Frequent visits were paid to family – these were bonds that were highly valued by them all. For the first fifteen years of her marriage, Alice's main concern in her trips to Skipton was seeing her parents. They died in 1864 and 1865, so that her younger children had no memory of them.
Alfred remembered his grandfather every time he voted. John Dewhurst, a supporter of the Whigs (forerunners of the Liberals), boosted his party by creating more votes for them – he transferred to relatives undivided shares in two or three cottages in Skipton to create more "forty-shilling freeholder" votes. Alfred benefited from this for years, and had a vote in Skipton as a "forty-shilling freeholder" until that property qualification was abolished in 1918. (As Alfred thought "One man, one vote" was an absurd idea, this rather underhand scheme seemed entirely right to him [1])
Alfred's elder brother John was 15 when their grandfather died. He talked of him to his own son Bertram, who wrote in his memoir of his father [2]
As John knew him, he was a fine old Yorkshireman, impetuous, even fiery, but possessed of the kindest of hearts. He was much troubled with rheumatism, but he fought his malady with the most indomitable courage and tenacity. His grandson had a vivid recollection of his hobbling round his garden, determined not to give in to his infirmity.
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| Possibly old John Dewhurst? |
Mary was only seven when John Dewhurst died but she had
childish recollections of our Grandfather, with snow white hair, sitting in the chimney corner, smoking his long "church warden" [pipe] and our grandmother looking very old but very happy in a high backed rocking chair near the table, busy with her knitting. [3]
(I think this unnamed photograph from the Hopkinson album passed down in my part of the family may be old John Dewhurst)
They were cared for as they grew older and more infirm by Alice's unmarried sister Lizzie. In 1864 their health grew more precarious. In the early part of the year Alice went to Skipton to help nurse them, taking her turn to sit at their bedside at night. That August John Dewhurst became very ill with bronchitis. On 28 August 1864 Alice wrote to John
Our beloved father's suffering were ended sooner than we had any of us anticipated. At a quarter past eleven he 'bowed his head and gave up the ghost.' Literally this describes his departure, no struggle told the moment when the spirit departed, we scarcely knew when he breathed his last. Poor Mother looks a wondering, wistful gaze at all of us; at times she realizes what has happened and then she weeps.[4]
John Dewhurst was 77 years old. He was buried at the Zion Chapel in Newmarket Street. The Cheshire Observer of 3 September 1864 reported his death, remarking
His name has for half a century been largely associated with the commercial prosperity of Skipton. In politics Mr Dewhurst was a staunch Liberal. By his liberality and judgment he earned a name which will long be remembered with sincere esteem.
And the Lancaster Gazette noted
His efforts have ever been to improve the social prosperity of the town. His remains were interred yesterday (Friday) morning, when most of the shops of the town were closed, and many gentlemen and tradesmen joined in the funeral procession.
Alice's mother Alice Bonny had endured very poor health for years.
I have heard our Mother speak with admiration of her uncomplaining patience and her great power of endurance
wrote her granddaughter Mary Hopkinson.[5] By the time her husband died she was frail and confused and she did not long outlive him. On 25 February 1865 at the age of 76 she died at home of "Decay of Nature".
In the burial ground of the Zion Chapel was the stone in memory of their 15 year old son James, who had died in 1838. Engraved below his name was a verse by the 18th century Baptist hymn-writer Anne Steele, which had been written 'To a friend, on the death of a child'
Hope looks beyond the bounds of time
When what we now deplore
Shall rise in full immortal prime
And bloom to fade no more
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| Gravestone of James, John & Alice Dewhurst |
Alice still had plenty of family to visit in Skipton after her parents had died, and so her children spent a great deal of time with their own multitude of cousins. Alice's brothers Bonny and Tom carried on the family business and Bonny's three sons and two of Tom's boys followed in their footsteps.
Alice's daughter Mary seems to have known her uncle Tom's family best and she particularly remembered times at 'Whinfield', the new house on the Keighley Road built by Tom when Mary was in her early teens. Tom and family had been living at Number 6 Belle Vue Terrace, just to the east of the Belle Vue Mills, but he and his wife Maria Stevenson, who came from a local farming family, needed plenty of room for their growing family. 'Whinfield' was a spacious new villa which stood in extensive grounds to the south-west of the town, out of way of the smoke from the mill chimneys. (Decades later it became the General Hospital).
Eleven of Tom and Maria's thirteen children survived infancy: Arthur, Alice, Ethel, Jack, Lilian, Edgar, Elizabeth, Maria, Nellie, William and Norman. The eldest was born in 1861 and the youngest in 1878, so there was an overlap with the younger Hopkinson children and Mary Hopkinson remembered them with great affection.
We all have the liveliest recollections of the generous hospitality at Whinfield, Skipton, the table groaning with good things in true Yorkshire fashion, and of our Uncle and Aunt's sympathetic forbearance with all the pranks which we, led by our cousins, indulged. The younger members of our family each found a special companion of his or her own age, and the friendships so formed have been lifelong. [6]
John and Alice's granddaughter Katharine Chorley encountered a Yorkshireman in the late 1940s who reminded her how her uncle Bonny Dewhurst used to hold a conference every Saturday with the firm's travellers after their week's journeying. Bonny heard their reports himself, kept up with successes and failures and listened out for comparisons with other firm's goods – then, if the Dewhursts were being beaten in something, the mill would set to work to outstrip their competitor. [7]
Bonny was deeply engaged in his business but he had a longing to be something of a country gentleman and do a bit of farming as well, so he took out a substantial mortgage and bought Aireville Hall and its estate. This stood to the north-west of the town on the other side of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal from his mills. It made a grand setting when Bonny and his wife Frances England celebrated their Golden Wedding with a day of amusement and entertainment for all the workpeople and their nearest relatives – some 2,000 people in all. (The estate is now a public park, and the hall buildings are the town's comprehensive school, the Skipton Academy).
Five of Bonny and Frances's children lived beyond the age of twelve. Born between 1851 and 1864, Algernon, Frances, Lionel, Harold, and Hilda were the same ages as the Hopkinson children. We don't know how often Bonny's family joined the Hopkinsons on holiday, but we are told that they were at Penmaenmawr in North Wales in 1863 at the same time as Alice's sister-in-law Alice Wills and her family – an example of the links between the three families that culminated in Gertrude Hopkinson being among the bridesmaids when Hilda Dewhurst married Arthur Stanley Wills in 1890.
Notes
[1] Sir Alfred Hopkinson, K.C., LL.D., Penultima (1930) pub. Martin Hopkinson Ltd, p. 40
[2] Original Papers by the late John Hopkinson, D.Sc., F.R.S. edited with a Memoir by B. Hopkinson, B.Sc (1901), Vol 1, pub. CUP, (available online at archive.org), p. xi
[3] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910 (1948) ed. Mary Hopkinson and her niece Lady Ewing, with a Preface by Sir Gerald Hurst, K.C., p. XIII
[4] ibid., p. 42
[5] ibid. p. XXIV
[6] ibid., p. XXVI
[7] Katharine Chorley, Manchester Made Them, pub Faber & Faber Ltd (1950), p. 50
