn't enough, and he was also working as a miner.
Unfortunately, by this time, things had begun to go very wrong. James's mental health rapidly deteriorated and by January 1877 he had been "wrong in his mind" for a short time.
On the evening of Tuesday 16 January 1877, James left the house. He had "had some drink", the deputy coroner was told at the inquest, and before leaving home he told Elizabeth that she would not see him alive again. One of his stepsons saw him go "in the direction of a reservoir". There were a couple of reservoirs nearby and only the previous July a young man had drowned in 7 or 8 feet of water in a reservoir on Eston Moor, a favourite summer bathing place for the lads and young men.
Elizabeth must have hoped James had just gone off to tramp the moors for a while but on Sunday 21 January his cap was found near the reservoir. When the police learned of his state of mind, they had the water dragged and they found his body. The next day at the inquest at the Talbot Hotel, the jury returned the verdict that "the deceased committed suicide while in an unsound state of mind."
Elizabeth was now nearly 49 years old. Her sons, aged between 14 and 21, were all working but Esther was coming up to 12 and was probably still at school. They needed mourning clothes and they needed to bury James decently. After that, without James's wage as a miner, Elizabeth needed to keep on making a living for herself and the young ones.
Fortunately James had belonged to a burial club or a friendly society – on the reverse of the undertaker's account can be seen the pencilled note "Club money £20". It was most probably the Oddfellows, who had been a fixture in South Eston from the start, opening their Oddfellows Hall in 1856. The undertaker was William Ingledew, joiner, builder and undertaker.
William Ingledew was 36 years old. He was born in Sadberge, Co. Durham and his wife Jane was from near Wakefield, but he had relatives in Great Ayton so perhaps he seemed almost a local to other incomers. They had two small children and he had plenty of work on. Two years later, when his daughter Martha was baptised, he was busy building houses – the parish register shows the family was living at 11 Ingledews Buildings – and by 1881, while they were living at Number 10 Imeson Street, he was renting 59 acres of land and must have been pleased to describe himself as a joiner and farmer, employing 1 man and a boy. The family went on to own High Grange Farm, Eston.
Three women were paid to lay James out (an unpleasant task after nearly 5 days in the water) and three women were paid for four days, which must have been for the attendance and perhaps for the baking. There were 12 bearers, paid 2 shillings and sixpence each.
The funeral was on Wednesday 24 January. After the Revd Jackson had read the burial service at St Helen's, there was food laid on. Clearly there were quantities of currant cake, with tea, bread and butter and jam, cheese, cold meat, ale and tobacco:
Fruit cake: 4 stone of flour (25.5 kg) –– 7 lbs of lard (3 kg) – 4 lbs of lump sugar (1.8 kg) – 14 lbs of currants (6.35 kg) – 2 lb of lemon peel (0.9 kg)
Sandwiches: 2 stone of bread (12.7 kg) – 6 lb of butter (2.7 kg) – 21 lbs of ham (9.5 kg) – 14 lbs of beef (6.35 kg) – 4 lbs of cheese (1.8 kg) – 4 lbs of jam (1.8 kg)
A pound of tobacco (0.45 kg) was provided for the men's pipes, while to drink there was 3 lbs of leaf tea (1.4 kg) and 3 gallons of ale (24 pints)
The club money paid for it all, with £3-5s-6d over. So Elizabeth also had money to buy wine and biscuits from Mr Brentnall on the High Street. She bought 3 lbs (1.4 kg) of biscuits at a cost of ninepence, together with 5 bottles of British wine (at 1 shilling and fourpence apiece) – British wine was something like port or sherry and was made in Britain from imported concentrate or juice.
Joseph Edmund Brentnall was the Registrar of Births and Deaths and from his shop on the High Street he traded as a "Druggist, family grocer, tea & colonial merchant and Italian Warehouseman". The letter heading on his bill advertises that he stocked "British wines, Plain and Fancy Biscuits and Patent Medicines of every description".
Mr Brentnall had arrived in Eston in the late 1850s from Witton Park, near Bishop Auckland but he was from Ilkeston in Derbyshire and his wife Mary Ann was born in Craster, Northumberland. When they came to Eston they had three little children, all born in Witton Park, and the family increased steadily afterwards – six children were born to them in Eston. Next door to the Brentnalls lived Mary Ann's parents, Thomas Strutt, a retired sea captain from Essex and his Lincolnshire born wife.
Mr Brentnall was quite a significant local figure. He had been appointed registrar in 1871 and in 1875 became vaccination officer for Eston. When his daughter Frances Hannah was married in 1871 to the mining engineer George Lee, the son of Thomas Lee, manager of the Eston Mines, there was a lively local celebration of the old-fashioned rural kind, according to the Darlington & Richmond Herald, 1 April 1871
The village had quite a gay appearance, flags and bunting being placed to good advantage. Some enthusiastic individuals found vent for their feelings in firing cannon; others in athletic sports, which were continued to a late hour.
Elizabeth paid Mr Brentnall's bill on the day of the funeral.
The day after James's body was found, Elizabeth went to the drapers to buy mourning. Two sheets of bills survive.
George Bottomley & Co were "Silk mercers, Hosiers, Glovers, Haberdashers, Carpet Merchants and General Drapers" trading from 10, 12 & 14 East Street, Middlesbrough. It was a large concern with a branch in Eston.
Mourning was a formalised affair, leaving the bereaved with weighty choices between their financial resources, the money they would need for the future and the need to present a decent, respectable appearance and not to slight the memory of the loved one.
The matt black fabric needed for mourning was called Crape. It was used for the widow's bonnet and veil, it was added as trimmings to dresses and it was sewn onto cuffs and edgings.
The upmarket version of crape was made from silk gauze, heat-treated, dyed black and stiffened. It was a grim material – it shed its dye if it got wet, it stained the skin if the wearer was sweaty, and it scratched the face and skin causing irritation.
For full mourning for the middle and upper classes, the widow's veil was traditionally 6 feet long and made of 2 layers of crape fastened to the bonnet – heavy, hard to breathe through and hard to see through. The blackness itself was toxic and began to cause doctors more and more alarm because the aniline dye was processed using arsenic. The British Medical Journal tried to draw the public's attention to the risk to the wearers – widows were breathing in the dust and toxins from the crape veil that hung over their faces. The textile company Courtaulds made a fortune out of crape until fashions at last changed in the early C20 (particularly because of the scale of death in the First World War) and sales figures finally dropped.
Albert-crape was a more economical version, made of a cotton and silk mix. Because mourning was an expensive matter, the working class in particular would alter and dye and trim clothes they already had so they could present a decent appearance.
The first bill shows that Elizabeth bought crape and calico, trimmings, buttons, a man's tie, gloves and a hat for Esther Jane. She bought a bonnet for herself with nearly half a yard of Crape and a flower and paid for alterations to it. The next day she went back for more crape, flannel, hose, a silk square, a cap and a table cloth.
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On 5 February there was still 1s 8½d outstanding to Bottomleys. More items would be needed over the next weeks and Elizabeth had to make several trips to the shop, paying the balance of £3 14s 7½d off by degrees in May and July, at the beginning of the following January. She finally settled the account on 13 February 1878, a little more than a year after James's death.
By this time, George Bottomley himself had been dead for 6 months. He was born at Sowerby near Halifax but when he married Mary Pickering at Wharram Le Street near Malton in February 1847, he was already living in Middlesbrough and working as a draper. He was then 24 years old.
He had built up a thriving business, been a JP and active in the public life of the new town. He had died unexpectedly at East Street on 20 August 1877 aged 54 and was buried in the Old Cemetery at Middlesbrough. He was a JP and one of the earliest inhabitants of the town and had been active in its public life – the Mayor, aldermen and councillors were at his funeral and about 20 vehicles of mourners followed the cortege.
When Elizabeth Scaife finally cleared her account with George Bottomley & Co, it was run by Mr Bottomley's Aberdeen-born son-in-law Alexander Cruickshank together with a trustee called George Watson.
While William Ingledew listed £1 for the "Dressmaker" in his bill – because though Elizabeth must have made and altered as much as she could for Esther Jane and herself, the help of a dressmaker would be very welcome given the pressure of time – for the boys' clothes, she needed to go to the tailor.
John Nicholson ("Tailor and Outfitter, Hats and Caps") was a 50 year old master tailor employing 2 men. He and his wife Mary were locals, born in Skelton. Like the Brentnalls, the Nicholsons came to Eston in the late 1850s. By then they already had 2 children, and it was in Eston that their youngest 3 children were born. Their house and shop was on the High Street. Mr Nicholson was another significant local figure. In 1871 he became a member of the Eston School Board in an uncontested election together with Thomas Lee, the manager of Eston Mines, Edward Williams of Cleveland Lodge (the General Manager of Bolckow Vaughan), Thomas Williams, Cashier at the Mines, and the Revd Vyvyan Henry Moyle.
John Nicholson's bill shows that he made three sets of clothes: a suit for £4 and 2 sets of jacket, trousers & vest. One jacket was made from 1¼ yards of black cloth at 13 shillings a yard, while 2½ yards of cheaper cloth at 4 shillings and sixpence a yard was made up into trousers and a vest. The other jacket was made from 1 yard of cloth with a further yard and an eighth for the trousers and vest. The suit must have been for Richard, the eldest. But the amount of cloth (respectively a little over, and a little under, a metre each) used for the jackets for 17 year old William and 14 year old John show that the boys were only small.
After this very creditable funeral, Elizabeth carried on as a newsagent and stationer but she clearly had difficulties. Without James's extra income, and perhaps because she and James had overstretched themselves in the hope of future prosperity, there were problems with money. It seems that creditors became impatient, proceedings in the County Court were begun and Elizabeth was obliged to take out a Grant of Administration of James's estate so that the house could be sold. On 20 March 1879 it was put up for auction.
A couple of years later, in the 1881 Census, Elizabeth was still in West Street, next door but one to the George & Dragon. She was quite possibly still living in the same house but now as a tenant. The house must have been very full. She had her three younger children with her – William and Esther worked in the shop while John Henry was a labourer – and she had 6 lodgers, all of them miners or labourers. She stayed in Eston, running her newsagents' business, until her final years. She died in 1904, ending her days in the Middlesbrough Workhouse.
For the Cleveland & Teesside Local History Society timeline of Eston: see here
For more on mourning crape
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