Potted Histories

Tag: Tunstall

  • Soprano: The Musical Career of Lily Lonsdale

    Elizabeth Longsdale, alias Lily Lonsdale

    Born in Pitts Hill, Tunstall in 1878, Elizabeth Longsdale came from a musical family, her father William was a potter, but served as the choir master at Christ Church, Tunstall, and several other family members such as her brother Wilson, would make their names locally as singers. It was Elizabeth, though, who under the alliterative stage name of Lily Lonsdale, would become the most famous, carving a notable career in the music halls of Britain and abroad.

    Elizabeth started her singing career as a soloist at local concerts and enjoyed a spell with the North Stafford Amateur Operatic Society before turning professional when she joined Thomas Tomkinson’s Gypsy Children. This was a local choir turned concert party that was composed of talented children and adolescents that had gained quite a following in the Potteries. The troupe served as a training ground for several local performers who later went onto greater things, most notably Gertrude Mary Astbury who as Gertie Gitana would become one of the best know stars of the music halls. Elizabeth (now billed as ‘Lily Lonsdale’) shone just as brightly, impressing audiences with her beautiful, well-modulated voice and garnering great praise. By 1897, the troupe had moved beyond the Potteries and began touring the Midlands and Wales, performing in various venues like theatres and town halls, supported by parents and helpers who assisted with logistics and costumes.

    Ernie Myers

    By mid 1899, Lily now in her early 20s was getting too old for child roles, and she was also romantically involved with Ernie Myers, a comedian from the troupe. However, her initial attempts for a career shift suffered a setback. After leaving the Royal Gipsy Children, she joined a rival troupe, Leon Vint’s Globe Choir, but soon had to resign due to vocal strain. This set her at odds with Vint, who after first agreeing to let her go then changed tack and took Lily and her sister Agnes to court for breech of contract. However, once in court, the judge deemed that Vint had acted unfairly and that the contract was far too heavily-weighted in his favour and as a result he ruled in Lily and her sister’s favour and they went on their way unhindered, leaving Vint with the costs for his bully-boy behaviour. Lily made a brief return to the ranks of the Royal Gypsy Children, but following the unexpected death in late January 1900 of Thomas Tomkinson the troupe’s founder, she and Ernie decided to set out on their own, securing an agent and booking early performances on the music hall circuit; they married in Liverpool in April 1901 whilst on tour. Shortly afterwards they were put on the so-called Moss and Thornton tour, taking in a series of theatres and musical halls across Ireland, northern England and Scotland.

    In 1901, Lily took a short break to have their son, Jacob William, but hard economics often meant that family life came second to their performing careers. Leaving their son with Lily’s mother, they resumed a busy schedule of public performances across Britain, building their careers. They used their stage names and normally performed separately, with Ernie as a popular ‘patter’ comedian telling amusing stories and Lily as a classical soprano singer, though occasionally she took on comedy roles in sketches opposite her husband. They shared the stage with various entertainers, including conjurors, ventriloquists, impressionists, acrobats, marksmen, puppeteers, clowns, jugglers, dancers and performing animals as well as other comedians and singers. An undoubted highlight of their careers was performing on the same bill as the famous American escapologist Harry Houdini in 1905, when he was on a tour of Britain.

    The demands of travel and performing were tough; they worked six nights a week, with Lily often singing multiple songs per show, and she and Ernie were constantly in search of fresh material. During winters, they performed in pantomimes together, with Ernie playing the villain in “Aladdin” and Lily as the princess.

    By 1911, their careers were going well and the couple lived comfortably in Derby with their daughter Lillian May and son Jack who were cared for by Lily’s mother. In August of that year, they were invited to perform in South Africa but returned by December. Their routine continued until 1914 when they travelled back to South Africa. Sadly, Ernie fell ill and died on the ship before reaching port, leaving Lily heartbroken and reliant on support from the theatre community in Cape Town. After Ernie’s funeral she stayed on to complete her contract, then she returned to Britain to support her family amid the challenges of the Great War.

    Despite wartime difficulties, Lily found work in successful and topical revues like Mind Your Own Business and My Son Sammy, and whilst on tour the theatre company would often lay on special performances for wounded soldiers in hospitals, which proved very popular. Her career flourished through the war and after, but away from the limelight her mother’s declining health was a worry. In May 1920, Lily suffered a nervous breakdown due to exhaustion and stress, and shortly afterwards her mother passed away, leading to another break from performances.

    Lily pictured in her obituary

    Over the next five years, Lily remained active but by her late 40s, probably as a result of her arduous lifestyle, her health began to suffer. Her career ended suddenly in August 1928 when she collapsed on stage in Wolverhampton. Although she finished her performance, she was taken to the hospital and she never really recovered. Lily died on 2 March 1929, aged 49, at the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary. There were short obituaries to the singer in the Sentinel and in a couple of Derby papers over the next couple of days, but that was the limit of the press coverage. She was buried at Derby’s Nottingham Road Cemetery four days later.

    Reference: Staffordshire Sentinel, 8 March 1929.

  • Smith Child – Admiral of the Blue

    The deck of an 18th century warship.
    Illustration by W. H. Overend.

    Smith Child, later an admiral in the Royal Navy, who also dabbled locally in the pottery industry, was born at the family seat of Boyles Hall, Audley in early 1729, and baptised in the local church on 15 May that year. He was the eldest son of Smith Child of Audley and the wealthy heiress Mary nee Baddeley, whose family had a long Staffordshire pedigree. The Childs by contrast were originally a Worcestershire family, one branch of which had migrated to North Staffordshire, settling in Audley. They had once possessed considerable property, but most of this had been lost by the future admiral’s father, whom local historian John Ward described as ‘a man of polished manners, but wasteful in his habits’. His marriage to Mary Baddeley was therefore quite a coup by which his family inherited several of the Baddeley estates that his eldest boy, Smith, would inherit.

    Enjoying the patronage of the politician Earl Gower as well as Vice-Admiral Lord George Anson, young Smith Child was entered the navy in 1747, serving aboard HMS Chester under Captain Sir Richard Spry. He was commissioned lieutenant on 7 November 1755 whilst serving in the Mediterranean aboard the Unicorn under Captain Matthew Buckle, and returned home to become a junior lieutenant aboard the ancient Nore guardship Princess Royal commanded by Captain Richard Collins. He served as a lieutenant on several more ships during the Seven Years War seeing action aboard the 3rd rate HMS Devonshire at the siege of Louisbourg in North America in 1758, then on the much smaller frigate HMS Kennington. Child is said to have also seen service the siege of Pondicherry, India, during 1760-1761.

    A distant view of  Newfield Hall, left.

    After the war ended in 1763, like many officers Lieutenant Child returned home and from this point in his life that he settled down in the Potteries. He erected a large pottery factory in Tunstall, that between 1763-1790 produced a range of earthenware goods. The following year he married Margaret Roylance of Newfield, Staffordshire, acquiring a significant estate from her family. Initially he lived with his wife at Newcastle-Under-Lyme, but the following year he inherited his uncle’s seat, Newfield Hall, Tunstall, a large three-storey house with a five-bay entrance front and seven-bay side elevation, that enjoyed impressive views over much of the Potteries. In 1770, he moved into the hall rebuilding it and in his time on shore cultivated a keen interest in agricultural and other useful pursuits. Here the Childs lived a happy life and raised their five sons: Thomas, who as a midshipman was drowned at sea in 1782; John George whose son later became heir to the family estates; Smith who died without children; and Roylance and Baddeley, whose names recalled their most recent family history. But it was a short interlude in his naval career as at the beginning of what became the American War of Independence in 1775, Smith Child was recalled into service and early in 1777, was sent to take command of the hospital ship Nightingale in the Thames. Later that year he was promoted commander of the store ship HMS Pacific on 30 October 1777, taking the ship out to North America in the summer of 1778.

    He was posted captain on 15 May 1780, taking temporary command of the Raisonnable, but in August 1780 in the most important move of his career, Captain Child was given command of the 64-gun HMS Europe and took part in two important sea battles for the control of the strategic Chesapeake Bay. His enemies here would not be American sailors (the American rebels barely possessed a navy), but the French, who had weighed in heavily on side of the Americans, effectively funding and supplying the rebellion in retaliation for the defeat and loss of Canada to Britain in the Seven Years War. As part of Admiral Marriot Arbuthnot’s fleet, Child participated in the Battle of Cape Henry on 16 March in which the British fought off a French fleet attempting to enter the Bay. Positioned in the vanguard of Arbuthnot’s fleet, Europe was one of three ships left exposed by the admiral’s poor tactics, losing eight crewmen killed and 19 wounded to the punishing French bombardment. The British won this round despite their casualties, but the vital waterway would be the scene of one more dramatic fight. 

    A typical third rate ship of the line like Child’s ship HMS Europe.

    This was the Battle of Chesapeake Bay, also known as the Battle of the Virginia Capes, fought against a slightly larger French fleet on 5 September 1781, when HMS Europe along with the 74-gun HMS Montagu, formed the leading part of the centre division of Admiral Sir Thomas Graves’ fleet, and was heavily involved in the fighting that ensued. These two ships suffered considerable damage in the intense two-hour battle. Child’s report after the battle lists numerous masts and spars damaged or shot through, twelve shots struck the hull while there was much damage to the upper works, including splintered decking and fife rails at the base of the masts broken to bits; the rigging and shrouds were also badly cut up and three gun carriages had been damaged, one beyond repair. Europe had taken a pounding, ‘the ship strains and makes water’ Child’s report noted. There was a human cost too, nine members of her crew were killed in the action, and a further 18 wounded.

    Outgunned and battered by the encounter, the British fleet eventually withdrew from the action, finally losing control of the bay and the ability to keep their ground troops supplied with food and ammunition. This sorry state of affairs soon after resulted in the Franco-American victory at Yorktown, the knock-on effect of which saw the withdrawal of British forces from the war and Britain’s eventual recognition of the newly-founded United States of America. This outcome was no discredit to Smith Child, though, who had fought well and his standing in the navy enabled him to obtain preferment for most of Europe’s officers when the ship returned home and was paid off in March 1782.

    Peace was declared in 1783 and for the next six years Smith Child served at home. However, on the continent, more trouble was brewing when in 1789 the French Revolution broke out across the channel. Though confined to France, the bloody revolution would be the catalyst for a renewed bout of Anglo-French rivalry that started in 1792, when after defeating an invading Prussian led army at Valmy, the new French Republic launched an invasion of the Netherlands. The next year the deposed French King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette were executed which caused outrage amongst the royal families and governments of Europe and brought Britain into the coalition that had formed to defeat the Republic. With a new war to fight, the Royal Navy – now a much fitter beast than during the American war – was again expanding and called in many of its old officers to fill in the gaps; this included Smith Child.

    After serving for some time in the Impress Service at Liverpool, in November 1795, Smith Child was given command of the HMS Commerce de Marseille, a huge French-built ship that had been surrendered to the Royal Navy in the 1793 Siege of Toulon. The ship, originally a 118-gun three-decker, at first seemed well built like most French vessels and an early report stated that she sailed as well as a frigate, but her construction gave the ship an unacceptably deep draft while her internal framing was found to be inadequate for the high seas and the hull suffered serious strain when sailing. Deemed unworthy of a major overhaul, the vessel had been quickly downgraded and remained languishing at anchor at Spithead until the autumn of 1795. She then underwent a partial repair, and was armed and equipped for sea. Shortly afterwards, however, the guns on her first and second decks were sent on shore again, the redundant gun ports were sealed up and she was converted to a store and transport ship. The ship was then loaded with 1,000 men and stores for transport, drawing a whopping 29 feet when fully laden. The ship was tasked as part of a large convoy of some 200 transports escorted by 8 ships of the line under Rear Admiral Christian, that was supposedly on a secret mission to the West Indies that would soon become much less secret after the disaster awaiting it off shore.

    Child’s ship was in poor condition before sailing and she was damaged beyond repair when shortly after the fleet had set out, on 17 and 18 November the English Channel was struck by a violent storm of nigh on hurricane strength. This sent Admiral Christian and his escort squadron running to Spithead for cover while the transport fleet was scattered, some sinking, others being driven ashore and wrecked. Some two hundred bodies were washed ashore after the storm and the fleet was left so disordered that it was not ready to make another attempt until early December, which was again battered by a fearsome storm. The Commerce de Marseille, though, would not be among them, because as a result of the first storm, ‘… this castle of a store-ship was driven back to Portsmouth; and, from the rickety state of her upper-works, and the great weight of her lading, it was considered a miracle that she escaped foundering. The Commerce-de-Marseille re-landed her immense cargo, and never went out of harbour again.’

    18th Century naval officers and crewmen.

    Child had commanded his last ship and after such a clunker he was perhaps glad of it. He was promoted to Rear Admiral on 14 February 1799, but it was a nominal rank and he apparently saw no further sea service. Subsequently promoted to Vice Admiral on 23 April 1804, and Admiral of the Blue (the junior position in the rank of full admiral) on 31 July 1810.

    At home, as well as being a noted pottery manufacturer, Admiral Child served at times as a Justice of the Peace for Staffordshire, a Deputy-Lieutenant of the county, and was a highly respected member of the local landed aristocracy. He died of gout of the stomach on 21 January 1813 at Newfield aged 84, and was buried in St. Margaret’s Church, Wolstanton, under a plain tombstone. His son and heir John had died two years previously, so Smith Child’s estate passed to his five year-old grandson who would later become the Conservative M.P, and noted philanthropist Sir Smith Child.

    Reference: The Graves Papers and Other Documents Relating to the Naval Operations of the Yorktown Campaign, July to October 1781, (New York, 1916) p. 67 and p.73. William James, The Naval History of Great Britain, Vol.1 (London, 1837), p.253. John Ward, The Borough of Stoke-Upon-Trent (1843) pp. 85-86.

  • Zeppelins Over the Potteries

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

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

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

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

    German airship designer Count Zeppelin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • 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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  • Last Stand at Isandlwana

    The Battle of Isandhlwana by Charles Edwin Fripp

    Following the British invasion of the independent Zulu Kingdom in Southern Africa in January 1879, a force of over 1,700 men, mostly from the 24th Regiment of Foot, was camped at the foot of a sphinx-shaped rocky hill called Isandlwana. Here on 22 January, they were attacked by a Zulu army some 20,000 to 25,000 strong that they had supposed to be many miles away. As the Zulu warriors swarmed down from hills to the north and spread out in a wide arc to envelope them, the 24th Foot and numerous colonial units moved forward and formed a line to face the enemy and for some time – in the centre at least – they did successfully hold their ground, keeping the Zulus at bay with concentrated volley and cannon fire. In trying to keep in contact with a mounted force to the east, though, the main British line became fatally over-extended and in danger of being outflanked. Seeing this, Colonel Pulleine the officer commanding the camp ordered his forces to fall back to a more defensible position in front of the hill, but it was a fatal move. When the gunfire slackened the Zulus in the centre seized the moment and rushed forward in pursuit while those out on the plain soon outpaced and outflanked the British line to the east, rushing in on the camp and behind the retiring blocks of infantry, cutting off their escape. Chaos ensued as the British line disintegrated and the battle then degenerated into a mass of isolated fights with knots of redcoats surrounded by masses of Zulus. Some 400 men, mostly mounted troops, managed to escape the resulting slaughter before the end, but over 1,300 men perished on the British side, including nearly the entire 1/24th and a company of the 2/24th Foot. The Battle of Isandlwana became the worst defeat ever suffered by the British army at the hands of a native foe and for the time at least it effectively stopped the invasion of Zululand in its tracks.

    The stained glass window and grave memorialising Private William Hickin.
    The stained glass window and grave memorials to Private William Henry Hickin.

    Several local men were killed in the action. In the ranks of the 1/24th were 25 year old Private William Henry Hickin from Hanley; the son of one Henry Hickin a local locksmith and bell hanger, William had previously worked as a writing clerk before enlisting in early 1876. Private George Glass 1/24th aged 22 from Shelton, was the son of a local school master and had briefly worked as a potter and joined the army in 1874. Private Enoch Worthington 1/24th from Kidsgrove, was 24 and had been a miner like his father before him; he enlisted in Newcastle in 1875. Private Samuel Plant 1/24th was an older man from Shelton, who had joined the 24th Foot in 1859, married in 1862 and prior to serving in Southern Africa he had served for a year on St Helena.

    In the 2/24th, former potter Sergeant William Shaw from Tunstall, was about 32 years old. After joining the army in 1870 he was promoted corporal in 1873 and sergeant in 1877. He had married locally before joining the army, had four children and had served in India and Britain before being sent to Southern Africa. His wife Emma and their children had come with him on this tour of duty and were lodged in King William’s Town, Cape Colony, far away from Zululand. Private Samuel Poole, 2/24th is something of an enigma as several possible candidates of that name were born in Audley, Kidsgrove or Newcastle, but there is no clear evidence if any of these are our man, all we know is merely that a man of that name enlisted in Hanley on 27 April 1875 aged 21 years. Records state that he served in G Company 2/24th. Private David Pritchard 2/24th, was from Stoke-upon-Trent though no one of that name appears in the civil records so that may have been an alias. He claimed to have worked as a forgeman before joining up in 1865 and he went on to see service in India. Aged about 34 at the time of the Zulu War, records say he served in B Company, but that was the company left at Rorke’s Drift, so he had probably been transferred to G Company.

    The most interesting of these local victims of Isandlwana from a historian’s point of view, is Sergeant William Shaw of the 2/24th, as evidence exists giving us a glimpse into his fate that day. According to the notebook of Corporal John Bassage 2/24th, now held at the Royal Regiment of Wales Museum, who was part of the force sent to bury the dead in June 1879 after the war was over, the remains of Sergeant Shaw and three private soldiers of the 2/24th were found together in a heap on the battlefield. The four men caught out in the open appeared to have formed into a small group in a last desperate attempt to try and fend off the Zulus as they poured into the camp. All seemed to have been stabbed to death with assegais.

    Staffordshire Sentinel and Commercial & General Advertiser – Saturday 8 March 1879, p.5

    In a report in the Sentinel noting Shaw’s death in action, it was stated that there were hopes of raising a memorial to him and all the Tunstall men killed in South Africa. This, though, never seems to have come to pass and of all the men mentioned above only one appears to have been commemorated locally. In December 1880 at St John’s Church in Hanley, a stained glass window was dedicated to the memory of 25 year old Private William Henry Hickin, whose father was a churchwarden there. Hickin was further commemorated on his grandfather and aunt’s gravestone in Hanley Cemetery. Private Hickin is in fact the only ‘other ranks’ casualty of the Battle of Isandlwana remembered with a memorial window.

    One other local soldier who who was initially listed as a casualty was Private Frederick Butler from Shelton and son of the proprietor of the Bell and Bear Inn. He was a soldier of the 1/24th but prior to the invasion he had been transferred to the Imperial Mounted Infantry, Though initially listed as a casualty of the battle, Butler was in fact many miles away with his new unit serving in another invasion column that saw action at the battle of Nyezane on the same day as Isandlwana. He survived the war, rejoined his own unit once the fighting was over and later returned to the Potteries.


    Reference: Staffordshire Sentinel, various issues March-May 1879. My thanks to Ken Ray for his detailed list and information on the local men killed at Isandlwana and to Alan Rouse for family and background information on Sergeant Shaw.

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