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

19: Alice Dewhurst goes to school in Halifax, 1836

In 1836 at the age of 12, Alice Dewhurst was sent to boarding school in Halifax, where she spent 3 years.  Only a couple of years earlier, John Hopkinson had been sent to school near Halifax and had run away – Alice's experience was far better.

Halifax, 1847

Her school was run by the Misses Chippendale and it was on Temple Street, a cul de sac off New Road, Halifax.  Across New Road, there were open fields, and at the other end of Temple Street lay the grounds of Summerville House.  This large villa, built in about 1800, can be seen in the centre of the picture on the right.  I think Temple Street is one of the roads on the left.

Meanwhile, a couple of miles away and outside town, was Miss Elizabeth Patchett's Law Hill School in Southowram – and while Alice was at the Misses Chippendales', Emily Brontë was at the Miss Patchett's, trying through gritted teeth to be a schoolteacher.  Her sister Charlotte wrote of Emily's duties in October 1838

Hard labour from 6 in the morning until near 11 at night, with only one half-hour of exercise in between – this is slavery. I fear she will never stand it

Emily lasted about 6 months and then left a life totally unsuited to her physically and mentally.  We can only hope that at the Misses Chippendales' the staff had an easier time.

And then, as Alice was leaving school, Branwell Brontë came to work as clerk in charge at the new railway station at  Luddenden Foot, about 4 miles on the other side of Halifax from the Misses Chippendales' school – a good position in the booming new industry.  But while he went out drinking, the man he left in charge was embezzling the money and Branwell's failure of duty led to his dismissal after about 18 months.  After that, he hung around Halifax, spending a great deal of time, and money he didn't have, at the Old Cock Inn, not 2 minutes' walk from Alice's old school.

Mary, 15 year old
servant girl, 1836
by Mary Ellen Best

Alice's school was kept by the Misses Margaret, Agnes, Ann and Elizabeth Chippendale – they were between 41 and 33 years old when Alice went to the school 

• their sister Mrs Mary Hall sometimes visited the school and on one of her visits was particularly kind to Alice, looking after her at night when she was very ill with something like "brain fever"

• the 1841 Census (taken after Alice left) shows that the live-in staff consisted of the 4 Misses Chippendale, plus a French or German governess (her name is illegible), and 3 women servants 

• there were 17 pupils – most of them were aged 15 – but there was also a girl of 9

• the Misses Chippendale will have taken day pupils too

In the same census, Law Hill School at Southowram had 3 staff (Miss Patchett and 2 teachers), with 3 women servants and a male servant in his 50s, and 20 teenage boarders

• we know that Miss Patchett had a school of 40 pupils, so it seems reasonable to suppose that the Misses Chippendales' school was the same size

Alice's parents will have known all about the Misses Chippendale, because they came from Skipton.  They were the daughters of the banker Mr Robinson Chippendale, and their sister Mary's husband was the Skipton lawyer Stephen Bailey Hall – he ran the Skipton Savings Bank alongside his legal practice

• Mr Bailey Hall was well known in the town as a poet – in 1839 he had a volume of didactic poems published called The Test of Faith, Israel a Warning to Britain, and other Poems (it can be read for free on Google Books) 

• the serious, high-toned nature of the school can be guessed from Mr Bailey Hall's poems and the fact that Robinson Chippendale was not only a banker but also a churchwarden – in fact, he sided with the vicar and his curate in the unseemly dispute over the appointment of the Revd Withnell as master of the Grammar School

• but, while the Misses Chippendale were Anglicans, they were Evangelicals and this will have appealed to Alice's Nonconformist parents – besides, two of the Misses Chippendale were "truly devout" and had a great influence on some of the girls

It was during this time that Alice's brother James, her merry and mischievous childhood playmate and the closest in age to her of all her siblings, died aged 15 of tuberculosis – his death certificate gives the cause of death starkly as "Decline".  He was buried at the Zion Chapel burial ground on 4 May 1838.  

The 1830s brought a great deal of grief and trouble to the family – the fire at the mill was only the beginning

• John Dewhurst's sister Eleanor was widowed in 1837, and left with 4 boys under the age of 7 and an ironmongery business to run

• Alice's grandmother Ellen Dewhurst died in 1839, aged 82

• for Alice's mother, it was a particularly bad time – not only did she lose her son, but her sister Betty was widowed in 1830, her mother died in 1831, her brother George was found dead in a ditch in 1834, and her brothers Richard and Robert hit financial disaster in 1838

So it is perhaps not coincidental that it was at this time, during the three years that Alice spent in the devotional atmosphere of the Misses Chippendales' school, that she decided to apply to the Zion Chapel in Skipton for membership

• her new conviction brought her very close to her eldest sister Jane – their shared spiritual experience bridged the gap of 8 years between them

As well as being "carefully taught both from the Bible and Prayer Book" (in Mary Hopkinson's words), the girls were taught the usual range of subjects of the time, including music and drawing.  Mary Hopkinson found an exercise book of her mother's dated May 1839, which contained notes written in a "clear hand" and "well executed sketches" copied from prints, which she thought were drawn by Alice herself. 

Ellen Ewing gives the text of a letter from Miss Margaret Chippendale, dated 19 December.  No year is given, but it's clear that Alice had been in the "first class".  Readers of Jane Eyre may remember that it was "the tall girls of the first class" who whisper their disgust at the burnt porridge.  So – as Mary Hopkinson said Alice spent 3 years at boarding school from 1836 – this would be Alice's final report, written in 1839.

Miss Chippendale informs John Dewhurst in this stately letter that, during all her time at the school and particularly over the last half year, Alice has been

exceedingly diligent in all those pursuits to which she directed her attention and has invariably pleased us by general good conduct and ready and cheerful compliance with all our wishes.  In the musical department she has more than exceeded our expectations.

Perhaps Alice came home a little aggrieved about not winning first prize in her class.  Miss Chippendale explains that Alice was a candidate for the first prize in the half-yearly exam, together with "three other young ladies in the first class" – but unfortunately they all deserved the prize and so it was decided by lot and Alice didn't win.  However,

the honour of ranking one of the first in our establishment will, I have no doubt, compensate her for any little disappointment she may feel in not obtaining the book

(We don't know how stiff the competition was for this desirable – and surely very edifying – prize)

Miss Agnes Chippendale died in 1844, Miss Margaret married a Halifax clergyman in 1845 – they were both in their fifties and lived into their eighties – and the Misses Ann and Elizabeth retired to live on the income from their Railway Shares. (We don't know if they were lucky in their investments – the Brontë sisters lost the money they invested)

Two particular friends from Alice's schooldays are recorded by her daughter Mary

• Sarah Jackson was "an extremely musical girl" from Kirkby Stephen in Westmorland – her father Henry Jackson was a solicitor  

• Mary Harrison was born in Penrith in Cumberland in 1823, her mother's 9th & youngest child

Mary's father was Anthony Harrison, a Penrith solicitor, who died aged 54 when Mary was 4 

• Mary was then adopted by her father's childless sister Ann, who was married to Captain William Buchanan RN – they lived in the Friarage in Friargate 

• Alice and Mary had "a very warm friendship".  Mary had a "particularly sensitive and refined nature" which "made her a truly kindred spirit" and they exchanged "long interesting letters"

The letters that are quoted by Ellen Ewing date from 1840 and 1843, after the girls had left school, but they give an idea of their friendship they made at Halifax.  None of Alice's replies survive.  It isn't possible to tell from the brief sentences quoted by Ellen Ewing where the balance in the friendship lay, but she describes Mary's

innocent gaieties and harmless pleasure in music and beautiful scenery and society and friendship, her guileless interest in the other sex, her efforts at self-improvement and the acquisition of knowledge, her religious doubts and hesitations, which she seems to have faced with courage and common sense

and she comments that Mary was often "afflicted with introspection of a depressing character" which was perhaps made worse by "her unusual interest in death beds, of which she seems to have been often a witness"  (Mary described the deathbed of her old schoolmistress Miss Agnes Chippendale in 1844 as "delightful")

Giulia Grisi (1811-69)
operatic soprano

It's impossible to say whether this was a sort of competitive gloom picked up at their very earnest school, nor who was the leader between the two girls.  But perhaps we can guess from Mary writing this, on 2 October 1843, that she could be very light-hearted

Will you be sadly shocked if I tell you I have been down to Carlisle lately, to hear Grisi.  And really, Alice dear, I did not feel I had done anything wrong.  I hope it is not a proof of a hardened conscience.

They wrote to each other about literature – we know that Alice was always a great reader – and that at one point Alice "recognized too strong an inclination for novels" and so she gave them up for "something more worth while".  (Not much like the Brontë sisters of nearby Haworth?  Alice was a near contemporary of theirs, four years younger than Anne Brontë)

Perhaps we see a bit of Alice's seriousness here, when Mary writes on 3 October 1840 

Recommend to me, if you can, some poetry to commit to memory which will have the effect of raising the mind … For my mind is one of those which requires solid nourishment.  The work of digestion never ceases.  Therefore, if substantial food is not administered it will feed on light, unwholesome things which, though palatable to the taste, do not strengthen the soul …

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1795

and, very interestingly, Mary continued

… Mama does not think she has a single autograph of S. T. Coleridge … My Father was very intimate with him.  As I think I told you, his powers of conversation were amazing and fascinating.  Aunt Buchanan tells me she once heard him talk for hours on end on the character of King David – a voluminous subject truly …

because it turns out that Mary's father was the Anthony Harrison mentioned by Dorothy Wordsworth in her journal on 28 August 1800:

I was rouzed by a shout that Anthony Harrison was come.  We sate in the orchard till tea time, drank tea early & rowed down the lake which was stirred by Breezes

William Wordsworth 1798

Anthony Harrison was at Hawkshead Grammar School with Wordsworth, one of Alice Dewhurst's favourite poets.  The friendship was renewed when Wordsworth returned to live in the Lakes, and Anthony Harrison became – for a while – part of the Lake Poets' circle.  He had Samuel Taylor Coleridge to stay with him in 1809, and helped him to proof-read his journal The Friend.  

"There was unpleasant gossip about his habits at Penrith, where he stayed with one Anthony Harrison, an attorney" wrote E K Chambers tersely in his 1938 biography of Coleridge.  

Luckily Mary never knew what the Lake Poets were writing about her father to each other. 

Anthony Harrison seems to have been filled with the longing to be a Lake Poet too, and in 1806 he published his own verse.  Poetical Recreations came out in 2 volumes when he was 33, the year before his marriage to Mary's mother (you can actually still buy it as a reprint).  

Robert Southey 1805

On 2 September 1805 Robert Southey wrote to a friend 

We have also had two evening parties – one for the Calverts & a poor fellow who having been a good Lawyer is gone crazy & turnd bad poet; – of course he brought me two vols his poems – two great books full!

Unfortunately Anthony had parodied Wordsworth's 'Hart-leap Well' in his 'The Barkhouse-Beck Leap'.  Wordsworth did not take this well.  The critics panned Anthony's verse.  

In 1840 Alice's schooldays were over and she was back at home with her family in the High Street at Skipton.  She would be 16 that November – her eldest sister Jane would be 24 that year and Tom, the youngest of them, would be 11 in December.  There was, of course, the dreadful gap where James should have been.

Her brother Bonny, now 20, had started work in the business and was already travelling on behalf of the firm.  Within a few years he would see a good deal of England, Scotland and Ireland.  He wrote long descriptive letters to the family back at home.  In one letter of 1840 he reported on his coach journey to Durham, describing Thirsk and Northallerton as "very dull and uninteresting places with no sort of manufacturers in the neighbourhood" but he approved of the railway:

… the great North of England Railway was in a very forward state.  It runs from York to Darlington and will be opened, it is supposed, in the month of November.  It crosses the Tees, about three miles from Darlington, by a very fine skew bridge

So now Alice would spend her time romping with the younger children, teaching Sunday School and staying with friends and family.  We know she visited Sarah Jackson in Kirkby Stephen, Mary Harrison in Penrith, John & Alice Bonny in Blackpool – and that, after her sister Ellen married in 1843, Alice stayed with her in Manchester.  There must have been many other visits in the years after school ended.

Miss Ellen Milne, Miss Mary Watson, Miss Watson, Miss Agnes Milne and Sarah Wilson
by Hill & Adamson
National Galleries of Scotland

Alice and her friends must have looked rather like these young ladies, photographed by Hill & Adamson in Edinburgh in the mid-1840s.  

The fashions were subdued, romantic, sentimental – the outline created was one of sloping shoulders, a low, pointed waist and bell-shaped skirts that skimmed the floor.  To get this look, a girl would have to wear a long, inflexible bodice and a couple of petticoats for standard day wear – and at least one of the petticoats would have to be made from horsehair crinoline to be stiff enough to hold up the skirt.  By the end of the decade, a woman might need to wear as many as 6 or 7 petticoats.  

But perhaps that was for the very fashionable, and I don't think Alice's religious principles would have permitted that sort of thing.

Next:  20: What was Alice Dewhurst like?

18: Alice Dewhurst's childhood

Skipton in 1830

The structure on the right of the High Street matches the description of the old market cross in Dawson's History of Skipton – it had a square awning supported by four piers, with tiers of steps around it and a small belfrey on top.  It was removed in the 1840s

Where was Alice born?

• Alice's daughter Mary Hopkinson thought that her mother was born at Swadford House, a place she knew well herself from visits to her grandparents

• but this was the house of John Dewhurst's prosperity, and they moved there in the 1840s when Alice was in her late teens

• until then they lived in the High Street, and the 1841 Census shows that they were living on the west side of the High Street near the Black Horse Hotel and not far from the parish church of Holy Trinity

So Alice spent her childhood in the bustle and excitement of the High Street, which was sometimes known as the Market Place, because that was where the frequent markets were held:

Skipton market, late C19

An excellent weekly market is held here on Saturday; and a good fair for fat cattle and sheep every alternate Monday; the annual fairs are March 25th, Saturdays before Palm and Easter Sundays, the first and third Tuesdays after Easter, Whitsun-eve, August 5th and November 5th, chiefly for sheep, horned cattle, horses, pedlary &c.

Pigot's Directory 1828-9

As the road wasn't then paved with setts, and especially as the Black Horse Hotel must have been popular with the farmers and merchants coming into town, it must have been a lively, noisy, dirty, exciting place for children.

(To try to give a flavour of the times, I'm adding here pictures by the young artist Mary Ellen Best of Clifton, just outside York.  For more, see the excellent book, The World of Mary Ellen Best by Caroline Davidson)

Alice's brothers and sisters were described by their niece Mary Hopkinson 

• Jane, the beloved eldest sister and family counsellor, was born in 1816

• her judgment was "wonderfully mature" from her early days and her brothers and sisters looked up to her with "reverent affection"

• John Bonny was born on the day of the Peterloo Massacre in 1819

• he was a studious, thoughtful boy – he went to Skipton Grammar School

• Ellen, born in 1821, was "a very bright, energetic and sociable girl"

• James, born on Christmas Eve 1822, was a merry, generous, loveable boy, "quite a wit and brimming over with fun and mischief"

• he was Alice's playmate and often led her into scrapes – she remembered how he once cut her hair "in Vandykes, much to the chagrin of her parents" (ringlets of some sort?)

Clifton Feast, May Day 1833 by Mary Ellen Best

Alice came next, born in 1824, and then there was a gap of 4 years before her younger sister & brother were born:

• Elizabeth Ann – Lizzie – was born in 1828 with a club foot, which was a cause of much suffering to her in her youth 

• eventually she was able to be treated and Alice went with Lizzie to London where she had "very skilful surgical treatment in London by Dr Taplin".  In those days this was without anaesthetic so her fortitude and endurance can only be imagined, but the operation was successful – a "complete cure".  The only surgeon I can find in any medical list is a Thomas Taplin of the Indian Army, whose listing shows he retired in 1849.  Perhaps he practised in London when he was on leave, or after retiring from the Madras Presidency 

• Thomas Henry ("Tom") was born in 1829 – he went to Skipton Grammar School and then (his father being now much more prosperous) was sent south to be a boarder at Mill Hill – founded in 1807 by Nonconformist merchants and ministers, who chose a site far enough out of London to keep the boys out of the "dangers both physical and moral" of the city streets

By about the age of 4, Alice could already read fairly well and she was learning to sew.  She was very like her father, in his quick-tempered, impulsive and outspoken nature, and in his looks – the family called her "little Papa" and Mary Hopkinson said that, when you looked at the portrait of John Dewhurst that used to hang on the wall in his son Bonny's house, you could see why.

Miss Mary Kirby of
the Castle Howard Inn
1832
by Mary Ellen Best

Alice was now sent to Miss Louisa Wimberley's school – a Ladies' Boarding and Day School in Newmarket Street

• the 1822 Directory shows their seminary was kept by the Misses L and C Wimberley, but Charlotte married that year and Louisa carried on the school on her own

• by the time Alice became a pupil, Louisa was about 33 years old and was working under her maiden name – in 1825 she had married Robert Hume Mossman, who kept a Commercial and Mathematical School in Newmarket Street

• the Mossmans had a chequered life – they left Skipton soon after their marriage and came back again a year or two later, I suspect because Robert's attempt at a school in Wetherby failed.  He was gaoled twice for debt in London in the 1840s

• Alice remembered Miss Wimberley for rapping her on the head with her thimble when Alice wasn't paying attention to her hemming in a sewing class – this reprimand was known as "thimble pie"

When the Mossmans left Skipton again, Alice was sent to Miss Mary Ann Dilkes' boarding & day school in Market Place

• Miss Dilkes appears as Miss Delk in the 1834 Directory – I can't find anything about her under either surname  

• Alice was nearly 8 years old now and she felt that her "mental training" under Miss Dilkes was "exceptionally valuable", according to Mary Hopkinson

Alice was an intelligent little girl, keen and eager to learn and always, her daughter said, aware whether she had grasped a subject or not.  She had a "remarkable faculty" for figures but she was always a great reader and her tastes were literary.

Next:  19: Alice Dewhurst goes to school in Halifax, 1836

14: The Bonnys of Blackpool after 1815

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Preston Chronicle, 15 February 1834

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blackpool in 1830

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The opening of Blackpool's North Pier, 1863

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

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

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

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

• an aquarium and menagerie

• the Winter Gardens, a grand entertainment complex 

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

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

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

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

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

Blackpool, 1840

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