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Kate Middleton:

With Cheerful Curiosity and Lots of Love

by

Keith Johnson

[Original articles published online at ‘Joe Shorrocks [Keith

Johnson Wellington NZ’

http://www.kjohnsonnz.blogspot.com]

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APRIL 7th 2014

A Royal Welcome to New Zealand for Bill, K8 and Geordy

A RIGHT ROYAL PALAVER

It’s been a hell of a morning at NZ’s Premier Online Newspaper KJ-WNZ. We are all running

flat-tack and topping the slurry sump trying to cover the Royal Tour. I even put some

retreads on our veteran reporter Six o’clock O’Reilly, as he has a knack for bar-room gossip

and leaks. Last I heard, he told me that he had a lead [from a fellow former Grub Street

journo] that the Prince’s Equerry was expected to hang out at the Kilbirnie Tavern after the

entourage’s plane had landed. He promised to follow this up.

Both the plane and Six o’clock have disappeared in Wellington’s Fog, and his ‘black box’

remains unanswered.

Still we have some of our No 1’s on the job, Gen-X’s photographer Bryce ‘Red’ Snapper and

chief reporter Chips ‘Hacker’ Woodward – backed up by two of our top spot Gen-Y Bug

Readers in the Eastern Suburbs, Hemi and Jackie. Unfortunately, Hacker has made it a

matter of honour to score with the Duchess’ Maids of Honour and Red recently confessed to

an alarming stalker crush on the Prince. What’s worse, Hemi and Jackie have absolutely no

idea who the Royals are.

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I’m still hoping for the best – with our backer PNI [Possum News] having lashed out big on

some prezzies for William, Kate, Baby George and other members of the Royal Family. We

see the visit as a way of putting ‘By appointment to ...’ on our own particular brand of

information chutney with a view to boosting sales through the magazine shelves of the

supermarkets of the Slough-Windsor-Swindon-Chipping Norton rectangle.

In collaboration with our manufacturing arm Ten Eighty Possum [10-80P] in Eketahuna, we

have come up with suitable prezzies for Prince Harry [a pair of purple, ermine-trimmed

Knock-ur-Sox designed to help him select the perfect mate] and Baby George [a Huggie-

pouched ‘Corgigator’ specially designed by 10-80P’s inventor and mechanic Ted Dargaville

that zaps corgis as soon as they get within slobbering distance].

At great expense, we developed a unique one-man Buzzy Bee lateral thrust helicopter for

Prince William which is propelled by rotating offset paddle wings. Currently though this

remains a ‘view only’ item, as we have been unable to obtain a ‘flight worthy’ certificate and

the initial prototypes developed a tendency to ‘dance’ on the runway tarmac.

As for the Duchess, we thought long and hard. A tongue-restrainer prototype by 10-80P was

considered but ultimately rejected as unfeminine – as was a smile-unfreezer. Finally Freya,

our Fashion Editor hosed down all the alternative stock trucks, drawing on the Wearable

Arts Show for inspiration. Our gift is a complete ensemble that represents our nation.

It consists of the inevitable ‘Little Black Dress’, embellished with beading, sequins, stuffed

toys and 'Frighteners' zombie schlock. It is accompanied by a fawn pleather jacket riffed

with simulated No 8 Fencing Wire, a matching ‘Gallipoli’ webbing ammunition belt trailing a

greenstone mere on a lanyard - set off by a haggis-skin bogle.

10-80P has chipped in with some serious heels that clackety-clack every time the wearer is

kissed by a prince and which have inbuilt locator beacons to ensure that they are never

completely lost after being left behind on the stairs when midnight strikes.

Welcome!

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The seat divine sees monarchy renew

MADAM

Thus we have welcomed you with bare delight

And shown the promise of our swelling throngs

So we display our best within thy sight

And you may share our native thongs and songs.

But soon the reasons why you're loved by all,

Grow infinite, and pass what glimpsing teaches,

Regardless of the straps that rise or fall

Betraying gaps the Maori challenge breeches.

Since you are then Will's masterpiece, and know

His token for our loves, do as you do;

Make your return home gracious, and so

Vouchsafe this sight for us - the best of you.

But as, although a squint short-sightedness

Be ungracious, you cannot leave our lands;

Without a moment that I might express

My love, when I perceive the zephyr lift your dress.

As the helicopter eclipses and despoils

Royal modesty when the rotors ground,

Amid the turmoil so the vesture roils

And photographic flashes there abound.

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Venus help me, I could not miss you there,

Your Kallipygos guise has claimed my token,

And any ills that flesh may bear

Erase with awe and majesty awoken.

Plain and sweet the left, plain and sweet the right;

By these we thus divine the absence of tattoo

The rumps which have the blessing of the light,

The seat divine sees monarchy renew.

In everything where nature grows

Are winds to keep it fresh and new

And turning cheeks the rear end shows;

Your birth and beauty are this balm in you.

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Cat got your tongue Kate?

TONGUE-FORWARDNESS AND THE STIFF UPPER LIP

Stressed young athlete tongues the air – a relatively common picture but one that comes of

something of a surprise when the subject is Kate Middleton. Helming a dragon boat during a

recent race on Prince Edward Island in Canada, Kate had an attack of the m’mm-ls.

Not that most people will resent this from the Gorgeous of Cambridge, though the

photograph has become hard to find online.

Tongues have been defined as ‘unruly members that are frequently put out’ but there is

some doubt it seems as to how far the trait follows a straightforward genetic pathway.

However, there is clearly a genetic component.

I can curl my tongue – as can both of my younger sons – their mother can’t. I too poke my

tongue out when I am concentrating - a trait that maybe only 40 percent of us do – again my

wife is immune.

Born some eight months after my father was killed in the RAF in WWII, my mother was

moved to find that, when I became a determined toddler, I poked my tongue out while

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trying to master new skills. It has delighted me that all four of my sons are strong ‘tongue-

forward’ like their grandfather.

So does this mean that we are related to the Duchess?

Well, yes of course – but then so is everyone else.

But if we want to claim a more direct relationship, tongue-forwarding is probably as good a

marker as a surname.

Bryan Sykes was surprised in his male-line ydna research on Englishmen holding the Sykes

surname that so many of them appeared to link back to a common ancestor. They can trace

their origins back to a family living in Slaithwaite, just outside Huddersfield, in the fifteenth

century, or, maybe further back to 1280 when William del Sykes held land nine miles east in

Flockton.

On the basis of his family, Bryan suggests that the slippage from non-paternity

(illegitimacies, adoptions, name changes etc.) was about 1.3% per generation. This meant

that, over the 600-700 years that the surname had been in existence, ‘only’ 56 percent of

the genetic imprint had been erased.

However, the rate derived for the Sykes’ is likely to be low in comparison to the nation as a

whole. Northern families like Bryan’s tended to stay close to their point of origin, at least

until the onset of the Industrial Revolution, and even then would not move that far from

‘home’.

But the agricultural dispossession of the poor in southern England, Ireland, Scotland and

Wales and the creation of rapidly growing and demographically turbulent manufacturing

towns increased social instability and infidelity. An overall figure for illegitimacy of 3.0% per

generation has been suggested for 19th Century England as a whole (with it now being

much higher).

And then there are name changes, of which I am particularly conscious, having spent years

for a great grandfather named Robert Edwin Johnson when ydna evidence cross-matched to

records eventually made clear that his real name was Robert Edwin Shorrocks. His son

Harry, my grandfather, casually divested himself of the family surname at some point

around 1905.

So I think that we can agree that the chances of your surname accurately representing your

paternal ancestry are well below those being linked through sharing a marked physical

characteristic, other things being equal.

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Surely though, this does not apply to the aristocracy?

I think it does – perhaps more so.

Although Dr Johnson noted that the chastity of woman was 'of the utmost importance, as all

property depends upon it', I would argue that pressing demands for the secure transmission

of power and wealth actually increased the likelihood of genetic-surname slippage.

In the first place, history is full of references to aristocrats who changed their surnames to

that of their wife or a relative of their mother to mark a transfer of lands and titles.

Secondly, the dangers of political instability and challenges to authority in the absence of a

male heir were such that there were obvious pressures to substitute live babies from the

local village for dead babies at the castle.

And Fairy Stories tell the reverse tale of noble infants consigned to peasant step-parents to

protect them from jealous interlopers and vengeful usurpers.

Finally, when all is said and done, the ladies of the nobility were not immune from affairs

that had unfortunate consequences.

MARY SET SOME TONGUES WAGGING

David(e) Rizzio di Pancalieri, a descendant of the Counts de San Paolo et Solbrito, near Turin

in Italy was a handsome young man with a fine bass voice. Luckily, (at least initially) having

found himself in Scotland, he joined a four part harmony of singers who entertained Mary

Queen of Scots. He became her private secretary in 1564.

Soon rumours were rife that he was having an affair with the Queen.

The Queen was seven months pregnant when Mary’s husband Lord Darnley had David

murdered in the Queen's presence, in her supper chamber ("a cabinet abowte xii footes

square, in the same a little low reposinge bedde, and a table in the Palace of

Holyroodhouse”).

The Queen had refused to yield Rizzio who had hidden behind her. Eventually, following a

violent struggle, Rizzio was stabbed 56 times. He was roughly buried within two hours in the

cemetery of Holyrood but shortly after his body was removed at the Queen's orders, and

interred in the royal sepulchre of the Kings of Scotland.

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Henry IV of France drew the obvious conclusion, mocking the pretensions of James VI of

Scotland [later James I of England] saying tongue in cheek that "he hoped James was not

David the fiddler's son".

However, I remain sceptical – any aspersions of this kind on Mary’s honour are likely

invalidated by the current Royal Family’s utter lack of musicality.

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Kate Middleton WDYTYA? - The Temple Family of Cleveland, North

Yorkshire

NOBILITY AND AFFINITY

The marriage of Kate Middleton to Wills ‘Wombat’ Windsor has provided an opportunity for

genealogists to strut their stuff. Termed archaically a ‘commoner’, Kate has a family tree

that has deep roots in the realities of economic and social history.

Like most of us, her family consists of a potpourri of the self-made, the worthy, the feckless

and the dispossessed, spiced with the odd tinge of nobility.

Not that this has pleased everyone - looking at Kate’s ancestry, some commentators have

emphasized the ordinariness. On the other hand, others have hastened to claim affinity

through the noble threads and have been at pains to point to remote links between historic

figures and contemporary notables.

Well you can read elsewhere about the descent from Edward III through Agnes Gascoigne

(wife of Sir Thomas Fairfax) and the remote branch links to George Washington,

Merewether Lewis, General Patton ... Ellen DeGeneres and Guy Ritchie etc.

But then again anyone who has ancestors who were living in England prior to 1750 is almost

bound to have a link to royalty and an estimated 30 million Americans can claim descent

from Edward III – which also means of course that they are highly likely to share common (

non-royal / ignoble) ancestors with the noted heroes and celebrities.

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And even among the lofty boughs of the establishment, there are a few ordinary branches.

It seems that Camilla Parker-Bowles is the descendant of a Victorian butler and that the

Queen Mother can claim descent from a plumber.

So when I read the beautifully researched Ancestry of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge that

has been compiled by William Addams Reitwiesner and Michael J. Wood, I started to look at

all the roots of the tree [See: http://www.wargs.com/royal/kate.html ]

After all the stories of the poor are often much more interesting than the stories of the

privileged.

So let’s start with Kate’s Temple family ancestors:

Great-Great Grandparent

Thomas Temple, b. Guisborough, Yorkshire, 23 May 1871 [entry no. 133 (where he is named

"Tom")], in 1891 an ironstone miner, in 1894 a steelworker, in 1901 and 1903 a farm hind, in

1934 a gardener, d.?, m. Parish Church, Tudhoe, co. Durham, 8 Sept. 1894 [entry no. 81]

Great-Great-Great Grandparent

Joseph Temple, b. Mickleby, Yorkshire, 25 Dec. 1833 [PRF], in 1861 an ironstone miner, in

1870 a miner, in 1871 an ironstone miner, in 1881 an iron miner, in 1891 an ironstone

miner, in 1894 a miner, in 1901 a shop keeper, d. 1910, m. Parish Church, Guisborough,

Yorkshire, 11 April 1870 [entry no.291]

Great-Great-Great-Great Grandparent

Thomas Temple, b. Skelton, Yorkshire, [ca. 1797], in 1851 an alum work labourer, in 1861 a

miner, in 1870 and 1871 a labourer, d. Guisborough, Yorkshire, 28 Nov. 1880 [entry no.

148].

THE TEMPLE FAMILY

The 1851 Census lists 96 individuals with the surname Temple in North Yorkshire, with 49 of

these living in just six locations: Cayton (8), Ebbertson (9), Raskelf (7), Sawdon (6),

Scarborough (11),and Snainton (8). Taken as a whole, the Temples are spread along the

North Sea Coast from Redcar to Scarborough and through the southern edge of what is now

the North Yorkshire Moors National Park.

It seems very probable that most, if not all, of the families stem from the same ancestry.

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T. Owston has posted a genealogy on the web of the descendants of John Temple who died

in Ebberston in 1751. The family members included joiners, tailors, farmers, labourers, inn

keepers, stone carvers, clerks, jewellery workers, grocers, blacksmiths, railway clerks,

butcher, and shoemakers.

That the family turned to mining in the 19th Century is not that surprising – it was gradually

becoming a relatively well-paid occupation.

ALUM MINING

Alum mining started in 1595 at Belman Bank, Guisborough and at Skelton in 1603. [Its

origins in the international industrial espionage perpetrated by Sir Thomas Chaloner (1559–

1615), who hoodwinked the Pope by stealing secrets from the Vatican estates in Italy and

who was subsequently excommunicated, are worth following up. Sir Thomas was the squire

of Guisborough Priory].

It is symptomatic of the poverty of North East England and its relative overpopulation with

respect to its agricultural base that workers were easily found for the industry, even though

the work was very irregular and the workers suffered terrible conditions.

Alum was principally used in the textile industry as a fixing agent for dyes. It was also used

by tanners to produce a more supple form of leather.

The process involved in extracting alum from alum shale was long and complicated. The

shale was quarried from inland hillsides, such as Belman Bank, Guisborough or coastal cliffs

such as those at Boulby, leaving massive quarries scarring the landscape.

The shale was then heaped into large mounds (often up to 30 metres high), fired and left to

smoulder for up to 9 months. The roasted shale was then tipped into leaching tanks where it

was left to soak in water.

It needed 50 tons of shale to produce 1 ton of alum. Large quantities of other materials

were also needed and nearly 1 ton of kelp (1 tonne), over 112 gallons of urine (509 litres),

and 6 tons of coal (6 tonnes), were required to produce just 1 ton of alum.

The industry was heavily reliant on sea transport for the sourcing of inputs and the export of

the finished product.

Given that between May 1790 and April 1791, the Yorkshire works between them shipped

over 5,000 tons of alum, some idea of the scale of this transport operation can be gained.

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The small ships and boats used in the trade would commonly be beached at high tide and

their cargoes off-loaded into horse-drawn carts when the vessel became ’dry’. At the next

high tide, the vessel would be refloated to continue its voyage.

Traditionally, two-wheeled Yorkshire carts were used to move these materials. To ease

movement, rutways were cut which “clearly served as forms of railway, permitting carters

to carry on their work through the night and through the tides, confident that as long as the

cart wheels remained in the ruts, the way ahead would be clear of boulders, shingle or

faulted ground”.

Once a mound had been ‘cooked’, the solution containing aluminium sulphate (the active

ingredient of alum) was drained off and ran along stone or wooden conduits to an ‘Alum

House’. Here the water was boiled away from the solution in evaporating pans.

An alkali, derived from human urine or burnt kelp, was added to cause precipitation of the

alum crystals. The crystals were then bagged and transported for sale. The burnt shale left

in the leaching pits was either disposed of nearby to form enormous shale tips (inland sites)

or simply thrown in to the sea (coastal sites).

The process was unpredictable in its outcome and there were long delays in reaping any

reward. Further, the heaps of shale gave off poisonous sulphurous fumes.

The early workers were paid 6 pence a day, with their wages often being withheld or given

in half rotten meat and corn. Contemporaries describe them as 'poor snakes, tattered and

naked, ready to starve for want of food and clothes.'

As the Industrial Revolution progressed, the processes were mechanized and standardized

and larger enterprises began to predominate. Conditions for the workforce became

marginally more humane but the levels of danger increased as deep tunnels were dug and

steep cliffs were exploited.

Only three mines continued in use into the 19th century, at Guisborough, Hummersea and

Boulby.

In 1831, Pigot’s Directory of County Durham in noted that the extensive Boulby Alum Works

near Staithes belonged to Messrs. Baker and Jackson and employed ‘many of the

industrious poor’.

Kate Middleton’s ancestor Thomas, who was enumerated as an alum worker in 1851, would

no doubt have used a similar phrase to describe his standing.

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The last mines also became uncompetitive in the 1860s when faced with competition from

works in Lancashire, Humberside and Scotland and the industry finally closed in 1871.

[Source: Tees Archaeology Website]

IRONSTONE MINING

Kate’s Great-Great-Great-Great Grandparent Thomas Temple (born ca 1797) had moved to

from alum to ironstone mining between 1851 and 1861. His son Joseph (born 1833) was

also an ironstone miner in 1861, and grandson Tom (born 1871) had taken up ironstone

mining by 1891.

Although the smelting of Cleveland ironstone has a long history, the exploitation of the

resource on a commercial scale dates from the mid-1800s. The 'Main Seam' ironstone

deposit was discovered in 1850 and its exploitation must have led to the recruitment of the

Temples. Maximum production was reached in 1883 with over 6.5 Million tons.

At the height of production, some ten thousand men and boys were employed in over

eighty mines. The last mine to operate was North Skelton which was the deepest at 740

feet. It closed in 1964.

Drawing on the comments of Tom Curnow, [a local historian who was born in 1922], as

recorded by Bill Danby, we bring the lives of the Skelton ironstone miners and their families

into focus:

"The miners started work at 6 am and deputies at 5 am so that they could examine the

workings before the miners arrived. They often had miles to walk to the mine and then walk

miles underground to the working face. Work finished at 2 pm over a six day working week.

Mining was always very hard work, dangerous and unhealthy, working in terrible conditions,

poor light, bad air, working sometimes to the knees in water - there was always the danger

of a roof fall, which could happen at any moment of time.

But even through all the groaning and creaking of the movement of rock above and the

timber supports the trained ear of experienced miners could detect for the most of the part

when a fall was about to happen.

Gas was one of the worst enemies and strict rules were enforced against matches and

smoking though in the early days a candle was the only source of light, this was often stuck

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in a piece of clay on the working face. Following gradual improvements, much safer Davey

Lamps were introduced in the 19th Century.

The road within the mine on which the miners worked could be level, rise or fall, according

to the direction of the vein of ore ran. Horses were used to pull the tubs to and from the

work face and the shaft bottom, the tubs being loaded by hand and shovel before the

introduction of power loaders.

The ore was transferred to picking belt where boys sorted the iron ore from shale and

‘dogger’ (overburden).

The men usually worked in pairs at the face and these two would often work together for

years, trusting each other for safety reasons as much as friendship. Often these men wore

only a pair of boots and a pair of football shorts when at work.

Water dripped from the roof in many places impregnated the clothing with a smell of

sulphur. Many of the older miners chewed tobacco and spat frequently, because of not

being allowed to smoke down the mine,

In the old days wood props were used and the miners always had an extra pocket stitched

inside the jacket to take away a clog or log of waste timber to feed the fire at home.

The miners worked hard and often fought and drank hard also.

They had to make their own amusement because they never had enough money to do

anything else. They liked gambling, horses, greyhound racing, whippets, poaching, pigeons,

and I think the main sport was football. It was not uncommon for some men to keep

pigeons in a spare room if they had no family, and even hens, birds and guinea pigs.

Living conditions were poor and furniture was sparse.

The fact that a lot of families in those days had many children and only two bedrooms, two

beds or more had to be placed in each room, and often four to a bed. Carpets were unheard

of - you were doing well if you had lino and coconut matting.

The fireplaces in miners’ homes were made of cast iron, with a side oven and probably a

small boiler at the opposite side, kept clean with black lead, two brushes, a bit of spit and

lots of hard work. There would be a rail above the fireplace, of wood or polished brass, and

a piece of rope, on which underwear was hung to air.

Most women did their own baking and made their own bread: “Oh-boy, the fresh warm

crust covered in margarine and jam, what a treat”.

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Bath night meant getting the old tin bath off the hook in the yard and put by the fire, kettles

and pans were boiled to fill the bath with water. There would be an earth toilet at the far

end of the yard and a copper in the corner to boil the water for wash days. After the wash

the clothes were hung across the street to day - no need to worry about vehicles.

There was a spirit among mining families that was unique’

For further information, see Bill Danby’s magnificent website ‘SKELTON - IN - CLEVELAND IN

HISTORY’ [archived for preservation by the British Library UK Web Archive]

See also the online film ‘Ironstone Mining’ made available by the Northern Region Film and

Television Archive at: http://www.nrfta.org.uk/explore/nrfta/12758.html

LINKS – WORTHY AND PROFLIGATE

Having set the lives of Kate’s Temple ancestors within their own milieu, I’ll turn for a few

minutes to a couple of links to local identities. In the first place, we can note local hero

Captain James Cook. He was born in the village of Marton (Middlesborough) in 1728, the

son of a Scots farm labourer / farm manager immigrant and a local girl, Grace Pace, who had

been born in Thornaby-on-Tees. In 1736, the family moved to Airey Holme farm at Great

Ayton, where his father's employer, Thomas Skottowe paid for James to attend the local

school (now a museum).

Like as, not the Cooks rubbed shoulders with Temples from the surrounding villages. In

1745, when he was 16, Cook moved 20 miles (32 km) to the fishing village of Staithes, to be

apprenticed as a shop boy to a grocer and haberdasher , where he gazed listlessly at the sea

horizon. Proving unsuitable for shop work, Cook travelled to the nearby port town of

Whitby, where he was recruited by a Quaker merchant John Walker as a merchant navy

apprentice in a small fleet of vessels, plying coal along the English coast.

The rest is history – at least for those of us who live in Australasia. Cooks' Cottage, his

parents' last home, which he is likely to have visited, is now in Melbourne, Australia having

been moved from England and reassembled, brick by brick, in 1934. The second local

celebrity is John Hall-Stevenson (1718 – 1785), a country gentleman who was the squire of

Skelton Castle.

J H-S repeatedly declared that his sole aim in life was to amuse himself. He had no liking for

field sports, and divided his energies at Skelton between literature and hospitality. At the

same time he gathered round him a crew of kindred spirits, drawn chiefly from the

squirearchy and clergy of Yorkshire, whom he formed into ‘a club of demoniacks.’

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The members met under his roof at Skelton several times a year, and indulged by night in

heavy drinking, obscene jesting and orgiastic feasts. The group included a clergyman, Robert

Lascelles (a relative of the Earl of Harewood), who was nicknamed ‘Panty’, and a motley

collection of local toffs and poseurs. The party was later joined by Laurence Sterne the

author of ‘Tristram Shandy’. Hall-Stevenson and his friends nicknamed his noble seat Crazy

Castle, and in ‘Crazy Tales’ he described the merry meetings of his friends there. Into the

mouth of each of the members he put a more or less obscene tale, and he appended a few

adaptations of Horace's ‘Odes’ to current events.

In the summer of 1767, a few months before Sterne's death, Hall-Stevenson stayed with him

at Coxwold, and then took him back to Skelton. They amused themselves on the seashore of

the neighbouring Saltburn by racing each other in chariots over the sands. After Sterne's

death Hall-Stevenson promised Sterne's daughter to write his life, but was too indolent to

make serious effort to carry out the promise. Hall-Stevenson's 'careless mode of life, which

involved very liberal potations, gradually induced chronic hypochondria'. In the ‘Sentimental

Journey’ Sterne wrote that ‘Eugenius’ ‘blamed the weather for the disorder of his nerves.’

The story is told that Hall-Stevenson took to his bed and regarded himself as in extremis

whenever there was an east wind, and that one day when the wind came from the east

Sterne cured him by tying up the weathercock. In 1765 he reopened at Selby Hagg, near

Skelton, some alum works which had been discontinued for near fifty years; but he failed to

make them pay, and gave them up in 1776.

On 17th of February 1785 he wrote to his grandson that the “chief advantages of life had

been denied him by premature marriage, and that the scantiness of his fortune had forced

him to vegetate in the country, and precluded him from every laudable pursuit suggested by

ambition”. John was a descendant of Humphrey Wharton of Gillingwood, Yorkshire who

traced his ancestry directly to a Gilbert De Querton who married Emma Hastings (co-heiress

of Croglin, Cumbria) in 1280.

Through these and subsequent intermarriages, Hall-Stevenson was related to virtually all of

the aristocratic families of England. As for Kate's Temples, I like to think that her Great Great

Great Grandfather Joseph very much enjoyed his well-earned semi-retirement as a

shopkeeper in Cleveland Street, Guisborough [see header photo] - not as grand as Skelton

Castle but a step in the right direction nonetheless.

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Kate Middleton WDYTYA? The Myers and Swales Families of the Vale of

Mowbray

THE MISTRESS OF BUCKINGHAM PALACE MIGHT BE SOMETHING

According to research conducted by Ancestry.com, the Duchess of Cambridge is a distant

relation of British novelist Jane Austen.

"It's relatively rare to find something quite as interesting as this," said Roger Dunbar,

managing director of Ancestry.ca, calling the connection "kismet" or fate.

He said the Kate-Jane connection surfaced when Ancestry.ca genealogists set out to map

the duchess's family tree. As they went further back in time, the common ancestor was

discovered when they cross-referenced it Austen's family tree, which was already in the

database.

The link is through a 15th century common ancestor Henry Percy, who was the 2nd Earl of

Northumberland. Claiming a mutual descent from the Percy family, Kate Middleton is ‘Jane

Austen's 11th cousin, six times removed’.

"Finding this connection between the Duchess of Cambridge and Jane Austen is very exciting

since, in many ways, Catherine is the modern Jane Austen heroine: a middle class girl

marrying the future King of England," said Anastasia Harman, lead family historian for

Ancestry.com.

"Jane Austen may have written about happily-ever-after but it seems Catherine has found a

non-fiction hero to spend her life with - far past the epilogue," Harman added.

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I wonder how far Kate, as the descendant of honest if humble Northern stock, let her mind

wander on the land-holdings of her Prince before the knot was tied.

Certainly, it seems that Elizabeth Bennett properly appraised her future seat before

committing to Mr Darcy:

‘They gradually ascended for half a mile, and then found themselves at the top of a

considerable eminence, where the wood ceased, and the eye was instantly caught by

Pemberley House, situated on the opposite side of a valley, into which the road with some

abruptness wound.

It was a large, handsome, stone building, standing well on rising ground, and backed by a

ridge of high woody hills;—and in front, a stream of some natural importance was swelled

into greater, but without any artificial appearance. Its banks were neither formal, nor falsely

adorned.

Elizabeth was delighted. She had never seen a place where nature had done more, or where

natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste. They were all of them

warm in her admiration; and at that moment she felt that to be mistress of Pemberley

might be something.’

KATE OF KATE-HALL

Picking up Kate Middleton’s Family Tree again, I had a look at her Myers and Swales

ancestors. I respect them deeply because (like the forebears of most of us) they are so

deeply grounded in the earth that they tilled and husbanded. But humble they were.

Here is a summary of what we know about them:

GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDPARENT

Elizabeth Myers, b. Hulam Sheraton, Easington, co. Durham, 29 Jan. 1868 [entry no. 334], d.

...

GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDPARENTS

Joseph Myers, b. Holme / Pickhill with Roxby, Yorkshire 1832: in 1850 a labourer, in 1851 an

agricultural labourer, in 1868 a hind, in 1871, 1881 and 1891 an agricultural labourer, in

1894 and 1901 a farm labourer, d. ... m. Leake, Yorkshire, 21 Dec. 1850 [entry no. 93]

21

Ann Swailes, b. Osmotherly, Yorkshire, 19 Dec. 1826 [PRF AFN: 1R96-M38], in 1851 a nurse,

d. ... [by 1901]

GREAT-GREAT-GREAT- GREAT GRANDPARENTS

Joseph Myers, bca 1786 , in 1850 a labourer, d. ... m. Frances ? bca 1801

Robert Swales, b. Appleton Wiske, Yorkshire, ... [ca. 1795, AFN: 1R96-M1T], in 1850 a

labourer, in 1851 1861 and 1871 an agricultural labourer, d. ... married Sarah Peacock... [ca.

1826]

Sarah Peacock, b. Great Smeaton, Yorkshire, 25 Aug. 1799 [PRF AFN: 1R96-M22], d. ... [living

1871]

GREAT-GREAT-GREAT- GREAT-GREAT GRANDPARENTS

Thomas Peacock b. 1760, Hawnby, Yorkshire [AFN:1R95-FPS] married Ann Atkinson in

Hawnby in 1822

Ann Atkinson b. 1766, Bilsdale, Yorkshire [AFN:1R95-FQI]

GREAT-GREAT-GREAT- GREAT-GREAT-GREAT GRANDPARENTS

William Atkinson b. 1727 [AFN: 1R94 – 5FM] married Elizabeth Douglas

Elizabeth Douglas b. 1734 [AFN: 1R94 – 5SW]

Well, I have had a good dig around at the tree roots and hit my spade solidly against hard

agricultural labour in wonderfully scenic settings among the villages of the Vale of Mowbray

in North Yorkshire.

The Myers and Swales families were likely descendants of the oldest inhabitants of this area,

with the Myers taking their name from the village of Ainderby Myers (i.e. the mirey, mucky,

muddy Ainderby) and the Swa(i)les taking their name from the River Swale which runs down

into the Vale of Mowbray from the Yorkshire Dales.

You can’t get much more local than that.

That they also had very hard lives is undeniable.

William Cobbett was severely underwhelmed by agricultural conditions when he surveyed

the area in 1832, remarking:

22

‘There is not as much corn grown in the North Riding of Yorkshire which begins at Ripon,

and in the whole county of Durham, as is grown in the Isle of Wight alone - what is grown is

" most miserable." No North Riding farmer has more than ten or twelve little stacks of corn

in his yard; his property is nearly all in cattle and sheep; he employs very little labour.

But if productivity was low, the condition of the working class was by no means the worst.

As Joseph Smith Fletcher points out:

‘No Yorkshireman is ever as badly off as any other man - not even a Lancashire man is as

resourceful as he is. No Yorkshire agricultural labourer ever sank to the depths to which his

brothers of Essex and Wiltshire were reduced.

Put a Yorkshireman in the tightest place conceivable, and he will find some way of wriggling

out of it; condemn him to ten shillings a week, and he will devise a means of earning

another five.

THE MASTER OF HORNBY CASTLE

Of course, thrift was less necessary and less prized among the aristocracy. So it’s interesting

to check up on the local gentry, as summarized in The Geographical and Historical

Information compiled in 1890.

With respect the parish of Hornby (which contained the hamlet of Ainderby Myers within its

wider boundaries) the Gazetteer comments:

‘The manor anciently belonged to the family of St. Quintin, whose ancestor had

accompanied the Conqueror to England, and was rewarded with these lands. They erected a

castle and resided here until the extinction of the direct male line, when the estate passed,

by the marriage of the heiress, to a branch of the noble family of Conyers, one of whom,

William Lord Conyers, rebuilt a large portion of the castle.

About the close of the 16th century, the castle and estate were conveyed in the same

manner to the Darcys, who assumed the additional surname of Conyers, and were created

Earls of Holderness and Barons Conyers in 1644.

Robert Conyers Darcy, the last Earl, left a daughter and heiress who married Francis

Godolphin Osborne, fifth Duke of Leeds and Marquis of Caermarthen, whose son, George

William Frederick Osborne, succeeded to the Barony of Conyers, in right of his mother in

1784, and to his father's titles and estates in 1799.

23

‘He married the sixth daughter of the first Marquis of Townsend, and died in 1838. He was

succeeded by his eldest son, Francis Godolphin D'Arcy-Osborne, who had been summoned

to the ‘House of Lords during his father's lifetime as Baron Osborne.

Francis married the third daughter of Richard Caton, Esq., and widow of Sir F. E. B. Hervey,

Bart., and dying in 1859, without issue, the titles and estates devolved upon his cousin,

George Godolphin Osborne; the second Lord Godolphin, married Mrs. Harriette-Arundel

Stewart, and at his death in 1872, was succeeded by his son, George Godolphin Osborne,

the present Duke’.

So there is another link - albeit fictional - between Kate Middleton and Jane Austen.

This time it is through Pride and Prejudice’s Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy who begins his

acquaintance with the impoverished Bennett Family ‘with smug condescension and proud

distaste for all the country locals’.

For all that, I have a picture in my mind of one of the Conyer Darcys gazing out of his

carriage on a spring morning as it slows to pass a band of villagers carrying butter and cakes

for sale in Thirsk Market. And for all the pride and no small prejudice, the gentleman finds

himself stunned by a beautiful young peasant girl from the Myers or Swales Families, who

smiles and tosses her hair in the sunlight.

24

Kate Middleton WDYTYA? The Harrison and Liddle Families of the

Durham Coalfield

IN MEMORIAM

The casualty records of the Eppleton Colliery at Hetton-le-Hole, Durham for the period 1825

to 1985 contain the following record:

Harrison, Anthony, died 13 Dec 1895, [born 1861] 11:30 a.m., 3rd hour of shift, aged 34,

Hewer [i.e. Coal Miner], suffocated by gases [Sunderland Daily Echo reports: accident - 23

Dec 1895 pg 3].

Anthony can be found with his family in the 1881 Census at 99 Lyon Street, Hetton le Hole

[RG11/4975]:-

John Harrison Head 46 Coal Miner born Byker, Northumberland

Jane Wife 40 born Sherburn, Durham

Jane A Daughter 20 born Sherburn, Durham

Anthony L. Son 19 Coal Miner born Sherburn, Durham

Martha Daughter 13 Scholar born Hetton le Hole

Isabella Daughter 10 ‘ born Hetton le Hole

25

James Son 8 ‘ born Hetton le Hole

John Son 6 ‘ born Hetton le Hole

Elizabeth Daughter 2 born Hetton le Hole

Alice Daughter 1 born Hetton le Hole

Anthony’s brother John Harrison was 6 years old when his oldest brother died.

John, who also became a coal miner, was a Great Great-Grandfather of Kate Middleton, the

Duchess of Cambridge.

Both boys were the sons of an elder John Harrison (as illustrated by the Census record)

whose life is summarized in genealogical terms as follows:

• John Harrison, born Byker, Northumberland, [ca. 1835]; in 1860 a miner, in 1861 1871

1874 and 1881 a coal miner, d. ... [by 1897] married Jane Liddle [born Sherburn,

Durham ca 1839], married at Shadforth Church, Shadforth, co. Durham, 7 April 1860

[entry no. 452]

The elder John and his wife Jane Liddle were contemporaries of Joseph Myers and Ann

Swailes (see previous WDYTYA post).

In what follows, I have chosen to concentrate on the Harrisons and their association with

Eppleton Colliery at Hetton le Hole. Much the same story of danger, hardship, community

and courage can be told of the Liddle Family [with the latter probably being largely

associated with the Pittington Colliery owned by Lord Durham].

As recorded in Whellan's ‘1894 Directory of County Durham’

‘The Eppleton Colliery, the property of the Hetton Coal Company, Limited, consists of three

pits. The Caroline, down-cast, was commenced in 1824, but after sinking a short distance, so

much sand and water were met with that the project was condemned by the leading

viewers of the day.

‘Another effort was, however, made, and, after overcoming 22 fathoms of sand and a

feeder of water, which made 1200 gallons per minute, the Main coal was reached, at a

depth of 140 fathoms, on the 1st of August 1833. The Jane pit down-cast shaft was sunk in

1837.

‘The New pit up-cast was commenced in April 1870, and finished in 1873. The shaft is 16

feet in diameter. There is a very powerful winding-engine at this shaft, capable of raising

150 tons per hour.

26

‘The following seams are worked: the Main coal, at a depth of 140 fathoms, 6 feet in

thickness; the Maudlin, 151 fathoms, feet 1 inch in thickness, at the shaft scarcely workable,

owing to bands and splint ; but to the east becomes valuable and about 7 feet thick,

separated from the Low Main by a band of about 8 inches, making a section of 11 feet 11

inches.

‘The Low Main is unworkable. The Hutton is 174 fathoms deep, and 4 feet 8 inches in

thickness at the shaft, tapering to 2 feet 11 inches at the extreme north and east points of

the royalty. The pits are ventilated by furnaces and boiler fires, producing 300,000 cubic feet

of air per minute.

‘The number of men and boys employed underground is 1100, above ground, 304. The

output averages 3,000 tons per day’.

Records are available for 193 of the fatalities until the mined closed in 1985. The worst

single accident occurred early in the life of the mine in 1836. A contemporary account tells

the tale:

‘An awful explosion occurred in the celebrated Hetton colliery, near Houghton-le-Spring, by

which twenty human beings lost their lives, and another was so dreadfully scorched as to

afford but faint hopes of his recovery.

‘Upwards of one hundred persons were employed in the pit at the time the explosion

occurred, but owing to the accident being confined to one of the workings, namely the

Downs pit, the number of victims was less than might have been expected.

‘From the evidence adduced on the coroner's inquest it appeared that the explosion was

caused by the negligence or inattention of a boy who had the charge of a trap door, and

whose duty was to keep it shut as much as possible, in order that the part of the pit where

the men were working might be purified by a current of air.

‘From the evidence of several witnesses experienced in the management of mines,

(including Mr. George Hunter, of Painsher, viewer to the Marquess of Londonderry), there

existed no doubt that the general ventilation of the pit was excellent.

‘The whole of the evidence tended to shew that, had the men been working with the Davy

lamp, instead of candles, no explosion would have occurred; but, it was stated that the men,

even in situations where danger existed, had an antipathy to its use, because from candles

they had a better light’.

27

A selection of accounts of fatalities is given below, from the Durham Mining Museum ‘In

Memoriam’ records:

• Allen, William, 24 Jul 1891, 10:40 a.m., 7th hour of shift, aged 50, Hewer, head and

chest severely crushed by tubs in landing, although told to get into refuge hole, he

refused to do so

• Batey, John, 06 Jan 1881, aged 16, Landing Boy, killed by full tubs ending up, the boys

run the set of tubs too full into landing, when the pony fell and tubs ended up on them

• Bert, James, 12 Aug 1912, aged 19, Putter, when coming into the flat with his pony

attached to a full tub, he stood at the points to push the tub over so that it would take

the full way; he was hurrying after the tub when he slipped and fell, his head striking

the rail; he died in a few minutes

• Birtley, Joseph, 17 Sep 1889, aged 7, [Not Employed], run over by wagons while taking

his father's dinner to the works

• Brown, John, 24 Nov 1894, (accident: 08 Sep 1894, 8:00 a.m., 5th hour of shift), aged

69, Wasteman, Received slight injury to finger, and by improper treatment he died from

blood poisoning on the 24th November

• Cowie, Nicholas, 08 May 1844, aged 43, Sinker, At Eppleton Jane Pit, Hetton Colliery, on

7 May, Nicholas Cowie, 43, was working with four or five others repairing and altering

the shaft "when a quantity of earth, stones and timber fell upon him. His fellow

workmen having laboured hard for two hours to effect his release extracted him alive,

and he was taken home, but survived a very short time."

Cowie was described as "a peaceable inoffensive man, much esteemed by all who knew

him." Cowie had been removing some props when the accident happened, and at the inquest

it was said that "On cutting through the first prop the pressure from the roof forced the new

timber which had been put in sideways and one of the pieces fell upon the deceased's loins,

and forced him to the ground he was got out from under it as soon as possible and removed

home, where he died shortly afterwards"

• Davidson, Anthony, 13 Mar 1913, aged 41, Waggonwayman, deceased signalled a set of

54 tubs out of a landing; the landing lad followed the set through the landing and near

the rapper found the waggonwayman lamp and a few yards further out the man's body;

probably he attempted to get on to the set to ride out and slipped between two tubs

• Gray, John, 05 May 1858, aged 12, Pony Driver, crushed by tubs; pony ran away

• Hardy, John, 10 Feb 1899, (accident: 14 Jan 1899), aged 13, Driver, He got in front of a

horse and got a blow on his leg from one of its feet. Tetanus supervened, and he died

on February 10th

• Hepplewhite, Joseph, 18 Mar 1856, he was taking timber out of the shaft and sending it

to bank. A portion slipped out of the sling as it was being drawn up, fell down the shaft

and knocked him off the cradle he was working on. He fell 70 fathoms to his death.

28

• Howarth, Mark Littlefair, 19 Nov 1912, aged 30, Boiler Fireman, coal drawing had

ceased for the day, and timber was being sent down the shaft as usual; deceased was in

the winding engine house, and when last seen alive was polishing the handrail and quite

clear of any moving machinery; the engineman on receiving a shout from the banksman

lowered his cage load of timber and then walked round to have a chat with deceased,

but found him lying in a mangled condition, having without doubt been crushed by the

crank in the crank pit; how he got there is a matter of conjecture; warning would be

given by the steam brake attachment before the engine moved, and also by the

banksman's shout.

• Scott, William, 06 Jan 1881, aged 14, Driver, killed by full tubs ending up, the boys ran

the set of tubs too full into the landing, when the pony fell and the tubs ended up on

them, Buried: St. Nicholas's Churchyard, Hetton-le-Hole

• Smith, Robert, 06 Apr 1889, aged 14, Trapper, a horse having run away Smith was found

to have been run over and killed near to his door

• Wheatley, John, 23 Nov 1897, aged 45, Hewer. On going to his working place, he met a

pony and tub standing in the middle of the way. There was room for him to pass on the

side he was on and instead of walking round the pony's head to get to the other side,

he attempted to step across the limbers between the pony and tub ; while doing so, the

pony moved away, and his head was crushed between the tub and the roof

...........

• Maughan, Robert, 1979, he was killed when a pikrose hauler which he was operating

broke free from its stays, the brake handle went through his chin and out of the top of

his head pinning him to the roof.

Enough said.

29

Kate Middleton WDYTYA? The Webster and Hill Families – Mariners of

Bishopwearmouth

DISCHARGED BY PROCLAMATION

Kate Middleton’s Great-Great-Great-Great Grandparents include mariners and sailors who

lived in Bishopwearmouth, near Sunderland, Durham.

During the 17th Century, Bishopwearmouth had developed as a transhipment point for coal

that had been delivered to the River Wear by wagon-ways [see previous posts]. From there,

shallow bottomed keel boats delivered the coal to nearby Sunderland for loading on ocean-

going brigs known as colliers.

The ancestors are:

• William Robson Hill [1814 -1875] – he was born in Shields, County Durham. In 1838

1844 and 1851 a mariner, in 1869 a sailor, in 1871 a mariner - died 35 Tower Street,

South Bishop Wearmouth, County Durham, 17 March 1875 [married Jane Dixon 1816 –

1880, also from Bishopwearmouth at the Parish Church, Bishopwearmouth, co.

Durham, 27 Dec. 1838]

30

• Thomas Hay Webster, born? In 1840 and 1848 a mariner, in 1869 a sailor – he had died

by 1871. [Married Elizabeth Golden at Bishop Wearmouth, County Durham, 3 Sept.

1840]

Now Hill and Webster are pretty common names and folk from such a humble background

seem unlikely to have left much of a trace.

But as a Family History sleuth, I always try to catch the slightest hint of the unusual to give

me a handle on possible links and references. In this mind, I was struck by the ‘Hay Webster’

combination and used this as a research spade.

Accordingly, it dug up the following reference on the Web from The Morning Chronicle,

Maidstone, Kent [Monday 15th October 1821]:

‘Tuesday last was committed to the county gaol at Maidstone, Kent, by the Magistrates at

Margate, John Ramsay, alias Buffington, and Thomas Hay Webster, both of Canterbury,

charged on the oaths of Washington Carr and others, of being concerned in the late

smuggling affray at Marsh Bay, in Thanet.

Ramsay was committed as a principal, and Webster as an accessory, for assisting and

concealing the offenders. Several persons, of whom better conduct might have been

expected, are said to have contributed to the concealment of some of the smugglers, and

their names have been forwarded to the Government’.

Brian Wilsden [a descendant of one of the smugglers] has posted additional information

about the ‘North Kent Gang’s involvement in the Marsh Bay Incident’, which I draw on

below:

On the night of the 2nd September 1821 a smuggling incident took place on the north Kent

coast at Marsh Bay, now known as St Mildred's Bay, Westgate. A member of the Coastal

Blockade estimated that there were between 70 and 80 members of the North Kent Gang,

involved, although a member of the gang giving evidence said there were only thirty nine of

them. They were obviously expecting trouble as many of them carrying firearms.

As they were unloading the boat they were seen by the crew of the Coastal Blockade cutter,

the Severn, who made a brave attempt to seize the contraband goods and apprehend the

smugglers. They were completely outnumbered there being only five of them. Three of

them were wounded, one seriously although not fatally so.

31

The fighting went on for about half an hour during which time many shots were fired which

could be heard in Margate. During the course of the fracas one of the smugglers, James

Taylor, was recognised although all of them escaped. Over the next few months nineteen of

the gang were arrested and imprisoned awaiting trial.

The trial was held on 22nd March 1822 before Mr Baron Wood at the County Assizes and

reported in the Kentish Gazette of that week:

" The Jury, after about five minutes deliberation, found all the prisoners guilty, but

expressed a hope that the Learned Judge would, at their suggestion, recommend them to

mercy according to any distinction he could draw between them. To them (the Jury) it

appeared that there was a great distinction between those who carried arms, and those

who did not.

The Learned Judge promised to attend to the suggestion of the Jury, and then proceeded to

pass the awful sentence of death upon all the prisoners, intimating however, that it was not

impossible that some commutation of punishment might be mercifully allotted to them by

the Crown. The trial heard from nine in the morning to half past six in the evening."

The gaol records include reference to a presumed accomplice Thomas Hey Webster (aged

32) who was ‘Discharged by Proclamation’.

In fact all the guilty prisoners, with the exception of Daniel Fagg, John Wilsden, Edward Rolfe

and John Meredith, had their sentences commuted to various periods of transportation to

Van Dieman's Land ranging from 7 to 15 years. The unlucky four were publicly executed on

Penenden Heath, Maidstone, on 4th April 1822.

The report in the Kentish Gazette [5th April 1822] reads as follows:

"Yesterday morning, pursuant to their sentences at the last Assizes for this County, the

unfortunate malefactors suffered the extreme penalty of the law for assembling with fire-

arms, and assisting in illegal landing of unaccustomed goods, on the 2nd of September last,

at Marsh Bay, near Margate, when Mr. Washington Carr, an officer, and Thomas Cook, a

seaman of the Coast Blockade, were wounded.

They were conveyed from the gaol soon after eleven o'clock in the forenoon, in the

accustomed manner, to the place of execution, where they all conducted themselves with

great fortitude and resignation. Bell first addressed the surrounding spectators, warning,

young men especially, to avoid the company of abandoned females, by whom he said he

had been deluded and betrayed into his present awful situation.

32

The others severally spoke with much firmness. Fagg said that he took the 9 shillings for his

night's service for the sake of his wife and family and did not consider it wrong to be

engaged in smuggling. Wilsden solemnly asserted that he had no fire-arms in his possession.

Rolfe said that the witness who deposed that he had fired five times had sworn falsely, as he

had fired only twice, and Meredith declared that he did not fire at any of the blockade men.

All, however, declared their cheerful forgiveness of their prosecutors, and hoped that God

would do the same.

The Executioner having made the necessary preparations, they were launched into eternity,

and after hanging the usual time, their bodies were cut down and those of the four latter

delivered to their relatives, who were waiting with a wagon near their place of execution, to

convey them to this City, where they had resided, for interment.

The assemblage to witness the execution was immense, the number being calculated at

from 10,000 to 15,000 persons”.

So is there a connection to Kate’s family?

THE EASTERN SHORE AS A HIGHWAY

Of course, it is hard to believe that the Thomas Hay Webster mentioned in the smuggling

incident is the very same man who married Elizabeth Golden in 1840.

If he had been 32 in 1822, he would have been 50 by the time he surfaced at the altar in

North East England and nearly 80 years old by the time we have a last reference to him. It is

possible but unlikely.

Taking a look at the 1840 Marriage Certificate though opens things up again. Kate’s X4 Great

Grandfather names his father as yet another Thomas Hay Webster who was a Grocer. And

who better to fence stolen contraband than a Grocer?

The problem remains though that Kent is a good distance from Sunderland. In an era when

most family movements were still local in the extreme, it is hard to credit a shift in

habitation of more than 400 kilometres.

But this set me thinking about the role of the North Sea [or as it was then the German Sea]

in linking the communities of the ports of Eastern England.

It seems obvious that the ‘sea coal’ trade that had developed along the East Coast from

Newcastle and Sunderland to feed the massive and growing demand for heating and

33

industrial fuel in London (given the impossibility of drawing sufficient timber and firewood

from the Thames valley) must have led to strong seaborne links of trade and community.

It also saw particular ports taking on specialist functions.

For example, the Scarborough Maritime Heritage Centre notes the important role that

Scarborough and Whitby played as home ports for colliers.

‘The greatest stimulus to the north east Yorkshire ports over several centuries was the

expansion in the despatch of coal from the Northumberland and Durham coal fields. The

port of Sunderland was improved and by 1710 its overseas shipments were nearly equal to

those of Newcastle.

The north eastern coal trade increased from 400,000 London chaldrons in 1701, to 2 million

tons in 1801, of which three quarters went to London. The vessels called collier brigs were

built to carry a maximum load of coal with a minimum draught.

Many were almost flat bottomed to allow the unloading of coal on east coast and European

beaches. The average capacity of colliers rose from 140 tons in 1702 to 580 tons in 1840.

Collier ownership was heavily concentrated at Whitby and Scarborough, where many of the

vessels were built and manned, rather than at Newcastle and Sunderland. Scarborough,

with 54 ships calling at Newcastle, early in the century, was already important in the trade,

although not as heavily involved as Whitby with 98 vessels.

Other east coast ports had significant fleets by 1704. Their order of significance in the

number of chaldrons moved was Yarmouth with 211 vessels, London, Whitby, Newcastle,

Brighton, Scarborough, Bridlington, Ramsgate, Hull and Margate, the last sending 24 ships’.

A typical voyage by a Scarborough owned collier saw Captain Allatson Bell leave Newcastle

on August 5th, 1718 for his sixth voyage. He sold 132 chaldrons of coal in London for £71.4.0

and his costs included purchases of peas, swine grease, cheese, hard and soft bread,

vinegar, a pair of oars for four shillings, a stone of oakum at one shilling and four pence, a

brass gauging compass for nine shillings and the mending of maintop sails for eight shillings

and nine pence.

Seven men were paid wages with a total remuneration of £25.12.6 [with one man being

given £1 for "looking after our ship in winter"]. The overall profit on the enterprise was

calculated as £17.9.1.

34

As ships got bigger, larger harbours were needed. This led to ‘beggar-my-neighbour’ tactics

by the ports as they sought to force users to pay dues for improvements.

Interestingly, Scarborough excluded ships from Great Yarmouth from paying dues. Which

brings me back nicely to my part of my own family in Norfolk and helps explain its early links

to Newcastle and London.

My family tree shows that my great great grandfather William Lubbock who was born in

1814 at Wells-next-the-Sea, Norfolk was a Mast and Block and Tackle Maker. He ran a

subsidiary enterprise to the family shipyard run by his brother John Lubbock. My X3

grandfather the elder John Lubbock, the founder of the firm, had been born in 1779 in

Hemsby, Norfolk.

We have family notes on 18 of the brigs and schooners that the firm built between 1832 and

1842. They were all relatively small, ranging from 95 to 200 tons.

Sturdy and strong, these kinds of ships were capable of exploring the world, as Captain

James Cook demonstrated. But the collier brigs were increasing in size in the 19th Century,

and Scarborough and Great Yarmouth struggled to keep pace – in terms of both providing

anchorage and accessing sufficient timber for ship building.

With the advent of steam propulsion for ocean-going ships in the mid-19th century and the

use of coal to smelt iron for the construction of iron clad ships, ship building moved

inexorably to the North East coalfields – the great era of Tyneside and Wearmouth ship

building was underway. Even the London yards struggled.

And with the Lubbock yard at Great Yarmouth already building ships that were far below the

580 ton average for the time, it soon became redundant. In all possibility it had closed by

1850, though inventories of the town’s old buildings still indicate the presence of the former

sail lofts and work yards of the industry.

As for William Robson Hill and Thomas Hay Webster, they may well have sailed early in their

careers on brigs that had been constructed or repaired by my family.

Was the younger Thomas Hay Webster the son of a Kentish man with the same name who

had dabbled in fencing smuggled goods? We can’t know for sure but I think that we have

established that there is at least a reasonable chance!

Regardless, I just hope that the experiences of William and Thomas with respect to their

ships were a little more positive than that recorded in the sea shanty ‘The Collier Brig’ (as

recorded by Bob Roberts in 2000):

35

“She was built in Roman times,

Held together with bits of twine...

The skipper's half drunk and the mate is too,

And the crew is fourteen men too few...

As we shoved off from the Surrey Dock,

The skipper caught his knickers in the main sheet block...

By Orford Ness she sprang a leak,

Hear her poor old timbers creak...

We pumped our way 'round Lowestoft Ness,

When the wind backed round to the west-sou'-west...

Through the Cockles to Cromer Cliff,

She's steering like a wagon with a wheel adrift...

Into the Humber and up to town,

"Pump, you bastards, pump or drown"...

Her coal was shot by a Keadby crew,

But her bottom was rotten and it all fell through...

So after all our fears and alarms,

We're all ended up in "The Druid's Arms."

So, we're waiting for the day,

Waiting for the day,

We're waiting for the day

When we get our pay!"

36

Kate Middleton WDYTYA? Harriet Martineau and 'A Tale of the Tyne'

TASK

Between pain-killing morphine doses, write a 66 page novelette, at 10 to 12 pages a day

(taking care never to revise), which illustrates the proposition that:

“A world of difficulties is sure to crowd in whenever legislation is brought to bear directly

upon industry. There are so many interests to be considered, and it is so impossible to

foresee how and where they interfere, that my wonder is how governments can like to

meddle as they (are) used to do”.

I will forgive you if you stumble. As I forgive Harriet Martineau for ‘A Tale of the Tyne’

(1833).

She commented herself some years later:

‘I remember nothing of that story and I should be rather surprised if I did under the

circumstances. The only incident that I read about it is that Mr. Malthus called on purpose to

thank me for a passage, or a chapter, (which has left no trace in my memory) on the glory

and beauty of love and the blessedness of domestic life’.

37

POTTAGE AND POLEMIC

A Tale of the Tyne is one of a 24 series of illustrative tales, part story part tract, that

together make up Harriet Martineau’s collective ‘Illustrations of Political Economy’ (1832-4).

She had become convinced that the public “needed” the series and she certainly needed the

money. It was a brilliant idea – a sort of ‘Economics for Dummies’ meets Penny Dreadful.

The series made her financially independent.

But I feel free to comment that A Tale of the Tyne is best likened to an extraordinary literary

ratatouille made up of chunks of half-cooked and badly prepared aphorisms on micro-

economics stewed with anecdotal early sociology, seasoned liberally with sentimentality

and melodrama.

I had thought of starting by summarizing the story but several readings leave me unsure

about the relationships between the characters – and have given me only a tenuous grip on

the way in which the strands relate.

Fortunately, Harriet’s contemporary John Stuart Mill has provided a complimentary review

which wisely ignores:

• Walter the young market gardener whose cabbages are blighted by the burning of

discarded undersize coal

• Adam the young rope-maker who dreams of fleeing to America to escape the servitude

of his apprenticeship

• Little Tim who had had lost his sight by an accident at the coal-pit at the age of four

• Uncle Christopher whose inventions cannot be protected by enforceable patenting; and

• Miles Otley the young clergyman (known as a child in the schoolyard as a ‘stupid boy,

with a bad temper’) who chooses out of conservatism and spite to oppose a plan to

develop a new coal mine known as the Deep Cut.

For J.S. Mill [Examiner, 27th October, 1833] Martineau’s ‘A Tale of the Tyne’ is a successful

diatribe about the iniquities of the Press Gang:

‘If, as we think must be admitted, some of the more recent tales of this series (though none

are deficient in passages of great beauty and power) have not kept up to the high level of

the earlier numbers, the illustration of impressment came in time to prove that the

inferiority arises from no decline of the author’s talents, nor exhaustion of her vein, but

from the more ungrateful nature of some of the topics on which she has recently been

engaged.

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‘The Tale of the Tyne is a story of impressment; and its appearance could not be better

timed, than immediately after our reforming Ministers have not only refused to abolish the

odious tyranny, against which the story is directed, but treated those who ventured to

express disapprobation of it, as if they had done something vicious and deserving of

opprobrium’.

Mill focuses on the plight of Cuthbert ‘Cuddie’ Eldred who had become a teenage mariner

on the colliers that ply between Newcastle and London, carrying ‘sea coal’.

To the despair of his family, Cuddie is seized by the Royal Navy for duty on a warship

patrolling against the French. Cuddie deserts and returns briefly to Tyneside to farewell his

sister Effie before he ships with an American merchant ship, never to return.

Mill quotes extensively from the conversation between Cuddie and Effie [I’ll provide a

snippet]:

“I am not a seaman now. However, say the country, if you will: if she knows no better how to

get served than by first making slaves of her free-born men, let her do as well as she can

when they leave her to turn against her. As soon as she takes a man’s birthright from him,

his duty ceases. Mine was at an end when they carried me off, neck and heels, and turned

me, in one hour, from a brave-hearted boy into a mean-souled man.”

Returning to the politics, John Stuart Mill picks up the issue:

‘Can anyone read this and not see that it is a true picture - that, of such causes, such are the

natural consequences? The fictitious Cuthbert Eldred is but a type of the countless multitudes

of real living men, who have been immolated, body and soul, like him, and died the living

death which he so powerfully describes.

.........

‘There is identity even in the wretched apologies which are set up; the captains or masters

are an ill-used, calumniated race of men, and free labour, forsooth, would be vastly dearer!

We are obliged, therefore, when we find the same men, at the same time, actually crusading

against everything which is called slavery in the remote parts of the globe, and battling for it

at home as for the most precious of our institutions, to conclude that it is not the thing that

they are averse to, but only the name; and that their quarrel with tyranny is not with the

tyranny itself, but solely with its unpopularity'.

Can't argue with that!

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CROSSED PATHS?

When Harriet Martineau died on 27 June 1876, at the age of 74, an autobiographical sketch

was found that she intended as an obituary:

"Her original power was nothing more than was due to earnestness and intellectual

clearness within a certain range. With small imaginative and suggestive powers, and

therefore nothing approaching to genius, she could see clearly what she did see, and give a

clear expression to what she had to say. In short, she could popularize while she could

neither discover nor invent."

She wrote such an enormous amount on such a wide variety of subjects that it becomes

hard to sieve the nuggets from the silt. Her own assessment has some truth though

pioneering requires an originality of mind.

However, as she mused during one of her painful and debilitating periods of illness, she did

gain, through hard work and meditation, 'a sense of the simultaneous vastness and

minuteness of providence', where:

“History becomes like actual life; life becomes comprehensive as history, and abstract as

speculation. Not only does human life, from the cradle to the grave, lie open to us, but the

whole succession of generations, without the boundary line of the past being interposed; and

with the very clouds of the future so thinned – rendered so penetrable, as that we believe we

discern the salient and bright points of the human destiny yet to be revealed”.

So I am sure that she would have shared my view that Family History should be given a

prominent and venerable spot on the Social Science book shelves and archives.

So, how did she come to write about the mariners and coal miners of Tyneside?

Well, she had a sister called Elizabeth who married Dr Thomas Greenhow. The Greenhows

had a house on Newcastle’s Eldon Square and Harriet must have visited them fairly

frequently. Thomas was born in 1792 in Leeds, the son of a professional from Scotland;

Elizabeth and Harriet were born in 1794 and 1802, the daughters of a manufacturer in

Norwich who later became insolvent.

A few years after writing A Tale of the Tyne, Harriet became seriously ill and she stayed with

Greenhow family for 6 months in 1839 while being treated by her brother-in-law. She then

took a room in a boarding house at Tynemouth where she could become more independent

(insofar as the laudanum permitted). She stayed there for nearly five years. Apparently, she

loved it.

40

Of course, Thomas and Elizabeth Greenhow are great-great-great-great-grandparents of

Kate Middleton.

Most of Kate’s ancestors on her father’s side were manufacturers or traders of the Middling

Sort or bourgeois professionals like doctors and clergymen – in marked contrast to those of

her mother’s side of the family which were from ‘the better end of the poor and worse’.

The ancestor contemporaries of Thomas and Elizabeth therefore include:

• James Harrison born Byker, Northumberland ca 1796 – a coalminer in Durham

• Anthony Liddle born Chisle, Durham ca 1817 – a coalminer in Durham

• William Robson Hill born Pensher, Durham ca 1814 – a Sunderland mariner

• Thomas Hay Webster, born ca 1818 – a Sunderland mariner.

[See my previous posts]

I find it fascinating then that in 1833, an ancestor who has been credited as a founder of

Sociology and Feminism, who was known to most of the important liberal and social

democratic figures of the Victorian Era, should have shared a landscape with other less

fortunate ancestors who became the subject of one of her books.

When the didactic fog clears in A Tale of the Tyne, Harriet can bring the scene to life:

‘Effie was usually fond of this walk —for other reasons than that Walter was at one end of it:

but today everything appeared disagreeable. The rustling of the autumn wind in the leafless

clump of trees under which she had to pass teased her ear. She tried to find a path where

she might walk without making a commotion among the dead leaves.

When it became necessary to cross the rail-road, it seemed to her that it was the most

difficult thing in the world to escape the trains of wagons.

She felt pretty sure of being run over before she got home. The smoke from the colliery half

stifled her, and the voices from the rows of cottages were more shrill and unfeeling than she

had ever heard them before. The river side had been cold; the colliery was too warm; and the

wind, or something else, prevented her getting forwards. She could almost have declared

that her feet were tied’.

And, as Thomas Robert Malthus observed, Harriet was always very genuine on the issue of

love:

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“Walter [asks Effie] do you really think there are any people that have passed through life

without knowing what that moment was — that stir in one's heart on being first sure that

one is beloved? It is most like the soul getting free of the body, and rushing into Paradise, I

should think. Do you suppose anybody ever lived a life without having felt this?”

“It seems to me,” said Effie, “that though God has kindly given this token of blessedness to

all — or to so many that we may nearly say all — without distinction of great or humble, rich

or poor — the great and the lowly use themselves to the opposite faults.

The great do not seem to think it the most natural thing to marry where they first love; and

the lowly are too ready to love.”

“That is because the great have too many things to look to, besides love; and the lowly have

too few.

The rich have their lighted palaces to bask in, as well as the sunshine; and they must have a

host of admirers, as well as one bosom friend. And when the poor man finds that there is one

bliss that no power on earth can shut him out from, and one that drives out all evils for the

time — one that makes him forget the noonday heats, and one that tempers the keen north

wind, and makes him walk at his full height when his superiors lounge past him in the streets

— no wonder he is eager to meet it, and jogs the time-glass to make it come at the soonest”.

Congratulations Kate and Will.