Potted Histories

Tag: potters

  • Battle Hardened

    Ken Ray, a long-time researcher into the lives of local soldiers has assembled an impressive list of North Staffordshire men who served in the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimea and the numerous colonial conflicts Britain participated in during the 19th and early 20th centuries. He has very kindly given me access to some of his documents which chart the lives and careers of ordinary men from the region who might otherwise have been forgotten. This is one of those stories…

    Private William Walker, 1st Battalion 4th Foot (King’s Own) 

    Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars 

    A soldier of the 4th (King’s Own) Regiment of Foot in the latter years of the Peninsular War. An edited AI rendering after a drawing by the author.

    There were several men from the Potteries that we know of who served in Wellington’s army in Portugal and Spain during the Peninsular War (1808-1814), but few had quite so impressive a record as Private William Walker of the 4th King’s Own Regiment of Foot who saw action in virtually every major land battle fought by the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars. Most likely the son of John Walker and Elizabeth, nee Lawns, he was born in Burslem and baptised at Stoke-upon-Trent on 8 October 1775. William seems to have received little or no education and initially found work locally as a potter. He was probably a member of the militia in this time of war, which would explain why he was far from home in Ashford, Kent on 19 June 1799, where he enlisted for ‘unlimited service’ with the 1st Battalion 4th Foot, with which he would serve for the next two decades.

    From his own records at his discharge, it is clear that Walker saw service almost immediately in an expedition to North Holland in 1799, under the Duke of York – the indecisive ‘Grand Old Duke of York’ of nursery rhyme fame. There his regiment took part in the fighting at Castricum on 6 October, a defeat where they suffered heavy casualties. Walker was one of these, receiving a gunshot wound in the left leg, but he survived, was evacuated back to Britain and spent the next few years on home service. In 1804, Walker’s battalion served under a much better commander, the visionary General Sir John Moore at Shorncliffe, where they underwent a rigorous regime of training. From there in 1805, the 1st battalion went to Hanover and later served at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1807. The battalion was back with Sir John Moore in Sweden in 1808, when he was given command of the force sent to the Iberian peninsula to support Portugal and Spain against the French. However, after some initial successes by the Spanish to oust the French invaders, the arrival of Napoleon at the head of a massive army saw the effective collapse of the Spanish forces before them and Moore and his men, including Private Walker, were forced on a 200 mile retreat to Corunna on the northern Spanish coast. It was an epic, gruelling march through mountains thick with snow and the French in close pursuit, but because of the rigorous training they had received under Moore the 4th suffered less hardship than many units. On reaching the coast, Walker with his fellows fought in the Battle of Corunna on 16 January 1809. Sir John Moore was killed in the fighting, but the battle effectively blunted the French attempts to thwart the evacuation of the British Army.

    The next year, though it receives no mention in his records, Walker was probably involved in another near disaster for the British, when the 4th Foot were sent on the Walcheren Expedition in an attempt to capture Antwerp. However, sickness quickly took a hold on the army causing many deaths and the expedition had to be abandoned. The 4th Foot suffered like the other regiments, but was one of the first of the Walcheren units to be sent to join Wellington’s forces in the Peninsula, where the 1st Battalion joined the 5th Division at Torres Vedras near Lisbon in Portugal in November 1810. The following year the 4th Foot took part in the Battle of Fuentes de Onoro, but positioned on the far left of Wellington’s line they took no active part in the fighting and received no casualties, though Walker was later to carefully add the battle to his list of engagements. Instead his real baptism of fire in this new phase of the Peninsula War would come in 1812.

    Having evicted the French from Portugal, two fortresses barred Wellington’s safe passage into Spain. The storming of the first of these at Cuidad Rodrigo did not involve the 4th Foot, instead they with many others were sent against Badajoz in the north. A heavily fortified town that had already endured two sieges, Badajoz now underwent a severe bombardment to breach its walls before the troops were sent in. This took place on 6 April 1812 and saw Wellington’s men put to their sternest test with four separate attacks made on the heavily defended breaches. The 5th Division of which the 4th Foot were a part, attacked the San Vincente bastion on the north-west corner of the town. Fighting their way through massed musketry, cannon fire, grenades, mines and lines of wooden poles dotted with blades and spikes, the 4th Foot were badly mauled, but managed with others to get over the wall and into the town, where they fell on the French defending the walls from other attacks and soon afterwards the town fell. The ordeal of Badajoz was not over, though, as driven into a frenzy by what they had endured the bulk of the British troops then went on a two-day rampage of looting, rape and murder through the town. Private Walker though, was not among them, as during the assault he had been shot in the neck and at some point nearby French soldiers had bayoneted him in the left arm and left leg and left him for dead. Again, he would live, but like most of the wounded Walker probably had to wait until the looting army had exhausted itself two days later before he got any medical treatment.

    The final attack on Badajoz, showing British troops assailing the walls with ladders.

    It is a testament to William Walker’s toughness that by July 1812, he was back in the ranks and fit enough to take part in Wellington’s long march and brilliant victory at Salamanca followed by his advance into Madrid. The following year, Walker fought in the battle of Vittoria which sounded the death-knell of the French army in Spain. Walker’s record then reads almost like a tally of the clashes that finally pushed Napoleon’s soldiers back over their own border – Palencia, San Sebastian, Bidassoa and Nive – all of which he seems to have passed through without any injury worth noting. The last action of the regiment before they swapped one war for another, was to help in the blockade of Bayonne just over the French border. Wellington’s army was still there when news reached them of Napoleon’s abdication and the war it seemed was over.

    Released from the war in Europe, in May 1814, Walker’s regiment was sent across the Atlantic to take part in the War of 1812 against the United States of America. He and his comrades were witness to great success at the battle of Bladensburg, where they helped rout the Americans, but disappointment and defeat at Baltimore and again at New Orleans, but a final success in the last clash of the war with the seizure of Fort Bowyer. By this time, though, the belated news that a peace treaty had been signed finally filtered down to the combatants and the British troops withdrew. But though another war had ended, an old one was to briefly flash back into life in dramatic fashion, for in late February 1815, Napoleon escaped from the island of Elba and returned to France. Europe was thrown once more into turmoil and Britain needed its troops for the war that was sure to come.

    What followed became known as ‘The Hundred Days’, Napoleon’s last throw of the dice that ended in his final defeat at the battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815. The 4th Foot served with Wellington’s army in Belgium and fought at Waterloo, but it seems that Private William Walker was not with them.  The records of the 4th Kings Own show that the regimental drum major also named William Walker received the Waterloo Medal which was awarded to all those who served in the battle, but there is no evidence that our Private Walker was a medal recipient. Evidence seems to suggest that the William Walker who later claimed four clasps to the Military General Service Medal in 1847-48 for his Peninsula War service was also the aforementioned regimental drum major.

    After peace was finally declared and the occupation of France ended, the 1st Battalion 4th Foot were posted to the West Indies. Two and a half years later on 7 May 1821, at St Ann’s in Barbados, 46 year old Private William Walker was discharged from the army, the reason given that he was worn out from his long years of service and the effects of his wounds. Walker was described as being 6′ ¼” tall, light haired, grey eyed and with a fair complexion. His discharge certificate also indicates that for 4 years and five days of his 22 years and 55 days of service with the 4th Foot he had served as a corporal, but does not indicate when this was, nor why he had been reduced back to private. Whatever the case his conduct as a soldier had been ‘very good’ and the record was careful to note all the battles he had participated in and when he had received his wounds.

    Walker returned to Britain on the first available vessel and his discharge was confirmed by the Chelsea commissioners later that year. What he did, where he went and what the ultimate fate of the old Peninsula veteran was after that remains unknown.

    Reference: The National Archives: WO97 – Royal Hospital Chelsea: Soldiers’ Service Documents, piece 267. Information courtesy of Ken Ray.

  • England Expects

    ‘The Battle of Trafalgar’ by William Clarkson Stanfield
    Source: Wikimedia Commons

    On 21 October 1805, a British fleet of 27 ships commanded by Admiral Horatio Nelson caught up with and attacked a combined Franco-Spanish fleet of 33 ships as they made their way towards the Mediterranean. The fleets met off Cape Trafalgar between Cadiz and the Strait of Gibraltar where the British attacked (albeit at a snail’s pace due to lack of wind) in two divisions striking at right angles into the enemy line splitting it into sections and the battle then became a series of small struggles between individual ships or groups of vessels, in which superior British gunnery and seamanship carried the day. Casualties on both sides were heavy, Nelson himself being mortally wounded by a French sharpshooter. Before he died, though, he received news that his fleet had inflicted a devastating defeat on the enemy force, capturing 20 ships, thus ending any immediate threat of a French invasion of Britain. Trafalgar was also the victory that established British naval dominance for the next century.

    Despite hailing from so landlocked a region, several men from the Potteries and neighbouring Newcastle were involved in this decisive sea battle. Two Royal Marines, Corporal William Taft, aged about 30 at the time of the battle, from Hanley Green (modern day Hanley town centre) and Private William Bagley aged 31 from Stoke, served aboard Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory, which led one of the two squadrons attacking the Franco-Spanish line and was in the thick of the fighting from the beginning. Bagley got through the battle uninjured, but Corporal Taft was badly wounded in the left arm, which had to be amputated near the shoulder. After the battle and the week of storms that followed it, Taft was transferred to Gibraltar, then to a hospital ship and transported with other wounded back to Britain. He survived, but was pensioned off and his fate after that is unknown. Bagley too returned to Britain early in 1806, but on 26 January he suffered a fall at Chatham and died from his injuries. His belongings were later returned to his daughter Susannah in Hanley.

    At the head of the other British squadron was HMS Royal Sovereign, the flagship of Admiral Collingwood, aboard which was 24 year old Royal Marine Private Richard Beckett from Burslem. The Royal Sovereign had recently had her hull re-coppered and as a result of her clean hull was a faster ship than most and was the first to pierce the enemy line. For most of the battle the ship was engaged in a prolonged duel with a Spanish vessel and suffered heavy damage. Private Beckett, though was fortunate and escaped injury. Equally lucky and untouched that day was another locally born Royal Marine, 29 year old Private Joseph Sergeant from Clayton aboard HMS Prince, which joined the battle late and saw little action.

    Only two local men that we know of, served as sailors in the British fleet that day and both survived the battle unhurt. John Bitts, a 24 year old landsman from Stoke was aboard the frigate Naiad which took no part in the fighting between the bigger ships, but joined in with the mopping up after the battle, while 28 year old ordinary seaman John Williams also from Stoke was part of the carpenter’s crew on board HMS Leviathan, which was one of the ships of the squadron that followed the Victory into the enemy line and captured a Spanish ship.

    Unlike the soldiers who later fought at Waterloo, no special medal was issued for the men of Trafalgar, but all were entitled to a share of the prize money from the captured enemy vessels, plus a special Parliamentary award. In the event some, for whatever reason, did not bother to claim their shares and the monies were donated to the sailor’s hospital at Greenwich. Corporal Taft, the man in most need of the cash, though, did take his share. His prize money came to £1 17s 8d, plus the Parliamentary award of £4 12s 6d, and presumably because of his life-changing injury, Taft also received £40 from the Lloyds Patriotic Fund.

    Reference: The National Archives, ADM 44 Dead Seamen’s Effects; ADM 73 Rough Entry Book of Pensioners; ADM 82 Chatham Chest: ADM 102.

  • Potts’ Luck

    Ken Ray, a long-time researcher into the lives of local soldiers has assembled an impressive list of North Staffordshire men who served in the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimea and the numerous colonial conflicts Britain participated in during the 19th and early 20th centuries. He has very kindly given me access to some of his documents which chart the lives and careers of ordinary men from the region who might otherwise have been forgotten. This is one of those stories…

    Private John Potts, 3rd Battalion 1st Foot (Royal Scots),

    Napoleonic Wars.

    Depending on which document you consult, John Potts was born in either Hanley or Stoke, in either 1784 or 1789, though the latter seems the most likely date as on his discharge certificate the age ’32’ is crossed out and replaced with ’27’, putting his birth in 1789. This accords with other documents which seem to agree on that date. Nothing is known of his parentage, but before joining the army he worked either as a printer or a painter in the pottery industry, though on at least one occasion he simply listed his occupation as a potter; Potts was ever fickle with his personal details.

    There is a hint that Potts may have been a member of the Staffordshire Militia before joining the regular army as when he attested for the 1st Foot at Windsor on 1 February 1808, he did so with several other men from Staffordshire who all indicated previous military service in Staffordshire. John Potts, however, did not specify how long his service had been. After several months of training, he was assigned to the 3rd Battalion 1st Foot on 25 June 1808.

    Potts went on to see service in the latter half of the Peninsular War.  One John Potts later earned two clasps for the Military General Service Medal (awarded to surviving veterans of the Napoleonic Wars in 1847-48) for the storming of  Badajoz in 1812, and the Battle of Vittoria in 1813. This may have been our man, but to further muddy the waters of his service record there were two John Potts in the 3rd Battalion 1st Foot (the other hailed from Roxburgh in Scotland) and the surviving records for both give no indication which of them this was. Our John Potts certainly suffered serious injuries during his service, with gunshot wounds to the head, right arm and leg and left knee. As the Royal Scots only suffered two casualties at Badajoz, (two wounded officers) then John may have got his wounds at Vittoria where the Royal Scots took a severe mauling. However, there is an excellent memoir of the Peninsular War written by Corporal John Douglas of the 1st Foot that mentions a Private John Potts having a miraculous escape from death, but suffering serious injuries, at the siege of San Sebastian in late 1813; and as his account indicates, this was almost certainly our man. We join the story just as the 1st Foot and other regiments are launching an attack against the southern walls of San Sebastian, which was a fortress town situated on a rocky peninsula.

    The attack on the breach at San Sebastian, illustration by Denis Dighton.
    Source: Wikimedia Commons

    ‘On the 25th July the breaches were pronounced practicable, but waiting for the tide to be sufficiently low to admit the men to reach the breach, it was daylight ere we moved out of the trenches; and having to keep close to the wall to be clear of the sea as possible; beams of timber, shells, hand grenades and every missile that could annoy or destroy life were hurled from the ramparts on the heads of the men; to shun which, if they kept further out in the tide, showers of grape and musketry swept them away by half companies. Those who scrambled onto the breach found it was wide and sufficient enough at the bottom, but at the top there was not sufficient room for one file at the curtain and from thence to the street was at least 20 feet. This was a house which was on fire close to the breach, and through which our poor fellows were forcing their way when a shell from our 10-gun battery at the passage side struck the gable and buried nearly a company in the burning ruins. One man alone escaped. The sides of the door being stone fell towards each other, and formed a letter A over him. Though his life was saved by this providential circumstance, he was, I might say, half-roasted, but survived. (I saw him in June 1817, after returning from France, near the potteries in Staffordshire, on the banks of the canal. His face then resembled a new-born infant. His name was John Potts.’

    Potts’ rejuvenated appearance was probably the result of new flesh and scar tissue covering the burns he had received in this closest of shaves.

    The uniform of the 1st Foot in 1815.

    The 1st Foot also took part in the Waterloo campaign in 1815 as part of General Picton’s division, a Private John Potts served in Captain Robert Dudgeon’s N° 8 Company, being awarded the Waterloo Medal for his service in the brief but dramatic campaign. There is evidence that the other John Potts in the ranks of the 1st Foot may have been stricken ill with eye problems on the march from Ghent to Brussels, which may perhaps have put him out of action for the duration, but again as with the Peninsula War clasps there is no clear indication as to which John Potts it was who saw action at Waterloo.

    Potts was in France with the army following Napoleon’s final overthrow and it was whilst stationed at Valenciennes that on 16 May 1816, he was discharged from the army due to being worn out by the effects of his numerous wounds. He was described at the time as being about 32 (sic) years of age, 5 feet 11 inches tall, with brown hair, grey eyes and a fresh complexion. Another document added the detail that he had a long visage. Having made his way back to Britain, on 9 August 1816 Potts was duly examined at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea to secure a soldiers’ pension. This he did, being awarded a shilling a day as an out-patient.

    John Potts disappears from the records after this, though we can presume from John Douglas’s account that he returned to the Potteries following his medical exam. There is some circumstantial evidence that he may have been the John Potts listed in the 1841 census as living in Joiners Square, Hanley. This man was was 52 years old (born in 1789 as the soldier seems to have been) and he worked as a pottery painter (one of Pott’s suggested pre-army trades). He was married, his wife Elizabeth being 45 years old, though they had no children. A decade later, though, the fuller census of 1851 revealed that the couple had suffered a serious downturn in their fortunes. John had gone blind and he and Elizabeth were listed as beggars lodging with a family in Bow Street, Northwood. By the time of the 1861 census, John Potts was 72 years old, his wife was 64 and they now had their own house at 34 Bow Street, where they lived with John’s niece. The census noted that John had been blind for 14 years. This, though, was the last census he would appear on and a John Potts was listed as having died in Stoke-on-Trent in the last quarter of 1862.

    Was this man really our old soldier fading away? We will probably never know for sure, but if so, the tale of his later years makes for a sad counterpoint to the high dramas of his youth.

    Reference: The National Archives, WO 97- Royal Hospital Chelsea: Soldiers’ Service Documents, piece 235, box 4; John Douglas, Douglas’s Tale of the Peninsula & Waterloo 1808-1815, pp. 79-80. Information courtesy of Ken Ray.

  • Am I Not a Man and a Brother?

    By the late 1700s, slavery, most notably the trade in African slaves, was being increasingly seen by many in Britain as a great moral evil. Abolitionist pamphlets and literature distributed in taverns, coffee houses, assembly rooms, reading societies and private houses up and down the country, brought home to the people of Britain the atrocities committed by the Atlantic slave trade, and attacked the entrenched attitudes and vicious practices of slave owners, and the greed of the other moneyed interests that thrived on this inhuman traffic.

    The anti-slavery movement had originated with non-conformist groups in Europe and America in the late 1600s. Quakers and other dissenters objected to slavery on both moral and religious grounds, but because of their unorthodox beliefs they were regarded as social outsiders and barred from public office, and as a result their views were largely ignored save by their fellow dissenters. The movement had grown slowly in Britain during the 18th century, but it finally found a voice and a leader in 1786, when Thomas Clarkson published  An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species. This proved to be a rallying cry for the movement, bringing Clarkson into contact with other like-minded men and the next year he and eleven others formed the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. This Committee would become a Society as it grew and would coordinate the Parliamentary campaign led by MP William Wilberforce that resulted in the end of the international trade in African slaves. That eventual success was still a couple of decades away, but the Committee made a good start, not only by being led by men of intelligence and zeal, but also by utilising what could be considered an early example of product branding, namely an easy-to-recognise logo, mass-produced by leading Staffordshire potter Josiah Wedgwood.

    Josiah Wedgwood like many abolitionists was a non-conformist, being brought up as a Unitarian. He was not an immediate recruit to the cause, his early life being devoted to setting himself up as a potter and businessman. However, he was always very keenly interested in the social movements of his time and their consequences for society at large. This found its way into his paternal attitude towards his workers, whom he housed in the new model estate of Etruria that he built around his factory, and can be seen in the interest he took in the American War of Independence and the French Revolution. His involvement in the anti-slavery movement, though, seems to have come about through the influence of his business partner Thomas Bentley. Bentley had worked as a merchant in Liverpool, a circumstance that might normally have made him a supporter of slavery, but he was firmly opposed to the trade and unlike the other merchants refused to go and meet the slave ships when they came into port. Doubtless Bentley’s feelings on the matter influenced Wedgwood in this, just as his knowledge of arts and science had done earlier in their friendship. Certainly, following Bentley’s death in 1780, Wedgwood subscribed to all the tracts and pamphlets concerning the abolition of the slave trade, and used his influence to do all that he could to help the cause.

    Josiah Wedgwood

    Wedgwood became friends with Thomas Clarkson and in 1787 he joined the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, shortly after it was set up. As an experienced businessman  Wedgwood would prove to be a valuable asset in the Committee’s arsenal. He understood the value of publicity – he after all, was the man who had pioneered the idea of the money back guarantee and the benefits of the ‘By Appointment’ status of Royal patronage – and he now came to the Committee with a brilliant idea to help promote their cause. Better still, he had the means to bring his plan to fruition and was willing to pay for it out of his own pocket.

    Wedgwood proposed producing a classically inspired oval cameo based on the seal of the Committee. This showed a kneeling African slave in chains, imploring mercy or pity, with the motto ‘Am I Not a Man and a Brother?’ The idea appealed to the Committee and Wedgwood immediately got one of his best craftsmen, William Hackwood, to first model and then prepare for production what became known as the slave medallion. Hackwood used Wedgwood’s black jasper to represent the supplicant slave, set against a white or cream background in the same ceramic body, with the motto moulded in relief above and partly around the figure. Then, once the working moulds had been made, the medallion went into production. Thousands were made and Wedgwood immediately began sending them out – again out of his own pocket – to interested parties. Thomas Clarkson, writing years later, remembered receiving his first batch and recalled the instant and telling popularity the slave medallion enjoyed.

    ‘Mr Wedgwood made a liberal donation of these, when finished, among his friends. I received from him no less than five hundred of them myself. They, to whom they were sent, did not lay them up in their cabinets, but gave them away likewise. They were soon, like The Negro’s Complaint, in different parts of the kingdom. Some had them inlaid in gold on the lid of their snuff-boxes. Of the ladies, several wore them in bracelets, and others had them fitted up in an ornamental manner as pins for their hair. At length, the taste for wearing them became general; and thus fashion, which usually confines itself to worthless things, was seen for once in the honourable office of promoting the cause of justice, humanity, and freedom.’

    Most of the medallions were distributed via the Committee, but Wedgwood sent out many more himself, most notably in 1788 when he sent a package of the cameos across the Atlantic to Benjamin Franklin, an old acquaintance from the Lunar Society and at that time the president of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery. Wedgwood wrote ‘It gives me great pleasure to be embarked on this occasion in the same great and good cause with you and I ardently hope for the final completion of our wishes.’ Franklin replied, ‘I am persuaded [the medallion] may have an Effect equal to that of the best written Pamphlet in procuring favour to those oppressed people.’ Sadly for both, neither Franklin nor Wedgwood would live long enough to see those wishes fulfilled.

    Wedgwood continued to actively support the anti-slavery movement right up to his death in early 1795. He bought shares in a company set up to form a colony for freed slaves in Sierra Leone; befriended and advised William Wilberforce who would lead the parliamentary fight against slavery; and he paid for the printing and distribution of an anti-slavery pamphlet that the Committee produced. Offering to pay the cost for the production of a woodcut block, he advised them to head their pamphlet not with the advertisement they had originally planned, but with the woodcut, a reproduction of the same image of the kneeling slave that had inspired his own ceramic contribution to the cause.

    Reference: Thomas Clarkson, History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade, vol. II (1807).

    Website: Wedgwood Museum

  • Dickens, the Dodo and the Dinner Plate

    On 1 April 1852, the writer Charles Dickens wrote a letter to his wife Kate informing her ‘We think of going on tonight from Birmingham to Stoke upon Trent.’  Despite worries about the trains, it seems that he and a travelling companion arrived in Stoke the next morning. Here after gazing with some fascination at the town before him, the famous author (who at the time was also writing up weekly instalments of his longest book, Bleak House) spent a few hours at the Spode factory which was at that period owned by W. T. Copeland.

    Dickens started his tour of Copeland’s works by watching a thrower and his attendant swiftly and skilfully fashion a breakfast set for his amusement, watched jiggerers and pressers making bowls and basins and saw Parian statuettes being produced in moulds. He then explored the factory kilns, seeing the saggars being stacked prior to firing and mused on the constant cycle of heating and cooling that accompanied the manufacture of pottery. This was followed by visits to see transferers and decorators at work, producing willow pattern wares or fancier stuff, before moving on to the dipping shop for glazing and then to the placers carefully loading the ware into the appropriate saggers prior to them being loaded into the kilns he had seen earlier. Dickens seems to have enjoyed his tour and it was doubtless a thrill for the workers at the Copeland works to meet, albeit briefly, one of the biggest celebrities of the Victorian age and show him their own impressive skills. Armed with all he had seen and imbibing a good working knowledge of the history and process of pottery making, Charles Dickens moved on the next day to Stafford.

    Compared to the grime and industry of the Potteries that evidently spoke to his imagination, Dickens was bored with Stafford and rather rude about the place, ‘it is as dull and dead a town as any one could desire not to see’ he wrote tartly. He lodged at the Swan Inn, which he disparagingly nicknamed ‘the Dodo’ and where he apparently seemed doomed to spend a very dull evening indeed. According to the tale he told, though, he chanced to look at the bottom of a plate and saw the name ‘COPELAND’, which set him to musing on the previous day’s events. Employing a literary conceit, he then let the plate ‘remind’ him of all he had seen at Copeland’s pot bank, telling the story outlined above as a journey through its creation. The plate’s ‘recollections’ got Dickens through the evening, so he claimed, though one might suppose that he was actually quite busy putting his recollections down on paper. His clever bit of writing, ‘A Plated Article’, was published in the magazine Household Words, on 24 April 1852. 

  • A Crime of Passion

    In 1796, whilst visiting Brownhills Hall, near Burslem, the home of wealthy pottery manufacturer John Wood and his family, a young apothecary named Thomas Millward Oliver, became enamoured of the Wood’s teenage daughter Maria, a noted local beauty, who returned his affections. Oliver came of a respectable Stourbridge family and as a well-educated, popular and respected medical man locally, he would seem to have been the perfect suitor for Maria Wood. Certainly Oliver himself believed this and he thought at first that Mr Wood actively encouraged him in his courtship of the young woman. In this, though Oliver was mistaken and when John Wood learned of the affair he quickly put a stop to Oliver’s visits, professional or otherwise, and had forbidden the young couple to meet. This threw Thomas Oliver into a fit of lovelorn despair that festered for some time before coming to a head early the next year in the most dramatic fashion.

    Brownhills Hall, from an engraving made some years later.
    Source: John Ward, The Borough of Stoke-Upon Trent (1848)

    At 8 a.m., on 27 January 1797, Oliver arrived unannounced at Brownhills Hall and asked to see John Wood. Mr Wood was in bed, but on hearing of his visitor and thinking that the apothecary had come to present his final bill, he went to his Compting House behind the hall and asked his foreman William Bathwell to bring Oliver down to see him. Bathwell went, but returned without Oliver, who had sent word that he would wait for Mr Wood in the parlour. So, along with his foreman, a slightly puzzled Mr Wood returned to the hall to see what his visitor wanted. Here the two men greeted each other coolly, but politely, and as expected Oliver presented his bill, but hardly had he done so than he drew two pistols that he had recently borrowed from a neighbour and pointed one at Mr Wood, asking him to take it, possibly to fight a duel. Mr Wood refused and Oliver lowered the gun for a moment. Alarmed, Bathwell started to take Oliver to task over the pistols, but the apothecary brushed his comments aside and brought one gun up and saying “I wish to die here!” fired directly at Wood, who was struck in the right breast. Oliver then raised the second pistol, probably intending to shoot himself, but Bathwell threw himself on the man, knocked the gun from his hand and pinned his arms to his sides. Others in the house, alerted by the noise, soon rushed into the room to help the struggling foreman and tend to the injured man. The wounded Mr Wood was then quickly carried upstairs to his bed and a doctor was called for, while Oliver, now apparently aghast at what he had done, was handed over to the local constables.

    John Wood had been mortally wounded and died three days later, being buried in Burslem on 2 February 1797; he was only 50 years old. Oliver meanwhile was left languishing in Stafford Gaol until the Summer assizes that year. Here on a sweltering day in August, he was put on trial on a charge of murder and though many witnesses came forward to speak of his gentle nature and good deeds, or argued that the act took place due to temporary insanity, the evidence against him was overwhelming and Thomas Oliver was quickly sentenced to death. 

    During his time in prison, Oliver is said to have impressed everyone, prisoners and gaolers alike, with his courteous behaviour and his obedience of the rules. All were struck by the calm and dignified manner in which he accepted his fate and in which he finally met his end. On Monday 28 August 1797, he displayed this same calm manner as he mounted the scaffold above the prison gatehouse, bowing to the large crowd that had gathered below to watch. Moments later the noose was placed around his neck and the trap door opened. Apothecary Thomas Millward Oliver, aged just 28, died without a murmur. 

    Reference: Trial of T. Milward Oliver at Stafford Summer Assizes, 1797

  • What the Potteries Gave to Basketball

    The Trenton basketball team 1896-97. Fred Cooper is bottom left with the ball, his friend Al Bratton is bottom right.

    In 1896, Frederick Cooper, a distant American cousin of mine, earned himself a place in the history books through the simple act of accepting a fee. Several years earlier, a dynamic new game called basketball had been invented that was gaining a strong following in the various YMCAs on America’s east coast. Fred, already a keen sportsman had like many others quickly warmed to the game, becoming the star player and captain of the highly successful Trenton YMCA team that for the previous three years had dominated the emerging leagues. At first the new game had been played for fun and entertainment, but the groundswell of support soon saw seats being sold for popular teams and inevitably the money trickled back to the players that the crowds wanted to see. The result was that in 1896 Fred was the first to accept payment for a game and in doing so became the world’s first professional basketball player.

    Though he would make his name in the United States, Fred Cooper was actually born at 21 Bethesda Street, Shelton on 25 March 1874, the fifth of seven children – six boys and one girl – born to Thomas Cooper and Ann, nee Simpson. Fred’s father, Thomas, had started out as a working potter but over the years had moved into small scale pottery manufacture. However, in the mid-1880s, in the wake of what was later described in Fred’s obituary as ‘some business reverses’, Thomas and Ann decided to emigrate and join their eldest child, William who was already settled in the States, working at the Greenwood Pottery in Trenton, New Jersey. The Coopers left Britain early in 1886, travelling as steerage passengers (i.e. 3rd class) aboard the SS England, arriving at New York on 27 May 1886, from where they made the relatively short journey south west across the state to Trenton. As it turned out, Thomas would only enjoy his new home in America for a few years, dying in 1891 at the age of 56, but his wife and children settled into their new lives and over time became valued members of the local community.

    Trenton, New Jersey, USA

    On arriving in the States, Fred and his younger brother Albert, or ‘Al’ as he became best known, had been enrolled in the Centennial School where they soon got involved in sports and stood out as skilled footballers, a game their father had taught them. Fred especially proved to be an all-round sportsman, also taking up baseball, competitive running and later becoming a fine billiards player and a good bowler. His successes, though were at first eclipsed by his older brother, Arthur, who back in Britain had been such a skilled footballer that in the early to mid 1880s he played for Stoke F.C.’s junior team, Stoke Swifts. Arthur seems to have stayed behind for a year after the rest of the family emigrated, perhaps to help the Swifts in their attempt to win the junior league cup. Once this was over though, in 1887, he too took a ship to the States, but not before being presented with a handsome medallion by his team mates and the club. Once in the States, Arthur’s success had continued, and it was not long before he was picked as a member of the All-America soccer team.

    While his brother’s career blossomed, Fred left school and found work as a sanitary-ware presser at one of Trenton’s pot banks, a job he would do for the better part of three decades. He continued to pursue his love of sport in his spare time through the local YMCA, which acted as a youth club for boys and young men of religious families like the Coopers. Here he found a kindred spirit in another keen footballer named Al Bratton, with whom he seems to have formed a winning partnership, not only on the football pitch, but also when the two of them decided to try their hand at the new game of basketball that was sweeping through the YMCA branches. Only a few years had passed since Canadian-born training instructor James Naismith had dreamt up the indoor game to placate a group of YMCA trainees at the School for Christian Workers, Springfield, Massachusetts, who had been chafing at their inactivity during the long winter months. Though rough-hewn at first, with early games resembling pitched battles between oversized teams, basketball proved an immediate hit and when Naismith published an article on the game it was quickly taken up by YMCA branches along America’s east coast. Soon, matches were drawing sizeable crowds and more and more teams sprang up, one of which was Trenton YMCA.

    Fred Cooper and Al Bratton first joined the Trenton YMCA basketball team for the 1893-94 season and had an immediate and lasting impact on how the game was played. In those early days, basketball was a game of individual dribblers working their way through the opposition before attempting a shot at the basket, a method that favoured heavy-set players who could push their way through the field. According to one of basketball’s early chroniclers, Cooper and Bratton changed this, creating a more fluid game by drawing on their footballing skills to develop a system of short, swift passes between them on the run, a style of play that completely unbalanced opposing teams.

    ‘The Trenton system of passing was definite. It meant to carry the ball to the opponent’s basket in order that a goal might be scored, and time and again I have seen Cooper and Bratton in those early days, pass the ball back and forth between them – no one else touching it – and score against all the efforts of the entire opposing team. I have seen them do this trick away from home and witnessed the spectators rise en masse and cheer the brilliant exhibition in spite of the fact that it was being done by invading players.’

    For the next three seasons, the Trenton YMCA dominated the game in New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania by which time Fred was the team captain and unofficial coach. Despite his refinements to the game, rough play characterised basketball in those free-wheeling and largely unregulated years, with physical injuries being an all too common feature of play, both on and off the court. Not only was there brawling between players, but partisan crowds took whatever opportunities came their way to try and injure or discomfort the rival team and as a result fighting between players and spectators was not unusual. Though the YMCA had quickly lauded Naismith’s new game for promoting a useful spirit of ‘muscular Christianity’ – a healthy body breeding a healthy mind – the rough-housing and unsportsmanlike behaviour drew the Association’s displeasure and increasingly basketball teams deserted the YMCA gyms, or were ousted by outraged officials and had to find other venues to play in.

    Warren Street, Trenton, with the Masonic Temple nearest the camera.

    Such seems to have been the case at the Trenton YMCA. Unspecified ‘trouble in the gymnasium’, followed by a string of disagreements between the branch secretary and the YMCA team saw the basketball players shifting their base to the Masonic Temple, a large building in downtown Trenton. Here the team made use of the large reception room on the top floor, where a 12 feet high mesh fence with gates at either end was built enclosing the court. This ‘cage’ was a new innovation, built to stop the ball going out of play so readily and prevent some of the troubles caused by resultant clashes with spectators. The Trenton team were the first to employ this device and though its use eventually fell out of favour, its early employment coined the term ‘cager’ as a snappy way to refer to a basketball player, a term that is apparently still in use today.

    It was in this cage that Fred Cooper and his team mates made history by playing what is presumed to be the first professional basketball game on 7 November 1896, against Brooklyn YMCA. The game had been advertised in a local paper three days earlier (another first) and provisions were made for a sizeable crowd, raised seating being built around the court. Seats were priced at 25c, standing room cost 15c. Nor would the organisers be disappointed by the turn out, ‘a large and fashionable audience’ of 700 turning up to watch.

    The Trenton team came out smartly dressed in red sleeveless tops, black knickerbockers and stockings and white ankle shoes. There were seven in each team, two forwards, a centre, two side centres and two defenders. This was before the days of the tall men in basketball, all of them being average sized, Fred himself was only 5 feet, 7 inches tall. In accordance with the practice of the time, the home team supplied the referee and the visitors chose the umpire.

    The game started with seven minutes of ‘fierce playing’ before Newt Bugbee, one of Trenton’s side centres scored the first goal. Fred did not disappoint either, leading the scoring by gaining six points for three baskets, while a player named Simonson scored Brooklyn’s only point with a free throw three minutes before the game finished. Trenton’s team played the full 40 minutes, while Brooklyn had one substitution. The final score was a 16-1 victory for Trenton.

    Following the game, Trenton’s manager hosted a supper for both teams at the Alhambra Restaurant, where the Trenton players received their historic payment. There has been some disputing the amount actually paid to the players after the various expenses were deducted, but the accepted version of events was that quoted in Fred’s obituary in 1955. ‘All the players collected $15  each, but Fred Cooper was the captain and manager (sic) and was paid off first. Thus he became the first professional basketball player in the world. He was proud of this distinction all his life.’

    Many versions of the story add that Fred as the captain was also paid a dollar more than his compatriots, which if true also made him the game’s first highest paid player. Also, the ‘professional’ status is perhaps somewhat fuzzy as he still worked as a potter; semi-professional, might be more accurate. That argument aside, it started a trend that would lead to the fully professional game seen today.

    As they had with the new swift style of play and Trenton’s ‘cage’, other teams quickly followed Trenton down the professional route. This in turn led to the formation in 1898 of the first professional league, the National Basketball League, which Trenton under Fred Cooper’s captaincy promptly dominated, winning the first two NBL titles. By this time the team had been joined by Fred’s younger brother, Albert. Tall and handsome and as skilled as his brother, Al Cooper proved to be an accomplished goal scorer and easily the best player in the new league.

    Despite their successes, during the first few NBL seasons, Fred was growing disillusioned with the Trenton team. His brother Al and Harry Stout, Trenton’s top scorer did not get along, while the team’s co-owners had also had a falling out. Keen for a fresh start, at the beginning of the 1900-1901 season, he quit the Trenton squad to coach a new team in nearby Burlington. The result, though, was embarrassing. Though Fred was an excellent coach, his new team lacked Trenton’s pool of of talented players, the result being that Burlington lost its first eight games before Fred gave up. He was immediately snapped up to coach the Bristol team, before going on to coach at Princeton University between 1904-1906. It was not until 1910 that Fred returned to coach the struggling Trenton Eastern Basketball League team and did so successfully, winning the EBL title the following year. He was replaced as the coach the next year, but returned to coach Trenton one more time ten years later. His last stint as a team coach was at Rider College in the 1920s.

    Fred and Catherine and their eldest children Thomas and Mabel.
    Photo courtesy of Susan Corrigan.

    Alongside his sporting career, Fred enjoyed a happy family and social life. In 1901, he had married Catherine Carr and the couple had three children. Like his siblings he was an active member of the Trenton community, becoming in time a church elder, and a member of various local and national patriotic orders and Masonic lodges. As noted earlier he had worked for many years as a sanitary-ware presser at the Enterprise Pottery, which generously allowed him time off for his coaching duties, but he quit his job in 1922, when on the strength of his sporting career, he was offered a position as a director of local sports grounds, a posting that eventually led to him becoming head of the city recreation department.

    Fred Cooper died in January 1955 at the age of 80, being buried in Greenwood Cemetery, Trenton. The local paper gave him a fulsome obituary, while the National Basketball Association,  heir to the early leagues that Fred and others had helped to forge, did not forget its pioneering sportsman. In February 1955, the NBA presented the city of Trenton with a bronze plaque in honour of Fred and his ground-breaking professional match, which was placed on the site of Trenton’s old Masonic Temple.

    The memorial plaque to the first professional match.
    Photo courtesy of Grace Cooper


    Reference: Robert W. Peterson, Cages to Jump Shots: Pro Basketball’s Early Years (New York, 1990) pp. 32-37.  Obituary, Trenton Evening Times, 7 January 1955. 

    Family information courtesy of Grace Cooper and Susan Corrigan.

    Website: Pro Basketball Encyclopedia.

  • 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)