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.

17: John Dewhurst's Belle Vue Mill and the break with his brother Isaac

In 1823, John moved the family back from Embsay to Skipton, and it was in Skipton that his daughter Alice was born, on 1 November 1824.

Isaac was already living in Skipton.  Perhaps the brothers were confident their on-site managers could run the mills while they dealt with marketing and management.  Or perhaps they were already planning a new venture – or at least John was planning it. 

In May 1828, they bought a site in Skipton between the Leeds & Liverpool Canal and the main road into Lancashire.  John's plan was to build a cotton spinning mill with power looms for weaving, and the power was to come from steam.  

Power loom weaving in 1835

But even as the new mill – it would be called Belle Vue Mill – was going up, all was not well in the business.  

K C Jackson (in The Dewhursts of Skipton: a dynasty of cotton masters, 1789 to 1897, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 75, (2003), pp.  181-205) has various suggestions for the difficulties.  Perhaps 

• there were problems coordinating the business across the various mills

• the brothers had different ideas of the business's future

• Isaac felt he was the junior partner because John had more capital – and so more clout – than he did.  John had inherited from an uncle, and he'd also inherited the farm at Pickhill (I think probably as his father's heir at law).  Alice had inherited money from her father – he left his daughters £800 apiece – and would share with her siblings in the residue of their father's personal estate (goods & chattels, monies & securities) after their mother died, which happened in 1831.  John might even have had capital from his first marriage

• Isaac was perhaps nervous about the new change of direction for the business 

We might think – given Mary Hopkinson's description of her grandfather as "quick tempered, impulsive and outspoken" – that without James being there as a buffer and emollient, John & Isaac couldn't get on.

On 17 February 1829, the Belle Vue Mill was opened and immediately afterwards refinanced with a mortgage from a farmer & grazier at Long Preston.  Two months later, on 21 April 1829, the partnership between the brothers was formally ended.

• John – whose project it seems to have been – took the Belle Vue mill and the mill at Airton – he also had a warehouse he had bought a few years earlier on Newmarket Street 

• Isaac took the mills at Embsay and Scalegill – it seems from the 1834 Directory that he also had the Manchester warehouse 

John began by producing cloth on his new power looms, but after a while most of the production was in spinning, turning out worsted yarns and cotton twist.  This shows he was aiming at the Bradford worsted trade, which made fabrics with a cotton warp yarn and a wool worsted weft

• worsted is a high-quality type of wool yarn that comes from long-staple pasture wool  

• at that time they used cotton warps in worsted fabrics because they hadn't yet developed worsted yarns that were strong enough to be used in power-looms 

• and the use of cotton warps saved money, which was useful because of the American tariffs

Belle Vue Mill: O.S town plan c1850
National Library of Scotland

This wasn't the first cotton mill in Skipton – there was Mr Sidgwick's High Mill at the entrance of Skipton Woods, built in 1785 and with a steam-powered extension added in 1825.  With two steam-powered mills in town, there were more mill-hands needed.  Between 1821 and 1831, Skipton's population went up from 3,411 to 4,842.

I hope the split didn't mean the families fell out.  There seem to have been plenty of little cousins in Skipton by then, all living not far from each other.  And by 1835 the town was full of them:

• John & Alice had 7 children 

• Isaac & Sarah had 9 children

• Nancy Dewhurst and Storey Watkinson had 9 children – Storey, who was mostly a farmer and grazier, was by 1837 keeping the Devonshire Arms in Caroline Square (which was not the same place as the upmarket Devonshire Hotel in Newmarket Street)

• Eleanor Dewhurst had married Henry Wilson, who was an ironmonger in town, in 1829 – they had 3 sons, and Eleanor would soon have her fourth 

Fire!

A horse-drawn fire engine from the 1840s

On the morning of Sunday 2 January 1831, two years after production began at the Belle Vue Mill, it was discovered that the buildings were on fire.  Crowds rushed to the scene to try to put out the flames.   

 

If only, lamented the Leeds Intelligencer, there had been even one fire engine in the town, "any very extensive injury might certainly have been prevented; but there were none!" 

Messengers were sent at once to Keighley, 10 miles away, and Leeds, 25 miles away.  The two Keighley engines galloped to the scene as soon as they got the message and were on the spot in 44 minutes.  But it was too late.  Nearly all the valuable machinery and stock was gone and the fine new building, except for the part where the engine stood, was left, the Intelligencer reported, "a mass of blackened ruin".  

It must have been an appalling moment for John and Alice.  The scale of the Belle Vue operation can be seen – if the report is accurate – in the amount of damage done.  It was estimated at £14,000 or £15,000, and the insurance with the Manchester, Alliance and Atlas offices would only cover about £8,000 worth.  The Mill formed the bulk of John's business – he'd bet everything on this.  And it was a bad blow for the town – somewhere between 300 and 400 people had been thrown out of work. 

A subscription was raised at once to support the workers, and the clergy, gentry and other inhabitants of Skipton were "cheerfully and liberally" contributing by the time the Intelligencer came to press on the 8th.  Two county magistrates began at once to investigate the cause of the fire.  Was it arson?  There were desperate and destitute former handloom weavers in the manufacturing districts and arson was always suspected.  But the magistrates couldn't establish a cause and the Intelligencer reported that John Dewhurst himself thought it was accidental.  On the very day of this dreadful crisis in his business career, he put a notice in the papers:

Fire at Skipton – Mr John Dewhurst feels himself particularly called upon the return his most sincere thanks to his friends, and the people at large, for their kindness and unremitting exertions which he this day witnessed through the dreadful proceedings of the calamitous Event.

Skipton, 2nd January, 1831

His daughter Alice was 6 years old at the time and it made a deep impression on her.  She loved to tell the story of how incendiaries had burned down her father's mill just before the insurance on it was completed (clearly the family thought it was arson) – and how his friends insisted he should build again – how they were ready to lend him money without security – and how the Bank Managers were keen to help in any way.  Customers relied on John's love of supplying only the best – they were happy to have him pass the goods they were buying, instead of examining the textiles themselves. 

John began rebuilding and re-equipping his mill and it opened as a cotton-spinning mill that very autumn.  He had already mortgaged the mill once, and now he topped it up with a second loan, this time from the Craven Bank, putting up as security the newly rebuilt mill and the warehouse that he owned in Newmarket Street.  

His wife Alice, who must have been glad of the support of her sensible daughter Jane, now 15, had a 1 year old and a 3 year old to cope with – and her mother Jennet died in Blackpool during the rebuilding of the mill.  The fact that the money which would now come to Alice under her father's Will was so welcome, given the family finances, must have added complicated feelings to her loss.

Perhaps John's status in the community is revealed by the fact that in 1832 he rode, his daughter Alice vividly remembered, at the head of the procession to welcome Lord Morpeth and Sir George Strickland into Skipton.  They had just been returned as Whig MPs for the West Riding in the newly reformed Parliament.  John's granddaughter Mary Hopkinson thought it was probably the last time he rode before the rheumatism obliged him to give it up.

Next:  18: Alice Dewhurst's childhood

16: The move to Embsay & the death of John Dewhurst's brother James: 1816-20

Embsay in 1907:  National Library of Scotland

By the time Alice Bonny married John Dewhurst, he and his brothers had been taken into partnership by their father and the business had become Thomas Dewhurst & Sons

• they had expanded the business, taking the leases of two water-powered cotton mills in the village of Embsay, a mile or two to the north-east of Skipton – its population was 861 in 1822

• the mills had been purpose-built only 20 years earlier and lay side by side at Sandbank and Mill Holme

• we can get an idea of the size of the mills and the water wheels of this time in the advertisement in 1823 for the mill George Balme was using to spin worsted – it was modern-built, 3 stories high and with 2 water wheels of 23 feet and 15 feet in diameter, using "a good and constant Supply of Water ... Hands are very plentiful, at moderate Wages"

Scalegill Mill today
(a holiday rental property)

John & Alice moved to Embsay in 1816 to live at Mill Holme and run the business.  John's younger brother James moved to Embsay too, and soon afterwards he married Elizabeth Shiers of Threapland farm at Rylstone near Cracoe.  Before long, there were four little cousins in Embsay – John & Alice's Jane and Bonny and James & Elizabeth's Benjamin and Eleanor.

And in the same year of 1816, Thomas Dewhurst retired to Skipton and left the business to his sons – it was now John Dewhurst & Bros.  

In 1819 the three brothers bought the lease of a cotton mill at Scalegill on the River Aire north of Kirkby Malham, ten miles to the north-west of Skipton.  Scalegill mill had been converted from a corn mill in 1792 but rebuilt in 1795 – the Dewhurst brothers refitted it and their cousin Isaac managed it for them until his death in 1823.

So prospects were looking good for the Dewhurst family as 1819 came to an end. 

And then, in March 1820, Thomas died, aged 71.  But much worse followed.  On 5 July 1820, James died after a short illness.  He was 25 years old.  He left his widow Elizabeth with two very small children and in the early months of pregnancy.  Their son James was born the next year.  I think little James died – I can find no trace of him.  

For a short while, Elizabeth took James's place in the partnership, but at the end of 1821 she left and the business became John & Isaac Dewhurst.   A few years later, she remarried in Bolton le Moors – she didn't return to Skipton.

In spite of losing James's capital and expertise, John and Isaac continued to expand the business.  

In 1822, they bought the lease of a water-powered cotton mill at Airton, about 1½ miles south of Kirkby Malham.  In 1818, when the lease had last come up for sale, it was described as "a substantial stone built cotton mill", 72ft 3ins long and 31ft wide, with a water wheel 12ft in diameter and 3ft broad.  There was another water wheel 16ft in diameter and 6ft broad, and among the rest of the equipment, there were 17 spinning frames containing 1,632 spindles and 3 warping mills.  The fall had been only about 8ft previously, but it had been increased to 16ft by a weir upstream.  A selling point was that it was within 3 miles of the Leeds & Liverpool Canal and 7 miles from Skipton.

Airton Mill 
right: the original cotton mill
centre: the steam-powered mill built by John Dewhurst in 1836

By this point, in order to match the demand for yarn with locations where they could get the necessary labour and water power, John and Isaac were operating 4 spinning mills on 3 separate sites – the mills at Scalegill and Airton and two mills at Embsay.   They employed handloom weavers and they had offices and warehouses in Skipton and Manchester.   Manchester was their principal market, and they had there the use of a warehouse at 14 High Street.

John later blamed the rheumatism that stopped him riding – his favourite pastime – on the 40-odd mile ride he made each week to Manchester in all weathers for so many years.

Next:  17: John Dewhurst's Belle Vue Mill and the break with his brother Isaac

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

Perhaps Alice Bonny already knew Skipton – perhaps she knew some of John's friends and family – so perhaps starting her married life would not be too daunting.  She might even have known the family of John's first wife Ann.  That would have been helpful in what might have been an awkward situation.  Fortunately, Alice wasn't a girl but a calm young woman of 27.

To picture Alice's new life as a married woman, I'm drawing here on the life of Mrs Mary Stubbs and her family in Boroughbridge, another West Riding market town, a few decades later but still attached to traditional ways 

• Alice's first social engagements will have been going out to dine and meet the neighbours – people were asked to dine "to meet the bride" 

• frequent sociable gatherings among family, friends and neighbours – invitations to tea and supper, followed perhaps by cards, games, dancing, singing

• visits and visitors – female friends and relations often stayed for long periods

• offering hospitality to people calling in, or coming to see John on business, or coming to town for the markets and fairs – Skipton being a great mart for cattle, sheep and corn

• traditional ways and customs – even in the 1850s, in Boroughbridge weddings were marked by races – the women were busy, active housekeepers and countrywomen, keeping a cow for the house, and a good larder, ready to offer food and drink to young relations who might call in – like the men, the women were good walkers, and walking was a companionable, social activity as well as a means of getting from place to place

• the men's lives outside work were filled with the traditional activities of the countryside – going out with a gun, getting up parties for rook shooting and, in John Dewhurst's case, going hunting 

Almack's Assembly Rooms by George Cruikshank

The digitised Leeds newspapers for 1816 to 1819 mention local events in Skipton – nowhere near as smart as the High Society gathering in Almack's Assembly Rooms in London, but there were plenty of gentry in the Skipton neighbourhood and the town was growing, its population in 1821 reaching 3,411 – for example:

• on 20 January 1816, the Leeds Mercury reported that the Skipton Dancing and Card Assemblies would be held monthly in January, February and March in turn at the Devonshire Hotel and Black Horse Hotel – "Residents of Skipton or not, admitted as Non-Subscribers"

• at the beginning of December 1817, the Leeds Intelligencer carried an announcement by the young organist at the parish church, Mr Charles Morine, who

Respectfully informs the Public, that he intends having a Miscellaneous Concert

at the Devonshire Hotel, Skipton, on Tuesday Evening, December 23d, 1817

with vocalists, including one from York, and a Mr Bradbury "from the King's Concerts", while Mr Morine himself led a Band of violins, viola, cella, flutes, bassoon, horns and double bass – and there was a Ball after the concert

• perhaps some of the Dewhurst family even went to Marton to watch a Mr Kendrick and his colleague Monsieur Evonthomasi exhibiting "Feats of Necromancy, Tight-rope Dancing, Deceptions of various sorts, Thaumaturgic Horologium Exhibitions, &c." – this attracted the notice of the press because the two men were later sent to the Wakefield House of Correction for 3 months, though this was more about staging their exhibition on a gentleman's land without his permission than the Necromancy and Deceptions.

Sunday would be taken up with attending church, and in the first years of their marriage this was at Holy Trinity, Skipton, where their first child was baptised.  

Alice and John Dewhurst had seven children

• Jane, born 25 September 1816 

• John Bonny, born 16 August 1819 – the family always called him "Bonny"

• Ellen, born 17 March 1821

• James, born 24 December 1822

• Alice, born 1 November 1824 – she would go on to marry John Hopkinson

• Elizabeth Ann, born 17 April 1828 – she was called "Lizzie"

• Thomas Henry ("Tom"), born 14 December 1829

Zion Chapel

Within the first three years of their marriage, two big changes had happened in their lives

• by the time Jane was born in 1816, John had moved the family from Skipton to nearby Embsay because of the business

• and by the time John Bonny was born, John had transferred their allegiance from the Church of England to the Congregationalists, and they were attending the Zion Chapel in Newmarket Street, where the younger children were baptised

• John's cousin Hannah and her husband Robert Johnston had already become members, and perhaps others in their circle of family and friends – I don't know how much difference being members would have made to their social lives, and whether cards and dancing might have been off the menu in future …

The move to the Zion Chapel, according to his granddaughter Mary Hopkinson, was because of "the degenerate lives of some of the clergy with whom he was brought in contact."  It might really have been on more theological grounds – she wrote that John read "with great interest the Puritan divines".  As for the clergy:

• the vicar of Skipton, the Revd John Pering, was a bachelor who lived with his sister in his other parish, Kildwick.  There doesn't seem to have been anything said against him, though he did enrage his parishioners over the tithes, with some of them threatening to emigrate to America and others threatening to raise a Meeting House and become dissenters

• John can't have been angered by the Revd Robert Thomlinson, the curate of Skipton who baptised Jane, because he sent Bonny to Skipton Grammar School when Thomlinson was master there

• it might have been because of the long dispute over who should be appointed master at the Grammar School.  Because while Georgian Skipton was a lively place among the lower orders

Tyne Mercury, 5 March 1816

On Wednesday, some persons threw Mr Joshua Metcalf, inspector of licences in Skipton, over one of the bridges in that town, into the water

the times were just as lively among the educated classes – 

Old Grammar School & Chapel, Skipton by Stephen Craven

The dispute began with the death of the old schoolmaster in 1792 (when John was five) when the vicar, then the Revd Thomas Marsden, wanted to appoint his curate the Revd Richard Withnell

• 5 members of the Parish Vestry objected to Mr Withnell as master and when Mr Withnell couldn't get into the School, he had the door "violently" broken open 

• so there were 4 years while there was no schoolmaster and no school, because the clergymen Fellows of Lincoln College, Oxford claimed the right to nominate and they chose a Revd Thomas Gartham of Queen's College – but the Bishop wouldn't give him a licence to teach and meanwhile Mr Withnell had taken his case to the law courts 

• Gartham finally took the post in 1796 – the town thought he had bought off Withnell 

• in 1800 Gartham got his unfortunate maid Mary Slater pregnant and failed to support her – she had to go to the magistrate, there was a Bastardy case, and Gartham was ordered to pay her £5 per week for the first month, and afterwards 7 shillings per week.  I doubt Thomas and Ellen Dewhurst sent their son John to the Grammar School after that

• there was the problem of Gartham's debts – he had to make an arrangement with his creditors in 1802 and it was said that he only dared leave his house on Sundays for fear of bailiffs

• there were attempts to get rid of Gartham – at one point, he was accused of defrauding the charitable foundation of money and trying to misappropriate future rents – to which Gartham responded with a notice put in the Leeds Intelligencer under an eye-catching headline "Diabolical Conspiracy": 

Whereas, serious hints are just come into Circulation, of a Deep-laid diabolical conspiracy against the life and civil safety of the Rev Thomas Gartham …

• the problem was only solved in 1824 when Gartham died 

John regularly attended and generously supported the Zion Chapel for the rest of his days.  Oddly, Ellen, James and Alice – but not Bonny – all underwent a second baptism in the parish church on 3 March 1825.  Perhaps it was an impulsive action by John.  The younger two children were only baptised at the Zion Chapel.

Next:  16: The move to Embsay & the death of John Dewhurst's brother James: 1816-20

10: John Dewhurst of Skipton (1787-1864): the father of Alice Dewhurst

For the industrial history that follows, I've relied on Kenneth C Jackson's The Dewhursts of Skipton: a dynasty of cotton masters, 1789 to 1897, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 75 (2003)

See also information on the Dewhursts of Craven on Rootsweb by Robyn Lynn and David Freeman

John Dewhurst was born in Marton in Craven, a West Riding township in which there were two little villages – East Marton and West Marton.  He was baptised at St Peter's in East Marton on 1 April 1787.  His father’s farm was seven miles to the west of Skipton.  The little market town lay under the shelter of the 11th century castle – which had been built on a limestone outcrop to command the Aire Gap, the ancient way between York and Lancaster – and in a natural amphitheatre with hills to the north and east, Flasby Fell to the west and, to the south, the floodplain of the River Aire.  

Craven Lowlands by Gordon Hatton

The Dewhursts were farmers in the undulating country of the Craven Lowlands west of Skipton

• the name first appears in the parish registers of Marton in Craven and Thornton in Craven in the last years of Queen Elizabeth I.  A John Dewhurst was buried in Thornton in 1598 and a gentleman called Robert Dewhurst lived at Crickle Bridge east of East Marton – but whether John was descended from them, we don’t know 

• in the 1630s, the family of a William Dewhurst of Moorber near Coniston Cold appears in the Gargrave registers.  They lived at Moorber through the Civil Wars and the destitution and distress inflicted by the armies of both sides trampling crops and looting, while Parliamentarian troops besieged the Royalists holding the castle

K C Jackson suggests that William and John were from the same family.

Skipton and area. [OpenStreetMap]

John’s family tree can be traced with certainty from the middle of the 18th century.  It begins with his grandfather Isaac.

When Isaac Dewhurst died in 1769 he was a tenant farmer at Varley Field in the township of Horton in Craven in the parish of Gisburn

• he had been a widower since 1758 when his wife Susanna died, leaving him with children who were still young

• Susanna was buried in Bracewell churchyard on 12 June 1758

• the entry in the burial register is spelt phonetically – "Susan Dewarst wife of Isack"

Approaching Varley Field by Chris Heaton

Isaac was failing in health when he made his Will:

I, Isaac Dewhurst of Varley Field in the Township of Horton in the Parish of Gisburn and County of York Farmer being weak in Body but of sound mind memory and understanding and considering the certainty and uncertainty of Death as to the time thereof Doth this Sixteenth Day of January in the year 1769 make this my last Will and Testament

He died not long afterwards and was buried at Bracewell with Susannah on 29 January 1769  

• he left £10 apiece to his eldest son John and married daughter Mary Roberts, with the remainder to be divided equally between John, Mary, Isaac, William, Thomas and Hannah

• Thomas and Hannah were not yet 21 years old; John and a neighbour were to be their guardians until they came of age

• Hannah died unmarried in 1774

John Dewhurst took over the tenancy at Varley Field from his father.  He died there in 1798 leaving a widow but no children, and was buried at Bracewell on 6 August 1798.

The lives of the three youngest sons – and the lives of their children – were intertwined.

Isaac Dewhurst of Varley Field (d 1769) married Susanna (probably Shackleton) and had

• Isaac (1745-1823) married Catherine Parkinson and had
• Phineas
• William
• Isaac
• William (1747-1809) married Alice Smith and had
• Susannah
• Hannah
• Ann
• Thomas (1749-1820) married Ellen Thornber (1756-1839) and had
• John
• Nancy
• Isaac
• James
• Eleanor                                                    

Isaac (1745-1823) was baptised in 1745 when his father was farming at Kildwick, 4 miles south of Skipton

• he married Catherine Parkinson at Gargrave on 28 January 1771

• they farmed at Bonber near Bell Busk, which is just north of Coniston Cold

• they had a large family, among them 3 sons: Phineas, William and Isaac, who all became operative cotton spinners

St Michael's, Bracewell

William (1747-1809) was baptised at Bracewell in 1747 when his father was farming at nearby Stock 

• he married a widow, Mrs Alice Smith, in 1785

• when he died in June 1809 they were farming at Slack, less than a mile north-west of Varley Field

William and Alice had 3 daughters

• Susannah was born in 1786
• she married Anthony Hargreaves of Horton Pasture in 1810 – they remained in farming

• Hannah was born in 1789
• she married Robert Johnston, a draper with a shop in the Market Place at Skipton, in 1815
• in 1816 they were admitted as members of the Zion Independent (Congregational) Church in Skipton, apparently the first in the family to do so.  Soon Hannah’s cousin John Dewhurst and his wife would become members too – the Zion Independent Church would be an important part of the life of their daughter Alice

• Ann was born in 1791
• she married John Bonny of the parish of Bispham in Lancashire in 1826.  He was a farmer and a Blackpool entrepreneur – and the brother-in-law of her cousin John

Thomas Dewhurst (1749-1820) was baptised on 8 October 1749 at St Michael's, Bracewell when the family was living at Stock 

• he was 9 years old when his mother died, and not yet 21 at the death of his father

• he was about 33 years old when he married Ellen Thornber on 23 November 1782 at Gisburn parish church

Ellen Thornber (1756-1839) was then in her mid-twenties.  She was the fourth child of Henry & Ellen Thornber, born at High Ground farm, which lies a mile outside Hellifield, a village on the floodplain of the meandering River Ribble.  On 16 May 1756 she was baptised at the nearby village of Long Preston

• her father Henry Thornber (1723-83) was born in the parish of Gisburn, where his father Henry farmed at Greengates

• Henry married Ellen’s mother Ellen Bulcock on 5 November 1748 at St. Mary le Ghyll, Barnoldswick.  The interior of the church, with its Jacobean pews and 3-decker pulpit, can hardly have changed since

• Henry died the year after his daughter's wedding – he was farming at Cotes Hall in the parish of Barnoldswick at the time

• he was buried on 6 April 1783 at Gisburn, where his father and grandfather had been buried before him

St Peter's, East Marton

Thomas and Ellen settled in the parish of Marton in Craven.  Five of their children survived infancy – John, Nancy, Isaac, James and Eleanor.  All were baptised at the parish church of St Peter's.

Perhaps Thomas was more of an entrepreneur than his brothers, or perhaps he hadn't been able to get such a good farm tenancy, but by 1785 – a couple of years before his son John was born – Thomas was not only farming but had diversified into textiles

• in the 1770s, corn production had expanded in the Vale of York and in the face of this competition the farmers of Craven found they could get a better income from the high prices fetched by wool and meat.  Many of them moved from arable to pasture

• they then found they could expand their wool production as there was a market for it outside the local area

• by 1785, when he was 36 years old, Thomas was buying yarn to supply local handloom weavers and he was trading in wool

• one of his principal markets was Darlington, where there was a well-established woollen and worsted industry serviced by a successful bank

• so Thomas was riding regularly with his goods across the Pennines – a 55 mile journey if he went by Coverdale, or more like 65 miles if he went by Skipton and Blubberhouses

A handloom weaver, 1888

This was a time of change

• in the 1780s wool began to give way to cotton

• some of the water corn-mills were now underused or no longer needed, and could be converted to cotton-spinning mills

• the move from arable to pasture led to the amalgamation of farms – so fewer farm hands were needed

• so there were people available to work in the new cotton mills – men who already had skills in textiles because the cottage industry had always been a useful addition to family income

• the patents on Arkwright's spinning system had stopped being effective in 1785.  High profits were expected and there was a boom in factory building

• the Leeds & Liverpool Canal from Bingley to Skipton and Gargrave opened in 1773, a boost to trade.  Its way lies through Marton in Craven, not far from St Peter's.  

Arkwright Spinning Frame

In 1789 Thomas Dewhurst leased a building at Elslack, about 2½ miles from East Marton.  It was probably a former corn mill and he converted it into a water-powered cotton-spinning mill

• he probably had Arkwright-type spinning frames because his yarn is described as "twist" (that is, warp yarn) 

• it was very soon up and running and by early 1790 he was selling his yarn in Manchester and Blackburn – this was at the time when the young John Lomax was establishing himself as a cotton manufacturer in Manchester

• by May 1791, his wife Ellen's family had also moved into textiles – Thomas's brothers-in-law John, James and Thomas Thornber had a cotton mill at Runley Bridge at Settle

Ellen Henlock (1808-85)

We don't know what Thomas, Ellen or their children looked like – but we do have a portrait of Ellen's niece Ellen, daughter of James Thornber, because she married into the family of my grandfather Hugh Stubbs.  

So, on the offchance that Ellen Thornber junior bore a likeness to her aunt Ellen Dewhurst, here she is – Mrs Ellen Henlock of Great Ouseburn.

By 1800 Thomas Dewhurst was doing well and he bought himself a farm – the first property transaction by anyone of his family to be recorded in the West Riding Deeds Registry.  He and Ellen moved onto his new farm, which was at Pickhill (sometimes spelt Pighill) in the parish of Thornton in Craven, not far from his mill at Elslack

• at about this time, his business changed its name to Wilson & Dewhurst – he had gone into partnership, possibly with John Wilson, a cotton spinner at Embsay.  Probably Thomas was looking to raise extra capital and perhaps bring in extra technical skills.  The partnership didn’t last long, but John Wilson’s son later married Thomas’s daughter Eleanor 

• by 1803 Thomas had expanded from spinning and set up as a calico manufacturer – so he was either employing local handloom weavers or commissioning work from them – and his mill at Elslack was managed for him by his brother Isaac's son Isaac 

Thomas Dewhurst (1749-1820) & Ellen Thornber (1756-1839) had five children:

• John (1787-1864) married (1)  Ann Atkinson and (2) Alice Bonny

• Nancy (1789-1854) married Storey Watkinson

• Isaac (1791-1866) married Sarah Sawley

• James (1794-1820) married Elizabeth Shiers

• Eleanor (1801-51) married Henry Wilson

The sons all went into the business.  John was the first, being older than Isaac by four years.  

Mary Hopkinson could remember her grandfather John Dewhurst, who died when she was 7 years old, and she often talked about him with her mother Alice

So how did Mary describe her grandfather? 

• he was quick tempered, impulsive, outspoken and impetuous

• his "transient storms" didn't perturb his daughters Ellen and Alice, who understood him, being like him in temperament

• he was genial, courteous and just

• he was a man of integrity, highly regarded and trusted in the business world

• he loved the country life, especially hunting, and he was a first-rate horseman

On 27 August 1810, when John was 23 years old, he married Ann Atkinson of Skipton at Holy Trinity church in Skipton

• Ann was, he used to tell his children, "as handsome a woman as ever stepped"

• the following year their son Thomas Atkinson Dewhurst was born, and was baptised at Holy Trinity in July 1811

• but on 31 July 1814, Ann died at the age of 24 in childbed

• five days later, the day after Ann’s burial, her baby was christened Sarah Ann

• Ann’s name and the name of her little boy Thomas, who died "in a state of infancy", were added to the gravestone of her father George Atkinson.  With them is the name of Ann's sister Sarah Fairbourn, who died only days before Ann.  The gravestone now leans against the wall at the back of the church

So John was left a widower with a baby daughter before any of his sisters or brothers were even married.  

Napoleon contemplates defeat
31 March 1814

His life had been overturned and so had the world.  Britain had been on a war footing since John was a little boy, but Napoleon had been forced to abdicate in May 1814.  There would be new challenges to the economy and new opportunities for the family business.

On 5 February 1815, John's sister Nancy married Storey Watkinson, who farmed at Bradley, three miles south of Skipton.  Perhaps it was through Nancy that John met his second wife – she was the same age as Nancy and they might have been schoolfriends.  

It was a tumultuous year – hardly more than three weeks had passed since Nancy's wedding when the news came from France that Napoleon had left Elba and his troops were flocking to him once more.  On 20 June the news reached Britain of Wellington's victory at Waterloo.  Perhaps John hardly noticed.  He was planning a second marriage and maybe one of his reasons was providing his little daughter with a mother.  But by now little Sarah Ann might already have been ailing.  She scarcely reached her first birthday – she was buried on 27 July.  

John had lost his wife, son and now his daughter.  It was a newly bereaved young man who married again on 11 November 1815.

John's new wife was Alice Bonny of the Lancashire parish of Bispham, where she lived with her family in a little coastal village which had been known for some years for its healthy sea-bathing.  It was growing into a pleasant little holiday resort – its name was Blackpool.

Next:  11: Alice Bonny of Blackpool (1788-1865) : mother of Alice Dewhurst