30. 1848

1848 – the year of revolutions across Europe, Chartism at home and, out in California, the first Gold Rush – was full of courtship in Manchester and Skipton.

The Adamson family: National Portrait Gallery

We have no photographs of John and Alice when they were young – they would both have their 24th birthdays that year – but we can imagine that they and their friends looked rather like the Adamson family (left).  We will have to imagine the colours of the clothes by looking at websites such as this one.  As this was before the invention of aniline dyes, colours were not as intense and bright as they would be in the later 19th century. 

This calotype of 1844-5 from the studio of David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson shows Robert Adamson (standing, left) and his brothers, two sisters and sister-in-law.  

Robert Adamson became a photographer when poor health cut short his apprenticeship as a millwright.  He was three years older than John Hopkinson.  His brother John Adamson (standing, right) was a doctor, physicist and lecturer.  His sisters (Melville with knitting and Isabella, standing behind her) were much the same age as Alice Dewhurst.

John Hopkinson's letter of proposal, filled with his devotion and longing to marry her, must have been very welcome and cheering to Alice Dewhurst.  Only three weeks earlier her schoolfriend Mary Harrison (described in 19. Alice Dewhurst goes to school in Halifax, 1836) had died at her aunt's home in Penrith.  

The doctors put her death down to typhus, which the newspapers were reporting as prevalent from Ulverston to Carlisle and for which the "morbid state of the atmosphere" was being blamed.  As there was still some confusion between typhus and typhoid fever and the causes for both were then still unknown – body lice in the case of typhus, contaminated water for typhoid – it was quite possibly typhoid.  The next year would see the second pandemic of Asiatic Cholera spreading across the country; it was another disease whose origin in water contaminated by faeces was still unknown at the time.

John's letter was written on 7 February.  He and Alice were formally engaged at Skipton on 11 February, John's birthday.  The next day he wrote in his book "February 12th.  Walked out with my Alice".

From this point on, they began to write to each other – rather formal and slightly stiff letters at first.  They told each other of going to chapel, of sermons heard.  Ellen Ewing in John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910 comments that they exchanged letters "the noticeable feature of which was enthusiasm, not for the recipient as might have been expected, but for the type of Christianity, then probably at its zenith".

But with visits and letters they grew to know each other better and to be increasingly comfortable in each other's company.  We only have the extracts quoted by Ellen Ewing but we can see a progression.

On 3 March Alice wrote 

On Wednesday I visited the poor woman who had lost her husband so suddenly; she appears to feel her loss deeply and yet she is resigned; … I always feel particularly pleased to find instances of this kind amongst the very poor; there are so many circumstances attendant upon their situation which appear to me calculated to blunt the finer feelings of our nature.  The middle walk of life seems the most favourable to the cultivation of the home affections

She signs herself

Accept my warmest love and believe me ever

Your affectionately attached

Alice

Knowing the influence on John of the Revd James Griffin and his deep sympathy for the poor, we can see that John's reply seems to be both encouraging and gently correcting Alice:

I am interested in the story of the poor woman whose sorrows you have been striving to heal.  I do think with you that there is much more true affection and tender feeling among the poorer ranks of life than we are apt sometimes to suppose – that generous, even refined feelings, are not infrequently hidden beneath a rough exterior.

They spent time together towards the end of April and explored the limestone uplands above Skipton.  "Do you remember last Good Friday, how gallantly I scampered with you over Malham Moors?" wrote Alice a year later.

Malham Moor by Trevor Littlewood

Ellen Ewing's quotation from Alice's letter of 12 May shows that her letters were growing livelier – and that she and her 20 year old sister Lizzie and brother Tom, then 18½, were still able to play boisterously like puppies

I have just been enduring a severe castigation from my younger brother and sister, and have returned from the wars with trembling hands and beautified with a variety of bruises.  I think, when you come, we must have a battle on even terms

(Perhaps readers will be able to remember, as I can, similar rather juvenile larks at that age?)

She was a physically active and intrepid girl:

If I had many walks with Tom as my leader I should become quite an accomplished climber.  He does not allow walls to be an impediment.  I had to scramble over several in our evening's ramble; he met with no serious objections to his mode of procedure

While Alice's letters became more playful, it seems from the extracts that John's were rather sober and plodding.  Sir Gerald Hurst, who wrote the Preface to John and Alice Hopkinson and who was married to their granddaughter Margaret, wrote

John Hopkinson had not a light touch and, I imagine, little sense of humour

By June, Alice was teasing John that he might prefer the quiet of a bachelor life to having

a saucy woman's tongue to interrupt your solemn musings, nothing to do when you come home but to make yourself comfortable

and John was assuring her earnestly

So quiet, so free, "no woman's tongue to interrupt my solemn musings" – pardon, 'tis that which constitutes my lack and makes a vacancy mind cannot fill.

And, very sweetly

I honestly told you my Alice that I liked you the better as I knew you better, and spoke the truth

He told her of his working day 

Armley Mills, now the Leeds Industrial Museum
by Mark Stevenson

After parting so reluctantly with you on Monday afternoon I was soon in Leeds whence, after making one call, I pursued my way to Armley Mill, where I found an accident had occurred on Saturday to the works requiring immediate attention.  I doffed my coat and hat and was soon at work, accepting by the way the offer of one of the workmen of some bread and butter and tea from a can (both capital) … I reached York Place at half past eleven – and was at the works at six …  This morning I left home at 5 o'clock …

He and Henry Wren were feeling pressure of work and criticism

Do what we will, Henry Wren and I are abused on all sides.  He is sorest now; I am getting case hardened and past feeling …

I do mean now to try to make my working hours shorter – and later must try, if it is possible by method, arrangement and punctuality to secure more despatch – that is, to do the same work in less time …Henry Wren has been asking more about my overhours work at Chapel etc, and suggesting, again very deferentially, that I should, for the present, exchange some of them for light outdoor exercise.  He proposed a riding horse for the firm and my scruples on this head are weaker than they were …

(Henry Wren, I am fairly sure, was an Anglican) 

By July Alice was making her views on women's abilities and rights to education very clear to John

In the meantime you can study Benjamin Parsons On the Mental and Moral Dignity of Woman.  He is a champion, though I am not quite sure that all his arguments are the soundest possible.  And we must also overlook a degree of coarseness; but his intention is so good that we will readily accord him every indulgence.  I mean we of the womankind ...

Alice was up-to-date with her reading – Benjamin Parsons' book (which can be read online) had only been published in 1842.  His subject was women's mental powers and education and he was forthright:

Most of us have seen boys and girls learning the same lessons and studying the same subject, but we never found that the girls were inferior to the boys … I never yet could detect any mental inferiority in girls, as scholars.  Indeed, my own observation would lead me to give them the preference over boys in their aptitude to learn … I am fully persuaded that experiment and observation can detect no inferiority whatever in the minds of females, during infancy, childhood, or youth.

But once the girls grew up – 

That young gentleman who aspires to her hand, although very polite and agreeable withal, is such an ill-informed personage, that an intelligent woman for a wife would quite bewilder him, and by contrast sadly expose his folly; and therefore he has come to the prudent conclusion that he will never marry a woman who knows more than himself; consequently, the lady is doomed to employ all her skill to contract her intellect to the dimensions of her lover's.  Books are abandoned or thrown away; French is forgotten, and perhaps English at the same time; and every effort is made to educe mental paralysis, until, perhaps, this seraph of a woman seems in part assimilated to the mere animal who is to be her companion until death

He thundered his conclusion:

To limit female education and acquirements, and doom husbands, son, and daughters to the sway of ignorance and caprice, is to inflict on society and on the nation one of the heaviest calamities.

Alice never attempted to hide her intellectual capabilities and literary tastes and John was proud of her.  Years later he quoted a remark of his sister Mary

Your wife's mind, John, is too good to be spent on secondary objects.

By August Alice was writing to John teasingly and her sister Lizzie was so much at home with him that she could tease him too

I feel concerned about your wounded leg, fearing that you will not take the necessary care.  It would be a serious affair if I had to make you.  But alas! that would be useless; you are such a master; I will not say My Master.  Oh no! "There's time enough for that, says I." I am still Alice the untamed, living in the land of liberty, town of Single Blessedness …

Lizzie sends her respectful compliments; she hopes you will take care of your leg as she certainly would not admire a cork legged bridegroom. 

On Saturday 4 September, a little more than a fortnight before the wedding, John had an unexpected setback.  It perhaps shows John Dewhurst's character, described by his granddaughter Mary as "quick-tempered, impulsive and outspoken" and casts further light on why his brother Isaac left their partnership.  When John Hopkinson proposed to Alice – as he explained to her in a stilted but heartfelt letter written on the Monday – it was with no thought of any private money she might have

I loved you for your own sake, and wished to marry you because I loved you – I do so still – I never have had any other reason

He hadn't even thought about the Dewhursts' financial position.  He had simply told Mr Dewhurst, in their first private interview, all about his own situation and prospects.  Mr Dewhurst had said something to the effect that "he could give his daughter something tidy".  John had assumed that this meant he was going to make some sort of marriage settlement.  But, he assured Alice, "money on your side found no item in my calculations".

On the Saturday, as he left Skipton, John thought he had better explain what he could do for Alice himself apart from what he earned in business – presumably he thought his future father-in-law was expecting him to tie up some capital sum in her name – and check out Mr Dewhurst's plans.  Slightly defensively and sounding rather hurt, he told Alice that he felt that this was  

A question with regard to the propriety of which I do not entertain the slightest doubt

Something seems to have gone rather wrong here.  John Dewhurst seems to have said that he had made the same provision for Alice as for her elder sisters, but John Hopkinson was left with no idea whether this meant on marriage or by his Will.  Now Alice had written to John, but as her letter didn't survive we don't know what had been happening in Skipton, what was said by Mr Dewhurst, or what had passed between Alice and John.  We have only his answer, quoted by Ellen Ewing.  It begins

My own dearest Alice 

The frankness of your note has relieved me from some perplexity, and I shall endeavour to answer it with equal candour. 

In our intercourse hitherto there has been no reserve on my part, and I do not intend that there should be any in the future.

Perhaps there was some question about whether they could afford to marry, whether John had been deterred by the question of money – he assured her that 

If we do not assume any wrong standard, I believe we may be comfortable.  I care little for the artificialities of life.  If I wish for wealth it is for your sake, that you may be a remove farther from want.  Do not oversestimate me in character, position or intelligence.  If you expect too much you may be disappointed.  Dearest Alice, I have long loved you for your own sake – the basis of my affection is unchanged.

He signed his letter

Your own true lover, 

John

Alice wrote back, Ellen Ewing noted, with "with religious reflections and contrition" saying

Weak, thoughtless and full of faults as I am, I would fain hope that the endeavour to promote your happiness, resulting from true affection, will not be altogether unavailing, I feel as if I had much to say: but my heart is too full to write

All was well between them.  Preparations for the wedding gathered pace.  On 16 September Alice sent John a very practical note

My dearest John 

Will you send by post six of the cards you said you would get for tieing round the cake; we wish to have the cake for Manchester packed.  If we wait till you come, there will be so many things to do, cards, directing, etc., that we should have rather too much bustle to do anything well.  

Ellen arrived in safety at half past six.  The various etceteras she brought are all approved.

We shall look for you by the half past four train on Tuesday. 

With kindest love to you Mother and sisters.  Believe me, in very great haste.  Your own affectionate 

Alice 

Skipton

Saturday afternoon,

1848

On Tuesday 19 September John arrived with his mother, sisters Alice and Mary in Skipton.  The next day he and Alice were married at the Zion Chapel by the Revd R Gibbs.  John Dewhurst rather characteristically put the announcement in a new weekly journal that he was evidently supporting.  It was called The Standard of Freedom and came out on Saturdays at a cost of fivepence.  It called for subjects dear to John Dewhurst's heart – Free Trade and religious liberty.

Meanwhile the newly married couple had left Skipton for York on their way for a fortnight's honeymoon in Scotland.  

The families wrote to them while they were away.  Alice's sister Jane sent a letter which, Ellen Ewing wrote, began with "the usual hopes" for their spiritual welfare and went on to say 

The party you left behind on your wedding day were as happy as possible to be under the circumstances.  Our dear father and mother kept up wonderfully and the two dear sisters, who were most certainly the greatest sufferers, bore up heroically … 

I feel very sorry to hear that dear John's leg is far from well; I do hope you will neither of you exert yourselves too much.  Remember now that you ought to lay up a stock of health for the Winter and not exhaust what little strength you have by trying too much …

I do not know when it became the custom – a sort of cult of sensibility – to dwell on the suffering of the families left behind by the young couple nor for how long this lasted.  John and Alice's daughter-in-law Esther wrote a very self-pitying letter to her daughter after Margaret's wedding in 1905.  In this case I think the "two dear sisters" were John's sisters.  Ellen Ewing comments on the "possessive quality of the sisters' affection for their only brother" shown in his sister Elizabeth Rooker's letter to him of 12 April 

Remember one visit to Skipton is equal to a dozen letters.  So, since you are able to pop over now and then, I cannot allow that it is needful for you to spend much time in writing also – this portion must be devoted to us I think … Do write very soon.  Remember you have three sisters here all longing to hear.

Alice's father wrote to them while they were in Scotland but no letters from Alice's mother from any period have survived.  There is no way of knowing whether she wrote too many to keep or whether she always left it to her husband and younger daughter Lizzie to write.  At some point, possibly before the elder girls' marriages, she began to suffer from very poor health and left the household management in her daughters' hands.  Alice spoke with admiration to her own daughter Mary of her mother's "uncomplaining patience and her great power of endurance" but we have no clue as to her illness.  

Ellen Ewing comments on John Dewhurst's lack of full stops (which was usual in his generation) and occasional spelling faults.  Here is his letter of 23 September 1848 in her transcription

Dear Alice, 

I am in receipt of your very welcome Letter dated Sunday 21 inst presuming you were well when you wrote as you say nothing to the contrary; you may probably get a sight of the Queen and prince Albert while you are in Scotland; they appear to be very much thought of in that part and they both appear inclined to make themselves very agreeable: your thanks for past favours are accepted and your pardon for all past faults but I do not recollect any (only the last) which cannot be repaired and that is leaving us: but John will say that is no fault, therefore I suppose we must take it for granted you must excuse all blunders as I have written in haste, may the Lord bless and protect you from all dangers and bring you both safe to your intended abode. 

I am Dear Alice, 

Your affecte Father, 

J W Dewhurst

His letters are in great contrast with the letters from the Hopkinson and Dewhurst daughters, who had all attended the sorts of schools which produced a uniformly decorous and formal way of writing.  The Hopkinson daughters were greatly given to pious reflections; possibly an awareness of their illegitimacy made virtue and piety even more imperative.  Ellen Tubbs wrote

You are the first sister we have acquired and it is delightful to have our circle enlarged and our affection strengthened by one who is one in heart with us and with whom we shall journey to the same everlasting rest.

She adds in a more chatty tone

You sent us a noble piece of cake, and very excellent it is.  For all the wedding symbols accept our thanks

Elizabeth Rooker "after elaborate expressions of regret" (Ellen Ewing's comment) that she could not help to prepare 1 York Place for Alice's arrival, wrote

We must not expect your lot to be perfectly exempt from trials; for, during our earthly pilgrimage, the cloud will sometimes obscure the brightest path; but, as far as human foresight can devine, there is every prospect of yours being a truly happy home, and most sincerely do I rejoice with Dearest John and yourself in the happiness which is at present your portion and which seems to be laid up in store with you.  To have such a pastor as our beloved Mr Griffin is no ordinary privilege.  May our Heavenly Father continue to smile on you …

John Dewhurst was much more down to earth about the Revd James Griffin.  Possibly he had listened to what he felt was excessive praise of Mr Griffin from his daughter Ellen and from the visiting Hopkinson women – he was clear-sighted about the dangers of creating a cult around a highly valued pastor

I hope he will continue long amongst you and that his labours will be blessed as they appear to have been, and that you may not make too much an Idol of him as sometimes there is very great danger in doing so with men of his worth.

On Thursday 5 October, showered with good advice and prayerful wishes by their families, John and Alice came home to 1 York Place.  They would begin their married life in Manchester in a household shared with John's mother and sister Alice.

29. Alice Dewhurst: Skipton 1840 to 1848

Alice led a sheltered life:  a little Sunday School teaching – chapel on Sundays – some visiting of the sick – fun with her younger brother and sister – staying with schoolfriends and family – writing letters – and quiet and thoughtful reading.

We don’t know how much she knew of the lives and hardships of the millhands in Skipton.  She told her children about the fire that nearly finished her father’s business before it could begin, but there is no mention of her talking about the "Plug Plot" Riots of 1842.  This was something that nobody who was in Skipton at the time would forget.

In the long hot summer of 1842, with the Chartists exasperated at Parliament's refusal of their demands and an economic depression bringing poverty and desperation, anger was building across industrial Yorkshire and Lancashire.  A General Strike began.  While Chartists were persuading the men of Messrs Wren & Bennett to come out, thousands of workpeople were taking to the roads and forcing the shutting down of mills by taking the plugs out of the steam boilers.  In those days the fire was underneath the boiler and not in a flue through it, so if the iron plug at the bottom of the boiler was knocked out, the water escaped.  

On Tuesday 16 August some 3,000 people walked the ten miles to Skipton from Colne in Lancashire.  It seems that Skipton was trying to manage the distress – of a population of 18,610, there were reported to be 4,308 individuals trying to survive on an average of only 17d (17 pence) per week – by creating some employment through schemes of public works.  This wasn't the case in East Lancashire.  Declaring that man was "born to live and not to clem" [starve], men, women and boys set off foraging from Colne and Burnley, stopping the mills, calling on workers to strike, and demanding food as they went.

The Skipton magistrates – who had sent for soldiers and quickly sworn in special constables – tried to talk them out of coming into the town, while shops hastily closed, blinds were drawn, doors and windows shut and some householders got hand-outs of food ready in case the protestors appeared at their door.  Some 500 of the marchers went to John Dewhurst's mill and pulled out the plug.  Alice's 23 year old brother Bonny went out to the protestors and gave them some money.

The huge crowd had filled the town when about 50 foot soldiers and 12 mounted troops arrived and the Riot Act was read.  Given five minutes to disperse, they left town quickly and settled in a field called Annahills on the road to Carleton to eat the food that they had begged.  

61st Regt at the capture of Delhi, Sept 1857

Local magistrates were moving among them trying to persuade them to break up the gathering but they were slow to move on and were caught out by the arrival of the 61st Regiment of Foot.  

Things turned ugly and stones were thrown.  A soldier later died of his injuries and James Braithwaite Garforth JP was blinded in one eye.  This was known in Skipton as the Battle of Annahills and it was long remembered.

  

(The man charged with assaulting Mr Garforth came before the York Assizes, where he was found guilty of riot but not of assault and was sentenced to 6 months in prison)

Either all the family except Bonny were out of town by chance, or John Dewhurst made sure that Alice and the younger ones were sent away when he saw trouble brewing, but it seems probable from Mary Hopkinson's silence on the subject that Alice must have missed it.  W H Dawson wrote in his History of Skipton (1882) that the episode "put the inhabitants into a state of terror from which it took them several days to recover".

The horizons of Alice's quiet life were broadened by the marriages of her elder brother and sisters.

Alice's elder sister Ellen, described by Mary Hopkinson as "a very bright, energetic and sociable girl", was the first to marry.  She was twenty-two when, on 5 September 1843 in the parish church of Skipton, she married 37 year old James Milne.  

He must have been quite a catch and she was going to have a very comfortable life.  He came from the same part of the country as Ellen and Alice's mother Alice Bonny, being the son of a farmer from a village a few miles from Blackpool.  But he had been apprenticed in the textile trade and for the past few years had been a partner in a thriving department store called Kendal, Milne & Faulkner.  They were silk mercers and general furnishers, selling bonnets and silks, ladies' dress materials, carpets and soft furnishings from a grand establishment in Deansgate, Manchester.  Only the year before they had created a sensation by lighting their shop with Bude Lights, a very bright oil lamp

Kendal, Milne & Faulkner in 1850

Manchester Courier 17 September 1842

On Wednesday evening last, for the first time, this most extraordinary artificial light was seen by thousands, at what is known as the Bazaar, Deansgate, Manchester, belonging to Messrs Kendal, Milne and Faulkner.  This shop is 120 feet long by 48 feet wide, and though only four lights were burning, (three of which were at the front windows, and in consequence one half of the light was thrown away – at all events, into the street,) still the light was so good that the smallest print or hand-writing could be read in any part of the shop, with as much ease and facility as though it had been noon-day.

(The department store was celebrated in Manchester and was run by the descendants of Kendal and Milne until the business was sold to Harrods in 1919)

Ellen's marriage had a significant impact on her sister Alice's life because it brought her to Manchester.  She met John Hopkinson for the first time when staying with Ellen – the Milnes and the Hopkinsons were neighbours in York Place. 

In 1844 Alice's brother Bonny was married in Colne to Frances England.  This was another textile-related match – Frances's father Nicholas England and grandfather Thomas Thornber were both cotton manufacturers.

Jane was the eldest of the Dewhurst children and inspired a loving reverence in her younger siblings, who relied on her judgement and wisdom.  In 1845 she moved away to Bradford on her marriage to a Skipton-born worsted manufacturer called Benjamin Harrison.  

So Alice could now extend her visiting range to Manchester and Bradford and she was soon an aunt.  Ellen's daughter Alice was born in 1845, Jane's son Alfred in 1846, but poor Bonny and Frances lost their seven-month old son Arthur, who was buried at the Zion Chapel in Skipton on 13 August 1846.  Alice can never have been in any doubt about the perilous nature of childbirth and the frighteningly tenuous hold on life of even tenderly cared-for, middle-class children. 

Next: 30. 1848

28. John Hopkinson at chapel & at home: 1840-1848

Outside work, John’s time was absorbed, then and for many decades to come, by the Rusholme Road chapel and its activities.  Just as his elder sisters had done, he became a Sunday School teacher, starting at the age of 16 after he had left school.  In the letter he wrote to his mother on 28 May 1846 – she was away in Wiltshire visiting his married sister Ellen – he gave her the latest news from the Sunday School before turning to the subject of his prospects at Messrs Wren & Bennett.

Kinder Downfall, by Stephen Burton

He was writing on the Thursday just before the Whit Sunday weekend.  On Whit Tuesday, he told her, he planned to join a walking party to climb Kinder Scout, setting off early by train to Mottram or Tintwistle and walking the rest of the way "making a good day's work of it, and returning by train in the evening".  This can't have been an expedition he had made before because he had to explain to his mother that "Kinderscout" was "the highest mountain in Derbyshire, and within sight of Manchester".  In fact, Kinder Scout isn't so much a mountain as a plateau of high moorland; part of it, at 636 metres (2,087 ft) above sea level, is indeed the highest point in Derbyshire.  John knew the Pennines from his time at school, but perhaps this was the serious beginning of his lifelong passion for walking in the uplands and mountains of Britain and Europe.  

An adventure like this had been opened up for him and his friends by the railways.  Mottram station (now Broadbottom) was opened in 1842 on the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne & Manchester line, and it lies 10 miles east of Manchester Piccadilly station.  It would depend on the route they took, but I think Mottram station to Kinder Scout would be a 10 mile walk.  A long energetic day.

Three days later, on the Friday, he would be back at Mottram station with the Sunday School children.  They were going "to the field as usual" on the Thursday and the next day were "to have an excursion to Mottram, where a field is engaged and a tent is to be fixed, the scholars to pay their own fares by the railway train and to take their dinners."

The letter shows that John at 22 years old was evidently a level-headed young man with a good deal of common sense and wry sense of humour, and he had done his best to scotch this plan only to find that, as a safe pair of hands, he was landed with the work:

I made quite a speech at the teachers' meeting in opposition to the proposal of taking the children out of town on account of the risk, responsibility, etc; but all my objections, in common with many others of the prudent teachers, were over-ruled.  And, being quite beaten, I had the amiability to say that, as they had thus decided to go out of town, I would go with them and do all I could to promote the safety and pleasure of those who went, which they have so far appreciated as to give me, with some others, the duty of seating the children in the carriages and seeing them safe there and back.

His letter gives us a glimpse of his mother's social life in the chapel – "very many of the friends enquire particularly and frequently about you" – and home life at York Place.  Only he and his younger sister Alice, aged 19, were in Manchester and Alice was running the house.  "Our maids go on pretty well" he says

Alice makes a very good mistress; but she is not afraid to speak when there is necessity for doing so.  Jane does far better than Anne, so much more ready to oblige, manifests more interest in her work and in us.  Alice is looking out for servants in place of Anne and Jane, as the former has given notice because there is so much work to do, the place is so hard, but was not a little surprised when Alice accepted it most cordially.

(He doesn’t mention the wage that Anne was clearly trying to negotiate.  I would think it possible that employers were in a strong position in Manchester, safe in the knowledge that there were always more young women newly arriving in town and looking for work)

Ellen, the eldest, had been the first.  Her husband was George Ibberson Tubbs, the Congregational minister of the Independent Common Close chapel at Warminster, a market town on the western edge of Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire.  When the census was taken on the night of 6 June 1841, Elizabeth, the second of the sisters, was staying with Ellen at her house in Boreham Road and Ellen will have been glad of her company and support as she was expecting the first of what would be a large family.  Her niece Mary Hopkinson wrote that Ellen had five boys and four girls in all and was "beautiful in character, most gracious and refined in manner and very sweet in appearance".  

By the end of the decade Ellen had four children and her husband George had left the Congregational church and become an Anglican clergyman.  

Perhaps doubts had crept into his mind and, from careful study, he had come to believe that he had been wrong all along and that the church should, as the Church of England held, be run by bishops.  We don’t know how the Hopkinson family reacted, but it had no effect on the relations between John’s family and Ellen’s.  His wife Alice and her sister-in-law were close and supportive of each other throughout their lives.  

His congregation in Warminster was certainly sorry to lose him.  The Patriot of 13 May 1847 reported that the members of the Common Close Chapel had held a meeting where they unanimously adopted a resolution expressing their "most unfeigned regret" at the resignation of their "beloved pastor".  They deeply deplored "the circumstances which have made it appear to him his imperative duty to sever those bonds which they had fondly hoped would have been long perpetuated" and decided to send a deputation to wait upon him "to request him to reconsider".  It was no use.  The Church of Ireland, traditionally of the Low Church tradition, was a natural home for him at least at the beginning of his ministry and he was ordained deacon for the diocese of Lismore in the Cathedral Church of Waterford on 19 Nov 1847.  In 1848 he was priested and until late 1849 he was curate at Innislormagh.  

The main result of Mr Tubbs' decision as far as John’s mother was concerned was that Ellen and the children were living on the other side of the Irish Sea and so she may not have been able to visit them.  However, in early 1848 when John was proposing to Alice Dewhurst, Ellen was in Manchester with her mother for the birth of her fourth baby, and as the decade ended Ellen and George had moved to London where he was curate at Trinity Church in the parish of St Mary Newington.  

Ellen’s marriage clearly led to the marriage of the third sister, Mary.  On 25 June 1844, Mary married Charles Foulger Tubbs at Rusholme Road Chapel.  He was her brother-in-law George's younger half-brother.  He was then a 28 year old dentist with a practice in Gosport, which lies across the harbour from Portsmouth, the birthplace of James and Eliza Griffin and Henry and Fanny Burnett.  Mary was five years his junior.  When she died in 1866 at the age of 43, her sister-in-law Alice, who had known her for nearly twenty years, wrote to John urging him to 

say something of our dear Mary in a Sunday School address.  Her earnest piety, great prayerfulness, unobtrusive but earnest endeavours to bring others to Jesus, her gentle meek spirit, altogether there was such a sweet savour of Christ about her that it seems as if the perfume of such life should be shed abroad …

John’s sister Elizabeth married on 19 September 1845 at the age of 26.  Her husband was 31 year old solicitor Alfred Rooker from Plymouth on the Devon coast.  Alfred was, of course, another Congregationalist.  His father William, a Congregational minister in Dorset, came up for the wedding and Elizabeth's two married sisters came from the South of England to be there.  "Twenty friends and relations were at the wedding breakfast" wrote John's daughter Mary.  Mary’s fondness for her aunts Ellen and Mary doesn't seem to have extended to her aunt Elizabeth.  She comments on Elizabeth’s rather sententious letters and her "customary little homilies" while praising Uncle Alfred Rooker as a "standby in the family" and a "valuable helper".

The census of 1841 had found John’s younger sister Alice still at school.  She was 13 years old and at a boarding school at The Elms in Lance Lane, Wavertree.  Wavertree was a genteel area, a place to which wealthy Liverpool merchants moved out of the city, with Georgian town houses in the High Street and new villas being built.  It was a very suitable school – its headmaster Thomas Sleigh was a Congregational minister.

By the time John reached his 21st birthday in 1845, three of his sisters were living far from Manchester – Ellen was in Warminster and Elizabeth was in Plymouth where she would soon be joined by Mary and her husband Charles.  Their mother Alice could now get a complete change of scene by visiting her married daughters.  When John wrote to her on 28 May 1846 from 1 York Place, only he and 19 year old Alice were in Manchester 

I am really glad, dearest Mother, to find that you are so much enjoying the pure air of Wiltshire and the society of our dear ones

It was after the move to York Place in 1845 that John first met his future wife, Alice Dewhurst.

Next: 29. Alice Dewhurst: Skipton 1840 to 1848

27. Henry Burnett & Fanny Dickens at the Rusholme Road Chapel

The unaccompanied hymns at the Chapel had always been plain and hearty, led by a rudimentary choir.  But at the beginning of the 1840s two musicians, fresh from London and the stage, had joined the congregation and, as their contribution to church life, formed a new and inspiring small choir to lead the singing.

They were Henry and Fanny Burnett, the two young people mentioned in blogpost 7. Becoming a member of the Rusholme Road Chapel.  Theirs was a world beyond John Hopkinson's imaginings.  He was 59 when he first went to the theatre in 1883 and seemed to his son and daughter-in-law to be fairly baffled by it, while his wife dared not tell his sister Elizabeth, "she would have been so shocked."  

Henry and Fanny Burnett came to Manchester after the baptism of their second son in London in the middle of May 1841.  Three or four weeks after settling in, they were walking along the Rusholme Road one Sunday evening when they saw the lights of the Chapel and the people going in.  They followed and were shown to seats.  Something – they could never say exactly what it was – impressed them deeply with the earnest wish to come again.  At the end of the service, Fanny had turned to Henry and said, "Henry, do let us come here again: if you will come, I will always come with you."  He was quite taken aback because she had never said anything like this before.  

For him, a Nonconformist service was a coming home.  He had been an acclaimed and successful operatic tenor, trained in music from an early age – at the age of ten he had stood on a table to sing a solo in the Brighton Pavilion to the Court and seen the old king George IV, gout-ridden and wrapped in bandages.  But though his father had been persuaded by a friend that the boy's voice was too good to be wasted, that he could make an excellent living from it, it was reluctantly because theirs was a Nonconformist family.  Henry had lived until the age of seven with a pious grandmother and aunt and their early teachings left a lasting impression on him.  And so his success in the world of music had become less and less fulfilling.  He was, as Mr Griffin wrote in his memoirs

gradually coming to feel the emptiness of worldly pleasure, and to yearn in his "secret heart" after more substantial satisfaction

In the end, he could no longer bear the contradiction between the life he was leading and what he felt to be right.  He decided to leave the stage and make his living from teaching.  He and his wife were advised that Manchester was the place to go, as music was highly appreciated there.  

Fanny Burnett wrote to Mr Griffin in these early days that 

I was brought up in the Established Church, but I regret to say, without any serious ideas of religion

but of that evening in the Rusholme Road Chapel, she said 

More or less all through the service, I seemed in a state of mind altogether new to me; and during the sermon it was as if I were entering a new world.

Her old world had been very different.  She was the elder sister of Charles Dickens.  In the Revd James Griffin's description of her new life in the chapel we can see the distinctive world of John Hopkinson and his family. 

Fanny Dickens, 1836

Fanny (1810-48) and Charles (1812-70) were born in Portsmouth, the first of the large family of John Dickens, a pay-clerk in the Navy Pay Office, and his wife Elizabeth Barrow.  

In 1822 John Dickens was posted to London where Fanny was one of the fortunate children to get a place at the newly established Royal Academy of Music at its opening in March 1823, where she studied piano and singing.  The fees were 38 guineas a year, which wasn't cheap – as is recorded in A History of the Royal Academy of Music (1922) one of the committee members wrote to another, "we find that there are a great many schools where children do not pay so much".

At this point, her parents' Micawber-like attitude to money, their habit of living beyond their means, caught up with them.  In September 1823, to save school fees and boost the family finances they sent their bright little 11 year old boy Charles to work in Warren's boot-blacking factory at Hungerford Stairs, an experience which Michael Allen (in this article on the National Archives website) has shown lasted for one year and which certainly marked him for life.  

On 20 February 1824 John Dickens was finally arrested for debt and sent to the Marshalsea Prison  where he, Elizabeth and the younger children lived for three months.  They managed to keep paying Fanny's fees, a strangely unworldly decision.  Boys' education was usually prioritised because their far greater earning capacity frequently meant they would be relied on to support family in need.  Fanny, though very able and determined – after February 1827 when her father's debts had left her fees badly in arrears and she had to leave the Academy, she was able to keep receiving tuition by taking on part-time teaching there – didn't in fact have a voice for the operatic stage where high earnings would have been possible.  Charles' feelings about his mother were permanently soured by his experiences.  He always said he never felt jealous of Fanny, but the contrast in their fortunes was dreadful for him.

Fanny married Henry Burnett, who had also studied at the Royal Academy, in 1837.  When Charles, already famous for The Pickwick Papers (serialised 1836-7) and Oliver Twist (1837-9), began to write Nicholas Nickleby (1838-9), people hailed Henry Burnett as Nicholas because he looked exactly like the pictures.  Dickens' illustrator Phiz (Hablot Browne) had probably used Henry as a model – and in fact there was a likeness of character too between Henry and Nicholas Nickleby (cf this article in the Christian Science Monitor)

At the time when Henry decided to remove himself and Fanny and their boys from London, they were spending their Sundays as professional singers at the Chapel of the Sardinian Ambassador and their Sunday evenings in the lively jollities of Charles Dickens' house – "in a manner which, though strictly moral, was not congenial" to his feelings, wrote Mr Griffin.  Fanny later told Mr Griffin that she too 

seemed gradually to lose my relish for the pleasures of the world, but I was still wholly ignorant of gospel truths. 

Charles Dickens found his brother-in-law's decision incomprehensible.  He was never a friend of this sort of religion.  As is obvious from his books, he had a great love of conviviality, parties, parlour games, dancing and noisy family fun and he loved the theatre.  He didn't think "the world, and pleasure, and dress, and company" – the sort of life condemned in the story called The Dairyman's Daughter described in this earlier blogpost  – were necessarily blameworthy.  He campaigned fiercely against the Sabbatarian movement which tried for decades to have work, trade and travel banned on Sundays.  Sunday was the only day of the week on which the lower classes could enjoy the sort of pastimes and entertainments that the upper classes could enjoy at any time.  He saw Sabbatarians as totally un-Christian and in 1843 he voiced his condemnation through the Ghost of Christmas Present speaking to Scrooge in A Christmas Carol 

"There are some upon this earth of yours," returned the Spirit, "who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us"

But by the time A Christmas Carol came out, Fanny was delighting in Sundays as a day of holy rest spent at divine service and prayer.

 

Perhaps Fanny had found life darker and sadder because of her anxiety over her eldest boy, Henry, who was far from strong.  He was born in 1839 with a physical disability – Mr Griffin wrote of a "deformed back".  He described little Harry, whom he knew well, as "a singular child – meditative and quaint in a remarkable degree".  It's said that he was the inspiration for Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol.  Mr Griffin wrote that

He was the original, as Mr Dickens told his sister, of little "Paul Dombey."  Harry had been taken to Brighton, as "little Paul" is represented to have been, and had there, for hours lying on the beach with his books, given utterance to thoughts quite as remarkable for a child as those which are put into the lips of Paul Dombey.  But little Harry loved his Bible, and evidently loved Jesus.  The child seemed never tired of reading his Bible and his hymns, and other good books suited to his age: and the bright little fellow was always happy.

(Dombey and Son was published in instalments between October 1846 and April 1848)

A few weeks after their first visit to the chapel, Fanny and Henry approached Mr Griffin to talk about joining the congregation.  They soon became good friends of James and Eliza Griffin – interestingly, they were all born in Portsmouth – spending many evenings together over the following years.  One year they all spent a month on holiday in the Lake District, driving and walking about Windermere, Rydal Water, Keswick and Coniston.  

James Griffin thought that because Henry and Fanny might still be exposed to "strong worldly influences which it might require no common degree of Christian principle to withstand" they should take becoming members slowly.  A year later Fanny wrote to Mr Griffin describing her progress in her faith.  "By degrees," she wrote,

my eyes were opened, and I saw with shame and confusion my utter worthlessness in the sight of God, and that unless I came to Him through His dear Son, I could not be saved  

Now, 

I seem to have clearer views.  I delight in the ordinances of the sanctuary.  I feel great pleasure in mixing with God's people.  I feel anxious to be spiritually-minded and to devote myself entirely to the service of Christ

During this time she and Henry "greatly endeared themselves to the hearts of the good people" of the congregation, who were deeply moved at the meeting in which Henry and Fanny were received into the church.  I feel sure we can assume that John Hopkinson and his family, with their deep involvement in the chapel and John's closeness to his friend and mentor Mr Griffin, knew the Burnetts.

The life of John Hopkinson and his family – described years later by his daughter-in-law Evelyn Oldenbourg as "their fine, almost austere, life" – and the ways of the people of the Rusholme Road Chapel could not have been more different from the life Fanny had known, the life loved by her brother Charles.  Mr Griffin wrote

the principles, the tastes, the pursuits, the habits of life, of those with whom she now came into daily intercourse, were almost entirely new to her …  

Thrown very much by the nature of her [teaching] engagements into worldly company, and with her natural buoyancy of spirits and fondness for society, her chief difficulty consisted in maintaining a spiritual and visible separation from the world.  No doubt it would demand much prayerful effort to make natural and educational tendencies bend to the requirements of religious duty and disposition 

She persevered.  She now felt that "a saving change had been wrought on her soul by the Spirit of God" and she "delighted to feel that she was now decidedly and irrevocably 'on the Lord's side,' for ever devoted and given up to Him".  She knew when she saw old friends that her "supposed fanaticism might be the object of their pity or contempt" but she kept on in her new ways all the same. When her parents came to stay, she told her husband not to miss out family prayer morning and evening.  John and Elizabeth Dickens stayed for many months and the Griffins got to know them well.  They went to chapel services and seemed to show great interest "in the new character and new associations of their daughter".

James Griffin's description of Fanny is very reminiscent of descriptions of her brother Charles – he wrote of Fanny's 

habit of endurance, fortitude, self-reliance, and firmness, in no ordinary degree – together with almost restless activity and practical energy

Her new life didn't change her attitude to her brother's work – she enjoyed equally the humour and the pathos of his books

She was no ascetic or recluse; nor was there any assumption or affectation of extraordinary piety ... She despised and detested affectation, assumed mannerisms, and shams of all sorts

Frank and open, a cheerful companion and hearty friend, she became "a general favourite.  She mingled freely with all classes, and apparently with equal interest".  She frequently asked at the end of evening service if they could go home with the Griffins and stop with them a while, even though this took the Burnetts quite out of their way.  The Griffins lived in Richmond Terrace in the hamlet of Old Trafford, more than a mile to the west of the chapel, while the Burnetts lived a considerable distance in the other direction.  They would have supper and family prayer and she would say, "Can't we have a hymn?" and they would usually sing the hymn  

When, O dear Jesus, when shall I

Behold Thee all serene …

O.S. map 1848: Richmond Terrace, Old Trafford
(National Library of Scotland)

Fanny's friends often feared that 

her incessant exertions were undermining her health.  It was difficult, however, to prevail on her to relax them

And then, about seven years after the Griffins first met her, Fanny's health began to show serious symptoms of decline.  She could not believe she was really ill, but in fact she had tuberculosis of the lung.  At last she was persuaded to go for medical care to London, where she stayed with her sister.  James and Eliza Griffin went there to see her for the last time, a "deeply affecting" and "touching" interview.  She died on 2 September 1848.

By her dying request, Mr Griffin went to London to take her funeral.  She was to be buried in "a secluded and picturesque nook in Highgate Cemetery".  All the men of her family were there.

Mr Dickens appeared to feel it very deeply.  He spoke to me in terms of great respect and affection for his departed sister – he had always so spoken of her – as I accompanied him in his brougham on my way to my brother's house.  His behaviour to myself was most courteous and kind.

Henry Augustus Burnett

Henry Burnett returned with his little boys Harry and Charles to Manchester.  Little Harry did not long survive his mother.  He died at the age of nine on 29 January 1849.  Mr Griffin wrote

He died in the arms of a dear, dear nephew of mine since passed away, John Griffin.

(John Griffin became a merchant in Manchester and lived in Bowdon.  When little Harry died, John was a youth of about 18)

I think this photograph of Harry, from the New York Public Library's digital collections, was possibly taken after his death, a not uncommon practice at the time.

Henry Burnett remarried in early summer 1857 and moved back south with his family in 1860.  

By then Mr Griffin had left Manchester, retiring from the Rusholme Road Chapel in September 1854 on account of his health.  He and his wife returned to their native South Coast where the climate did him so much good that he was able eventually to go back into the ministry in 1858.

Note:  James Griffin and his wife Eliza Marden knew Henry and Fanny well and he wrote of them at length in his Memories of the Past: Records of Ministerial Life, published in 1883.  I’m afraid this seems no longer to be available as a free e-book online.

Next: 28. John Hopkinson at chapel & at home: 1840-1848

26. John Hopkinson: out & about in Manchester in the 1840s

Living on the semi-rural southern edge of Manchester out of the smoking chimneys of the houses and mills of the town, John and his family would not have to see – unless they went expressly – the conditions of the vast numbers of people who were thronging to Manchester for work.

Friedrich Engels, who explored the worst areas, wrote in the Condition of the Working Class in England that a person might live in Manchester for years, 

and go in and out daily without coming into contact with a working-people's quarter or even with workers, that is, so long as he confines himself to his business or to pleasure walks

Less than a mile north of Wren & Bennett's works was the Old Town, lying alongside the River Irk, which Engels described as "a narrow, coal-black, foul-smelling stream, full of debris and refuse".  Mills, tanneries, bonemills and gasworks stood on the river and dry weather left slime pools 

from the depths of which bubbles of miasmatic gas constantly arise and give forth a stench unendurable even on the bridge forty or fifty feet above the surface of the stream.

He described in detail the narrow, winding streets of dirty and decaying houses, the courts and lanes and tangles of passages crammed with dwellings in "filth and disgusting grime"  

in one of these courts there stands directly at the entrance, at the end of the covered passage, a privy without a door, so dirty that the inhabitants can pass into and out of the court only by passing through foul pools of stagnant urine and excrement 

He wrote of the lack of ventilation of the streets and courts, the "filth, debris, and offal heaps" and the "multitude of pigs walking about in all the alleys."

South of the Old Town was the commercial district "perhaps half a mile long and about as broad."  Mostly consisting of offices and warehouses, much of this area was only alive by day but the main streets leading into town were lined with "brilliant shops" and here and there the upper floors were occupied and full of life until late at night.

Working-class housing stretched "like a girdle" that averaged a mile and a half in breadth around the commercial district.  Almost all the mills stood alongside the rivers and canals of the town.  The middle classes had moved out to places like Cheetham and Chorlton, and the most prosperous of all were furthest out still 

on the breezy heights of Cheetham Hill, Broughton, and Pendleton, in free, wholesome country air, in fine, comfortable homes, passed once every half or quarter hour by omnibuses going into the city 

As the town had grown, John's mother had moved from the centre of Manchester first north to the fresh air of Cheetham and then to Chorlton on the southern edge of town.  When John's sister Ellen was married in 1839, the family was living in Lloyd Street, Greenheys, to the west of today's Whitworth Park.  It was a countrified area described by Elizabeth Gaskell in her first novel Mary Barton (1848)

There are some fields near Manchester, well known to the inhabitants as "Green Heys Fields," through which runs a public footpath to a little village about two miles distant … thoroughly rural fields … here and there an old black and white farm-house 

By the spring of 1841 the Hopkinsons had moved to 41 Rumford Street, near to the Rusholme Road Chapel, and only about a mile from Wren & Bennett's works.  

O.S. map of Rumford Street 1849 
National Library of Scotland

Comfortable and spacious family houses with gardens were being built in terraces along Rumford Street, which was a very long road that ran southward from the edge of Manchester into the countryside.  (It lies underneath today's University District).  In 1842 Elizabeth Gaskell, her Unitarian minister husband and their family moved into Number 121, a larger and more expensive semi-detached villa at the farthest end of the road.  Mrs Gaskell described their house seven years later as "the last house countrywards" and "a mile and a half from the very middle of Manchester".  They could see fields from some of their windows – "not very pretty or rural fields it must be owned" – but all the same the Gaskell children could see cows milked and watch haymaking.

In 1845 John's mother took the tenancy of Number 1 York Place, the last of her moves in Manchester.  Except for six years in their early marriage, York Place was to be John's home for years – he and Alice and their family lived at Number 12 from 1855 until 1874.  

York Place has now disappeared under the site of Manchester Royal Infirmary, but I think it was built by Richard Lane & Partners, who were the architects of Victoria Park.  The Wikipedia entry for Victoria Park, the exclusive gated development with its own tollgates, walls and police, built in the countryside to the south of the Rusholme Road Chapel, mentions that a "cul-de-sac of villas was built opposite Whitworth Park, and these were later demolished for the construction of the Royal Infirmary".  This description tallies with the maps.

O.S. map of York Place 1848-50
National Library of Scotland

A photograph of 5 York Place (which can be seen here) shows rather dimly a large, plain semi-detached villa on three floors, possibly with a cellar, and an advertisement for one of the houses shows their appeal

Manchester Courier, 7 October 1843

York Place, Oxford Road

To be let, and may be entered upon immediately, a very Excellent Dwelling House, most pleasantly situated at York Place, Oxford Road, lately in the occupation of William Cooper, Esq.  It contains dining, drawing, and breakfast rooms, six or seven lodging rooms, and every other convenience suitable for a family of respectability.

Apply to Mr Wilson, Solicitor, 37, Mosley-street

Rumford Street must have been particularly convenient for John for work, for his keen pursuit of further self-education and for Rusholme Road Chapel, but York Place was perhaps only half a mile further out of town.

John was, in the true Nonconformist spirit, always eager to improve himself and learn more.

In 1841, soon after he started work, he noted in his log book that he had bought himself a tool chest.  (His daughter Mary remembered how he later taught his children to use the tools and made them their own workshop in the cellar.)

In 1842 he made a note of buying chemicals, so he must have been making experiments.  Perhaps he had been inspired by going to a lecture – it seems very likely that he joined the Manchester Athenaeum.

He certainly was at the Athenaeum's Grand Soirée at the Free Trade Hall on Peter Street on Thursday 4 October 1844 – this was the brick-built Free Trade Hall of 1842, not the monumental building of 1853.  

Benjamin Disraeli as a young man

It was a grand occasion, attended by 3,000 ladies and gentlemen and all the great and good of Manchester, representatives of the Mechanics' Institutions, the libraries, the literary institutions and the local Literary & Philosophical Societies.  The Manchester Times of 5 October 1844 reported in detail the speech of the chairman, the Conservative MP and future Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81).  He extolled the aims and achievements of the Athenaeum (its news room – library – lectures – classes in modern languages – debating society – gymnasium) and he exhorted the youth of the town, calling on them to "aspire":

The youth I address have duties peculiar to the position which they occupy.  They are the rising generation of a city unprecedented in the history of the world – a city that is at once powerful and new…

The elders of their community have not been remiss in regard to their interests:  let them remember that when the inheritance devolves upon them, they are not only to enjoy but to improve.  They will some day succeed to the high places of this great community:  let them recollect, then, who lighted the way for them; and when they have wealth, when they have authority, when they have power, let it not be said they were deficient in public virtue and public spirit.  When the torch is delivered to them let them be always ready to light the path of human progress to educated men!  

(Loud and long continued cheering)

In 1842 John went to a lecture by James Braid (1795-1860) who was a Scottish-born, Manchester-based surgeon, known for his innovative treatment of conditions such as club foot.  Braid was lecturing on what was then known as "Animal Magnetism", which he approached from the point of view of science, pioneering the use of hypnotism and hypnotherapy as a useful remedy.

in June 1842 John went to a lecture by the Revd John Curwen (1816-80).  Curwen was a Congregationalist Minister who advocated a Tonic Sol-fa method of teaching sight-reading, which he had adapted from earlier systems, including that of Sarah Ann Glover (that is, Do-re-mi with hand signals).

John's attendance might have been inspired by recent developments at the Rusholme Road Chapel. 

Note: The 1848-50 maps of York Place and Rumford Street can be examined on National Library of Scotland Map Images at Georeferenced Maps (search under England and Wales, Town Plans for Manchester, OS 1:1,056, 1848-50)

27. Henry Burnett & Fanny Dickens at the Rusholme Road Chapel

25. The disaster at the Brinksway Mill, Stockport in 1850

At 1:20pm on Tuesday 30 July 1850, during the dinner hour, when most of the workforce had gone home except for a few who had stayed to eat in the work rooms, suddenly and with a loud crack and a fearful crash nearly a quarter of the newly-built Brinksway Mill at Stockport fell in.  Four floors collapsed, carrying with them girls and women and crashing down on labourers and wheelwrights.  13 people were killed.

Wren & Bennett had drawn up the plans, were superintending the building, and building the water wheel, shafting and gearing, with the iron castings supplied by Williamson & Roberts of Stockport.  Work had begun in August 1849 on the site on the Lancashire side of the River Mersey about three-quarters of a mile from Stockport marketplace and by June 1850 the mill could be occupied – all that remained was the setting up of a water-wheel and installation of some cotton machinery.  As soon as he heard of the disaster, John Hopkinson – now a young married man and father of a little boy who had just had his first birthday – left Manchester, taking the 4:15pm train for Stockport.  He will have found a scene of shocking devastation.  

The mill was now a mass of rubble, debris of large cast-iron beams and smashed machinery.  The walls were standing, but highly dangerous.  The floors were gone and the basement, filled with collapsed masonry, ironwork and machinery, was open to the sky.  On nails in the wall, high up on the third storey, could be seen three dresses, hanging where the girls had left them before starting work.

For three dreadful hours men had worked to stabilise the ruins, trying to tie the beams of the different floors more firmly together.  At about the time of John's arrival they began to move the fallen mass and dig for the missing.  Two men had been heard crying out from under the masonry and ironwork, but only for a few seconds – nothing could be done for them and, wrote the journalist of the Manchester Examiner and Times of 3 August, "their voices soon ceased to afflict the ears of the bystanders."

Some people had been lucky enough to get out.  Bridget Larney, who worked in cardroom number 3 on the third floor, was sitting with half a dozen of her workmates having their dinner among the machines. She heard a crack and looking up saw the floor above them tumbling down over Ellen Ashton's bobbin frame.  She cried, "Good God, what's coming!" and got up and ran down the room – and then when she got to the door she looked back and she saw that where they'd been sitting, that part of the mill had fallen down and there was a hole up to the roof.  "All that I left in the room were killed," she told the coroner.  

Extra hands were taken on – the journalist doesn't say who was in charge, but as Wren & Bennett were superintending the building we must assume that John Hopkinson was part of this – and the first person was taken out at about 8:30pm.  They found five others after that, three of whom were dead.  The men worked on through the night until the Wednesday morning, the surgeon John Rayner standing ready in a nearby warehouse to give help when called and the Borough Police at hand to keep people clear.

There was so much to be moved, there were so many cast-iron beams, that progress was painfully slow.  It wasn't until Wednesday at four that they found more bodies – by then they were expecting to find seven people beneath the rubble.  The workmen worked on, in spite of the considerable risk from the walls which were in a very dangerous condition, desperate to find their workmates.  Mr Trimmer the factory inspector was on site on Wednesday at 11am, and work went on until 6pm when the weather worsened and the wind rose, and it was decided that they had better pull down the worse parts of the tottering walls – unfortunately the walls fell inward, adding to the amount to be moved.  At about 9pm they started again, frantically searching.  The journalist wrote

The interior of the ruined portion at this period presented a mournfully picturesque appearance.  The flashes of light from a fire placed in a portable grid, with the glare of several double oil lamps, threw a strong gleam over spectators and workmen, and with the associations natural to the beholder at such a moment, gave to the scene a thrilling interest.

Work went on without a break all night.  By 7 o'clock on the Thursday morning, they had reached the place where the women had been seen to fall through and disappear.  They found their bodies at 11am, dreadfully mangled and starting to decompose.  Then they found the body of a young labourer, Samuel Harrop, who had only been taken on for work on the Monday.

The bodies were quickly coffined and taken to the nearby Egerton Arms, ready for the Lancashire county coroner to come and hold the inquest.

Three of Wren & Hopkinson's millwrights had been found dead:

• Ephraim Kitson, aged 50, millwright, married with 3 children, he had been 15 years in the service of Wren & Bennett
• Wright Barker, aged 36, millwright, who left a widow
• John Bushby, aged 19, "a very promising apprentice", who lived with his parents in Manchester

Two labourers working with the millwrights had been found badly injured and had died in the infirmary:

• Joseph Orme, aged 53, who left a widow and five or six grown up children
• James Robinson, aged 28, single

The rescuers had managed to get Ellen Ashton out of the ruins where she had fallen three storeys deep, but she was shockingly mangled and died in the infirmary a couple of hours later.

Parents, siblings and friends gave evidence at the inquest of the identity of those who had been found dead:

• Mary Ann Macnamara, 14 years old, jack-tenter, daughter of a painter
• Elizabeth Sykes, 14 years old, jack-tenter, daughter of spinner David Sykes
• Hannah Cash, drawing-tenter, 19 years old, single, only daughter of James Cash, twister
• Ann Swindells, 30 years old, jack-frame tenter, mother of five, wife of George Swindells, self-acting minder
• Margaret Ardern, 30 years old, jack-frame tenter, single woman, mother of two and sister of John Ardern
• Bridget Silk, about 36 years old, drawing-tenter, single
• Samuel Harrop, 22 years old, labourer, son of James Harrop

As three people had died at the Infirmary, which was in Cheshire, while the others had died at the mill, which was in Lancashire, two inquests had been opened.  But the coroners, Mr W S Rutter for Lancashire and Mr Charles Hudson for Cheshire, agreed that the inquests should run together, beginning on Friday 9 August at 3pm.

John Hopkinson gave his first evidence at the Lancashire inquest at the Egerton Arms, Brinksway on the Wednesday and then returned to give his evidence in full at the joint inquest on 9 August before both coroners and the juries for both Lancashire and Cheshire.  During his evidence, journalists report him as using both "I" and "we" in his explanations, but it is clear that at least one crucial decision was made jointly by him and Mr Henry Wren.  

As the Home Secretary had turned down the coroners' request for somebody competent to survey the mill to establish the cause of the collapse – on the grounds that this wasn't necessary – they had called in two Manchester experts themselves.  These were formidably qualified men – the engineer and mathematician Professor Eaton Hodgkinson FRS (1789-1861) and civil engineer William Fairbairn FRS FRS (later Sir William Fairbairn, Bt) (1789-1874).

They were pioneers in investigating structural failure and in particular the question of cast iron.  John, 26 years old and a junior partner in the firm, would be facing two experienced men of sixty-one with strong views and many experiments and publications behind them – as well as the friends and families of the dead.

The interior of the mill was 14 yards (nearly 13m) long, consisting of 14 regular 10 foot (3m) bays, and was 60 feet wide.  Each floor was supported by two rows of cast-iron pillars running the length of the building at 10 foot intervals.  The mill was to be worked by both steam- and water-power.  After the plans were drawn up, the owner Mr Cephas Howard and the future tenant Mr Joseph Heaward decided it would be better to have the mill moved 11 feet closer to the River Mersey.  This meant a significant alteration to the plans.  

An old tunnel ran under the ground floor the whole length of the mill; it was in this tunnel that the water wheel was being fixed.  Cast-iron columns went through the tunnel to support the upper floors, and were fixed into solid rock on the floor of the tunnel.  But because the mill site had been moved, one of the cast-iron columns had to be left out to make space for the water-wheel.  So, to support the line of pillars above, a large cast-iron beam was placed over the water-wheel, resting on the two adjoining columns, which were accordingly made stronger.  One entire line of columns, four storeys in height, rested upon the centre of the large beam.  "We should have avoided," said John, "if it had been practicable, placing a row of columns on the middle of a beam."

Professor Hodgkinson and Mr Fairbairn both found that it was, as had been suspected from the beginning, this cast-iron beam that had given way.  As this interesting article entitled 'An Iron Will' by Clive Richardson explains, cast iron "was reliable for columns but treacherous for beams."

A crucial point was that it had been not a solid beam but an open-work beam.  When John was recalled to explain his calculations for the beam (made "according to a rule laid down in a book (produced)", noted the Manchester Courier of 10 August 1850) and the tests that had been carried out on the castings, he said that they had made the decision to make it open-work rather than solid when the "the drawing of it was executed … on account of its large size.  That was decided by himself and Mr Wren."

Professor Hodgkinson was brutally clear, citing the published research carried out by himself and Mr Fairbairn

the beam, to save metal, had, however, been made with apertures at the side, which, according to my experiments, greatly impairs the strength ... From the experiments I have made it is proved that beams with open work have great weakness.  Open-work beams ought to be discarded.  I am sorry that a want of knowledge of that fact led to the accident.  I think the accident has arisen from error of judgment … I attribute the falling of a portion of the mill to an error of judgment in the form of the beam and of the pillars; it is quite possible the form of the pillar led to the fracture of the beam; the brick-work of the mill seemed to be good …

John defended the pillars in his reply

I believe this form of pillar has been used by architects of the greatest eminence; I believe they have been adopted in the new houses of parliament by Mr Barry; the interior of the Manchester Athenaeum rests upon four columns of the same description, and all the pillars in the Free Trade Hall are of the same description.

William Fairbairn
in 1877

William Fairbairn – who had worked briefly for Thomas Cheek Hewes until a disagreement over the design over a bridge over the River Irwell – was equally condemnatory, though he spared the pillars from criticism

Cast-iron may be said to be of almost universal application at the present time in the construction of buildings.  Its use is at all events very extended, and the repeated occurrence of lamentable accidents, which have hurried numbers to their graves without the means of escape or a single moment's reflection, evidences a deplorable want of knowledge of its general properties amongst those who undertake the designing and erection of buildings, and seems to call for the interference of the strong arm of the law, or, at least, for the supervision of some higher authority than now exists to enforce obedience to those well-established principles and facts, which point out a way to its perfectly secure adaptation when duly and accurately proportioned to the duties it may be called upon to perform ...  

when its application is undertaken by, or entrusted to the management of, the unthinking and ill-informed, who possess no knowledge of, or have not taken the trouble to make themselves acquainted with its cohesive strength and powers of resistance, it becomes in such hands a most dangerous enemy, instead of a useful and powerful auxiliary ... 

I have, therefore, no hesitation in stating that I have come to the conclusion, that the unfortunate accident at the Brinksway Mill has arisen from the weakness of the large beam which supported the columns and brick arches over the water-wheel.  My opinion further is, that although the bearing powers of the beam had been very materially diminished by the openings made in it, yet it appears that it is in some measure owing to the unequal shrinkage of the casting during its cooling, occasioned by these very openings, that we must attribute failure.

As some consolation to John, Mr Fairbairn did, before sitting down – and presumably in answer to a question from one of the coroners – bear testimony to the skill and talent of the architects.

The journalist on the Manchester Courier on 10 August 1850, recorded John's response to these damning conclusions:

It would be improper for him to give any opinion as to the quality of the metal, as that would seem as if he wanted to throw the responsibility on other parties.  This he wished particularly to guard against, and take the whole responsibility upon himself and his partners.

John wrote to his wife at the end of his day at the inquest

For about two and a half hours I was on my legs with all sorts of questions on all hands.  I felt more comfortable than I have done since this deplored occurrence, the verdict condemns the beam as of imperfect construction and improper calculation, but fully aquits us of anything like want of care or negligence 

And on 10 August he wrote to her with more and very encouraging details

And for your ear only, dearest Alice, for are you not my second self.  The coroner, in summing up, remarked that the jury had had the fullest explanation and clearest evidence with regard to the construction of the building from one of the partners whose statements, he must say, had been characterized by a veracity, straightforwardness and moral courage which were infinitely creditable

We don't know whether any of the families took action under the Fatal Accidents Act 1846 against Wren & Bennett and we don't know how the loss – estimated at about £1,000 for the buildings and £7,000 for the machinery – was made good, and whether covered by insurance.  I don't know if Wren & Bennett changed the way they used cast iron afterwards.  But the experience must have been formative for John.

Next: 26. John Hopkinson: out & about in Manchester in the 1840s