Letters home from a travelling salesman: 1817-42

Anyone researching the life of a commercial traveller in the early 19th century may be interested in letters now deposited at North Yorkshire County Record Office.  

Among the papers of John Leslie ("Jack") Mackinlay of Pinchinthorpe Hall near Guisborough and Simonstone Hall near Hawes were letters written by his great-great-grandfather John William Nicholson Storr.

John William Nicholson Storr was born in 1781 and he married Elizabeth ("Betsey") Maine on 30 December 1816 at St Mary Magdalene's, Bermondsey.  The first of the letters was written the following August, when Betsey was staying in Margate, and the last of them dates from January 1842, with John describing a North Sea passage.  These are loving letters home, often written over several days, from a travelling salesman, recounting his news, his journeys, accounts of Betsey's family, and instructions for the home.  

The list below gives the date on which John Storr began his letter, the address to which he sent it, and a little excerpt from the letter:

• 31 Aug 1817:  to Mrs Jno Storr, at Mrs Fosters near the Jolly Sailor, High Street, Margate, Kent from Chester.  Betsey has gone by sea from London to Margate for a holiday:

"My love My dear Betsey.  I have just returned from walking on the Walls of this City, it being here a very fine day, I have only known the want of the Company of my Wife to have participated in my observations of this Curious Ancient City, and to have enjoyed the pleasure of Her expressing the delights I know she would have felt beholding the distant View of the Welch Mountains … My dear this City contains the Antientest [ancientest] looking Houses I ever saw and is all together the strangest place I ever saw … I am sorry to hear that you was so very unwell on your passage … pray Betsey do not bathe if you find yourself inclined at all to be unwell, as it will do you great injury ..."

Carrying coal by donkey

"There are those yet in Cleveland who can remember coals being conveyed into the country across the backs of donkeys."

wrote John F Blakeborough in his newspaper column on 14 May 1904.  Two Hutton Rudby men were, he said,

"perhaps the principal coal carriers in Cleveland."

John Fairfax-Blakeborough (1883-1976), as he was later always known, was at the beginning of his career as a well-known journalist and author.  Like his father Richard, he had a great interest in North Riding history, tales and dialect, and he had a column called 'By-Gone Cleveland' in the Northern Weekly Gazette.  This cheery weekly paper, with its household tips and Children's Corner, was popular with Hutton Rudby families who must have been particularly interested in this story.  

The older villagers will have known all about the two men concerned and they will have recognised a mistake in the names.  Blakeborough gives the names as George Dickenson and John Bowran, but they were actually George Dickinson and John Bowman.

They were "ass-colliers" by occupation and they were married to sisters.  John Bowman had married Margaret Best, daughter of papermaker Martin Best, in 1838.  George Dickinson married her sister Ann in 1840.  The two families lived near each other on Enterpen until the Bowmans moved round the corner onto South Side.

Before the railways came, Blakeborough explained, coals were brought into Cleveland by donkey all the way from Durham, a two days' journey.  After the Stockton & Darlington Railway opened in 1825, the coals were brought from the Durham coalfields to Yarm.

"They had droves of donkeys, and all in a line about twenty or thirty of these would start away for Yarm in charge of one or two men, and headed by a pony as their leader.  At each side of them was a bag resting on a pad, so that when the bags were filled the weight would not rest on the unprotected backs and produce a sore.  Each animal carried 16 stones of coal, and the mules 24 stones."  

(Mules can carry much heavier loads than horses or donkeys, cf The Donkey Sanctuary's explanation.)  

The 16 stones of coal – 2 hundredweights (102kg) – and the 24 stones for the mules were accurately measured out at Yarm at the start of the journey.  People in Hutton Rudby thought that by the time the sacks reached them, the bags were mysteriously lighter and they got short measure.

When they reached journey's end at Hutton Rudby, George Dickinson and John Bowman turned the donkeys out on the village green.  In the morning they would round them up and start back for Yarm.  If they had to stop somewhere else and spend the night away from home, they didn't hesitate overmuch before turning the animals out into someone else's field.  They could be on their way before anyone detected them because they had their leading pony well trained.  They could summon it with a "peculiar blowing noise" and it would make for the gate, all the other animals following behind, and the procession would be on the road in no time.

A couple of newspaper reports show that this didn't always work.  In fact, it was always rather risky.  

On 20 May 1843 John Bowman had been working with Joseph Richardson, an older collier who lived on South Side.  William Hugill, a tenant of Lord Feversham, had found their donkeys grazing on his farm in Bilsdale and had gone to the magistrates.  The charge was that they had "wilfully and maliciously consumed the grass" in William Hugill's fields "by depasturing a number of ponies, mules and asses therein."  They were fined two guineas plus costs.

Towards the end of their careers John Bowman and George Dickinson were caught out twice in a matter of weeks.  In May 1866, P.C Smith found them letting 6 mules and 3 asses stray on the highway for three days.  George was fined 5 shillings with 9 shillings costs, and John 5 shillings and, for some unexplained reason, 18 shillings expenses.  At the beginning of July the animals had been found on the highway again and the two men were again up before the Bench.  Unsurprisingly, the fines were heavier – four times heavier.  George had to pay £1 plus costs of 8 shillings and sixpence and John was fined £1-2s-6d (one pound two shillings and sixpence).

George died three years later, in his late fifties.  John outlived him by eight years, dying aged 72 in 1877.

Durham Donkey Rescue

Court cases reported in
The Cleveland Repertory, 1 June 1843
Richmond and Ripon Chronicle, 2 June 1866
York Herald, 7 July 1866

The Cleveland Repertory and Stokesley Advertiser was a Stokesley newspaper launched by printer William Braithwaite in 1843  

New & Good Things: Alfred Hopkinson, 1930

Alfred Hopkinson (1851-1939)

When Alfred Hopkinson, barrister, academic, MP and keen alpinist, wrote his memoirs in 1930, he ended one chapter with three lists.  He was 80 years old and looking back over the changes he had seen since he was a boy.  Here are his lists – perhaps readers will be inspired to make their own.

New & Good Things

Electric Lighting
New Universities
Short Skirts
Third Class on Express Trains
Telephones
Typewriting
Bathrooms with Hot & Cold Water
Underground Electric Tubes
Trained Nurses
Merciful Administration of Criminal Law
Mixed Bathing
Improved Sanitation
Woollies for Children
Boy Scouts
Girl Guides
Taxi-cabs
Afternoon Tea
Spring Wire Mattresses
The Salvation Army
Improved Anaesthetics
Antiseptic Surgery
Lawn Tennis
Sunday Opening of Libraries and Museums
Grape Fruit
Co-operative Holidays
Push Bikes
Lavatory Carriages
Flannel Shorts for Men
Charity Organization
Better Architecture
More Platonic Friendships
Wireless Telegraphy
Lighter Meals
Less Drunkenness
Workers' Educational Association
Wider Knowledge on Sex Matters
Garden Cities
Sun-bathing
Cushions in Third-class Carriages
More Daffodils
Pneumatic Tyres
The National Trust

Cockfighting in Hutton Rudby & Stokesley

In 1903 Richard Blakeborough (1850-1918), celebrated collector of North Riding folklore, wrote an article for a cheery weekly family newspaper called the Northern Weekly Gazette about cockfighting in the village of Hutton Rudby.

Cockfight in London: c1808

He had written on the subject before and he knew that cockfights hadn't stopped as soon as they were banned in England in 1835 (they haven't stopped yet), but now he had been contacted by Richard Robinson, a 68 year old retired farmer living in Old Battersby, who had anecdotes to tell him.

You can see from his article that Blakeborough enjoys the old North Riding dialect most of all.  He was a dialect enthusiast, well known for his recitations and writings.  

He begins

As late as 1850, many a main was fought in or near to that village on a good Sunday morning.  And one Robert Dorking, a weaver about that date, possessed a bird of such note that on many occasions it was matched to fight some of the best birds in the North.  These contests came off somewhere in Newcastle, whither Dorking tramped from Rudby with his bird. 

(Robert Dorking's name was actually Robert Dalking, so I'll alter the name accordingly from now on)

The people of Hutton Rudby always knew, even before Dalking got out of the bed the next morning, when his bird had won.

"It was like in this way," 

said Richard Robinson, 

"when Dalking's cocks lost, for he sometimes used to hug as many as four on his back – his missus used to come out with her head lapp'd up in a shawl, looking that dowly and never a word for nobody.  She used to creep along with her head down, an' were as cross as a bear with a sore head.  But when Dalking came home victorious, she was out with her best hood, fleeing all over the village to spread the good news; there was no ho'ding her back at such times."

Christmas recipes from Hutton Rudby, 1896

The Northern Weekly Gazette was a cheery weekly newspaper with editions published in Middlesbrough, Guisborough, South Bank, Stockton, Darlington and West Hartlepool.  Advertisements declared that

"The Northern Weekly Gazette is the most interesting and readable penny weekly paper in the North, and contains as much general reading as many shilling books"

It certainly was popular among Hutton Rudby families.  It only cost a penny and there was something in it for everybody – national and local news, local sports reports, household hints, recipes, jokes, serialised stories, pages for children, contributions welcomed and prizes to be won.

Mary Williams and her family were keen readers of the Gazette.  She was born in about 1856 in Hovingham and was married to a Welshman, Thomas Williams, who was coachman for the Blair family at Drumrauch Hall, their country house a little way outside Hutton Rudby.  Some time between the summer of 1895 (when their daughter Gladys was born) and the beginning of December 1896, the Williams family moved from Norton-on-Tees to one of the cottages by the entrance to the Hall on Belbrough Lane.  

Drumrauch Hall, O.S map revised 1911 
National Library of Scotland

These are two Christmas recipes sent in to the newspaper by Mrs Williams in 1896:

Northern Weekly Gazette, Saturday, December 5, 1896 

Christmas Mince Meat

Six nice apples, 2 lb currants, 1 lb Sultana raisins, 1 lb stoned raisins, 1½ lb moist sugar, ½ lb candied peel, 1 lb suet, 1 teaspoonful mixed spice, the rind of two lemons, the juice of one, 2 tablespoonfuls of orange marmalade, 1 teacupful of brandy; chop the apples and suet very fine, grate the lemons, mix all well together, press into a stone jar, cover air-tight; ready for use in a fortnight

A Good Family Christmas Pudding

1 lb breadcrumbs, ½ lb flour, 1 lb currants, 1lb Sultana raisins, 1 lb Muscatel raisins, 1 lb suet, 1 lb moist sugar, ½ lb mixed peel, 6 eggs well beaten, the rind and juice of a lemon, 2 oz powdered almonds, 1 teaspoonful of mixed spice, 1 teaspoonful salt, 1 teaspoonful ground ginger, 1 glass of brandy.  Mix all well together; boil for 8 hours.   

Mrs Williams, Drumrauck Cottage, Hutton Rudby, Yarm

Thomas and Mary spent the rest of their lives in Hutton Rudby.  They are buried in the churchyard there.

Dark nights in Great Ayton: 1889

This sad little story is a reminder of village life before street lighting.  We are so conscious of light pollution nowadays, we can forget the hazards of the past.

That admirable woman Mrs Annabel Dott wrote on the subject after her experiences among the rural poor of Dorset during the First World War.  She had been shocked and dismayed by their conditions and wrote about it in 1919 with great feeling.  Being a practical person, she saw where matters could be improved and one issue was lighting: 

Lighting is another important rural matter.  The dark roads make traffic difficult if not impossible after sunset, and during long evenings when there is no moon it is not an easy matter for old people, women, or delicate folk to get about.  One of the attractions of the town is the brightly lit streets ...

Joseph Longstaff was a Great Ayton man born and bred.  His father John had been a weaver and the parish clerk, and Joseph became parish clerk in his turn.  He began his working life as a tailor but for many years ran the village Post Office, with a grocery shop alongside.

In 1889 he was 69 years old and working as a tailor again and as assistant overseer for the parish.  He lived with his wife Mary and 11 year old son Edward on the High Street.

Northern Echo, 25 October 1889

Missing from Great Ayton

Considerable anxiety is being felt at Great Ayton on account of the mysterious disappearance of the Clerk of the Parish (Mr Joseph Longstaff).  

It appears on Friday evening he left home in his slippers and never returned, and nothing has been heard of him since.  The night was excessively dark, the weather tempestuous, and an unusual amount of water was rushing down the River Leven, which flows through the village.  It is very much to be feared that he has missed the bridge and fallen into the water, in which case the body would probably be carried for miles, so strong was the current at the time.  

Mr Longstaff was an old inhabitant of Ayton, and much respected.  He was for many years postmaster.  The village is in total darkness during the evenings of the winter months.

This wasn't the only tragedy that autumn, and the question of lighting was clearly on people's minds.  This happened less than a week later:

Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough, 31 October 1889

Another Fatality at Great Ayton

Some time during last night Henry Peacock, late stationer and newsagent, was drowned in the River Leven at Great Ayton.  His body was found early this morning under the stone bridge.  His death furnishes another sad argument for the necessity of lighting up the village. 

For a while the problem was solved and the village was lit by gas but, in the summer of 1896, the Friends' School changed to electric lighting, the gas works were discontinued and the village was dark again.  

At the beginning of the new century, several town councils were experimenting with a new invention called the Kitson Lamp, which was invented by Arthur Kitson, an Englishman who had moved to the USA.

His lamp used petroleum and a carbon mantle similar to those used in gas lamps.  The petroleum was held in a metal reservoir some distance away and drawn up to the lamp under air pressure through a very fine copper tube.  When it reached the part of the tube that was inside the lamp, the heat of the mantle vaporised it and was lit by an ingenious device that did away with the need to climb up to the lamp on a ladder.  As only a very minute quantity of oil was subjected to heat at any one time, even if the tube was broken there was no chance of an explosion.  

It was described enthusiastically in the press as a brilliant and beautiful light, the nearest approach to pure daylight and more pleasant to the eye than electric light.  Not only that, but it cost under a penny an hour and no underground plant or digging up of the streets was needed.  The gentlemen of Great Ayton decided to install one:

Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough, 6 March 1901

The Lighting of Great Ayton

Mr Henry Richardson and Mr Thompson, trustees to the manorial rights of Great Ayton, have, with other local gentlemen, aided Mr John Dixon to place on the High Green at Great Ayton a Kitson patent 1,000 candle-power lamp.  The lamp lights the whole of the green, and has been so successful that it is hoped that before long the whole village will be illuminated.  

Since the gas works at Great Ayton were discontinued on the Governors of the Friends' School having electric light instituted the village has had no illumination at all.  It is hoped by the tradesmen and inhabitants generally that a number of the lamps will be procured not only to light the road as far as the stone bridge, but also for California.

Defective bottles at Seaton Sluice: 1835

A chance find which has turned up among my family's papers – a furious letter about defective bottles.  No idea how it ended up in a solicitor's offices in Middlesbrough …

On Thursday 23 July 1835, a young man called John Latimer Nichol dashed off an angry letter to a Mr John Jobling of Seaton Sluice, the busy little port close to the village of Hartley in Northumberland.

John Latimer Nichol was a 28 year old merchant, born in Gateshead and working in the City of London.  Among their other business ventures, he and his father Anthony Nichol were in partnership with Ingleby Thomas Miller from Shincliffe, Co Durham as Nichol & Miller, bottle merchants in London.  New stock for their warehouses was shipped in bottle sloops to their premises at Dowgate Wharf on the Thames, near today's Cannon Street Station.  There was a booming market for bottles in the capital.

Nichol & Miller's bottles came from the North East, where the vast majority of glassmaking was carried out – there were bottleworks on the Rivers Tyne and Wear and the Northumbrian coast, supplying customers across the world.  

The region had all the advantages of cheap coal for the furnaces (glassmaking was a very convenient sideline for colliery owners) together with established shipping routes and easy availability of raw materials.  In 1790, the North East mostly made wine and claret bottles but when, during the 1820s, bottled beer began to be exported to hot climates, the manufacturers began to produce beer bottles.  

It's possible that Nichol & Miller dealt exclusively with the bottleworks at the bustling seaport of Seaton Sluice, acting as their London outlet.

John Jobling, who would soon receive this angry letter, came from a family that was of very considerable importance in Seaton Sluice.  He was the son of James Jobling who, in partnership with John Carr, had been running the Hartley coalmines since 1809.  They had prospered and, besides their collieries, brewery and malt kilns, Mr Jobling and Mr Carr had taken over the Hartley Bottleworks in 1820.  

The works had been founded at Seaton Sluice by Thomas Delaval in 1763 and had swiftly grown into a huge concern – production had reached 1,740,000 bottles a year by 1777.  The following year, the first of three cone-shaped bottle houses was built to replace the old square buildings, their more powerful draught enabling more efficient furnaces.  There would be six of them eventually, dominating the skyline for the next 150 years and useful as sea marks to sailors. 

Seaton Sluice:  OS 1896 
CC-BY National Library of Scotland

In 1835 John Jobling was agent for the bottleworks of Messrs John Carr & Company.  Aged 42 and unmarried, he lived with his widowed mother and spinster sisters at the large, thatched Jacobean house called Seaton Lodge.  

This was originally the home of the Delaval family and was later occupied by the Delavals' land agent.  It was a picturesque old house, described in John Robinson's Illustrated Handbook to the Rivers Tyne, Blyth, & Wansbeck in 1894 in glowing terms – this was 22 years after the bottleworks and its smoky chimneys stopped work:

The situation of the house is all that can be desired, sheltered on all sides from the storms of the coast, the views from its windows up the charming dene, the sheet of water flowing in front of its terraced walks; while behind is one of those old fashioned gardens which delight the eye of all lovers of romantic landscape gardening.

Seaton Lodge from A History of Northumberland 1893

John Latimer Nichol wrote in such haste that his handwriting is a scrawl and he made a mistake with the date, giving it as 23 June 1835.  (It looks as though a later hand, possibly that of John Jobling himself, has corrected this to 23 July).  The letter was posted that very day and is marked

Z

JY 23

1835

He had just returned from a meeting with an important customer, who had sent for him to explain why they wouldn't be buying from Nichol & Miller in future.  John Latimer Nichol couldn't blame him.  He had been shown the product of one of his major rivals, and the difference in quality between Jobling's bottles and those bought from Cookson & Coulthard of South Shields was all too obvious.  Jobling's goods were not only inferior in colour and finish, but they were noticeably lighter and they gave way "at the shoulder".  John Latimer Nichol wrote bitterly, 

It is of little use our holding a stock of bottles which is only saleable till Mr Coombs or Mr Coulthard walk in & shew theirs

This was the third large business house whose custom they had lost and he wasn't going to order from Seaton Sluice again unless John Jobling could assure him that they would match the quality of bottles from Cooksons of South Shields and from Ridleys of Newcastle.

 

He asked John Jobling to meet his father Anthony Nichol in Newcastle to see 

if some thing cannot be done to meet our opponents in this matter for I have no fancy for carrying on my business at a rivals sufferances

This is John Latimer Nichol's letter – in some places I have had to make a guess at a word, and I've marked this with square brackets.