A small tin box – a Teesside "garden city" – a house in Nunthorpe

Question:  what is the link between the small tin box of sweets and cigarettes given to soldiers and sailors in World War I – the Redcar suburb of Dormanstown – and the 'Red House' on Church Lane in Nunthorpe-in-Cleveland?

Answer:  they were all designed by the architects Stanley Davenport Adshead and Stanley Churchill Ramsey.

The tin: the Princess Mary Gift Fund Box

Princess Mary in 1932

In the autumn of 1914, the 17 year old Princess Mary – only daughter of King George V and Queen Mary – decided that she wanted to give every soldier at the front and every sailor at sea a Christmas gift bought from her own allowance.  It was a generous plan, but it was found to be unworkable and so it was decided instead that she should be the face of a fundraising campaign.  She wasn't simply a figurehead of the campaign – she was deeply interested in the project and followed it closely.  Her letter to the public says it all

I want you now to help me to send a Christmas present from the whole of the nation to every sailor afloat and every soldier at the front.  I am sure that we should all be happier to feel that we had helped to send our little token of love and sympathy on Christmas morning, something that would be useful and of permanent value, and the making of which may be the means of providing employment in trades adversely affected by the war.  Could there be anything more likely to hearten them in their struggle than a present received straight from home on Christmas Day?

Please will you help me?

The troops' present came in the form of a small, brass, water-tight box.  For most of the men, the box contained tobacco, cigarettes and chocolate but everyone was catered for – non-smokers, nurses, Gurkhas, Sikhs, other troops from India, authorised camp followers ...

Many men sent the boxes home as a present for their wives and families; many re-used and long treasured the empty tins.  This was the box kept by the Middlesbrough solicitor, Major Thomas Duncan Henlock ("Duncan") Stubbs, a Territorial officer with the Northumbrian (Heavy) Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery.

It's a small metal tin embossed with a picture of the Princess.  In the surrounding border can be seen the words 'Belgium', 'Imperium Britannicum', 'Japan', 'Russia', 'Montenegro', 'Christmas 1914', 'Servia' and 'France'.  

There had been no difficulty in raising the money.  In fact, so much was raised – mostly from the thousands of small donations sent in by ordinary people – that there was enough to include everyone wearing the King's uniform in Christmas 1914, prisoners of war and the next of kin of 1914 casualties.  There were more difficulties, in the conditions of war time, in sourcing the contents and enough brass to make the boxes.  Gift boxes were still being sent out in 1918.  The tins were designed were designed by the architects Stanley Davenport Adshead (1868–1946) and his partner Stanley Churchill Ramsey (1882-1968).

Stanley Adshead was the first professor of town planning in this country, appointed by Liverpool University in 1909, the year of the first Town Planning Act.  He took Stanley Ramsey into his practice as a junior partner in 1910, when the King had invited him to carry out a survey for the Duchy of Cornwall estate in Kennington.

Stanley Adshead in 1927

The Garden City of Dormanstown

In 1917 Messrs Dorman, Long & Co built their new Iron and Steel Works at Redcar.  

Dorman, Long & Co were steel manufacturers, bridge builders & constructional engineers.  An internationally significant company from the heyday of the Industrial Revolution, founded by Sir Alfred and his partner Albert de Lande Long in 1875, by the 1920s it would have over a dozen iron and steelworks across Teesside, together with mines and quarries, London offices in Westminster and Cannon Street, a wharf at Battersea, offices in Manchester, Nottingham and Calcutta and associated companies in South Africa and South America.  They built bridges across the Tyne, the Nile and the Limpopo.  They made the steel for bridges in India and Burma and for the Lambeth Bridge across the Thames.  

In 1917 the USA entered the war and an end to the fighting came in sight.  It was a time of great change – there was a huge shortage of workers' housing, the iron and steel industry was in flux, there were shortages of materials and labour, and people were beginning to look to the return of the troops.  Conscription had revealed the scale of the poor state of public health.  Electoral reform was on its way.  After the war, things would and should be different.  

Dorman Long wanted to give their workers a standard of life that wouldn't simply meet minimum requirements, but would 

encourage, develop and secure that spirit of loyal service and co-operation which is recognised by enlightened employers of labour as a vital factor in the success of industrial enterprise.

The company decided to build housing for its Redcar workers – a new "Garden City" or "Industrial Village" called, at first, Dormantown and then Dormanstown.

The chosen architects were Messrs Adshead and Ramsey together with Patrick Abercrombie.

Influenced by social reformers and commentators such as Florence Bell (1851-1930) whose At the Works had been published in 1907, and in collaboration with local and central government – particularly the Ministry of Health – and after consultation with the workmen, the architects' brief was to create healthy conditions for the workforce, in stark contrast to the insanitary, overcrowded conditions of much workers' housing on Teesside, where infectious disease was rife.  

The streets of Dormanstown would be wide – there would be trees and grass, shops and facilities, play areas and open spaces – and the houses would have front and back gardens, electricity, hot and cold water and an indoor WC and bath.

They were designed in the newly fashionable Neo-Georgian style, which blended the modern desire for simplicity and regularity with the traditional look of 18th and early 19th century housing.  White-rendered houses – mostly semis, but with some short terraces – with plain frontages, sash windows and six-panelled doors were built.  They echoed the Georgian architecture of local towns and villages such as Great Ayton, Guisborough, Yarm.  

Dorlonco houses under construction, Dormanstown 1920

The first 300 houses were built of brick, but then the authorities approved an experimental prefabricated construction using precast concrete and steel.  

This was Dorman, Long's own 'Dorlonco' system.  It was described in a newspaper article of 24 July 1919 

A steel frame is first set up on similar lines to the American skyscrapers, and on this is wired strong, rough netting, as a foundation for the concrete walls

The houses could be built by the company's own workforce with easily obtainable materials, and quickly.  A 2-tonne steel frame, pre-cut and prepared in the factory, could be put up by 4 unskilled men in a day.  And as houses were urgently needed across the country, Dorlonco houses were built by many local authorities until the mid 1920s.  

Unfortunately, things didn't work out entirely as planned.  Infectious diseases like scarlet fever, TB and diphtheria persisted – the people of Dormanstown were too much exposed to the noxious fumes from the steel mills and the raw damp from the sea – and the Dorlonco system had a flaw.  When the render shrank, it exposed the steel laths and rods, which had no protective bitumen coating, to corrosion.  At Dormanstown, built on low lying, marshy land near the North Sea, salt-laden air and driving rain led to rusting.

But in the early days this wasn't known and everything looked promising.  

In the spring of 1919, Major Duncan Stubbs returned from the war.  He chose not to go back into private practice as a solicitor, but instead to put his talents as an administrator and lawyer to work in industry for an old family friend, Sir Arthur Dorman.  On 13 May 1919, he became Company Secretary of Dorman, Long.  

Major Duncan Stubbs & a Dorlonco house under construction

The Red House, Church Lane, Nunthorpe

After the War, the Stubbs family returned to live at Red Croft on Guisborough Road, Nunthorpe, and they were living there when Dorman Long got the contract to build the Sydney Harbour Bridge.  

Sir Arthur Dorman

In fact, Sir Arthur Dorman was at Red Croft for tea with the family one day when the telephone rang.  Duncan's teenage daughter Katharine took the call.  The caller needed an answer from Sir Arthur – she took the message and Sir Arthur instructed her to make the reply, "Yes".  When she came back into the room, he told her that she had held the fate of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in her hands.  

Sir Arthur lived near Nunthorpe and he was the village's benefactor.  He had rebuilt the village school – the new church of St Mary the Virgin would soon be built on the lane that led to Nunthorpe Grange and Morton Carr farms on land given by him – and the houses that had grown up around Nunthorpe railway station were also his work.  His great house, Grey Towers, stood a little way from the station, in parkland near the old village.  A keen horticulturalist, he had built terraced rock gardens and in his woods had planted an example of every type of tree that it was possible to grow in England.

Duncan Stubbs planned to build a house for himself on Church Lane.

In 1922, he bought the land for his new house and he chose Messrs Adshead and Ramsey to be his architects.  Their Neo-Georgian style was fashionable for the new country houses being built for upper and professional middle classes.

The house would stand in a commanding position in the rolling North Riding countryside, with a view across fields to Roseberry Topping and the Cleveland Hills.  

His 18 year old daughter Katharine laid the first brick in the foundations of the north-west corner of their new house in March 1923.  Every detail of the house's design was attended to; Mr Ramsey even designed the light switches.  

The Red House, built of locally hand-made brick with a red-tiled roof, was designed to look mellow and serene from the beginning.  The drive curved down from Church Lane towards the front door between avenues of limes, and, so that the new house would not stand in a raw, barren landscape, these trees were planted before building even began.  

The Red House, 1924
with Alfred Leonard Hill's HE (Herbert Engineering) sports car

The rooms faced south to the sun and the view of the Cleveland Hills.  The grounds would include formal gardens, lawns, orchard, paddocks, tennis courts, a kitchen garden and a wild garden.   

The Red House

The house and garage, with a yard between them, formed one long block enclosed by a continuous external wall.  The entrance from the drive was given dignity and importance by a portico and distinctive circular windows to either side of the front door, but it was the frontage to the hills – so clearly seen across the fields from the Stokesley road – that was designed to be the more imposing.  

The house consisted of: dining room, inner hall (used as a sitting room), drawing room, study, 3 large bedrooms (the master bedroom had a dressing room and there was a dressing room for guests) and 2 smaller bedrooms.  On the second floor were the maids' bedrooms, reached by back stairs.  

The service end of the house, through the green baize door near the dining room, contained the kitchen, larder, butler's pantry, scullery and washhouse.  Beyond the kitchen was a yard with the coal store – deliveries were made through the double doors which can be seen on the photograph of the front of the house – and beyond it was the garage.

The impression on crossing the threshold was of light and air.  The front inner door was of glass and the view was directly through the inner hall towards the garden and hills.  The halls, dining room, drawing room and study all had oak floors and an impressive oak staircase led to the first floor.    

From the inner hall, a couple of steps dropped down to a terrace overlooking the hills and a further flight led down to the tennis courts.  There were kennels and garages, outhouses and two tennis courts.  The house had central heating, powered by a Robin Hood Royal boiler.  The design assumed an unending supply of cheap fuel and easily available domestic staff.

Stanley Ramsey (right)
at Katharine Stubbs' wedding 

On 3 June 1924, the family moved in.  

Guests soon followed and the Visitor's Book shows that the first to arrive, in mid July, were the architect Stanley Ramsey and his wife.  Two years later, Stanley Ramsey was at Katharine Stubbs' wedding to Alfred Leonard Hill on 13 July 1926.

The Red House was an ideal house for entertaining.  

One of the earliest parties was described years later by Katharine

We gave a garden party for Dorman Long office workers to celebrate the Sydney Harbour Bridge.  Tennis (two courts) on the lawn and a room cleared for dancing indoors.  Buffet in the garden.  A lovely hot day

In 1931, Duncan Stubbs was digging a hole for the back gatepost when he had a heart attack; he died at the Red House a few days later, on 18 March.  He was buried in the graveyard of the new church, his coffin carried on a farm wagon from the house – the same wagon and the same horse that had taken the coffin of Sir Arthur Dorman a few weeks before.  As they stood in the churchyard, the family could hear Duncan's dogs howling at the house – somehow they knew their master was gone.

Note:  the original garage became a separate house some decades ago, and the house itself has been much altered over the years by successive owners

Sources

For Dormanstown, see Modernity, Tradition and the Design of the 'Industrial Village' of Dormanstown 1917–1923 by Cheryl Buckley 

Journal of Design History, Vol. 23, No. 1, Model, Method and Mediation in the History of Housing Design (2010), pp. 21-41 (21 pages)

The photograph of Stanley Adshead is by Bassano, the society photographer, and is in the National Portrait Gallery (NPG x124052)

The Poltergeist at Moor Farm, North Yorkshire: 1940 to 1950

This is a record kept by Kay Hill of unnerving experiences in a moorland farm during and after World War II.

In 1938 Kay had become – in the slang of the time – a Bolter.  

She had left her very comfortable life at Carlton Manor, the country house set, the trips to London to have her hair done, the holidays abroad with her husband, the ironmaster and amateur racing driver Leonard Hill – and she had left her young daughter too – and she had run off to live with a local race horse trainer.

Kay Hill:  Filey 1939

At first they lived in Filey, where he kept his horses at Foords Hotel Stables and exercised them on the sands, but when war broke out and the beaches were closed, they moved away from the coast to live and work at a moorland farm.  

Racing continued through the war, though much reduced, because the government decided it was a boost to the country's morale.

I don't know that the current owners would want me to name the farm, so I haven't.  (Do contact me if you think you know which one it was).  And I didn't feel it right to identify Kay's partner and his sons.  I've called him Alfred and his sons Brian and Peter.  I knew Peter well; a lovely man.  The boys lived with their grandparents after they lost their mother when they were very small, aged only 2 and 4.  Kay was Katharine Stubbs, only daughter of Major Duncan Stubbs and his wife Madge Buchannan.

Kay refers to Alfred as "the farmer" in this account and she doesn't explain him at all.  This seems to be because she always intended to share the story, which she finally sent to the Incorporated Society for Psychical Research in 1977.  She kept her married name throughout her long life – she died aged 100 – she wrote under that name, and she was well known as Kay Hill in the world of Siamese cat breeding.

Her account begins in early 1940 when she was 34 years old and Alfred was 36:  

The Poltergeist at Moor Farm: 1940-1950

by Kay Hill

Moor Farm, painted by Kay Hill

According to accounts of poltergeists, including that of John Wesley's family, there is often a sound of flying & clucking & almost always someone in the house sees an animal such as a hare or a cat.  Children see it so often they have given it pet names; & this has happened in one generation after another for centuries past

References: "Poltergeists over England"  and "Poltergeists" by Sacheverell Sitwell 

War Years

Note

There was no electricity supply on the farms up the Moor Road until after the War.  
The blackout was in force and we had paraffin lamps and candles

When I first came to the farm in the late spring of 1940, I had my own furniture with me, and was given the choice of two rooms, as my bedroom.  I moved my furniture into the lighter of the rooms, and the other became the spare room.

Within a week of moving in, I had to make the enormous effort of changing over the furniture in both rooms.  It was a busy time of year on the farm, and I only had the Land Girl to help me.  My reasons for moving seemed ridiculous, and the whole thing was most unpopular.  I made an excuse that the room over the kitchen, which I still occupy, was the drier of the two; and after a day of violent effort I made my escape from the thing that had frightened me.

I had been woken up by the sound of something flying round the room, and could hear the beat of its wings.  I had the horrifying thought that it might be a bat, so I shone my electric torch, and the flying stopped.

As soon as I put the torch out, the flying started again.

I got out of bed, shut the window, and put up the blackout.  I lit the lamp and searched the top of the wardrobe, and all round the room, and under the furniture.  I opened the wardrobe door and shook the clothes.

When I went back to bed and turned the lamp out, the flying started again.  I was not at all afraid, but extremely annoyed at being kept awake.  I sat up in bed with my torch on the sheet, and when the thing was in mid flight switched it on.  The flying stopped instantly. 

The flying made a sound like the beating of wings of considerable power.  As when a woodpigeon passes low overhead at dusk, you can hear the air passing through the feathers of the wings.

This went on for some considerable time, until I lit the lamp, and went to sleep with the light on.

The next night it all started again, and continued in the same way for five successive nights.  By this time I was short of sleep, and rather frightened.  I talked about it to other people, but it sounded ridiculous and was put down to starlings, or rats, with which opinion I was inclined to agree; although I knew that I had not satisfied myself with such an easy explanation.

The last night in the room there was no flying.  I was kept awake by a carthorse on the road outside, which went up and down with a steady clop clop clop of hooves on the macadam.  I went to the window with the idea of going out and putting the horse back in the field.  I could hear no horse on the road, and our own horse was in the field near the water trough, a few yards from the house.  When I went back to bed the horse started walking again.  It was then that I realised that the sound was in the room – but like a ventriloquist throwing it about, so that it was impossible to tell from where it came.  

By this time the room frightened me, and I made up my mind to move, however much trouble it caused.  

From this time the noisy room became the spare room.  An endless succession of visitors slept in it.  My friend Mrs Macfarlane came for weeks on end, during the school term, & Brian the farmer's son came in the school holidays.  

No one ever made a complaint, and the whole thing was forgotten.  I never associated the sounds with poltergeists, because I thought of them as some sort of German forest thing, like an Irish leprechaun.  It was not until I read Sacheverell Sitwell's book on Poltergeists that I realised that the flying and the clucking were very ordinary manifestations.

When Peter, the farmer's younger son, first spent his school holidays at the farm, the whole thing was forgotten.  He was about thirteen years old, and was living with his grandparents during the time he was at Coatham School.

I found that he was burning candles in the night to such an extent, that I guessed that he was frightened.  As he had been badly bombed I put it down to this, and thought it better not to say anything to him.  At that time he was very much the ardent Boy Scout, and would rather have died than admit to any sort of fear.

I tactfully provided him with a box of nightlights and a saucer of water.  About this time he started taking the dog to his room at nights, and would search the farm rather than go to bed without him.  He was burning a night light through every night, and I began to be rather worried.

One morning he called to me, "Come and look at this."  I went into his room.  Down at the bottom of the bed by his feet were broken pieces of lamp glass and his leg was cut and bleeding.  There was a stable light standing upright on his chest of drawers minus its glass, but with the wire guard still intact around it.  It was the glass from this lamp down his bed – yet his hands were not marked.

Kay's sketch of the stable lamp

I decided to ask him to tell me his opinion of the matter.  He poured out a story of terrified nights when he dare not move in bed, because he knew there was something in the room.  Of sounds he could not account for – "I took Laddie to bed because when there was a queer noise, I would say "That was only Laddie.""

After this he was moved out of the room, and he shared a bedroom with his elder brother and there was no more trouble.

One thing that interested me – he never heard either flying or clucking.

Peter at this age was a violently active intelligent but unimaginative boy.  He never read a book, except on a technical subject, such as aircraft, motor cars, or horses.  He was extremely truthful, and would face punishment rather than tell a lie.  Since then he has become a very promising amateur jockey in point to points, and "over the sticks" and is physically afraid of nothing.  The only way in which I consider him unusual, is his intuition about people, which is sometimes so accurate as to be almost psychic.

By the summer of 1947 we had all decided that the poltergeist, if it was one, had gone for good.  Alfred (the farmer) was occupying the room, and had at various times slept with his door wide open "To let it fly out"; but he never would discuss the matter, and said that in any case he was not frightened.

At the time of the heat wave, he was away in Ireland.  I was changing the bed linen in all the rooms, and found that whereas my room over the kitchen was intolerably hot – the other room was cool.  That night I decided to sleep there.  I fell asleep not at all afraid, as it was midsummer and not dark.  I was awakened by a thunderous rap on the chest of drawers about a yard from my head, where the stable lamp had stood in Peter's day.  I did not wait for any more trouble, but went downstairs and spent the night on a sofa in the sitting room.  

In the past winter months we have had endless trouble, and a variety of manifestations which became more alarming.

Alfred reluctantly admitted that something flies; that it clucks "like a broody hen"; that it plucked at his sleeve – and gave him a sharp rap on the ankle in bed.  That it opens and shuts a door in the bedroom that isn't there, and lets in a draught.  As he sleeps with his door wide open I have at various times heard him say out loud, "Stop it" to something that is annoying him.  (He is so concerned with the horses in the yard he seldom sleeps with the door shut and seems to hear the slightest sound of anything wrong in the stableyard)

I always come out of the "ghost" room backwards, whether in daylight or at night.  I would never turn my back on that presence.  Peter and I are sometimes quite happy about going to bed, and sometimes dare not go upstairs even together.  One night I was asleep, when I felt a cat jump on my bed, and thinking it was my own, took no notice.  As I became more awake I remembered that my cat had run away months ago.  I lit a lamp, there was no cat in the room – the door was shut, and the window only open a fraction.  I called to Peter, and he came into the room.  As I was talking to him a loud wailing "Meow" came from under the bed, making us both jump.  We searched the room (which is tiny) but there was nothing there.

That was the first time we had a fright outside the usual room.  Then we both heard sounds on the landing from time to time, thumps, and a clicking noise like a parrot cracking sunflower seeds in its beak.

Sitting in the kitchen on winter evenings I frequently felt that I had just missed seeing a cat come from the bottom of the stairs and flash out of sight.

One night sitting with Peter, I saw him jerk his head round, and asked him what was the matter.  He said, "I just missed it, you know what I mean."

On one occasion when I said that I wished my cat were back to sleep on my bed and keep me company, he said, "They are no good – they are hand in glove with the other side; in league with it."

This remark coming from a boy of Peter's type is more impressive to one who knows him than to an outsider.

On the night of the Hurworth Hunt Ball early this year [1948], we were all dressed and ready to go.  Peter was in the kitchen, with the door at the bottom of the stairs closed.  I was in my bedroom with the door open, just ready to put the light out and go downstairs.  Alfred was in his room with the door open, and the light on.

There was a sliding sound on the banisters, and something that seemed like a heavy coat or a rug slid off and swished down the stairs, hitting the door at the bottom, bursting it open, and landing with a soft thump on the floor.

Peter called up to me, "What are you trying to throw at me?"  Alfred and I went out onto the landing to see what had fallen.  There was nothing to be seen either on the landing or at the bottom of the stairs.  Peter said the door flew open, and he heard something land on the floor with a thump.  The door has an old fashioned latch, and will not stay shut at all unless this is in place.  It is impossible to burst open.  (The door is tilted, like most of the house, and swings open into the kitchen unless the latch is firmly home)

One night I heard slow heavy footsteps coming up the stairs, as if someone were carrying a heavy tray.  I realised that Peter and Alfred had gone to bed when I did, and that both were in light slippers, and not in outdoor boots.  I dare not go out, or call out.  The footsteps went into the room with the open door called the attic.

In the morning both Peter and Alfred said that they had never been out of bed, and in any case their boots were downstairs.

Winter 1948.    A few weeks ago Peter and I were sitting in the kitchen listening to the racing results on the wireless at 6.25 (part of the job in a racing stable).  I had scribbled them down on a piece of paper, and he was checking them off from the runners in the daily paper.  We were both talking and laughing.

Suddenly he looked at me and turned crimson.  Then he said, "Stand up".  I stood up, and he stared behind me at the cushion at the end of the sofa.  He went white, and said, "A cat clawed itself on to the sofa and went across your knees to the cushion behind you.  It was a nearly white cat with tabby markings on its back and tail.  I didn't see its head because it was moving away from me.  I have just realised that we have no cat like that, and never have had."

At this time we were both shut in for a winter evening by the fire, and there was no cat in the room.  Neither of us was thinking of anything but racing, and I could tell by the colour of Peter's face that he was deeply distressed.  I felt nothing, and saw nothing.

Finally, a week or so ago, I was reading in bed.  Alfred was in his room and came into mine, saying "The damned thing is there."  My lamp was on a very heavy Victorian chest of drawers.  He had no sooner spoken than there was a terrific knock in the chest of drawers.  I said, "That sounded like a sledge hammer", and he said, "If you or I had picked up a hammer and hit that thing as hard as we could, we could not have made a noise like that."

The power of this noise was indescribable.  Enough to crack a chest of drawers in two.  Like a burst of thunder.  The flame of the light on the dressing table never flickered.

I have tried to trace the record of this house.  No one in the village has ever heard of it being haunted.  There is a farm record book, which people have seen, dating the house back to the 16th century.

Summing up

When I first heard the flying and the clucking I was one night alone in the house, and Peter was not there on any night.  The influence, whatever it is, comes and goes for no apparent reason, sometimes for weeks or months at a time.  The Land Girl never heard it.  Peter and I seem together to make it worse and together know when it has returned.  Someimes we have been afraid to go upstairs even together.

Alfred is not afraid but hates to talk about it.  If he can be persuaded to talk he admits its existence.

Peter tells me that when he slept in the room at the time the lamp glass was broken – he lay night after night rigid with fear and soaked in sweat, and convinced of a presence in the room.  He kept the light on, as he found that light put a stop to the thing.

1949

After the incidents in 1948 nothing happened, and it appeared that the trouble was over, and my account of it finished.

November 1949 – I heard someone feeling their way along the landing wall until they came to my door, when the groping (over the wood of the the door) changed its sound.  I thought someone was trying to go to bed without a light.  Went out, and no one was there.

A week after, the same sound halted at my door, and the feeble effort of someone trying to turn the brass door knob.  Like a child whose hands are slipping and very weak.  I was too frightened this time to go out.  I saw the handle turn half way several times.  Next morning took a look at door handle which is below door centre and possible for a child to reach.

Peter coming back from Bedale Hunt Ball 1949 saw lights moving in upper bedrooms.  I was alone in the house and in bed.  Had been terrified, and was awake when I heard the car come in.  I remembered then that on walking up from the bus in the dark I had seen lights on the ground floor pass through the 3 front rooms as if someone were carrying a faint lamp.  Was surprised to find front and back doors locked and the house empty.  I did not think much about this at the time, as hauntings were, I thought, over.

K I E Hill

December 28 / [19]49

There is no doubt that this winter the feeling is back again, but much fainter than before.  I am frightened to sleep alone in the house again, and scared of the room - although it is nothing like as bad as before.  The gropings at my door have shaken me, and I would not like this to happen if I were alone.  The thing was always malicious and rather evil.

Postscript

1950.  Had Brian staying.  Peter and I in kitchen doing racing entries.  Heard whispering voices arguing urgently and violently in next room.  They went on and on and we couldn't concentrate or catch what they were saying.  I shouted, "Will you two shut up" and dashed into the telephone room to slam the door.  No one there and Brian had gone with his father to the pub.

.........................................................

When Kay writes of the poltergeist in John Wesley's family, she is referring to the Epworth Rectory Poltergeist – cf Jeffrey the Jacobite Poltergeist: the politics of the ghost that haunted the Epworth Rectory in 1716-17  by Kelly Diehl Yates from the Wesleyan Theological Journal (2015).

It's fascinating and very readable.

The sounds of flying and clucking:  witnesses in the Epworth Rectory heard clucking and animal sounds among the thumps, raps, knocks etc, and one witness saw a rabbit-like creature.  They grew used to their visitation and 7 year old Kezzy used to have a game of chasing the noise around the house. 

The books which Kay quotes as references are:

  

Poltergeists over England by Harry Price (1945).   Harry Price was famous for exposing fraudulent mediums and is best remembered for his investigation into the Borley Rectory haunting

Poltergeists: An Introduction and Examination followed by Chosen Instances by Sacheverell Sitwell (1940). With decorations by Irene Hawkins and silhouettes by Cruikshank.  Written to entertain, it was reviewed in the Aberdeen Press and Journal of 19 July 1940, which hailed Sitwell's "benevolent intention of distracting his readers' minds from present preoccupations" and said "as an 'escape' volume we have not seen its equal this war"

Frightful Accident at Sleights Station: 1 August 1901

On 2 August 1901, the Whitby Gazette carried a shocking headline:

Frightful Accident at Sleights Station

A Whitby Lady Cut To Pieces

This is the story – two elderly ladies – and a busy railway station in the age of steam.

Sleights station by Maniac Pony at English Wikipedia, CC BY 2.5

On the evening of Thursday 1 August 1901, two old ladies, the Misses Emma and Harriet Williamson, had walked down to the station after spending a couple of hours calling on friends in Sleights.  Emma was the elder, at 84 years of age; Harriet was 81.  They wanted to catch the 7:36 home to Whitby.  It would come from the Grosmont direction and there was indeed a train coming that way – they thought it was theirs, and that they were just in time.  But first they must cross the line to the down platform.  

There was a level crossing where the road to Whitby crossed the railway track and the station buildings and its platforms lay between the old ladies and the oncoming train – they thought they would have time to get across as the train drew to a halt at the station, so they went through the little gate at the level crossing.  

The signalman shouted, "Keep back!" 

George Wilkinson, a 53 year old builder and joiner from Sleights, who had gone to the down platform for some parcels and had been held up at the gates as he set off back home, saw the old ladies – he knew them quite well – and he shouted.  

James Moor, aged 51, gamekeeper for Mr Robert Yeoman at Grove Hall, Woodlands at Aislaby was waiting at the station too.  He saw the ladies crossing – he thought if it was stopping at the station they might just catch the train – he shouted to them as hard as he could, telling them to get along.

The ladies didn't seem to hear.  

It wasn't their train.  It was an excursion train from York, which had taken people on a day's outing to Whitby, and it was on its way back to Whitby to pick up the tired and happy holidaymakers for their journey home.  The crew had spent the last four hours at Grosmont – plenty of time for a cup of tea – because there wasn't enough room for the empty train to wait in the sidings at Whitby.  It wasn't due to stop at Sleights at all.

The excursion train – six carriages and two vans – had rounded the sharp curve about 170 yards before Sleights station.  It had come into view of the station.  Now it was whistling continuously.  

John William Pearson, aged 43, was the driver.  He had already shut off steam and slowed up on the approach to Sleights because the distance signal had been against him, but it had been lowered as they passed through and he had picked up steam again.  He had obeyed the directive to all drivers to whistle as they came within 200 yards of Sleights station. 

Now he saw a lady about to cross the line.  She hadn't yet reached the metals – the rails.  Seeing she was in danger, he shut off steam, he applied the brakes, he was pulling on the whistle all the time.

And then he saw that there was a second lady about to cross behind the first.  He had a good view – he was coming in tender first, which he felt gave him a far better view than if the engine had been first, under the circumstances – and he thought he was doing about 25-30 mph at the time.  

The guard Harold Clough Emmerson, aged 42, said at the inquest that he thought they were going rather slower, at 20-25 mph.  He couldn't see the ladies himself because the train blocked his view – all he could see was "an old gentleman on a trap waving for them to stop".

As the engine arrived at the level crossing, John Pearson lost sight of both ladies.  

George Wilkinson, waiting at the gates, saw the younger of the two make a little rush forward and just manage to clear the rails – he thought for a moment that the elder lady was going to get across – but the train struck her and whirled her round so that she went under it.  He didn't think she ever saw the train or heard it.  All the train went over her, and the lady was literally cut to pieces.  

John Pearson feared both ladies had been killed when "he felt something like a thud" on impact.  He brought the train to a standstill just after passing the crossing, "the last vehicle," he said at the inquest, "being near the bridge."  He had done everything he could.  The train had stopped in about 80 yards, little more than its own length.  

He got down at once, leaving the fireman on the engine, and then he saw Miss Emma Williamson.  The engine and all the carriages must have passed over her.  "She was terribly cut, and mangled most fearfully – the scene was dreadful."  He didn't know how the first lady had escaped.  

Miss Harriet thought that her sister was crossed the tracks just behind her.  She didn't see what happened and she must have stood there wondering at the scene, with the men gathering about the train in alarm.

John Pearson spoke for a while with Watson Bulmer, the 38 year old station master.  And then he got back in the cabin to attend to his duty – he had to take the train to Whitby for the return journey to York.

And it was only when the train had left the station that Miss Harriet saw that her sister had been killed.  She was in a most dreadful state of shock – someone must have taken her home to No 8 Park Terrace in Whitby.

Watson Bulmer organised the removal of poor Miss Emma's remains to the station buildings to await the coroner's instructions.  In the early hours of the morning they were taken "in a shell" to her home in Park Terrace.

Everyone who had seen the accident must have been very much shocked and shaken.  The driver and guard went home to York – John Pearson to 11 Drake Street, off Nunnery Lane, to his wife Rose, and Harold Emmerson to his wife Zillah and their four children – the youngest was only a baby – at 13 St Ann Street in Walmgate.  George Wilkinson went up to Sleights to his wife Jane and the family – six children, with Stanley the youngest at 10 years old.  James Moor would go home to Aislaby, to his wife Hannah and their children.  The men would all be wanted the following week to give evidence at the Coroner's Inquest.

The next afternoon, the coroner George Buchannan, a Whitby solicitor, opened the inquest at the County Hotel just to hear Miss Harriet bravely give her very brief evidence.  The coroner was a familiar figure to her – he was her cousin Ann Langborne's son.  She told him that she did not blame the driver of the train or any one else in the least – the blame, she said, was their own.

The accident shocked and horrified the area.  The Misses Williamson had many friends and relations and they were well known for their charitable work.  So when, on the afternoon of Saturday 3 August, Miss Emma was buried in Sleights Churchyard, it was amid great sympathy and sorrow.  

St John the Evangelist, Sleights by Nigelcoates at English Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0

It must have been a very well-attended and solemn funeral.  Three clergymen took the service and signed the burial register – the Revd Hugh P D Walker, vicar of Sleights, the Revd George Austen, the Rector of Whitby, and his curate the Revd Michael A Horsfall.  The church bells rang a muffled peal.

On Wednesday 9 August, George Buchannan resumed the inquest.  

John Pearson – he always gave his name in official documents such as census forms as John W. Pearson, but the Whitby Gazette's reporter caught his name as William Pearson – explained the actions he had taken.  

"So far as you were concerned," asked the Coroner, "you did everything in your power?" – "Yes, everything, Sir."

Harold Emmerson and James Moor testified.  George Wilkinson explained to the coroner and jury that the last accident at that level crossing had happened 30 or 40 years ago.  He thought the danger at Sleights crossing was chiefly because so many trains were timed to meet there together, and because of obstructed sight lines.  The railway line in the Grosmont direction was on a curve and the view towards Whitby was blocked by a house, which belonged to the railway company and occupied by a platelayer.  People at the station had a very limited view in either direction.  He thought it would be quite practicable to make a bridge.

The District Superintendent of the Traffic Department, Mr John Bradford Harper, said a footbridge would make crossing safer, if only the public would use one.  They found that it was hard to stop people from crossing the rails and where, as at Sleights, there had to be a "sleeper crossing" for luggage, then the public would use the luggage crossing rather than a bridge.  As there was a rule prohibiting putting up a fence within 4 feet of a running line, it was virtually impossible to stop them doing this.

The Jury returned a verdict of accidental death by a passing train.  And they requested the Coroner to communicate to the North-Eastern Railway Company their opinion that a footbridge should be provided and that the cottage which obstructed the view towards Whitby be removed.

Miss Harriet decided on a fitting and beautiful memorial to her sister, and to her mother and brother.  She engaged the celebrated designer Charles Eamer Kempe (1837-1907) to create a stained glass window for the church of St John the Evangelist at Sleights.  On 13 March 1903, the Whitby Gazette reported this generous gift had been installed.  The window showed John the Baptist indicating Christ as the Lamb of God and the inscription was  

In the reverence of God, and in loving memory of Elizabeth, William and Emma Williamson, this window is dedicated, AD MDCCCCIII

Miss Harriet Williamson died three months later aged 83 on 13 June.  She was buried at Sleights with her mother, brother and sister on 17 June 1903.

Heart Echoes in late Victorian Stockton-on-Tees

A few keepsakes from late Victorian Stockton-on-Tees.  They belonged to Miss Eleanor Bateson of 37 Skinner Street.  

Skinner Street, Stockton-on-Tees
(running vertically down centre of picture)
O.S. 1913 National Library of Scotland

 Eleanor was born on 21 November 1866 to John and Mary Bateson, the fourth child of a family of six.  

Her father was a cordwainer when she was born – not a cobbler who repaired shoes, but a man who made shoes from new leather – but when she was a little girl he became firstly a foreman in a local ironworks and then a school warden for Stockton, responsible for enforcing school attendance by calling on parents and visiting schools.  It was quite an onerous position.

These keepsakes and chance survivals of a long life date from Eleanor's twenties and early thirties.

To begin with the Christmas season – 

Eleanor kept two particularly attractive Christmas cards.  One of them shows a spray of ivy and the message "A Happy Christmas".  Folded, it measures 3 inches by 2 inches, and it opens out to reveal a quotation from Shakespeare's Sonnet 30 and a verse by Thackeray.  

 

We might not think the verses very Christmassy but they send wishes for "Good Health and Good Fortune" to an absent friend.

The second card is rather larger, measuring when folded 5 inches by 3 inches.  "With Louie's love to Nellie" is written on the reverse.  The picture shows strawberries and strawberry leaves together with a little scene of a house by the sea.  "Good Wishes" is the message on the front.

Inside is a verse by Helen Marion Burnside (1841-1923), an artist and  writer of lyrics and verses.  The verse inside this card begins 

Happy Christmas to you.

Best of earthly blessings

Fall on you to-day

A collection of small, brightly-coloured paper scraps shows that Eleanor kept a scrapbook.  

These are all that remain of the sheets of embossed relief images and die-cuts that she bought to fill her pages – but we don't have her scrapbook, so we can't see how she arranged them and what sort of artistic effects she achieved.

The next memento shows that Eleanor was a singer.  

The Programme for the Long Newton Cricket Club Annual Concert is simply dated Tuesday May 20th.  The year isn't given, but 20 May fell on a Tuesday in 1890 and in 1902.  I rather think the concert might have taken place in 1890.  Quite a few of the pieces date from the 1880s and listening to fairly new songs would have been part of the attraction.  

We don't know if Eleanor was in an ensemble that sang for the Long Newton Cricket Club's fundraiser or if she was involved in the Club itself.  And was the Mr Bateson on the programme her father or her brother?  We don't know.  Perhaps it was both of them, one of them giving a rendition of the music hall comic monologue 'The Penny Bus'  and the other singing the romantic ballad 'In Old Madrid'  (which you can listen to in a 1920 recording here).

Eleanor appears four times in the programme.  She opened the concert in a quartet singing 'O Who will o'er the Downs so free?'   and followed it up with 'Love's Old Sweet Song', which we might remember better as 'Just a Song at Twilight'.  She opened the second half with 'Needles and Pins', which I suspect must have been a comic song, and then she sang in a duet.  And both halves of the programme ended with a glee sung by all the company. 

Besides music, Eleanor also loved poetry.  In the late 1880s she bought a dark red, hardback exercise book measuring 7 inches by 9 inches – it was her Poetry Book.

The first poem she transcribed into her book was "Newly Wedded" by Lizzie Berry.  This probably came from a recently published book called Heart Echoes: Original Miscellaneous & Devotional Poems, which came out in 1886 and is available in a reprint today.  Lizzie Berry came, her publishers explained in their foreword, of a humble background and had suffered "great trials and difficulties".  Her verses were often printed in the newspapers and she came to have a devoted following.  

But Eleanor also liked older verse and classics such as Shelley, Cowper, Thomas Moore and Longfellow.  And she read novels – she had been reading A Romance of Two Worlds by Marie Corelli.  Newly published in 1886, it was Marie Corelli's first book and an immediate popular success – and the beginning of a highly colourful career.  Eleanor was clearly taken by it and she transcribed verses from the novel into her poetry book.  

She didn't confine herself to poetry.  When she saw something that amused her, she copied it out.  Some of us will remember Avoirdupois Weight – which usually went like this

16 oz (ounces) = 1 lb (pound)

14 lb = 1 stone

28 lb = 1 qtr (quarter)

4 qtrs = 1 cwt (hundredweight)

In 1895, when Eleanor was 29 years old, she was taken with a gently humorous, sentimental version:

Avoirdupois Weight

(New Code) 1895

16 Looks make 1 Smile

16 Smiles make 1 Nod

28 Nods make 1 Moonlight meeting

4 Moonlight meetings make 1 Kiss

20 Kisses make 1 Wedding

One of the quotations on the same page reads, "A true man is generous and unselfish and has a conscience."

The notebook is far from full – Eleanor only filled a dozen or so pages.  The last poem of all was part of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 'A Psalm of Life' (1838), which begins

Tell me not, in mournful numbers 

Life is but an empty dream!

Eleanor transcribed verses 6 and 9:

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!

Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act,— act in the living Present!

Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Let us, then, be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labor and to wait.

In 1901 Eleanor was living at 37 Skinner Street with her parents, her brother Malcolm and a young lodger, who was a grocer.  She was working as a clerk in a tea warehouse.  

The Square, Stockton-on-Tees
O.S. 1913 National Library of Scotland

I expect the tea warehouse stood at 29 The Square (where the library stands today) and belonged to William Thomas Trattles.  In the late summer of 1906, as she approached her 40th birthday, Eleanor married him.

A year after the marriage, Eleanor gave birth to her only child, Mary, born on 31 October 1907.  It was Mary who kept her mother's poetry book and the other little keepsakes, a small collection surviving by chance from a family's accumulated mementos.

Mary was only 14 when her father died, so she must only have had a child's remembrance of him.  He must have been a man of determination, energy and business acumen; he was certainly someone who knew personal tragedy.

William Thomas Trattles was 11 years older than Eleanor, a widower with 5 children – the youngest was 11 and the oldest was 21.

He was born in 1855 in Staithes, the son of a master mariner.  For many years – for all of Mary's lifetime – a picture of the sailing ship Zephyr had pride of place above the fireplace.  The Zephyr was built in 1845, master John Trattles, owner Thomas Trattles, her destined voyage was Hamburg and she was rigged as a snow.  (And you can examine her survey on the Lloyd's Register Foundation Archive here).  When John Trattles retired from the sea, he was for some time a grocer in Staithes.  Perhaps this was perhaps the impetus for his sons Matthew and William to go into the tea trade.  

In 1880 they were in business together as Trattles Brothers, tea and coffee merchants of 29 The Square.  But the partnership only lasted 3 years and they split up in 1883.  They must have agreed that William could keep on the warehouse at 29 The Square because he carried on there as a tea wholesaler.

William built up the business, advertising heavily to tea dealers in the Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough – one of his selling points was that he was the "Sole packer of the celebrated Sultan Packet Tea".  He prospered, diversifying into Fancy Goods, Glass and China.  His December advertisement for 1891 proclaimed 

Christmas and New Year Presents – the largest and best assortment in the district at W T Trattles, 29 The Square, Stockton.  Dinner Sets, Chamber Sets, Toilet Sets, Tea Sets of endless variety to choose from, and all at wholesale prices

He tried branch shops for a while – the shop in Middlesbrough was on the "main thoroughfare" but it didn't work out and he put it up for sale in 1892 ("would suit a lady").  The shop in Darlington lasted longer.  He advertised it for sale in 1903 

To be disposed of, an old-established Present, Tea and Fancy Goods Business, in Darlington; satisfactory reasons for disposal; managed by a female.  

Meanwhile, he and his wife Agnes Jemima Wilson and their growing family progressed from 24 Balaclava Street, in the network of terraced streets near the railway station, to 13 Palmerston Street – where they had a live-in servant – to Park House on Richmond Road, next to Ropner Park.  It was a villa with "12 large, spacious rooms, with all conveniences, large garden and grass lawn; adjoining Park; very best position".

And it was there, on 29 May 1895, only three weeks after giving birth to her sixth child, that Agnes died at the age of 40.  William was left a widower with five children – their first baby, Agnes, had died within weeks of her birth.  Ida was the eldest at 13, and after Ida came Hugh Harold, William Horace (always called Horace), Agnes and the new baby Thomas. 

William picked up his life and carried on.  He had his business, he was a town councillor, and he employed a housekeeper.  The children were growing up and Hugh Harold started work as a Chartered Accountant's clerk.  Then disaster struck.

On 8 April 1902 a fire at the shop and warehouse in the The Square gutted the building and destroyed a great deal of the stock.  A few months later, on 26 July, his beloved daughter Ida died at Park House.  I'm not sure if his heart was in the business after this, or perhaps he no longer had the drive to rebuild the business.  At any rate, by the time of the next census in 1911 he was no longer an employer, but was working as a Commercial Traveller for China goods. 

When the First World War broke out, little Mary was nearly 7 years old.  Her eldest brother Hugh Harold was 29, living in Beckenham and working as a bank clerk.  He joined the 24th Battalion Royal Fusiliers as a private.  Horace had been living at home in 1911 and working as a drapers' assistant.  When war broke out he joined the 14th Battalion London Regiment as a Private.  Thomas was a merchant seaman.  He joined the Yorkshire Regiment in December 1915 when he was 20.  Their sister Agnes was 23 years old.  I think it was probably during the War that she trained as a nurse, the career she followed for the rest of her life.

William Horace Trattles
(1890-1917)

Mary adored her brother Horace, he was her favourite brother.  In June 1915 he was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant in the 13th Battalion Hampshire Regiment.  In the spring of 1916 he was attached to the 9th Battalion Worcestershire Regiment and sent out to Mesopotomia.  He was killed in action on 25 January 1917 at the age of 26.  He is buried in the Amara War Cemetery in south-east Iraq.

Mary had prayed for him fervently every night; she never believed in God again.

By the time of Horace's death, Hugh had been wounded twice and was back in the trenches, and Thomas had been in hospital for 6 months.  

He had been sent out to France towards the end of April 1916 but was wounded within weeks.  The damage – I think he was left with epilepsy – that was caused by the gunshot wounds to his head on 12 July 1916 incapacitated him from work for life.

Hugh Harold Trattles died in 1920 at the Phillips Memorial Hospital in Bromley, Kent, aged 35.  His father William Thomas died the following year at the age of 66.

So only Mary, her mother and her brother Thomas were left in Stockton.  They lived at Rosebank, a house with 5 bedrooms and 3 reception rooms on Cranbourne Terrace, where the family had moved in 1915.  

Rosebank stood on a large plot and its garden stretched back to the railway line – which meant it was naturally called into use when the centenary of the Stockton to Darlington Railway was celebrated on of 2 July 1925. 

Cranbourne Terrace, Stockton-on-Tees
O.S. 1913 National Library of Scotland

A grandstand was built at the bottom of the garden for dignitaries and notables to watch the grand Railway Centenary Procession of locomotives going by.  

Locomotives of all types and ages, passengers and crew in period dress, the Darlington Band playing from one of the rear wagons, a tableaux train carrying a pageant illustrating the evolution of the wheel in transport, luxury trains – the Flying Scotsman carrying excited children – and in pride of place a replica of Locomotion No 1, led by a horseman flourishing a red flag to warn of its approach.  It was an enormous success and you can see newsreel footage of it on youtube today here, here and here.

Mary Trattles

Eleanor, Mary and Thomas lived at Rosebank for about 20 years.  Mary, it is said, was engaged to be married but she had her mother and brother to care for, and the engagement was ended.  

By the time the Second World War broke out they had moved to Stirling House, 98 Darlington Road, Hartburn.  Eleanor died there in 1952.  

Mary lived on there until her death in 1998, long outliving her brother Thomas and sister Agnes.  She was the last of the family.

Her most vivid memory to the end was her beloved brother Horace carrying her piggy-back as he raced round the garden, her mother calling anxiously all the while, "Be careful!  Be careful!  You'll drop her!"

Letters of Mrs Lucy Browne of Gorleston: 1835 & 1836

Two letters in the collection that I describe in The Revd William Atkinson of Kirkleatham & Cambridge (1755-1830) are filled with news from Gorleston in Suffolk.  

They were written from Gorleston on 8 May 1835 and 22 July 1836 by Mrs Lucy Browne to Mrs Elizabeth Williamson – she features in the blogpost about her uncle the Revd William Atkinson.

Mrs Lucy Browne is almost certainly the widow of William Atkinson's friend the Revd Thomas Browne, late rector of Gorleston.  Mrs Elizabeth Williamson is her friend and former neighbour, now living in Baxtergate in Whitby.

Mrs Browne's handwriting is not of the clearest, but I expect somebody who knows the area would recognise the names which my colleague has found illegible.  There are many names – her friends the Miss Brownes, Mrs Oliver, Mrs Sewell, Mr Worshop, Mr Salmon, to name a few – as Mrs Browne is anxious to keep her friend up-to-date with all the goings-on in Gorleston.  She includes such little snippets of news as:

My poor friend Mr Morrison's Death is much lamented, he was a kind friendly Man

Mrs Price is at present in the same Lodgings with Miss Tapp whose Mother is dead.  I hear the Match is quite off between Mrs P and Mr Wake. 

But I think the most tantalising bit of gossip must be about the Spalding-Astley marriage.  Mrs Browne herself was an Astley by birth, so she must have a very good source here:

You could not be more surprised than I was in the Marriage [of] Miss Astley.  Till after the sons Marriage then I thought it might take place, they have almost ever since been residing in a place that he purchased at Stockton about 17 miles from hence.  Mr Spalding is in bad health confined to a weakness [?] in his heart, and is attended by Mr Smith who recommends abstinence.  

She is never seen and I hear nothing more of her than if she was not residing in the Parish, she is certainly in a more respectable situation since her marriage, but I fear she will have reason to repent.  There is not any communication between her and her Brother, this affair has given him very much concern.  

Daniel Spalding and Mary Ann Elizabeth Astley had been married on 16 October 1834 at Gorleston.  Perhaps Mr Spalding tried abstinence – perhaps he didn't – but at any rate his health worsened and he died in June the following year at the age of 60.  In 1836, Lucy Browne wrote

the late Mr Spalding's House is still upon Sale – his Widow lives at present in part of a Farm House near [Haddiscoe?] but I hear she is going to leave shortly

Contact the North Yorkshire County Record Office at Northallerton, which holds the collection of letters, if you're interested!

Thomas Barlow Allinson writes a letter: 1836

Thomas Barlow Allinson's letter of 1836 was among the small collection mentioned in The Revd William Atkinson of Kirkleatham & Cambridge (1755-1830). These letters survived apparently by chance, but very probably because of the intervention of Mr John Gaskin, MBE, of Whitby.  He was a solicitors' clerk for many years with Buchannans of Whitby and may have come across the letters in their offices and thought them worth preserving – possibly for their unusual postal markings, as he had a keen interest in philately.  The collection is now in the Northallerton Archives.

This is the story of one of those letters, as far as we can make it out.  I say "we" because I'm indebted to my collaborator for contacting me in the first place and for all the research she has done.  I hope this chance survival from 1836 might help the people who are trying to disentangle their Allinson forebears.  The Allinsons you will meet in this blogpost lived in Whitby and near Penrith, in the parish of Dacre in Cumberland.

I'm quoting below from a transcript and I have made some alterations for readability's sake.

It's a story which begins with Dickensian echoes and goes to darker places …

Billiter Square: O.S. 1840s-1860s.  National Library of Scotland

It's 4 April 1836.  The writer of the letter is a 24 year old solicitor's clerk called Thomas Barlow Allinson.  He's an unhappy and worried young man, marked by a series of disappointments and trapped in a job he doesn't like.  When he came to London from Staffordshire in 1830, he had thought that his uncle Josiah Allinson would help him to a clerkship in a trading or banking house.  Six years later, he's still with Messrs Druce in Billiter Square off Fenchurch Street in the City of London, in a job that was supposed to be temporary.  It's the Easter vacation for the law courts, and he's writing a personal letter from his employers' offices in the City.

Thomas is only a few months younger than Charles Dickens, who is now beginning his startling career as a writer – the first instalment of The Pickwick Papers appeared in print only weeks before Thomas started his letter.  But Thomas's story has echoes of Dickens' much later and darker novels and the dark and dirty London of Bleak House is the one that Thomas knew.

Thomas is writing to a relation he has never met, a Miss Nanny Ellerby Allinson of Whitby.  He is offering her information she wants and he has carried out a favour she has asked for – and between these two sections of his long letter, he has sandwiched a tactful and carefully-written account of the financial difficulties and disappointments beneath which he, his mother and his 7 siblings are labouring.  Miss Allinson is now under something of an obligation towards him, and she might be able to help them.