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’. 

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.

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.

A Crime of Passion

Brownhills Hall, from an engraving made some years later.
Source: John Ward, The Borough of Stoke-Upon Trent (1848)

In 1796 whilst visiting Brownhills Hall, near Burslem, the home of wealthy pottery manufacturer John Wood and his family, a young apothecary named Thomas Millward Oliver, became enamoured of the Wood's teenage daughter Maria, a noted local beauty, who returned his affections. Oliver came of a respectable Stourbridge family and as a well educated, popular and respected medical man locally, he would seem to have been the perfect suitor for Maria Wood. Certainly Oliver himself believed this and he thought at first that Mr Wood actively encouraged him in his courtship of the young woman. In this, though Oliver was wrong and when John Wood learned of the affair he quickly put a stop to Oliver’s visits, professional or otherwise, and had forbidden the young couple to meet. This threw Thomas Oliver into a fit of lovelorn despair that festered for some time before coming to a head early the next year in the most dramatic fashion.

At 8 am on 27 January 1797, Oliver arrived unannounced at Brownhills Hall and asked to see John Wood. Mr Wood was in bed, but on hearing of his visitor and thinking that the apothecary had come to present his final bill, he went to his Compting House behind the hall and asked his foreman William Bathwell to bring Oliver down to see him. Bathwell went, but returned without Oliver who had sent word that he would wait for Mr Wood in the parlour. So, along with his foreman, a slightly puzzled Mr Wood returned to the hall to see what his visitor wanted. Here the two men greeted each other coolly but politely and as expected Oliver presented his bill, but hardly had he done so than he drew two pistols that he had recently borrowed from a neighbour and pointed one at Mr Wood, asking him to take it. Mr Wood refused and Oliver lowered the gun for a moment, but then brought it up again and fired directly at Wood who was struck in the right breast. Oliver then raised the second pistol, perhaps to shoot himself, but Bathwell threw himself on the man and knocked the gun from his hand. Others in the house alerted by the noise soon rushed into the room to help the struggling foreman and tend to the injured man. The wounded Mr Wood was then quickly carried upstairs to his bed and a doctor was called for, while Oliver, now aghast at what he had done, was handed over to the local constables.

John Wood had been mortally wounded and died three days later, being buried in Burslem on 2 February 1797; he was only 50 years old. Oliver meanwhile was left languishing in Stafford Gaol until the Summer assizes that year. Here on a sweltering day in August he was put on trial on a charge of murder and though many witnesses came forward to speak of his gentle nature and good deeds, or argued that the act took place due to temporary insanity, the evidence against him was overwhelming and Thomas Oliver was quickly sentenced to death. 

During his time in prison, Oliver is said to have impressed everyone, prisoners and gaolers alike, with his courteous behaviour and his obedience of the rules. All were struck by the calm and dignified manner in which he accepted his fate and in which he finally met his end. On Monday 28 August 1797, he displayed this same calm manner as he mounted the scaffold above the prison gatehouse, bowing to the large crowd that had gathered below to watch. Moments later the noose was placed around his neck and the trap door opened. Apothecary Thomas Millward Oliver, aged just 28, died without a murmur. 

Reference: Trial of T. Milward Oliver at Stafford Summer Assizes, 1797

England Expects

'The Battle of Trafalgar' by William Clarkson Stanfield
Source: Wikimedia Commons

On 21 October 1805, a British fleet of 27 ships commanded by Admiral Horatio Nelson caught up with and attacked a combined Franco-Spanish fleet of 33 ships off Cape Trafalgar between Cadiz and the Strait of Gibraltar. In the battle that followed, Nelson was mortally wounded by a sharpshooter, but before he died he heard the news that his fleet had inflicted a devastating defeat on the enemy force, capturing 20 ships, thus ending for good any lingering threat of a French invasion of Britain. It was also a victory that established British naval dominance for the next century. 

Admiralty records held at The National Archives in Kew, clearly show that despite hailing from so landlocked a region several men from the Potteries were involved in this decisive sea battle. Two of them served together aboard Nelson’s flagship, HMS Victory.

Corporal William Taft, Royal Marines, HMS Victory

Depending on which of his records you believe, William Taft, was born in Hanley Green (present-day Hanley town centre) in either 1775 or 1777, though the earlier date seems the most likely. There is no trace of his birth or of his parents locally, though their records like many others may have been lost when the registers of St John’s church in Hanley were destroyed in the Pottery Riots in 1842. Army and Royal Marine records, though, make up the deficit somewhat and through them we learn that William was the son of Ralph and Hannah Taft. In his teens he worked briefly as a potter, before he enlisted in the army in early 1793, joining the 11th Light Dragoons. He served with that regiment for just over two years before transferring to the 27th Light Dragoons on 25 April 1795. Records show that he was a smallish man being only 5’ 4¼” tall, (he was listed as 5’ 5” as a Royal Marine) with a fresh complexion, dark brown hair and brown eyes and the fact that he always signed with his mark reveals that like many common soldiers he was illiterate. Military life seemed to agree with him, though, and Taft remained with the 27th Light Dragoons until 20 October 1801, when for reasons unspecified he was invalided out of the service.

For a time Taft found employment as a labourer, but was soon drawn back to military service, though not this time in the army, enlisting instead in the Royal Marines at Rochester (probably the town in Kent) on 13 April 1803, where he joined Nº16 Company of the Chatham Division. Four days later Private Taft was posted as part of the marine detachment aboard HMS Victory. This big three decker first-rate ship of the line had just undergone an expensive reconstruction at Chatham dockyard and with its new crew on board in May it set sail for Portsmouth. Once there, the ship was joined by Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson who chose Victory as his flagship.

The ship was in the Mediterranean when on 5 March 1805, William Taft was raised to corporal and he served in that capacity during Nelson’s dash across the Atlantic in pursuit of the Franco-Spanish fleet and later at Trafalgar. As the lead ship of the weather division, Victory was in the thick of the action from the beginning of the battle, crippling the French ship Bucentaure with it’s first broadside before becoming involved in a protracted fight with another French ship Redoutable and the ship’s company suffered many casualties as a result, most notably Admiral Nelson, who was shot by a French marksman and taken below where he subsequently died. Corporal Taft was another of the injured, badly wounded in the upper left arm during the fighting; his shattered limb could not be saved and was amputated at the neck of the humerus (i.e., just below the shoulder ball joint). Surviving the fight, the amputation and a violent storm that nearly wrecked the battered warships after the battle, Taft was admitted to the hospital in Gibraltar on 29 October 1805, being formally dismissed from Victory’s crew on 4 November 1805. On 10 January 1806, Taft was transferred to the hospital ship Sussex for transport home and just over a month later on 11 February and presumably back in Britain, he was discharged at headquarters. Only three other documents list his progress after that; on 3 March he was dismissed from the Royal Marines as an invalid and the next day he received a pension of £8. Then on 7 April in the Rough Entry Book for Pensioners we learn that he was a married man and was lodging at the Wheat Sheaf, Market Place, Greenwich. His fate after that is unknown.

Like all the surviving sailors and Marines who fought at Trafalgar, William Taft was also awarded prize money of £1 17s 8d and granted a Parliamentary award of £4 12s 6d. Presumably because of his career-ending injury, Taft also received £40 from the Lloyds Patriotic Fund.

Private William Bagley, Royal Marines, HMS Victory

William Bagley was born in Stoke in about 1774, though nothing is known about his parents, nor much about his early years, though at some point prior to serving in the Royal Marines he spent 4 years and six months as a soldier in the 4th Dragoons. He seems to have been married, certainly he had a daughter named Susannah who later lived in Hanley, but there are no local records of who William’s wife was, nor of Susannah, these again may have been victims of the records burnt in the riots in 1842. After his army service William may have returned to the Potteries as he was listed as having worked as a potter prior to joining the Royal Marines.

He enlisted in the Royal Marines on the same day as William Taft, 13 April 1803, and although Bagley was posted to Company 7 of the Chatham Division there seems to have been a connection between the two men, perhaps they were friends. It is notable too that after Bagley and William Taft were both posted to HMS Victory on 17 April, they were always listed together, Bagley and then Taft, in the ship’s muster roll. On his enlistment William Bagley was described as being 5’ 10” tall, with dark hair and a fresh complexion.

Unlike Taft, Bagley was never promoted, but he was much luckier during the battle of Trafalgar and survived the encounter uninjured. After the battle Victory was towed to Gibraltar for repairs before returning to Britain in December 1805. Bagley was discharged from the ship on 17 January 1806 at Chatham, but on 26 January he suffered a serious fall at headquarters and died from his injuries. He did not collect his prize money from the battle which was donated to the Greenwich hospital, while his personal effects were returned to his daughter Susannah in Hanley.

Private Richard Beckett, Royal Marines, HMS Royal Sovereign

Private Richard Beckett was a 24 year old from Burslem, 5’ 6” tall with light hair a fair complexion and grey eyes and prior to enlisting had worked locally as a potter. He had enlisted in the Royal Marines at Stafford on 2 May 1803 and served for 7 months with the Chatham Division before being moved to the Portsmouth Division where on 31 August 1805 he was posted as part of the Royal Marine detachment aboard HMS Royal Sovereign. Like Victory, this ship was a first-rate three decker and at Trafalgar she served as the flagship of Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood, the second-in-command of the fleet. The ship had recently had her keel re-coppered and as a result she was a very fast sailer, a fact which showed as she led the lee squadron of the fleet into battle, racing ahead of the other British ships and being the first to break the enemy line. 

For most of the battle Royal Sovereign fought with a Spanish ship the Santa Ana. Both vessels suffered heavy casualties before the Santa Ana surrendered, but Private Beckett was uninjured. Like everyone in the fleet he was entitled to prize money, £1 17s 8d in his case, but did not collect it and the money was instead donated to the Greenwich hospital. He did, though pick up the Parliamentary award of £4 12s 6d given to men of his rank. He was illiterate and signed his mark.

Private Joseph Sergeant, Royal Marines, HMS Prince

Joseph Sergeant was born in Clayton in about 1775 or 1776. He worked briefly as a glazier, but on 10 January 1798 at Kidderminster he enlisted in the Royal Marines. On his enlistment he was described as 5’ 5” tall with brown hair and a fresh complexion. A member of Company 37 of the Chatham Division on 22 December 1803, Sergeant joined the marine contingent aboard HMS Prince a second-rate ship of the line attached to the Channel Fleet which by October 1805 was part of Nelson’s fleet set to engage the Franco-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar. A slow ship, Prince was passed by most of her division as they sailed into battle and by the time the ship arrived at the fighting the battle was nearly over, though opening fire on a couple of enemy ships Prince managed to set fire to and de-mast the French ship Achille. Prince launched boats to rescue Achille’s crew and managed this before the ship exploded. HMS Prince suffered no damage and took no casualties and proved herself a real godsend in the week of storms that followed the battle, rescuing numerous crews from sinking ships and transporting then safely to Gibraltar before going back for more.

Sergeant received his share of the prize money of £1 17s 8d from the battle but did not collect the healtheier parliamentary award and the money went to the Greenwich hospital. He stayed aboard HMS Prince and just over a year later on 12 November 1806, he was promoted to the rank of corporal of 58 Company. On 20 December 1808 he was promoted once more to sergeant of 55 Company. He remained in the Royal Marines until he was disbanded from the service on 13 September 1814. What happened to him after that, though, is unknown.

Private William Shield, Royal Marines, HMS Defiance

William Shield was born in Newcastle, Staffordshire in about 1778 and initially worked as a papermaker. He enlisted in the Royal Marines at Banbury on 14 July 1803 and attached to Company 101 of the Portsmouth Division. Only nine days later he was assigned to HMS Defiance, a remarkably short amount of time, which may indicate that Shield already possessed some military experience. He was described as being 5’ 5” tall with light hair, light eyes and a fair complexion.

HMS Defiance was a nimble 74 gun third-rate ship of the line that prior to Trafalgar saw action at the battle of Cape Finisterre on 22 July 1805. At Trafalgar the ship captured two enemy vessels, storming the French ship Aigle with a full boarding party. Defiance suffered serious casualties as a result with 57 killed and 153 wounded, but Shield managed to get through the battle uninjured.

Shield collected £1 17s and 8d, his share of the prize money and stayed in the service until he was discharged on 16 October 1815 with ‘impared sight’. What course his life took after this is unknown, but he was still alive in 1847 when he applied for and received the Naval General Service Medal with the Trafalgar Clasp.

John Bitts, Landsman, HMS Naiad

John Bitts claimed to have been born in Stoke, Staffordshire, but as with many of the other men here nothing is known of his background or family, no local records mention him. He was aged 24 at the time of the battle of Trafalgar which puts his date of birth in 1781 or 1780. He seems to have been illiterate, signing with his mark and no indication is given as to how he had ended up in the navy, save that he joined the crew of the Naiad on 17 March 1803 as a volunteer. His ship was part of Nelson’s fleet at Trafalgar, but being a small frigate Naiad kept out of the fighting between the bigger ships, though she was involved in the mopping up after the fighting ended. He escaped the battle uninjured and unlike many Bitts claimed both the prize money of £1 17s 8d and the Parliamentary award of £4 12s 6d. Nothing is known of his life and career after Trafalgar.

John Williams, Carpenter’s Crew, HMS Leviathan

According to his navy records, John Williams was born in Stoke, Staffordshire, in about 1778, but nothing more is known about his early life. The records state that he had been pressed into the navy and that prior to joining the Leviathan on 24 February 1803, he had served aboard the frigate HMS Pegasus in the Mediterranean. As part of the carpenter’s crew, Williams would have worked to keep the ship in a good seaworthy condition. The Leviathan was a 74 gun third rate ship of the line and at Trafalgar was one of the ships of the weather squadron that followed HMS Victory into battle, where she captured a Spanish vessel. Williams got through the battle uninjured and later received prize money of £1 17s 8d.

Reference: The National Archives, ADM 44 Dead Seamen's Effects; ADM 73 Rough Entry Book of Pensioners; ADM 82 Chatham Chest: ADM 102.

Boots! Boots! - A Potteries World Premier

Probably at some point in early to mid July 1934, Burslem hosted the world premier of the first film of an up-and-coming star, when, according to report, the Palladium Cinema in in Waterloo Road showed a new British comedy entitled Boots! Boots! The star of the production was George Formby Jr, the son of a notable music hall performer, who would go on to be one of the biggest home grown film stars of the early 20th century. In his most famous films, Formby was invariably cast as a gormless but cheeky character with an infectious grin and an astonishing skill with a ukulele, on which he played numerous very catchy tunes; his films still come over surprisingly well today. This early film, though, was a far cry from those later glossy productions. Apparently filmed over a fortnight on a shoestring budget in a room above a garage, the film has the feel of a review, with very little plot. George plays John Willie (a character invented by his father) a hotel boots who indulges in a number of comic encounters with the hotel manager, the chef, some of the hotel guests and a scullery maid (played by Formby's formidable wife Beryl). Discovering John Willie's prowess with the ukulele and the maid's dancing skills, the manager puts them in the hotel's cabaret.

George Formby later described Boots! Boots! as 'a lousy film', and certainly it seems very cheap and cheerful today, but on it's opening it proved to be a great hit across the country and effectively launched Formby's cinema career. By his own account he himself saw what a draw the film was when he secretly came to the Potteries to see the film open and was astonished to find that it was playing to packed houses. A Sentinel reviewer described it as ‘a distinctly happy piece of entertainment. There are plenty of laughs, an abundance of good tunes and the settings are up to standard for a film of this type.’

The reason why the exact date of the premier is unknown seems to be because the Palladium Theatre often went through periods when it did not advertise in the Sentinel, 1934 being one of these times and as a result the date is lost. The film was subsequently shown at the Roxy in Hanley for three days from 19 July and at the Regal, Newcastle on Bank Holiday, Monday, 6 August 1934, having gone on general release on 30 July. 

Reference: Staffordshire Sentinel 7 August 1934, p.3; correspondence of Jonathan Baddeley and David Rayner in The Way We Were supplement to the Sentinel, partially reprinted in The North-West George Formby Newsletter 36, Vol. 3, No. 12, June 1998, p.4.

The Great Storm of 1872

Being situated in such a hilly region, widespread flooding is a rarity in Stoke-on-Trent, but occasionally chance extremes of weather have briefly put parts of the area under water. One startling weather event occurred on the afternoon of Sunday, 7 July 1872, when what the Staffordshire Advertiser described as 'a thunderstorm of great severity', struck the Potteries. Though it only lasted an hour and a half, it was so fierce that it left in its wake many dozens of flooded or damaged properties and a somewhat shell-shocked populace. Considering the violence of the storm and the damage it caused, remarkably few people were injured, though it seems there were many close calls.

It had been cloudy all day, but in the afternoon the sky began to grow much darker presaging a storm, the light becoming so dim that newspapers could only be read near to windows or by candle or gas light. The dark clouds then gave way to ones with a strange yellow tint to them and it was then that it started to rain, not in drops, but as a veritable deluge driven in by a fierce wind and accompanied by loud claps of thunder and multiple bolts of lightning. In Hanley there was one very alarming event when a bolt of lightning passed through the Primitive Methodist school room in Frederick Street (now Gitana Street), entering by one window and out through another. The only damage was a scorched paint board on the front of the building, but the room had been full of children when the lightning shot through and these now fled the room in panic. They had to descend a flight of stairs to get out of the building and while none had been injured by the lightning, several now fell and were trampled underfoot and bruised in the crush, though none of them seriously. 

During a service at Shelton Church, it rained so heavily that water forced its way through the roof and poured down into the building in streams. Buckets had to be brought to catch the water and the noise produced during the saying of the litany is said to have made for a very curious sound. Elsewhere in town, the lobbies of Bethesda Chapel in Old Hall Street were flooded, so too were numerous houses in town, notably in Nelson Place where part of the road nearby carrying a tramway was washed away. In Hanover Street, the downpour lifted stones up out of the road and deposited them at the bottom of Hope Street, where a heap big enough to fill two barrows was collected. The bottom end of Hope Street itself flooded, filling the cellars with up to a foot of water, floating heavy beer barrels in a brewery and boxes of live chickens in one house. The damage done to yards and gardens was tremendous. Nor were the local pot banks immune. The Cauldon Place works were flooded, though no serious damage was caused. Hanley's satellite villages were likewise hard hit. At Basford a lightning bolt shot down a chimney and blew away a portion of a mantle shelf in one of the rooms; Etruria saw dozens of properties flooded, as too did Bucknall, where the water rushing down the roads and through the houses quickly threw the Trent into spate, causing it to overflow. This caused enormous damage on the low-lying ground of the neighbouring Finney Gardens where Bucknall Park now stands, some of the walks, plants and flowers being washed away by the sudden inundation. 

Probably in no other part of the Potteries were the effects the storm so severe than in Burslem. Reporters on the scene shortly afterwards noted that even the oldest inhabitants had never before witnessed such a tempest, one stating that the rain 'came down in bucketfuls'. The rain here was particularly heavy and for more than an hour the thunder and lightning was incessant and at one point the wind rose to a terrible pitch causing major damage in several places. On the Recreation Ground (where the old Queens Theatre now stands), Snape's Theatre, a temporary structure of wood and canvas which had been constructed for the town's wakes week, was in a matter of minutes blasted to smithereens. A number of the thickest supports were splintered like matchwood and many of the rafters and seats were destroyed, while the canvas roof was torn to shreds as the wind hit it. Mr Snape was a veteran travelling showman, well liked in the district and there was a great deal of local sympathy for him over his losses. In the aftermath of the storm a fund was set up, subscriptions to which would hopefully help him in repairing the serious losses he had sustained. 

The Big House, Burslem.

Just down the road from where Snape's Theatre was taking a battering, part of an eight-foot tall wall between a timber Yard and the Big House was knocked down by the wind and rain, the accumulated flood water then rushed through the ground floor of the Big House with great force, blowing the front door open and then pouring in a stream down the turnpike road. 

At the Roebuck Inn in Wedgwood Place, the violence of the rainstorm split some of the roof tiles, causing a mass of water to cascade into the upper rooms, then down the stairs and out through the front doors. The Town Hall too received a soaking, the basement of which was flooded to a depth of three feet, which caused no end of problems for the hall keeper and his wife who had the job of clearing it all out. Likewise the row of houses in Martin's Hole – literally a hole or hollow near the Newcastle Road, where the roofs of the houses were on a level with the road – 'presented a truly pitiable appearance', the buildings being flooded to a depth of four and a half feet, ruining food stores and furniture and forcing the luckless inhabitants to seek shelter on the upper floor. 

Almost everywhere else it was the same story with only slight variations. Longport received a severe visitation with most of the houses flooded to several feet. At Middleport the canal overflowed adding to the chaos. At Tunstall, water poured into the police station and several houses doing much damage. In Smallthorne numerous houses were flooded and smaller items of furniture were flushed out of the doors and sent floating down the street. At Dresden as well as the numerous flooded properties, the road at the lower end of the village was split apart by the storm, leaving it looking for all the world as if it had been heavily ploughed, which made it impassable to traffic and men had to be brought in to make repairs. In Stoke, Fenton and Dresden as in Burslem, many householders were forced briefly to live upstairs as their ground floors filled up, sometimes as high as the ceiling. Longton too suffered torrential rain and likewise had some flooding, but saw much less material damage, though at one pot bank the downpour extinguished the fires in their kilns. 

Then the storm passed, leaving the Potteries in a battered state that it would take several days to recover from. That evening another storm broke overhead, but this turned out to be a much less severe event and caused no more serious problems.

Reference: Birmingham Daily Post, Tuesday 9 July 1872, p.5; Staffordshire Advertiser, Saturday 13 July 1872, p.5.

Old News from the Potteries

Regular newspaper coverage of events in the Potteries only really started at the end of the 18th century with the advent in 1795 of the Staffordshire Advertiser paper, though as this was published in Stafford, it's coverage of the goings on in the north of the county was limited to the most noteworthy events. Another half century would pass before more local newspapers were being produced in Hanley, Stoke and Burslem. However, histories, travellers journals and some other national or regional papers occasionally carried tales from the Potteries from this early period giving us fleeting glimpses into life in the area.

* * * * *

The King's Touch

It was widely believed in the past that the King's touch could heal certain ailments. To this end on 29 August 1687, the minister and churchwardens of Stoke-upon-Trent gave John Bell of Cobridge a sealed certificate whereby he could obtain the King's sacred touch for his son Samuel Bell, who suffered from 'the King's Evil' i.e. scrofula. 

(John Ward, The History of the Borough of Stoke-upon-Trent, p.281)

John Wesley is Pelted in the Potteries 

On 8 March 1760, the Reverend John Wesley, the founding father of Methodism, visited Burslem for the first of many visits to the region. He described Burslem as 'a scattered town, on the top of a hill, inhabited almost entirely by potters', a large crowd of whom had gathered to hear him at five in the evening. He noted that great attention sat on every face, but also great ignorance which he hoped he could banish. 

The next day Wesley preached a second sermon in Burslem to twice the number of the day before. 'Some of these seemed quite innocent of thought. Five or six were laughing and talking till I had near done; and one of them threw a clod of earth, which struck me on the side of the head. But it neither disturbed me nor the congregation.' 

(John Wesley, Journal, 8-9th March 1760)

The First Cut

After receiving the royal assent two months earlier for construction of a canal connecting the rivers Trent and Mersey, on the morning of 26 July 1766, at a site just below Brownhills, pottery manufacturer Josiah Wedgwood cut the first sod of what would in time become the Trent and Mersey canal. James Brindley, the engineer who would oversee the canal's construction, and numerous other dignitaries were present, many of whom would also cut a piece of turf, or wheel away a barrow of earth to mark the occasion. In the afternoon a sheep was roasted in Burslem market place for the benefit of the poorer potters in the town. A bonfire was also lit in front of Wedgwood's house and many other events took place around the Potteries by way of celebration. 

(Jean Lindsay, The Trent and Mersey Canal, pp.31-32)

News from the North

'As you often give me London News, I will give you some from this Country, which has of late made a Figure. This Neighbourhood has for many Years made Pots for Europe, and will still do so, though the King of Prussia has lately clapt 28 per Cent, upon them. Our Roads were so bad that nobody came to view the Place where the Flint Ware is made, but now we have Turnpikes upon Turnpikes, and our Potteries are as well worth seeing as the Stockport Silk-Mills, or the Bridgewater Navigation, which we intend to beat hollow by Lord Gower's, now begun in our Meadows, and advancing apace towards Harecastle, on the other Side of which Multitudes of Men are at work, and before Christmas we shall have cut through the Hill, and made another Wonder of the World. There are already 100 Men employed on our Side, and 100 more will be added as soon as Wheelbarrows can be procured for them. Saturday last we had brave Sport at Earl Gower's, where 100,000 Spectators were present at the Prison-Bars played in Trentham Park. Among them were the Dukes of Bedford and Bridgewater. The Prizes were Ten Carline Hats, with gold Loops and Buttons, given by the Earl. The Cheshire Men were active Fellows, but unluckily their Lot was to wear Plod Drawers, to distinguish them from their Antagonists, which made the Crowd oppose their getting the Honour of the Day. During this Game, my Friend Bucknall loft his Boy, about Eight Years of Age, who was suffocated by going aslant down a Sort of a Cave into an old Coalpit, the top of which was fallen in. The Man that ventured to fetch him out, found a Number of Birds, supposed to have dropped down there by the sulphurous Stench issuing from the Pit. We have much Hay, and Cheese is plenty, and Corn without Barn-room, nor do we want Money. 

P. S. I have just seen a Hen, which laid Twelve Eggs only, from which she has brought up Twelve Cock Chickens, which is looked upon as somewhat remarkable.' 

(Extract of a Letter from Burslem,14  August 1766, Derby Mercury, Friday 29 August 1766, p.2)

Tunnel Vision

On 1 July 1772, an anonymous correspondent writing from Burslem related what he had seen the day before when he and some companions paid a visit to the first incarnation of the Harecastle Tunnel, situated between Tunstall and Kidsgrove and then under construction as part of James Brindley's Trent and Mersey Canal. 

'Yesterday we took a walk to the famous subterraneous canal at Harecastle, which is now opened for a mile on one side of the hill, and more than half a mile on the other, of course the whole must be compleated in a short time. As it is not yet filled with water, we entered into it, one of the party repeating the beautiful lines in Virgil, which describe the descent of Æneas into the Elysian fields. On a sudden our ears were struck with the most melodious sounds. - Lest you should imagine us to have heard the genius or goddess of the mountain singing the praises of engineer Brindly, it may be necessary to inform you, that one of the company had advanced some hundred paces before, and there favoured us with some excellent airs on the German flute. You can scarcely conceive the charming effect of this music echoed and re-echoed along a cavern near two thousand yards in length.' 

(Leeds Intelligencer, Tuesday 14 July 1772, p.3)

A Fungi to Be With

'A few days ago, a mushroom was got at Stoke-upon-Trent, in the county of Stafford, whose diameter was 5 inches, and 30 inches in circumference, it weighed 16 ounces. The above is very authentic.' 

(Leeds Intelligencer, 5 September 1775, p.3)

All in a Spin

'The following extraordinary phenomenon was lately observed here; at the latter end of last month, a field of hay belonging to Mr. J. Clark, near Burslem, was carried off by a whirlwind; the day when it happened was exceedingly calm, scarce a breath of air to be perceived. The people who were at work in the field observed, that in one part the hay began to be agitated in a small circle, at every wheel it increased in size and velocity, continually sucking more hay into its vortex; after a considerable time it began to ascend, taking along with it a silk handkerchief which hung rather loosely about the neck of one of the men who was at work; it continued ascending till entirely out sight, and in about an hour it began to descend, and continued to so for an hour's space, alighting at, or within a few hundred yards of the place from whence it had been carried up, so that the owner lost but a very trifling quantity of his hay.' 

(Hereford Journal, 23 August 1781, p.2)

A Tragic Accident

The following melancholy tale from the Potteries is related in a letter dated August 14 1785. 'As Ellen Hulme, a poor woman of Lane End, was returning to her habitation late last night, with her infant, six weeks old, in her arm, she unfortunately stepped into a coal-pit, which shamefully lay open close to the road, and even with the track which led to the poor creature's house. Her husband, whom she had been to fetch from an alehouse, immediately alarmed the neighbourhood, when her distressing cries were very distinctly heard from the bottom of the dreary pit every effort was attempted by the hardy colliers to fetch her up, but the damp prevailing very much, obliged them to use means to extract it, after which was found the mother with her infant upon her arms, both dead.' 

(Sussex Advertiser, 22 August 1785, p.3) 

A Hard Winter

During the harsh winter of 1794-1795, the better off inhabitants of Hanley and Shelton formed a committee which started a subscription list for the temporary relief the poor who were suffering great hardship during the cold weather. By February 1795 the committee had collected an impressive £150, enough to enable them  to supply nearly 500 local families with meat, potatoes, and cheese. The Wedgwood family gave a liberal amount and through them a Mrs Crewe kindly added a welcome donation of a quantity of flannel clothing. The Marquis of Stafford aided the relief fund by ordering 100 tons of coal to be at the distribution of the committee. 

A month later, in an issue of the Staffordshire Advertiser that noted that thermometers in Macclesfield had measured temperatures as low as -21° F (-29.4° C), the fearsome nature of the winter was highlighted dramatically by one small but rather macabre snippet of news. 'Through the inclemency of the night of Saturday last [i.e.,14 March] a poor man perished betwixt Hanley and Bucknall. He unfortunately lost himself in attempting to cross the fields, and was found on Sunday standing upright in a snow drift, with his hand only above the surface.' 

(Staffordshire Advertiser, 7 February 1795, p.3; 21 March 1795, p.3.)

Wild Fire

In late March or early April 1799, a dreadful accident happened in a pit at Lane End, the property of John Smith, Esq. Four men were blown up, and two them terribly burnt by what the colliers of the time described as 'the wild fire'. The explosion was loud, and the concussion so great that nearby houses shook violently. Two of the men were not expected to recover, while the other two were thrown to a considerable distance, and left badly bruised. The reporter noted that their hats were blown to the distance of 70 yards from the mouth of the pit. 

(Staffordshire Advertiser, Saturday, 6 April 1799, p.4)