Tag: workhouse

February 28th

On 28th February 1803, Burnett’s Daily Shipping List reported that no ships arrived in Hull, and nothing sailed, for the 2ndday in a row. A heavy gale on Saturday and Sunday 26th& 27thresulted in a number of ships losing their anchors, running ashore and collisions. 8 ships were named as affected.

On 28th February 1823, the conditions of employment of the Matron of the workhouse at Nafferton recorded she was paid 5 guineas a year, plus 5 chaldrons of coals and half a load of whins; her tasks included mending clothes and laundry. There was also a Workhouse Master. (Nafferton was included in Driffield poor law union in 1836).

On 28th February 1826, Joseph Robinson Pease, Hull banker, reported in his diary that confidence in banks was being restored, that the credit of Liddell & Pease Bank stood high, and he believed that the Hull banks ‘never stood better’ after the recent national economic crisis.

pease

December 13th

thwing meteorite

On 13th December 1760, John Courtney, gentleman, reported in his diary being awoken at midnight by the sound of bells ringing to announce that Hugh Bethell had declared himself a candidate for Parliament. The bells rang all day. A week later, Bethell changed his mind and withdrew his name.  He served as Beverley MP 1768-72.

On 13th December 1795, at 3p.m., a meteorite weighing 56 pounds landed in a field near Wold Cottage, Thwing, home of Capt Edward Topham. It embedded itself 9 inches into the soil, weighing 56lbs, and 3 ft long. Capt Topham displayed the meteorite in London at a charge of 1shilling. He raised a brick obelisk on the landing site (see photo). The meteorite is now in the Natural History Museum, and is the origin of the name of Wold Top Brewery’s ‘Falling Stone bitter’.

On 13th December 1816, Frederick Brown, 60, was buried in Holy Trinity, Hull, after dying in the workhouse. Born in Guinea, he worked as a labourer in a number of jobs in Whitby and Hull. In 1794 he was acquitted of burglary by a Hull jury, apparently a case of being mistaken for another black man.

On 13th December 1830, Joseph Robinson Pease, JP, recorded in his diary an attempt to swear in special constables to deal with the ‘Swing Riots’ by agricultural labourers protesting about high rents, low wages, and the introduction of new machinery. However, they found it difficult to recruit in Cottingham.

On 13th December 1842, Moses Roper, student and escaped slave, gave a lecture at Beverley Guildhall on his personal experience of slavery in the USA, in which he exhibited instruments of torture used on slaves. He lectured extensively and published an autobiography.

On 13th December 1889, John Nicholson reported seeing the “Plough Lads’ (groups of men not hired on farms) going round Beverley, dancing and asking for money or drink. They dressed in ‘motley garb’, with one dressed as a woman with a broom, one (Blether Dick) with a bladder on a stick, one with a coat covered in strips of rag. “Often … at lonely houses they are rude and bold, demanding money or drink in such a way as to terrify the women who have been left at home”.  

October 23rd

On 23rd October 1667, Richard Sterne, Archbishop of York, excommunicated a number of people, both male and female, at Beverley, and required them to make public penances, for crimes including adultery, fornication, and incest.

On 23rd October 1908, Wm Jackson & Son Ltd, Hull grocers & bakers, bought the company’s first motor vehicle (having previously used only horse-drawn transport and hand carts); by 1933 they had a fleet of 30 motor vehicles.

On 23rd October 1909, Rev Canon Joseph Malet Lambert, Hull philanthropist  and his wife Rose were charged at Dollgellau Magistrates Court, while at their holiday home in Barmouth, with cruelty against Mary Rose Inman, 11 years, whom they had adopted to save her from the workhouse and to train for domestic service. The girl had been starved (weighed 48lb) and beaten, and hidden from visitors. It appears that Mrs Lambert was convicted and sentenced. photo shows the school named after the Canon.

Malet_lambert

 

September 14th

On 14th September 1484, Anne de la Pole, great granddaughter of Geoffrey Chaucer, was betrothed aged 8 to the Duke of Rothesay, future King James IV of Scotland, as part of peace negotiations between the 2 countries. Her brother John, 1stEarl of Lincoln, was then Heir Presumptive to the English throne. Anne never became Queen, however, as on the death of her uncle Richard III, she was sent to a convent and became a nun at the Abbey of Syon.

On 14th September 1581, the Hull Mayor and aldermen agreed to pay 12d per week towards the keep in God’s House (i.e. the Charterhouse) of keelman Christofer Harrison, on account of his being blind and aged.

On 14th September 1643, Sir Thomas Fairfax, Hull governor, opened the sluice gates to flood all areas from Derringham Dyke to Dunswell, during the 2nd siege of Hull, to keep the royalist guns away from the town.

On 14th September 1828, Thomas Thompson MP died aged 72. A Methodist and member of the Clapham Sect, he provided land to poor families to keep them out of the workhouse. Wrote History of Church & Priory of Swine. Father of Thomas Perronet Thompson. (b 5.4.1754  Swine)

On 14th September 1853, Hugh Edward Strickland went to examine railway cuttings near Retford, and stepped out of the way of a goods train and was killed by a train coming from the opposite direction. Inventor of the power loom, ornithologist and geologist, Fellow of the Royal Society. (b2.3.1811 Reighton)

On 14th September 1861, John Kingston, chimney sweeper and soot dealer of 16 Worship St, Hull, gave his annual bill to Hull Charterhouse for £5 for sweeping chimneys, with a note that his prices would rise in the following year due to a new law forbidding sending children up chimneys to clean them.

 

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