Potted Histories

Category: Local History

  • Thomas Cooper Sparks the Pottery Riots

    One of the least known literary associations with Staffordshire, is that of Charles Kingsley’s novel Alton Locke. Tailor and Poet, which was published in 1851. The story of the rise and fall of a self-taught working man who is eventually imprisoned for rioting, is based upon a real person and a real incident. The person was the Chartist leader, Thomas Cooper, who was arrested and sentenced to two years in prison, for the events he had prompted in the Staffordshire Potteries.

    Thomas Cooper was born in Leicester to a working class family and from an early age displayed a precocious intelligence, the development of which was only limited by the fact that most of his lessons were self-taught. Occasionally, he had been known to immerse himself so deeply into his studies that the sheer mental effort he put forth ended on one occasion, at least, in him being physically ill. He worked at various jobs, mostly as a teacher, lay preacher and journalist, but eventually, appalled by the conditions endured by many factory and workshop workers, he became a convinced Chartist, a member of that Victorian working class movement which supported the introduction of a People’s Charter, which called for fair representation for the working population. The Charter’s six points demanded votes for all men at 21, annual general elections, a secret ballot, constituencies regulated by size of population, the abolition of property qualifications for MP’s and the payment of MP’s. Most of these points eventually became laws of the land and form a part of the state we live in today, but none of these things came into being until the latter half of the nineteenth century, long after the Chartist movement itself had collapsed.

    There were two bodies of the Chartist movement, the physical and the moral-force Chartists, who sought to bring about social change by revolutionary or evolutionary means. In his early days, Cooper was a supporter of the former faction. He was a fire and brimstone type of preacher, who like all great orators could move people with his speeches. This power comes through in Cooper’s autobiography, which is widely regarded as one of the finest working class ‘lives’ written during the Victorian age. The book, though written in Cooper’s later years after he had become a convinced moral-force Chartist, tends to carefully skate around his fiery physical-force youth and he presents himself as a far more reasonable man than he actually was in August 1842, when he arrived in the Potteries. Only by bearing in mind, that Cooper at this time advocated revolution of sorts, do the events he inspired in the Potteries make sense. Though he says in his book that he proclaimed, ‘Peace, law and order’, the resulting riots that left one man dead, dozens wounded or injured and many buildings burnt or ransacked, indicated that he said more than he was letting on.

    Cooper arrived in the Potteries, after a tour of several major towns and cities in the Midlands, and here he was to make a number of speeches before moving on to Manchester. The area was in the grip of a wage dispute. In June, 300 Longton miners whose wages had been drastically cut had gone on strike. By July, the strike had expanded to all of the pits in north Staffordshire, and hundreds of miners were on the streets, begging for money, and with the pits being closed, the potteries through lack of coal, could not fire their kilns and were also closed. By early August, the dispute had attracted widespread attention, certainly the Chartists expressed sympathy for the miners’ action, but contrary to later claims that the subsequent riots were Chartist inspired, it was mostly miners and not Chartists who did the rioting. The Potteries were a powder keg, ready to explode and Cooper’s arrival, as he himself admitted was ‘the spark which kindled all into combustion’.

    Thomas Cooper addresses the crowd at Crown Bank, Hanley

    Standing on a chair in front of the Crown Inn, a low thatched building at Crown Bank in Hanley, on Sunday, 14 August, Cooper addressed a crowd of upwards of 10,000 people, delivering a brilliant Chartist speech to his audience. He look for his text the sixth commandment, ‘Thou shalt do no murder’. Throwing his net wide, he drew on examples of kings and tyrants from history, such as Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon, who had violated this commandment against their own people, even as their own government would be prepared to do. The next day, he addressed an equally sizeable crowd and moved a motion, ‘That all labour cease until the People’s Charter becomes the law of the land’.

    What followed, Cooper later regretted. As the crowd dispersed. rioting started around the Potteries towns in all except Tunstall and the borough town of Newcastle. Police stations were attacked, magistrate’s houses ransacked and burned, as were Hanley Parsonage and Longton Rectory. By the 16th, the chaos had lasted a day and a night, but on that day, the most famous, or infamous incident of the uprising occurred, what is known locally as ‘the battle of Burslem’. Following the rioting in Stoke, Shelton, Hanley and Longton, a great crowd moved towards Burslem, there to meet a crowd coming from Leek. Here, though, the authorities played their hand, when a troop of mounted dragoons stopped the crowd from Leek. The magistrate in charge read the Riot Act, then tried to reason with the men, but when it was clear that they were bent on trouble, the soldiers were ordered to fire. One man from Leek was killed and many injured, the crowd was routed and the disturbances ended overnight, but for many weeks afterwards, the Potteries were full of troops and vengeful magistrates arresting rioters and Chartist leaders.

    Cooper, horrified at the events he had unleashed, had tried to escape, but he was arrested and eventually tried and sentenced to two years in Stafford Gaol, on charges of arson and rioting. Here, he spent his time profitably, learning Hebrew and writing his book, The Purgatory of Suicides. On leaving prison, though, his views were found to differ considerably from the new mainstrean in Chartist thought, and he became increasingly a moral-force activist and remained so for the rest of his life.

    It was in the two or three years after leaving prison, that Cooper was interviewed by the Rev. Charles Kingsley, whose Christian Socialist movement had inherited many of the Chartist beliefs. Kingsley had sought out several old Chartists and educated working men on whom he wished to base the life of the major character in the novel he was preparing. Thomas Cooper, was obviously the chief amongst these, certainly his autobiography, written many years after Kingsley had published Alton Locke, shows many striking similarities between Cooper’s life and that of his fictional alter ego. The riot that Alton inspires in the book, for which he too is committed to the prison, takes place in the countryside, amongst agricultural labourers, but behind it there is the faintest echo of the struggle in the Potteries, that one historian has considered the nearest thing to a popular revolution that the Victorian age saw.

    After 1845, Thomas Cooper turned his talents mainly to writing, but he also lectured on subjects such as history, literature and photography. In this capacity, he made a number of return visits to the Potteries, to the place where on that day many years before, he had ‘caught the spirit of the oppressed and discontented’, in seeking to establish the basis of a democratic society.

    Reference: Charles Kingsley, Alton Locke. Tailor and Poet (1851); Thomas Cooper, Life of Thomas Cooper, written by Himself, (1872).

  • Zeppelins Over the Potteries

    During the First World War, the action for the most part took place along a line of trenches stretching from the. Belgian coast, down to the Swiss border, where massed armies, huddled in their trenches, were launched in pointless attacks in the face of merciless machine gun and cannon fire. For the civilians back home the war was distant, though those left at home may have had relatives in the trenches, the Great War was an impersonal thing. True, foodstuffs were in short supply, and women took a great leap forward in society by going to work in the factories and on the farms, but the prospect of imminent death from enemy bombers, was still a generation away, or so it seemed. Then there came the Zeppelins. In a bold move, the Germans attempted to disrupt British life and industry, by sending over fleets of hydrogen-filled airships to drop bombs on anything they thought worthy of being destroyed. Two of these airships, at least, made it as far as North Staffordshire, and though the damage they did was insignificant, the authorities fell that they were such a threat to British morale, that the circumstances of the raids were not fully reported until a month after the war had ended.

    The first raiders came on the night of the 31 January 1916, Several cities throughout the Midlands were surprised to find airships over them, since few had thought that the area was within the radius of such craft. This was in the days before the blackout, and the major manufactories of the Midlands were a blaze of lights and fires, and in North Staffordshire, the glow was particularly noticeable from the pot banks and steel-works of Stoke on Trent, which were obscured only by a slight ground mist.

    A squadron of Zeppelins had crossed the coast that night. One attacked Walsall at 8.10 p.m., and later at 12,30 a.m. There, the Mayoress, Mrs. S. M. Slater, was fatally injured in a bomb blast. The Wednesbury Road Congregational Chapel was demolished by a bomb and other unspecified damage was done. At 8.30, another airship suddenly loomed out of the dark over Burton on Trent, and dropped a cluster of bombs, one of which fell on a mission house, where a clergyman’s wife was holding a service, and in the blast three of the congregation were killed and a forth fatally injured.

    Not long after the Zeppelin over Burton had begun its attack, engines were heard moving towards Trentham and the Potteries, and presently, the Zeppelin appeared, cruising slowly overhead. Its obvious target could be seen miles away, the light from the Stafford Coal and Iron Company’s blast furnaces. The raider circled the foundry like a vulture and dropped half a dozen bombs in close succession. However, these fell on the spoil banks between the colliery and the furnaces, where they made several large holes, but did no serious damage.

    German airship designer Count Zeppelin

    After that the elusive raider sneaked off. Its course was only a matter of speculation, though engines were heard over Hanley, then Wolstanton and as far west as Madeley, where it dropped a flare over open country. It’s raid, though it must have injected some excitement into the area, caused no harm and it must have used up its stock of bombs, or been searching for a secondary target.

    The second Zeppelin raid, though, was more dramatic, and took place during the night of 27 to 28 November 1916. It was a clear, dry night over the Midlands, there was the nip of an autumn frost in the air, perfect weather for an air raid. So, perhaps, at 10.45 p.m.. when the warning was received in the Potteries that Zeppelins had been sighted, few were surprised. The whole district was blacked out. and air raid precautions were put in place the special constabulary, the fire brigade and doctors and nurses were all alerted and went to their stations. Positive information was soon received that a raider was making for North Staffordshire, and at a few minutes before 1 a.m, the steady drone of aero engines was heard and the Zeppelin was sighted over Biddulph, slowly making towards the Kidsgrove-Goldenhill-Tunstall area of the Potteries. Then the bombs came crashing down.

    One unnamed witness, had been up late and was just going to bed at about 1 a.m., when he heard a ‘deep rumbling, long-sustained explosion’ and thought that there had been a serious colliery accident nearby. He went into another bedroom to ask if anyone else had heard the noise, when there were further explosions, two short sharp blasts, then another ‘accompanied by a rending sound’, then a series of four or five blasts in succession. The witness looked out of a bedroom window and caught sight of flashes off towards the Chesterton area, followed by the thudding boom of the detonations. The bombardment went on for about half an hour until the Zeppelin drew nearer to the witness’ house and dropped another bomb about half a mile away ‘that shook every brick and window in the house’, before it moved. The witness had counted 21 explosions.

    The first bomb blew a hole in a spoil bank at Birchenwood Colliery, Kidsgrove, while the second two landed not far off from the Goldendale Iron Works. The forth landed in Tunstall, impacting in the back yard of No. 6 Sun Street, and the explosion destroyed the sculleries and outhouses of Nos. 2, 4, 6 and 8, but shards hit other houses, as well as a nearby Roman Catholic church. Luckily, no one was killed and only one person was injured, a Mr Cantliffe of No. 8 Sun Street, who was hit in the chest by shrapnel, but he later made a full recovery in the North Staffordshire Infirmary. Had the raider circled in that area for a time, there is little doubt that there would have been a great deal of destruction and many more casualties, but the Zeppelin moved on, leaving Sun Street battered and bruised and in such a state that it would for days attract a horde of sightseers.

    The Zeppelin cruised over Tunstall and out across Bradwell Wood, where the burning mine hearths seem to have attracted the raider away from the areas of population. This area was just a mass of calcinating ironstone left to smoulder out in the open, but which obviously seemed to have given the impression of being an ironworks of some description. Certainly the Germans thought so, and the area was heavily bombed, watched from a distance by our nameless witness. Explosion after explosion reverberated over Chesterton, but the only damage done was to a shed that was knocked over and the closest that any other bomb got to the public, was when one of the last of these landed behind Bradwell Lane, Wolstanton. A later report summed it up succinctly as a ‘particularly futile’ attack on the area.

    As it had circled over Bradwell Wood and the area around Chesterton and Wolstanton for some time, illuminated in the flashes from the bombs, many locals had spotted the airship. But finally, spent of its bomb load, the raider turned south-east and was last sighted passing low over Blurton Farm coming from the direction of Hartshill. This was at 1.35 a.m., the Zeppelin then vanished into the dark at a ‘moderate speed’.

    There had been a number of bombing raids over Britain that night and many came to a grim end. Certainly the North Staffs raider never made it back to Germany. Lord French, reporting the fate of several of these Zeppelins in a communique, made special reference to the airship that had bombed the Tunstall area. It appeared that after leaving the North Midlands, the airship hail taken a direct route towards East Anglia, from where there was but a short stretch of sea separating her crew from their homeland. However, before she even reached the coast, the Zeppelin had been repeatedly attacked by aeroplanes of the Royal Flying Corps and by ground-based artillery. Perhaps she was damaged, since Lord French’s report noted that the last part of her journey was made at a very slow speed and the airship was unable to reach the coast before day was breaking. By the time she reached Norfolk, however, it seemed that the crew had managed to make repairs, and after running a gauntlet of coastal batteries, one of which claimed a hit, the Zeppelin was seen making off to the cast at a high speed and at an altitude of about 8,000 feet. But more planes came at her. About nine miles out at sea, the Zeppelin was attacked by four machines of the Royal Navy Air Service and further fire came from an armed trawler. Worried like a bear with terriers at her heels, the airship struggled on until gunfire ripped into her hydrogen filled body and she went crashing down in flames into the sea at about 6.45 a.m. No survivors were noted.

    Reference: Staffordshire Sentinel, Friday, 27 December 1918, p.4

  • Jane Austen and the Clay of Staffordshire

    Jane Austen and the Clay of Staffordshire

    Through the efforts of potters such as Thomas Whieldon, Josiah Wedgwood, Josiah Spode and many others less well known, between 1750 and 1800 the local pottery industry had undergone a tremendous revolution. In 1762 when Wedgwood was just beginning his career as a major manufacturer, there were 150 potteries in the district employing over 7,000 people. By 1800, the figures for both had doubled. The improvement in trade was matched by technical developments and the use of new resources which improved the quality of the products produced. Thus the salt-glazed wares of one decade had been displaced in turn by creamwares and porcelains and by the turn of the century by bone china. All in all it had been quite an achievement in so short a time, As the words of the Wedgwood Memorial had it, these enterprising potters had ‘converted a rude and inconsiderable manufacture into an elegant art and an important branch of national commerce.’

    It was an improvement noted by none other than that great observer of her age, the novelist Jane Austen. Jane never visited the Potteries and had only a vague notion of its location (she thought it was near Birmingham and may have been confusing the district with the Black Country). She was, however, part of the genteel social set that these new, finer, highly decorative wares were aimed at, for whom buying the latest thing in pottery became something of a craze.

    In her letters Jane writes of visiting the Wedgwood showrooms in London and in one gleeful missive to her sister Cassandra in June 1811, she writes ‘I had the pleasure of receiving, unpacking, and approving our Wedgwood ware’ and anticipates the arrival of a new Wedgwood breakfast set for their mother, ‘I hope it will come by the waggon to-morrow; it is certainly what we want, and I long to know what it is like’.

    A decade earlier, though, her enthusiasm for Staffordshire pottery found a release in one of her early novels. Though not published until after her death, Jane Austen’s Gothic conceit, Northanger Abbey, was revised and finished between 1801 and 1804. In chapter 22, there is a short witty passage that may be the first literary appreciation of the Staffordshire Potteries and their rising status amongst the ceramic capitals of the world.

    ‘The elegance of the breakfast set forced itself on Catherine’s notice when they were seated at table; and, luckily, it had been the general’s choice. He was enchanted by her approbation of his taste, confessed it to be neat and simple, thought it right to encourage the manufacture of his country; and for his part, to his uncritical palate, the tea was as well flavoured from the clay of Staffordshire, as from that of Dresden or Seve. But this was quite an old set, purchased two years ago. The manufacture was much improved since that time; he had seen some beautiful specimens when last in town, and had he not been perfectly without vanity of that kind, might have been tempted to order a new set.’

    Though the line about a breakfast set made two years earlier being ‘quite old’ is a touch of Austen wit, it nevertheless reflects the real situation at that time, when local manufacturers were working day in, day out to keep their wealthy clients happy with newer and more exciting goods.

    Reference: Letters of Jane Austen (1884); Northanger Abbey (1817)

  • A Million to One Chance

    On the afternoon of Sunday 9 May 1943, 40 year old colliery maintenance worker Joseph Boulton of 12 Blake Street, Burslem, was engaged with others in recapping a winding rope at the top of No. 2 pit at the Sneyd Collieries, Burslem, when he overbalanced and fell backwards head first down the pit shaft. He turned several somersaults and in his headlong fall happened to see a wire guide rope glistening with oil from the light reflected from the top of the pit shaft which was rapidly disappearing from his view. Reaching out he grasped the guide rope first with one hand, then with the other, and succeeded also in wrapping his legs around it, the thick coating of grease preventing any serious injury from friction burns. In this way he slowed his descent and eventually came to a stop and stepped off at a pump inset about 300 yards from the top of the pit shaft. The pump attendant was not there, so Mr Boulton sat in the pump house and read an illustrated magazine until a manager Mr J Hebblethwaite, and other colliery officials, who had expected to find him dead at the pit bottom, found him with only slight burns to one hand and one leg. They were amazed to see the man and find that he was comparatively unhurt, but insisted on him receiving first-aid treatment at the ambulance room before he went home and went to bed.

    Describing his miraculous escape to reporters Mr Boulton said ‘A million-to-one chance saved my life.’

    Reference:Liverpool Daily Post 11 May 1943, p.3; Staffordshire Advertiser 15 May 1943, p.7

  • The Last Bottle Oven Firing

    The kiln used for the firing at the Hudson and Middleton factory, Longton.

    On 29 August 1978, the last ever firing of pottery in a coal-fired bottle kiln began. The Clean Air Act of 1956 had made it illegal to produce masses of black smoke in urban areas, which forced the local potteries to finally switch over from the old bottle ovens to new gas and electric kilns. However, two decades later, to raise funds for the repair of its own ovens but also to document the process before all knowledge died out completely, Gladstone Pottery Museum in Longton, was given leave to carry out one last traditional firing. The kiln chosen for the job was a quick firing glost china oven at the nearby Hudson and Middleton factory and the museum produced a selection of wares including plates, bowls, character jugs and tygs for this final load. Many local factories also provided ware to be fired. The man placed in charge of the firing was 73 year old Alfred Clough a former pottery manufacturer, who was aided by other former firemen, ovenmen and placers plus numerous volunteers from Gladstone. These helped in preparing and loading the kiln and on this day at 12.45 pm, the last of the fires were lit by Mr Clough’s 11 year old grandson. The firing went without a hitch and 32 hours later the fires were extinguished and the kiln was allowed to cool for three days, being emptied on 2 September.


    Reference: Evening Sentinel, 29 August – 2 September 1978.

  • Death of a Lady Artist

    Image reproduced with kind permission of The British
    Newspaper Archive (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk)

    Late in the evening of 18 January 1899, Mr Richard Smith of Stoke was walking along Bagnall Street, Hanley alongside the Victoria Hall, when he was startled by the sound of a gunshot nearby. There was no one else in sight, but he noticed that across the road, a door beside a small medical dispensary was standing part-way open. Peeking carefully through the opening into a dark passageway beyond he spotted a body lying on the floor a pistol in its hand. Alarmed, he dashed to the police office around the corner in the Town Hall and returned moments later accompanied by an inspector and several policemen. When they reached the passage they found 51 year old Dr John Craig who ran the dispensary examining the body of a woman who had clearly shot herself in the head. They could make out little more in the dark, but when the doctor announced that the woman was still breathing the police brought a stretcher and together they carried her across to the police parade room. Hardly had they got into the well-lit yard, though than Dr Craig let out a cry having recognised the woman before him. The man was visibly shocked and while a senior officer took him aside for questioning the police searched the injured woman for clues to her identity.Going through her pockets they found numerous items: some money, a few keys, a packet of arnica, a left luggage receipt from Stoke Station and several newspaper clippings, one of which carried a few lines from Tennyson’s poem, Sea Dreams.‘

    ……. he that wrongs his friend

    Wrongs himself more, and ever bears about

    A silent court of justice in his breast,’

    There were also receipts for recorded letters and a cryptic inscription on a visiting card that indicated a strong connection with Dr Craig. These along with the doctor’s own faltering statement soon identified the woman as Catherine Devine, a 43 year old artist from Chelsea. The doctor explained how he knew her and what he believed had just happened here and why. The lady herself, though, did not live to give an account of her actions, dying from her wound at 10 p.m., without regaining consciousness.

    Present-day Bagnall Street, Hanley.

    The full story of the connection between Catherine Devine and Dr John Craig came to light two days later in front of a packed court at the coroner’s inquest into her death. Here, Dr Craig revealed that he and Catherine had known one another for about 25 years, having first met in her home city of Edinburgh. It was there that John Craig had trained as a doctor, being licensed in 1869 and shortly afterwards he had married Ellen Macintyre a native of the Potteries, before moving to the area and setting up his practice in Hanley. His wife had given him a son and daughter, but in December 1874 she died at the age of 25, leaving him a widower with two young children on his hands.

    Among his late wife’s friends were Eliza and Catherine Devine of Edinburgh, daughters of a well-known and wealthy family of Scottish artists. Eliza had agreed to paint a posthumous portrait of Mrs Craig and whilst visiting their studio in 1876 to see how work progressed, Dr Craig had met and become so smitten with the younger sister Catherine, that he had been contemplating asking her to marry him. They corresponded for a time, but his marriage hopes had faded a short time later, when Catherine and several members of her family emigrated to New Zealand in 1878. Robbed of his potential bride the doctor had little choice but to get on with his life as a single parent and as the years passed he became very content with this state of affairs.

    Catherine remained in New Zealand and later Australia for eleven years, carving out a moderately successful career as an artist, but in 1889 she returned to Britain. Settling in a studio flat in Glebe Street, Chelsea, her skills soon saw her supplying artwork for several London fashion magazines and eventually holding an exhibition of her works. To this she invited several old friends including Dr Craig. This restarted their acquaintance and they corresponded intermittently for a few years until Catherine was invited to spend Christmas with the Craigs at their house at Mossley near Congleton. During this visit, Dr Craig innocently noted to Catherine in conversation that prior to her departure to New Zealand he had contemplated asking her to marry him, and was surprised when she immediately asked him why he could not ask her now? The doctor replied that time had altered his circumstances, that he was content and he now had no thought of marrying anyone. Catherine seemed to accept that at the time, but the remark had struck a chord with this brilliant but lonely woman and she soon started to obsess over the matter.

    Apparently oblivious to what he had started, Dr Craig extended another invitation for Catherine to stay once again a few months after this, but she soon upset the situation by again urging Dr Craig to marry her. He again refused and the next morning, whilst he was out, Catherine left the house under a cloud. Returning to find her gone, Dr Craig was left feeling very angry at her behaviour and that might have been the end of the matter, but a few months later he received a conciliatory letter from Catherine and he agreed to meet with her at her home in London when he visited the capital for Queen Victoria’s Jubilee in 1897. After watching the festivities he did indeed call on Catherine, prepared to let bygones be bygones, but when she again raised the subject of marriage he left in disgust and vowed never to visit her again.

    Catherine then began to bombard Dr Craig with a series of scathing letters on his conduct that were followed more often than not by apologetic letters or telegrams asking him to reply. The doctor did reply to some to try and calm her down, especially when she began to threaten to kill herself. However, staggered by the barrage of letters he began to receive and the increasingly erratic mood swings of his would-be paramour, Dr Craig started to burn many of the letters unopened.

    This state of affairs had carried on for the best part of a year, during which time Dr Craig had attempted to maintain his distance from Catherine. The death of her mother, though, in October 1898, seems to have made him sympathetically disposed towards her once more and shortly afterwards he met her again during a visit to London. He found her in a miserable state and recalled that she was in tears most of the time. Her one consolation was that she now wrung a promise from the doctor that if he would not marry her then he would marry no one else, an assurance he was happy to give. She also asked if she might be invited for Christmas once more if she avoided the question of marriage. Dr Craig told her that he and his daughter were in the process of moving into a house in Hanley adjoining his practice and would anyhow be in Northumberland visiting his mother over Christmas. He promised her, though, that once they had moved in after New Year, that she would be invited for a visit. Satisfied with this, Catherine parted amicably with Dr Craig and eagerly waited for the invitation to arrive.

    Sure enough a few weeks later a letter did come, but the news it contained flung Catherine back into a rage. Dr Craig wrote to her saying that due to the work needed on the new house and because his daughter would be going abroad for a while, he did not feel that he could accommodate Catherine before his daughter’s return in March; in effect, for the time being at least, she couldn’t come. Stung by what seemed like another heartless rejection, Catherine wrote a furious reply saying that he had deceived her, adding ominously that she could not go on like this. It was a threat she had voiced before, but this time after all of the mental agonies she had suffered over the past year, it seems that Catherine had finally snapped. In the notes discovered after her death it appears that she wrote more letters to Dr Craig, but, as before, finding himself pestered beyond belief, the doctor had once again begun to burn the letters unopened. He was thus completely unaware of what she now set out to do.

    Nor would he be the only one, as to most of her London friends the story of Catherine’s violent passion for Dr Craig would come as a great surprise, as she had displayed no outward signs of any great interest in men except as friends. All noted that she had been ill over the past year, stricken by a listlessness that her own physician, Dr Schorstein, put down to anaemia, but otherwise she seemed to be the same kindly, mild-mannered woman she had always been. As a result, none of them were aware – or could even have guessed – that Catherine spent early January 1899 preparing for her death, finishing a portrait of her doctor and wrapping up her affairs.

    On the morning of 18 January, Catherine paid a visit to her housekeeper, Mrs Stoner, who had injured her wrist several days before and she now made sure that the elderly lady had everything she needed. Catherine told her that she would be going to Staffordshire for a few days, joking that it would give Mrs Stoner a rest from her. Back in her flat, Catherine left a package with a letter in her writing desk laying the blame for what she was about to do squarely on Dr Craig. Then she dressed well, putting on a fashionable lady’s walking-out costume, collected a nightdress she had wrapped up in brown paper (the police speculated that she brought the nightdress with her to be used as her shroud), a travelling rug, an umbrella and her purse containing money and a few notes to give the police enough clues to discover her story. She also pocketed the small, silver five-shot revolver that she kept for personal protection. Catherine then sent for a cab to Euston Station to catch the 4 p.m. train to Stoke. As she left, Catherine waved goodbye to her housekeeper and that was the last time that anyone who knew her saw her alive and conscious; it thus became the job of the police to reconstruct her last hours for the benefit of the inquest.

    After a three hour journey north, the train arrived at Stoke Station at 7.14 p.m., and it appears that, after depositing most of her belongings at the left luggage office, Catherine had walked from Stoke into Hanley. Never having visited Dr Craig’s new house in Bagnall Street, she seems to have taken the better part of an hour locating it. Once she had, though, Catherine went into the gated entry where she removed her right glove to give her a better grip and taking out the pistol she placed the barrel against her right temple and pulled the trigger, inflicting the fatal wound.

    Because of Catherine’s accusations against him, Dr John Craig found himself being closely questioned at the coroner’s inquest in an effort to determine if he was in any way morally responsible for what had taken place. Indeed, the doctor feared so much for his reputation that he had employed a solicitor to sit in on the inquest to represent his interests in the proceedings. However, the coroner was satisfied with the explanation that Dr Craig had given to the inquest; nor did the police see any reason to pursue the matter any further. The jury thought likewise and quickly returned the verdict that Catherine Devine had committed suicide whilst of unsound mind.

    The final act in this tragic tale of missed opportunities and fatal obsession took place the day after the inquest, on Saturday 20 January, when the remains of Catherine Devine were interred at Hanley Municipal Cemetery. To avoid undue attention, the funeral took place a day earlier than advertised and the funeral cortège took a circuitous route to the cemetery for the same reason. Two of Catherine’s London friends, Miss Maud McCarthy and Dr Schorstein, who had appeared at the inquest, were the only mourners and not more than a dozen people stood around the grave in the pouring rain as the last rites were performed. As this was a suicide’s burial, there would be no headstone to mark her lonely plot, while the brass plate on the polished oak coffin bore only the simplest inscription.

    Catherine Devine
    Died Jan. 18 1899,
    Aged 43 years.

    Reference: Staffordshire Sentinel 19 – 23 January 1899. Numerous national and international papers January – March 1899.

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  • News and a Narrowboat

    On 1 September 1939, Tom Rolt and his wife Angela were travelling along the Trent and Mersey canal aboard their narrowboat, Cressy. Arriving at Trentham Bridge to take on some fuel they were hailed by a boatman at the tiller of a passing barge, who told them that Germany had invaded Poland. That day they passed through the Potteries, and the Harecastle Tunnel on into Cheshire, where two days later they heard the announcement that war had been declared.

    Rolt, a future campaigner for preservation of Britain’s neglected canal system and one of the founders of the Inland Waterways Association, later wrote a lyrical account of their journey entitled Narrow Boat, which sparked a post-war resurgence of interest in this by-then woefully neglected transport network. A traditionalist at heart, Rolt was dismissive of many of the towns and cities they passed through, but devoted two short chapters to their brief passage through the Potteries. His appreciation of the area and its people stemmed from the fact that he had some years earlier partially served his engineering apprenticeship at Messrs Kerr, Stuart and Co, locomotive engineers in Stoke.

    Reference: L.T.C. Rolt, Narrow Boat pp. 115-129; Landscape With Canals, p.3.

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  • Hannah Dale – The Child of Wonder

    A wildly exaggerated publicity image of Hannah Dale c.1889.
    Author’s collection.

    Hannah Dale, ‘the Staffordshire Giantess’ as she became known, was born in in the village of Mow Cop on the 23rd February 1881. She was the daughter of 31 year old miner Thomas Dale and 28 year old Elizabeth Dale, nee Oakes of Dales Green, Mow Cop, and was their fourth child, Hannah having a brother and two sisters older than herself. All the family were normal average-sized folk, her father weighed 10 stone, and her mother was only 8 stone in weight and their other children were likewise quite ordinary. At the time of her birth Hannah too seemed to be a normal child, so small it was said that she could fit into a quart jug, but at the end of three months she began to develop very rapidly and this growth continued throughout her short life. Within a few years she had outstripped her older siblings in weight, and though she started out enjoying a perfectly normal childhood Hannah was growing taller and broader and soon became something of an attraction in the out-of-the-way village.

    It is unclear when Hannah’s parent’s first started exhibiting their rapidly expanding child to a paying public, but she was certainly something of an attraction for the crowds when at the age of eight flyers such as the one seen here were advertising her for exhibition. Though depicted on the flyer as a veritable giant, Hannah was at this time actually only 4ft 4ins tall, but weight-wise she was prodigious, already weighing more than most grown men, so big that the family home at Oakes Bank, Dales Green had to have the doors widened. By the time she reached ten years of age, Hannah had grown to 4ft 11ins tall, had a 55-inch chest and her thighs measured 3ft around while the vaccination marks on her arms had stretched out to the size of small plates. Looking at her it was easy to forget that she was so young, but many papers were happy to point out that she was still very much a child, at her happiest playing with the other children in and around Mow Cop.

    ‘She is a bright, attractive, and talkative child, and plays as other children do of her own age. For her enormous weight she is very active, but if she accidentally stumbles and falls she cannot get up without assistance. Dolls are her great delight, and in making their apparel she exhibits considerable dexterity and intelligence… She has no special diet, but dines with the other members of the family, consuming as much food as a healthy man, and sleeping on an average twelve to fourteen hours each night. On the railway she travels with a half-ticket, a privilege to which she is entitled, but which often causes her father to supply his name and address to irate ticket collectors, who entertain an honest suspicion about a giantess who takes up as much space as three ordinary persons would occupy.’

    South Wales Echo, 16 June 1892, p.2

    For several years Hannah was exhibited around the country and by 1892 was becoming something of a celebrity. Early that year she was fulfilling an engagement at Sheffield, prior to going to America, but her fame was cut short when she fell ill with bronchitis in late May or early June of 1892. Her condition quickly worsened and she was taken home to recuperate, arriving there on Tuesday 7 June. However, it was too late and she died from the infection the next day.

    At the time of her death, Hannah Dale, was 5ft 3ins tall, weighed 32st 6½lbs, and measured 5ft. 8in around the waist. Her size caused difficulties when it came to her funeral at St Thomas Church, Mow Cop, on 10 June. Her coffin was huge, its size demonstrated prior to her funeral by the undertaker, a Mr Boon, having five young men lying down sideways in it and easily closing the lid over them. Together with the corpse, this finally weighed 6cwt, (48 stone, or nearly 305 Kg) and took up a double plot. It required thirteen people to carry and then lower the little girl’s coffin into the grave.

    Nearly 2,000 people, many of them friends and neighbours and other locals who had watched Hannah grow up assembled to witness the funeral. The inscription on her gravestone read:

    IN LOVING MEMORY OF

    HANNAH

    The beloved daughter of

    THOMAS & ELIZABETH DALE

    Of Dales Green Mow Cop

    WHO DIED JUNE 2ND (sic) 1892

    AGED 11 years & 3 months.

    HERE LIES MY DUST THE CHILD OF WONDER

    I BID FAREWELL TO ALL BEHIND

    AND NOW I DWELL JUST OVER YONDER

    IN HEAVEN WITH GOD SO GOOD AND KIND

    ALSO WILLIAM & WALTER their sons

    WHO DIED IN INFANCY

    Reference: Philip R. Leese, Mow Cop: Living on the Hill; Staffordshire Sentinel, 11 June; South Wales Echo, 16 & 22 June 1892; Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough, 22 June 1892, p.4; Hampshire Advertiser, 16 July 1892, p.7.

    Website: http://www.mowcop.info/htm/thumbs/tn060.htm

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  • Captain Smith Tells a Tale

    Hanley-born Commander Edward John Smith is best remembered as the captain of the ill-fated White Star Line steamer RMS Titanic, which sank on its maiden transatlantic voyage after colliding with an iceberg in 1912. In many ways the image of Smith presented in the disaster has coloured how we see the man, to some he is the villain of the piece, to others a tragic figure. The few earlier glimpses that exist though, paint Captain Smith in a far different light. For instance in 1911 following the successful maiden voyage of Titanic’s elder sister Olympic, Smith comes across as something of a raconteur, playfully spinning a yarn to deflect over- eager reporters.

    ‘Captain Smith of the Olympic was questioned in New York about the coal consumption of the world’s biggest liner on her first voyage. But Captain Smith shook his head and said:”That is a coal story I am not privileged to speak about. I’ll tell you another coal story, though, if you’d care to hear it?”

    “I’d be delighted,” said the reporter. “Well,” said Captain Smith, “It’s a story about a poor sailor. He was taken down with fever on a brigantine. and, though the mate and captain dosed him well, he died. They buried him at sea. “They buried him with the usual impressive sea rites. He was sewed in a sail round which a flag was draped, and, to make him sink, the sail was weighted with a number of big lumps of coal. “A landlubber of a passenger participated in the services. He watched the well weighted corpse slip into the water. It disappeared at once, and the landlubber shook his head and said: ” ‘Well, I’ve seen many a man go below, but this is the first one I’ve seen taking his own coal down with him.’ “


    Reference: San Francisco Call, 29 August 1911 

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  • The Curious Case of the Dwarf and the Bulldog

    Brummy and Physic battle it out. From James Greenwood’s Low Life Deeps (1876).

    In a detailed and lurid article published on 6 July 1874 in the Daily Telegraph, investigative journalist James Greenwood claimed that several days earlier on 24 June, during a brief stopover in the Potteries, he had hoped to find evidence of illegal organised dog fighting, but that he and a large crowd of onlookers had instead witnessed a brutal fight in a cellar in Shelton between a grizzled, muscular dwarf named Brummy and a ferocious bulldog named Physic, a battle that the man had barely won. The national scandal that resulted from this shocking article seriously embarrassed the area for a time and questions were even asked in Parliament.

    However, all was not quite as it seemed and once the initial furore had died down the tables were quickly turned on Mr Greenwood, as subsequent investigations by the police, the local authority, other newspapers and the RSPCA, not only highlighted the numerous glaring discrepancies in Greenwood’s tale, but more tellingly found no absolutely evidence whatsoever that such a fight had taken place. Rather than sticking rigidly to the story he had spun, Greenwood then started to back-peddle, changing or mitigating parts of the tale to excuse himself and explain why there was no proof to be found, all of which excited a great deal of derision from other papers. The upshot of it all was that within a few weeks it was widely concluded that Greenwood had simply made the story up, or adapted a dubious scrap of Staffordshire folklore that he may have heard during his stay in the area. Following the RSPCA’s investigation and the report they sent in to the government, the Home Secretary of the time came to the same conclusion and on 20 July wrote a reply to the Hanley Watch Committee, which stated that he was satisfied that the story of the fight was false.

    Greenwood had thus been called a liar at the highest level and Hanley’s good name was restored, but mud sticks, and the tale rankled with the people of the Potteries for a good while after. In 1907, Local author Arnold Bennett summed up the lingering ill-will towards the reporter and his tall tale in his short story ‘The Death of Simon Fuge’.

    ‘The only man who stands a chance of getting his teeth knocked down his throat here is the ingenious person who started the celebrated legend of the man-and-dog fight at Hanbridge. It’s a long time ago, a very long time ago; but his grey hairs wont save him from horrible tortures if we catch him. We don’t mind being called immoral, we’re above a bit flattered when London newspapers come out with shocking details of debauchery in the Five Towns, but we pride ourselves on our manners.’

    Reference: James Greenwood, Low Life Deeps; Staffordshire Sentinel, July 1874; numerous national newspapers and magazines July 1874.

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