In 1823, John moved the family back from Embsay to Skipton, and it was in Skipton that his daughter Alice was born, on 1 November 1824.
Isaac was already living in Skipton. Perhaps the brothers were confident their on-site managers could run the mills while they dealt with marketing and management. Or perhaps they were already planning a new venture – or at least John was planning it.
In May 1828, they bought a site in Skipton between the Leeds & Liverpool Canal and the main road into Lancashire. John's plan was to build a cotton spinning mill with power looms for weaving, and the power was to come from steam.
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| Power loom weaving in 1835 |
But even as the new mill – it would be called Belle Vue Mill – was going up, all was not well in the business.
K C Jackson (in The Dewhursts of Skipton: a dynasty of cotton masters, 1789 to 1897, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 75, (2003), pp. 181-205) has various suggestions for the difficulties. Perhaps
- there were problems coordinating the business across the various mills
- the brothers had different ideas of the business's future
- Isaac felt he was the junior partner because John had more capital – and so more clout – than he did. John had inherited from an uncle, and he'd also inherited the farm at Pickhill (I think probably as his father's heir at law). Alice had inherited money from her father – he left his daughters £800 apiece – and would share with her siblings in the residue of their father's personal estate (goods & chattels, monies & securities) after their mother died, which happened in 1831. John might even have had capital from his first marriage
- Isaac was perhaps nervous about the new change of direction for the business
We might think – given Mary Hopkinson's description of her grandfather as "quick tempered, impulsive and outspoken" – that without James being there as a buffer and emollient, John & Isaac couldn't get on.
On 17 February 1829, the Belle Vue Mill was opened and immediately afterwards refinanced with a mortgage from a farmer & grazier at Long Preston. Two months later, on 21 April 1829, the partnership between the brothers was formally ended.
- John – whose project it seems to have been – took the Belle Vue mill and the mill at Airton – he also had a warehouse he had bought a few years earlier on Newmarket Street
- Isaac took the mills at Embsay and Scalegill – it seems from the 1834 Directory that he also had the Manchester warehouse
John began by producing cloth on his new power looms, but after a while most of the production was in spinning, turning out worsted yarns and cotton twist. This shows he was aiming at the Bradford worsted trade, which made fabrics with a cotton warp yarn and a wool worsted weft
- worsted is a high-quality type of wool yarn that comes from long-staple pasture wool
- at that time they used cotton warps in worsted fabrics because they hadn't yet developed worsted yarns that were strong enough to be used in power-looms
- and the use of cotton warps saved money, which was useful because of the American tariffs
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| Belle Vue Mill: O.S town plan c1850 National Library of Scotland |
This wasn't the first cotton mill in Skipton – there was Mr Sidgwick's High Mill at the entrance of Skipton Woods, built in 1785 and with a steam-powered extension added in 1825. With two steam-powered mills in town, there were more mill-hands needed. Between 1821 and 1831, Skipton's population went up from 3,411 to 4,842.
I hope the split didn't mean the families fell out. There seem to have been plenty of little cousins in Skipton by then, all living not far from each other. And by 1835 the town was full of them:
- John & Alice had 7 children
- Isaac & Sarah had 9 children
- Nancy Dewhurst and Storey Watkinson had 9 children – Storey, who was mostly a farmer and grazier, was by 1837 keeping the Devonshire Arms in Caroline Square (which was not the same place as the upmarket Devonshire Hotel in Newmarket Street)
- Eleanor Dewhurst had married Henry Wilson, who was an ironmonger in town, in 1829 – they had 3 sons, and Eleanor would soon have her fourth
Fire!
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| A horse-drawn fire engine from the 1840s |
On the morning of Sunday 2 January 1831, two years after production began at the Belle Vue Mill, it was discovered that the buildings were on fire. Crowds rushed to the scene to try to put out the flames.
If only, lamented the Leeds Intelligencer, there had been even one fire engine in the town, "any very extensive injury might certainly have been prevented; but there were none!"
Messengers were sent at once to Keighley, 10 miles away, and Leeds, 25 miles away. The two Keighley engines galloped to the scene as soon as they got the message and were on the spot in 44 minutes. But it was too late. Nearly all the valuable machinery and stock was gone and the fine new building, except for the part where the engine stood, was left, the Intelligencer reported, "a mass of blackened ruin".
It must have been an appalling moment for John and Alice. The scale of the Belle Vue operation can be seen – if the report is accurate – in the amount of damage done. It was estimated at £14,000 or £15,000, and the insurance with the Manchester, Alliance and Atlas offices would only cover about £8,000 worth. The Mill formed the bulk of John's business – he'd bet everything on this. And it was a bad blow for the town – somewhere between 300 and 400 people had been thrown out of work.
A subscription was raised at once to support the workers, and the clergy, gentry and other inhabitants of Skipton were "cheerfully and liberally" contributing by the time the Intelligencer came to press on the 8th. Two county magistrates began at once to investigate the cause of the fire. Was it arson? There were desperate and destitute former handloom weavers in the manufacturing districts and arson was always suspected. But the magistrates couldn't establish a cause and the Intelligencer reported that John Dewhurst himself thought it was accidental. On the very day of this dreadful crisis in his business career, he put a notice in the papers:
Fire at Skipton – Mr John Dewhurst feels himself particularly called upon the return his most sincere thanks to his friends, and the people at large, for their kindness and unremitting exertions which he this day witnessed through the dreadful proceedings of the calamitous Event.Skipton, 2nd January, 1831
His daughter Alice was 6 years old at the time and it made a deep impression on her. She loved to tell the story of how incendiaries had burned down her father's mill just before the insurance on it was completed (clearly the family thought it was arson) – and how his friends insisted he should build again – how they were ready to lend him money without security – and how the Bank Managers were keen to help in any way. Customers relied on John's love of supplying only the best – they were happy to have him pass the goods they were buying, instead of examining the textiles themselves.
John began rebuilding and re-equipping his mill and it opened as a cotton-spinning mill that very autumn. He had already mortgaged the mill once, and now he topped it up with a second loan, this time from the Craven Bank, putting up as security the newly rebuilt mill and the warehouse that he owned in Newmarket Street.
His wife Alice, who must have been glad of the support of her sensible daughter Jane, now 15, had a 1 year old and a 3 year old to cope with – and her mother Jennet died in Blackpool during the rebuilding of the mill. The fact that the money which would now come to Alice under her father's Will was so welcome, given the family finances, must have added complicated feelings to her loss.
Perhaps John's status in the community is revealed by the fact that in 1832 he rode, his daughter Alice vividly remembered, at the head of the procession to welcome Lord Morpeth and Sir George Strickland into Skipton. They had just been returned as Whig MPs for the West Riding in the newly reformed Parliament. John's granddaughter Mary Hopkinson thought it was probably the last time he rode before the rheumatism obliged him to give it up.
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