A Titanic Engineer

Stoke-on-Trent's best known connection with the Titanic disaster is of course the ship's venerable skipper, Captain E. J. Smith, but a less well-known Potteries-born sailor who also perished in the Titanic disaster was Senior Fourth Engineer Leonard Hodgkinson. At the time of his death he was 46 years old, and like Captain Smith had spent most of his adult life at sea, albeit in a far different environment to that of his much more famous shipmate. As a member of the ship’s engineering staff, his working life was one spent for the most part in noisy, hot engine rooms, with little view of sea or sky save when he was off duty.

Leonard was born at 20 North Street, Stoke-upon-Trent, on 20 February 1866, the second son and fifth child of potter’s presser John Hodgkinson and his wife Caroline nee Steele. Educated at St Thomas’ School, Stoke, before the age of 15, Leonard was apprenticed as an engine fitter with Messrs Hartley, Arnoux and Fanning, in Stoke. Once his apprenticeship was done, Leonard left the Potteries sometime in the 1880’s and took up a position with Messrs Lairds of Birkenhead, lodging with his elder sister Rose, her husband Henry Mulligan and their children, who had settled in Liverpool sometime after their marriage in 1877. It was in Liverpool that Leonard met his wife-to-be, Sarah Clarke. The couple were married in West Derby, Liverpool on 14 February 1891 and within a few years the couple had three children.

North Street, Stoke

Leonard was now a seagoing marine engineer. He served for five years with the Beaver Line, whose ships sailed from Liverpool to Quebec and Montreal. In 1894, though, the Beaver Line went into liquidation and it may have been at this point that Leonard left and joined Rankin, Gilmour and Co., Ltd, which firm he also served with for five years, earning his first class certificate in the process. He may also have served with the Saint Line of ships which were owned by Rankin and Co., most of which carried the ‘Saint -’ title. Leonard’s final position with the company was as chief engineer aboard a ship with just such a title, the Saint Jerome.

For a few years between 1901 and 1905, Leonard quit the sea and set himself up in business ashore as a mechanical engineer, but in May 1905, he returned to his old line of work, joining the White Star Line, serving first as assistant engineer on the Celtic, later earning promotion to fourth and then third engineer.

According to family lore, Leonard Hodgkinson was keen to serve on as many vessels as possible before retirement, so was doubtless pleased after what appears to have been a six year stint aboard the Celtic, to be transferred over to the glamorous new Olympic (the Titanic's elder sister) when that ship came on-line in June 1911. Here he was briefly bumped back down to assistant engineer, but soon earned promotion to fourth engineer once again. Perhaps more troublesome for him and his family was the fact that the Olympic was to sail from Southampton. There is no indication that the whole Hodgkinson family moved to Southampton at this time, though it is a possibility, but if not, then Leonard had to put up at lodgings in between journeys and perhaps only got to see his family on a few occasions when he could make the journey back to Liverpool.

It was in early 1912, that Leonard travelled to Belfast where he joined the staff under Chief Engineer Joseph Bell, who were involved in getting the Olympic’s younger sister Titanic up and running. On 2 April he was signed onto the ship’s books for the delivery trip from Belfast to Southampton and on 6 April he was signed on once again in Southampton, now as senior fourth engineer.

A White Star engineer

As senior fourth engineer, Leonard Hodgkinson was the highest ranking of the five fourth engineers aboard the Titanic, one of whom was a specialist in charge of the ship’s refrigeration equipment. Whilst at sea their duties involved checking that the adjustments and routine maintenance of the ship’s machinery were carried out. They dealt with any minor problems as they arose, answered any orders rung down via the ship’s telegraphs and ensured that everything ran as smoothly as possible. As officers it was also their duty to supervise the firemen, trimmers and greasers who worked with them down in the bowels of the ship.

How Leonard’s days passed aboard the Titanic prior to its fateful collision is unknown, as too are his deeds on the night in question, as no accounts seem to exist noting him. If the story is to be believed, though, his fate and that of the 1500 other people who perished on the Titanic was foreseen by one of his relatives back in the Potteries, none of whom had any idea that Leonard was aboard the Titanic. According to the story she later told, two days before the disaster, Leonard’s 14 year old niece, Rose May Timmis, the daughter of Leonard’s elder sister Agnes, was sleeping in the same bed as her grandmother Caroline Hodgkinson (Leonard’s mother) when she had a nightmare. Rose dreamt that she was standing by a road in Trentham Park looking out over the lake, when a large ship steamed into sight. Suddenly the ship went down at one end and she could hear screams. Rose herself woke up with a yell that frightened her grandmother awake. When the frightened girl related her dream her grandmother snapped, “No more suppers for you, lady; dreams are a pack of daft.”

After a while, Rose drifted back to sleep once more, only to find herself dreaming the same scene and as before when she heard the people screaming she did the same. She recalled that her grandmother was furious with her this time. A few days later, though, the news of the disaster broke and the family learnt that Leonard had been aboard the Titanic and that he and the other 34 engineering officers aboard had perished with the ship. Though several bodies from the engineering department were recovered in the following weeks, Leonard’s was not one of them.

Though Leonard’s body was never found, he is remembered in several memorials, most notably on the Engineers Memorial, East Park, Southampton, the Titanic and Engineers memorial, Liverpool; the Glasgow Institute of Marine Engineers memorial; and the Institute of Marine Engineers Memorial in London. There is also a brass memorial plaque in the church of St Faithful, in Crosby, Liverpool, dedicated to the memory of the Chief Engineer and his Engine Room staff.

The Titanic Engineers Memorial, Southampton

Leonard Hodgkinson was not the only member of his family to go to sea. His son Leonard Stanley also became a marine engineer with White Star and later Cunard.  He served on the transatlantic run most of his career, mainly on RMS Majestic before the war and later on the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth.

Website: Encyclopedia Titanica

Elijah Fenton

Elijah Fenton

Elijah Fenton, poet, biographer and translator, was born at Shelton on 25 May 1683. His father John Fenton, an attorney at law, and one of the coroners for the county of Stafford, was of an ancient family and possessed of a sizeable estate, while his mother Catherine Meare claimed direct descent from an officer in the army of William the Conqueror. Elijah was the youngest of their twelve children, and not being likely to inherit any of the family estate he was destined from an early age to be placed into some form of employment. He was an intelligent child  and the church was therefore chosen as his future profession. Accordingly, after being educated locally, on 1 July 1700 he was admitted as a pensioner of Jesus college, Cambridge, where he earned a reputation as a diligent student. He gained his B.A., in 1704, but being an adherent of the old Stuart dynasty he denied himself the chance of taking holy orders by declining to take the required oaths of allegiance to the Crown. 

Seeking out alternative employment, Fenton became first an usher in the school of a Mr Bonwick, in Headley in Surrey, but was soon afterwards patronised by the representative of the noble Boyle family. He was subsequently appointed as secretary to Charles, 4th Earl of Orrery and later tutor to his son Lord Boyle. The Boyles were residing in Flanders and it was during his time there that Fenton produced some of his early poetry.

On returning to England, he opened a grammar school at Sevenoaks in Kent. Though this added to his growing reputation as an able tutor to the gentry, the school was not a success and Fenton turned to publishing a series of verses. These received some favourable notices and he attracted the patronage of Henry St. John (later 1st Viscount Bolingbroke) and resigned his teaching post in 1710. This connexion, together with his abilities and amiable manners, brought him to the attention and earned him the friendship of the great and learned of his day, most notably one of the great British poets of the 18th century, Alexander Pope, who became a lifelong friend. 

Fenton's friendship with Pope seems to have energised him and over the next few yeas he produced a series of poems. Pope also managed to get his friend additional patrons, first as private secretary to the politician James Craggs and after the latter's death he secured him the patronage of Lady Trumbull who appointed Fenton as tutor to her eldest son. He was to enjoy the lady's patronage until his death nine years later.

During this period he produced further poems and a tragedy Mariamne, which though deemed unfit for performance by the then poet laureate, went on to earn Fenton over £1,000. There was also a profitable collaboration with Alexander Pope, who asked Fenton if he would assist in a translation of The Odyssey. Fenton duly translated books 1, 4, 19, and 20, his style apparently being so similar to Pope's that it is difficult to tell them apart.  Fenton also wrote the Life of John Milton, a biography that continued to be reprinted into the 19th century. His last significant work was an edition of the poems of Edmund Waller. 

Though seen today as a minor 18th century poet, at the time Fenton's skills were highly regarded by his contemporaries and may indeed have improved were it not for by his habitual idleness. One of Fenton's early biographers, none other than Dr Samuel Johnson of dictionary fame, touched on this in an amusing pen portrait of his fellow Staffordshireman.

'Fenton was tall and bulky, inclined to corpulence, which he did not lessen by much exercise; for he was very sluggish and sedentary, rose late, and when he had risen sat down to his book or papers. A woman, that once waited on him in a lodging, told him, as she said, that he would "lie a-bed, and be fed with a spoon." This, however, was not the worst that might have been prognosticated, for Pope says, in his Letters, that "he died of indolence;" but his immediate distemper was the gout.'

But, Johnson notes further, Fenton's faults were outweighed by his intelligence and the kindliness of his character.

'Of his morals and his conversation the account is uniform: he was never named but with praise and fondness, as a man in the highest degree amiable and excellent. Such was the character given him by the earl of Orrery, his pupil; such is the testimony of Pope; and such were the suffrages of all who could boast of his acquaintance.

By a former writer of his Life a story is told, which ought not to be forgotten. He used, in the latter part of his time, to pay his relations in the country an yearly visit. At an entertainment made for the family by his elder brother he observed that one of his sisters, who had married unfortunately, was absent, and found upon enquiry that distress had made her thought unworthy of invitation. As she was at no great distance he refused to sit at table till she was called, and, when she had taken her place, was careful to shew her particular attention.'

Fenton died at the age of 47 on 16 July 1730, in Easthampstead, Berkshire, most likely from health problems related to gout and is buried in the churchyard of St Michael and St Mary Magdalene's Church, Easthampstead, with an epitaph by his friend Alexander Pope. It reads:-

To the memory of Elijah Fenton of Shelton in Staffordshire,

who dyed at Easthampstead Anno 1730, aged forty seven years.

In honour of his great integrity & Learning.

William Trumbell Esq erected this monument.

This modest stone what few vain marbles can

May truly say, here lies an honest man

A poet blest beyond the poets fate

Whom heav'n left sacred from the proud and great

Foe to loud praise and friend to learned ease

Content with science in the vale of peace

Calmly he look'd on either life & here

Saw nothing to regret, or there to fear

From natur's temp'rate feast rose satisfy'd

Thank'd heav'n that he had liv'd and that he dy'd.

A. POPE

Reference: John Ward, The Borough of Stoke-Upon-Trent (1843); Samuel Johnson: Lives of the English Poets (1779-81); ed., Hill (1905), 2:257-66

Illustrations: John Ward, The Borough of Stoke-Upon-Trent (1843)

Hannah Dale - The Child of Wonder.

A wildly exaggerated publicity image of Hannah Dale c.1889.

Author's collection.

Hannah Dale, 'the Staffordshire Giantess' as she became known, was born in in the village of Mow Cop on the 23rd February 1881. She was the daughter of 31 year old miner Thomas Dale and 28 year old Elizabeth Dale, nee Oakes of Dales Green, Mow Cop, and was their fourth child, Hannah having a brother and two sisters older than herself. All the family were normal average-sized folk, her father weighed 10 stone, and her mother was only 8 stone in weight and their other children were likewise quite ordinary. At the time of her birth Hannah too seemed to be a normal child, so small it was said that she could fit into a quart jug, but at the end of three months she began to develop very rapidly and this growth continued throughout her short life. Within a few years she had outstripped her older siblings in weight, and though she started out enjoying a perfectly normal childhood Hannah was growing taller and broader and soon became something of an attraction in the out-of-the-way village.

It is unclear when Hannah's parent's first started exhibiting their rapidly expanding child to a paying public, but she was certainly something of an attraction for the crowds when at the age of eight flyers such as the one seen here were advertising her for exhibition. Though depicted on the flyer as a veritable giant, Hannah was at this time actually only 4ft 4ins tall, but weight-wise she was prodigious, already weighing more than most grown men, so big that the family home at Oakes Bank, Dales Green had to have the doors widened. By the time she reached ten years of age, Hannah had grown to 4ft 11ins tall, had a 55-inch chest and her thighs measured 3ft around while the vaccination marks on her arms had stretched out to the size of small plates. Looking at her it was easy to forget that she was so young, but many papers were happy to point out that she was still very much a child, at her happiest playing with the other children in and around Mow Cop.

'She is a bright, attractive, and talkative child, and plays as other children do of her own age. For her enormous weight she is very active, but if she accidentally stumbles and falls she cannot get up without assistance. Dolls are her great delight, and in making their apparel she exhibits considerable dexterity and intelligence... She has no special diet, but dines with the other members of the family, consuming as much food as a healthy man, and sleeping on an average twelve to fourteen hours each night. On the railway she travels with a half-ticket, a privilege to which she is entitled, but which often causes her father to supply his name and address to irate ticket collectors, who entertain an honest suspicion about a giantess who takes up as much space as three ordinary persons would occupy.'

South Wales Echo, 16 June 1892, p.2

For several years Hannah was exhibited around the country and by 1892 was becoming something of a celebrity. Early that year she was fulfilling an engagement at Sheffield, prior to going to America, but her fame was cut short when she fell ill with bronchitis in late May or early June of 1892. Her condition quickly worsened and she was taken home to recuperate, arriving there on Tuesday 7 June. However, it was too late and she died from the infection the next day.

At the time of her death, Hannah Dale, was 5ft 3ins tall, weighed 32st 6½lbs, and measured 5ft. 8in around the waist. Her size caused difficulties when it came to her funeral at St Thomas Church, Mow Cop, on 10 June. Her coffin was huge, its size demonstrated prior to her funeral by the undertaker, a Mr Boon, having five young men lying down sideways in it and easily closing the lid over them. Together with the corpse, this finally weighed 6cwt, (48 stone, or nearly 305 Kg) and took up a double plot. It required thirteen people to carry and then lower the little girl's coffin into the grave.

Nearly 2,000 people, many of them friends and neighbours and other locals who had watched Hannah grow up assembled to witness the funeral. The inscription on her gravestone read:

IN LOVING MEMORY OF 

HANNAH

The beloved daughter of

THOMAS & ELIZABETH DALE

Of Dales Green Mow Cop

WHO DIED JUNE 2ND (sic) 1892

AGED 11 years & 3 months.

HERE LIES MY DUST THE CHILD OF WONDER

I BID FAREWELL TO ALL BEHIND

AND NOW I DWELL JUST OVER YONDER

IN HEAVEN WITH GOD SO GOOD AND KIND

ALSO WILLIAM & WALTER their sons

WHO DIED IN INFANCY

Reference: Philip R. Leese, Mow Cop: Living on the Hill; Staffordshire Sentinel, 11 June; South Wales Echo, 16 & 22 June 1892; Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough, 22 June 1892, p.4; Hampshire Advertiser, 16 July 1892, p.7.

Website:http://www.mowcop.info/htm/thumbs/tn060.htm

A Local Waterloo Veteran

The French attack on Hougoumont.

After three days of fighting and manoeuvring between the opposing sides, on 18 June 1815 the Battle of Waterloo was fought twelve miles south of Brussels in modern-day Belgium. Here the French army of Napoleon Bonaparte clashed with an Anglo-Dutch army under the Duke of Wellington and a Prussian army under Field Marshal Blucher in a fight that would decide the future of Europe. Probably over a dozen men from the Potteries served in the ranks of the Duke of Wellington's army during the battle. One of these was 35 year old Private John Oulcott of Burslem, a soldier in the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Foot Guards, a unit that was heavily involved in the ferocious fighting around the farm of Hougoumont.

John Oulcott was born in Burslem in 1780, though nothing certain is known of his parentage and definite information on his early life is speculative at best. For instance, he may have been the John Oulcott of Burslem who on 18 October 1800 married Martha Heath at Stoke-upon-Trent parish church and they went on to have four children together. The last of these was born in 1811 and he may have been widowed that year as on on 16 June 1811, a collier named John Oulcott married Maria Broad at St John's in Burslem and they later had a son together. Those, however, are the only items noting a man of that name in the area at that time.

The next we hear of John Oulcott of Burslem was when he attested for the 3rd Regiment of Foot Guards at Knightsbridge, Middlesex on 6 December 1813 at the age of 33. On joining the regiment he gave his trade as a brick maker, though there is no indication as to how or why he had travelled so far from his home town and possibly abandoned his children, though poverty and lack of work are the most likely reasons.

John Oulcott's records indicate that he served in Holland in 1814 and 1815 and then at the battle of Waterloo. He was a member of Lord Alexander Gordon's company and like most of the battalion saw action in the woods and fields around the château complex of Hougoumont on the Allied right, the scene of some of the fiercest fighting on the whole battlefield. Like all those present, he was subsequently awarded the Waterloo Medal for his service there.

Above: Three views around Hougoumont farm.

After Waterloo, Oulcott's served at home. As a member as one of the prestigious Guards regiments he would have been involved in various ceremonial duties. However, he was never promoted and was eventually dismissed from the army due to ill health. On 13 July 1830, his discharge papers noted that he was 'wholy unfit for service in consequence of Asthma from repeated attacks of inflammation of the chest and is much emaciated.' The Chelsea commissioners awarded him a pension of 9d a day commencing the next day. The discharge papers also offered a description of the man. John Oulcott was described as being 49 years of age, 5 feet 7¾ inches in height, with sandy hair, hazel eyes and a fresh complexion.

After his discharge Oulcott returned to Burslem. However, dogged by ill health he did not get to enjoy a long retirement on his pension. Less than a year after leaving the army John Oulcott died, being buried in Burslem on 29 June 1831.

Reference: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C8703923
Pictures: Author's collection.