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