Hanley Goes to Hollywood

Hanley Stafford, c.1945
Source: CBS Radio, Public Domain
via Wikimedia Commons

Alfred John Austin had been born in Hanley on 22 September 1899, the eldest child of George and Emily Austin, he had a younger sister named Ann. In 1911 the family emigrated to Canada, settling in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where the father George initially worked on the railway and later as a caretaker. Their settled life, though, was interrupted by World War One. It seems that young Alfred was keen to go to war as on 16 August 1915, he attested for the Canadian Army, claiming he was 19, though he was actually a month shy of his 16th birthday. Two days later his father George also attested for the army, though the two were posted to different units, Alfred joining the 79th Cameron Highlanders of Canada with whom he went to serve in France. In 1916, his father George Austin was killed in action, while Alfred for his part is said to have been wounded in the Third Battle of Ypres and his papers indicate that in 1917 he also suffered from shell shock. It was also in 1917, whilst probably visiting friends and relatives in the Potteries, that Alfred married his first wife Doris Roberts at St George’s Church, Newcastle-under-Lyme on 23 December. He returned to France, eventually rising to the rank of Company Sergeant Major, but got through his remaining service unscathed.

Returning home to Canada with his new wife in 1919, he settled back in Winnipeg where he and Doris had a son, Graham, born in 1920. He had started acting with the Winnipeg Permanent Players on his return and through them, he got a job with a summer stock company that toured western Canada, but when the company folded he had to make a living in other ways, taking jobs working in wheat fields, hauling freight and working as an office stenographer. In search of more acting work, in 1922 he took his family to live in the USA, settling in California. Five years later on his application for US citizenship, to give himself a memorable stage name and in a nod to his place of birth, he stated that he wished to be known henceforth (in the States, at least) as Hanley Stafford. He then played in summer stock productions for eight years and then in tent shows. He was appearing in radio plays in Los Angeles by April 1932 and briefly went to Phoenix to manage a stock theatre company, but returned to Los Angeles in August to resume his stage and radio work. His career was going well, but at the expense of his marriage it seems and in 1934, he and Doris were divorced. The next year he married his second wife Bernice Bohnett.

After starring in the New York radio detective series Thatcher Colt from September 1936 to March 1937, Stafford again returned to Los Angeles and there took on a number of radio roles, providing voices for amongst others Speed Gibson and The Shadow of Fu Manchu. In December 1937, he also landed the role of Lancelot ‘Daddy’ Higgins, the oft-harassed father of mischievous Baby Snooks, a young girl played convincingly by a grown actress, Fanny Brice, originally in a series of sketches on The Good News Show and later on The Baby Snooks Show. It was the role that made his name and alongside his other work Stafford continued playing the part until the final broadcast on 22 May 1951, two days before the sudden death of star Fanny Brice. In 1939, Stafford also took on another notable role as J. C. Dithers, the boss of Dagwood Bumstead, in the popular radio comedy Blondie, again a part he would play for many years. That year, his second marriage failed and in 1940 he married Veola Vonn, who played Dimples Wilson in Blondie. They would stay married until Stafford’s death.

Between 1950 and 1963, Stafford also appeared as a guest star or in bit parts on various television series, these included The Popsicle Parade of Stars and Hollywood Premiere Theatre, episodes of  Cheyenne, Maverick, Shirley Temple’s Storybook, Sugarfoot, and 77 Sunset Strip, The Brothers, The Betty Hutton Show,  Angel, The Millionaire. and The Lucy Show. He also appeared in minor roles in several light-weight films such as Lullaby of Broadway starring Doris Day, A Girl in Every Port, Just This Once, Tell it to the Marines, Francis Covers the Big Town and The Affairs of Dobie Gillis. These, though seem simply to have been strings to his bow, radio being his preferred medium. In 1960 for his radio work, Hanley Stafford was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. This was unveiled on 2 August 1960 at 1640 Vine Street, Hollywood, California; the venue was fitting as in Stafford’s heyday, the area around the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street was known as ‘Radio Row’ housing the four large radio stations in the city where he had worked for the past two decades.

Hanley Stafford, born Alfred John Austin, died at home from a heart attack on 9 September 1968, in Los Angeles, California, USA, aged 68. He was cremated and his ashes placed alongside those of his mother in the Columbarium of Heavenly Peace, Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, Los Angeles. 

Reference: Wikipedia entry for Hanley Stafford; IMDb entry for Hanley Stafford; Find-a-Grave entry for Hanley Stafford.

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

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

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.

Vinegar and Vanity

Some of the unusual and dangerous practices indulged in by teenage girls to make themselves look attractive, were highlighted in 1901 in the tragic case of 15 year old Florence Henrietta Burton of Longton, who met an untimely end in the pursuit of beauty.

Florence was the youngest of four children born in late 1885 to coal miner Samuel Burton and his wife Harriet. Her father had died a few years after Florence’s birth and her mother had remarried, though by 1901, she was again a widow living at 3 Adam Place, Longton with her 18 year old son John Thomas Burton a potter’s presser, Florence who was a potter’s gilder, and an elderly boarder. The census was the last official document to record Florence alive, as the final act of a bizarre drama was playing out in the Burton family home.

For some time her mother Harriet had been getting increasingly worried about Florence, who had started drinking large amounts of vinegar and eating lemons. She had spoken to her daughter about it, but to no avail, the girl would scarcely eat anything without pickles or something else acidic. Florence’s friend Julia Brain later revealed that she knew that Florence had obtained large quantities of lemons from a local fruit shop ‘on trust’ and said that she had also seen her pour out a glass of vinegar, pour salt into it and drink it. When quizzed as to the reason for this Julia said it was to try and make her complexion ‘pale and nice’ giving her skin a translucent quality to make her more attractive; but in truth Florence’s beauty regime was gradually killing her. The end came suddenly in June 1901 when Florence was at work and suffered chest pains that made her so ill that she had to go back home. Once there she reportedly suffered a fit and died shortly afterwards.

As a result of her sudden death, a post-mortem was carried out by a Dr Howells, who reported to the inquest into the girl’s death that Florence had died due to heart disease caused by her unusual diet. Her practice of consuming large amounts of vinegar, salt and lemons would, he said, ‘disorganise the whole system, upset digestion and cause the person to be half-starved, though well and apparently well nourished.’

The Coroner, clearly flabbergasted by what he had heard, asked the surgeon, “Why do girls do these things?” Dr Howells answered, “To make them pale and interesting-looking. They like to look transparent.” - “And it kills them?” - “It does.” The Coroner commented on the folly of such practices and the jury returned a verdict of ‘Death from Natural Causes.’ 

Reference: Birmingham Mail, 28 June 1901, p.4; Coventry Evening Telegraph 28 June 1901, p.2.)

Murder in Mind

During a visit to Liverpool, a financially insecure pottery manufacturer, Theophilus Smith of Tunstall, asked one of his creditors, a merchant named Peter Wainwright, to return to the Potteries with him for a meeting. Very early in the morning of 21 June 1800, after travelling most of the way back to Tunstall, Smith stopped their carriage near to his home Smithfield Hall and said to Mr Wainwright that they should proceed the remaining short distance across the fields on foot. The two men were seemingly on good terms and had enjoyed a pleasant ride despite the distance, but as they crossed the field in the half-light before dawn, suddenly and without warning Smith drew a gun from his pocket. Thinking that the desperate potter was about to shoot himself, Wainwright pounced on the man, wrestled the gun out of his hand and threw it away. The crisis seemed to be over, but moments later as they continued their walk, Smith drew another pistol and fired at Mr Wainwright, but missed. The two men fought and Smith was thrown to the ground and begged forgiveness of his would-be victim. Evidently stunned by events, Wainwright relented and even let Smith get up and go to collect a coat he had left behind after leaving the coach, never thinking that Smith may have another pistol hidden there which he produced as they neared his home and shot Wainwright through the body just below the stomach. Though badly wounded Peter Wainwright again fought back, but Smith then drew a knife and the merchant received numerous cuts to his hands and jawline before he finally threw his attacker off. Smith then retreated to his house, leaving the badly injured man to stagger several hundred yards to a neighbouring cottage for help. Doctors were called who at first despaired of his wounds, but against the odds Mr Wainwright survived, though he spent several weeks recovering from his ordeal. 

Smithfield Hall c. 1794. Detail of an engraving by W. C. Wilson after an illustration by E. Dayes.
The field in the foreground may be where Theophilus Smith attacked Peter Wainwright.
(Author's collection)

The alarm was immediately raised and constables raced to Smithfield Hall to arrest Theophilus Smith, but he had already fled his home and 50 guineas were offered for his capture. This was achieved a little time later in London where Smith was arrested in his lodgings by the Bow Street Runners. Sent for trial at Stafford Smith was sentenced to hang, but he cheated the hangman when on New Years Day 1801, whilst in the hospital at Stafford Gaol and having by some means got his hands on a couple of pistols, he shot and wounded his wife who was visiting him, then shot himself through the head, dying instantly. Fortunately Theophilus Smith was the only fatality of his two murderous assaults as like Mr Wainwright, Smith's wife survived the attack. 

It has been suggested that this final act and Smith's earlier attack on Mr Wainwright were because he suspected that Wainwright and his wife were lovers, though there seems to be no clear evidence to support this. 

Reference: Staffordshire Advertiser, 12 July 1800, p.3; 19 July 1800, p.4; 2 August 1800, p.3; 3 January 1801, p.4; The Annual Register 1800, Vol. 42.

Lights in the Night Sky

During a spate of UFO reports across North Staffordshire, a large number of witnesses around Beverley Drive and Wendline Close in Bentilee reported seeing a large, brightly-lit saucer-shaped object soar overhead shortly after 9 pm on 2 September 1967 and land in the fields at the far end of the Close, where it lit up the surrounding area like a bonfire. The object, described by witnesses as a dark orange disk surmounted with a glowing red dome, was then seen to hop from one field to another, attracting more onlookers as it did so. The police were called and before the object vanished the officers did witness unusual lights as the ‘saucer’ took off, but could draw no conclusions, suspecting that they were simply car lights. Two amateur investigators Roger Stanway and Anthony Pace later interviewed the witnesses and compiled a detailed report of the incident. 

Reference: Roger H. Stanway & Anthony R. Pace: Flying saucer report. UFOs, unidentified, undeniable. (1968).