Richenson’s Patent Aerial Battleship

In late August 1908, the Sentinel and numerous other papers up and down the country carried the story that an engineer, Mr A. T. Richenson. and who was living at 5 Ward Street, Burslem, claimed to have it within his power—providing he could get proper funding—to build a dirigible air-battleship which would carry guns and that the War Office was showing an interest in his proposal. Intrigued, a representative of the Sentinel called upon Mr. Richenson and found him quite willing to talk of his invention. The reporter described Mr Richenson as a coloured man who had been born at Barbados, British West Indies, who had first come to Britain twenty years earlier to serve an apprenticeship as a marine engineer at the Elder Dempster Co.'s work at Liverpool. He then served in the Royal Engineers' Constabulary at British Honduras for several years before returning to England in 1891. After working as an engineer at sea for a period of three years, he started work as an engineer for Messrs Vickers Son, and Maxim at Sheffield and continued in their employment for a considerable time.

Mr Richenson said, “This air-battleship has been my life study and I am confident, providing I can get some gentlemen to back me up with financial assistance, that its success will be great.” He produced a number of letters for the reporter showing that the War Office was taking more than a passing interest in his invention, though he added that negociations were currently paused as the War Office wanted him to disclose certain details regarding the construction of his air-battleship which he did not want to release. Though he remained cagey regarding the construction details of his aerial battleship, Richenson stated that the length of the "deck " was to be 100 ft and it would carry six small calibre guns. The car supporting the deck and guns, was to have three sets of petrol engines to provide motive power and there would be three propellers, one at the front of the ‘ship’ and the other two aft. Wings were to play an important part in the vessel, and attached to the car there will be a balloon 100 feet in length and 90 feet in diameter, making it part plane and part airship. Mr. Richenson claimed that his air-battleship could be steered in any direction in even the worst conditions. By a secret process, which he would not divulge, he said he could reduce the amount of gas required to keep the vessel in the air. He had a working model at Manchester, noting, "It is twelve feet long, by six wide and the moving of a lever releases it from its anchorage, and it soars into the air like a pigeon leaving its nest." The only major problem was a lack of funding to take the project further and he added that any gentlemen who was interested in the matter would be shown drawings of the "ship," and if the money was made available he would have the airship built by a reliable engineering firm.

One has to wonder if this was a genuine project or an elaborate scam-cum-money pit, as after that there was no further mention of Mr Richenson and his innovative new air battleship in any newspapers. If for real, then either the cash injection he hoped for to fund his project was not forthcoming, or the War Office were unimpressed with his invention and his caveats and never returned to the negotiations.

Reference: Staffordshire Sentinel, 29 August 1908, p.6; The Manchester Evening News, 28 August 1908, p.6; Banffshire Herald, 5 September 1908, p.6.

Wind-Stars for Mr Wells

Norman Saunder's illustration showing the
Time Traveller rescuing Weena from the
Morlocks in The Time Machine.
(Wikimedia Commons)

In early 1888, 22 year old Herbert George Wells was recovering from an illness, some disorder of the lungs, and went to stay with an old college friend and his wife at their terraced house in Basford for a few months where he was apparently a troublesome and petulant house guest; perhaps as a result he also spent some time lodging at the Leopard Inn in Burslem. The future ‘father of science fiction’ had lived most of his life in rural or semi-rural districts and the Potteries was the first industrial landscape he had encountered. As he later wrote to local author Arnold Bennett, ‘the district made an immense impression on me’ and his memories of the area later found their way into his works. 

In the 1890s, Wells wrote a short essay entitled ‘How I Died’, in which he seemed to recount his recovery at this period. He described how after four months lying ill and convinced that he was dying, he staggered out one early spring morning to get some fresh air and take a last look at the sky before expiring, when he encountered a young girl who had got her dress caught by a bramble whilst climbing a hedge. After helping her free, the invalid stood chatting with the girl about this and that and he noted that she carried a small bunch of wood anemones that she called ‘wind-stars’. Wells was charmed by the pretty name that the innocent youngster gave her flowers and by his account the meeting - if genuine - bucked him up and he grew bored with the idea that he was dying and decided at that point to put all gloomy thoughts aside and get on with his life. It has been suggested that this pleasant meeting was the model for the time traveller’s first encounter with the childlike Eloi Weena in Wells’ first novel, The Time Machine, who presents a bunch of flowers to him for saving her life, then sits with him as he tries to communicate with her. Also in The Time Machine, a friend of the time traveller refers to a conjuror he had once seen in Burslem, while the spectacle of the Potteries at night with its numerous kilns and furnaces casting a fiery glow into the sky, is famously referenced early on in his next novel, The War of the Worlds, to describe the destruction wrought by the Martian war machines.

In addition to these famous examples there were lesser tales of his that owed something to the Potteries. In 1895, the same year that The Time Machine was published and he began work on The War of the Worlds, Wells had a short macabre horror story The Cone published, which was set in a fictional forge in Etruria, and was probably based on Earl Granville’s iron works. That story was all that remained of what Wells had originally planned to be a larger dramatic novel set in the area, but he went on to produce another work, the slightly scandalous science fiction novel (because it advocated free love) In the Days of the Comet, published in 1906, which was also set in a fictional version of the Potteries.

Slaughter of the Innocents

At about 10.10pm on the night of 28 May 1837 in Lane Delph, Fenton, on hearing a cry of ‘Murder’, a man in a nearby house and two customers from the Canning Inn went out into the street to see what was happening. To their horror they found two young boys, 11 year old George Colley and nine year old Josiah Colley, running down Market Street (now part of King Street) dressed in their night gowns and drenched with blood. George had one of his ears nearly cut from his head, while Josiah had suffered a severe cut to the throat. The distressed boys cried out that their mother had attacked them and was killing their brothers and sister. The three men quickly passed the boys into the care of others and rushing to the house, lit a candle and ventured in. Going up the stairs to the family bedroom they encountered a scene that none of them would ever forget. In the middle of the bare room they found the mother, Ann Colley, on her knees with her head down and blood streaming from her throat. Beside her was a black handled kitchen knife which she had used to kill or wound her children before using it on herself. Her six year old daughter Ann lay uncovered on the floor, her head nearly severed from her body which was covered in blood. On the right of the room was Charles Colley, aged about three years, lying on his back on a pile of bloody clothes. He too had suffered a deadly cut across the throat. Her infant son James aged about three months lay at right angles to the dead girl, his feet resting against her, the slit across his throat was not easily seen and the dead baby had a peaceful look on its face.

At first, the stunned men thought that Ann Colley was also dead, but when they went to lift her up there was a flicker of life and on repeatedly being asked “What have you been doing?”, the woman replied “I am in want. I am in want.” She then asked if any of her children were alive. Surgeons were sent for and were soon on the scene, one tending the struggling, injured mother, while another treated her two surviving children. More neighbours came in to help as did the police and George Colley the father also arrived, but was quickly led away by a neighbour. By midnight the surgeons were finished sewing up the injuries and Mrs Colley and her son Josiah were both transported to the North Staffordshire Infirmary two miles away. On Monday afternoon an inquest was held at the Canning Inn, where the numerous witnesses of the night’s events described what had occurred and a picture began to form of a once respectable family that fallen on hard times with horrifying results. The tragedy of the Colley family was explained in detail at the subsequent trial of Ann Colley at the Stafford Assizes in July that year.

The Colleys were originally from London and had arrived in the area at the beginning of the year, when the father George, who had served as a police constable in London and then in Walsall, secured a position as superintendent of police in Fenton. However, in March, he had been dismissed from his post by the inspector and was forced to make a humiliating apology for some unspecified wrong-doing. The family’s formerly comfortable existence rapidly fell apart after that and they had to sell most of their belongings to live. Though well-educated, Ann Colley either suffered with mental issues, or was in the grip of a severe postnatal depression that had worsened with each pregnancy. She had reportedly threatened to kill her children a few years before, but had been dissuaded by her husband. However, when George lost his job and the family sank into poverty, her depression deepened and finally tipped her over the edge.

As a result of the evidence presented at the trial, Ann Colley was found not guilty due to temporary insanity and ordered to be detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure at Stafford. But hers was not destined to be a long incarceration as she could not escape the horror of what she had done. On Wednesday, 4 October 1837, George Colley paid Ann a visit in prison and foolishly gave his wife a locket containing hair from the three murdered children. This left Ann greatly agitated for the rest of the day and night. The next morning at about 10 o’clock, she went to the privy and hung herself from the rafters with a long silk handkerchief. Discovered shortly afterwards she was cut down still alive, but the effect of the strangulation had put her beyond medical help and at 5 p.m. that day, she died. Ann Colley aged 36 was buried two days later in the grounds of St Mary’s Church, Stafford.

Reference: Staffordshire Advertiser 3 June 1837; 17 June 1837; 7 October 1837; numerous other papers nationwide, June to October 1837.

A Swedish Spy in the Valley of Crockery

A portrait of R. R. Angerstein in 1755.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

A visitor to the mid-18th century Potteries was Reinhold Rücker Angerstein, an industrial spy in the employ of the Swedish government, who was tasked with gathering information on new or emerging technology. Between 1753 and 1755, he journeyed through England and Wales and produced a wide-ranging and comprehensive survey of the various industries and their practices. He appears to have visited the Staffordshire Potteries, which he labels rather colourfully as a ‘Valley of Crockery’, in about 1755. Here, after examining the manufacture of salt-glazed wares, describing the kilns in Hanley (including illustrations), the raw materials used, the prices of ware and various mechanisms employed in producing pottery (with still more pictures), he went on to add a few descriptions of the area that make for interesting reading.

He notes that in Hanley there were 430 makers of white ware and other types of pottery, adding ‘The kilns are everywhere in this district.’ and to prove his point he includes an illustration of the skyline of the town. There were also large numbers of potteries in Stoke and other places, ‘where mostly the same kind of ware as that enumerated is made and also some simpler crockery.’ He then adds a picturesque and slightly comical tale. ‘When as it sometimes happens, many kilns are glazing with salt at the same time, there is such a thick smoke of salt in these towns, that people in the streets cannot see 6 feet ahead, which, however does not cause any difficulties. On the contrary, the smoke is considered so healthy that people who are ill come here from far away to breathe it.’

Of the pottery itself, he writes, ‘The crockery produced is mainly sent to London or other sea ports, from which much of it is exported to America and many other foreign countries.’

R. R. Angerstein’s Illustrated Travel Diary 1753-1755, pp. 340-342.

See a Fine Lady upon a White Horse

Between 1697 and 1702, partly from a wish to improve her health and from an equally strong desire to see more of her native land, Lady Celia Fiennes (whom some claim was the fine lady at Banbury Cross from the children's nursery rhyme) undertook a series of journeys around England. In the summer of 1698, her peregrinations brought her into North Staffordshire. Here, after admiring the as yet unsullied landscape, she was keen to visit the Elers Brothers' factory at Bradwell, but as she notes in her diary she was unsuccessful; the potters had temporarily run out of clay and were not working.

'..and then to Trentum, and passed by a great house of Mr Leveson Gore, and went on the side of a high hill below which the River Trent ran and turn’d its silver stream forward and backward into s’s which Looked very pleasant Circling about ye fine meadows in their flourishing tyme bedecked with hay almost Ripe and flowers. 6 mile more to NewCastle under Line.'

After ruminating briefly on the 'coals to Newcastle' adage, she continued. 

'… I went to this NewCastle in Staffordshire to see the makeing of ye fine tea potts. Cups and saucers of ye fine red Earth in imitation and as Curious as yt wch Comes from China, but was defeated in my design, they. Comeing to an End of their Clay they made use of for yt sort of ware, and therefore was remov’d to some other place where they were not settled at their work so Could not see it;'

Reference: Celia Fiennes, Through England On a Side Saddle in the Time of William and Mary, pp.146-147.

The Ballad of Stevo and One-Armed Jack

On 26 January 1895, 27 year old George Stevenson, a habitual petty criminal and deserter from the British army was shot and mortally wounded in a backroom to a bar in Johannesburg, in Southern Africa, for informing on his fellow criminals after a robbery. The story made news locally as Stevenson, though born in Hixon near Stafford, had grown up in Hanley, where he had turned to a life of crime at a very early age. At the age of ten, after several run-ins with the law, he was sentenced to Werrington Industrial School for four years, where he did seem to turn his life around and in 1882 was released back to his parents. For several years Stevo, as he was known to his friends, worked in his father’s clay pits, then in 1886 aged 18, he joined the army and the next year was posted to Pietermaritzburg in South Africa. Though he stayed in touch with his mother, Stevenson never saw his family or the Potteries again.

At first Stevo enjoyed army life, but garrison duty bored him and at the end of 1889, he deserted and fled to Johannesburg arriving there early in 1890. There he led a brief inglorious life as a thief being quickly caught and sentenced to a year on a chain gang and though he escaped and went on the run he was eventually recaptured and sent to finish his sentence. Shortly after his release in 1893, he fell in with a villain and fellow deserter (from both the army and the Royal Navy) named Jack McLoughlin, who went by the nickname of ‘One-armed Jack’, from having lost his lower left arm during a jailbreak. At first the two men were good friends, but only a few months passed before tattled tales between their respective lovers caused them to have a falling out and they shunned each other for a time. It was only when McLoughlin needed several others to help him with a robbery a few months later that they patched up their differences enough that Stevo could join the gang. 

The gang robbed a safe at a railway station in Pretoria, it was a pitiful haul and their troubles started immediately after the robbery when they tried to take the train back to Johannesburg and realised the authorities were onto them. One of the gang stayed in Pretoria, while early in the journey Stevenson got cold feet and quit the train and doubled back. McLoughlin jumped through a window to escape while the train was in motion, leaving one man on the train who was arrested in Johannesburg. Stevenson and the gang member in Pretoria were also quickly caught. In custody and fearful of returning to prison, when he heard that another of the men was about to inform on them, Stevo got in first and told all to the authorities, naming McLoughlin as the ringleader. Stevenson avoided imprisonment as a result, but he knew that his life was now in danger as McLoughlin, who remained at large, was a vindictive man who hated informers. 

Stevenson and his lover Sarah Fredericks fled Johannesburg for a time, but foolishly drifted back into town a few weeks later and by January 1895, they were living out of a room at the back of the Red Lion bar close to their old haunts. With no sign of McLoughlin, Stevo thought he was safe, but on the 26 January he learnt that One-armed Jack was in town looking for him. Stevo and Fredericks retreated to their room hoping he would not find them. A few hours later, though, there was a knock at the door. Expecting a visitor Fredericks opened the door, only to find that it was McLoughlin, who had tracked them down. Brushing Fredericks aside, One-armed Jack then pulled a gun and shot Stevenson who was sitting on the bed, mortally wounding him before making his escape. Pursued by an angry mob, McLoughlin then shot and killed another young man who he thought was trying to stop him and fled into the night going on the run once more. Back at the Red Lion meanwhile, Stevenson lingered for a time, but presently died from his wound. His last request to Fredericks was that she send his ring back to his mother in the Potteries.

McLoughlin escaped and eventually fled South Africa, first to India, but later back to Australia and it was there in 1908 that he was arrested. When the Australian authorities realised McLoughlin was wanted for murder he was extradited back to South Africa where he was quickly sent to trial, found guilty of the double killing and hung in February 1909.

Reference: Charles Van Onselen, Showdown at the Red Lion: The Life and Times of Jack McLoughlin, pp. 288-342. Staffordshire Sentinel, 22 December 1877; 19 June 1878, p. 3; 28 October 1878, p. 3. 

The Lamppost of Beauty

On 11 June 1956, 46 year old Arnold Machin and his 34 year old wife Pat of number 15 The Villas, Stoke, took a stand against the encroachment of post-war brutalist architecture and what they saw as the insidious spread of ‘subtopia’ near their home. When they heard that morning that a gang of workmen were coming later that day to remove an old Victorian lamppost from the centre of their estate and replace it with a modern streamlined concrete electric lamppost, they were appalled that such a fine bit of street furniture was being usurped simply in the name of progress. So, the Machin’s decided to make a stand and promptly sat themselves in front of the lamp for the next six hours. It was a hot day, so they hunkered down under an umbrella and tellingly sat reading The Seven Lamps of Architecture by John Ruskin, (an essay that outlined the principal demands of good architecture) and waited to see what transpired.

Arnold Machin was no mean intellect when it came to the subject of form and beauty. Born in 1911 at Oak Hill, he had begun his working life as a china painter at Mintons, but moved on to study sculpture at the Art School in Stoke, followed by a stint at Derby Art School and then the Royal Academy in London. He was later retained as a designer for Wedgwood and worked a teacher at the Burslem School of Art and in the same year that he made his stand over the lamppost, he was elected as a member of the Royal Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors. And as his record showed, like many a seemingly straight-laced academic, he had a strong rebellious streak and was prepared to stand up for his beliefs come what may. Sixteen years earlier Arnold Machin had done just that and served time in prison during World War Two for being a conscientious objector. Now, when the workmen turned up he stuck to his principles once more, saying: " I forbid you, as a token protest on my part, to remove this ornamental gas-lamp centrepiece."

Faced by the prickly couple and not sure what to do, the workmen politely withdrew and put in a call to the city surveyor, Mr D. F. Brewster who soon arrived on scene. In response to the official, Mr Machin merely turned to Chapter IV "The Lamp of Beauty." of Ruskin’s work and carried on reading. When shortly after this a police inspector and a sergeant also appeared, seeing what was afoot Machin put down his book, threw his arms around the lamppost and his wife slipped a chain around his wrists and padlocked him in place. Mr Machin then proclaimed to the police: "This is my protest against the destruction of all the beautiful things which is going on in this country." 

The officials paused to have a quick conference then offered Mr Machin a compromise, saying that he could have the lamppost to have in his garden. He was satisfied with the suggestion, so Pat unlocked him. A crane arrived a short time later, pulled the lamp out of the ground, carried it 40 yards to the Machins’ house and dropped it neatly outside their front gate. Undaunted by the large post with a sizeable block of concrete at the bottom, the Machin’s said they were going to mount a commemorative plaque on it, find somewhere to put it in their garden and surround it with flowers. 

Reference: Daily Mail, 12 July 1956.