See a Fine Lady upon a White Horse

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

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

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

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

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

The Ballad of Stevo and One-Armed Jack

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Lamppost of Beauty

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

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

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

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

Reference: Daily Mail, 12 July 1956.

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.