45. "Intense love of the hills": 1850s

The Hopkinson boys' earliest experience of hills and fells was on visits to Skipton.  In the summer of 1856 Alice wrote to John that she was taking long walks with the eldest three – John, who was 7 at the end of July, Alfred who had recently had his fifth birthday and Ellen aged nearly 3 – and their nursemaid

Nelly requires a good deal of carrying and Alfred a helping hand.  Johnny bounds away like a wild one. [1]

In old age Alfred remembered

As early as the age of five I recall going up the River Aire to Gordale Scar, than which there is no more impressive scene in the country.  To a young child the grandeur of it was almost overpowering.  And then came the delight of climbing up the rocks at the side of the falls and crossing the moor to the great Cove above Malham. [2]

William Cecil Slingsby on Vesle Skagastølstind
with Storen in the background 1908

It was when they were in Skipton that the boys first went out on the moors with one of their future mountaineering companions, William Cecil Slingsby (1849-1929), always known as Cecil.  He was their second cousin, part of the Skipton cousinage – his grandfather Isaac Dewhurst and the Hopkinsons' grandfather John Dewhurst were brothers.  

One of Cecil's earliest great expeditions to Norway was in 1874 with Algernon Dewhurst, Bonny Dewhurst's son, so we can probably assume that there was quite a small gang of Dewhurst cousins going out together on the uplands of Craven.  Alfred wrote Cecil's obituary for the Alpine Journal, explaining to readers 

I knew Slingsby for nearly 70 years, from the time when as boys we walked together over Pen-y-ghent and the hills of Craven.  [3]

Cecil had written the Alpine Journal obituaries for Alfred's brother John and for John's son Bertram, remembering 

Every member of my generation of my cousins, the Hopkinsons, has been endowed from earliest childhood with an intense love of the hills, a love which deepened naturally as years rolled on.  This was inherited from their father, as was the case with me and my father.  In boyhood days I had many a good walk with a few climbs thrown in amongst the fells of Craven

And when he wrote Charles Hopkinson's obituary for the Journal in 1920, he explained the intense love of the hills was inherited "from both of their parents".  [4]  Walking on the hills and fells of Craven, just as their mother Alice had done from childhood, was the beginning of the Hopkinson brothers' lives as mountaineers and their love of it was nurtured by both their parents.

John and Alice's habits were clearly frugal and their way of life struck Evelyn Oldenbourg as austere, but they certainly put a high value on their annual holidays, though the whole large family did not always holiday together.

In June 1857, John took the two oldest boys John and Alfred to the Lake District to join his sister Alice Wills, now a 30 year old mother of two little boys, and her husband Henry.  John wrote to his Alice on 18 June 1857 from Grasmere

We had yesterday another famous time on the mountains.  Alfred, Johnnie, Henry, Alice and myself set off to walk over the pass by Grisedale tarn between Helvellyn and Fairfield to Patterdale understanding the distance was six miles.  And so it is, but as the crow flies or a direct line on the map.  By the road it is certainly nine miles beside the ascent of some 1,600 feet – as it is one of the highest passes.  They all managed it comfortably.  Alfred coming in at a run. [5]

Alfred's memory was still vivid many years later

When I was six my father took us to the Lake District for the first time and we bathed in Easedale Tarn, climbed Helm Crag under his guidance, and another day reached the top of Fairfield with some friends.  A boy's whole spirit was filled with the joy of the first ascent of one of the higher mountains and the widespread view around.  [6]

At least two of Alice Wills' sons became mountaineers, and it seems likely that they climbed with the Hopkinson brothers.  Her third son Maitland was at Cambridge at the same time as Edward Hopkinson and his death must have been one of the Hopkinson family's earliest experiences of climbing fatalities.  Maitland died at the age of 27 in an accident in Wales in April 1885.  He had walked to Aber with a younger brother and a friend, and they were descending by the Aber waterfall when Maitland, who had been jumping from crag to crag, sprang, lost his balance and fell about 50 feet into a pool below.  He died instantly.  But this was not the first climbing tragedy in the Wills family.  His 14 year old cousin William Wills had been found dead on Newquay beach two years earlier; they thought he had been climbing the cliff.  

In 1859, two years after the holiday in the Lakes, John took Johnnie, now nearly 10, and Alfred, who would very soon be 8, to join his sister Elizabeth Rooker and her family at Llangollen in the valley of the River Dee.  John and Alice's entire holiday philosophy can be found in this little exchange:  Alice wrote to John on 19 June

I was quite grieved to find that your Bible was not put in the box. I understood, when I enquired, that the Bible and testaments were there.  I like the dear boys to hear or read some portion of God's word every day

while on the same day he was writing to her

The dear boys greatly enjoy the scenery and are learning something every step.  I like their companionship and am glad to have them find their best pleasures in their parents' society … We are just going to have a Bible lesson, having borrowed one from the landlady [7]

Very observant and knowledgeable himself, John had the rare ability of "finding little forms of life of all sorts", as his granddaughter Ellen Ewing later put it, and making them interesting for children without in any way making them feel they were being taught or lectured.  Alfred called this "having attention directed to anything of interest without any obtrusive attempt at giving lessons on any subject".  [8]

At Llangollen they had the Berwyn Range and the beautiful Clwydian Range of hills to explore, and their cousins, 12 year old Alice and Marian (whom John calls May), who was the same age as Alfred, to play with.  On 20 June John wrote

The cousins are very happy together.  May and Alfred are well matched and Alice and Johnnie equally distinguished by their own individuality.  [9]

The Parade, Llanfairfechan between 1890 & 1900

The following years saw seaside holidays.  In July 1861, when the children were recovering from whooping cough, we find the family at Abergele on the North Wales coast, easily reached by train from Manchester, and where there were shingle and sandy beaches and wooded hills.  Alice's letters home ask for old slippers to protect feet from the stones on the seashore.  But from 1863 they took their holidays at Penmaenmawr or nearby Llanfairfechan, where the younger children could play on the beach and John could take the older boys up into the hills and mountains.

In 1862, however, they had a holiday at Sunderland Point on the Lancashire coast.  It was to prove rather too memorable.

Notes

[1] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910 (1948) ed. Mary Hopkinson and her niece Lady Ewing, with a Preface by Sir Gerald Hurst, K.C., p. 26

[2] Sir Alfred Hopkinson, K.C., LL.D., Penultima (1930) pub. Martin Hopkinson Ltd, p. 225

[3] Alpine Journal 1929, Vol 41 

[4] Alpine Journal, November 1920 Vol. XXXIII, No. 221

[5] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910, p. 27

[6] Penultima, p. 226

[7] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910, p. 30

[8] Penultima, p. 226

[9] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910, p. 30

44. Visiting the Dewhursts in Skipton

Frequent visits were paid to family – these were bonds that were highly valued by them all.  For the first fifteen years of her marriage, Alice's main concern in her trips to Skipton was seeing her parents.  They died in 1864 and 1865, so that her younger children had no memory of them.

Alfred remembered his grandfather every time he voted.  John Dewhurst, a supporter of the Whigs (forerunners of the Liberals), boosted his party by creating more votes for them – he transferred to relatives undivided shares in two or three cottages in Skipton to create more "forty-shilling freeholder" votes.  Alfred benefited from this for years, and had a vote in Skipton as a "forty-shilling freeholder" until that property qualification was abolished in 1918.  (As Alfred thought "One man, one vote" was an absurd idea, this rather underhand scheme seemed entirely right to him [1])

Alfred's elder brother John was 15 when their grandfather died.  He talked of him to his own son Bertram, who wrote in his memoir of his father [2] 

As John knew him, he was a fine old Yorkshireman, impetuous, even fiery, but possessed of the kindest of hearts.  He was much troubled with rheumatism, but he fought his malady with the most indomitable courage and tenacity.  His grandson had a vivid recollection of his hobbling round his garden, determined not to give in to his infirmity.

Possibly old John Dewhurst?

Mary was only seven when John Dewhurst died but she had

childish recollections of our Grandfather, with snow white hair, sitting in the chimney corner, smoking his long "church warden" [pipe] and our grandmother looking very old but very happy in a high backed rocking chair near the table, busy with her knitting. [3]

(I think this unnamed photograph from the Hopkinson album passed down in my part of the family may be old John Dewhurst)

They were cared for as they grew older and more infirm by Alice's unmarried sister Lizzie.  In 1864 their health grew more precarious.  In the early part of the year Alice went to Skipton to help nurse them, taking her turn to sit at their bedside at night.  That August John Dewhurst became very ill with bronchitis.  On 28 August 1864 Alice wrote to John

Our beloved father's suffering were ended sooner than we had any of us anticipated.  At a quarter past eleven he 'bowed his head and gave up the ghost.'  Literally this describes his departure, no struggle told the moment when the spirit departed, we scarcely knew when he breathed his last.  Poor Mother looks a wondering, wistful gaze at all of us; at times she realizes what has happened and then she weeps.[4]

John Dewhurst was 77 years old.  He was buried at the Zion Chapel in Newmarket Street.  The Cheshire Observer of 3 September 1864 reported his death, remarking

His name has for half a century been largely associated with the commercial prosperity of Skipton.   In politics Mr Dewhurst was a staunch Liberal.   By his liberality and judgment he earned a name which will long be remembered with sincere esteem.

And the Lancaster Gazette noted

His efforts have ever been to improve the social prosperity of the town.  His remains were interred yesterday (Friday) morning, when most of the shops of the town were closed, and many gentlemen and tradesmen joined in the funeral procession.

Alice's mother Alice Bonny had endured very poor health for years.  

I have heard our Mother speak with admiration of her uncomplaining patience and her great power of endurance

wrote her granddaughter Mary Hopkinson.[5]  By the time her husband died she was frail and confused and she did not long outlive him.  On 25 February 1865 at the age of 76 she died at home of "Decay of Nature".  

In the burial ground of the Zion Chapel was the stone in memory of their 15 year old son James, who had died in 1838.  Engraved below his name was a verse by the 18th century Baptist hymn-writer Anne Steele, which had been written 'To a friend, on the death of a child'

Hope looks beyond the bounds of time

When what we now deplore

Shall rise in full immortal prime

And bloom to fade no more

Gravestone of James, John & Alice Dewhurst 

Beneath the inscription John and Alice Dewhurst had left plenty of space for their own names.  Today the stone slab lies flat in the ground in front of the now disused St Andrew's Methodist & United Reform Church, which stands on the site of the old chapel.  (The congregation of St Andrew's has moved to Westmoreland Street)

Alice still had plenty of family to visit in Skipton after her parents had died, and so her children spent a great deal of time with their own multitude of cousins.  Alice's brothers Bonny and Tom carried on the family business and Bonny's three sons and two of Tom's boys followed in their footsteps.

Alice's daughter Mary seems to have known her uncle Tom's family best and she particularly remembered times at 'Whinfield', the new house on the Keighley Road built by Tom when Mary was in her early teens. Tom and family had been living at Number 6 Belle Vue Terrace, just to the east of the Belle Vue Mills, but he and his wife Maria Stevenson, who came from a local farming family, needed plenty of room for their growing family.  'Whinfield' was a spacious new villa which stood in extensive grounds to the south-west of the town, out of way of the smoke from the mill chimneys.  (Decades later it became the General Hospital).  

Eleven of Tom and Maria's thirteen children survived infancy:  Arthur, Alice, Ethel, Jack, Lilian, Edgar, Elizabeth, Maria, Nellie, William and Norman.  The eldest was born in 1861 and the youngest in 1878, so there was an overlap with the younger Hopkinson children and Mary Hopkinson remembered them with great affection.   

We all have the liveliest recollections of the generous hospitality at Whinfield, Skipton, the table groaning with good things in true Yorkshire fashion, and of our Uncle and Aunt's sympathetic forbearance with all the pranks which we, led by our cousins, indulged.  The younger members of our family each found a special companion of his or her own age, and the friendships so formed have been lifelong. [6]

John and Alice's granddaughter Katharine Chorley encountered a Yorkshireman in the late 1940s who reminded her how her uncle Bonny Dewhurst used to hold a conference every Saturday with the firm's travellers after their week's journeying.  Bonny heard their reports himself, kept up with successes and failures and listened out for comparisons with other firm's goods – then, if the Dewhursts were being beaten in something, the mill would set to work to outstrip their competitor. [7]

Bonny was deeply engaged in his business but he had a longing to be something of a country gentleman and do a bit of farming as well, so he took out a substantial mortgage and bought Aireville Hall and its estate.  This stood to the north-west of the town on the other side of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal from his mills.  It made a grand setting when Bonny and his wife Frances England celebrated their Golden Wedding with a day of amusement and entertainment for all the workpeople and their nearest relatives – some 2,000 people in all.  (The estate is now a public park, and the hall buildings are the town's comprehensive school, the Skipton Academy).  

Five of Bonny and Frances's children lived beyond the age of twelve.  Born between 1851 and 1864, Algernon, Frances, Lionel, Harold, and Hilda were the same ages as the Hopkinson children.  We don't know how often Bonny's family joined the Hopkinsons on holiday, but we are told that they were at Penmaenmawr in North Wales in 1863 at the same time as Alice's sister-in-law Alice Wills and her family – an example of the links between the three families that culminated in Gertrude Hopkinson being among the bridesmaids when Hilda Dewhurst married Arthur Stanley Wills in 1890.

Notes

[1] Sir Alfred Hopkinson, K.C., LL.D., Penultima (1930) pub. Martin Hopkinson Ltd, p. 40

[2] Original Papers by the late John Hopkinson, D.Sc., F.R.S. edited with a Memoir by B. Hopkinson, B.Sc (1901), Vol 1, pub. CUP, (available online at archive.org), p. xi

[3] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910 (1948) ed. Mary Hopkinson and her niece Lady Ewing, with a Preface by Sir Gerald Hurst, K.C., p. XIII

[4] ibid., p. 42

[5] ibid. p. XXIV

[6] ibid., p. XXVI

[7] Katharine Chorley, Manchester Made Them, pub Faber & Faber Ltd (1950), p. 50

43. "See what you can do without": John Hopkinson & money

During his twenties, when so much of a young man's habits of mind and practice are formed and his character is so often moulded by his occupation, John Hopkinson went through a great deal.

He started his twenties still in his apprenticeship.  A couple of times he was nearly wiped out in accidents at work.  One of the workmen suffered a hideous death by scalding.  He put all his inheritance into the partnership with Messrs Wren & Bennett at the beginning of the tumultuous year of revolutions across Europe, with all the economic anxiety that followed.  He married, and within months he was doing his utmost to support his lively, fun-loving, sensitive wife as she found herself plunged into a sort of despair during her first pregnancy.  The following year, just as Alice was hit by the death of her beloved sister Jane, the Brinksway Mill collapsed and thirteen people died; John found himself giving evidence at the inquest in the presence of their grieving families.  In 1851, the year after his firm became Wren & Hopkinson with the retirement of Mr Bennett, they suffered a disastrous fire.  In 1852 his mother, who had been his constant advisor and friend, died.  By the end of 1854, when he had reached 30, he had four children and his old friend and father-figure the Revd James Griffin had retired to the South Coast because of his health.

It was in those years that John Hopkinson became the responsible, conscientious, frugal, hard-working, enterprising man and loving husband and father that his family and friends remembered.

We don't know how much money John Hopkinson made – perhaps his log-book would have told us – but Gerald Hurst, who did see the log-book, wrote in the Preface 

The social historian will note how comfortably a middle-class provincial family could live in the 'fifties' on an expenditure of £300 a year; the bread-winner's income was about £700 [1]

£700 a year was, I think, a nicely comfortable income for a rising professional man.  But John's income wasn't assured and he knew very well that he couldn't take anything for granted.  He was doubtful about being able to take a holiday when he wrote to Alice on 4 April 1849, 

Our Easter work is unusually heavy and success in our business depends so much on personal attention, especially at such times. [2]

John aged 43 or 44

The themes of pressure of work and the need for his personal attention were a constant in his working life – in 1865 he wrote to Alice from Belfast

All day here has been occupied with details of the new sheds we have already in hand, and also a great deal of gearing for another already built.  There is plenty of work to be done; but, to be really effective here, one needs to be almost always on the ground. [3]

In 1850 he wrote to his mother

I am head over ears in engagements just now.  Most heartily do I wish I could be freer from them and have more time for higher objects, but really it is necessary nowadays to work hard to keep pace with the times and I feel that, in my position especially, I must achieve standing room in the world for myself.  The probabilities now are that trade will gradually revive and be more steady than formerly.  Unfortunately the cotton speculation in Liverpool has spoiled the prospects of this year. [4]

At that point the firm was hopeful and they were planning new buildings.  He explained to his mother 

Having been for long sadly hampered by our works being divided and nothing of our own we have determined to build new ones on a modern scale where we can have all together – Foundry and everything on the same spot so that, when the gates are closed, all is locked up.  The site is at the bottom of the Temple Street, Chorlton-upon-Medlock. [5]

(Temple Street disappeared, I believe, in the 1960s.  The works were in Lower Temple Street, that is, somewhere in the area of the Renold Building and Pariser Buildings of the University)

The new buildings were just finished when, at about 9.30 on the morning of Sunday 26 October 1851, a fire was discovered burning furiously in the three-storey building used as Wren & Hopkinson's pattern room on Altrincham Street.  Three fire engines turned out and four jets of water were poured into the building from the high pressure mains.  The fire was put out but the pattern room was completely destroyed with its contents.  Bell's New Weekly Messenger of 2 November 1851 reported that these were 

valuable patterns of machinery, which had been accumulated during a business of thirty years.  The damage altogether will be from £3,000 to £4,000.  The owners are insured in the Atlas, Sun, and Legal and Commercial Offices, to the amount of £2,300.  The origin of the fire is not ascertained.  The workmen were on the premises until about midnight on Saturday finishing some work, but not in the pattern-rooms, and the porter left all right when he locked up after them.

It must have reminded Alice of the fire at Skipton when she was a little girl that had nearly brought her father to disaster.  It certainly struck John Dewhurst that way.  He wrote on 28 October with his own inimitable spelling and style

My dear Son in Law,

I am in receipt of a note from dear Alice this morning informing me of your serious loss sustained by fire in your Moddle shops etc … Your loss no doubt will be great but not so much as to take away the whole of your business, which was the case with me or thereabouts when my Mill was burnt down in 1831.  I have great reason to think that the Almighty God and our Saviour was at that time in a peculiar manner my daily support in raising me kind friends and also in directing my steps in all my proceedings afterwards [6]

He ended his letter

I am, my dear Son in Law, your well wishing and affectionate Father in Law 

John Dewhurst

Excuse all my little blunders being written under excitement

When John wrote to his mother about the "disaster on Sunday" he described to her how, the day after the fire, the firm had put out a circular to most of the customers to say there would be no interruption of business, and that several men in the same line had offered them help with tools and so forth.  The fire had made the national press, and he didn't want his mother unnecessarily alarmed, writing to her

In regard to the loss, the amount will exceed our insurances, perhaps considerably – yet not so much as we expected at first – and if we obtain the amount we claim, upwards of £2,200, it will enable us to do a great deal in the way of restoration [7]

But of course it would take a good while to recoup the losses, and the following year he wrote to his mother on 2 March 1852 that, while they were managing the ongoing strikes quite well and the Manchester employers were determined to resist any attempt by the government to reimpose the Corn Laws

We are still feeling the effects of the fire and shall do so for many months; but we continue to do our best to get out of the mire which clogs our efforts.  It has been necessary to put down some very costly machinery to expedite the restoration of the patterns, and we have had a great deal of trouble in trying to bring it to perfection, to which we approach step by step slowly. [8]

The year 1853 saw the business worries continue.  John was travelling around the Northern towns by rail, coach, gig and on foot and occasionally going to London to make useful contacts and in search of orders.  He went abroad for the first time in his life, going by sea to Copenhagen and on to Karlshamn in Sweden.

On 21 January 1853 he described his sea voyage to Alice

A Danish mariner spoke fractional English so I fraternized with him and also with the Danish Engineer on board who could speak no English; but I became very good friends with him by entering into the construction of his engines and describing other sorts in chalk upon the wall of his room [9]

Wren & Hopkinson were ready to take a firm line at the beginning of strikes, but John was very conscious of his responsibilities to his workmen.  He didn't want to lay men off (unpaid) unless he had to – writing to Alice ahead of joining her on holiday, he told her that 

I, and some of the young men, are staying late to arrange some matters so that the men may have some employment in my absence – for I cannot bear to think of sending men off work while I go on pleasure.  Last night I was successful in obtaining an order for the Gearing of a small mill in Sweden, £1,500, which must be done in excessive haste – and happily gives work of a kind to spread over [10]

John Hopkinson, as Gerald Hurst wrote in the Preface, "lived through several business crises.  The failure of one of his companies was disastrous." [11]

This was the Chatterley Iron Company.  Both John and his son young John were involved in this company which at first was very promising.  John had become chairman in 1874 and he put in a great deal of time and effort in improvements to their collieries and to providing access by private lines to their sale yards.  But in 1879, when the coal trade was very slow and the Midland & Northern Coal & Iron Trades Gazette of 13 August was reporting that the "Chatterley Iron Company are putting out their last furnace", John's daughters were faced with the real possibility they would have to earn their own livings.  And, before John became chairman, the company had incurred excessive royalty obligations.  These became a heavy burden.  The company faltered on but by the end of the 1880s it went into liquidation.  To make matters worse, young John and his wife Evelyn Oldenbourg had invested their savings of about £7,000 in it; they lost them.  

John was also very much aware that the family income depended on his efforts.  He had put all his inheritance into Wren & Bennett.  It's clear that during the thirty odd years of their partnership, he and Henry Wren did not always see eye to eye and, as the strains finally led up to its dissolution on 19 December 1881, Alice wrote

My notion is that he will follow out this plan as likely to be the most inconvenient to you and that his idea will be to buy in the concern for he will be well assured that he has the money advantage.  Somehow my faith in his nobility is so small that I should give him credit for wishing to make it as awkward as possible for you.  It is best that the upset should come now than later on in life, and your coolness will give you a great advantage [12]

Henry Wren had inherited his father's business, so it's hardly surprising that when he died in 1902 he left a gross estate of £315,276-0s-10d, while the value of John's estate was £45,100-9s.  

John certainly wanted to earn enough for his family, their needs, educations and futures – and he never neglected the Rusholme Road Chapel.  He wrote to Alice in January 1865 from Belfast

I wanted to give a help to the Sunday School Collection this time.  If I should not be home to Service on Sunday morning, will you see Mr Clayton and tell him how I am fixed here and ask him to add £25 which I will give him when I return. [13]

John was not interested in money for itself, nor particularly interested in honours and recognition.  His son Alfred wrote

It was characteristic of my father that he never grumbled at want of recognition or not gaining reward.  The work itself, something to be accomplished, was what he thought of, and if anyone was disposed to grumble at the way the world treated him, he would say:  "The world treats you as well as you can expect and probably rather better than you deserve."  [14]

The family lived, Alfred said, "very plainly"  

My father used to say that it was good to learn how many things there were people wanted which we would find we could do without. [15]

"See what you can do without" was one of John's favourite sayings.  Evelyn Oldenbourg, who married Alfred's brother John, wrote in her memoirs of how she met the Hopkinsons through their daughter Ellen when they were at school together, and how she loved to spend time with the family – though "their fine, almost austere, life sometimes almost frightened me." [16]

Alice sometimes felt rather conscious of the difference between her and her sister-in-law Alice Wills, whose husband was Henry Overton Wills, the third of his name in a Bristol tobacco dynasty – W.D. & H.O. Wills was the first British company to mass-produce cigarettes and it was to be one of the first in Britain to issue cigarette cards.  In early July 1863 she wrote to John, describing how Alice and Henry, with six children, two nurses, and their friends Mr and Mrs Duckham and their boy joined the family on holiday at Penmaenmawr

Their children are all so trim; I fancy they look at ours as if they were somewhat common.  For myself, I am struck with the look of earnestness and power about our own in comparison with most others and am well satisfied that their greater energy should defy the niceties of dress. [17]

It was an uncomfortable feeling and made her uneasy, as we can see from the letter she wrote to John on 30 October 1865.  She was staying with the Wills family in Bristol, and there were several young men of Henry's family about:

The young Wills's – Edward and William Henry – never know me, and Samuel very slightly acknowledges the acquaintance.  I suppose my externals are not imposing enough to claim their attention and possibly my own pride increases the distance.  This worship of externals!  How it prevails here!  Let us beware; it only needs to be fostered to make it flourish in ourselves.  I feel it is a plant indigenous in my own heart and only needs to be put into the hotbed of riches and worldly adulation to make it grow.  The Lord help me to watch and pray. [18]

But she never let the creeping feeling of inferiority interfere with her open hospitality in welcoming people to the family holiday and she was as careful with money as John.  From the 1864 holiday to Llanfairfechan, where she was in charge of a niece and nephew as well as her own children, she told John of a quiet conversation with young John

Then, as to taking conveyances, railway trips and the like, I told Johnnie privately I did not feel disposed to incur the extra expense, that I denied myself constantly, was happy in doing so and expected them to do the same. [19]

A major factor in the family's expenditure was, of course, the number of children.  There were an awful lot of mouths to feed.  No wonder Albert told his daughter Alice Bragg that "nothing less than a baron of beef" could feed the Hopkinson family [20].  When young John's five children spent Christmas 1883 with their grandparents they found a strange disconnection between the palatial Grove House and the household habits – Ellen Ewing remembered that it was "too grand, so they thought, for all the small economies that were enforced at table and elsewhere". [21]

On 29 September 1883, Alice wrote to John

In regard to our means, we have had a very varied experience.  It must be for some good end that we are tried in this particular.  I trust we shall not miss learning the lesson intended.  We must be slow scholars, needing recurring repetition … We have often said that our riches are in our children.  And, being in them so richly blessed, we must not expect uninterrupted prosperity in other matters.  Let us thank God for the higher gifts and seek to profit by the disappointments allotted to us in worldly things … I often think you are much nearer this mark than I.  There is less covetousness in you to struggle against. [22]

Notes 

[1] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910 (1948) ed. Mary Hopkinson and her niece Lady Ewing, with a Preface by Sir Gerald Hurst, K.C., p. IX

[2] ibid., p. 13

[3] ibid., p. 43

[4] ibid., p. 18

[5] ibid.

[6] ibid., p. 19

[7] ibid., p. 19

[8] ibid., p. 20

[9] ibid., p. 22

[10] ibid., p. 23

[11] ibid., p. X

[12] ibid., p. 79

[13] ibid., p. 43

[14] Sir Alfred Hopkinson, K.C., LL.D., Penultima (1930) pub. Martin Hopkinson Ltd, p. 229

[15] ibid., p. 228

[16] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910, p. 54

[17] ibid., p. 38

[18] ibid., p. 47

[19] ibid., p. 41

[20] Crystal Clear: The Autobiographies of Sir Lawrence and Lady Bragg, ed. A M Glazer and Patience Thomson (2015), pub. OUP

[21]  John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910, p. 84

[22] ibid., p. 83

42. A career ended by illness: Gertrude Hopkinson (1862-1895)

 

Gertrude (I think) aged about 5

Gertrude was the ninth child and fifth daughter, born on 9 May 1862.  We catch glimpses of her – as a poorly two year old, when her mother wrote from the holiday at Llanfairfechan that

Little Gertrude looks very languid, wants nursing altogether [1]

and as an 8 year old, being snubbed by her 10 year old sister – "Lily has a way of contradicting," wrote Esther Wells to Alice, "when Gerty says anything." [2]

In March 1877, after the death of little Harry, Gertrude received this sombre and unnerving reminder from her mother

Many solemn thoughts arise as we review the last sad weeks … Supposing the call had come to you, dear child, instead of to our precious little Harry, would it have found you ready?  Have you given your heart wholly to Jesus?  Have you sought and found forgiveness? [3]

Gertrude was fifteen at the time.  We don't know what she can have been doing to prompt this warning.  She seems to have been indefatigable in her voluntary work with the chapel later and her niece Lina wrote to Mary after Gertrude's death

Aunt Gertrude once told me that she did not need arguments to convince her of God's presence, He proved Himself to her [4]

In 1879 John's business hit problems and it looked as though his daughters would have to earn their own livings.  Mary wrote to her mother on 3 July 1879

With regard to Father's letter to Gertrude, she was distressed at first and disposed to take a gloomy view of the subject.  She would take no comfort for awhile.  Her first notion was this 'Mary will be wanted at home.  Lily will get married.  May is too young.  So I must be a charwoman, a dressmaker or a lady's companion.'  However, she did not long indulge in such melancholy reflections. [5]

But disaster was averted and Gertrude was still at home, helping her mother and active at the chapel when Alice wrote on 26 December the same year

We miss you all very much.  I miss the services of my loving little maid and well as herself [6]

At some point at the beginning of the 1880s Gertrude decided to train as a nurse in Liverpool.  Ellen Ewing does not specify where, but it can only have been at the Liverpool Training School and Home for Nurses [7] attached to the Royal Liverpool Infirmary, which had been established in 1862 by a wealthy Liverpool philanthropist and Florence Nightingale.  Nursing, it's clear from her parents' letters, was Gertrude's natural talent and we can see why it appealed so strongly to her from the introduction which Florence Nightingale wrote in 1865 for Organization of nursing: an account of the Liverpool Nurses' Training School [8]

Bust of Florence Nightingale,
given by her to Nurses' School

An Institution for training Nurses in connection with the Infirmary has been built and organized.  This is a matter of necessity, because all who wish to nurse efficiently must learn how to nurse in a Hospital.  Nursing, especially that most important of all its branches – nursing of the sick poor at home – is no amateur work.  To do it as it ought to be done requires knowledge, practice, self-abnegation, and, as is so well said here, direct obedience to, and activity under, the highest of all Masters, and from the highest of all motives.  It is an essential part of the daily service of the Christian Church

It was one of the first training schools in the country and was a highly respected institution – famous enough for the Oxford Times of 1 June 1889, when reporting the notorious Maybrick poisoning trial, to include it in the description of a nurse who was one of the witnesses ("Ellen Anne Gore, certificated nurse, of the Liverpool Nurses' Training School").

 

Gertrude must have impressed the Lady Superintendent in charge, because she was only in her very early twenties and in Organization of nursing it is stated that "the age considered desirable for Probationers is from 25 to 35".  Her application had to supply a certificate of age, as well as a certificate of health and testimonials of character.  She was accepted and started her training – but in the spring of 1884, aged 22, she fell ill with scarlet fever.  Her elder sister Mary went to Liverpool to look after her, writing to their mother 

I feel so glad it is an illness I have had myself because I know better how to do for her and minister to her comfort [9]

Gertrude never fully recovered from the illness, which ended all her hopes and plans for her career.  And to add to the distress, the scarlet fever exacerbated the deafness which she had inherited from her mother.  

The next year, in August 1885 when she was only 23, she saw a Manchester specialist, Dr Leopold Larmuth.  Alice wrote to John

He hurt her very much.  She would bear anything with the hope of improvement.  As soon as she felt a little rested she went off to Rusholme Road to help Lily and Mabel for their Boys' tea party.  Mary will go after dinner to help to entertain.  I expect they will all come home thoroughly tired tonight [10]

In 1887 she went to stay with her aunt Ellen Tubbs in Reading while she endured what Ellen Ewing describes as "a searching medical examination and severe treatment of her throat".  Her younger brother Albert, who was training as a doctor, was with her, and reported back to their mother on the treatment and Gertrude's fortitude during it all.  Alice wrote to her

Never trouble about expense.  Could money be better used?  And what good is money if not used? … But, my precious child, though you may be shut out from the work you have chosen and love so well, you will not be debarred from that which your Father has appointed and for which, no doubt, He is preparing you. [11]

The result was only temporary relief.  Shut out from nursing, she threw herself into charitable work.  She must have been visiting the poor and sick in their homes, judging by this comment by Alice in August 1887 

I do think she ought to give it up or else choose her own days for going; the damp affects her throat and increases the deafness, yet one shrinks from hindering any good work [12]

Gertrude did have a life beyond the chapel work and sick visiting.  We get a glimpse of it in the spring of 1886 when she went to London to visit her brother John and his wife Evelyn and their five children at their pleasant modern villa at 3 Holland Villas Road.  Alice visited some time soon afterwards.  We can see from her letter to Gertrude on 8 May 1886, reporting her opinions of the exhibition at the Royal Academy, that Gertrude had been to the Exhibition before her – 

I was amused to find our notions coincided.  My remark on 'The death of Cain' was 'That's horrid,' and I found you had written 'horrid' [13]

Death of Cain by G F Watts
Watts Gallery - Artists' Village

In early 1888 the Whitworth Institute wanted to begin work on turning Grove House into an exhibition hall – today it is the Whitworth Art Gallery.  The family decided to move out of Manchester to the Cheshire countryside to live in the prosperous village of Bowdon.  Linked to Manchester by the railway and a favourite choice of the merchant princes for its peace and healthy situation, it was described by Kelly's Directory of 1877 as "studded with handsome villas and mansions".  Their new home, a fine detached villa built some twenty years earlier, was 'Inglewood' on St Margaret's Road.

On 30 July 1890 Gertrude was one of the bridesmaids at her cousins' wedding in Skipton.  She was a cousin of both bride and groom – Hilda, daughter of Gertrude's uncle Bonny Dewhurst, was marrying Stanley Wills, son of Gertrude's aunt, her father's sister Alice.  

The wedding of a daughter of one of Skipton's major employers to a barrister from a wealthy family in the tobacco industry created quite a stir in the town.  The Burnley Express reported that it was "celebrated with much pomp and ceremony".  Spectators crowded to watch, there was a canvas awning the whole length of the chapel grounds, the chapel was beautifully decorated inside with "choice plants and flowers" and there was a full choral service.  The bride "wore a lovely dress and train of white brocaded silk, with petticoat of muslin chiffon, trimmed with Brussels lace and orange blossom, and wore a tulle veil."  Gertrude and the other three bridesmaids wore "dresses of white muslin, with Valenciennes lace, trimmed with pale green ribbon, and hats trimmed with posies of La France roses".  

The list of guests shows that John and Alice's family was represented by their son Albert and their daughter-in-law Evelyn.  It's a pity we don't know John and Alice's opinions on this grand wedding – I think they would certainly have preferred something much more simple and restrained – but any letters mentioning it had not survived to be quoted in Ellen Ewing's book.

At the end of 1892, John fell very ill and Gertrude came into her own as a devoted nurse.  They grew very close as she nursed him over the following two years and there are several very loving letters between them.  Gertrude wrote to her father 

The joy of nursing you will always be a bright gleam to lighten future years.  That to have the opportunity of showing that I love you was something for which to thank God with my whole heart [14]

And on 8 May 1895 he told her

Well dearest Gertrude, I wish you were by my side that I might tell you some of the things that are in my heart about you.  How much do I owe you; that is one of the things I could not tell – it is beyond computation or narration [15]

The next day was her 33rd birthday.  Soon afterwards she fell ill with influenza and died of acute pneumonia at 'Inglewood' on the morning of 16 May 1895.  Only a few minutes' walk away, her sister May's second child was born that evening – a little daughter they called Gertrude.

Ellen, Gertrude, Harry and baby William Henry lie in the family vault with their parents at Southern Cemetery, Manchester.  

Gertrude & Ellen's names on family grave
(courtesy of Bob the Greenacre Cat @ findagrave.com)

Next:  43. "See what you can do without": John Hopkinson & money

Notes 

[1] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910 (1948) ed. Mary Hopkinson and her niece Lady Ewing, with a Preface by Sir Gerald Hurst, K.C., p. 41

[2] ibid., p. 58

[3] ibid., p. 72

[4] ibid., p. 99

[5] ibid., p. 65

[6] ibid., p. 74

[7] Liverpool John Moore University blog

[8] which can be read online here Wellcome Collection

[9] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910, p. 86

[10] ibid., p. 89

[11] ibid., p. 93

[12] ibid., p. 93

[13] ibid., p. 92

[14] ibid., p. 98

[15] ibid.

41. The life that disappeared into drudgery: Ellen Hopkinson (1853-75)

As the 20th century drew on, the story of Ellen, the eldest daughter, began to seem ever sadder and more pointless.  The younger generations looked with dismay and disapproval on parents whose daughters' lives disappeared into household drudgery.  Ellen Ewing, endeavouring to put the story in its own historical and religious context, wrote [1] 

Ellen c1867-8

Judged by common standards her pleasures had been few … Judged by higher standards, however, her life, all too short as it undoubtedly was, was supremely happy and supremely successful.  For her ardently affectionate and unselfish nature found ennobling and satisfying outlets in the love of her parents and of her sisters and brothers … Her life cannot be said to have been sad.  Who, then, shall say it was wasted?

Like little Alice, Ellen seems to have been delicate from the beginning.  She was born on 7 October 1853, the third child and first daughter.  Alice wrote to a friend on 11 March 1861

Ellen, a little over seven, is an interesting child, both in appearance and character.  She is a very thoughtful, very sensible, dear child.  She loves the name of Jesus, she has such sweet thoughts I often learn from her.  Oh pray that these sweet blossomings may be the precursors of fruit to be hereafter borne to the praise and glory of God [2]

Ellen's competence, sense of responsibility and love of her mother meant that she took on her mother's duties when very young.  She was not yet eleven when John wrote 

Poor Nellie cried in bed last night under the sense of responsibility and want of Mama's counsel and help [3]

She was nearly 13 when Alice wrote to John on 9 July 1866 that she 

had to devolve nearly all my maternal duties on dear Nelly … Nelly is invaluable to me and I do not think she feels it any hardship to minister to me. [4]

She was only to ready to please her mother and look after her.  She was fifteen when John wrote 

Our young ones all seem full of love for Nellie.  She makes a very good 'Missus' and it is good practice for her to have some domestic responsibilities thrown upon her, only she should not have too much writing and study at the same time. [5]

Young John's future wife Evelyn Oldenbourg met Ellen for the first time at their school, Ellerslie Ladies' College on Upper Park Road in the select gated community of Victoria Park.  She described in her memoirs how a plain, unhealthy-looking girl asked her, with spontaneous friendliness of indescribable charm, for the loan of a pencil.  Ellen became her chief friend and they had a great influence on each other.  To Evelyn, Ellen "was a noble simple Soul"[6].  She was two years younger than Evelyn, and was very grateful for Evelyn's help with schoolwork, which she found difficult – "Evelyn, you are an angel, barring the petticoats" she exclaimed.  Ellen might have felt a little out of her depth at Ellerslie, which was a seriously academic school, one of the new endowed schools for girls modelled on boys' grammar schools. 

By this time Ellen's letters show her adoration of her mother.  She wrote on 23 February 1870, when she was sixteen

My own beloved Mother,

Why did you spoil your sweet, precious letter by that horrid sentence?  As if you weren't the cleverest, sweetest, most perfect woman that ever walked the earth!" [7]

There is what can only be described as a blindness on Alice's part to see the effect on Ellen of the responsibilities that she piled on this devoted child, possibly because she felt overwhelmed and Ellen's willing help was so badly needed.  Perhaps she had no idea what it might it feel like to be Ellen, being a younger daughter herself.

In April 1870 Ellen had been visiting her new friend Esther Wells, who had come to the family as a governess five years earlier, and when she came back home to Manchester her mother went off on a visit to Oxford, Cambridge and Nottingham.  (Ellen Ewing does not tell us why or for how long).

Ellen wrote to Alice with meticulous reports until she fell ill.  Alice wrote to John

When I read your letter I wished I was coming home … It seems as if I ought to be at my post … I know you will be Mother as well as Father when you are at home:  but you have to be away so much.  I fancy Lily attending lovingly to her 'Mother-Sister' 

And then

I longed for, yet half dreaded, your letter this morning.  It is such a relief to hear that dear Ellen is better.  I do hope the improvement will continue.  She is a fine girl.  She will be a finer woman.  She is one of the granite character; the waves of life will beautify as well as strengthen.  And then the polishing hand of the great Master Builder will tell in its every stroke upon her. [8]

John was clearly not quite happy about Ellen.  In his letter to Alice, reporting on the family and on Ellen's recovery, he wrote

Baby is tolerably bright and happy.  Nelly is most devoted to him and the stockings … I would have her out at Belmont nolens volens [ie. whether she liked it or not] yesterday and I think it did her good; she is over young to get mopish and stockingly [9]

He had taken Ellen from mending the stockings and made her go to Belmont where Alice's sister Ellen Milne and her family lived in the Cheshire countryside at Cheadle, and he added – surely by way of a hint to his wife – a story about a girl of the same age who had become a household drudge.

Ellen with Harry, taken in Southport 1868 or 1869

But between Alice's great readiness to leave Ellen in charge, and Ellen's willingness to take it on, it is no surprise to find Ellen writing, soon afterwards, on 26 May 1870

I know it is very wrong, but I feel as if I could not order another dinner; I do detest it … I have just been seeing the little ones to bed … 

I am a great deal better tonight except my back aches badly for I have been sewing as hard as I could all day.  You know it is Thursday of washing week and things seem to want more mending than usual. [10]

She is clearly trying to tell Alice that the task is too great.  Alice doesn't seem to respond.  

So it is again no surprise to find that in early 1871 Ellen, at the age of 17, is in charge of the younger children (we don't know how many) in Stockport.  Three year old Harry, always delicate, often had attacks of pain and Ellen had looked after him devotedly since he was born.  Ellen wrote to her mother and again we can't help but notice that she is, to all intents and purposes, calling for help and relief

I felt very nervous about Baby because, when we were coming back from our walk, he began crying so with pain in his stomach.  I wrapt him your waterproof and went home as fast as we could; but he quite screamed with pain.  As soon as we got in I put his feet in as hot water as he could bear and it seemed to give him instant relief for he stopped crying at once and seemed to enjoy it so.  I then got him to drink some hot milk and, when he was warm, put him to bed where he slept for an hour and woke quite well and bright.  I should not have told you only I want to know if I did the best thing for him, and you know I should let you know if he should not be so well …. You must not be anxious about Baby; I will take the greatest care of him … Excuse this wretched writing; my arm still trembles with carrying Baby  [11]

The rest of the family knew that this bond of work and dependency between Alice and Ellen was bad for Ellen.  We don't know if anything was ever said, or could be said, but they never forgot Ellen's unremitting work for them all.

In 1873 John and Alice celebrated their Silver Wedding.  Evelyn Oldenbourg remembered John's speech – he said of Ellen, "We simply cannot do without her." [12]

 

In 1874 the family moved from 12 York Place to rent Grove House from the Whitworth Institute.  It was a much larger house, built in about 1830, and had a fine garden and a paddock in which they could keep a cow.  Evelyn remembered how tired Ellen was after the move – "almost too tired," wrote Ellen Ewing, "to rejoice in the additional cupboard space in the new home which should have gratified her highly developed sense of order."  [13]  Never robust or healthy, the poor girl was worn out.

On 20 September 1875 (Ellen Ewing's date of 1874 is not correct) Ellen fell ill with scarlet fever.  She died six days later on 26 September, ten days before her 22nd birthday.  

Mary, who had helped to nurse her, fell very ill.  But she survived and lived to a great and active old age.

Next:  42. A career ended by illness: Gertrude Hopkinson (1862-1895)

Notes

[1] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910 (1948) ed. Mary Hopkinson and her niece Lady Ewing, with a Preface by Sir Gerald Hurst, K.C., p. 66

[2] ibid., p. 33

[3] ibid., p. 40

[4] ibid., p. 48

[5] ibid., p. 52

[6] ibid., p. 53

[7] ibid., p. 57

[8] ibid., p. 59

[9] ibid., p. 59

[10] ibid., p59-60

[11] ibid., p. 60

[12] ibid., p. 66

[13] ibid., p. 66

40. "Filled with longing for her baby": the babies who died

 Alice (1856-1858)

Alice was their fifth child and second daughter.  She was born on 27 April 1856 and was always rather delicate.  On 16 July 1856, when she was nearly three months old, her mother wrote 

Baby Alice looks so sweet so gentle and lamblike; it makes my heart ache to see her so pallid and thin [1]

She never grew strong – a friend writing to Alice in early 1858 asked after the "fair, pale Alice" – and on 8 May 1858, soon after her second birthday, she died of hydrocephalus, a build up of fluid in the brain.  John, who was with his little daughter at the end, wrote to his sister Ellen Tubbs

Our sweet lamb is safely gathered to the fold of the Good Shepherd – within His arms she rests forever … Dearest Alice was spared the last sight, and now all that remains of our sweet one is so beautiful in death that we can hardly cease to gaze and feel that indeed that there must be some connecting link between earth and heaven.  We shall have treasure now in heaven. [2]

The boys and Ellen were old enough – young John was nearly 9, Alfred nearly 7, Ellen 4½ and Charles 3½ – to feel the loss of their little sister.  Alice's grief never left her.  She wrote on 8 July 1859 as she was resting and recovering from the birth of Edward on 28 May,

Now that I am so much alone I seem to have my darling Ally in constant remembrance.  Those lustrous loving eyes are ever before me [3]

And Ellen Ewing described Alice many years later when she "spoke of the death of her little daughter, her voice still shaken with grief and her beautiful eyes still filled with longing for her baby". [4]

William Henry (1866)

No letters survive to tell us of the birth and death of little William Henry on 30 September 1866.  He died five minutes after he was born.  The doctor certified that the death was from Debility – he was too weak to survive.  His father was there at his death and registered the death and the birth at the same time.

Harry (1868-77)

Harry in 1870 with Lily,
Albert, Gertrude & May

Harry was the youngest of the family, born on 23 February 1868.  He was always delicate and was very much treasured by his older sisters.  His eldest sister Ellen was nearly fifteen when he was born and was already her mother's right hand at childcare and housework.  She cared for him devotedly until her untimely death of scarlet fever in 1875.  Her younger sister Mary felt that Harry was "a precious charge bequeathed to me by my beloved sister."  She had begun teaching him his first lessons when he was five and she was 16 – fitting it in with her schoolwork, it seems.  She and Ellen loved him like mothers; as she said nearly 80 years later

I loved him with a love beyond words [5]

Soon after his death she wrote an account of his short life, remembering

Reading was a task for him for, with his active nature, he found it wearisome to sit still.  History and geography, however, always went pleasantly and he more and more exhibited great intelligence.  The freshness and originality of his mind showed itself most of all, I think, in the remarks he made and the thoughtful questions he asked during the Scripture reading … We always read to him the simple Bible – he loved it almost from babyhood and greatly preferred it to any of the forms in which it is put for children. [6]

At New Year 1876 Mary took him along to begin at Miss Jackson's school.  He was there for two terms, leaving in the Michaelmas of 1876, and Mary taught him for a few weeks until the end of November when he started going with his big brother Albert to Mr Jones' school.  Each day Mary looked forward to him coming back from school, and she helped him with his lessons in the evenings.  She was sure he would have a bright future and was very ambitious for him.  

But in January 1877 14 year old Albert began to feel ill.  The next day the doctor diagnosed scarlet fever.  This was a fearsome scourge in the middle of the 19th century, causing an enormous number of deaths.  In the 1880s it was recognised to be a bacterial infection; effective treatment came at last with penicillin after the Second World War.

 

Mary went to the school to fetch Harry home and she spent the next ten days looking after him.  They were both kept rigorously out of Albert's sickroom and at nights Harry slept with his father.  When John was away, Charley – by then a 23 year old engineer – slept with his little brother.  The next morning, just as they must have been hoping he had escaped infection, Harry had a sore throat, then violent sickness.  John and Alice nursed him devotedly, coaxing him to take some food in spite of the painful soreness of his mouth and throat and mouth.  On Saturday 17 February they thought he had turned the corner and Alice wrote to Ellen Tubbs

My dearly loved Sister

I know you are rejoicing in our joy that our darling Harry is given back to us.  We have been passing through deep waters during this month – days and nights of interest and anxiety.  But God has not forgotten us; there has been daily strength for daily need.  Truly the Lord does give strength to His people [7]

But on the Monday he was suddenly worse.  Mary wrote in her record of Harry that  "acute rheumatism" set in – this would be rheumatic fever, which is one of the complications of scarlet fever.  He died peacefully at about half past nine at night on Wednesday 21 February 1877, two days before his ninth birthday.

Names of Harry, Alice & William Henry on family grave in Southern Cemetery, Manchester
(courtesy of Bob the Greenacre Cat at findagrave.com)

Two of John and Alice's daughters died before they were 35.

(The poor quality of the photograph is because my only source is the photograph in John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910)

Next:  41. The life that disappeared into drudgery: Ellen Hopkinson (1853-75)

Notes

[1] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910 (1948) ed. Mary Hopkinson and her niece Lady Ewing, with a Preface by Sir Gerald Hurst, K.C., p. 26

[2] ibid., p. 29

[3] ibid., p. 30

[4] ibid., p. 29

[5] ibid., p. 70

[6] ibid., p. 70

[7] ibid., p. 69

39. "My deafness! My deafness!"

Alice had to bear another loss, slow but inexorable, as growing deafness gradually afflicted her and increasingly cut her off from the helpful distractions of the outside world.

It is first mentioned by Alice in July 1866 in a letter from the summer holiday in North Wales.  She was 41 years old, was expecting her twelfth baby and was unwell, and, she said

my increasing deafness gives me a nervous feeling [1]

By 1870 it was worse.  She was consoling herself then with the thought 

I thank God I can see.  It is better to be deaf than blind … I must seek for more complete submission in this trial; it is only a small light cross after all [2]

By 1878, when she was approaching her mid-fifties, it was a real trial.  She wrote on 3 March 1878

My deafness! My deafness! How it interferes with pleasant communion and makes one dull and uninteresting [3]

She had some consolation – she was not cut off from her religion.  They lived very close to the Union Chapel, which Ellen and Mary had joined in 1873, and where the minister was the celebrated Dr Alexander Maclaren.  He was two years younger than Alice and John, and famous as an expository preacher – that is, he explained in detail the meaning of Scriptural texts.  A commanding figure in the pulpit, he had a clear, carrying voice which Alice could hear long after deafness cut her off from so much.  Listening to his sermons would be like listening to an excellent lecture.

Silver-plated ear trumpet c1801-1900
Science Museum Group

It seems likely that she consulted more than one doctor, but in 1881 she took advice from 46 year old Dr George Constantine Phipps who lived with his wife and four young children not far from the Hopkinsons.  Dr Phipps' advice was rather consoling, as Alice wrote on 22 April 1881

Dr Phipps called this morning and had a long chat with Mary – a good deal about my deafness.  He does not care for ear doctors and advised me to do the best I could with such mechanical aids as are available.  We liked his sensible talk.  It was rather comforting because he feels pretty certain I shall never be quite deaf.  Doctors disagree … He told Mary I should probably outlive many strong people for I was very wiry, something like his own Mother, who had never been robust, but now at 75, could walk five miles [4]

She didn't follow Dr Phipps' opinion of ear doctors when deafness began to be a real problem for her daughter Gertrude a few years later, and Gertrude visited more than one specialist.  The fact that the deafness was proving hereditary was particularly distressing – Alice wrote at about this time

It would seem to me that, if my children might be exempted from the trial, I would willingly bear an aggravation of my own affliction [5]

The isolation of deafness was a hard burden to bear.  She wrote to John in October 1881 from the house of young John and Evelyn and their family in London

I went to Chapel this morning with Evelyn, Eva and Alice.  I could not hear a word and, in my mood of mind, the isolation was too much for me; I had to come out.  [6]

Alice's own account on 9 May 1886 of how her deafness afflicted her spirits describes her sad position best

I was not very bright last night.  These waves of distress will come at times.  Shut in my own thoughts, if sad ones come to me, the clouds seem to darken and shut out the bright light.  I believe it is a temptation which, if not resisted, gets a firm hold of my spirit and destroys my peace of mind.  This special trial of deafness doubtless has a teaching; it touches me at many points.  I do want to learn my lessons; but am very slow.  [7]

The physical and emotional burden of pregnancies – the hormonal turmoil – the likely anaemia – the exhaustion of grief – the weariness that would come from managing servants and running a household – the feelings of failure when she had been irritable with the children – the strain from feeling responsible for so much – Alice bore all these.  And they were combined with a religion which was more of a challenge and a spur than a consolation, especially after the Revd James Griffin left Manchester in 1854 because of his health.

Who can say how these played into the times when Alice slipped into excessive housework?  Was she too tired to stop herself?  Had she fallen early in her married life into a habit that she simply couldn't kick?  This is such a sad and dispiriting picture.

On the other hand and to put it into perspective, we have to remember that all Alice's confidences to John, and all the times she let off steam about how she felt and how she was coping, took place in the privacy of their letters.  It is as though we are overhearing them as they carry on telling each other their secret thoughts while they are apart.  The letters are like a mutual secret diary – and we have no idea what the lost letters would have told us.  Nor do we have any idea what outsiders thought.  Alice's brother-in-law Benjamin Harrison, the widower of her sister Jane, gives us quite a different picture of Alice in a letter of 1861

Were I placed as you are just now with six children in the whooping cough, I should either end or mend I think and yet I can fancy you with your never ceasing smile, even happy as a queen in the midst of it all. [8]

Next: 40. "Filled with longing for her baby": the babies who died 

Notes

[1] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910 (1948) ed. Mary Hopkinson and her niece Lady Ewing, with a Preface by Sir Gerald Hurst, K.C., p. 48

[2] ibid., p. 75

[3] ibid., p. 75

[4] ibid., p. 75

[5] ibid., p. 76

[6] ibid., p. 78

[7] ibid., p. 92

[8] ibid., p. 32