Chapter 3. The Village & its Vestry

Village affairs in England were run by the Parish Vestry, a parish meeting that had developed over the centuries largely unregulated by legislation.  It took its name from the church ante-room in which it was held.

The Vestry officials, elected or appointed, were unpaid – the constable was responsible for law and order, the overseers for the poor relief, the surveyor of the highways for the upkeep of the highways and bridges in the parish, and the churchwardens for the upkeep of the church and a varied range of duties from the baptism of foundlings to the extermination of vermin.  The funds for the churchwardens' duties were provided by the church rate, set by the Vestry.

Each township was responsible for the care of its poor and sick, who were given relief in money or kind from the parish rate, and the Vestry could engage the services of a medical man to attend their poor.  Hutton township had adopted the 1819 Sturges Bourne Act, which enabled it to elect a committee, the Select Vestry, to administer its poor relief.

Very few records from the early 19th century have survived, the most significant being the overseers' accounts for Rudby township between 1779 and 1830, and the churchwardens' accounts from 1787 onward.

Chapter 2. Linen Weaving & the Paper Mill

In 1831 the population of Hutton Rudby was at its 19th century peak of 1,027 and the township was dominated by linen weavers [1].

In the early part of the century there was a significant linen industry in the Cleveland area (though on a minor scale compared to Nidderdale and Knaresborough) and neighbouring villages such as Osmotherley and Brompton were also weaving communities.
   
Linen had long been used for many products from fine fabric to canvas, but it would soon face serious competition from light cottons, which would eventually force linen manufacturers to concentrate on the heavier cloths – in Hutton, this was to be sailcloth. 
   
From the harvesting of the flax to the woven linen cloth lay many stages of production and a great deal of time, and this long interval between the initial investment and the finished product created a natural division between the flax preparation and spinning, and the weaving and finishing.

Chapter 1. Hutton Rudby: a North Riding Township

Revd R J Barlow c1804-78

Very early in January 1831, a young Irish clergyman named Robert Joseph Barlow arrived in the Yorkshire village of Hutton Rudby where he was to be vicar for the next 47 years, until his death in 1878.

He would be remembered above all for his devoted service to his parishioners in October 1832 – the time of the cholera.

Hutton Rudby was the largest township of the parish of Rudby-in-Cleveland.  His new home lay in the North Riding of Yorkshire, some six miles south of its northern boundary, the River Tees.

Had Mr Barlow cared to look up the North Riding in the recently published Clarke's New Yorkshire Gazetteer (1828), he might have found the description rather uninviting. 

The coast is described as "hilly, bleak and cold" and

the interior part of the moorlands is bleak, dreary, and destitute of wood, where the traveller sees nothing but a few small sheep.  

The writer conceded that "the climate admits of some variety", but generally, he declared, "it may be called severe", with the moorlands "enveloped in fogs and chilled with rain". 

Remarkable, but still True: a Note regarding money

I have not attempted to give modern equivalents of the money of the day, but rather to place it in context to give an idea of value.

It was generally estimated at this time that a yearly income of £150 was the bare minimum for middle-class life, and that a family needed £300 to live respectably in a town, where expenses were higher.  A good urban artisan's wage in 1835 was round about a pound a week.  An income of £1,000 put a man at the top end of the middle class.

For those unfamiliar with pre-decimal coinage:-

• 12 pence (12d)  =  1 shilling  (1s. or 1/-)

• 20 shillings  (20s. or 20/-)  =  £1

• One pound and one shilling  (£1-1s or £1/1/0)  =  1 guinea (1 gn.)

The penny was subdivided:-

• One-quarter of a penny  (¼d)  =  1 farthing

• Half a penny  (½d)  =  one halfpenny

(pronounced "haypny" and sometimes written "ha'penny")

A half-crown, or half-a-crown (mentioned in Chapter 6) was a coin worth 2s 6d

Pronunciation:
 
The suffix "-pence" is now usually pronounced as it is spelt.  This practice only began after decimalisation, when for a time "pence" was usually prefixed by "new".  Previously, "-pence" (in compound words) was always shortened to something nearer "pnce".

For example, in "threepence", the ee and e were pronounced short ("thrupnce" or "threhpnce").

Remarkable, but still True: Foreword

This book is dedicated to the memory of Dr Geoffrey Stout and Miss Grace Dixon, to whom I owe many thanks for early encouragement and support.

The original research into the Hutton Rudby cholera outbreak of 1832 was done by Dr Stout.  He and I then collaborated on further work, which we wrote up for the Teesside and North Yorkshire Archives, but never published.  After his death, I presented our findings to the Hutton Rudby History Society in a talk in his memory.  Margaret Brabin of the Society urged me to write up the information – but first I thought I should complete the research.  This took several years longer than I had expected and led to many unexpected discoveries.

I would like to thank the many people who helped me on the way.

I was particularly well-served by the many sources now available on the internet and by the help of several librarians – particularly Nigel Prince and the staff of the Northallerton County Library, Jenny Parker of the Middlesbrough Reference Library, Penny Rudkin of the Southampton Reference Library, and Michele Lefevre of the Leeds Local Studies Library, who in response to my request for copies of items in the Leeds newspapers relating to the cholera in October 1832 found the letter written by Mr Barlow to the Leeds Mercury.  The Borthwick Institute and the Cambridge University Library were also most helpful.  I owe a great deal of information to Jacky Quarmby’s work on the Brigham family and to a most fruitful collaboration with her over this interesting episode.

Many thanks to Kate Milburn and Julia Weeks for their helpful comments over the years, to Beryl Turner, and lastly to my proof-readers Margaret Brabin, Shirley Storey and above all Lynda McPhie.

Finally, my grateful thanks to my husband and children for their support during the research and writing of this book.

Remarkable, but still True: the story of the Revd R J Barlow and Hutton Rudby in the time of the cholera

Over the next weeks, I am going to be posting the full text of my book, Remarkable, but still True.

Published in 2007 by Westgate Publishing of Guisborough in a limited edition, copies can be found in libraries and second-hand.

I think it needs to be available online in full for several reasons.

Firstly, Hutton Rudby was a village through which many people passed, and many of their descendants – as I know from contacts through my previous website, www.jakesbarn.co.uk – are in search of their family history.  There are many local people named in the book, with stories and details that would be very hard to find elsewhere.

Secondly, the story told in the book isn't only relevant to the Hutton Rudby area.  The Revd Barlow's family came from Dublin.  Mr Barlow's brother, James Barlow Hoy, became a Hampshire landowner and MP for Southampton.  His daughter Louisa Barlow Hoy lived in Italy, where she married a Florentine nobleman, the Marquis Guadagno Guadagni – and it's likely that the only surviving descendants of the Barlows are amongst the Guadagni family.

Thirdly, it's a very good story!

As reading online is a different experience from reading a book, I shall break up the longer paragraphs to make it easier.

Literary Wars in Whitby: 1825 to 1833

Whitby harbour: from a papier mache tray

As my post of 19 November explains, in the early 1820s Stokesley seethed with political controversy.

Young men and women horrified their elders by buying radical literature from Mr Armstrong’s shop and the 'Stokesley Paper War' between Armstrong and the Methodist businessman Thomas Mease polarised opinion in the town.

In 1825, the year after Thomas Mease published the last edition of The Extinguisher in triumph over his now absent adversary, a new monthly magazine began to appear in Whitby.

Before long, Whitby would have its own paper war.

But there the debate was not political – Whitby had little by way of radical tradition.  Instead, the factions came from different Nonconformist churches, and the arguments were literary and personal.