His Superb Fighting Spirit

Lance-Sergeant J. D. Baskeyfield VC

Operation Market Garden, launched on 17 September 1944, was an Allied attempt to seize a series of strategic bridges through the Netherlands to break into Nazi Germany and end the war sooner. The plan was for three giant airborne raids, consisting of thousands of paratroopers and glider borne troops, to seize and hold the bridges, while an armoured column would punch its way north through the intervening German troops and link up with the lightly armed airborne forces before they were overrun. American paratroops dropped at Eindhoven and Nijmegen succeeded in capturing and holding their positions until the armoured column arrived. However, the British 1st Airborne Division, assigned to capture the furthest target, the road bridge at Arnhem, faced difficulties from the start, with many paratroopers and gliders landing far from their target. Only one battalion, under Major John Frost, reached Arnhem, but they could not secure the bridge. The rest of the Division, including several battalions of the Paras and the 2nd Battalion South Staffordshire Regiment, all under the command of General Roy Urquhart, were stuck outside the town, facing transport and communication issues and fierce enemy resistance.

On 19 September, General Urquhart attempted to reach Frost and his men in Arnhem, but the British suffered heavy losses against German armour. Urquhart therefore pulled his men back to Oosterbeek, a suburb of Arnhem, hoping to establish a bridgehead against the river until ground forces arrived. The Paras and South Staffords created a perimeter at the edge of Oosterbeek, bringing in artillery to cover the main roads and snipe German tanks when they came. At 11:15 a.m., eight anti-tank guns from the South Staffords were moved forward, with two of their 6-pounder guns positioned at the T-junction of Benedendorpsweg and Acacialaan to take on any German armour moving in from the north-east, while other guns covered their flank and troops in trenches and nearby buildings prepared to support the gunners and confront any enemy infantry.

In charge of the two guns facing up Acacialaan was 21-year-old Lance-Sergeant John Daniel Baskeyfield of the South Staffords’ Anti-Tank Platoon. Born on 18 November 1922, ‘Jack’ Baskeyfield was the eldest of five children born to Daniel and Minnie Baskeyfield of Burslem. Educated at Burslem St John’s School and Christ Church, Cobridge, for several years he was a choirboy at Cobridge Church. Starting work as an errand boy, he later trained as a butcher and briefly managed a co-op butchers in Pittshill. He was called up for the army in February 1942 and served with the 2nd South Staffords in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy before participating in Operation Market Garden. No stranger to peril, during the North Africa campaign, a glider that Jack was aboard crashed into the sea and he spent 8 hours in the water before being picked up by a launch. Evidently a good soldier, he had achieved the rank of lance-sergeant through merit and during the ferocious battle that would take place around his guns the next day, his ability to lead and inspire those around him would prove him worthy of the rank.

The statue depicting Jack Baskeyfield at Festival Park, Etruria

By nightfall on the 19th, British forces in Oosterbeek had been heavily pounded by artillery and mortar fire, resulting in significant losses. On the 20th, German forces attacked the eastern side of the perimeter with infantry, tanks, and self-propelled guns, aiming to overrun the weakened British position. Despite the heavy fire, the British airborne soldiers fought back fiercely, particularly Baskeyfield and his crew, who are said to have destroyed two Tiger tanks and a self-propelled gun. Their success, though, came at a heavy cost, the gun crew being either killed or badly injured in the fighting, Jack being seriously wounded in the leg. In the lull that followed the initial German attack, Jack refused to be carried off to the Regimental First Aid post and instead manned his gun alone, shouting encouragement to the men in nearby buildings and trenches. When the Germans returned with even greater ferocity, Baskeyfield fired round after round until his gun was finally put out of action.

Pulling himself away from the wreckage and under intense enemy fire, Jack crawled across the road to the other gun, Corporal Hutton's 6-pounder, the crew of which now lay dead around it. Again, he manned the gun alone, though another soldier tried to crawl across the road to help him, but he was killed almost immediately. Undaunted, Jack carried on, engaging another enemy self-propelled gun that was moving in to attack. He managed to get off two rounds, one of which scored a direct hit on the vehicle, rendering it ineffective, but, sadly, whilst loading for a third shot, he was killed by a shell from a supporting enemy tank.

There is some question over the number or type of ‘kills’ that Jack and his men gained, but there is no disputing that the terrific stand he made inspired nearby troops and bolstered that part of the perimeter. This undoubtedly helped in preventing the Germans from cutting the 1st Airborne Division from the Rhine, across which the survivors of Urquhart’s forces escaped several days later. For by 25 September, the desperate struggle for Arnhem was over, and Major Frost's men had been forced to surrender. Hundreds of soldiers and over 400 Dutch civilians had been killed, thousands more wounded and Arnhem and its suburbs were wrecked and littered with bodies, many mangled beyond recognition. Corporal Raymond Corneby and other captured troops were working to gather up bodies where Baskeyfield and his men had fallen, when he found just such a corpse, a battered, headless body by the wreckage of a gun, which he buried in a nearby garden. From the evidence Corneby found on the body it seems very likely that this was Jack Baskeyfield, whose remains now lie in an unknown grave. His name appears on panel 5 of the CWGC Groesbeek Memorial to the Missing. 

The modern day juction of Benedendorpsweg looking up Acacialaan - which was then much more open - from where the German tanks were approaching. Baskeyfield's final position was on the left where the 'Jack Baskeyfield Tree' now stands.

Source: Google Earth

Despite his body being lost, Jack's deeds were not forgotten, and word of his bravery spread quickly. A week after the battle, war artist Bryan de Grineau drew a sketch of the action for the Illustrated London News and official reports were made on Baskeyfield's behalf, with the recommendation that he be posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. This was granted, and the London Gazette carried the official citation for his award five days after what would have been his 22nd birthday. This outlined the action and Jack Baskeyfield’s doggedness in carrying out his duty in defending the road junction, his determination to carry on even though badly wounded and it praised ‘his superb fighting spirit’ which inspired all who witnessed his stand. Back home, though his parents and siblings were devastated by the news of his death, they were immensely proud at the news that Jack had been awarded the Victoria Cross. At an investiture at Buckingham Palace on 17 July 1945, Daniel and Minnie Baskeyfield received their son’s medal from King George VI and soon after the war they took a trip to the Netherlands to see where their son had died. Jack Baskeyfield’s VC is today in the keeping of the Staffordshire Regiment Museum at Whittington near Lichfield.

Pride was felt across the Potteries at Jack’s incredible bravery. A memorial fund was set up, a mural was raised in his honour at one of his old schools and his name continues to be used proudly around the city in streets, buildings, an Army Reserve Centre and for a while a local school. In 1966, a local amateur film maker Bill Townley began filming a well-produced cinematic depiction of Jack’s deeds entitled ‘Baskeyfield VC’, which received it’s first public airing in 1969 and is still available to buy on DVD. Official memorials also appeared. A plaque dedicated to the town’s medal winner sits near to Burslem’s war memorial on Swan Bank, but surprisingly the most notable memorial was erected not in Burslem, but at Festival Heights in Etruria. Unveiled in 1990, the twice-life size statue of Jack Baskeyfield sculpted by Steven Whyte and Michael Talbot, has him in action, shell in hand in the act of loading his gun; a brave man, defiant to the end. 

Reference: Andy Saunders (Ed.),Victoria Cross (magazine), pp.96-99; Evening Sentinel, 24 November 1944 p.1 and p.4; Evening Sentinel, 18 July 1945.

An Awful and Melancholy Accident

An appalling family tragedy occurred in Hanley on Saturday 1 August 1807, when Robert, John and James Wilson, three sons of David Wilson, a respectable local pottery manufacturer in the town, prepared for the forthcoming Hanley Wakes by setting up three small cannon in Robert’s garden. There was a general gathering of friends and family there for the celebration, one of these was a friend of Robert Wilson named William Jervis, who nine years later described how the incident had unfolded. The whole group it seems were in high spirits, perhaps they had been drinking as they were certainly in a reckless mood. Jervis for instance, at one point went up to John Wilson, who would be setting off the cannons and said that he wanted to place his own child astride one of the barrels when it was fired, but John refused to let him do so and likewise refused to set the cannon off while his brother Robert and infant niece were so near. The first two cannons were loaded with powder and cabbages while the third was loaded with powder and an old sack for wadding which was provided by Robert himself.

Along with Jervis, Robert Wilson with his infant daughter in his arms then retired a safe distance to a nearby arbour to watch the show, but Robert was still feeling full of bravado and now made a terrible decision. Turning to Jervis he asked him whether he dared to pass in front of one of the cannons while it was firing? Jervis understandably refused to do so. Meanwhile, John Wilson, oblivious to this conversation fired off the first cannon, then the second, which with loud bangs sent gouts of smoke and showers of shredded cabbage leaves blasting out across the garden to the delight of those watching. As he was applying the match to the third, though, Robert came out of nowhere and ran in front of it with the child in his arms. The cannon went off as he did so and both were caught in the blast and it killed them. Robert Wilson got the worst of it, the sack wadding took the back part of his head off, and he died instantly. His daughter survived the initial blast but died of her injuries 20 minutes later. Their mangled remains were said to be a horror to behold and if it could be any worse, all of this occurred in front of a large group of family and friends including the little girl’s mother and grandmother; the grief and horror they all experienced can easily be imagined.

The authorities were alerted to the tragedy and a coroner’s inquest was convened on the following Monday. This quickly returned a verdict of accidental death and the two were buried on 5 August in the same coffin in the family tomb, their funeral being watched by many spectators. Newspapers of the time reported that the deaths cast a gloom over the Potteries that the amusements of the following week were unable to fully dispel.

In his book People of the Potteries, local historian Henry Allen Wedgwood attributed this accident to the mischievous folly of John Wilson who fired the cannons. John, despite his respectable background, later became notorious as ‘Mad Jack’ Wilson, the leader of the Rough Fleet, a gang of drunks, gamblers, street thugs and ne’er-do-wells, who for several years terrorised the Potteries. There are some significant differences in the story that Wedgwood relates, he says that the accident occurred after 1817, that there was only one cannon and that only Jack’s brother was killed when the gun went off. His act of folly, Wedgwood claimed, left ‘Mad Jack’ a broken man who then turned to the bottle for solace. However, despite his undoubted criminal career, if we believe William Jervis’ account the accident was actually due to the macho stupidity of Robert Wilson (it seems to have been a family trait) and John was the sensible one that day. John Wilson wasn’t broken by the tragedy, though it could be argued that coupled with subsequent events it perhaps unhinged him and turned him bad. Certainly it remained a very ‘tender point’ with him and nearly a decade later he took a man to court for slander after he had supposedly accused ‘Mad Jack’ of murdering his own brother that day. It seems however, that by 1816, John Wilson received little in the way of sympathy from the townsfolk, his thuggish reputation was against him as he lost the case, the jury easily finding for the defendant.

There may have been more immediate tragic sequels to this sad story when just over a month after the accident, and within only a few days of one another in late September and early October, the following death notifications appeared in the Staffordshire Advertiser. The first on 26 September 1807, seems to record the death of Robert and John’s mother, ‘On Wednesday last, at Hanley, in the Potteries, in her 46th year of her age, after a lingering illness which she bore with exemplary fortitude, Mrs Wilson, wife of Mr. David Wilson, at that place.’ Then, the following week, there was one apparently noting the death of Robert’s wife.

‘DIED... On Sunday evening last at her house in Newcastle-under-Lyme after a few days illness, Mrs. Wilson, relict of Mr. Robert Wilson late an eminent manufacturer at Hanley in the Potteries; - in her life and conduct was exemplified every virtue which dignifies the christian character; a sincere lover of and a liberal benefactor to the cause of truth; an affectionate relative; a true friend to the poor and distressed, and a promoter (so far as Providence had enabled her) of every benevolent institution within her sphere of action.’

As there is a lack of documentation regarding the Wilson family at this period, it is difficult to say conclusively that these were the mother and wife of the dead man, but if so it is not too great a leap to suppose that the two women had been crushed by the loss of their son, husband and daughter through Robert’s signal act of foolishness, that their mental and physical health had suffered and they had wasted away as a result.

Reference: Staffordshire Advertiser 8 August 1807, p.4; 26 September 1807, p.4; 3 October 1807, p.4; 16 March 1816, p.4; Henry Allen Wedgwood, People of the Potteries pp. 65-72. Local press coverage was thin on the ground at this time, only the Staffordshire Advertiser being available. Likewise, church records that might have added more details are lacking, due to the near wholesale destruction of St John’s records during the Pottery Riots of 1842. These (save for a single baptismal register) were lost when Hanley Parsonage was burnt to the ground.

The End of the Rough Fleet

The Rough Fleet, an amorphous gang of street thugs under the leadership of John ‘Mad Jack’ Wilson were a terror to the locals, notably in and around Hanley, for many years at the very beginning of the 19th century. Born in 1787, Wilson was the eldest surviving son of David Wilson, a respectable pottery manufacturer who ran the Church Works, Hanley, which stood on ground between St John’s Church and what later became Hanley Deep pit, ground now given over to the swirl of roads and traffic islands where Town Road coming out of Hanley joins the Potteries Way. John Wilson was also the man who accidentally killed his brother and niece when he was firing off cannons to celebrate the Hanley Wakes in 1807 (see ‘An Awful and Melancholy Accident’ above). Maybe this family tragedy had in some way adversely affected him and set him on the criminal path he henceforth followed, but it is easy to look for excuses for bad behaviour and there is too little information on John Wilson’s early days to know for sure what started him on his criminal career; perhaps he had always been a bad lot who just got worse over time.

The approximate site of the Church Works just outside of the centre of Hanley
Source: Google Earth

Concrete information on the early origins of the gang is likewise thin on the ground. Writing in the early 1840s and thus well within living memory of events, John Ward in his history The Borough of Stoke-upon-Trent, noted that ‘In the years 1808 and 1809 a gang of reckless young men, some of whom were respectably connected, carried on a system of nocturnal outrage, rather from a wanton and mischievous spirit, than for the sake of plunder, which greatly annoyed and terrified the peaceable community. They obtained the name of The Rough Fleet, from their daring and buccaneering-like exploits’. This may have been when they started their reign of terror, but if so it seems that they continued causing trouble and dodging any real justice for the better part of a decade before the gang’s chief members were finally brought to book. 

Between 1816 and 1818, The Staffordshire Advertiser noted that the gang or its individual members were involved in several brushes with the courts for assaults, riotous behaviour and attempted shootings. At the Swan Inn in Hanley’s Market Square in early 1816, John Wilson was confronted in the bar by one outraged local, potter John Sheridan of Cobridge, who accused him of threatening his life and shooting at him, describing Wilson as ‘the terror of the neighbourhood’ and ‘the Captain of the banditti’. Wilson took Sheridan to court for slander when the latter accused Mad Jack of murdering his own brother, but he lost the case perhaps as a result of the growing ill-feeling towards him and his confederates. Incidents continued to be reported through to early 1818, while in the same paper John Wilson’s financial fall was also chronicled. His father David Wilson had died suddenly in 1816 and as John was his heir, the Church Works and family business had passed to him. Little good he did with it, though, being more interested it seems with his incessant drinking, partying with his gang and trouble-making and by July 1817 he was declared bankrupt and as numerous notices in the papers showed, his pot bank and other properties quickly passed out of his hands.

The end for the gang followed shortly after this in early 1818, when as Ward put it, ‘several of them were ultimately prosecuted at the Sessions, and convicted of various misdemeanors, which at length broke up the lawless confederacy.’ It came about as the result of an attack on a local constable Ralph Barton, who was left wounded by the encounter. Eight members of the Rough Fleet including John Wilson, were arraigned on a charge of riot and assault at the March Assizes at Stafford, being committed to Stafford gaol in June with the case being deferred until October; and it was there, doubtless much to the relief of the locals, that they finally got their comeuppance. 

‘John Wilson, Samuel Shelley, Thomas Shufflebottom, John Clews, Henry Brereton, John Wallbank, Wallace Lockett, and Samuel Earnest, were convicted of riot, and of assaulting a constable in the execution of his office at Hanley. These prisoners are part of a corps too well known in the Potteries by the name of the Rough Fleet. Wilson (the Captain) was sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment; Shelley (Lieutenant) to ten months; and the other six to four months; each of them to find security for a year longer. The three first-named pleaded guilty.’ 

Following this conviction as Ward noted, the Rough Fleet seems to have been broken and it disappeared from the streets of the Potteries. Certainly that infamous title does not seem to crop up in any further stories in the contemporary press, save as a bad memory and the fates of its former members remain unknown.

Reference: John Ward,  The Borough of Stoke-upon-Trent (1843) p. 369; Staffordshire Advertiser 16 March 1816, p.4; 5 July 1817, p.4; 18 October 1817, p.4; 31 January 1818, p.4; 21 March 1818, p.4; 13 June 1818, p.4; 24 October 1818, p.4.

Little Gypsy Girl

Of all the famous names who have hailed from the Potteries, few in their lifetime gave more honest, unalloyed pleasure than Gertrude Astbury, who as ‘Gertie Gitana’ became a darling of the music halls prior to World War One. Her talent and staying power were considerable. In her prime, her name on the bill was enough to ensure a full house.and even in the twilight years of her career, she was still able to command a large audience.

Gertrude Mary Astbury, the eldest child of pottery turner William Astbury and Lavinia nee Kilkenny, a teacher at St Peter’s R. C. School in Cobridge, was born on 28 December 1887 at 7 Shirley Street, Longport, but the family lived at various addresses after that. When in 1954 the City Council decided to rename Frederick Street, behind the Theatre Royal in Hanley, as Gitana Street in her honour, Gertie wrote a letter to The Sentinel saying that she was very proud of the honour noting that ‘Gitana-street is adjacent to the theatre stage is appropriate.’ She then added, ‘I don’t think anyone knows of it, but it may be of some slight interest to mention that I actually lived in Frederick-street; my mother had a small shop there. I was three years old when we moved there and we were there for two or three years.’ There is no official evidence to support this story, but at the time of the 1891 census, Gertie was certainly living with her grandparents in Bucknall New Road, Hanley, while her parents and brother James lived in Burslem. Perhaps the family moved to Fredrick Street after the census was taken?

From a very early age, Gertie proved to be something of a musical prodigy. Apparently as a toddler she delighted in putting on performances for her dolls and by the age of four she had been enrolled into Thomas Tomkinson’s Gypsy Children as a male impersonator, singer and comedienne and was soon earning star billing as ‘Little Gitana’ (the Spanish word for a female gypsy). The tale told of her discovery is that she was seen dancing in the street (arguably in Frederick Street, Hanley) by two girls attached to the troupe who befriended her. She then went along to one of the rehearsals and began copying the moves. Thomas Tomkinson noticed her and recognising her ability, applied to her parents to let her join the troupe. Once in the line-up and out touring with the show first around the Potteries, then through Wales, Gertie honed her skills and there was no doubting her burgeoning talent and her performances were regularly singled out for praise in press reports. In 1896, her career was given a helping hand by two music hall veterans, James and Mabel Wignall, known professionally as Jim and Belle O’Connor, who took her away from the Gypsy Children and under their wing. Though the O’Connors were apparently somewhat protective of their young charge, it was not in any sinister way and Gertie always referred to them affectionately as ‘Uncle and Auntie.’ It was thanks to them that at only eight years of age, Gertie made her music hall debut at the Tivoli in Barrow-in-Furnace, where she sang the song, 'Dolly at Home.' Two years later at the age of ten, she had a major billing at The Argyle in Birkenhead, and her first London appearance came in 1900. 

By the age of 15, Gertie was earning over £100 per week, much more than her father earned in a year. At the age of 17, she topped the bill for the first time at The Ardwick Empire at Manchester. From late 1903 onwards, though often still appearing as Little Gitana, she was also being referred to increasingly as Gertie Gitana, the stage name she would adopt for the rest of her career. As she grew into womanhood, though, her skills and repertoire expanded and as well as singing she entertained by tap dancing, yodelling, and playing the saxophone, a relatively new instrument developed in the States and which at that time was something of a novelty in Britain. Her music hall repertoire of songs over her career included ‘All in a Row’, 'A Schoolgirl's Holiday', 'We've been chums for fifty years', 'When the Harvest Moon is Shining', 'Silver Bell',  'Queen of the Cannibal Isles', 'You do Look Well in Your Old Dutch Bonnet', 'Never Mind', 'When I see the Lovelight Gleaming', and most famously 'Nellie Dean' which she first sang in 1907. It was a song her younger brother James had heard in the United States and was an instant success for Gertie, becoming her signature tune. Her first gramophone recordings, dating from 1911–1913 (some of which can be heard online), were made in London on the Jumbo label.

During the Great War, like many music hall performers Gertie turned her talents to entertaining the war wounded in hospitals or raising funds for the injured and she gained a following with the men in the trenches as a forces sweetheart. After the war, she appeared in pantomime, most notably as the principal boy in Puss in Boots, or as Little Red Riding Hood, and Cinderella. One amusing incongruous tale from this period is that she was reputed to have said the line in Cinderella, 'Here I sit, all alone, I think I'll play my saxophone', before removing the instrument from the stage chimney and bashing out a tune*. Two musical shows were specially written for her: Nellie Dean and Dear Louise, and in 1928, despite initial opposition from the O’Connors, Gertie married her leading man in the latter, dancer Don Ross. Don was as ambitious and driven as his wife and would later prove to be quite the impresario, bringing over one of the first Vaudeville strip-tease artists after a visit to the States, running a three-ring circus and organising variety shows; he later becoming King Rat of the Grand Order of Water Rats and founder and first president of the British Music Hall Society.

After the shows had run their course, Gertie returned to the variety scene, working for some time in partnership with blackface performer G. H. Elliott and an up-and-coming comedian Ted Ray, who liked her immensely. In his autobiography, Ray described both Elliott and Gertie as charming and courteous professionals, who never let their acts devolve into smut and no matter what their moods or what else was going on in their lives, never let an audience down or turned in a sub-par performance. 

However, determined to retire at 50, by her own design Gertie’s career was now winding down. Made rich by her tireless work over the years (“No gutters for Gertie.” she sometimes commented wryly on her wealth) she was able to retire in 1938, but the old trouper could not be kept down and ten years later she made a short but very successful comeback with other old music hall stars in the show Thanks for the Memory produced by her husband. The show was the centrepiece of the Royal Command Performance in 1948. Her final appearance was on 2 December 1950 at the Empress Theatre, Brixton. She retired completely after that and spent her remaining years quietly, though she increased her fortune by speculating successfully on the stock market. On her death she left just over £23,584 in her will, equivalent to £484,727.62 in 2024.

Gertrude Ross, nee Astbury, alias Gertie Gitana, died of cancer on 5 January 1957 in Hampstead, London, aged 69, and was buried in Wigston Cemetery, Wigston Magna, Leicestershire, where her husband had been born. Some lines from her most famous song, 'Nellie Dean' are engraved on the gravestone.

By all reports, Gertie, though no pushover after years toughing it in showbiz, was an incredibly good natured and generous woman, well-liked not only by her legion of fans, but also by her fellow performers who felt her loss. After her death her friend, comedian Ted Ray, wrote ‘She was the most gentle, loveable person I ever met… A perfect artiste in every sense of the word. I place her among the immortals.’ In his book My Old Man, former Prime Minister John Major, recalled how years later his father (who trod the boards as part of the act ‘Drum and Major’) expressed similar sentiments about Gertie. Her death made the TV and radio news of the time, papers including the Sentinel, carried glowing obituaries to the star and memorials were mooted, though the only one of note at the time was a memorial bench that was unveiled in Edinburgh. In the Potteries memorials to Gertie Gitana have for the most part been fleeting. The Gertie Gitana pub (later The Stage Door) has come and gone, likewise Gitana’s pub in Hartshill and today few save die-hard local historians or music hall enthusiasts remember her. But her name lives on in Gitana Street, an honour that never ceased to delight and surprise her. As her husband Don Ross recalled, on the day she died Gertie was fading away, but talking with him about this and that when unbidden she suddenly brightened up and said, ‘Fancy them naming that street in Hanley after me.’

Modern day Gitana Street, Hanley.
Source: Google Earth

*Comedian Roy Hudd in his foreword to Ann Oughton’s biography of Gertie Gitana, recalled asking Don Ross in later years if Gertie really had used the amusing ‘… I think I’ll play my saxophone’ line in Cinderella, but Don neither confirmed nor denied it.

Reference: Ann Oughton, Thanks for the Memory, passim; Ted Ray, Raising the Laughs, pp. 86-87; Evening Sentinel 15 February 1954 . 

Into the Valley of Death

Richard Caton Woodville's famous painting of the Charge of the Light Brigade.
Lord Cardigan on the far left of picture is dressed as the commander
of the 11th Hussars.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

In 1975, a small article appeared in the Evening Sentinel noting that at the battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War, 1358 Private George Turner* of the 11th Hussars, born in Burslem, had been mortally wounded during the Charge of the Light Brigade. According to his records, Turner was indeed from Burslem, and had worked locally as a crate maker until at the age of 18 he had enlisted in the 11th Hussars at Coventry on 24 September 1847. As the paper noted, he was probably the only man from the Potteries to have taken part in that famous but suicidal military action, when on 25 October 1854, a force of nearly 670 light cavalrymen were mistakenly launched in a frontal attack on an extended line of Russian cannon, infantry and cavalry at the end of a valley, that were further supported by other batteries on either side. The results of this colossal blunder were predictable, with some 110 British soldiers being killed and 160 wounded in the attack, a 40 percent casualty rate, while over 300 horses were killed. 

The 11th Hussars, resplendent in their black fur shakos, blue and gold braided jackets and crimson trousers, formed half of the second rank of the Light Brigade, though that did not spare them and they took a severe mauling from the Russian cannons as the Brigade closed on the enemy line. Private Turner was one of those struck down well before they got there, hit on the left arm by a cannonball, his injury being witnessed by Sergeant Major George Loy Smith of his company, who was riding nearby. Loy Smith later wrote ‘… before we had gone many hundred yards Private Turner’s arm was struck off close to the shoulder and Private Ward was struck full in the chest.’ Another Private named Young had received a similar injury to Turner and Loy Smith told him to turn his horse around and go back to their own lines, ‘… I had hardly done speaking to him, when Private Turner fell back, calling out to me for help. I told him too, to go back to the rear.’

The rest of the brigade rode on down the valley and through the line of cannons where they briefly caused havoc in the rear of the Russian line before exhaustion, the decimation of their ranks and Russian reinforcements forced them to retreat. Turner meantime, must have ridden, or been carried back down the valley to the British lines, bandaged up and with others was then placed aboard a transport ship bound for the military hospital at Scutari in Turkey. However, he never made it, his wound was too severe; Private George Turner aged 25 years old died aboard ship on 28 October and was probably buried at sea. 

There was no mention of the fate of Private Turner in the local papers at the time and it took 120 years for his story to finally make the pages of the Sentinel. It was related by Mr W. R. Baker of Endon, who added, 'I ask your readers to spare a moment’s thought to his memory now when tradition has little meaning and patriotism is an outmoded word I make no apology for thinking that he should not be entirely forgotten.’ 

There existed, though, another poignant addendum to Turner’s sad tale. Seven months after the battle of Balaclava, the Light Brigade had passed again over the same ground, now deserted of enemy troops and here the upper part of a sabre scabbard, all twisted and mangled, was picked up by Sergeant Major Loy Smith and it became part of his collection of memorabilia. When the collection was put on display in Sheffield in 1981, a card attached to the scabbard’s remains read, ‘This belonged to Private Turner, K.I.A.’

*Despite my best efforts, I have yet to find a trace of a George Turner in the local civil records who fits the available data, raising the possibility that the name is an alias.

Reference: Evening Sentinel, 25 October 1975, p.4; George Loy Smith, A Victorian RSM: From India to the Crimea, p. 132. My thanks to Mr Philip Boys for kindly providing me with background information on Private Turner contained in ‘Lives of the Light Brigade: The E. J. Boys Archive’. 

Dickens, the Dodo and the Dinner Plate

On 1 April 1852, the writer Charles Dickens wrote a letter to his wife Kate informing her ‘We think of going on tonight from Birmingham to Stoke upon Trent.’ Despite worries about the trains, it seems that he and a travelling companion arrived in Stoke the next morning. Here after gazing with some fascination at the town before him, the famous author (who at the time was also writing up weekly instalments of his longest book, Bleak House) spent a few hours at the Spode factory which was at that period owned by W. T. Copeland. Here he apparently watched a thrower and his attendant swiftly and skilfully fashion a breakfast set for his amusement, watched jiggerers and pressers making bowls and basins and saw Parian statuettes being produced in moulds. He then explored the factory kilns, seeing the saggars being stacked prior to firing and mused on the constant cycle of heating and cooling that accompanied the manufacture of pottery. This was followed by visits to see transferers and decorators at work, producing willow pattern wares or fancier stuff, before moving on to the dipping shop for glazing and then to the placers carefully loading the ware into the appropriate saggers prior to them being loaded into the kilns he had seen earlier. Dickens seems to have enjoyed his tour and it was doubtless a thrill for the workers at the Copeland works to meet, albeit briefly, one of the biggest celebrities of the Victorian age and show him their own impressive skills. Armed with all he had seen and imbibing a good working knowledge of the history and process of pottery making, Charles Dickens moved on the next day to Stafford.

Compared to the grime and industry of the Potteries that evidently spoke to his imagination, Dickens was bored with Stafford and rather rude about the place, ‘it is as dull and dead a town as any one could desire not to see’ he wrote tartly. He lodged at the Swan Inn, which he disparagingly nicknamed ‘the Dodo’ and where he apparently seemed doomed to spend a very dull evening indeed. According to the tale he told, though, he chanced to look at the bottom of a plate and saw the name ‘COPELAND’, which set him to musing on the previous day’s events. Employing a literary conceit, he then let the plate ‘remind’ him of all he had seen at Copeland’s pot bank, telling the story outlined above as a journey through its creation. The plate’s ‘recollections’ got Dickens through the evening, so he claimed, though one might suppose that he was actually quite busy putting his recollections down on paper. His clever bit of writing, ‘A Plated Article’, was published in the magazine Household Words, on 24 April 1852. 

White Rabbit

According to the tale told, in the 19th century the Etruria Grove, a copse planted on the orders of Josiah Wedgwood near to his factory alongside the Trent and Mersey canal, was haunted by a curious phantom. Travellers that way reported hearing the terrified cries of a child after which a ghostly milk-white rabbit would appear in the road in front of them. According to local historian Henry Wedgwood, most locals avoided the area or hurried on through, though one man who encountered the ghost rabbit tried to catch it, but merely ended up with a dislocated shoulder for his pains. This phantom is said to have been conjured by the murder of a young boy, the terrified screams that heralded the appearance of the rabbit were said to be the sound of the young lad being killed in that secluded spot and presumably the animal-form that followed was a manifestation of the child’s soul seeking justice, or simply trying to find his way home.

The murder that supposedly raised this restless spirit was, alas, all too real. At about 10.30 a.m., on Sunday 4 August 1833, engraver Thomas Davies from Shelton, was out searching for a wasp’s nest in Crabtree Field adjoining the canal towpath near to Macaroni Bridge, Etruria, when he found the body of a young boy lying face down in a water-filled ditch with a length of packer’s cord wrapped around his neck. Fetching assistance, he and another man quickly fished the body out and transported it to the nearby Etruria Inn before sending for the local Constable and fire brigade chief Steven Johnson, who was soon joined by Hanley Constable Charles Rhodes; the two men immediately set about investigating the killing. 

The corpse was soon identified as that of John Holdcroft, a boy of nine years of age, whose parents had been desperately searching for him since the previous evening when he failed to return home to Burslem after leaving his place of work. John had worked for a potter named Hawley in Burslem and when the constables went to enquire there they learnt that young John had left the premises at 6pm on Saturday evening in the company of another of Hawley’s employees, an older boy, 15 year old Charles Shaw. Shaw was a relative newcomer to the area being from Swinton in Yorkshire and was lodging locally with his grandfather. As a result many witnesses did not know his name, but they knew John Holdcroft and several people saw the two boys together along the canal at Etruria on Saturday evening, some noting that the older boy was carrying a piece of packer’s cord like that found around Holdcroft’s neck. When questioned by Constable Charles Rhodes on Sunday afternoon, Shaw first claimed that he had left Holdcroft by the canal with a stranger whom he described as ‘a gambler’, the implication being that this stranger had done Holdcroft in. The constable, though, was dubious, the evidence against Shaw was strong and when Rhodes discovered blood on the boy’s shirt that he had tried to hide by dabbing clay over it, the constable immediately arrested him. The boy then accused a fellow Yorkshireman named John Baddeley who lived nearby, of the killing, but on investigation the man had a solid alibi. Shaw was committed to Stafford gaol to await trial, while John Holdcroft was buried at St Paul’s, Burslem on 7 August 1833.

When Shaw’s case went to trial at Stafford in late March 1834, the prosecution argued that a trifling amount of money was at the root of the killing, as both boys had been paid by Hawley the day before, but while Holdcroft had received 1s, 6d, Shaw because of stoppages and money he owed, only received 4d to take home. The theory was that the boys had been gambling and Shaw envious of Holdcroft’s money had fleeced the younger boy of all his wages. When Holdcroft tried to get some money back, a fight had started that resulted in his death, possibly by a beating followed by strangulation. When the younger boy's body was found the next day the money was missing and Shaw meantime seems to have gone on a spending spree that he could not have afforded. This sudden wealth, plus the rope, a footprint at the scene that matched his boots and the evidence of the witnesses weighed heavily against Charles Shaw and he was quickly found guilty of the murder and sentenced to hang.

Judge Patteson, presiding, was clearly uncomfortable sentencing one so young to death and perhaps to his relief several days later some doubt was thrown on the murder conviction. Shaw’s mother gave sworn testimony that her son had told her that Holdcroft had died from hitting his head against a railing after Shaw knocked him down, and the rope had merely been used to drag the body to the ditch. Probably as a result of this new evidence and the questions it raised, Charles Shaw’s death sentence was commuted to one of transportation for life and he was held in prison until the next year, when he was one of 280 convicts loaded aboard the ship Norfolk which sailed from Sheerness on 14 May 1835. Arriving in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) in on 28 August that year, Shaw was first incarcerated in the Point Puer Juvenile Penal Station and later the Port Arthur Penal Station in Tasmania. His records seem to indicate that he was an habitual troublemaker from beginning to end, being subjected to numerous whippings and solitary confinements for his bad or disruptive behaviour, though many were for minor infractions. From the late 1840s, Shaw put in numerous requests for a conditional pardon, but was refused many times, only finally being granted one in March 1851. His fate after that remains unknown. 

Reference: E. J. D. Warrillow, History of Etruria, p.135; The Staffordshire Advertiser, 10 August 1833, p.3; 22 March 1834, p.2; The Monmouthshire Merlin, 5 April 1834, p.1; Tasmanian Names Index/Libraries Tasmania, online resource.