Potters at Waterloo

French cuirassiers charge a British square at Waterloo, painting by Felix Philippoteaux.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

After three days of fighting and manoeuvring between the opposing sides, on 18 June 1815, the Battle of Waterloo ended once and for all the military career of Napoleon Bonaparte. In celebration, it became the first ever action commemorated in Britain with a campaign medal that was awarded to soldiers of all ranks who survived the fighting, and there are records for over 40 men from the Potteries who later received the Waterloo Medal.*

The campaign opened at dawn on 15 June, when Napoleon struck into what is today Belgium crossing the river Sambre at Charleroi with 126,000 men, and securing a pivotal ‘central position’ between Wellington’s Anglo‑Dutch‑Belgian army and Blücher’s Prussians. His plan was to defeat each army separately before they could unite against him. On 16 June, he struck the Prussians at Ligny, while Marshal Ney fought Wellington’s forces at Quatre Bras. Quatre Bras was a scrappy battle with Wellington’s forces arriving on scene in a piecemeal fashion, but they held their ground. Among the several local men engaged, Sergeant Sampson Midlam of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Foot, from Stoke, was wounded in the hand and evacuated to Brussels.

On the 17th, the Prussians, though battered, withdrew from Ligny in good order, marching north towards Wavre. Hearing of this and to keep in contact with them, Wellington then fell back in parallel with the Prussians, northward towards Brussels, to a position he had scouted the year before. Meantime, Napoleon sent a third of his forces under the command of Marshal Grouchy to pursue the Prussians while he shifted his main weight towards Wellington. Indeed, at one point Napoleon, riding at the head of his cavalry, led the pursuit of the Allied rearguard as they fell back, but soon, all pursuit and fighting ground to a halt as a terrific storm broke overhead, drenching both armies. They moved into position on either side of a wide shallow valley, Wellington’s men settled on the northern ridge just south of the village of Mont St Jean, while the French took the opposite heights. Here they spent a sodden night under the rain, while the Duke made his headquarters two miles further up the road at the village of Waterloo.

After dawn on that fateful Sunday 18 June, the rain eased, and the two armies faced each other across the valley. The sodden ground delayed the battle until late morning, when Napoleon opened the action with a bombardment and a diversionary attack on the fortified farmstead of Hougoumont on the Allied right of line. Intended to draw troops from Wellington’s centre, the fight instead became a prolonged and savage struggle that pulled in increasing numbers of French troops without success.

Present day Hougoumont
Author's collection.

Many Potteries men fought at Hougoumont. In the 2nd Battalion Coldstream Guards, Private John Harrison of Burslem, was severely wounded in the neck and left arm. Private Ralph Cartledge (or Cartlidge), also of Burslem, was wounded in the mouth. Sergeant John Simpson of Burslem was shot through the thigh early in the action, and Private John Johnson of Tunstall, previously wounded at Bergen‑op‑Zoom, suffered a serious groin wound. Two others from Burslem, Privates Thomas Grocott and William Waller, escaped without injury.

The 2nd Battalion, 3rd Foot Guards also sent many men into the fight. Private John Copeland of Burslem, formerly of the Stafford Militia, fought first in the lane to the west of the chateau complex and then in the wood, before being driven back into the château; he was badly wounded and later lost his left leg. Two older Burslem soldiers, 40 year old Private William Collier and Private John Oulcott, aged 33, were not wounded.

While the struggle for Hougoumont continued unabated, elsewhere other locals were feeling the brunt of Napoleon’s first grand attack. In the early afternoon following a fierce bombardment, a force of some 16,000 French infantrymen in three giant columns, was sent marching across the valley against the Allied left of centre. With drums beating and flags flying, their progress seemed unstoppable and when they crashed up against the forces on the ridge and opened fire it looked as if the thin Allied line might give way under the pressure. Luckily, Wellington’s second-in-command the Earl of Uxbridge, was on the spot and countered by launching his two brigades of heavy cavalry in a great charge which shattered the French attack and sent it reeling back across the fields in panic. However, many of the horsemen got out of control and crossing the valley attacked the French guns, only to be themselves attacked by French lancers who took a heavy toll. Despite these losses, the charge had done its job and shattered Napoleon’s first gambit.

In the 2nd Life Guards were Private George Ball of Burslem, a veteran of Vittoria and Toulouse; Private James Bott, likely from Longton; Private William Henshall, a Burslem potter; and Private Joseph Walker of Stoke, a 6’2” former miller. Their regiment charged to the east of La Haye Sainte, smashing through a force of cuirassiers, (armoured French cavalry) and then into the French infantry. Nearby in the ranks of the Royal Horse Guards, Private Philip Yates, probably from Hanley Green and also a veteran of Vittoria and Toulouse, was also involved in with the charge. His regiment, acting as reserve, joined the charge but withdrew in good order and suffered fewer casualties as a result.

As the armies paused and reorganised after these dramatic events, movement to the east revealed the arrival of Blücher’s Prussians, who had outpaced Grouchy. Napoleon ordered Ney to seize La Haye Sainte, but whilst so engaged, Ney mistakenly thought that Wellington was retreating. Determined to turn this imagined withdrawal into a rout, Ney abandonned the attack on La Haye Sainte and rode around and gathered every cavalryman he could find and launched the first of several massive charges against the Allied ridge. Wellington, however, was not retreating, and the order went along the Allied line to prepare to receive cavalry.

The French cavalry first had to endure long‑range fire from the Allied guns spaced along the ridge. The Potteries were strongly represented in the British artillery at Waterloo. Gunner and Driver Samuel Day of Burslem, though belonging to a Royal Artillery company not present at the battle, had been seconded to Rogers’ R.A. battery to help supply small‑arms ammunition. He fought with the battery at both Quatre Bras and Waterloo, positioned in the latter action on the centre‑left near the Brussels road before moving further to the west in the afternoon. Then there was Gunner and Driver Joseph Lightfoot, from Stoke parish, serving in Sandham’s Company, which was placed roughly in the centre of the Allied artillery line on the right of the battlefield and it remained there for most of the day, enduring attack after attack.

Several local men of the Royal Artillery Drivers—non‑combatants responsible for moving guns, limbers, ammunition and spares—also received the Waterloo Medal. Although only four R.A. companies served at Waterloo (employing no more than 300 drivers), over 1,000 R.A.D. men were awarded the medal, making it unlikely that most were present. Even so, Driver Thomas Bolton of A Troop from Burslem; Driver Daniel (or David) Goostree of A Troop from Stoke; Driver William Ellis of D Troop probably from Hanley; and the likely brothers Joseph and Thomas Kirby of F Troop, both from Stoke, may have taken part.

A RHA Troop under attack.

Others served in the Royal Horse Artillery. Gunner Theophilus Harrison of F Troop, possibly from Burslem and Gunner Aaron Wedgwood of H Troop definitely from Burslem, were heavily engaged throughout the day, firing on repeated French attacks. Gunners George Barlow and Thomas Millar both from Stoke parish and Samuel Weaver of Trentham, served in G Troop, R.H.A., which saw some of the fiercest action. Their commander, Captain Mercer, refused to withdraw his men into the infantry squares during the cavalry charges, instead keeping his guns in action and blasting the French horsemen as they charged his position.

When the cavalry finally crested the ridge, they found Wellington’s infantry not retreating but formed into tight squares or oblongs, bristling with bayonets and backed by ranks of muskets that poured heavy fire into the attackers as they appeared. Among the men inside these squares were Private William Hilditch of the 3/1st Foot Guards, a former bricklayer from Stoke, who at some point was wounded in the thigh; Corporal William Walbank of Stoke and Private Joseph Bourne of Burslem, both of the 33rd Foot; Private Aaron Lockett of the 3/69th Foot possibly from Stoke; Colour Sergeant Thomas Scarratt, who was wounded in the right arm, and Private Thomas Wilkinson were both of the 73rd Foot and both from Stoke parish; while further east, near to the Brussels road, the burnt and scarred Peninsular veteran Private John Potts of Hanley was hunkered down with the 3/1st Foot.

Behind the squares, Allied light cavalry waited with swords drawn, ready to strike the French horsemen as they emerged exhausted from their attacks. The 15th Light Dragoons repeatedly charged cuirassiers, dragoons, lancers and gendarmes as they spilled out from between the infantry. Three locals rode with them: Private John Challiner aged about 24, possibly from Hanley, was a Peninsular veteran wounded at Vittoria; Private William Machin aged 26, from Hanley; and Private John Simpson, 28, from Stoke. None appear to have been injured at Waterloo.

Napoleon, distracted by the growing Prussian threat on his right, failed to halt Ney’s increasingly futile cavalry assaults. By the time the charges ended a couple of hours later, the Prussians were fighting for the village of Plancenoit, threatening the French flank and Napoleon committed elements of the Imperial Guard to hold them off. Returning his attention to Wellington, he ordered Ney to seize La Haye Sainte, still convinced it was the key to breaking the Allied centre. With around a thousand men, Ney attacked and captured the farm, helped by the defenders’ running out of ammunition. A mass of French skirmishers then pushed up the slope toward the Allied line and opened a galling fire on the troops there. Opposite them stood the 1st Battalion, 4th Foot, which had spent most of the day in reserve near Mont‑St‑Jean. Now on the front line, they suffered heavily from this fire. Private William Tunnicliff, 21, of Burslem, a veteran of both the Peninsular and North American campaigns, who was shot in the left arm. Many others also fell in the desperate struggle and seeing the damage Wellington’s line was taking, Ney called for reinforcements to attack the battered Allied centre. However, the Emperor, his mind still focused on the Prussian threat, refused to send any more troops. Wellington, meantime, used his enemy’s delay to bolster his line, piling in reinforcements, and gradually the best chance of a French victory faded away.

It was now nearly 7pm and after stabilising the fight against the Prussians, Napoleon knew that to break Wellington’s forces before night fell he would have to gamble all on one final attack. To boost morale, Napoleon spread the false rumour that the troops they could now see to the east were Marshal Grouchy’s men coming to join them. Buoyed up, the French army launched a general attack all along the line, but the main punch would come from the Imperial Guard, Napoleon’s toughest troops, who had never failed in an attack. Ordering forward eight battalions of the Middle and Old Guard, Napoleon personally led them to within 600 yards of the Allied ridge between La Haye Sainte and Hougoumont, before handing command to Ney for the attack. Despite facing intense artillery fire, the Guard advanced steadily in four columns towards the Allied ridge.

At the ridge, a fierce firefight erupted. Some Allied units wavered under the onslaught, but were steadied by supporting cannon fire. The westernmost French column met the 1st Foot Guards head‑on and if he had not already been wounded, Private William Hilditch mentioned earlier, would doubtless have been among those now exchanging volleys with the Guard. The 52nd Foot then wheeled onto the French flank, pouring volley after volley into them and though the Imperial Guardsmen fought stubbornly for a time, the sustained fire eventually broke their formation. As the 52nd advanced, the entire Allied brigade on the ridge surged forward in a bayonet charge, driving the Imperial Guard back down the slope.

The final battle with the Imperial Guard
Author's collection

The sight of the Guard retreating, combined with the realisation that the troops to the east were Prussians, not Grouchy come to save them, shattered French morale. Cries of “The Guard retreats!” and “We are betrayed!” rippled through the ranks. Units that had fought bravely all day, now began to break and fall back, and the panic spread rapidly. Wellington, watching from the ridge, seized the moment. He waved his hat towards the enemy, signalling a general advance. Cheers erupted along the Allied line as thousands of infantry formed line to advance and cavalry swept down from the bloody ridge, driving the collapsing French army from the field. Two light cavalry regiments kept in reserve for most of the day—the 11th and 16th Light Dragoons—now rode over the ridge near to where the Imperial Guard had attacked and hurled themselves into the fight, eager to repay the French fire that had swept over them for hours. The 11th charged a French battery, receiving its final shots before driving the gunners off, while the 16th pursued fleeing infantry. Serving with the 11th were Privates Joseph Hill, Joseph Hulme, James Jones and Samuel Tamms, aged 20, all from Stoke parish; Private George Goodwin of Bucknall or Hanley, rode with the 16th. All five men came through the battle uninjured.

When the French were finally pushed from the field and in full retreat, Wellington’s exhausted army halted as darkness fell, the men bivouacking where they could amongst the thousands of dead and wounded, the pursuit being left to the vengeful Prussians, who drove the French back over the border. The next day, the British followed along behind Blücher’s army, skirmishing briefly with French border guards but taking no further significant casualties. Within days of his defeat, Napoleon had abdicated for the second time and surrendered to the Royal Navy, which soon after carried him into permanent exile on St Helena. With that, the long wars were finally over for good.

The British troops who had fought at Waterloo soon marched into Paris as part of the army of occupation, and many of the Potteries men named above would spend the next few years there. These, of course, are the men we know of, the survivors whose records remain. For there may have been others who were not so lucky. Any soldiers from the district who were killed at Quatre Bras or Waterloo are anonymous now; the records of those who had been killed were usually destroyed as a matter of course when their names were removed from the regimental rolls. Their families would not even have the posthumous glory of a medal to their name and memory, as only living men could receive the Waterloo Medal.

* There were over 200 men from North Staffordshire involved in the campaign, too large a number to be covered here in one go. I hope to publish more posts on these other soldiers at a future date.

Reference: The National Archives: WO 22 - Royal Hospital Chelsea: Returns of Payment of Army and Other Pensions; WO 23 – Out Pensioners: Ordnance; WO 97 - Chelsea Pensioners British Army Service Records 1760-1913; WO 100 – Cavalry, Wagon Train, Artillery and Foot Guards (Waterloo Medal list) – various entries in all categories. I am greatly indebted to Ken Ray, Ken Baddeley and Gwylim Roberts for their exhaustive original research into the local soldiers who fought at Waterloo and in other conflicts of the 19th and 20th centuries.

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. 

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.

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.

Buffalo Bill Rides in... and Bows Out

Buffalo Bill and some of the Red Indians in 1890
Source: Wikimedia Commons

On 17 August 1891, former hunter and US army scout turned impresario, William Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill, opened his 'Wild West Show' for the first of six days of performances in the Potteries. The show was making a tour of Britain and had arrived from Sheffield several days earlier in three trains comprising 76 carriages, bearing 250 performers, several hundred horses and dozens of bison. Cody and his company also brought enough scaffolding with them to build a pavilion that could seat 15,000 spectators, which was quickly constructed not far from the train station in Stoke by local workers. A Red Indian village was also built nearby for the many native American performers and their families, which became a great attraction during their stay. In the main pavilion there were two shows a day at 3pm and 6pm and though it rained on the first day the weather improved as the week went on. Sure enough, as elsewhere, thousands of local people turned up to watch the likes of Annie Oakley with her sharp shooting, cowboys riding bucking broncos and especially the Red Indians riding around the pavilion, whooping their war cries as they attacked stage coaches or a pioneer cabin. At the end of each performance, Buffalo Bill himself, elegantly clad in his buckskin suit, rode into the arena mounted on a white horse and was wildly cheered by the crowd as he made his parting bow.

Thirteen years later on 21 October 1904, the people of the Potteries witnessed the last ever performance by 'Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show' to be held in Britain. The season had started here earlier that year on 25 April, most of the animals and some of the cowboys and stable hands having overwintered at Etruria, while the bulk of the company had gone home. Now after their last tour of the country, the show made a return to the area prior to departing for the Continent. They signed off with two final performances held on this day at the Agricultural Show Fields at Birches Head. The evening performance attracted a crowd of 12,500 people and at the end of the show the performers were bid goodbye by the audience spontaneously singing Auld Lang Syne.  

Reference: Staffordshire Sentinel, 17 – 18 August 1891; Staffordshire Sentinel, 22 October 1904.

Victim of a Mineshaft

Thomas Holland's demise as depicted on
the front of the Illustrated Police News

At about 6.50 am on 12 December 1903, Thomas Holland, a 56 year old candle maker was walking along St John Street, Hanley, en route to his workplace in Charles Street, when the pavement suddenly caved in beneath him and he plunged to his death down a long forgotten mine shaft. Walking only a few yards behind Mr Holland that morning, was Joseph Pritchard a sanitaryware presser at Twyford’s, who was also on his way to work and was the only witness to what happened. Despite the fanciful stories that sprang up over the next few days about Holland plunging to his death whilst singing a prophetic Sunday School hymn, Mr Prichard’s account of the man’s demise was much more prosaic. Speaking to reporters only hours after the tragedy, he recalled how they had both been quietly walking along the street when the man in front of him ‘went all of a sudden. His arms went out, he went face forwards and the sudden fall jerked his basket into the gutter hole.’

As it was still pretty dark, Mr Prichard had not clearly seen what had happened and rushed forward thinking that the man had suffered a fit. Only when he bent down towards a dark patch on the pavement thinking it was the fallen figure, did he hear the sound of rocks tumbling down the pit shaft and the awful truth dawned on him.

A small crowd of residents and other early morning workers soon gathered around the hole, one of whom warned the Powell family in the nearest house, number 34, not to come out of their front door. Police, borough workmen and mine officials from Hanley Deep Pit were called and soon arrived on the scene with lamps and ropes hoping to effect a rescue, or to at least recover a body, but a lamp lowered down into the hole soon went out indicating that the mine was full of blackdamp or chokedamp, a lethal mix of carbon dioxide and nitrogen. By this time inquiries had identified the missing man as Thomas Holland and his family had been informed, but given the depth of the shaft and the presence of gas, there was no chance that he was alive and as a result his body was never recovered. Two days later with his family’s permission, a funeral service watched by thousands of people was held over the pit shaft, then contractors moved in to fill in the hole.

The tragedy caused a sensation in the district and a meeting was quickly arranged between Hanley Town Council, local colliery officials, foremen and workmen, H. M. Inspector of Mines and the Chief Constable. Here, in the light of a number of other incidents outlined in the meeting, it was decided that a thorough investigation would be made into the dangers posed by old pit shafts in the Potteries.

The danger was real enough. For decades the locals had known and accepted the risks. In the mid-1880s, builders converting the old Queen’s Hotel into Hanley Town Hall had discovered an old shaft, which they put to good use by dumping rubble down it. Local historian Henry Wedgwood mentioned old exposed pit shafts protected only by flimsy wooden barriers and Arnold Bennett had used such a shaft to dispose of the love-lorn Willie Price at the end of his novel Anna of the Five Towns, published a year earlier. Now a Sentinel report revealed a catalogue of near-misses prior to the tragedy. There were trees that had vanished down holes in the ground in Hanley Park; the story of a drayman who watched in horrified astonishment as a rolling barrel of beer had suddenly plunged down a hole that opened up before him in Market Square, Hanley. A Port Vale player had also narrowly avoided death when a part of the Burslem Park pitch caved in just after he had passed over it. The investigation that followed identified where old pit shafts and workings were located and how they had been covered or filled in. In Hanley alone over twenty shafts, mostly covered with wood, were discovered and subsequently bricked over. 

Reference: Staffordshire Sentinel, 12-16 December 1903.

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.

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.

In Grateful Memory of Timothy Trow

At about a quarter past four on the afternoon of 13 April 1894, a three year old girl named Jane Ridgway who lived with her parents at Steele’s Cottages alongside the Newcastle canal* in Boothen, Stoke, tumbled into the water. Nearby 21 year old Timothy Trow, a tram conductor who was in charge of the car working London Road that afternoon, was just about to signal to the driver to pull away from the West End terminus, when he heard a loud splash from the adjacent canal and saw the little girl in trouble. Without a thought for his own safety, Trow - a non-swimmer - got down from the tram, ran to the canal and jumped in. He managed to wade most of the way across the cut, the water only coming up to his waist, but then it fell away much deeper and Trow called out to his colleague the tram driver that he had cramp. The young man was in trouble and seemed to become helpless in the water. A passer by, Mr Henry Lloyd of Beresford Street, Shelton was one of several other men who rushed to the canal and he now jumped in to help Trow while another man, John Forrester of Wellesley Street, Shelton also plunged in and fished little Jane Ridgway out of the water. Timothy Trow desperately grabbed hold of Mr Lloyd who tried to pull him to the bank, but Lloyd too was struck by cramp and unable to hold onto the floundering man who threatened to pull him under had no option but to let go. Lloyd managed to scramble back to the bank where others hauled him out while John Forrester having handed Jane Ridgway to others, also tried to grab onto Trow, but to no avail. Every effort was made to catch the drowning man, but it was futile and in the struggle Timothy Trow disappeared from view and it was not until half an hour later that his body was found.

This dramatic rescue that ended in tragedy made quite an impact in the Potteries and all involved were praised for their bravery, especially Timothy Trow whose selfless act in going into the canal despite not being able to swim won him a massive amount of sympathy. As a result, his funeral three days later was a grand affair attended by dozens of mourners, his parents, family and friends as well as 30 fellow tram conductors and drivers who had been let off work for the day to attend the service as well as several company officials. Numerous wreaths decorated the hearse and hundreds of people watched from the pavements while blinds were drawn in many houses along the route  that the funeral cortege took on its way from Timothy’s family home in William Street, Hanley to Hanley Borough Churchyard. 

The Timothy Trow Memorial, London Road, Stoke.
Image: Google Earth

All this and the church ceremony were reported in the Sentinel which several days later announced that a memorial committee was being formed to raise funds for a permanent memorial to the young tram conductor and during the summer news came that Timothy Trow, Henry Lloyd and John Forrester were to be recognised by the Royal Humane Society. By early October a sum of £47,11s had been raised, enough to fund an 8 feet tall obelisk made of grey granite to be sited in London Road near to the scene of Trow’s deed and a marker was placed on his grave in the cemetery. The inscription picked out in gold near the base of the obelisk reads: ‘Erected by Public Subscription in Grateful Memory of TIMOTHY TROW, tram conductor aged 21 years who lost his life by drowning near this spot, in an heroic effort attempt to save that of a child April 13th 1894.’

The remaining money from the collection was divided between Messrs Lloyd and Forrester. On 22 October 1894, a large party of council officials and a crowd of onlookers were in attendance when the obelisk was unveiled, after which Henry Lloyd and John Forrester were presented with their certificates from the Royal Humane Society while the Society’s ‘In Memorium’ certificate for Timothy Trow was later presented to his parents. Despite the depredations of years in the open and the unwanted attentions of an occasional vandal, the obelisk still stands today and forms to focus of ‘Timothy Trow Day’ on 13 April each year that still draws a crowd to remember one young man’s brave deed.  

* The Newcastle branch of the Trent and Mersey was a four mile long canal connecting Newcastle to Stoke. It no longer exists, having long since been filled in.

References: Staffordshire Sentinel, 21 April 1894, p.2 and 11 October 1894, p.3; Birmingham Daily Post 16 April 1894 p.8 and 23 October 1894.