Cholera: glimpses of the pandemics of the 19th century

In the 19th century, the usual yearly epidemics of frequently fatal infectious diseases in Britain were eclipsed by successive waves of a frightening newcomer: Asiatic Cholera.

It first arrived in 1831.  You can read about it in 'The year of the Cholera', Chapter 11 of Remarkable, but still True: the story of the Revd R J Barlow and Hutton Rudby in the time of the cholera .

There I describe how, in York, Dr Thomas Simpson and the surgeon J P Needham not only treated patients but also investigated the spread of cases.  They both believed cholera was contagious and Needham wrote a monograph on the subject in 1833, after the pandemic had subsided.  Dr Simpson, who thought it was an air-borne disease, published his Observations on the Asiatic Cholera: and Facts regarding the mode of its diffusion after the next pandemic, which happened seventeen years later in 1848.

In 1848, as in 1831, cholera was firmly associated with "nuisances" – sewage and filth – and it was still thought that it was the "unwholesome exhalations" and poisonous vapours from nuisances and decaying vegetable matter that spread the disease.  The theory may have been erroneous but the practice was helpful, because cholera is spread through water contaminated by faeces; this was the beginning of improvements in better drainage and public health.  

Cholera isn't easy to catch but without the correct treatment it is fatal in half the cases.  Nowadays it is treated by rehydration – which has to be begun without delay – and sometimes with antibiotics.  In the 19th century, careful nursing might pull a patient through but unfortunately doctors very often used purges and emetics on their patients, which would only have dehydrated them further.  

Meanwhile, there were plenty of advertisements for patent medicines.

William Hardcastle advertised his "Cure for Asiatic Cholera" and "Grand Preventive of Cholera" extensively in the Northern press.  Born in Sunderland, he had learned his trade as a chemist in Stockton-on-Tees and now had his own shop in Finkle Street – and I'm glad to say the interior of Hardcastle's is preserved at Beamish Open Air Museum (photographs here).  He was a man in his late thirties and evidently very enterprising.

At this time anxiety was all the greater because diarrhoea was thought often to precede cholera – of course there was a good deal of diarrhoea around – and it was believed that stopping diarrhoea would stop cholera developing.  William Hardcastle's advertisements proudly proclaimed that 

having witnessed the great mortality by Cholera which took place in Stockton, 17 years ago, when about 130 persons died in a very short time, Mr H. directed his earnest attention to discover some more efficient Preventive and Cure than were at that time employed, and has succeeded in compounding the "Diarrhoea Powders" and "Cholera Drops", which has rescued many from premature graves.  Their great efficacy has caused them to be so much esteemed in Stockton and the Neighbourhood, that the Proprietor has now made arrangements for extending their sale to other places.

The Drops could be sent by Post to any part of the UK on forwarding 12 Postage Stamps, and they cost a shilling and a penny halfpenny or two shillings per bottle.  I expect the chief ingredient was laudanum.

More useful in preventing cholera were products such as Sir William Burnett's Patent Disinfecting Fluid, which was advertised as "a deodorizing and purifying agent" and was a chloride disinfectant.  

When nothing seemed to help, the only answer was prayer:

York Herald, 22 September 1849

Cholera – The authorities of Middlesbro' have issued a notice to the inhabitants to set apart Friday, the 21st inst., as a day of humiliation and prayer to God to remove that desolating pestilence, the cholera, which has lately been so fatal in that place.

Then a third wave of cholera reached Britain in 1853.  It was at this point that Dr John Snow of London  (1813-58) demonstrated that cholera was a water-borne disease by removing the handle of the Broad Street pump.  He published his findings in his work of 1855, which drew upon the careful observations of Dr Thomas Simpson.  But it took many years for public health authorities to act to ensure a clean water supply and Snow had been long dead when the Chief Medical Officer for Health acknowledged the significance of his work.

We can see that keeping the streets clear of nuisances and encouraging better cleanliness was well established as a priority for the authorities:

York Herald, 15 October 1853

Cholera – On the 24th of Sept last, this devastating disease broke out in one of the low parts of Stockton, and since that period to the present time, 13 deaths have occurred, but all in that particular locality, which is said to be in a very indifferent state of drainage, and where many of the inhabitants are not of the most cleanly description.

In Darlington, the local board of health and the board of guardians held a joint meeting.  They decided to carry out the recommendations of the medical superintending inspector of the General Board of Health to set up a system of house to house visiting as the only effectual safeguard against the spread of the epidemic.  (This might remind us of recent events described in this story on the BBC News website in which Professor John Wright, Head of Bradford Institute for Health Research describes the work of the local test and trace teams, sending testers door to door in neighbourhoods with high rates of infection).  They resolved to employ more scavengers to clear away the nuisances, to set up a more general distribution of disintectants such as chloride of lime, and to supply water for free to the poorer districts, "in order that greater facilities for cleanliness might be afforded".   

And, then as now, there were plenty of conspiracy theories.  In some countries, the swiftness with which the disease spread led the people to think their water supply had been poisoned:

Huddersfield Chronicle, 2 September 1854

News has arrived in Palermo of the appearance of cholera in that city.  The Sicilians, it seems, are under the impression that the cholera is a poison which has been communicated by human means.  The people have surrounded the Governor's palace, and shouted "We will not have the cholera here!"  The Lord Lieutenant immediately issued orders prohibiting the people to speak of poison.  The city is in a very excited state.

In 1865 the cholera returned yet again to Britain.  

It reached Yarm on 8 October 1866 and when doctors Robert and Christopher Young, the town's medical officers, made their report on 13 November, they hoped they had seen the back of it.  There had been 23 cases of cholera, 12 of which were fatal, and 5 cases "approaching cholera", of which 2 were fatal. In the same period they had seen 87 cases of diarrhoea.  

A few days before cholera came to Yarm, it had already reached Hutton Rudby and Potto – but luckily not with the virulence of the 1832 outbreak, when there were 45 cases and 23 deaths at the east end of the village green:

York Herald, 6 October 1866

The Cholera – We regret to state that a fatal case of Asiatic cholera has just occurred at the small rustic hamlet of Potto, in the parish of Whorlton, near Stokesley.  Elizabeth Mary Cawthorn, the wife of a brickmaker, was attacked on Saturday afternoon last, and was visited the same night by Mr A A Boyle, assistant to Mr J H Handyside, surgeon, Stokesley, and he at once perceived that she was prostrated by a malignant attack of cholera.  Mr Handyside attended on the following morning, and Mr Boyle was present when she died on Sunday night, medical skill being of no avail.

Richmond & Ripon Chronicle, 13 October 1866

Thompson - On the 6th inst., at Hutton Rudby, Cleveland, of Asiatic cholera, aged 60 years, Mr George Thompson, brickmaker

Nearly twenty years and many cholera deaths later, people across the world were electrified to hear that the German scientist Dr Robert Koch and his team had discovered the "cholera germ".  

Dr Koch had carried out his researches in India.  This fact spurred Professor Edwin Ray Lankester (1847-1929) to write a trenchant criticism of the British government's approach to scientific research that appeared in, among other papers, the Pall Mall Gazette of 2 November 1883.  He was the son of Edwin Lankester (1814-74), surgeon, naturalist, the first public analyst in Britain, the first medically qualified coroner for Central Middlesex, a man who made a major contribution to the control of cholera in London.  So his son had, in a way, a family interest in the fight against the disease.  

He deplored the fact that

when a dire disease broke out in a country occupied by British troops, and, for the time being, controlled by the English Government, no steps were taken by that Government to initiate a thorough study of the disease in the light of modern science, but that, on the other hand, independent Commissions were sent to the plague-stricken country by the Governments of France and Germany for the express purpose of making the investigations which the English Government had omitted to set on foot.

The French and German scientists were from 

the State-supported laboratory of M Pasteur; they were his assistants and pupils.  The German Commissioners came from the Imperial Sanitary Institute of Berlin, the workers in which are drawn from the twenty-two State-supported laboratories of pathology which are scattered throughout the German Empire

Britain should be following the examples of France and Germany in training scientists and funding research bodies and laboratories like those in France and Germany.

By July 1884 the "discoverer of the cholera germ" Dr Robert Koch was known to everyone and admired by all.  The Pall Mall Gazette of 11 July 1884 noted that "in the last five years he has succeeded in identifying the germs of cattle disease, of consumption, and of cholera" – he was the benefactor of humanity.

Two years later, the Sanitary Congress – the annual meeting of the Sanitary Institute of Great Britain, founded in 1876 – was held in the Museum in York (now the Yorkshire Museum).  

The Leeds Mercury of 25 September 1886 carried a report of the proceedings.  The president, Mr William Whitaker, read a paper about water-supply in which he said two of the chief problems in sanitary matters were getting good water and getting rid of bad water.  Percy F Frankland, associate of the Royal School of Mines, spoke on the filtration of water.  They had known for many years that the real danger in sewage-contaminated water lay not in the organic matter to be found by analysis but in "the presence of minute living organisms, capable of producing zymotic disease".  Largely thanks to the genius of Robert Koch they now had "beautiful methods of bacteriological investigation" and this had enabled the great advance made in water purification.  Surgeon-Major Pringle described his system of collecting and storing rain and drinking water. Another debate clearly centred on the role of government.  Enforcement or education?  The West Riding County Surveyor, J Vickers Edwards, took what might now be called the libertarian approach to achieving "a healthy house", arguing that sanitary science would not progress through the actions of local authorities nor by legislation, but by educating people to act for themselves.  

Over the next fifty years the Sanitary Institute was to become the leading public health organisation in the UK, with a world-wide reputation.  It is now the Royal Society for Public Health.

Public health reform was truly on its way.

George Bewick in Hutton Rudby

 If anybody has any information on the origins of the George Bewick who settled in Hutton Rudby in the mid-18th century, do let me know.  

I've been contacted by someone who'd very much like to have more information on the family.

The Bewicks first appear in the Hutton Rudby parish registers in 1760 with the baptism of Susannah, daughter of George, on 16 October 1760.  Then there is the burial of George Bewick on 20 March 1761.  

The relationships of these early Bewicks can't easily be disentangled, as can be seen from my original notes on the family which can be found here.  Women of the Bewick family appear in the baptismal registers of St Mary's Roman Catholic in Crathorne (see The Roman Catholic population of Hutton Rudby, c1780 to 1830)

A later George Bewick plays a major role in the story of the disappearance of William Huntley.  This George was a Wesleyan Methodist linen manufacturer in North End who was at the time Constable of Hutton township.  The newspaper account of the testimony at the trial of the accused murderer of Huntley reports what George Bewick actually said at the time – it is like overhearing a voice from the past.  The story can be found here in Chapter 6. 1830: Suspicions of Murder of my book Remarkable, but still True.

Do contact me using the Contact Me page on the blog if you would like to be contacted yourself – using Comments doesn't give me your email address.

Rev Robert Joseph Barlow invents a carriage spring, 1836

I came across this fascinating report quite by accident.  It turns out that the Rev Robert Joseph Barlow of Hutton Rudby (c1804-78) invented a safety spring to make travelling by carriage (and this seems to mean, above all, railway carriages) safer and more comfortable.

His invention was presented to the Whitby Lit & Phil by Dr George Merryweather of Whitby, who owned Linden Grove (now Linden Grange), the house in which Mr Barlow lived.  He was the inventor himself of the celebrated Tempest Prognosticator, a leech-powered barometer.  A model of it may be seen in Whitby Museum.

The Rev George Young referred to is the celebrated historian (a short biography can be found here here on the Whitby Museum website).

The surprising story of Robert Barlow's brother, James Barlow Hoy, and his rise to unexpected good fortune and a seat in the House of Commons can be found in my book Remarkable, but still True: the story of the Revd R J Barlow and Hutton Rudby in the time of the cholera.  His life history begins here at Chapter 7 and the account of his sudden death in an accident while shooting in the Pyrenees is here in Chapter 16.

The Whitby & Pickering Railway was one of the first railways in Yorkshire and George Stephenson was the engineer.  When it opened in 1836 – when it tried out Mr Barlow's spring – it was a single-track horse-worked railway.  Now it is the North Yorkshire Moors Railway and is not to be missed by any visitor to the moors who values heritage steam locomotives and diesel engines, beautiful scenery, nostalgic tearooms, etc, etc.

Hampshire Advertiser, 1 October 1836 

Newly Invented Safety Spring for Carriages 

We take from the Yorkshire Gazette, the following notice of a new Spring for Carriages, the invention of the Rev R J Barlow, brother of our town member, J Barlow Hoy, esq.:- 

A general meeting of the Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society was held at the Whitby Museum, on Monday, September 12, for the purpose of receiving a communication from the Rev R J Barlow, of Linden Grove near Stokesley, on his newly invented patent safety springs for carriages.   

A respectable company of ladies and gentlemen having assembled, John Frankland, esq. was called to the chair, and the object of the meeting was stated by the Rev George Young, A.M. one of the secretaries.  Dr Merryweather, through whom the communication was received, then addressed the company as follows:- 

Mr Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I have the pleasure this day of bringing before your notice an original paper by the Rev Mr Barlow, communicating an invention which, when properly understood and duly appreciated, will, in my humble opinion, rank among the most beneficial and ingenious of modern times.  When I say ingenious, I particularly allude to the simplicity and beauty of the contrivance, and when I say beneficial, I mean not only to express my sense of the increased convenience and comfort of carriages, but also with the great comparative security of life and property, by which travelling will be accomplished when these springs shall have become universal ...

After an introduction full of praise for the invention and its usefulness for the future, Dr Merryweather read Mr Barlow's paper.  The company then examined the "ingenious models" he had provided and they "admired the simplicity and excellence of the invention."

The Revd Young concluded by praising the Spring, which would promote ease and convenience in travelling and "prevent accidents and preserve life"

The speed with which locomotive carriages are sometimes propelled on railroads is truly astonishing, and every practicable plan for rendering these and other carriages safe, as well as commodious, must be of incalculable value

The Spring had been tested by Mr Barlow himself and by the Directors of the Whitby and Pickering Railway, 

who have a coach constructed on the new principle, fully answering the expectations that were formed.  It must have cost the Rev Gentleman much study and many trials to bring his invention to this state of maturity

Mr Young concluded his speech of thanks by suggesting that Mr Barlow be elected an honorary member of the Society, and this was done.

Then & Now: Asiatic Cholera & Covid-19

Listening to the news of the coronavirus, it seems timely to look back on another rapidly spreading disease – the pandemic of Asiatic Cholera that reached Hutton Rudby in 1832.  

This was a very frightening pandemic, not because it was terribly contagious – it was noted in 1876 that out of nineteen people drinking from a infected vessel, only five contracted the infection – but because nobody knew how it spread or what caused it and because without treatment it is fatal in half the cases.  Nowadays it is very treatable; the website of Médecins sans frontières explains that it "can be treated simply and successfully by immediately replacing the fluids and salts lost through vomiting and diarrhoea – with prompt rehydration, less than one per cent of cholera patients die."  

The arrival of the cholera in Hutton Rudby was to prove pivotal in the life of the new vicar, the Revd Robert Barlow.  The story of the cholera and Mr Barlow is told in my book Remarkable, but still True: the story of the Revd R J Barlow and Hutton Rudby in the time of the cholera which I posted on this blog in December 2012.

Here are a few excerpts from Chapter 11. 1832: The year of the Cholera to entice readers back to the chapter itself (just click on that hyperlink to get there), with its account of the dilemmas faced by the authorities and the reactions of business interests and ordinary people:

Cholera had always been endemic in pockets of India, but now, perhaps spread by the new conditions of greatly increased trade and British troop movements, it broke out explosively, and soon produced on the minds of the medical attendants the strong conviction that it was a new disease – a most fearful Pestilence.   

It swiftly passed its usual boundaries and spread widely and rapidly along the trade routes of Asia.  An exceptionally severe winter prevented its further spread into Europe, but a second pandemic beginning in Bengal in 1826 spread rapidly across Asia and the middle East. 

By August 1830 it had reached Moscow, and helped by large numbers of refugees from a savage military campaign in Poland, it travelled rapidly along the complex of busy trade routes across Europe.  It carried with it a terrifying reputation, and even though its impact in Britain was far less damaging than had first been feared, it would cause over 31,000 deaths in England, Scotland and Wales in the years 1831 to 1832. 

The British quarantine regulations were developed from those devised to combat plague and yellow fever.

The 31,000 deaths were from a population of 16.54 million (this website explains the figures from the 1831 census).  I think the population of England, Scotland and Wales is now about 65.4m people.

Dr Simpson [who studied the 1832 outbreak] wrote in 1849: 

If quarantine could be strictly enforced, there cannot be the slightest doubt that it would be successful.  The difficulties, however, of enforcing quarantine, between countries where extensive commercial intercourse is constantly going on, would appear to be quite insurmountable.

Internal quarantine was considered:

The Board of Health had considered the possibility of internal quarantine to limit the spread of cholera once it arrived, but it was obviously impracticable.  Given the terrifying nature of the disease reported in Asia and eastern Europe, they recommended local isolation of the first cases and the separation of the sick from the healthy.  This was to be done by a network of local Boards of Health.  The Board envisaged the removal of the sick into cholera hospitals, and thence into convalescent homes, while their contacts would be taken into isolation houses; if all three buildings could be in the same enclosure, this could be conveniently guarded by the local military.  Their homes would be purified with chloride of lime and hot lime wash; the dead would be buried swiftly in ground close to the house for the infected.  Their first circular, published in the press, called for local Boards to be established,

There should be established a local board of health, to consist of the Chief and other Magistrates, the Clergyman of the parish, two or more Physicians or Medical Practitioners, and three or more of the Principal Inhabitants…

The Central Board advised the magistrates to prevent, as far as possible, intercourse with any infected town.  Magistrates and clergy were asked to improve the conditions in which cholera spread:

the poor, ill-fed, and unhealthy part of the population, and especially those who have been addicted to the drinking of spirituous liquors, and indulgence in irregular habits, have been the greatest sufferers from the disease…. 

This circular was published on 20 October 1831 shortly before the news of the first official case of cholera was confirmed in Sunderland in late October. 

Cholera came to Hutton Rudby at nine o'clock in the evening on Tuesday 2 October 1832, when the weaver John Cook came back from Newcastle to his home in the Bay Horse Yard.

Hutton Rudby 1876 to 1877: the Albion Sailcloth Mill

This follows the post Hutton Rudby 1859-1908: the Cleveland Sailcloth Mill

It has always been remembered that William Surtees, who lived in Eden Cottage at the time of the 1871 census, established a linen manufactury in Albion House, at the corner of Doctors Lane and Garbutts Lane.

This is his story.

I have come to the conclusion that William was the grandson of the William Surtees and Eden Dodds who married on 7 December 1797 in Hutton Rudby – not least because he used the name Eden for his house and as the middle name of one of his daughters.

William Surtees and Eden Dodds had several children (see here).  Their daughter Margaret Surtees married Edward Hansell of Kirklevington in 1830, while daughters Jane and Sarah had children outside marriage.  The Guisborough registers record the baptism on 15 August 1825 of William & John, illegitimate sons of Jane Surtees of Guisborough.  This was the William of Eden Cottage.  

By 1832 Jane was back in Hutton Rudby where her daughter Elizabeth was baptised on 25 July.  The Memorial Inscriptions transcription shows that Jane died the following year aged 34.  Eden and William Surtees were left with the care of Jane's 7 year old twin boys and baby daughter.  William died four years later and was buried at Hutton Rudby on 12 March 1837, aged 66.  The 1841 census shows Eden was still at work – though she was now 70 years old, she was listed as an agricultural labourer.  With her were Elizabeth, aged 10, and John, a stonemason's apprentice aged 15.  Her house must have been at the top of Enterpen; it appears directly after Hutton House in the enumerator's round of the village.  

The twin boys had both been apprenticed as stone masons.  While John was with their grandmother, the 1841 Census found William in the household of John Souter in Stockton; there was a family called Souter in Hutton Rudby, so John Souter may have been a friend or relation (see here).  Ten years later, in 1851, William Surtees, stonemason aged 25, birthplace Guisborough, was visiting Henry Fletcher in Hartlepool.

Meanwhile, his grandmother Eden lived on in Hutton Rudby.  She was still alive and still working as a farm labourer at the time of the 1851 census, but she was also described as a pauper and she was living on her own.  She died in 1854 aged 84.

By the early 1850s William was in partnership with Robert Todd of Marton-in-Cleveland.  This was just before the village was changed by the building of Marton Hall by Henry Bolckow; at the time of the 1840 White's Directory it "had in its parish 363 souls".  Marton Lodge ("a large stone mansion") was still in ruins after a fire in 1832, and St Cuthbert's church had not yet been modernised and was described as a "small ancient structure".   

Robert Todd was born in about 1820 in Shadforth, Co Durham.  He had married a Marton girl called Jane Ord of Marton and settled there.  The 1851 census shows that they had three small children and were living with her widowed father William.  

The Todd-Surtees partnership ended in 1853:

Yorkshire Gazette, 4 June 1853 

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN, that the Partnership heretofore subsisting between the undersigned WILLIAM SURTEES, of Hutton, near Rudby, in the County of York, Stonemason, and ROBERT TODD, of Marton, in the same County, Stonemason, carrying on business as Stonemasons and Contractors at Marton aforesaid, under the firm of "ROBERT TODD," was this day DISSOLVED by Mutual Consent. 

All Debts due and owing to or by the said Partnership will be paid and received by the said ROBERT TODD, who will complete all existing Contracts on his own account.  As witness our hands this Twenty-Seventh Day of May, 1853. 

(Signed) WILLIAM SURTEES
ROBERT TODD
Signed by both parties in the presence of
J PEIRSON HOLT,
Solicitor, Middlesbro'

After the end of his partnership with William Surtees, Robert and the family moved into the new and growing town of Middlesbrough, to live in Corporation Road.  

William must have gone to work somewhere near Darlington, because when he married in the spring of 1856, it was registered in that district.  His wife was Hannah Thorburn.  I think she is the girl who can be found in the 1841 Census for Haggbeck, seven miles from Longtown, north of Carlisle.  She was then aged 8, the youngest child of Hannah & Thomas Thorburn, a joiner.  My conjecture has some support from the fact that the record of her death states that her father was called Thomas and that the birth of a William Surtees was registered at Longtown at the end of 1857.  As was quite common, Hannah had been near her family for the birth of her first child.

A little more than a year later William and Hannah had come across the Pennines to Hutton Rudby, where their second son Thomas was born on 14 January 1859.  William's occupation is given on the birth certificate as stonemason.

Before very long, William, Hannah and the two little boys had sailed for Australia.

They must have hoped and planned for a successful new life there.  It began with a birth, when another baby boy, Elijah, was born to them on 28 March 1862 – but the bright start did not last long.  Elijah died only weeks later on the 9 May.  His death was registered at Newtown, New South Wales and he was buried in the Camperdown Cemetery, Newtown, City of Sydney 

On 6 May 1863, less than a year later, Hannah died.  She too was buried in the Camperdown Cemetery.  And then, only a few months later on 20 January 1864, six year old William died.  His father buried him in the same cemetery as his mother and baby brother.  Only William and Thomas remained.

On 22 August 1866 William remarried.  His second wife was Clara Susan Louisa Graham of Liverpool, New South Wales. 

Clara – as can be seen from her obituary at the end of this piece – came of a family that had lived in Liverpool for a long while; their oldest family tombstone was dated 1809.  Her mother was a sister of the Lieutenant Wilson who first sighted the promontory on the southern coast which was named after him (Wilsons Promontory?).  Her brother George Graham was a Sydney solicitor; her cousin George Smith was the first Mayor of Manly.  Clara was born in Liverpool in 1834 and her memory stretched back to the dark past.  She could remember "when the present asylum was used as a military barracks, and the stocks and triangles were employed to punish rebellious convicts".  The last convict ship had arrived in New South Wales from London on Christmas Eve 1849, a dozen years before William Surtees and his family arrived.

Collingwood Paper Mills

William is described in Clara's obituary as having "built the Liverpool paper mill."  This was the Collingwood Paper Mill which, according to the website of the developers who are even now working to turn it into Liverpool's new premier destination, could produce 20 tonnes of paper per week and was the biggest employer in the Liverpool district.  

William and Clara had a little girl, Eva Eden, born in 1867.  Then, the work on the paper mill finished, William and his little family left for Yorkshire, sailing from New South Wales for London on La Hogue at the beginning of January 1868.  The passenger list in the Sydney Morning Herald of 8 January 1868 names "Mr and Mrs Surtees and child"; I expect Eva was too young to be counted.  

William returned, local boy made good, to Hutton Rudby.  Perhaps he longed for the familiar; perhaps he felt the need to show how well he had done.  He built himself a house beyond the edge of the village, in the fields between the Station Hotel at the corner of Doctors Lane and the Vicarage on Belborough Lane, and named it Eden Cottage.  There is no sign of a house on this spot in the 1861 census, so I think we can safely assume that William built it and named it after his grandmother. 

Eden Cottage & the Thorman family, 1880s
Courtesy of Sue & Bob Hutchinson

In 1869, Clara gave birth to another baby girl.  She was baptised Amy Louisa Victoria on 29 March by the Revd R J Barlow, and her father's occupation given as Builder.  The 1871 census finds them all at Eden Cottage: William, Clara, Thomas (now aged 12), Eva (aged 3) and 2 year old Amy.  Clara was by then pregnant with Laura Adelaide, who was born a short while after the census was taken and baptised on 7 August.

In the 1871 census William described himself as a builder, and in the 1872 Post Office Directory as a builder and contractor.  We catch a glimpse of his activities in this advertisement which appeared through the months of June and July 1873 – in it we can see that, having come home from Australia, he named his business Albion, the ancient name for Britain:

Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough, 24 June 1873 

For Sale by Private Contract,
The Albion Steam Crushing and Cutting Mills, occupying the space between Boundary-road and Dale-street, Middlesbrough, in full work, and open to inspection.
Apply, by letter, in the first instance, to William Surtees, Eden Cottage, Hutton Rudby, via Yarm.

Perhaps he was selling his Steam Crushing and Cutting Mills to finance his new scheme.  He was going to set up a sailcloth manufactury to rival the Wilsons' Cleveland Sailcloth Mill.  Why did he decide to sink his capital into this rather unlikely business?  Was he really likely to succeed?  Nobody now knows.

He called it the Albion Sailcloth Works and built it on land he had bought on the edge of the village at the corner of Doctors Lane.  This was not far from the village pond (on the opposite side of Garbutts Lane) and it had a good water supply.  Malcolm McPhie, when a boy, was shown the well that supplied a house on that corner – when the lid was lifted, he could see running water at the bottom of the well.  Surtees equipped his mill with a horizontal steam engine driving six Parker's Patent Mathematical Looms.  This was a loom for weaving Navy sailcloth and other heavy fabrics; it was developed by C E & C Parker, Dundee and was exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851.

As for his other activities in the village, there is an interesting report from the magistrates' court in Stokesley in early January 1876:

York Herald, 15 January 1876 

Stokesley Petty Sessions
William Surtees, of Hutton Rudby, stone mason, was charged by Police-constable Thompson with being drunk on licensed premises, occupied by Eliza Raney, of the Wheat Sheaf Inn.  Defendant said that he was quite capable of talking on scientific subjects and transacting business.  Fined 5s. and costs

What can have been going on?  Mrs Elizabeth Raney was an experienced publican.  Aged 64 at the time of this incident, she had been running the Wheatsheaf since her young husband Jeremiah died in 1842.  William's scientific discussion and business transactions must have been getting rather noisy if she had to call the village policeman!

That summer, on 14 August 1876, William's son Thomas became a Merchant Navy apprentice, bound for a term of four years.  (He can be found in the Register of Apprentices available on Ancestry.co.uk).  Perhaps the voyages to and from Australia had inspired him; perhaps a love of heavy machinery was kindled in him by the equipment his father was buying.

Then, eighteen months later on 3 September 1877, William Surtees died at the age of 53.  Thomas, who was able to be at his deathbed, went to the registrar Joseph Mellanby Mease to register the death.  He gave his father's occupation as Contractor.  The cause of death was certified by Dr M C Hopgood as "Anasarca".  This is a general swelling of the whole body, probably caused in William's case by liver, kidney or heart failure.

He had hardly had time to get his enterprise up and running.  The machinery was scarcely used.

His widow Clara and Thomas Milestone, the gardener at Skutterskelfe, were his Executors and they took out Probate promptly on 28 September.  Clara then put the business up for sale – and the solicitor she chose was John George Wilson, brother of Allan and Thomas, who ran the rival business at the Cleveland Sailcloth Mill.

This notice of an auction sale to be held on 25 October 1877 gives us a great many details of this fleeting business:

Northern Echo, 13 October 1877 

Hutton Rudby, in Cleveland – Albion Sailcloth Works and Freehold Land 

TO BE SOLD BY AUCTION, at the Wheat Sheaf Inn, Hutton Rudby, in the County of York, on Thursday, October 25th, 1877, at Two for Three o'Clock in the Afternoon (subject to such conditions as shall then agreed),
Mr J J HANSELL, Auctioneer 

All that newly-erected FREEHOLD SAILCLOTH FACTORY, situated at the north end of the village of Hutton Rudby aforesaid, together with the adjoining Field of Old Grass LAND, containing 1a. 1r. 15p., or thereabouts, be the same more or less. 

The Factory comprises a large Manufacturing-room, measuring 64ft by 24ft 9in, together with Office, Storeroom, and Engine-house, and contains Six Parker's Patent Mathematical Looms, with all the necessary Preparing Frames and Finishing Machinery; also Paper Calendar, Horizontal Steam Engine, Boiler, and Cold Water Pump.  The Machinery is of the best description; it has all been recently fitted up, and is in good condition, having been but little used.  There is a capital supply of Water. 

The Land is known by the name of the "Town End Field," and is splendidly situated, with a commanding view of the Cleveland Hills and surrounding district, and having extensive frontages to high roads on the North and East boundaries thereof, it may be easily sub-divided into excellent sites for the erection of Villas or other Residences. 

Potto Station, on the North Yorkshire and Cleveland Branch of the North-Eastern Railway, is within the distance of One Mile from the Property. 

A considerable portion of the Purchase Money may be left on Mortgage of the Premises on terms to be stated at the time of sale. 

The Property will in the first instance be put up for sale in One Lot, and, if not sold, it will then be offered in such Lots as may be agreed upon. 

Further particulars may be obtained on application to Mrs WILLIAM SURTEES, Hutton Rudby, near Yarm, Yorkshire; or to 

Mr JOHN GEORGE WILSON, Solicitor,
Hutton Rudby and Durham.
Hutton Rudby, October, 1877

The Sailcloth Works came to an end and it is said that the buildings were used as a laundry and a dyeworks before being converted into the Albion House and Albion Terrace that we know today.  In a decorative detail above the windows of the Terrace is the date 1881, so this happened within a very few years of William Surtees' death.  Perhaps the conversion was the work of the builder Matthew Bewick Bainbridge, who lived in Albion House at the time of the 1881 census.

Albion Terrace in the 1930s

Clara went back to Australia with her three little girls.  I wonder when she sailed – probably as soon as she could sell up, as all her family were in New South Wales and there was nothing to keep her in England.  Thomas stayed behind, but he saw Sydney again at least once.  The crew list of the Parramatta out of London shows that he came back into Sydney harbour on 8 December 1879.  One would think he must have gone to see his stepmother and half-sisters.

His time served, Thomas can be found in 1881 working as a fitter and boarding with his father's cousins, Margaret, Thomas and William Hansell, middle-aged unmarried siblings living together at 32½ Brunswick Street, Stockton.  He married Margaret Adamson in the spring quarter of 1881 soon after the census was taken, and worked as a Marine Engine Maker.  He might well have worked for Messrs Blair & Co, the company founded by George Young Blair of Drumrauch Hall, Hutton Rudby.  By 1891 he and Margaret were living in Mount Pleasant Street, Norton-on-Tees and had four children between the ages of three and nine.  By 1901 they were at 6 Trent Street, Stockton-on-Tees with their children Annie, William, Thomas, Margaret and Eva.  William was apprenticed to a joiner and young Thomas was a junior clerk.  Thomas died in the April-June quarter of 1907 aged 49.

His stepmother Clara outlived him.  She died in 1922, the oldest resident of Liverpool, and her death merited a piece in the Sydney Morning Herald:

Sydney Morning Herald, 11 October 1922 

MRS C SURTEES
Mrs Clara Surtees, Liverpool's oldest resident, died suddenly at her home, George-street, Liverpool, on Thursday last, at the age of 87 years and was buried on Saturday.  

She remembered Liverpool when the present asylum was used as a military barracks, and the stocks and triangles were employed to punish rebellious convicts.  Among her recollections were the scenes when hundreds of Chinese were to be seen marching through the town on their way to the diggings; another was the time when George's River was navigable as far as Liverpool.  She had seen steamers conveying supplies to the town and unloading at wat at present is the dam.  

Her husband, Mr William Surtees, built the Liverpool paper mill.  He was a Yorkshireman, and after completing that work he went with his wife and one daughter to England, residing there until his death.  Mrs Surtees then returned to her native town of Liverpool.  

Her eldest brother, the late Mr George Graham, was a well-known solicitor of his day in Sydney, and took a team of aboriginal cricketers to England so many year ago that the occurrence is well nigh forgotten.  His son, George Graham, lately retired from the position of secretary to the Government Printing Office.  Mrs Surtees's mother was a sister of Lieutenant Wilson, who first sighted the promontory on the southern coast which was named after him [Wilsons Promontory?].  A cousin, Mr George Smith, of Undercliffe, Manly, was the first Mayor of that borough.  In the Liverpool cemetery the oldest family tombstone bears date 1809.  When Mrs Surtees was 81 years of age she sustained an attack of double pneumonia, and although she recovered from it, her health was permanently impaired.

Eden Cottage, Albion House and Albion Terrace remain – a reminder of an unusual man.  The Mease brothers, the Blacket brothers and George Wilson all came from backgrounds that gave them advantages that William Surtees never had; his achievements were hard-won and cut short by his untimely death.

Hutton Rudby 1859-1908: the Cleveland Sailcloth Mill

This follows the post Hutton Rudby 1834-1849: the Flax-Spinning Mill by the bridge

George Wilson was born in Newcastle in 1810, the son of James Wilson and Mary Straker.  He was one of a large family – I have found the names of three daughters (Jane, Matilda and Mary) and six sons (William, James, John, Henry, George and Edward) and there were possibly more.   There is an account of his family, including a portrait of his father James here, 

George Wilson comes to Hutton Rudby

George arrived in Hutton Rudby as a very young man in the 1830s.  His father worked for Messrs Clarke, Plummer & Co, linen manufacturers & spinners, for 37 years at their Northumberland Flax Mill at Ouseburn.  George himself came to Hutton Rudby as a clerk to the company.  His job was to put out work to the local handloom weavers, have the cloth bleached and send it north to the firm's warehouses in Newcastle.

As R P Hastings explains in Hutton Rudby: An Industrial Village c1700-1900 (1979) handloom weavers worked in shops or sheds attached to their cottages or rented nearby.  Generally, they were supplied with yarn by the manufacturer, to whom they returned the finished cloth.  Some linen went to the nearby markets, or to the ports at Stockton or Whitby, and some was sent by pack mule up to the Bigg Market in Newcastle.  It is said that there was stabling for 50 pack mules at the top of Enterpen.  

Bleaching needed plenty of water and stone troughs and, as the 18th century went on, more and more equipment and machinery.  Several local bleach grounds are known – there was one in Potto by 1700 and one in Hutton Rudby by 1727.  A bleach yard was marked near Sexhow Hall in the Sexhow Tithe Map.  A big bleaching enterprise existed at Crathorne, described by the Rev John Graves in 1808 as 

an extensive bleach-ground ... with a bleach-house, situated on the eastern brink of the Leven, (over a stone bridge of one arch,) at a little distance from, and nearly opposite to the village; which consists of two beetling mills, and a variety of other machinery, where linens are made up similar to the Irish.

In 1838 the cornmill at Rudby was also bleaching and dyeing yarn and thread.

Life in the village in the early 1830s can be seen very vividly in the story of the disappearance and supposed murder of the weaver William Huntley.  It can be found here in my book Remarkable, but still True: the story of the Revd R J Barlow and Hutton Rudby in the time of the cholera at Chapter 6: 1830: Suspicions of Murder and, as I say in that chapter, 

In the newspaper reports of the trial we can hear the actual voices of the villagers themselves, and their testimonies reveal a vivid picture of life at the time – lived under the scrutiny of close neighbours, often outside the houses, in the street. 

The past is brought alive: rising at dawn; shared loomshops in the yards; men drinking late at night in the kitchen of a public house; a labourer breaking stones at the roadside in return for parish relief; the local habit of poaching in the Crathorne game preserves; the little shops run by the women of the village in their own homes; the long distances people were accustomed to walk; the clothes they wore; how the village governed and policed itself; the emigration ships sailing from Whitby.

 In 1837 George Wilson went into partnership with a Mr Robinson and they took over the business in Hutton Rudby:

Newcastle Journal, 28 October 1837 

ROBINSON & WILSON,

(SUCCESSORS TO MESSRS CLARKE, PLUMMER & CO. AS) 

LINEN MANUFACTURERS,

AT HUTTON RUDBY, YORKSHIRE, AND NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE; 

BEG respectfully to acquaint their Friends that they have REMOVED their Stock from the Warehouse at the Northumberland Flax Mill, Ouse Burn, to a newly erected and commodious one at

No. 79, PILGRIM-STREET,

Where they intend to keep an extensive Assortment of every kind of LINEN GOODS OF CLEVELAND MANUFACTURE, for the accommodation of their Customers in this District, and where all Orders will be received and attended to from this Date.

Newcastle, Oct. 11th, 1837

George still had a warehouse in Pilgrim Street in 1864 – it is mentioned in the Shields Daily Gazette of 11 May 1864, when it was reported that his bookkeeper and manager had absconded after 26 years with the firm, taking with him at least £600 from the till.

On 9 June 1836, George Wilson married Ann Hutton in Newcastle; their son James Alder Wilson was born in 1837, followed by Allan Bowes Wilson in 1839.

Hard times for the handloom weavers

During the 1830s, the condition of handloom weavers was rapidly deteriorating.  Unemployment, falling wages and severe distress were feeding into growing political unrest and radicalism.  Resentment was increased by passing of the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 which put an end to relief to the poor being paid through the parish and obliged them to enter the workhouse.  So a Royal Commission was set up in 1837 to enquire into the industry.

Sixteen Hutton Rudby operative weavers gave evidence, saying that, when the cost of winding, loom and shop (ie workshop) rent, sizing, grease, candles, brushes, shuttles etc had been deducted, an average weekly wage of 11s 6½d was reduced to 9s 6d.  This was higher than the average wage in many neighbouring linen villages and at least Hutton still had 157 looms at work making “linen cloth, ticks, drills, checks, and diapers” [R P Hastings:  Hutton Rudby, An Industrial Village]

All the same, conditions were bad and it is not surprising that in the spring of 1839 one of the leading Chartists, Peter Bussey, decided to visit the North Riding and urge the people to support  Chartism.  This was a radical, grass-roots, nationwide, working class movement calling above all for Parliamentary reform in the conviction that only when ordinary men had the vote would their voice be heard.

The Chartist newspaper the Northern Star & Leeds General Advertiser of 30 March 1839 gave an account of Mr Bussey's arrival in Stokesley:

The inhabitants of this place, met Mr Bussey on entering the town with a procession and banner; the banner being a white ground – motto – "England expects every man to do his duty."  He was conducted to the Black Bull Inn, in the Market-place, from one of the front windows of which he addressed the people with considerable effect; after which resolutions were passed, adopting the petition and pledging themselves to support the Convention.

(White's Directory 1840 lists 17 inns and taverns in Stokesley; the Black Bull was run by John Smith.)

 

Peter Bussey went on to an open air meeting at Swainby:

Mr Bussey addressed a meeting of the inhabitants of Swainby, a considerable village, six miles from Stokesley, in the open air, at four o'clock in the afternoon, when the inhabitants poured in from the surrounding places, namely, Osmotherley, Carlton, Faceby, Hulton, Rudby [Hutton Rudby], Potter [Potto, spelled phonetically], and Trugleby [probably Ingleby]; the whole amounting to many hundreds; a beautiful green and white flag floated in the air; the whole presenting an appearance of beauty calculated to inspire the ardent lover of liberty with a fresh impulse to go forward in defence of the rights of the masses.  

Mr Douglas, an operative shoemaker, occupied the chair, who, after a few preliminary remarks, read the National Petition to the assembly, and then introduced Mr Bussey, who was received with loud and continued cheers.  He addressed them at great length in a powerful and effective speech, which seemed to be well understood and appreciated by the intelligent but simple peasantry, of whom his audience consisted.  He was vociferously cheered throughout.  The Charter and Petition were unanimously adopted, and a vote of confidence and determination to uphold the Convention was enthusiastically carried. 

Some months later, the Chartist James Maw came to Hutton Rudby.  Maw makes a fleeting appearance in my book as he had a walk-on part as a witness in the story of William Huntley (see Chapter 6)

He held a Chartist meeting on the Green.  According to R P Hastings' Chartism in the North Riding of Yorkshire and South Durham, 1838-1848, (2004), the Revd Robert Barlow and Henry Bainbridge tried to bribe some women to disrupt the gathering.  They failed, but achieved the dismissal of Richard Joysey, a Methodist class leader who had given Maw hospitality.

The story of Henry Bainbridge and how he lost his wife and two children in the cholera epidemic of 1832 and his power and influence in village matters can be found in Chapter 11 and Chapter 12 of my book.

The situation was still bad when in 1842 Mr Harrison Terry, who was Hutton's Poor Law Guardian, was killed in a fall from his horse.  A public meeting was held and it was resolved to ask the Poor Law Commission for permission to nominate a replacement for Mr Terry for the rest of the year, and not to wait for the next elections 

since under the present depression of trade and the number of applications it is impossible to do without one ... The Paupers of Hutton require more attention than any other township

[R P Hastings' Hutton Rudby: An Industrial Village, p11]

The village was in decline.  In the ten years between the censuses of 1841 and 1851, the population of the township of Hutton was reduced from 911 to 771.  The census enumerators ascribed the fall to "the stoppage of a flax mill and the decline of handloom weaving ... which have caused the hands to migrate in search of employment".

George Wilson had come to the village when the population was at its 19th century peak of 1,027 in 1831.

George's next venture would bring back employment to Hutton Rudby.

George Wilson & the 'Cleveland Sailcloth'

Perhaps it was the opening of the North Yorkshire & Cleveland Railway Company's line from Picton Junction to Stokesley in 1857 that gave George Wilson the impetus for his bold new enterprise.  Hutton Rudby was now connected to the outside world – and the Durham coalfields – by Potto Station and the railway system.

On 18 February 1860 a rather excitable and inaccurate report appeared in the Newcastle Guardian & Tyne Mercury

HUTTON RUDBY SPINNING MILL 

This neat establishment, once the property of Messrs Blackett and Mease, and which stood so long idle, seems, in the hands of Mr George Wilson, likely to enjoy a good share of prosperity.  Gas has been attached to the premises, and eight sail cloth steam power-looms have been put into operation, besides a number of hand-looms that are dependent upon the establishment for employment.  The mill has been regularly at work during the past year, and there is every prospect of its future being still more successful.  It has been a great blessing to many poor families in Hutton and has found employment for a large number of hands in the locality.

The mill had never belonged to Blacket & Mease, and there was no gas.  However, the rest was true – George Wilson had taken a tenancy of the disused flax-spinning mill and was weaving sailcloth.  He was setting up in competition with the likes of Messrs Yeoman and Messrs J Wilford & Sons of Northallerton.  In the 1861 census he identified himself for the first time as a "sailcloth manufacturer".

Sailcloth from Cleveland Sailcloth Works.  Courtesy of Allan and Joy Barthram

His speciality was his "Cleveland Sailcloth" and he sent samples of it to the Great International Exhibition of 1862, the world fair held from 1 May to 1 November in South Kensington, on the site now occupied by the Natural History Museum

Newcastle Journal, 11 April 1862 

Hutton Rudby will be represented at the Great International Exhibition by the Cleveland sail cloth, manufactured by Mr George Wilson, and now so very extensively used and appreciated for its strength and durability.  On the 26th ult., two cases were sent off, containing eight sample rolls of splendid canvass, which will be placed on view, in a neat mahogany case with plate-glass front, made expressly for their reception in class 19 of textile fabrics.  Numerous visitors, who saw the canvass before it was sent off, were unanimous in their praise of beauty and quality.

Even his Scottish rivals, reporting on the flax and jute manufactures, praised George Wilson's canvas:

Dundee Courier, 3 July 1862 

Yorkshire comes out particularly strong in Canvas, as well as in many other kinds of Linens and Linen Yarns, and we shall notice them first.

(The report lists Messrs Wm Booth & Co, Leeds; Messrs Carter Brothers, Barnsley; Mr C J Fox, Doncaster; Mr J Gill, Headingley; Messrs W B Holdsworth & Co, Leeds; Messrs Marshall & Co, Leeds; Messrs J Wilford & Sons, Northallerton)

Messrs J Wilford & Sons ... have a beautiful display of Linen Drills, adapted for Trouserings, Vestings, &c., Bleached, Dyed, and Printed.  The patterns are very pretty, the cloth of most superior quality of material, and well woven, and the goods finished in fine style.  The goods are worthy of high commendation, as they are both very sightly, and of real merit 

Mr G Wilson, Cleveland:  Exhibit "The Cleveland Sail Cloth."  It is from extra long flax, tied up with the yarn of which it is made to shew the quality, which is most superior.  The cloth is firm, well drawn up, really good, and deserving of high praise.

Cleveland Sailcloth stamp.  Courtesy of Marie Wray

Messrs Yeoman & Co, Northallerton:  Show a neat case of Yarns, Ducks, Drills, Huckabacks, &c.  The Yarn is level and well spun, and from fine material.  The Ducks are well made, superior cloth.  The Huckabacks are good, useful cloth, and the Drills are of various finish – brown, bleached, dyed, and printed.  They would make beautiful trouserings and vestings, and are of very nice shades of colour, and admirably finished.

The Yorkshire Drills are especially deserving of notice, being very handsome, strong goods, and most suiitable for the purposes intended.  They show very favourably with similar character of Irish goods.

(The other English exhibitors of Linens are: Mr T Ainsworth, Whitehaven; Mr A Cleugh, Bromley; Messrs Costerton & Napier, Scole, Norfolk; Messrs Faulding, Stratton & Brough, London; Mr Harford, Newcastle-upon-Tyne; Mr W F Moore, Douglas IoM Mr John Morison, Norton Tolgate, London; Messrs Stephens, Hounsells & Co, Bridport; Messrs Wilson Brothers, Whitehaven, Messrs Wilks, Brothers & Seaton, London)

Hutton Rudby church and mill
The chimneys of Leven House can be seen at the right

It was a business which required skilled hands and advertisements for the Hutton Rudby Mill can be found in newspapers through Yorkshire and Cheshire and into Scotland, for example

Leeds Mercury, 22 December 1873
WANTED, WOMEN WINDERS for heavy flax yarns; piece work, good wages and constant employment.  Apply personally or by letter to George Wilson, Sailcloth Works, Hutton Rudby 

Dundee Advertiser, 28 January 1881
TENTER (Competent) Wanted for Sailcloth Looms.  None but Steady Men Accustomed to Sailcloth need apply.  Address Cleveland Sailcloth Works, Hutton Rudby, near Yarm, Yorkshire

A tenter was the mechanic responsible for running and maintaining the power-looms, as can be seen from this letter from a Power-Loom Tenter to the Glasgow Mechanics' Magazine 1832.

There are still stories in the village of men waiting at Potto station to see girls arriving from Scotland in response to the advertisements, hoping to spot a future bride, and several men did find wives among the Scottish girls.

Hutton Bleach Works

There was a Bleach Works associated with the Sailcloth Works, It lay on the Hutton side of the River Leven but the access road was from Rudby.  This O.S. map dated 1888-1913 shows its position clearly – it is marked as The Holmes, the bleachyard having closed by then.

Reproduced with permission of the National Library of Scotland from their website https://maps.nls.uk/index.html

I don't know if this had always been the site of the Hutton bleach grounds, but it seems very likely.  I was once told that there were the remains of machinery at the bottom of North End, where the linen manufacturer George Bewick once lived, that had been used for winching bales of cloth down to the bleach ground below.  It isn't clear whether the Bleach Works was exclusively used or operated by the Sailcloth Works nor whether it was owned by the Wilsons.  Very little is known of the Works, but there are several photographs showing the buildings with yarn hanging out on the long lines in the field in front.  According to Bulmer's Directory, twelve hands were employed at the Works in 1890.

The Bleach Works, Hutton Rudby

Men at work at the Bleach Works, Hutton Rudby

The Wilsons & the village

Meanwhile, George and his wife Ann Hutton raised a family at Hutton House, on the Green.  In 1856 their youngest child was born.  They now had four sons and a daughter: James, Allan, Thomas, John and Annie.

George was – naturally, given his position – involved in village life from the beginning.  He was a churchwarden in 1838 and it's clear he took very wisely charge of the Revd R J Barlow's accounts – for the church and the Bathurst Charity – Mr Barlow was rather slapdash about money and paperwork.  Secondary in importance to the Falkland and Ropner families of Skutterskelfe Hall, the Wilson men were significant as employers and charitable donors and their involvement can always be seen in the celebrations of royal occasions.  When the Prince of Wales married Alexandra of Denmark on 10 March 1863, the mill was very much part of the village celebrations (for a full account see here) 

A correspondent says that on the wedding day the British and Danish flags were seen waving in the air from the summits of the Cleveland Sailcloth Manufactory, and in various prominent places of the village.  The Hutton brass band sent forth its animating and melodious strains, and Mr George Wilson provided a liberal banquet for all his workmen and their wives, in which the band joined them, and all enjoyed themselves most heartily.  

Of course there were plenty of grumbles about them – and there was plenty of time for this as the Wilsons lived in the village until after the Second World War.  It has still not been forgotten that the houses at the east end of South Side and the houses of Barkers Row have little or nothing by way of garden because the land was absorbed into the own gardens and orchards of Hutton House.  For many years the cottages of Barkers Row only had windows opening onto the Green, as Mr Bowes Wilson objected to the occupants looking into his gardens.  When Mr Robson of Robsons, Painters & Decorators had an advertisement painted onto a nearby gable end on South Side – one that happened to face directly towards Hutton House – Mr Bowes Wilson objected and it was painted over.  The black paint has been washing off the brickwork for many years now.  The well which was once reached by the footpath called the Wellstand seems to have disappeared when the gardens of Hutton House were enlarged.

Three of George and Ann Wilson's children made their homes in the village.  George took Allan and Thomas into the business with him while Annie stayed at home, unmarried.  (I was told that a descendant once said that "she wasn't allowed" to marry.)  James and John both went to Oxford, James to Wadham College and John to Worcester.  James was a clergyman, becoming Rector of Crathorne in 1878; John George was a solicitor in Durham and an eminent figure in the civic life of the county.

In the summer of 1876 their father died

York Herald, 10 July 1876
Wilson. - On the 8th inst., at Hutton Rudby, Mr George Wilson, aged 66 years

and less than a fortnight later, John Mease died at Leven House.  It must have seemed like the end of an era.

Allan Bowes Wilson was then 37 years old and his brother Thomas Bowes Wilson was 31 and newly married:

York Herald, 15 June 1876
Wilson - Hutton.  On the 13th inst., at St Andrew's church, Newcastle, by the Rev Marsden Gibson, M.A., Master of the Hospital of Mary Magdalene, Thomas Bowes, third son of George Wilson, of Hutton Rudby, Yorkshire, to Maria, only daughter of John Hutton, of Claremont-place, Newcastle-on-Tyne

The brothers continued to run the mill.  The following year, because of a Chancery case in the estate of John Mease, his property in Hutton Rudby was offered for auction and the Mill was included:

A Building called the “CLEVELAND SAIL CLOTH FACTORY,”
WORKED BY STEAM POWER,
In the occupation of the Executors of the late GEORGE WILSON. 

A WATER CORN-MILL,
With Iron Water-wheel, Three Pairs of Millstones, Hoist, Corn-screen, Flour Dressing Machine,
Large Granary, Cart-house, Stable, Outbuildings, Dwelling-house, and Office and Yard,
In the occupation of WILLIAM KETTON and the Executors of the late GEORGE WILSON.

I don't know what happened at the sale and whether the Wilson brothers decided to buy the freehold of their premises; I believe the Mease trustees still owned land in Hutton Rudby in 1928.

A notice in the York Herald of 28 October 1878 shows that their mother Anne died on 25 October, a couple of years after her husband.  Allan and Annie continued to live at Hutton House for the rest of their lives.  

Allan Bowes Wilson in Hutton House

There is a photograph of Allan at ease with a book with the light pouring in through the window.  He and his brother John were keen collectors of the paintings of Ralph Hedley 

Meanwhile, Thomas built Enterpen Hall for his family (see Stately Homes of Hutton Rudby)

But by 1890, the sailcloth business was beginning to slacken and neighbouring sailcloth factories closed:

Newcastle Chronicle, 17 May 1890 

Dead Industries at Stockton. - Harker's sail cloth factory, near the railway station at Stockton, which was established many years ago, and where a lucrative business was carried on for a long time, was recently closed, and the buildings are now being pulled down.  On the site of the factory, and on the bleaching field behind, a large number of superior artisan dwellings are to be erected.  Building operations have been commenced, and already a number of houses are in course of erection.

The Wilson mill continued – and was fêted in the Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough in 1895 for having "the prettiest warehouse in England".

R P Hastings recounts (Industrial Village, p17) from local knowledge, that the mill remained viable by supplying markets in the Baltic, including the Russian Navy, and that one of its most valuable assets was a British Admiralty contract for its well-known blue-line sail cloth.  Working hours were from 6 in the morning to 6 in the evening in the summer months and from 6 in the morning until the light failed in the winter.  It was an intensely hot and noisy place and often at the end of a shift the workers would emerge covered with white lint.  

In 1900 the Wilsons installed electric lighting powered by a generator.  It was to commemorate the Relief of Mafeking – Thomas's son John Hutton Wilson was a professional soldier who served in the Boer War, where his life was saved by a sergeant later awarded the Victoria Cross.

John Hutton Wilson returns from the Boer War

This rather dark photograph shows mill workers pulling his open carriage through the village upon his return from South Africa.  (He died in the First World War, as did his solicitor brother George.  They are commemorated by brass plaques in the church)

The lighting was a "gift" to their workers because it gave them extra earning hours through the winter, but of course it was a very useful gift to the Wilsons themselves.

Hutton Rudby Sailcloth Mill seen from upstream of the bridge
Courtesy of Joyce Walker

The closure of the Mill

However, by 1908 the mill was no longer viable and it had to close.  Hastings records that a handful of families migrated to find work in Dundee and the mill machinery was sold to a firm in Leven in Fife.  The mill buildings once again were used only for meetings, until finally they were demolished in 1937 when the road was widened so that the dangerous approach to the bridge was made safer.  

Thomas's wife Maria had died on 16 April 1904 at Newcastle aged 55 (according to the National Probate Calendar); after the mill closed he left Hutton Rudby to join his daughter in Scotland.  The old mill was used as the venue of the auction of the furniture, glass, pictures and ornaments that had once graced Enterpen Hall:

Whitby Gazette, 9 July 1909

HUTTON RUDBY

One Mile from Potto Station, N.E.R.

Highly Important Unreserved Sale of Valuable Chippendale, Oak and Cabinet Furniture; Carpets, Oil-paintings, Engravings, Water-colours, Antique China and Glass, Books, etc.
MESSRS HODGSON & FARROW, honoured with instructions from T BOWES-WILSON, Esquire (who has left the district), will SELL BY AUCTION, in the old SAIL-CLOTH FACTORY, on THURSDAY & FRIDAY, July 22nd and 23rd, 1909, the FURNISHINGS & APPOINTMENTS of dining, drawing, and morning rooms, library, bedrooms, entrance hall, kitchens, and outside effects, removed from Enterpen Hall.
On View on Wednesday, July 21st, by Catalogue only, price threepence each.
Auctioneers' Offices:
Market Place, Stokesley.
Established 57 Years

Thomas died on 29 June 1929 at St Andrews.  Allan died three years later.  His death notice appeared in the newspapers after his quiet burial:

Leeds Mercury, 8 July 1932
Wilson - July 4, at Hutton House, Hutton Rudby, passed peacefully away, aged 93, Allan Bowes Wilson.  His wish was for a quiet village funeral – no mourning or flowers.  He was buried in Rudby-in-Cleveland Churchyard July 6, 1932

Allan had been a generous benefactor of the church and his last gift was the lychgate.  It was dedicated by the Rev A L Leeper in May 1933.

Lychgate at All Saints', Hutton Rudby soon after it was built by Jim Barthram. 
Courtesy of Allan & Joy Barthram

The mill buildings were demolished in 1937 so the narrow road up Hutton Bank with its dangerously tight corner could be widened and straightened.

Cottages on Hutton Bank

The photograph above shows the blind corner on Hutton Bank before the Mill and the cottages were demolished.  Leven House is to the right of the picture.

Demolition of the Mill
from the Stockton & Teesside Weekly Herald, 22 Jan 1937

The last part of the Mill to be demolished was the chimney.  The schoolchildren were taken down the bank to watch it fall.  Go to the Hutton Rudby & District Local History Society's Facebook page to see Maurice Atkinson's sketch capturing the moment when it fell.  The base had been weakened by removing courses of brickwork and a rope attached partway up the chimney. The rope was tied to a steel stake, anchored in the hillside, and four men swung on the rope until the chimney started to rock, eventually falling to much cheering from the children.

Many thanks to Malcolm McPhie and the Hutton Rudby & District Local History Society's Facebook page for the photographs

Next post: Hutton Rudby 1876 to 1877: the Albion Sailcloth Mill