Potted Histories

Tag: history

  • A Soldier of the U.S. Cavalry

    John Livesley’s grave marker in Hanley Cemetery.

    In 1997, Hugh Troth of Ohio, published a tribute to his grandfather, The Life and Times of Isma Troth. Isma Troth had served as a soldier in the American Civil War and he wrote several letters charting his friendship with a fellow soldier named John Livesley whom he met in hospital when he was there recovering from his wounds. Troth’s account indicated that Livesley came from Potteries and using biographical information from this book and information from other social archives, local researchers were able to piece together the life of this otherwise forgotten local who had somehow got himself involved in a foreign war.

    John Livesley was born in Shelton on 12 October 1838, the son of pottery engraver and journeyman William Livesley and Sarah nee Brundrett. He enjoyed a privileged upbringing as his father was an increasingly prosperous man, who by 1851 had opened his own pottery and also ran a grocery business, all together employing 46 men, 23 women, 20 boys and 25 girls. As a result of his family’s wealth, John enjoyed a good education, attending a boy’s boarding school run by James and Harriet Grocott at Wilton House, Wrinehill near Betley on the Staffordshire border.

    As the family business grew, William Livesley entered into partnership with one Edwin Powell, and his name then regularly appeared in the local press, often for his philanthropy and support for public works and by the mid-1850s, John Livesley or J. Livesley likewise puts in a few appearances, attending performances or contributing money for some good cause supported by his father. But by 1861 census John had disappeared from the area.

    In fact, he had left the country and crossed the Atlantic to the United States, sailing in September 1860 aboard the RMS Persia to New York in company with 40 year old James Carr, a native of Hanley who two decades earlier had emigrated to the States and had established a successful pottery in New York. Both men give their occupation as ‘potter’ in the ship’s passenger list and it is not unreasonable to suppose that John Livesley, the son of a successful Hanley manufacturer had gone over with John Carr to work in his growing firm.

    Yet, it was a bad time to be travelling to the USA as growing tensions between the northern and southern states over the expansion of slavery, came to a head the following year. The southern slave-owning states split from the Union, forming a Confederacy, an act that pushed the country into a bloody civil war.

    Was John Livesley permanently settled in the States at this time, resisting the urge to join in the conflict, or just an occasional visitor to the country, criss-crossing the Atlantic and thus avoiding becoming involved? It is hard to say, but he was certainly in New York on 23 January 1864 when he was enlisted as a private in L Company 6th Regiment New York Cavalry of the Union army. Details on his enlistment are unclear, but suggestions have been made that he was drunk at the time, a not unlikely hypothesis as John seems to have had a habit of drinking to excess when he found himself in like-minded company. This is backed up by records that show that he was in hospital for the first week of his service due to “delirium”. He also seems to have enlisted under an assumed name, the enlistment records for John Livesley being struck through and replaced with the name ‘John Lindsley’. The records note that he was born in England, worked as a potter and gave a physical description: ‘gray eyes, brown hair, light complexion, 5 feet 8½ inches in height’. His term of enlistment was given to be three years.

    His new home, the 6th New York Cavalry, also known as the 2nd Ira Harris Guard, was a veteran unit, it had been formed at the outbreak of the Civil War and seen much service. Only a few months earlier it had taken part in the Battle of Gettysburg and since then played its part in numerous smaller actions taken on by the Army of the Potomac to which it belonged. With the onset of winter though it had gone into cantonments and when John Livesley enlisted, was employed in guarding the country between the Union lines and the Blue Ridge Mountains.

    US and Confederate cavalry in action at the Battle of Trevilian Station in 1864.

    On 3 May 1864, the regiment – now with Livesley, or rather ‘Lindsley’ in its ranks – returned to action, crossing the Rapidan river and taking part in the Wilderness campaign under General Grant. The regiment was part of the Cavalry Corps, and played a role in all the operations undertaken by the corps commander General Sheridan, notably in his famous raid around the Confederate capital of Richmond. At the battle of Yellow Tavern on 11 May 1864, the 6th New York Cavalry charged down the Brook Pike and went into and entered the line of the first defences about Richmond, being the first Union regiment to get so close to the city. The regiment then saw action in the Battle of Trevilian Station, and in numerous smaller actions and it was probably during one of the latter in August 1864 that John Livesley was badly wounded eight months after joining up.

    Carried from the front and admitted to the USA Post Hospital, Bolivar Heights, Harper’s Ferry on 20 August with gunshot wounds, Livesley was a wreck and had to have an arm and a leg amputated. Records show that aside from his physical injuries, he like many in the army was also suffering from chronic diarrhoea, but also that he was quickly transferred further from the seat of war, first to the Field Hospital at Sandy Hook, Maryland and finally to Rulison USA General Hospital at Annapolis Junction, Maryland on the road between Washington and Baltimore. Confined to a wheelchair, it was during his long convalescence here that he met Isma Troth, a former prisoner of war at the infamous Andersonville prison, who now worked as a clerk at the hospital, often writing letters home for the wounded, one of them being John Livesley whom he first met shortly after his arrival there. The two men developed a close friendship and Livesley’s father offered to pay for the two of them to come to England when they were discharged. The war effectively ended in April 1865 and John was mustered out of the Union army on 24 May 1865 whilst still at Annapolis Junction.

    Cheered by the thought of making a new life for himself, Troth was keen to go to Britain, noting that his friend’s family were influential and he might secure a good position there, but he had some major misgivings about Livesley’s drinking habits. In a letter written in June that year, Mr Troth wrote: ‘Mr Livesley is a good, kind friend of mine and is an honest, intelligent man – but he sometimes drinks’. He noted that he had known Livesley for about a year and that the man was not a regular drinker and he never drank when they went places, but on a couple of occasions he had gone out with soldiers who did drink and had come home in quite a state. Once he went with them to a neighbouring village and came back the worse for wear, and on being mustered out of the army he had gone out ‘with some fast boys’ to celebrate his release and had come back drunk, much to Troth’s disgust. After talking of their plans to travel to Britain, Isma said: ‘If my friend associates and drinks with these rough characters I shall not go with him, for I cannot place any confidence in a drunkard.’

    Despite these problems, the two friends did indeed take passage to Britain and Isma spent a year in England before travelling home. John returned to Stoke-on-Trent and was soon set up as a grocer in Lichfield Street, in Hanley, marrying a local girl Ellen Twigg from Bucknall on 18 June 1867. But tragically John Livesley died just four months later, on 23 October 1867, aged 29, his cause of death being given as epilepsy.

    Despite his father’s wealth John was buried in an unmarked grave in Hanley Cemetery. However, when he learned of his grandfather’s link with John Livesley, Hugh Troth endeavoured to see John’s service recognised and in 1997 contacted the United States Government to obtain a bronze plaque, recognising Private John Livesley’s service during the American Civil War. In 2003, the plaque was put on his burial spot, being unveiled by Mr Troth.

    Reference: Hugh Isma Troth, The Life and Times of Isma Troth (1997)

  • A Titanic Engineer

    Stoke-on-Trent’s best known connection with the Titanic disaster is of course the ship’s venerable skipper, Captain E. J. Smith, but a less well-known Potteries-born sailor who also perished in the Titanic disaster was Senior Fourth Engineer Leonard Hodgkinson. At the time of his death he was 46 years old, and like Captain Smith had spent most of his adult life at sea, albeit in a far different environment to that of his much more famous shipmate. As a member of the ship’s engineering staff, his working life was one spent for the most part in noisy, hot engine rooms, with little view of sea or sky save when he was off duty.

    Leonard was born at 20 North Street, Stoke-upon-Trent, on 20 February 1866, the second son and fifth child of potter’s presser John Hodgkinson and his wife Caroline nee Steele. Educated at St Thomas’ School, Stoke, before the age of 15, Leonard was apprenticed as an engine fitter with Messrs Hartley, Arnoux and Fanning, in Stoke. Once his apprenticeship was done, Leonard left the Potteries sometime in the 1880’s and took up a position with Messrs Lairds of Birkenhead, lodging with his elder sister Rose, her husband Henry Mulligan and their children, who had settled in Liverpool sometime after their marriage in 1877. It was in Liverpool that Leonard met his wife-to-be, Sarah Clarke. The couple were married in West Derby, Liverpool on 14 February 1891 and within a few years the couple had three children.

    North Street, Stoke-upon-Trent

    Leonard was now a seagoing marine engineer. He served for five years with the Beaver Line, whose ships sailed from Liverpool to Quebec and Montreal. In 1894, though, the Beaver Line went into liquidation and it may have been at this point that Leonard left and joined Rankin, Gilmour and Co., Ltd, which firm he also served with for five years, earning his first class certificate in the process. He may also have served with the Saint Line of ships which were owned by Rankin and Co., most of which carried the ‘Saint -’ title. Leonard’s final position with the company was as chief engineer aboard a ship with just such a title, the Saint Jerome.

    For a few years between 1901 and 1905, Leonard quit the sea and set himself up in business ashore as a mechanical engineer, but in May 1905, he returned to his old line of work, joining the White Star Line, serving first as assistant engineer on the Celtic, later earning promotion to fourth and then third engineer.

    According to family lore, Leonard Hodgkinson was keen to serve on as many vessels as possible before retirement, so was doubtless pleased after what appears to have been a six year stint aboard the Celtic, to be transferred over to the glamorous new Olympic (the Titanic’s elder sister) when that ship came on-line in June 1911. Here he was briefly bumped back down to assistant engineer, but soon earned promotion to fourth engineer once again. Perhaps more troublesome for him and his family was the fact that the Olympic was to sail from Southampton. There is no indication that the whole Hodgkinson family moved to Southampton at this time, though it is a possibility, but if not, then Leonard had to put up at lodgings in between journeys and perhaps only got to see his family on a few occasions when he could make the journey back to Liverpool.

    It was in early 1912, that Leonard travelled to Belfast where he joined the staff under Chief Engineer Joseph Bell, who were involved in getting the Olympic’s younger sister Titanic up and running. On 2 April he was signed onto the ship’s books for the delivery trip from Belfast to Southampton and on 6 April he was signed on once again in Southampton, now as senior fourth engineer.

    A White Star engineer at work.

    As senior fourth engineer, Leonard Hodgkinson was the highest ranking of the five fourth engineers aboard the Titanic, one of whom was a specialist in charge of the ship’s refrigeration equipment. Whilst at sea their duties involved checking that the adjustments and routine maintenance of the ship’s machinery were carried out. They dealt with any minor problems as they arose, answered any orders rung down via the ship’s telegraphs and ensured that everything ran as smoothly as possible. As officers it was also their duty to supervise the firemen, trimmers and greasers who worked with them down in the bowels of the ship.

    How Leonard’s days passed aboard the Titanic prior to its fateful collision is unknown, as too are his deeds on the night in question, as no accounts seem to exist noting him. If the story is to be believed, though, his fate and that of the 1500 other people who perished on the Titanic was foreseen by one of his relatives back in the Potteries, none of whom had any idea that Leonard was aboard the Titanic. According to the story she later told, two days before the disaster, Leonard’s 14 year old niece, Rose May Timmis, the daughter of Leonard’s elder sister Agnes, was sleeping in the same bed as her grandmother Caroline Hodgkinson (Leonard’s mother) when she had a nightmare. Rose dreamt that she was standing by a road in Trentham Park looking out over the lake, when a large ship steamed into sight. Suddenly the ship went down at one end and she could hear screams. Rose herself woke up with a yell that frightened her grandmother awake. When the frightened girl related her dream her grandmother snapped, “No more suppers for you, lady; dreams are a pack of daft.”

    After a while, Rose drifted back to sleep once more, only to find herself dreaming the same scene and as before when she heard the people screaming she did the same. She recalled that her grandmother was furious with her this time. A few days later, though, the news of the disaster broke and the family learnt that Leonard had been aboard the Titanic and that he and the other 34 engineering officers aboard had perished with the ship. Though several bodies from the engineering department were recovered in the following weeks, Leonard’s was not one of them.

    Though Leonard’s body was never found, he is remembered in several memorials, most notably on the Engineers Memorial, East Park, Southampton, the Titanic and Engineers memorial, Liverpool; the Glasgow Institute of Marine Engineers memorial; and the Institute of Marine Engineers Memorial in London. There is also a brass memorial plaque in the church of St Faithful, in Crosby, Liverpool, dedicated to the memory of the Chief Engineer and his Engine Room staff.

    The Titanic Engineers Memorial, Southampton

    Leonard Hodgkinson was not the only member of his family to go to sea. His son Leonard Stanley also became a marine engineer with White Star and later Cunard. He served on the transatlantic run most of his career, mainly on RMS Majestic before the war and later on the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth.


    Website: Encyclopedia Titanica

  • A War Horse and the Man Who Refused to Die

    John Edward Kitson was born at Coseley, near Dudley, Staffordshire in 1897, the eldest of two children born to Edward and Florence Kitson. His father was a police constable at first in the Dudley and Handsworth regions, but it seems that promotion to sergeant saw him move north to the Potteries, perhaps before John was 10 years old. Here the family prospered and his father would eventually rise to the rank of Chief Inspector at Burslem Police Station. In the 1911 census, the family was living in Shelton New Road, Newcastle and barring service in World War One, John Kitson would remain in the area for the rest of his life.


    The Great War started late in 1914 and by early 1915 John Edward Kitson had joined the army. As 31331 Gunner J. E. Kitson, Royal Field Artillery, he arrived in France in March 1915 and from April 1916, he served as a driver for X/9 Medium Trench Mortar Battery, part of  the divisional artillery attached to the 9th Scottish Division. Though never promoted, he proved a brave soldier, being wounded in action at least four times, seeing service on the Somme and at the Battle of Passchendaele. Gunner Kitson finished his war by winning the Military Medal in 1918 for gallantry in the field.  Hospitalised in Britain after his final wound, he did not return to the front to see out the war, being discharged from the army on 8 July 1918.


    After the war he married a local woman, Doris Hudson, they settled in Sneyd Green where they brought up five children. Kitson worked as a civil servant for the Ministry of Labour, but this seems to have been an anti climax after his wartime adventures which prompted him to leave an interesting anecdote of his service during the war and a record of how his injuries had affected his life afterwards. The stories were colourful enough to warrant syndication on papers as far afield as Australia and New Zealand.

    ‘A WAR HORSE’ ‘ALMOST  HUMAN.’

    ‘Mr. J. E. Kitson. of Hanley, Staffordshire, in England, sent to the “Daily Mail” the following remarkable stories of his war horse: – During 1916 and 1917 I had a charger named Tommy. He was nothing short of human, and many an entertainment was given by him to the troops. Once, when we were being shelled he got loose from his peg, and coming to me, gripped my shoulder In his mouth and “led” me away. A minute later a shell fell at the very spot where I had been standing. His favourite trick was to wait until I had given him a thorough grooming, then sit down like a dog. open his mouth, and “laugh” and roll. This usually happened when the Inspecting officer was just coming round the lines. Luckily, the officer knew Tommy. Another time, when I was riding him at a gallop my tin hat fell off. Tommy at once stopped, turn­ed. and picked it up and “handed” It to me. Just as I had put the hat on a piece of shrapnel struck it a glancing blow. He brought me in when I was badly gassed, I was unconscious on his back. A few weeks later he also entered hospital, and was sent into retirement.’

    The Mercury (Hobart, Tasmania) 2 July 1931, p.12

    ‘MAN WHO REFUSES TO DIE’

    ‘Mr J. E. Kitson, of Hanley Road, Sneyd Green, Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, is known to his family and friends as the man who refuses to die. Doctors have repeatedly told him he has only a few years to live – but he fools them all. It all started during the war, when a piece of shell pierced his neck and killed a comrade behind him. Mr Kitson recovered, but doctors gave him just five years of life.

    The five years went by; then two years later he collapsed at work. This time he was given just seven months more. But after five months he got fed up with being a sick man and returned to work.

    Two years ago he collapsed again, was rushed to hospital and put on the danger list. Two hours later he was normal again and walked out of the hospital the next day.

    Doctors are perplexed about Mr Kitson, but he doesn’t mind. He says he will live to be 100.’

    Cairns Post (Queensland, Aus.) 15 March 1939, p.9

    John Edward Kitson certainly defied his doctors by many years, but did not carry on going as long as he predicted and he died on 13 July 1953 in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, when he was 56 years old. 

  • The Sneyd Colliery Disaster

    At 7.50 am, on 1 January 1942, a devastating explosion took place 800 yards below ground at No 4 pit of Sneyd Colliery, Smallthorne. In normal times the pit would not have been working on New Years Day, the miners considering it unlucky, but because of the demand for coal during the war, work had gone on as normal and a full shift was on duty at the mine when the explosion occurred. The blast was contained to one coalface in the 7-foot Banbury Seam of No. 4 pit. All other workings were unaffected by the explosion, but the thump was felt throughout the mine, some men in the pit noted that the flow of air changed direction, while on the surface people felt a bump and all the lights flickered. Everyone knew something major had happened and when a frantic telephone call from the pit bottom informed them that an explosion had occurred, for the safety of all, work was stopped and the miners were quickly evacuated from the unaffected parts of No. 4 pit as well as from the neighbouring No. 2 pit.

    The Sneyd Mines Rescue Team sprang into action immediately after the blast and venturing down they rescued a handful of men from the pit bottom, but also found the first bodies. Teams were soon arriving from other local collieries including Chatterley Whitfield, Black Bull, Hanley Deep and Shelton; in total nine local mines rescue teams became involved in what soon turned from a rescue to a recovery effort. Beyond the mine, news of the explosion soon spread by word of mouth through the local community. Families and friends horrified by the reports they were hearing dashed up to the colliery to wait at the Hot Lane gate for news of their loved ones, but for many it would be the worst news. The bodies of 16 men were brought out that first day, but the rescue operations had to be postponed due to the presence of afterdamp and it was announced at that point that there was now no hope of finding anyone else alive. Up top, everyone came in to help, first aid staff were on duty at the ambulance room, the mine managers directed the rescue operation and the Inspectorate of Mines soon had staff on site to help out and assess the damage. Other staff did their bit too, the pit’s chief telephonist Mabel Caine was reported to have stayed at her post almost continuously for five days and nights, fielding thousands of phone calls and refusing all attempts to get her to take a long break.

    On 5 January even before all the bodies had been recovered, nearly 80% of the workforce got back to work, but it was not until 10 January that the last bodies were recovered. The list of the dead was sobering, as of the 61 men and boys working on the face that morning, 57 had lost their lives in the blast, most being killed in the initial explosion, while two later died in hospital. The two youngest, David George Briggs from Stanfields and Albert James from Burslem were both aged 15, while the oldest Hamlett Gibson, from Cobridge was 65. There were many sad stories to be told of those who were lost. A Mrs Bennett of Moorland Road, Burslem, suffered a double bereavement, losing her 41 year old husband James and 17 year old son Robert, both of whom had been working on haulage; the family had only recently moved down from Scotland. Mr and Mrs W. F. Harrison of Cobridge lost two teenage sons, Frank aged 18 and Alexander Charles aged 17. Joseph Sherratt aged 38 from Porthill was one of two firemen who were missing. Married with two children and a third on the way, only hours before he had been enjoying a party with his children and some of their friends and had laid on a puppet show of ‘Sinbad the Sailor’ to amuse them. He had not been superstitious about working on New Year, but his wife had and handed him a silver three penny piece for luck. Another haulage worker from Burslem, William Docksey aged 27, had been at the pit for 10 years, He had a brother working elsewhere in the mine who immediately joined the rescue team in an effort to find William. And David Briggs one of the youngsters mentioned earlier, had enjoyed a brief moment of local fame only a short while before, when he was photographed with the Minister of Food, Lord Woolton, eating one of the first sandwiches to be served by the new central depot for providing sandwiches for the miners of North Staffordshire.

     Four survivors had been pulled out of the pit, who by sheer luck or their more sheltered position in the mine, had escaped serious injury or death. One was Ernest Stone of Burslem in charge of the telephone at the pit bottom, whose call had alerted those up top to what had happened. He had been seated in a recessed area off the main road when the explosion occurred and thus avoided the worst of the blast. When the first rescuers arrived, though very dazed, he stayed at his post for three hours refusing to go up until he was finally overcome with dizziness. Another equally lucky was George Read of Burslem, the chief hooker in charge of loading and unloading tubs into the cages at the pit bottom. Like Mr Stone he was in an area off the main roadway and likewise escaped the worst of the blast. After a day at home getting over the shock of what had happened, he returned to the pit to help in the recovery effort. Thomas Gibbons from Burslem aged 64, was not so lucky. He was working near to the pit bottom operating a compressed air machine that drew tubs from the Banbury seam when the explosion occurred. Hit by a tremendous blast of hot air, he was hurled against a wall and fainted. Coming to a short while later in complete darkness and covered in dust only his intimate knowledge of the mine saved him. Working out where he was, Thomas crawled along the passage to where it branched off from the Bambury seam to the return of the Holly Lane branch. After crawling along for another 200 yards he was discovered by some Holly Lane miners who gave him some water and got him transported to the surface, from where he went to hospital. The fourth ‘survivor’ had not actually been in that part of the pit, but had initially been listed with the missing. Mr J. Bailey from Hanley, had only started at the pit the day before and swapped his heavy hand lamp for a helmet lamp with another man that morning. This was later discovered by the rescue teams who presumed Mr Bailey was a victim, though he had already been evacuated from the mine with the other 600 men. The mix-up was only discovered when he later wandered into the Burslem Miner’s Hall to correct the mistake after finding that he had been listed as a victim.

    In the immediate aftermath of the disaster a fund was set up to which many members of the public, collieries and companies gave money, while the proceeds of many local performances were also donated and money came in from abroad, even from as far away as soldiers serving in Iceland; over £17.000 was eventually collected and shared out amongst those who had lost a relative, the shares being determined by how many dependents the victims left behind. Families had been devastated by the disaster, many losing their main or only breadwinner. The disaster left 32 widows and 35 fatherless children, while of the 24 unmarried men 13 left grieving mothers and fathers and 8 left mothers who were already widowed.

    The question everyone wanted answered, was what had caused this appalling accident? The subsequent inquiry headed by Sir Henry Walker, concluded that the most likely cause was that tubs used to move the coal out of the mine had derailed and damaged an electric cable. Sparks from the cable had then ignited coal dust in the air and caused an explosion. Some writers have since disagreed with this explanation, and have advanced other perfectly valid theories, though after all this time any kind of definitive explanation of what happened is not possible as the mine is no more and all the witnesses are long dead.

    Sneyd Colliery continued working through the war, but from the late 1950s onwards it was slowly swallowed up by a larger neighbour. Major reconstruction work at Wolstanton Colliery saw an underground connection made to Sneyd and from that point on coal gradually started being brought to the surface at Wolstanton. Coal ceased being raised at Sneyd in July 1962 and though for a time the shafts there were still used for sending miners down, eventually all the men were transferred to Wolstanton Colliery. The No. 4 shaft, however, remained open as a spare entry for the northern area of the expanded colliery until the final closure of Wolstanton in 1985.

    The Sneyd Colliery explosion has the dubious honour of being the last major pit disaster in the Potteries and it cast a long shadow in the city’s collective memory. A memorial comprising a pit wheel set in bricks was unveiled in Burslem town centre in 2007. It lists all 57 names of the dead on a plaque and carries another praising the mines rescue teams that worked so hard to bring out the bodies.

    Reference: Evening Sentinel, 1 January 1942, p. 1; 2 January, p.1; 5 January, p.1; 10 January, p.1.

  • Visiting Burslem’s Houses of Ill Fame

    The oldest profession in the world had its place in soft underbelly of the Regency Potteries. Prostitutes plied a regular trade usually around the local inns where there were rich pickings when the potters and miners rolled in with their wages. A brief memoir of the period reveals that then as now many of the local working girls were ordinary women driven to extremes by circumstances, the probable cause being abject poverty. A Short Memoir of Ann Sheldon, published in 1821, tells the story of the short life of a dedicated Burslem Sunday School teacher. Constructed around entries in Ann’s diary, it reveals her to have been a noble spirited young woman, who saw it as her Christian duty to visit the sick and try to save the fallen.

    Burslem town centre in the early 19th century.

    In April 1813 following a class, one of her class members asked Ann if she would visit a woman who was very ill. Accompanied by a fellow teacher ‘Miss B’, she went to see the woman whom she soon discovered to be a local prostitute. They found her to be, ‘a little better and very penitent.’ Ann continued : ‘she had been a very wicked woman for years, and is now little more than 30 years of age. Her parents died when she and her sister were young. As they advanced in years they got into bad company and lost their character. Masters would not employ them and they became common prostitutes.’ The woman, exhausted and frightened by her illness, told the two teachers that if she lived she was determined to leave her ‘wicked course of life.’

    After praying together they left her. The two young teachers had obviously been shocked by the interview and though the nature of the woman’s illness is never stated, the impression we are left with is that it was contracted as a result of her calling. Both came away from the house burning with a desire to save others from such a dangerous and degrading career.

    The next day, Ann and Miss B set out once more and found a woman to direct them to the ‘houses of ill fame’. They visited two buildings, but met with a mixed reception, made all the more galling no doubt, by the fact that at least two of the girls they encountered were old Sunday school scholars.

    In the first house ‘we found a young woman about seventeen years of age, who lived by herself, and was three years ago a Sunday scholar.’ The girl was unmoved by the teachers’ entreaties, Ann went back many times to invite her back to the school, but to no avail.

    There were two women in the other house: ‘we found a woman about twenty-seven years of age; who met in class about two years ago: we both spoke as close as possible for an hour and a half; they shed many tears and confessed they had a hell upon earth. There was another woman present, a companion in sin, who appeared to take no notice: – I said to her come down on your knees, and cry to the Lord, to have mercy upon your soul, before it is too late: we all bowed the knee before God, and found much liberty in prayer.’

    It is unknown whether Ann and Miss B efforts were successful. The biography remains silent on the matter. Ann herself died at a young age in 1819.

    Reference: John Tregortha (publisher) A Short Memoir of Ann Sheldon, Burslem 1821

  • The Learned Ease of Elijah Fenton

    Elijah Fenton

    Elijah Fenton, poet, biographer and translator, was born at Shelton on 25 May 1683. His father John Fenton, an attorney at law, and one of the coroners for the county of Stafford, was of an ancient family and possessed of a sizeable estate, while his mother Catherine Meare claimed direct descent from an officer in the army of William the Conqueror. Elijah was the youngest of their twelve children, and not being likely to inherit any of the family estate he was destined from an early age to be placed into some form of employment. He was an intelligent child and the church was therefore chosen as his future profession. Accordingly, after being educated locally, on 1 July 1700 he was admitted as a pensioner of Jesus college, Cambridge, where he earned a reputation as a diligent student. He gained his B.A., in 1704, but being an adherent of the old Stuart dynasty he denied himself the chance of taking holy orders by declining to take the required oaths of allegiance to the Crown.

    Seeking out alternative employment, Fenton became first an usher in the school of a Mr Bonwick, in Headley in Surrey, but was soon afterwards patronised by the representative of the noble Boyle family. He was subsequently appointed as secretary to Charles, 4th Earl of Orrery and later tutor to his son Lord Boyle. The Boyles were residing in Flanders and it was during his time there that Fenton produced some of his early poetry.

    On returning to England, he opened a grammar school at Sevenoaks in Kent. Though this added to his growing reputation as an able tutor to the gentry, the school was not a success and Fenton turned to publishing a series of verses. These received some favourable notices and he attracted the patronage of Henry St. John (later 1st Viscount Bolingbroke) and resigned his teaching post in 1710. This connexion, together with his abilities and amiable manners, brought him to the attention and earned him the friendship of the great and learned of his day, most notably one of the great British poets of the 18th century, Alexander Pope, who became a lifelong friend. 

    Fenton’s friendship with Pope seems to have energised him and over the next few yeas he produced a series of poems. Pope also managed to get his friend additional patrons, first as private secretary to the politician James Craggs and after the latter’s death he secured him the patronage of Lady Trumbull, who appointed Fenton as tutor to her eldest son. He was to enjoy the lady’s patronage until his death nine years later.

    During this period he produced further poems and a tragedy Mariamne, which though deemed unfit for performance by the then poet laureate, went on to earn Fenton over £1,000. There was also a profitable collaboration with Alexander Pope, who asked Fenton if he would assist in a translation of The Odyssey. Fenton duly translated books 1, 4, 19, and 20, his style apparently being so similar to Pope’s that it is difficult to tell them apart. Fenton also wrote the Life of John Milton, a biography that continued to be reprinted into the 19th century. His last significant work was an edition of the poems of Edmund Waller.

    Though seen today as a minor 18th century poet, at the time Fenton’s skills were highly regarded by his contemporaries and may indeed have improved were it not for by his habitual idleness. One of Fenton’s early biographers, none other than Dr Samuel Johnson of dictionary fame, touched on this in an amusing pen portrait of his fellow Staffordshireman.

    ‘Fenton was tall and bulky, inclined to corpulence, which he did not lessen by much exercise; for he was very sluggish and sedentary, rose late, and when he had risen sat down to his book or papers. A woman, that once waited on him in a lodging, told him, as she said, that he would “lie a-bed, and be fed with a spoon.” This, however, was not the worst that might have been prognosticated, for Pope says, in his Letters, that “he died of indolence;” but his immediate distemper was the gout.’

    But, Johnson notes further, Fenton’s faults were outweighed by his intelligence and the kindliness of his character.

    ‘Of his morals and his conversation the account is uniform: he was never named but with praise and fondness, as a man in the highest degree amiable and excellent. Such was the character given him by the earl of Orrery, his pupil; such is the testimony of Pope; and such were the suffrages of all who could boast of his acquaintance.

    By a former writer of his Life a story is told, which ought not to be forgotten. He used, in the latter part of his time, to pay his relations in the country an yearly visit. At an entertainment made for the family by his elder brother he observed that one of his sisters, who had married unfortunately, was absent, and found upon enquiry that distress had made her thought unworthy of invitation. As she was at no great distance he refused to sit at table till she was called, and, when she had taken her place, was careful to shew her particular attention.’

    Fenton died at the age of 47 on 16 July 1730, in Easthampstead, Berkshire, most likely from health problems related to gout and is buried in the churchyard of St Michael and St Mary Magdalene’s Church, Easthampstead, with an epitaph by his friend Alexander Pope. It reads:-

    This modest stone what few vain marbles can

    May truly say, here lies an honest man

    A poet blest beyond the poets fate

    Whom heav’n left sacred from the proud and great

    Foe to loud praise and friend to learned ease

    Content with science in the vale of peace

    Calmly he look’d on either life & here

    Saw nothing to regret, or there to fear

    From natur’s temp’rate feast rose satisfy’d

    Thank’d heav’n that he had liv’d and that he dy’d.

    A. POPE

    Reference: John Ward, The Borough of Stoke-Upon-Trent (1843); Samuel Johnson: Lives of the English Poets (1779-81); ed., Hill (1905), 2:257-66


    Illustrations: John Ward, The Borough of Stoke-Upon-Trent (1843)

  • 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)

  • 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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  • 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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