14: The Bonnys of Blackpool after 1815

When Alice left Blackpool, the little seaside place was just as Richard Ayton had described it a couple of years earlier.  It changed only very slowly in the early years of her marriage.  In 1821 a church – which was seen by everyone as absolutely vital for a resort – was built.  Fifty years later (shortly before it was demolished and rebuilt on a grander scale) it was described as "a plain brick edifice, with a low embattled tower, and destitute of any architectural beauty."  As Blackpool grew, it was enlarged – in 1832, in 1847 and in 1851. 

In August 1816, a few months after she had left Blackpool, her grandfather William Bonny of The Hill died at the age of 91 – "universally respected" according to the Revd Thornber.  

Three years later there would be more bad news from Blackpool – in March 1819, when Alice was in the early months of pregnancy with her second child, her father John Bonny died aged 58.  

By 1824, the number of people living in Blackpool all year round had increased to 750.  Handsome houses facing the sea were beginning to be built on the flat sandy land called the Hawes, where the race meetings used to be held.  By the middle of the century the houses reached nearly as far as the south end of Blackpool itself, and the area had been given the name South Shore – described as "the pretty village of Southshore" in the 1855 Directory – and it had its own church, built there in 1836.

By the time her mother Jenny died on 26 May 1831 aged 72, Alice's sisters Nancy (1787-1868) and Betty were both widows 

• Betty's husband Robert Fairclough left her with two little boys under the age of 3.  In 1851 she was living in Liverpool with the elder, who was a printer compositor

• Nancy's husband Edward Gaskell, who kept the Hotel in Blackpool, died 5 years after their marriage leaving her with two little girls under the age of 4

• she set up as a lodging house keeper in Victoria Street – a little street running down to the spot where the Blackpool Tower would be built in the early 1890s

• when Nancy died in 1868 aged 81 her surviving daughter Nancy took over the lodging house – Nancy the younger's illegitimate son Richard Gaskell was a fisherman, to be found living at 58 Bonny Street in 1891

• the money that Nancy and Betty inherited from their father must have made a substantial difference to their lives

The year 1834 brought shocking news.  Alice's brother George (1798-1834) had been an ironmonger in Friargate in Preston, but had moved back to Blackpool.  Then, only a fortnight after his baby daughter's baptism at Bispham church, George was found dead in a ditch:

Preston Chronicle, 15 February 1834

Lamentable Occurrence – On Tuesday evening last, Mr George Bonny, formerly of the firm of Bonny and Granger, of Friargate (in this town), after having attended a meeting of rate-payers at Bispham, proceeded towards home at about half-past nine at night, and was not afterwards seen alive.  

On the following morning he was found quite dead, lying on his back, in a ditch at Bispham, not far from his own house.  There was no water near him, nor were his clothes soiled, and it was supposed he had missed his footing and fallen in, that he had been unable to extricate himself, and had afterwards fallen asleep and perished from the cold.  

A Coroner's inquest was held on the body, before R Palmer, Esq., and in the absence of all further evidence, the jury returned a verdict of "found dead."

George was only 35.  I think the drink must have been flowing and the ratepayers' meetings in Bispham must have been very convivial affairs.

Perhaps it was their mother's death and a release of more funds from their father's Will that encouraged Alice's brothers to speculate.  Robert, Richard and (probably) James weren't successful.

Robert (1792-1875) married Sarah Gardner in 1836, a few years after his mother's death.  Sarah's father was the miller at the Hoo Hill windmill – it can be seen on the map of 1830.

Blackpool in 1830

• Robert bought the Hoo Hill House tavern, for which he had ambitious plans.  It was – as the auction notice for its sale in 1838 explained – in an excellent situation for "a considerable Business", almost midway between Poulton-in-the-Fylde and Blackpool, and at the junction of the three roads which led north east to Poulton, west to Blackpool, and north to Fleetwood

• the hamlet of Fleetwood was being developed by the landowner and MP Peter Hesketh into a seaport, a resort for the rather cheaper end of the market and a railway spur – he saw it, when there was no London-Scotland rail link, as the point where travellers would take the steamer to Scotland.  He hit financial difficulties at the same time as Robert Bonny

• Robert enlarged Hoo Hill House, built a bowling green and laid out gardens – but he went bankrupt in 1838, two years after his marriage.  So he found himself spending a short while in the Debtors' Prison at Lancaster Castle. 

• he was able to set himself up a few years later as a boarding house keeper in Fleetwood – it declined as a resort as Blackpool grew, but the port grew and by the end of the century it was one of the three major fishing ports of England

• Robert died in 1875 – in later years, his son Robert William kept a Temperance Hotel in Fleetwood

Richard (1804-66) hit financial problems at the same time as Robert, and had to make an arrangement with his creditors – perhaps he was involved in his elder brother's enterprise.  His wife was Esther Ward, from an old Fylde family

• Richard later ran a lodging house in South Beach, Blackpool

• his son George ran a joinery business – he was on the first Town Council after Blackpool was incorporated, established an Orange Order Lodge in the town, was a Freemason and an Oddfellow.  His brother Richard Ward Bonny was a joiner too – both of them built housing in Blackpool.  Another son was a chemist and druggist in Leicestershire

James – I think, but the identification isn't certain – was a mercer & draper in Castle Street, Liverpool who went bankrupt in 1842. 

Alice's brother William (1791-1841) was the eldest son

• he was a farmer, he ran a bathhouse on the seafront, and – if he was the William Bonny who is listed among the innkeepers in the 1824 and 1834 Directories – he ran an inn called the Letters, which might or might not have been the old Bonny's Hotel

• he never married and he must have been comfortably off because he retired in 1839

• in 1839 he advertised that his "large and commodious Dwelling-house" with its 27 acres of "excellent Arable, Meadow, and Pasture Land" was up for let

• he died "very suddenly" aged 51, according to the newspaper notice of his death, in 1841

• he was living with his married brother Edward when he died

Her brother Edward (1799-1876) had left Blackpool by 1839

• he was farming at Warton, a village about 8 miles south-west of Blackpool on the banks of the River Ribble, not far from Lytham, when he married Anne Salthouse of Bispham, the schoolmaster's daughter, in 1839

• he was interested in agricultural improvements and active in the Lytham Agricultural Society 

• the 1861 Census finds him further east, at Cuerden Gates Farm on the edge of Cuerden Hall Park; in 1871, a widower, he lived north of Preston in Victoria Street, Fulwood

• there was certainly money in his family – his son John was able to retire and live off income from property before he was 40

Her brother John (1796-1871) married Ann Dewhurst, John Dewhurst's cousin, in Skipton in 1826

• he was a coal merchant with a coal-weighing machine on the shore where the coal barges from Wigan were beached and offloaded

• he was a property developer and it seems that he's mostly remembered nowadays – and not kindly – for the working-class housing that he built.  Blackpool's Seaside Heritage by Allan Brodie and Matthew Whitfield describes the small houses in narrow streets and alleys on Bonny's estate – it became an "infamous slum", which some called the "Whitechapel of Blackpool".  It was cleared at the beginning of the 1960s

• he was an active investor in the booming Blackpool holiday market.  If he didn't build the Victoria Hotel on South Beach, he rebuilt it – in 1845, the Fleetwood Chronicle carried a report that 

Large additions and alterations have also been completed at the Victoria Hotel, by Mr John Bonny, the respected owner, viz:- a commodious dining room, two elegant sitting rooms, and six spacious bedrooms having been added to this building.  On the plot of land adjoining several modern residences are nearly finished, and we believe the whole plot, forming the Victoria Terrace will shortly be built upon

In the 1840s John built a double-fronted house for himself and Ann on the newly-developing stretch called South Beach (now the Golden Mile).  'Rocklands', Number 8 South Beach faced the sea and I think it had a long front garden.  It had 2 reception rooms and 4 bedrooms with dressing rooms and all conveniences, including a WC, a wash house and cellar.

In April 1846 an imposing railway station was opened, bringing a branch of the Wyre and Preston Railway to Blackpool and more growth to the town

• by 1855 the resident population had reached 2,000, with 5,000 visitors arriving in the summer 

• Slater's Directory 1855 commented, "The months of September and October are considered the genteel season"

• better administration was needed – and John Bonny was one of the first members elected to the Blackpool Local Board of Health in December 1851 and was chairman until 1856

By the 1860s Blackpool had become a small town and its population had doubled to almost 4,000

• there were gasworks, more churches and chapels, a lifeboat station, and water was pumped to two-thirds of the houses

• in 1863 a second railway station was opened and the North Pier was built (an uncluttered promenade pier, like the one still to be seen today at Saltburn-by-the-Sea)

• it was so very successful that the South Pier was built in 1868.  This was aimed at the popular market, and was the "People's Pier", with open-air dancing to a German band

The opening of Blackpool's North Pier, 1863

Blackpool always attracted working-class visitors, but it was still aimed at the genteel middle class market, with an assembly room, baths, circulating libraries, fancy goods shops, bazaars, booksellers.  Visitors liked to go for walks in the countryside and trips by sea and coach to the Lakes.

John Bonny died on 4 February 1871.  Like his brothers William and Richard, and all their forefathers, his Probate describes him as a Yeoman – this clearly meant a great deal to them.

In the years after John's death, while Ann lived on at Number 8 South Beach, more attractions were opened.  Blackpool had always drawn a small-scale genteel clientèle – in the 1870s it began to target at a mass but respectable audience, with large, popular and reasonably affordable entertainments  

• the Raikes Hall Gardens, with walks, gardens, statuary, a conservatory, a dancing platform for 4,000 people, fireworks, circus acts 

• an aquarium and menagerie

• the Winter Gardens, a grand entertainment complex 

• by 1879 nearly 1 million people arrived each year by train 

• as the years went by, the middle classes became only a small part of the visitors

When Ann died in 1881, the population had reached 14,000 (by the beginning of the 20th century it had passed 50,000).  She died on 4 July 1881 at the age of 89 and the notice of the goods to be auctioned after her death gives a glimpse of an old lady's comfortable life:

excellent Household Furniture, Pier and Toilet Glasses, Mantel and other Clocks, Ornaments, Antique China, Cut-glass, about 50 ounces of Silverplate, Gold Watch and Gold Guard, Silver Watch, Feather Beds, Carpets, Linen, Mahogany Secretaries, superior Mahogany Wardrobe, Capital Bath Chair, &c

Mary Hopkinson and Ellen Ewing made no mention of Blackpool in John & Alice Hopkinson – not even that Alice Bonny came from there – but we can see that there was continuing contact between Skipton and Blackpool in the fact that John Bonny and Ann Dewhurst met and married – and we can actually catch Alice's daughters Jane and Alice Dewhurst staying with their uncle John and aunt Ann on the night of the census, on Sunday 6 June 1841.

Blackpool, 1840

Next:  15: Alice Bonny & John Dewhurst start their married life in Skipton