Military – Norfolk Tales, Myths & More!

Norfolk: The ‘Bread or Blood’ Riots of 1816

By Haydn Brown.

Background:
During the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) it became difficult to import cheap grain into Britain which resulted in the price of bread increasing. Because wages failed to increase correspondently, many agricultural labourers were plunged into poverty. Then, following peace, the Tory government of the day, under Lord Liverpool, passed the Corn Laws to keep the price of grain artificially high. The consequences were that great social unrest quickly grew on the back of industrial and agricultural depression and high unemployment. The government had, effectively, increased taxation on imported wheat and grain to help pay for the costs of the Wars. Poor Laws had been designed to help alleviate financial distress of the poorer communities, but this system actually helped in keeping wages artificially low; the farmers knowing that labourers’ wages would be supplemented by the system.

Then there was the weather of 1815 when East Anglia suffered disastrously. After an “extremely changeable” January, came February which was “unseasonably warm and moist” which, in effect, lifted hopes that the season’s crops might recover. Some blame for this bad weather was attributed to the extraordinary eruption of Mt Tambora a ”super-colossal event”, the ash of which reduced the earth’s temperature by one degree; the years 1810 to 1819 were reckoned to have been the coldest since the 1690s. May and June of 1815 suffered heavy rainfall which in turn had the effect of ruining the harvest. Yet newspapers reported that both industrial and agricultural workers were already in “extreme distress”. The price of wheat increased by 33% between March and May and labourers were incapable of affording the prices of food.

As a consequence, rioting broke out in parts of East Anglia by the April and May of 1816. Areas particularly affected were in West Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire. Apart from the significant disturbances in Littleport and Ely between Wednesday 22 and Friday 24 May 1816, riots had also broken out in Bury St Edmunds and Brandon in West Suffolk and Hockwold, Feltwell and Norwich in Norfolk on the previous Wednesday, 16 May of the same year. In fact, one of the first instances of rioting was on 17 April when a crowd assembled in Gedding and smashed some farming equipment. After that, Wattisham, Hitcham, and Rattlesden experienced disturbances on 24 April; Needham Market and Swaffham Bulbeck on 7 May; Bury St. Edmunds on 14 May; Brandon on 16-18 May Norwich on 16-20 May; Hockwold on 17 May; Feltwell on 18 May; Hockham on 19 May; Downham Market on 20-21 May 1816.

Rioting:
It was on the morning of 20 May when a meeting was held in Southery, Norfolk and a group, including a Thomas Sindall, left there and marched some eight miles or so through Denver to Downham Market; there they met with the magistrates at their weekly meeting at The Crown Inn. The mob of some 1,500, mainly men but some women, besieged the public house and, it was said, the magistrates of Pratt, Hare and Dering just about escaped with their lives by hiding. Circumstances, one way or another, allowed them to reassemble and agree for a deputation of eight rioters to be allowed inside in order to make their pleas; namely, demands for work and two-shillings (£8) per day. The magistrates readily agreed; unfortunately for the rioters, the authority had already called for troops from Upwell. Captain William Lee’s Upwell Yeomanry Cavalry arrived at around 5 o’clock in the afternoon on what was the first day of the riot, and though heavily armed the troops behaved in a disciplined way; as a result, no lives were to be lost. The Riot Act was duly read by Reverend Dering, but instead of calming down the atmosphere further tussles broke out, which only stopped after arrests were made. A subsequent newspaper report stated:

”On Saturday morning seven persons were fully committed for trial; and on Sunday and Monday last many more prisoners were brought in, what have not been examined. The Upwell troop were ordered to Wisbech on Saturday morning to meet the March and Whittlesey troops, the magistrates and inhabitants being fearful of outrages; but all is at present quiet there.”

The Observeron of 26 May 1816 reported the following:

“NORWICH, MAY 22. —A Court of Mayoralty was, held on Friday morning, when strong measures to preserve the peace were determined on. At sun-set a Captain’s guard of the West Norfolk militia were marched into the Hall; the Norwich Yeomanry cavalry under Capt. Hudson, assembled at the Swan Inn; a detachment of the 1st Royal Dragoons were under arms at the Horse Barracks; and the magistrates, constables, and a number of the respectable inhabitants, at the same time were assembled at the Hall. These demonstrations had, to a considerable degree, the desired effect; nevertheless, a large mob collected, who shewed a bad disposition, by breaking a number of lamps, windows, &c. The Magistrates and their assistants therefore proceeded in a body to the Market-place, and the Riot Act was read: several of the mob having surrounded them and behaved in a disorderly manner, three were taken into custody, and the rest refusing to disperse, after some had been allowed to do so, the military were called in, and were on their appearance received with volleys of stones, and their horses alarmed by throwing a large fire ball; they, however, succeeded in driving their assailants out of the market and dispersing them in every direction; several who resisted were committed to the gaol, and before eleven o’clock, everything was quiet. We are sorry to add, that several of the Yeomanry Cavalry received cuts and bruises from the stones, and one gentleman was thrown from his horse, and the animal falling upon him he was severely injured, but is now in a convalescent state. On Saturday the Magistrates issued a Proclamation, and having the same forces ready for preserving the peace, the market and streets were cleared at an early hour, without any damage being sustained. On Monday morning the persons who had been taken into custody were brought up for examination, when two were committed to gaol, and several bound over to take their trials at the Sessions and Assizes.”

A long article on May 27th dived into the economics of the issue. The Times, for instance, concluded that the government should not intervene in such a matter, and suggested that protestors were merely using high prices as a “pretence” for violence. However, The Times then placed the blame for “much of the disorderly conduct” on the Poor Laws. The paper suggested that the laws had led the poor to expect handouts, and when they did not get what they wanted they became unruly.

On 24th August 1816 the local papers had a field day on the back of their billboard announcement:

“This day is published A REPORT on The Trials of the Rioters at Downham and Feltwell. At the late Norfolk Assizes. To be had of the Printers of this Newspaper and all their Agents.”

Downham Riots 1816 (Vicary-Gibbs) — “Gibbs’s unpleasant voice, disagreeable temper, and jejune pedigree presented formidable handicaps at the start of his career. He initially employed himself as a special pleader, in which capacity he developed a good professional reputation, and was called to the bar in 1783. He proved successful, if acidulous, as an advocate, and powerful in marshalling evidence”. Born in Exeter son of an apothecary 1751, educated Eton, Cambridge. Retired 1818, died 1820. Source: Wikipedia; DNB

Many column inches were devoted to the trial before Lord Chief Justice Gibbs:

“William Bell, Amelia Lightharness and Hannah Jarvis were indicted for having on the 20th inst. together with various other persons riotously and tumultuously assembled at the parish of Southery from whence they proceeded to acts of theft and violence in the town of Downham …….Frances Wiseman stated that she kept a pork and sausage shop: that in the afternoon of the 20th a mob assembled in front of her house: that she observed the prisoner Amelia Lightharness, looking in at the shop window, and that immediately afterward the same prisoner opened the latch of the door and brought in several of the mob , telling them ‘this was the shop for good pork’. The witness further stated that her shop formed part of her dwelling house: that Amelia Lightharness was the first that entered and at her instigation the mob ransacked the shop of the witness taking away forcibly a quantity of pork and sausages. The shop window was broken by the violence of the people.”

“Maria Palmer, William Buxton and Zachariah Stebbing severally corroborated the first witness and the latter proved that all the above-named prisoners entered the shop of Mrs Wiseman and concurred with the acts of violence there committed. Bell and Jarvis severally produced evidence of good character. Verdict – All Guilty.”

“Thomas Thody, Charles Nelson, Daniel Harwood, the same Hannah Jarvis, Elizabeth King, Margaret Jerry and Elizabeth Watson. These prisoners were indicted as forming part of the same unlawful riotous assembly at Southery as before mentioned and for proceeding to assault William Spinks, at Downham aforesaid, and stealing from his person a certain quantity of meal and flour. William Spinks stated that he was an apprentice to Mr Baldwin, a miller at Downham and at the time of the riot had charge of his mill. That on 20th May at about two in the afternoon , he saw a large number of persons approach the mill whilst he was on the road alone about a furlong off ; that upon his coming up to them , they demanded of him the key of the mill , which he delivered to them through the impulse of fear ; that the persons so assembled had sticks and cudgels ; that upon him delivering the key , they proceeded to lay violent hands on the meal , flour and sacks found therein , some part of which they threw about and destroyed and the other part they carried away with them . This witness together with George Gillingham, Susan Stebbing, Pleasance Laws, and William Baldwin or some of them identified the persons of all the prisoners, and proved that Charles Nelson was the first who entered the mill. Verdict – All Guilty.”

“The same Thomas Thody , the same Daniel Harwood, the said Amelia Lightharness, William Youngs, Edward Mellon, and William Galley were indicted as part of the same unlawful and riotous assembly at Southery and having proceeded to Downham, for breaking open the dwelling house and shop of Samuel Bolton, a butcher there, and stealing therein and carrying away a certain quantity of pork the property of the said Samuel Bolton, the said Samuel Bolton and another being in the house and being put in fear . Samuel Bolton stated that on the said 20th May he had given the mob some meat, in the hope of pacifying them; that about five o`clock in the afternoon of the same day, they came in a large body to his house and demanded more which he said he was unable to give them. Upon this occasion Thody, Harwood and a man named Fendyke who is still at large, appeared to be the ringleaders. Harwood said if witness did not give them more, they would have all there was in the shop. To this menace uttered by Harwood the witness replied, ‘he would be damned if they should’, and immediately closed and bolted the door, and went toward the kitchen for the purpose of finding two guns, with which he meant to defend his property. Before he had reached his guns however, the mob forced open the door and stripped the shop of all meat to the value of £5 or £6.”

“These prisoners were all identified as taking an active part on this occasion by the concurrent testimony of the last-named witness and Thomas Bolton, Zachariah Stebbing, and Ann Springfield. Verdict – All Guilty.”

”The same Thomas Thody, the same Daniel Harwood, Frances Porter , John Bell and John Blogg were indicted as parties to the same unlawful and riotous assembly, and for breaking open the dwelling house of John Parkinson in Downham aforesaid, no person being therein, and feloniously stealing and carrying away a quantity of flour and various articles of wearing apparel found therein. Hannah wife of the said John Parkinson who is a tailor and baker and keeps a general shop at Downham, stated that being terrified at the appearance of the mob, they had, on the said 20th May last, shut their shop, and retreated to the house of a neighbour. The mob did proceed to Mr Parkinson’s house and shop as was expected and after they were gone away, the witness with her family returned, upon which they found the house had been broken open and they missed from the shop there, waistcoats, shawls, shoes, flour and other articles.”

“The evidence of the last witness corroborated by her daughter Charlotte Parkinson, Richard Gamble, Thomas Mallett Bailey, Wm. Gamble, Charles Smith, and James Weston, was sufficiently clear to establish the charge against all the prisoners except John Bell who had not been seen in the house but had been afterwards met with a ham under his arm. The latter prisoner was therefore acquitted and the others found – all Guilty.”

”John Stearne was indicted for larceny only , he having on the said 20th May , demanded cheese of William Oakes of Downham. William Oakes stated that the prisoner came with a mob and demanded cheese, which he delivered to him through fear, observing at the same time that he himself wanted it as much as they did. Samuel Johnson, landlord at the Crown Inn, at Downham stated, that on the same day the prisoner Stearne brought a cheese to his house and divided it amongst the mob. Verdict – Guilty.

“The same John Stearne, the same Thomas Thody, and John Pearson, were indicted for breaking open the Crown Inn, in Downham, with other persons, for assaulting the said Samuel Johnson, the landlord, and for stealing from his person, meat, flour and other provisions. Mr Johnson identified the persons of the prisoners Thody and Pearson as having been the foremost of the party who first broke in by force, but the prisoner Stearne was not observed by him until he (Stearne) produced the cheese, which was sometime after the forcible entry. Stearne was therefore acquitted. The other prisoners were both found Guilty.”

“In addressing the Jury upon the several indictments for riot , the Chief Justice very clearly explained the law to them, that in tumultuous assemblies of this nature, not only the parties which commit any acts of violence are answerable to the law, but likewise all persons who by joining a mob give sanction to their unlawful proceedings were in the eye of the law equally guilty of any outrage which was committed by any of such mob…….… In allusion to the good characters which most of the prisoners adduced in their favour, with respect to the honesty and peaceable habits of their lives, the Judge emphatically observed, that nothing could more clearly show the necessity of suppressing such disorderly and mischievous proceedings as were subject of these trials. Persons who had heretofore acted honestly and had been good members of society, had now by deluding one another in the vain hope of redressing those grievances which their proceedings only tended to aggravate, evinced their peaceable dispositions by unlawfully assembling to the terror of well-disposed persons, and their honesty by forcibly seizing the property of others.”

“Having convicted the ringleaders at Downham, sufficient had been done to answer the purposes of the prosecution on the part of the Crown, which could only be to show persons who were disposed to join in such tumultuous proceedings, that these transactions cannot take place with impunity, for a day of reckoning must come sooner or later.”

The Chief Justice then proceeded to pass sentence of transportation for seven years on John Stearne who had been indicted and convicted of larceny only. ……the charge against him not having been laid capitally.

“This being done the following prisoners , who had been capitally convicted of rioting, 16 in number (viz, William Bell, Amelia Lightharness, Hannah Jarvis, Thomas Thody, Charles Nelson, Daniel Harwood, Elizabeth King, Margaret Jerry, Elizabeth Watson, Lucy Rumbelow, William Youngs, Edward Mellon, William Galley, Frances Porter, John Blogg and John Pearson), were called before his Lordship to show cause why sentence of Death should not pass against them to die according to Law. The Chief Justice, then, in a very impressive manner passed that solemn sentence against them. His Lordship stated that on account of the good characters which some of them had borne, it would afford him high satisfaction if circumstances should appear to justify him in recommending their cases for a relaxation in the severity of their punishment. Nevertheless, he wished them not to be deluded into any ill-founded security. There were among them some who had excelled their fellows, and had stood foremost in the execution of their misguided and wicked actions. To these he could hold out no hope. His Lordship concluded by exhorting them all to use well the short time which might remain to them in this world, and to make their peace with Him before whom they must soon appear in the next.”

“Of the above 16 prisoners who received sentence of death, only two were left for execution, viz. Thody and Harwood“. All the others were reprieved, but being reprieved is not the same as being acquitted or discharged. After the ringleaders had been tried and convicted the following minor offenders were discharged on giving security for their good behaviour, viz. John Jerry, Harrison Bone, and John Bowers.”

Apart from these minor offenders, the remaining 14 sentenced to death and reprieved, were dealt with quickly and harshly. Of the Hilgay rioters William Young received one year’s hard labour. The Southery two Stearne and Bell got 7 and 14-years transportation. Of the Downham rioters Lucy Rumbelow received 6 months hard labour, Elizabeth Watson, at the age of 49, received a year`s hard labour, as did Margaret Jerry and Elizabeth King. The harshest sentences were given to Amelia Lightharness aged 23, Hannah Jarvis, aged 36, widow, and Charles Nelson, all of whom were sentenced to ‘Transportation for Life’.

Referring specifically to the Downham Market riots and the subsequent trial, Elizabeth Howard, principal contributor to the Downham Market History site, writes: “At the end, on that hot August Saturday, on Norwich Castle hill, there was a delay. A rumour of a reprieve – “and the execution not taking place until half past one, gave strength to that rumour.” But no urgent galloping horse, no urgent running man brought a reprieve. The due process of the law continued inexorably. A cynic might believe that a public hanging as late as half past one on a summer Saturday afternoon would guarantee to attract a bigger public audience, the better to educate them in the ways of the law versus the law breaker. Castle Hill was crowded with the curious and the ghoulish and the thrill seekers.

Downham Riots 1816 (Norwich Castle) — Norwich Castle and Prison. Image: Public Domain.

Daniel Harwood faced the hangman and “suffered with firmness the dreadful sentence of the law”. The Cambridge Chronicle went on to say that Harwood aged 22, “had been led away by bad example and in a moment of intoxication.” Harwood “was to have been shortly married, and that the unhappy object of his choice is now pregnant by him.” Thomas Thody the second of the Downham rioters held in Norwich Castle “when brought out, evinced great fear, which he expressed by convulsive shrieks and was obliged to be supported by several men.” He left a wife and two children.

Downham Riots 1816 (Coke)1 — William Coke of Holkham 1817.

There had been at least two attempts to halt the executions. Thomas William Coke of Holkham had written to Chief Justice Vicary Gibbs suggesting that the men, Thody and Harwood had been of previous good character and would certainly regret their actions and return to a quiet life. Pathetically, Daniel Harwood’s father Thomas had written to suggest that this was a tragic case of mistaken identity; his boy had been christened Dan, as the parish register of Gooderstone would show, not Daniel. He would get the parish register to the Chief Justice to prove it. And there was a long 70-plus signature petition from the townspeople of Downham asking for clemency. Privately, Chief Justice Vicary Gibbs reported to Coke of Holkham that these two had to hang, but the other rioters would be reprieved. It was reasonable. It was exemplary. No blood had been shed, but the townspeople had been terrified and their property had been stolen and severely damaged. The two would act as a deterrent to others who might consider rioting and smashing up and stealing the property of law-abiding citizens. The acquitted would go home and feel lucky to be alive.

Transportation:

Downham Riots 1816 (Prison Ship) — Prison Ship

The transportation of convicts to Australia was big business and many shipowners contracted their vessels to the Government. Ships of the Royal Navy used as transports tended to be in the final seaworthy years of their lives. Charles Nelson sailed out on the HMS Shipley with John Pearson He was fortunate and sailed from Woolwich on 20th November 1816, just a matter of months after the August sentencing in Norwich. They may well have been held in a prison hulk on the river Thames during that 3-month waiting period. For the women Amelia and Hannah, they had to wait before they were embarked on the ludicrously named ship ‘HMS Friendship’. They are reported removed from Norwich Castle in June 1817 and put on board the Friendship” now at Deptford awaiting orders to sail to the Bay.”

Downham Riots 1816 (Convict Ship) — An illustration of an 18th century British Convict Ship.

The convict ship Friendship departed England on 3 July 1817 – not to be confused with the First Fleet ship of 1788 of the same name, which had been beached for want of healthy crew to operate her. While off the coast of Madeira Captain Armet of the Friendship received on board six Spaniards and an American sailor who had almost perished being in just a small boat. They were pirates from South America and were later transhipped to an American vessel to be landed at Bonavista. After departure the ship then, on the night of 22nd September 1817, anchored off the coast of Africa. During the next morning, the cable parted from her anchor and the ship was in danger of being driven on to the breakers. This accident was averted and on the 15th October she arrived at St. Helena where she remained for a week before departing again for New South Wales, where it arrived in Port Jackson on 14 January 1818 with one hundred and ninety-seven female prisoners aboard; three women died on the passage – Ann Beal, Sarah Blower and Martha Thatcher. Jane Brown also died having thrown herself overboard.

The Shipley had a very smart crew and master and for Charles Nelson and John Pearson, a good ship`s surgeon in George Clayton who managed to get all convicts to Australia in reasonable health and without too many punishments. In fact, he writes in his journal that he was able to release most of the convicts during the journey of one and then both leg irons. Nevertheless 176 days with or without leg irons was a daunting prospect for convicts and guards alike. Charles Nelson and the HMS Shipley arrived at Sydney on 20th August 1817 and the last sight of him is in 1844 when he finally got his pardon. Twenty-eight years after his conviction and sentencing in Norwich, he was finally a free man again.

Downham Riots 1816 (Governor) — **Major General Lachlan Macquarie, (1762 – 1824)**
was a British Army officer and colonial administrator from Scotland. Macquarie served as the fifth and last autocratic Governor of New South Wales from 1810 to 1821, and had a leading role in the social, economic and architectural development of the colony. He is considered by historians to have had a crucial influence on the transition of New South Wales from a penal colony to a free settlement and therefore to have played a major role in the shaping of Australian society in the early nineteenth century. Wikipedia

Bad luck followed Amelia and Hannah all the way to Australia, where they arrived on 14th Jan 1818. Governor Macquarie wrote in his journal that Friendship “arrived 7th Jan re-quarantine on suspicion of contagious diseases.” and “re-arrival with female convicts with reports of prostitution on board”, also “26th Feb charges were brought against Capt. Armet and Peter Cosgreave the surgeon.” By 20th Feb Amelia and Hannah were embarked on the Duke of Wellington for yet another voyage into the unknown, this time and finally to Tasmania.

Downham Riots 1816 (Gov-Macquaries-Journal) — A page from Governor Macquarie’s Journal

Downham Riots 1816 (Aus. Newspaper)2a — The paragraph is taken from an Australian colony newspaper of 1817 and reads: “Yesterday morning, 28 of the female prisoners arrived in the Friendship were landed; 16 of whom having husbands in the colony were allowed to join them, and the remaining 12 went as servants into various families. Thirteen others who were afflicted with scorbutic diseases were sent to the General Hospital; and 56 were transhipped from the Friendship to the Duke of Wellington to be conveyed to Hobart Town together with 28 artificers and mechanics, sent from this settlement to be employed on the Government works there.” Image: Public Domain

There were four further sightings of Amelia Lightharness. Firstly, she married in 1820 a Samuel Cash in Hobart. Female convicts in the female Factories were offered to the men of the colony who could drop a handkerchief or similar at the feet of the female convict they had chosen. But then her ticket of leave was taken from her in 1823 because of “immoral conduct and living in a disorderly house.” Clearly her marriage to Samuel Best was not long lasting nor a success. Her ticket of leave was finally restored in 1832 and she died in 1834. She would have been about 40 years old. Hannah Jarvis did a little better. Internet posted family histories in Australia indicate that her two children born circa 1801 and 1804 in Norfolk finally joined her in Tasmania. She died in the newly named New Norfolk, in 1853.

Downham Riots 1816 (Aus. Newspaper)1a — From the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW: 1803 – 1842), Saturday 17 January 1818, page 3. Source: National Library of Australia. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article 2177693

For the women who rioted, the punishment was vastly disproportionate to the crime. They never again achieved their freedom and had to endure one of the longest, hardest voyages of any having to call in at St Helena for desperately needed water and supplies before sailing on to Sydney. And as if that was not the worst, their captain and surgeon were capable of acts of abuse against a captive group of women. Is it any wonder that Jane Brown “threw herself overboard and was drowned?” Despair was the most likely reason not as given in the Ship News,” from a sudden irritability of temper.” If Chief Justice Gibbs and the law of the land believed that hanging was the worst punishment, they should have researched the lives of those transported, for women for the most part it was a far worse punishment than death.

And of the rest? John Pearson who travelled with Charles Nelson on the Shipley to Australia, does not appear again in any record. The two, John Stearne and William Bell both from Southery, who were sentenced to seven and 14-years transportation seem not to have made it on to a ship. Australia`s wonderful convict database has no sighting of either of them. Perhaps their sentences were commuted to imprisonment here. Of the other names, Lucy Rumbelow seems to have survived to 1861 still living locally; Elizabeth King, Elizabeth Watson and Margaret Jerry are glimpsed in the first census living locally quiet poor lives. Of the men, John Shinn appears in the 1841 census living in Downham. Harrison Bone is a shepherd living in Brancaster, Spencer Rayner, William Galley, and William Youngs live in the villages around Downham, heads down, unremarked and unremarkable.

Downham Riots 1816 (Sydney Harbour)1 — ‘View of Sydney Cove from Dawes Point’ by Joseph Lycett, c.1817/1818. Image: Greg Beeforth

The riots had unsettled the Government and over the next twenty years, a gradual humanising of the law and ideas of welfare for the poor started to emerge. By 1834 the Poor Law Amendment Act had been passed. The destitute poor were to be housed in Union workhouses, but they were also to be fed, sheltered, clothed, to have a rudimentary education for children, some medical care, and protection and work. By the mid-1840s the dreadful Corn laws had been repealed, but not before nearly one third of the population of Ireland had died of starvation or been lost to emigration; in fact, parishes all over the country had forcibly emigrated their largest and poorest families.

Downham survived the mob of the “insurgent fenmen” and, in modern parlance, maybe lessons had been learned, maybe a distant memory of the sudden terror of an armed mob in the town inclined the magistrates and property and landowners to be a little more understanding in the future. And in a small way the tradesmen could hold their heads up in pride for having created a petition signed by 70-plus of them asking the Chief Justice for clemency. Perhaps the ordinary man in the street knew not only about being hungry, but about the terrors of transportation and the loss of freedom, the inescapable exile.

THE END

Sources:
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Ely_and_Littleport_riots_of_1816www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/poorlaw/speen.htmhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Poor_Laws
https://www.historicalclimatology.com/blog/bread-or-blood-climate-insecurity-in-east-anglia-in-1816
www.downhammarkethistory.co.uk/downham-riots-1816/
http://www.downham.blogspot.com/2013/04/downham-riot-1816.html

May 1816: Disturbances in Norfolk, Suffolk and Devon

https://www.jenwilletts.com/convict_ship_friendship_1818.htm
National Archives , Kew
British Newspaper Archive : AJ Peacock , Bread or Blood , 1965: National Portrait Gallery, London : National Archives of Australia : TROVE.
“Disturbances in Norfolk And Suffolk.” The Times, May 23, 1816, pp. 3. The Times Digital Archive
“Monthly Agriculral Report.” The Observer, Feb 04, 1816, pp. 4, ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Guardian and The Observer.
“Monthly Agricultural Report.” The Observer, May 05, 1816, pp. 4, ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Guardian and The Observer.

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Norfolk’s George Townshend: Army Officer and Caricaturist.

By Haydn Brown.

George Townshend was born on 28 February 1723/24, the eldest son of Charles (3rd Viscount Townshend) and his wife Audrey Harrison. The Townshend family-owned extensive estates in Norfolk and elsewhere, but their ancestral home was Raynham Hall in Norfolk.

Townsend (Raynham Hall) — Raynham Hall, Norfolk. © Historic Houses.

George was educated at St John’s College, Cambridge, leaving there in 1742 to become a volunteer to the British Army in Germany, attached to the staff of Lord Dunmore, one of the general officers. He was present at the battle of Dettingen (16 June 1743) and also apparently at that of Fontenoy (30 April 1745), though a letter of Horace Walpole’s says that he was too late for any action!

Townsend (Battle of Dettingen_NAM) — The Battle of Dettingen was fought during the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) in the area which is now southern Germany. When his retreat was cut off, King George II (1683-1760) successfully led a multinational force of British, Hanoverians, Dutch and Austrians against the French under the Duc de Noailles, inflicting heavy losses.
This was the last occasion when a reigning British monarch led his troops in person on the battlefield. As Duke of Cambridge, the King had already fought under Marlborough’s command at the Battle of Oudenarde in 1708. Although he displayed great personal courage, the King had little flair for higher military command and wisely left the conduct of the campaign to his generals. His victory at Dettingen brought him much popularity at home.

In May 1745 Townshend was appointed a captain in Bligh’s Regiment (later the 20th Foot). On the outbreak of the Jacobite rebellion in that year he returned to Britain, joined his regiment, which fought at the Battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746; during this battle, the Bligh’s casualties were 4 killed and 17 wounded. Afterwards, Townshend went back to the Continent, having been appointed an aide-de-camp to the Duke of Cumberland. In this capacity he was present at the battle of Laffeldt on 21 June 1747 and carried Cumberland’s dispatch back to England. Then on 25 February 1748, he was appointed to a captaincy in the 1st Foot Guards, which carried with it the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.

Townshend (Duke-of-Cumberland-1745) — Duke of Cumberland at the Battle of Culloden 16th April 1746: Image: David Morier

When the War of the Austrian Succession ended in 1748, Townshend returned to England and became a MP in the House of Commons for the County of Norfolk – which he continued to represent until he succeeded his father as 4^th Viscount in 1764. But before that, he famously fell out with the Duke of Cumberland; attacking him in parliament, and making him a victim of his notable powers as a caricaturist.

Townsend (Cumberland) — Duke of Cumberland 1750s by George Townshend. © National Portrait Gallery, London

George Townshend, you see, had a mercurial personality that did not suffer fools gladly and was never shy about criticising those whose competence he questioned. Not surprisingly perhaps, this was the reason which led to the open hostility between Townshend and his military superior. At the end of 1750 Townshend resigned from the army and identified himself with the cause of militia reform; largely as a result of his efforts an effective new militia act was passed in 1757.

Townshend had always exhibited a knack for drawing, and during his military tenure used it effectively to sketch topography, fortifications, and maps. But beginning around 1750, he began to draw caricature sketches of people–officers, clergy, fashionable women. He was soon covering every scrap of available paper with caricature portraits of friends and enemies and circulating them among his friends and correspondents. But it was in 1756-57 that Townshend began embedding his portrait caricatures into dramatic and narrative frames to make a political point, and thereby creating the prototype for satiric political caricature that would later be followed by others. The Recruiting Sergeant, for example shows Fox acting as a sergeant gathering a pathetic group of recruits to create a new ministry while the Duke of Cumberland (for whom the ministry would be formed) appears ironically exalted in the Temple of Fame.

Townsend (The Recruiting Sargeant) — The Recruiting Sergeant 1757 by George Townshend. © Trustees of the British Museum

In the same year Cumberland ceased to be Commander-in-Chief, being succeeded by Sir John Ligonier. Townshend now returned to the service, being commissioned as Colonel on 6 May 1758 – but without a regiment, a point which prompted him to write to William Pitt asking for active employment against the French. In December he was summoned to London and appointed to command a brigade in the expedition under James Wolfe which was being organized to attack Quebec by way of the St Lawrence.

This appointment displeased Wolfe very much; he had asked Ligonier to let him choose his own subordinates – and he had not asked for Townshend! The “Proposals for the expedition to Quebec” in Pitt’s papers suggest that the three brigadiers were Robert Monckton, James Murray, and Ralph Burton. Unfortunately, Burton, a particular friend of Wolfe’s, was squeezed out to make room for Townshend – a man with more influence! Wolfe wrote Townshend a welcoming letter in which he said:

“Your name was mentioned to me by [Ligonier] and my answer was, that such an example in a person of your rank and character could not but have the best effects upon the troops in America; and I took the freedom to add that what might be wanting in experience was amply made up, in an extent of capacity and activity of mind, that would find nothing difficult in our business.”

This reflects the feelings of a hard-working middle-class career officer confronted with the heir to a viscountcy who has always had things made easy for him. It would be strange if Townshend did not resent the reference to inexperience, especially as he had seen a good deal of active service. Here perhaps is the origin of later trouble!

Townshend, junior to Monckton but senior to Murray, was third in command of the expedition. He crossed the Atlantic with Wolfe in Vice-Admiral Charles Saunders*’s flagship Neptune. It may have been during the voyage that he made the water-colour drawing of Wolfe which the general’s biographer Robert Wright called “the most convincing portrait of Wolfe I have ever seen”; it is certainly the best portrait extant. In the last week of June 1759, the British fleet and army arrived before Quebec, and Wolfe began his long struggle with the problem of bringing the Marquis de Montcalm to battle.

Townshend (Fleet Landing Wolde's Troops) — Drawing by a soldier of Wolfe’s army depicting the fleet, under Saunders’ command, disembarking Wolfe’s soldiers. This 1797 engraving is based on a sketch made by Hervey Smyth (1734-1811), General Wolfe’s aide-de-camp during the siege of Quebec. A view of the taking of Quebec, 13th September 1759. Library of the Canadian Department of National Defence

During 9 and 10 of July, Townshend’s and Murray’s brigades landed on the north shore of the St Lawrence, below Montmorency Falls, and entrenched themselves there. By this time Wolfe’s relations with his brigadiers, and particularly Townshend, had deteriorated. On 7 July Wolfe had written in his journal:

“Some difference of opinion upon a point termed slight & insignificant & the Commander in Chief is threatened with a Parliamentary Inquiry into his Conduct for not consulting an inferior Officer & seeming to disregard his Sentiments!”

The “inferior Officer” was presumably George Townshend; and matters got worse after the unsuccessful Montmorency attack on 31 July, an operation which the brigadiers had disliked. On 6 September Townshend wrote the rather famous letter to his wife in which he said, “General Wolf’s Health is but very bad. His Generalship in my poor opinion – is not a bit better; this is only between us.” Townshend’s wickedly clever caricatures of Wolfe which have survived tell a great deal about their relationship.

Townsend (Wolfe) — Image: George Townshend’s caricatures of Wolfe. © McCord Museum, Montreal.

On or about 27 August Wolfe, then recovering from a severe illness, consulted the brigadiers formally for the first time. He sent them a memorandum begging them to consult together as to the best method of attacking the enemy. He himself suggested three possible lines of attack, all variants of the Montmorency operation which had already failed. After discussion with Admiral Saunders, the brigadiers politely rejected the Commander-in-Chief’s suggestions and recommended a quite different line of operation, bringing the troops away from Montmorency and landing above Quebec:

“When we establish ourselves on the North Shore, the French General must fight us on our own Terms; We shall be betwixt him and his provisions, and betwixt him and their Army opposing General [Jeffery Amherst] [on Lake Champlain].”

For the first time, the essential strategic weakness of the French position was pointed out and exploited: Quebec, and the French army outside Quebec, were dependent on provisions brought down the river, and if this supply line were cut, Montcalm would have no choice but to fight to open it. Wolfe accepted the brigadiers’ recommendation, and thereby made possible the victory on the Plains of Abraham; though the decision to take the risk of landing at the Anse au Foulon, close to the town, was Wolfe’s own. The brigadiers had favoured landing further up the river.

In the battle of the Plains, Townshend commanded the British left wing. Wolfe was mortally wounded and Monckton disabled, and Townshend unexpectedly found himself commanding the army. In these circumstances it is not surprising that his direction of the last phase of the action and its aftermath was not particularly effective. His first task was to deal with Colonel Louis-Antoine de Bougainville’s belated intervention from up the river; this was easily done. But the beaten French field army made good its escape to the west. Townshend prepared to besiege and bombard Quebec, bringing large numbers of guns up the cliff to the Plains of Abraham. But the city surrendered to him on 18 September and in return was offered relatively lenient terms in order to get possession of the town as soon as possible.

Townsend (Quebec) — The surrender of Quebec on 18 September 1759.

Townshend returned to England before the winter and was rewarded with the colonelcy of the 28th Foot and the thanks of Parliament. On 6 March 1761 he was made a Major-General, and took command of a brigade in the British contingent of the allied army in Germany. The following year he was sent to Portugal with the local rank of Lieutenant-General, and took command of a division of the Anglo-Portuguese army which was protecting Portugal against the forces of France and Spain. No important operations took place here before the conclusion of peace.

In 1767 Townshend was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and held this post until 1772. Traditionally, Townshend in Ireland has been remembered chiefly as a person who was adept at manipulating the Irish parliament by corrupt means and was considerably disliked. Later research, however, reveals him as an effective and resolute administrator whose financial measures broke the power of the local oligarchy and transferred it to a party in parliament controlled by the government in Dublin Castle.

From 1772 to 1782, and again for some months in 1783, Townshend was master general of the Board of Ordnance. He was promoted general in 1782 and field marshal in 1796. He was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Norfolk in 1792, and also held the office of governor of Jersey. In 1787 he was made a marquess.

Although Townshend had been so bitter against Wolfe in 1759, time softened his feelings, and in 1774 he discouraged Murray from making an attack on the memory of the dauntless hero. Townshend and his fellow brigadiers have been much abused by Wolfe’s admirers; but there is not the slightest doubt that they gave him sound advice at a moment when he was floundering badly, and that it was they, with the support of Saunders, who set Wolfe’s feet on the path to victory. Townshend had important artistic abilities; he has been called “the first great English caricaturist.” An obituary in the Times said, “In his private character he was lively, unaffected, and convivial.” His portrait was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds and by Thomas Hudson.

Townshend was one of the favoured people who in July 1767 received 20,000-acre grants in St John’s (Prince Edward) Island, being awarded Lot 56 in the east end of the Island. In 1770, embarrassed by his Irish expenses, he was trying unsuccessfully to sell this land. Like so many of the absentee proprietors, he seems to have done nothing to settle or develop his grant. In 1784, however, he gave up one-quarter of it to “American Loyalists and disbanded troops,” and some settlement then took place.

Footnote:
On the domestic front, and away from all the awards during an illustrious career, George Townshend married Charlotte Compton in 1751; she was Baroness Ferrers of Chartley in her own right. By her, four sons and four daughters were said to have been delivered before she died in 1770. Three years later he married Anne, daughter of Sir James William Montgomery; this marriage is said to have produced six children.

George Townshend, 4th Viscount and 1st Marquess Townshend, army officer and caricaturist died at Raynham Hall, Norfolk, England on 14 Sept. 1807.

THE END

Sources include:
P. Stacey “TOWNSHEND, GEORGE, 4th Viscount 1st Marquess TOWNSHEND,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 5, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed February 6, 2021, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/townshend_george_5E.html.

James Gillray: Caricaturist: George Townshend (james-gillray.org)

Heading Image: George Townshend, 4th Viscount and 1st Marquess Townshend, attributed to Gilbert Stuart, circa. 1785 Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Darwin Considered Him an Ass!

By Haydn Brown.

ROBERT McCORMICK was a British Royal Navy ship’s surgeon, explorer and naturalist. He was born on 22 July 1800 at Runham, a village near to Great Yarmouth in the County of Norfolk, England. John Marius Wilson’s 19^th century ‘Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales’ described Runham as such:

“RUNHAM, a village and a parish in the Flegg district of Norfolk. The village stands near the river Bure, at the Runham-Swim Ferry, 4½ miles W N W of Yarmouth and was once a market-town. The parish includes a detached portion, called New Runham or Vauxhall, immediately adjoining Yarmouth, and on which fish-offices, manure-works, and the terminus of the Norwich and Yarmouth railway [would be] situated; and it was [to be] re-turned in the Census of 1851 as including also the extra-parochial tract of Nowhere……”

Robert McCormick was the only son of Robert McCormick, Royal Navy, a ship’s surgeon from Ballyreagh, County Tyrone. Young Robert spent his childhood around Great Yarmouth; he was educated by his mother and sisters. His father had encouraged his son to become a naval executive officer, but the father’s death in the wreck of the HMS ‘Defence’ off the coast of Jutland on 24 December 1811 left Robert junior without the necessary influence and means by which to achieve his father’s desires.

Two warships, the **HMS St. George** and the **HMS Defence**, both part of the British Baltic fleet, ran aground and were lost outside Thorsminde at the west-coast of Jutland on the 24th of December 1811.

It should be said at the outset that Robert McCormick junior was to turn out to be an eccentric and sometimes difficult character. His naval career would disappoint him, and promotion would be slow. Distinction also would elude him for his ambitions were greater than his application to his work. He would regularly invalid himself out of active service and only occasionally seemed to find work that he was keen to undertake. Almost certainly, his ambitions were destined to be thwarted by his own personality, and he was neither to make a great name for himself in the navy nor as a naturalist.

Sir Astley Paston Cooper from Brooke in Norfolk. Engraved by J.S. Agar from an Drawing by A. Wivell. Image: Public Domain.

Nevertheless, in 1821 young Robert McCormick decided to enter the Royal Navy ‘as the only chance now left me of entering upon a naval life’. He asked to be trained as a surgeon and was accepted as an apprentice by the famous Sir Astley Paston Cooper, also originally from Norfolk. Following his studies in London, namely at Guy’s and St Thomas’s hospitals, he became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons on 6 December 1822. The following year, he was assigned to the flagship Queen Charlotte as assistant surgeon.

Robert McCormick, Age 25 From a portrait drawn on HMS Icarus. McCormick had been invalided out of active service for the first time and was travelling home to England from the West Indies after contracting yellow fever. Source: MacCormick (1884: 2: frontispiece). Credit: Wellcome Library, London.

When Robert McCormick entered the navy, the status of a naval surgeon had risen from that of the turn of the 18th century. He always maintained, however, that his father’s death had left him without enough money or influence to join the ‘executive line’ of the navy; also, his medical training in London would have cost perhaps £200 a year, ‘much the same as a young gentleman at Oxford or Cambridge’. However, it was a fact that a surgeon who had good connections in the Admiralty would have been in a far better position to achieve a successful career – for McCormick it was not to be!

Lack of family influences or fortune aside, McCormick seemed to be incapable to make friends in high places, and it has been argued that his lack of promotion came from antagonising the powerful William Burnett (1779-1861). Burnett sat on the Victualling Board from 1822, and became Director-General of the Medical Department upon its creation in 1832. It was said that Burnett ‘despised the spectacular, the second rate, or the ’dilettante’; but Burnett was not a scientist or a literary man, and seldom promoted those whose interests obviously lay more in the field of geology or botany than medicine. Indeed, McCormick did have more enthusiasm for exploration than for medicine, or natural history – maybe, therefore, he was considered by Burnett as both a ’dilettante’ and second rate!

Certainly, McCormick’s love of the spectacular would not have endeared him to Burnett. The sum total of McCormick was that he was a man with the wrong aptitudes in the wrong place at the wrong time in history. His efforts in natural history, intended to distinguish himself on the Navy’s congested personnel list, antagonised the Admiralty’s Medical Department, and alienated those with the power to advance him. Added to this, McCormick seemed neither good at, nor dedicated to, disciplined natural history collecting. To his further detriment, his dabbling came at the time when both natural history and medicine were growing complex networks. As a qualified but unexceptional naturalist, he had limited capacity for otherwise overcoming his lack of connection to London’s scientific elite. His case reveals the tensions inherent in the position of the ordinary naval surgeon in the mid-19th century – in which one individual performed the roles of doctor, scientist and naval officer, and these roles sometimes came into conflict. These tensions were to be amplified by the presence of the young Charles Darwin on HMS Beagle’s second voyage to South America in 1831.

800px-Robert_McCormick_by_Stephen_Pearce — Robert McCormick, oil portrait by Stephen Pearce, 1856 (National Portrait Gallery, London)

But first, McCormick’s served in the Caribbean where, in 1825, he contracted yellow fever and was invalided home. He then spent two years as medical officer to shore stations. Then, in 1827, he gained his first experience in the Arctic with William Edward Parry aboard the HMS ‘Hecla’ to Spitsbergen. Although he was not a member of Parry’s unsuccessful polar sledge party, he did contribute significantly to the expedition by keeping the crew healthy and by studying the plants, animals, and geology of Spitsbergen. Following this expedition, he was promoted to the rank of surgeon and then spent a year on half pay, after which he was assigned to the HMS Hyacinth and Caribbean duty, only to be invalided home again in 1830. By May 1831 Francis Beaufort was looking for suitable personnel for a survey expedition to South America. McCormick appeared well qualified, and was recruited as ship’s surgeon for the second voyage of HMS Beagle under Captain Robert FitzRoy.

While the preparations of the Beagle progressed in late October, McCormick met Charles Darwin who had been given an unofficial place on board as a self-funded gentleman naturalist who would be a companion to Captain FitzRoy. Darwin wrote telling his university tutor John Stevens Henslow about McCormick:

“My friend the Doctor is an ass, but we jog on very amicably: at present he is in great tribulation, whether his cabin shall be painted French Grey or a dead white— I hear little except this subject from him”.

Robert McCormick (HMS Beagle) — HMS Beagle in the Straits of Magellan. Image: Wikipedia.

When the voyage got under way, their first landfall was at St. Jago in the Cape Verde Islands in January 1832. McCormick and Darwin walked into the countryside together, and Darwin, influenced by Charles Lyell’s ideas on geology, found the surgeon’s approach old-fashioned:

“He was a philosopher of rather an antient date; at St Jago by his own account, he made general remarks during the first fortnight and collected particular facts during the last.”

McCormick became increasingly frustrated when FitzRoy took Darwin onshore, leaving McCormick behind and thereby denying him an opportunity for collecting. The last straw came at Rio de Janeiro in April 1832, when FitzRoy arranged for McCormick ‘s collection to be packaged and sent back to England. McCormick was also invalided home; he recalled in his memoirs of 1884:

“Having found myself in a false position on board a small and very uncomfortable vessel, and very much disappointed in my expectations of carrying out my natural history pursuits, every obstacle having been placed in the way of my getting on shore and making collections, I got permission from the admiral in command of the station here to be superseded and allowed a passage home in H.M.S. Tyne.”

McCormick’s upcoming return to England on 29 April 1832 gave Darwin the chance to send post home. He began a letter to his sister, Caroline, where he referred to McCormick, his former colleague:

“I take the opportunity of Maccormick [sic] returning to England, being invalided, ie. being disagreeable to the Captain & Wickham. – He is no loss.”

When HMS Tyne sailed, McCormick was unaware that he was conveying home not only Darwin’s letter, but also his opinion of him. Probably comfortable in his ignorance of Darwin’s words, McCormick settled into yet another ‘sabbatical’ before being posted once more to the Caribbean; only to suffer a further attack of yellow fever, for which he was sent home in 1834. For the next four years he was unattached except for one month aboard the HMS Terror in relief of ice-bound whalers.

HMS Erebus and Terror in the Antarctic ice pack, from A Voyage of Discovery and Research, by James Clark Ross, engraving, 1847 (Linda Hall Library)

In 1839 McCormick successfully applied for duty with the expedition of James Clark Ross to the Antarctic as surgeon and zoologist aboard HMS Terror. The expedition lasted from September 1839 until September 1843; during this time, it managed to undertake much important work in all branches of science from the Antarctic, through to Australia and New Zealand. The large collections of zoological materials obtained were catalogued later – but not by McCormick! The task was undertaken by John Edward Gray and Sir John Richardson, on orders from the Admiralty following the discovery that the task had been left undone after the expedition.

Here was another example of McCormick’s apparent lack of drive and skills; also, the scientific ability, to cope with such a massive collection. Small wonder then when he did gain some recognition with his election, in 1844, as an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons – a different field of course. Then, during the following year, McCormick received what he thought was a life-time appointment; that of surgeon to the yacht William and Mary. To his dismay, however, the commission was changed and he was assigned to the Woolwich Dockyard, east of London; but even in this post he was to be disappointed when, in 1849, he was superseded.

It seems not generally known that Robert McCormick was a proponent of the search for Sir John Franklin, and he was one of the first to lay detailed plans for such an expedition before the Admiralty and the House of Commons. He advocated the use of small boats and sledges to explore Wellington Channel, the Boothia Peninsula and King William Island. However, whilst his suggestions, were well based on Arctic and Antarctic experience, they were ‘unofficial’, coming as they did from a medical officer and not a line officer; inevitably, they were rejected! It was left to Francis Leopold McClintock to later demonstrate and prove that McCormick was correct!

In 1851 McCormick was appointed surgeon on the North Star in the search fleet of Sir Edward Belcher . At last, his life-long ambition was realised: for during this expedition, he became officer in command of a party. In August and September 1852, he explored the Wellington Channel, in a boat named Forlorn Hope, covering 240 statute miles. He did not find any trace of Franklin’s ships, Erebus and Terror, but did map the east side of the channel and establish the probability of a connection between Baring Bay and Jones Sound, virtually proving that Franklin had proceeded westward from Beechey Island.

Robert McCormick, Age 52, in Full Dress Uniform. McCormick seems to have had a lifelong interest in his appearance. His diary entry for 3 June 1832, while returning to England on HMS Tyne, reads: ‘Mustered in blue trousers’. Years later, in his early eighties, he was seen by RB Sharpe at the British Museum dressed like someone from a ‘bygone age’, in a ‘swallow-tail coat… with gilt buttons and trousers of a ‘pronounced shepherd’s plaid. Source: McCormick (1884: 1: frontispiece). Credit: Wellcome Library, London.

McCormick was awarded the Arctic Medal in 1857 and then, in 1859, he was finally promoted to Deputy Inspector-General. This was his last rise in rank and he was placed on the retired list in 1865, and in 1876 received a Greenwich Hospital pension of £80 per annum through the good offices of his friend, the medical director-general, Sir Alexander Armstrong, himself an old Arctic hand. In 1884 McCormick published his ‘Voyages of Discovery in the Arctic and Antarctic seas, and Round the World’. Despite excellent illustrations, sound scholarship, and an interesting narrative, it came too late to arouse much interest – most of the information was already well known and the incidents were too remote for acclamation.

McCormick, in fact, spent the last 20 years of his life in relative obscurity. He had failed either to reach the top in the naval medical service or to become a distinguished biologist. He displayed stamina and competence in exploration but had little opportunity to engage in it except, perhaps, during the North Star expedition. His troubles in the Admiralty have been attributed to a lack of tact and a strong individualism which resulted in frequent disagreements with each of the medical directors-general of his time, especially Sir William Burnett. The yellow fever he contracted and his dislike of small ships led him to avoid assignments to the Caribbean, even to the point of insubordination. However, these characteristics do not explain his scientific failure. McCormick was on good terms with many influential scientists of the day, including Sir John Barrow, Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, and Sir Charles Lyell, and had opportunities to make his mark, but he did not display the single-mindedness, patience, and learning.

McCormick’s only claim to fame was that his name was given to several natural features: in the Antarctic, to Cape McCormick by Ross; in the Arctic, to McCormick Bay by Beaufort and McCormick Inlet by McClintock; and in northwest Greenland, to a valley. McCormick was proud of having his portrait painted in 1853 by Stephen Pearce, one of a series planned on the commanders in the Franklin search. He thought it a harbinger of a distinguished future, but, in the event, the Forlorn Hope was his first, last, and only command.

In his last years, McCormick lived in a Wimbledon house he named Hecla Villa, after the ship on which he sailed with Parry, and the class of ships that included the HMS Erebus. His living companions included a duck named ‘the Duchess’, and a sparrow named Polly. McCormick died at Hecla Villa on 28 October 1890 – He never achieved the desired rank of Inspector-General.

THE END

Sources Include:
Biography – McCORMICK, ROBERT – Volume XI (1881-1890) – Dictionary of Canadian Biography (biographi.ca)
bshs_monograph_14_9780906450185_Steel_2011.pdf

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The Locker-Lampson’s and Cromer.

By Haydn Brown.

This is a brief account of a family’s links, not only to numerous historical personalities, but also with the seaside resort of Cromer in Norfolk. It pays particular attention to two members of the family line who, despite leading different and extraordinary lives, both had a special and direct link with the town of Cromer.

But we begin by mentioning Sir Curtis Miranda Lampson, who was an American-born self-made millionaire who became a British citizen and was made a baronet in 1866. This reference to him is brief and refers only to his death, on his Sussex estate at Rowfant near Crawley Down in 1885, and the fact that he was succeeded, as a hereditary knight, by eldest son George – who, again, has no relevance to this particular story. Our real starting point is with Sir Curtis Lampson’s only daughter, Hannah Jane, and her husband, Frederick Locker; it was these two who kicked off a fascinating story of the ‘Locker-Lampson’s.

Rowfant-House — **Rowfant House, formerly on the Locker-Lampson Sussex Estate.**
After the Second World War, the Latvian Lutheran Church in London started to lease the empty Rowfant House from the Locker-Lampson family. Latvian people had fled their country before its occupation by the Soviet Union and were living in Germany as displaced persons. Volunteers revamped the property and then it was used for living in and community events. In 1962 the Latvian Church bought the property from the Locker-Lampson family and Rowfant House Ltd was set up.

Captain William Locker:
Things will become clearer; but at this point, mention must be made of Frederick Locker’s line and his paternal grandfather – Captain William Locker, He was somewhat famed for being in charge of HMS ‘Lowestoffe’ in the latter part of the 18th century which, on its 1777 voyage to the West Indies, included a very young and newly promoted Lieutenant Horatio Nelson – later to become Admiral Lord Nelson. It would appear that Locker’s influence on young Nelson was immense because, on 9 February 1799, the then Lord Nelson wrote the following to his old captain:

“I have been your scholar; it is you who taught me to board a Frenchman by your conduct when in the Experiment; it is you who always told me ‘Lay a Frenchman close and you will beat him’, and my only merit in my profession is being a good scholar. Our friendship will never end but with my life, but you have always been too partial to me.”

Nelson was also staying with William Locker at Greenwich in 1797 when, at Locker’s behest, Lemuel Francis Abbott came down to make the oil study on which all his Nelson portraits were based. These eventually numbered over forty. William Locker was a noted patron of the arts, having a number of portraits painted. He was also the driving force behind the creation of a National Gallery of Maritime Art; he suggesting the Greenwich hospital:

“…should be appropriated to the service of a National Gallery of Marine Paintings, to commemorate the eminent services of the Royal Navy of England.”

He died before his vision could be realised, but it was subsequently put into effect by his son, Edward Hawke Locker.

Frederick Locker:
Frederick Locker was born in Greenwich Hospital in 1821, the son of Edward Hawke Locker. Frederick would always be poor in health, but he did mature into a distinguished man of letters and poetry. His first marriage, in 1850, was to Lady Charlotte Bruce, daughter of Lord Elgar, the man who famously brought the marbles to England from Athens. The couple had a single child, Eleanor, who later married Lionel Tennyson, a son of Alfred Lord Tennyson. It was Alfred, the poet laureate, who had been a good friend of Sir Curtis Lampson (see above) and it is likely that, through this connection, that Frederick Locker met Hannah Jane Lampson. In 1874 these two married and took on the family surname of ‘Locker-Lampson’. This double-barrelled appellation was the wish of Sir Curtis in his Will, and it enabled the couple to live at Rowfant and to be an integral part of the line’s inheritance. It was on the ‘Rowfant’ estate where Frederick Locker and Hannah Jane produced four children.

Frederick Locker-Lampson, as he now was, became somewhat of a minor figure in the Victorian literary field, but he did publish “London Lyrics” in 1857 – his first book of poetry. However, being well regarded as a convivial host and raconteur, he did become well acquainted with all the big literary names of the age, including Charles Dickens, the Brownings, Thackery and Trollope. One of his observations was: “The world is as ugly as sin – and almost as delightful.” In 1886 he produced “The Rowfant Library”, a catalogue of his much-lauded collection of rare books; then in 1892, this work inspired the founding of the Rowfant Club in Cleveland, USA, for people “interested in the critical study of books to please the mind of man”. Frederick Locker-Lampson died at Rowfant in 1895. Following his death, his youngest son, Oliver Stillingfleet Locker-Lampson inherited the likes of Newhaven Court in Cromer, Norfolk, and was to lead a quite different life from his father, but equally an extraordinary one. – here we come to the crux of this blog.

Newhaven Court, Cromer and Oliver Locker-Lampson:
Newhaven Court at Cromer was built in 1884 by Oliver’s father, Frederick as the family’s summer holiday home. In its time, under the Locker-Lampson’s ownership, Newhaven Court played host to many eminent visitors; they included Oscar Wilde, the King of Greece, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Sir Ernest Shackleton, Prince Philip (who, as a boy, stayed in a chalet in the grounds) and, of course, Albert Einstein. It was to become an hotel later in the 20th century, but before it was destroyed by fire on 23 January 1963.

147258813_1057106121459603_9063225423363916165_n — Newhaven Court in Cromer, Norfolk

It was Oliver Stillingfleet Locker-Lampson who ended up as a Commander with the awards of CMG and a DSO to his name. But as a young man, he first became a journalist. Then in 1910, at the age of 30 years, he became a Conservative MP. War broke out in 1914 and in the December of that year he joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve as a Lieutenant Commander; this was a post vouched for by Winston Churchill, the then First Lord of the Admiralty. It was Churchill who asked Locker-Lampson to establish an armoured car unit for the Royal Naval Air Service. Following training, Oliver’s No. 15 Squadron went to France but stalemate in the trenches negated the unit’s potential for mobile warfare. Then in 1916, in a show of support for Russian Tsar Nicholas II and his hard-pressed army, Locker-Lampson sailed with his squadron of armoured cars to the arctic port of Murmansk. From there his vehicles ranged as far south as the Caucasus Mountains skirmishing with the invading Germans.

Commander Oliver Locker-Lampson, always the self-promotional sort of figure, never denied talk of his involvement in the Russian court’s plots and schemes – and even of being implicated in the murder of the “mad monk” Rasputin who wielded a malign influence over the Tsarina. Apparently, he also proposed a plan to spirit the Royal Family out of Russia following the Tsar’s abdication in March 1917! Post-war, and as an MP, he warned of communist meddling in Britain’s home affairs – that still rings a bell in recent times! In 1931 he formed the Blue Shirts movement with the intention to “peacefully fight Bolshevism and clear out the Reds”. Their motto was his own family motto: “Fear God! Fear Naught!” In 1932 the Nazi Alfred Rosenberg visited Britain and was introduced to Oliver who was truly shocked to learn that Hitler believed the Blue Shirts to be fellow fascists.

The Locker-Lampson’s always had several houses but their principal home was still ’Rowfant’ in West Sussex; and it was following the death of Oliver’s mother, Hannah, in 1915 when Frederick’s eldest son, Godfrey Locker-Lampson, inherited Rowfant, whilst the younger Oliver, inherited Newhaven Court in Cromer. He married twice; his first wife was Californian Bianca Jacqueline Paget in 1923. Their wedding saw the couple dragged through the streets of Cromer in a car by members of his old armoured car squadron of World War 1 – only for her to die on Christmas day in 1929. His second wife was Barbara Goodall, whom he married in 1935 – it was she who was in his company, as one of the secretaries who guarded the physicist Albert Einstein when he was in residence on Roughton Heath in 1933. Oliver had given refuge to Einstein after the latter had received death threats while living in Belgium; he even took Einstein to meet Winston Churchill. In Norfolk, Oliver is probably only remembered as the person who gave refuge to Albert Einstein – and was the resident of Newhaven Court.

147502554_1057106544792894_4303430389101080251_n — Albert Einstein pictured with Commander Oliver Locker-Lampson’s party. In 1933, Lampson invited the German-born physicist to England to evade persecution by the Nazis.
Oliver Locker-Lampson (is left) with Albert Einstein (centre), then Barbara Goodall his future wife and the gamekeeper and guard (right). Image Credit EDP.

Overall, Oliver Locker-Lampson’s life in Cromer, between 1909 and 1936, was relatively genteel – if one ignores his exploits during the First World War, Russia in particular and his later ‘crusading’ as an MP. In Cromer, he helped to raise funds for an X-ray unit at the local Hospital, and opened a gymkhana to raise funds for lifeboat families who had lost crewmen at sea. It was in August 1925 when Oliver, ‘the commander’ and some of his ‘guests’, whom he used to collect into his ‘celebrity culture group’, organised a fete on Cromer Pier, with stalls, bunting, 500 lights and fancy dress – this was the forerunner of today’s annual carnival in the town.

During his time as an MP, Oliver Locker-Lampson assisted Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie find sanctuary in Sussex and evade the clutches of Mussolini. He also helped scores of ordinary Jewish families fleeing Nazi Germany. Then in the Second World War he joined the Home Guard and gave his full parliamentary support to Prime Minister Churchill. He retired from politics at the 1945 General Election and died in 1954. He is buried along with his father and other family members in Worth churchyard, West Sussex. Unfortunately, he missed the boat to becoming famous himself; and, given his life-long efforts and achievements, he never did receive the recognition that he probably deserved.

Footnote:
On 23 January 1963 Cromer’s Newhaven Court Hotel, formerly ‘Newhaven Court’ was destroyed by fire; more than a century of Locker-Lampson holidays and heritage ended in fierce flames and billowing smoke. The fire was tackled by 40 firemen, who battled through the night, trying to confine the flames to the first floor, but:

‘Flames and sparks leapt high into the night from the roof, 50ft above the ground. Fire gained a good hold till the whole roof was ablaze.’

Gone also were its tennis courts, said to have been the best in England and used by some professional players of the time. Prior to the fire, the hotel was run by Mr and Mrs Donald Stevenson, who had leased it from local building firm A.G. Brown. It was said at the time that Donald Stevenson and his 15-year-old son, ran upstairs to fight the blaze, but were beaten back by smoke. The building was never restored, and was demolished to make way for homes and flats at Newhaven Close and Court Drive.

THE END

Sources: Various but includes:
https://www.sussexexpress.co.uk/news/opinion/familys-links-nelson-rasputin-and-king-farouk-1158565

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Spitfire X4593

By Haydn Brown.

On 22 November, 1940 Spitfire X4593 of 266 Squadron crashed near Holme Lode Farm, Holme in Cambridgeshire. At the controls for what was intended to be a routine training flight was Pilot Officer Harold Edwin Penketh. During a battle climb to a high altitude with two other Spitfires, he was seen to break formation entering a dive from which unfortunately he failed to fully recover. Witnesses stated that his aircraft partially recovered at around 2000ft but immediately re-entered a dive and struck the ground vertically.

Spitfire X4593 2 — Spitfire X4593. Photo: Public Domain.

Pilot Officer Penketh was not able to use his parachute and was killed in the resulting crash. Although he was a new pilot with 266 Squadron, based nearby at Wittering, with only some 13 hours experience on Spitfires, his Station Commanding Officer stated that he could fly it quite well and was fully conversant with the oxygen system. It was assumed that his oxygen system was working as he had reached 28,000ft without any apparent problem. Investigation concluded that either a failure of the oxygen system or a physical failure had occurred.

Spitfire X4593 (Harold Penketh) — Pilot Officer Harold Penketh. Photo: Aviva Group archive

Harold Penketh’s body was recovered from the wreck of his Spitfire and returned to his home town of Brighton where he had previously worked for the Ocean Accident and Guarantee Corporation. His obituary in the staff magazine ended: “He was of a charming disposition and his loss was keenly felt by his family and those who knew him.” His name is recorded on a memorial at Brighton’s Woodvale Crematorium and Cemetery; he died aged only 20.

In 2016 the decision was taken to excavate Spitfire X4593. The dig was a collaboration between the Great Fen Project, Oxford Archaeology and Operation Nightingale. Personal items belonging to Mr Penketh, including his initialled cigarette case and watch, were found, along with some skeletal remains that had not been recovered in 1940.

The Plane:
The Spitfire’s registration number was X4593; it was built at Eastleigh, Hants as a Mark 1A Spitfire with a Merlin III engine. The plane flew in the Battle of Britain and is credited with destroying at least one German plane, believed to be a Heinkel. It was a presentation Spitfire paid for/named by the Madras Mail (English language daily evening paper, published 1868-1981), the first in a trio of Mark 1s named by their readers. The plane was called ‘Kerala’ (after the SW Indian state) and allocated to 266 Squadron, a Rhodesian squadron. The other two planes were X4594 ANDHRADESA and X4595 TOMILAND.

No. 266 Squadron:
Number 266 Squadron had been formed on 27 September 1918 from Nos 437 and 438 Flights at the seaplane station at Mudros on the Greek island of Lemnos, for anti-submarine patrols over the Aegean. On 30 October 1939, the Squadron was reformed at Sutton Bridge Lincolnshire, intended to be a Blenheim squadron. None were received and after training with Battles, it began to receive Spitfires in January 1940. The Squadron became a Rhodesian fighter squadron within Fighter Command and went on to establish a fine reputation in the skies over Western Europe. The squadron moved to Martlesham Heath near Ipswich in March 1940, then to Wittering in May 1940, having been re-equipped with Spitfires. These planes went into action for the first time on 2 June over Dunkirk, and flew coastal patrols and convoy escorts until fighting in the Battle of Britain in August and September 1940. During August they were based in south-east England and then returned to Wittering. Sqn 266 began an intensive operational training programme in September for the many new pilots, when patrols over the Thames Estuary permitted. The Squadron’s crest has a motto: Hlabezulu, meaning ‘The stabber of the sky’.

THE END

Principal Source:
https://www.greatfen.org.uk/about-great-fen/heritage/spitfire-excavation

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The Birth of the Bethel.

By Haydn Brown.

The complete history of the former Bethel Hospital is too involved to appear here. Instead, today’s blog is confined to its very beginning, prefaced by a summary of the periods which led up to the time when Mary Chapman shared her ideas with her husband, Reverend Samuel Chapman of Thorpe Parish Church. He died before their project was implemented and it was left to Mary to forge ahead – when the time was right!

Preface:
There is evidence to suggest that the site of the Bethel – and that was its original name – had been settled as early as Saxon times. We know this through extensive archaeological excavations which took place on the site of the former Norwich Central Library prior to its construction in 1960; the library then lay almost next door to the ground on which the Bethel was built back in 1713. This pre-1960 excavation unearthed a large collection of finds; significantly, the discovery of Saxon postholes confirmed that the area had been settled well before Norman times, whilst a rare Viking gold ingot, the first of its type found in the UK, could be roughly dated to the Viking occupation of East Anglia in the late ninth century.

During the Medieval period, Over or Upper Newport, as Bethel Street was then known, stretched from St Peter Mancroft to St Giles Gate, or New-port, close to the surviving church of St Giles. The Norfolk historian, Francis Blomefield, wrote in 1768 that this street was:

“the ropery, where the cord and ropemakers formerly dwelt’.

During this period the Bethel site also fell under the shadow of St Mary-in-the-Fields, a chapel and hospice founded by John Le Brun in 1248, the crypt of which survives below the Assembly House grounds, which itself still faces towards the south-west of the earlier Bethel and later renamed Bethel Hospital.

Bethel Hospital5 — The diagram shows part foundations of St Mary-in-the-Fields, chapel and hospice, founded by John Le Brun in 1248. Image: The Assembly House.

The Committee House and The Great Blow:
Blomefield also noted that part of the Bethel was located on the site of the former ‘Committee House’, a meeting place and store for the County’s armoury; the house was rented to Norfolk’s County Committee. Significantly, the building’s importance was reflected in the naming of the road outside as Committee Street, which linked Over or Upper Newport Gate (Upper St Giles’) to St Peter’s Street by St Peter Mancroft Church.

Bethel Hospital3 — Thomas Cleer’s Map of 1696 showing the ‘vacant’ plot. Image: Norfolk Record Office.

Little is known about the Committee House, but it is recorded as having been the house of Francis Wyndham (1525-1592), who is ‘immortalised’ in a memorial at St Peter Mancroft. He had no children and left his property to his wife, Elizabeth, with the exception of the Committee House, which was valued at £400 and was to be sold to pay his debts.

Bethel Hospital (Francis Wyndham_J. Hannan) — Monument to Sir Francis Wyndham, St Peter Mancroft church. Photo: © Copyright J.Hannan

The Committee House’s demise is recorded in an incident known as the ‘Great Blow’ which took place on 24 April 1648. The background to this incident is that Norwich, on the eve of the Second English Civil War, was a hotbed of dissent. This was exacerbated by high taxes levied by Charles I and objections to the King’s High Anglicanism, which stood in contrast to the Puritan values prevalent in Norfolk at the time. It was said that tensions ran particularly high when a death warrant was apparently placed on the head of the City’s Mayor, John Utting. A crowd of residents, ‘having a strong affection for the Mayor’, attempted to prevent the official’s imminent capture and, to prove their point further, a number of rioters plundered the houses of his suspected enemies.

254876_full — Image: British Army Museum.

It was around 2pm on the same day when crowds converged on the Committee House, a symbol of Parliament’s power over the city, emphasised by it being the arsenal for the County Arms Magazine. The crowd broke through the bolted doors and ascended to the armoury above where Samuel Cawthorne, the armourer, was assaulted for having shot a boy in the scuffle. By 4pm three troops of Colonel Charles Fleetwood’s parliamentarian cavalry regiment converged on Norwich. Riding down the crowd, they sent many of the inhabitants scurrying indoors, while a firefight developed around the Committee House during pouring rain.

The-Great-Blow-front-cover-small-for-publicity-300x453 — *The Great Blow: Examinations and Informations relating to the Great Blow in Norwich, 1648* was edited by Andrew Hopper, Jean Agnew and Emily Alley (Published October 2018) and is available from the Norfolk Record Society

Amongst the excitement, the rioters were careless with the gunpowder, ‘one sweeping it from the stairs, another taking a hatful home’! In the midst of the violence and clear confusion, the rioters accidentally detonated ninety-eight barrels of gunpowder. It was reported that around 100 people were killed or seriously injured as a result, along with total destruction of Committee House and adjacent properties. The blast also blew out all the windows of both St Peter Mancroft and St Stephen’s Churches, along with most other glazed buildings in the Market Place. Total damage was later estimated at the colossal sum of £20,000. Subsequently, fragments of glass were “gathered” from the site of the former Committee House and later set in St. Peter Mancroft church’s east window.

Bethel (Great Blow 1648) — There is no contemporary image of Norwich during or following the ‘Great Blow’. However, this view of Delft illustrates the devastation following a similar explosion: Egbert van der Poel, ‘A View of Delft after the Explosion of 1654’ (National Gallery, London).

The Founding of the Bethel:
Given Committee Street’s history, it is not perhaps surprising that in 1712 the Guardians described the site on which the Bethel Hospital was built as a ‘wast peece of ground’. Thomas Cleer’s map, produced in 1696, was the first professionally surveyed scale plan of Norwich; it showed the site of the Bethel, seventeen years before the building was construction. The row of buildings fronting the street were broken by an empty plot. It appears very likely, therefore, that this plot was the site of the former ‘Committee House’ that had been destroyed 50 years earlier. The south side of the site was undeveloped at this point and backed on to a street, to the south of which were gardens adjoining ‘Chapply Field’ – known today as Chapelfield Gardens.

Mental Health Care in the 18th Century:
Before the eighteenth century the only dedicated facility in England for the care of those suffering from mental illness was the Bethlehem Hospital in London, which admitted its first mentally ill patients in 1407. Hence the Bethel, once built, would be the first purpose-built asylum in the country outside London.

Before the Madhouse Act of 1774, treatment of the Insane was generally carried out by non-licensed practitioners, who ran their asylums as a commercial enterprise with little regard for the inmates. With the establishment of the Mad House Act, licensing was required for each property if it was to house mentally ill patients, with yearly inspections of the premises taking place.

As the century progressed, ideas surrounding the treatment of patients changed. One notable Georgian development was the belief that regular bathing in hot and cold water would help alleviate symptoms of mental illness. In 1797 the Master of Bethel was responsible for ‘properly preparing the Bath and bathing of the patients, when ordered by the physicians’, reflecting the adoption of bathing as a medical practice.

The part dereliction of this area of Committee Street does offer an explanation for why the City was willing to lease the land to Mary Chapman for the establishment of her lunatic asylum in 1712. Mary Chapman came from a background of wealth and influence; the daughter of a former Mayor of Norwich and wife of Samuel Chapman, Rector of Thorpe. Although the Bethel was opened 14 years after her husband’s death, Mary’s Will suggests that the project was the joint charitable venture of Mary and her husband, both of whom had experienced the effects of lunacy in their own families. The name ‘Bethel’, meaning ‘House of God’, was apparently chosen by Samuel Chapman for its biblical connotations. His widow reinforced this sentiment by having a quotation from the book of Hebrews inscribed above its eventual door:

‘But to do good and to communicate forget not; for with such sacrifices God is well pleased’

Mary Chapman (1647 – 1724):
At this point in the story, a little must be said about the driving force behind the building of the Bethel, Mary Chapman. She was born on 24 of March 1647, during the English Civil War, and was the third daughter of John Mann and Hester nee’ Baron. Her father had made his fortune as a Worstead weaver, before going on to become Sheriff of Norwich in 1649 and Mayor four years later; in 1671 he took up the position of High Sheriff.

Mary Chapman (Bethel St Hospital_Archant) — Mary Chapman (1647 – 1724)
Founder of the Bethel Hospital. Photo Credit: Archant Library.

It was on 10 of May 1682 when, at the age of 35, Mary became the second wife of Rev. Samuel Chapman, Rector of Thorpe St Andrews; however, the marriage was childless. The couple, nevertheless, had the possible compensation of both sharing a concern for the treatment and welfare of the mentally ill. However, only 18 years of marriage passed before Samuel Chapman died, leaving money in his Will for Mary Chapman to build their dream of a house for the ‘habitation of poor lunatics’. In this, Mary was to devote herself to its foundation – somewhere in the city.

It was Mary’s staunch faith that was the driving force behind success in eventually building what became the Bethel in 1713. It was so named in accordance with the ‘advice and desire of Samuel Chapman’. Once founded, Mary Chapman continued to dictate the running of the Bethel; from specifying rules for admittance to carefully appointing her trustees, It was only later when the Bethel, became known as the Bethel Hospital, maintaining ‘several poor lunatics therein at her own expense during the time of her life and at her decease’.

Mary Chapman was a very religious women and in her Will she wrote; ‘First and before all things I humbly dedicate most heavenly devote to God….…’ and requested a plaque with the inscription ‘To do good and to communicate forget not, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased’ from Hebrews 13th chapter and 16th verse. As well as inscribing this quotation above its door, Mary ensured that biblical texts were placed throughout the building, such as “Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom” and “Surely oppression maketh a wise man mad”. According to Dylan Read:

“Mary Chapman became aware that ‘abuses of several kinds’ were taking place at the Bethel towards the inmates. She devised a system to regulate the abuses and instructions were given to deal with reducing the amount of abuse at the Bethel……”

Mary died in 1724, leaving most of her possessions and her wealth to the Bethel, as well as directions of its future running. It was her intent that, even after her death, the Bethel would continue to serve the purpose for which it was founded. In this, she also left it under the direction of seven trustees; John Hall, William Cockman, Richard Cooke, John Lombe, John Thompson, William Lombe and Timothy Gaming. In her Will, Mary also said that she wanted everyone with lunacy, whether from Norwich or not, to be placed in the Bethel and for the trustees to be paid by the families and friends of those living there. She also requested that a percentage of the earnings would go into the improvement of the charity through the payment of rent, maintenance and the employment of doctors. It was also requested that the trustees elected a treasurer.

newspic — The ruins of the old Parish Church of Thorpe St Andrews. Photo: Thorpe Parish Church.

Mary Chapman’s body was buried in accordance to her Will in the grounds of the Old Parish Church of Thorpe St Andrews, next to her Husband – without disturbing him. She asked for a plain coffin with only the letters M.C and that it would be carried to the by six parish clerks. Her tombstone survives in the chancel of the now ruinous church. It reads,

“She built wholly at her own expense the house in Norwich called Bethel for the reception, maintenance and cure of poor lunatics, to which and other charitable uses she gave all her income while she lived and her estate at her death.”

The Design of the Bethel:
After securing a 1000-year lease on the site of the proposed building at a peppercorn rate, Mary Chapman and her trustees commissioned Carpenter Richard Starling and mason Edward Freeman to build the Bethel, at a total cost of £314 2s. 6d; one trustee, John Morse, was responsible for overseeing the work. The only surviving image of Mary Chapman’s Bethel can be found on the Hospital’s seal, which depicts the building’s north façade and shows a two-storey range with two adjoining wings.

Bethel Hospital (Seal) — The Bethel Hospital Seal from Bateman and Rye, 1906. Norfolk Record Office.

A copy of the original building agreement in Bateman and Rye’s History of the Bethel Hospital sheds further light on the building’s original design. In it, the trustees ordered the construction of a building measuring 89 foot in length with two 27-foot wings, as well as two cellars at the south-east and south-west corners of the main range. Staircases ran from these cellars to the second floor. Internally, the Hospital was to be divided by a passageway running:

“from the dore in the middle of the fore front of the said building to the dore in the midle of the back front of the said house”.

Each side would then be partitioned into three rooms. Every door was to include a six-inch square hole covered by an iron grille and shutter, presumably as a means of ensuring proper ventilation whilst also enabling the observation of patients. Three of these seem to survive in an altered form on the second floor of the western 1753 wing. The agreement specified that ‘good clear glass’ was to be used for all windows except for the cellar and attic windows, which were to be glazed with:

‘quarrell (kwor′el} glass’ – a square of glass placed diagonally – a diamond pane of glass. Windows were also to be fitted with ‘two iron bands of three-quarter inch barrs’.

Whether or not these plans were enacted in their entirety, they nevertheless help to shed light on the building’s function as a place of confinement. Mary Chapman herself stated that:

“those put…into the said House shall be kept close and not suffered to wander abroad during their disorder”.

However, it was the inmates’ care rather than their confinement that was at the forefront of Mary’s vision for the Bethel. In an inscription on the Hospital’s foundation stone, now repositioned at the entrance of the building, Mary laid out the Bethel’s purpose:

“This house was built for the benefit of distress Lunaticks Ano Dom. 1713 and is not to be alienated or employed to any other use or purpose whatsoever. Tis also requir’d that the Master, who shall be chosen from time to time, be a Man that lives in the Fear of God and sets up true protestant Religion in his Family and will have a due Regard as well to souls as bodies as those that are under his care.”

In his history of the Hospital, Bateman describes how the Bethel was “bounded west by a house and east the school house of Bernard Church”. These buildings on either side of Bethel Hospital are shown on Kirkpatrick’s 1723 map of Norwich, with Mary Chapman’s House clearly set back from the street.

Kirkpatrick Map 1723 — Kirkpatrick’s Map of 1723. Norfolk Record Office.

Another terrace fronting Theatre Street falls within what is now the south west wing of Little Bethel Court. Produced four years later, James Corbridge’s 1727 map clearly illustrates the U-plan of the Bethel, showing the main range with its two adjoining north wings. Aside from this detail, the area around Committee Street appears relatively unchanged from Kirkpatrick’s map published three years earlier.

Bethel Hospital4 — James Corbridge’s 1727 Map of Norwich. Here, it clearly illustrates the U-plan of the Bethel. Norfolk Record Office.

Little is known about the Hospital’s early years, other than that Mary Chapman lived at the Bethel until her death in 1724. In her Will, dated 22 October 1719, Chapman mentions that one Henry Harston was the master of the house at the time. The presumption that Harston was a layman with no medical qualification gives an indication of the type of care provided to those patients at the Bethel during its early years. Chapman’s Will also specified that seven trustees were to be appointed to run the Hospital on the occasion of her death. This wish was enacted in January 1724, when a group of appointed trustees presided over the newly formed public charity for the first time.

Footnote: (Mental Health Reform):
For a century, the Bethel was the sole public facility specifically for the mad or insane in Norwich. Andrew Halliday reported to the 1807 Select Committee that Norwich had 112 ‘lunatics and idiots’, of whom only 27 were detained in poor law or penal institutions. In 1808, the County Asylum Act was passed, which allowed counties to levy a rate in order to fund the building of county asylums. The intention was to remove the insane from the workhouses and provide them with a dedicated care system. Despite this legislation, only 20 county asylums were built around the country.

One such institution was the Norfolk Lunatic Asylum, opened in 1814 with beds for 104 patients. However, the city’s provision of care for the mentally ill was severely inadequate. Of the few patients that were sent to Bethel Hospital, hundreds more were left in workhouses. Until the Lunatics Act of 1845, the number of patients at the Bethel remained between seventy and eighty, while those in the new asylum increased. This was sped up by the transferral of a number of Bethel’s pauper patients to the County Asylum in 1814.

By 1845, the Lunatics Act had brought public asylums into line with each other. It made the provision of accommodation for pauper patients compulsory and required mental healthcare institutions with more than 100 patients to have a medically qualified superintendent at their head. It also took into account the moral treatment pioneered by William Tuke and saw the care of the lunatics being funded by the individual county.

William Tuke (1732 – 1822) was a prominent mental health reformer and philanthropist. Born into a leading Quaker family, Tuke embraced social activism in his youth, campaigning for the abolition of the slave trade. Towards the end of the century Tuke increasingly became involved in mental health reform and raised funds to establish his own Quaker asylum in 1796. The York Retreat was a religious and humane hospital for Quakers suffering with mental illness.

Tuke’s model of moral treatment was adopted by asylums across the country and went on to become one of the most influential practices in 19^th century asylums. Chains were removed from inmates, accommodation was improved, and patients were engaged in occupational work as a form of ‘moral therapy’.

Footnote:
For those who have an appetite for more, several documents which relate to Mary Chapman are held at the Norfolk Record Office; NRO, BH21-23 -‘A Short Account of Mrs Mary Chapman and of her founding and embowering the house called Bethel in the city of Norwich’, this includes information on Mary Chapman as well as a copy of her Will. This can also be viewed on the microfilm at the Norfolk Record Office (NRO, NCC will register Lawrence 219). NRO, MC 2018/1, 895X6 is a Work book which contains transcript and notes on Mary Chapman amongst other information on the Bethel Hospital.

THE END

References:

Francis Blomfield, An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: History, Volume 1. (W Miller: London, 1805), 235

Christopher W Brooks, “‘Wyndham, Francis (d. 1592)’”, The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004),

Anonymous, The History of The City and County Of Norwich: From The Earliest Accounts To The Present Time, Volume 1 (1768), 267

Sir Frederick Bateman and Walter Rye, The History of the Bethel at Norwich (Gibbs and Waller: Norwich, 1906), 6 and 166.

Sources:
Bethel Hospital Conservation Management Plan
https://norfolkwomeninhistory.com/1500-1699/mary-chapman/?fbclid=IwAR0_mAc-IPls0lP4a2o8Nz00im_RAnxmTySExFVBCgn4uDplAgiVhjp63qQ
https://norfolkrecordsociety.org.uk/the-civil-war-comes-to-norwich/

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Norfolk in Brief: A Victoria Cross Award.

By Haydn Brown.

Major William Mordaunt Marsh Edwards, VC, DL was an English recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.

William Mordaunt Marsh Edwards_ Royal Collection Trust — William Mordaunt Marsh Edwards, VC of Hardingham Hall, Norfolk. Photo: Royal Collection Trust

Edwards’ Early life:
He was born on 7 May 1855 at Hardingham Hall, in the village of Hardingham, Norfolk; the son and heir of Henry William Bartholomew Edwards, and Caroline Marsh, formerly of Gaynes Park, Epping, Essex. Due to his wealthy upbringing, he was educated privately at Rottingdean, at Eton, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, but did not take a degree at Cambridge; instead he joined the Army. He was commissioned as a sub-lieutenant on the Unattached List on 22 March 1876, then in January 1877 joined the 74th (Highland) Regiment of Foot, with the rank of lieutenant.

Hardingham Hall, Norfolk. Photo: Courtesy of Ivan Barnard.

His Victoria Cross:
Edwards was 27 years old, and serving as a lieutenant in the 2nd Battalion, The Highland Light Infantry during the British occupation of Egypt, when the following deed of his took place and for which he was awarded the Victorious Cross.

It was on 13 September 1882 at Tel-el-Kebir, Egypt, when Lieutenant Edwards led a party of the Highland Light Infantry which stormed a ‘Redoubt’. He was the one who rushed forward alone and in advance of his party, entered the battery and immediately killed the artillery officer in charge. In the melee, Edwards was knocked down by a a rammer, welded by an enemy gunner and was rescued only by the timely arrival of three men of his regiment. Edwards was severely wounded.

Edwards’ Later career:
Edwards was promoted to captain on 23 March 1887 and served as adjutant of the 3rd Battalion, Highland Light Infantry from 1 January 1892 and until 1 November 1893; almost two years later, on 4 September 1895, he was promoted to major and retired from the army on 11 November 1896. On 19 February 1899, on the nomination of Lord Belper, he was appointed one of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms, and on 13 August 1900 he was commissioned as a Deputy Lieutenant of the County of Norfolk.

668599_f3f6fd04 — St Georges Church, Hardingham. Photo: © Copyright Evelyn Simak

Major William Mordaunt Marsh Edwards, VC died Hardingham Hall, Norfolk on 17 September 1912; he was aged 57 years. He was buried in St George’s Churchyard, Hardingham, Norfolk; an impressive place, sitting as it does on St Georges Mount but somewhat isolated. The mount is, as the name suggests, a rise in the ground which is framed by a sandy track and the large old rectory. Inside the church, is a window in the west wall which commemorates Major William Mordaunt Marsh Edwards VC. On the north wall is a memorial window to a family descendent, William Bartle Marsh Edwards of the Rifle Brigade, who was killed in action in Tunisia in 1943.

Grave of Major Edwards VC in St George’s Churchyard, Norfolk.

Memorial window to Major Edwards in St George’s Church, Hardingham.

Footnote:
There are three other Norfolk recipients of the Victoria Cross: Cpl Harry Cator (b Drayton), Capt David Jamieson (b Thornham) and Sir Arthur Knyvet Wilson (b Swaffham) Hardingham churchyard also contains three CWGC graves.

THE END

Source:
http://www.vconline.org.uk/william-m-m-edwards-vc/4586628841

A Time When James Returned to Norfolk!

By Haydn Brown

Preface:
The Norfolk writer, Bruce Robinson, died in 2016 at the age of 80 years. His wife, Cynthia, said in his obituary – published in The Guardian newspaper, on 14 July 2016 and modified on 28 November 2017 – that he was:

“Quietly spoken, unassuming, browns and beige on the outside but inside seething with ideas that tumbled over each other to reach the daylight; my husband, was a born writer; someone for whom the honing of a chapter was as natural as the squeezing of oranges he juiced each day for breakfast.”

Notable, after his retirement in 1993 Bruce Robinson wrote mainly for pleasure; focusing on local history, novels with a Norfolk connection, plus miscellanies. Included amongst these was his ‘flongster blogspot’, from which the following two extracts about the late James Stewart, famous film-actor, were taken – Enjoy!:

James Stewart’s visit to Tibenham in 1975:

“…….In early June, 1975, I took a phone call from a [Tibenham] gliding club member who told me that film star James Stewart was planning a private visit to the base – a members’ only job, apparently; very hush-hush; no fans; no Press! But if I didn’t let on how I knew, kept in the background, and didn’t wave a notebook about, then I might be able to pass muster as a club member.

James Stewart (WW2) — **James Stewart.**
Believed to be on the Control Tower of the old US airbase at Tibenham, Norfolk. Image: Courtesy of the 2nd Air Division Memorial Library Collection and EDP.

However, Stewart’s visit was not a total surprise because during the Second World War he had been based at Tibenham (and elsewhere), from where he flew 20 bomber missions. He was a genuine war hero, and now, thirty years and many films later, he was appearing in the stage play ‘Harvey’ in London, and was simply taking advantage of a day off. Though I didn’t know it at the time, he had also planned to do a photoshoot with Terry Fincher for the Daily Express.

On the day in question I did my best to melt into the background and became a quiet bystander as James toured the base and the ruined control tower, and gazed at the runway. He clearly found it all very affecting. When they offered him a towed glider flight to RAF Coltishall and back, he jumped at the chance, and happily squeezed his lanky frame into the tiny cockpit. While he was away ….. I withdrew for a pub lunch.

James Stewart (1975 Visit to Tibenham)2 — James Stewart, the famous Hollywood actor, seen here on a visit to the old US airbase at Tibenham, Norfolk, England in June 1975 – he was stationed there during the Second World War as a pilot. Photo: Terry Fincher, © The Fincher Files. 2013

Back at Tibenham again, Mr Stewart was ushered into the clubroom for sandwiches and coffee, where he looked at more memorabilia and chatted freely with everyone. Every so often his gentle drawl, ‘ahhh, well,’ and ‘kinda’ and ‘sorta’ could be heard across the crowded room. Relaxed and affable, he was in his element.

James Stewart (1975 Visit to Tibenham_Fincher)3 — James Stewart looking along the old runway of the former U.S. air base at Tibenham, and from where he took off on some 20 combat missions during World War Two. It was here that he served with distinction. Photo: Terry Fincher © The Fincher Files.2013

I was sitting in a corner munching sandwiches when Stewart’s agent came across. ‘He knows who you are,’ he said. ‘He knows you’re a local journalist.’ I envisaged a firing squad. ‘Would you like to meet him?’ Yes, please!

Then James Stewart came across and sat down beside me, balancing a cup and saucer on his knee, and we talked for ten minutes. Deliberately, I ignored my notebook and later on had to struggle to remember some of the quotes. But in a way I was glad. It was not an interview, it was a neighbourly chat, freely offered and entered into.

James Stewart (1975 Visit to Tibenham_Daily Mail) — James Stewart at the derelict U.S. air base at Tibenham in June 1975. In the background, the former Control Tower where it is believed the above image of him, sitting on its rail during the war, was taken. Photo: © As on the above image.

James Stewart was like that. Aimable, interested, and at ease. He talked about Tibenham and how tough he had found it to remember his way around the base. ‘The only thing I can really orientate on is the control tower,’ he said. He talked about his glider flight, and I asked if he had taken the controls. ‘Sure I flew it. Sure I did.’ And then he talked about Norfolk and Norwich and how he hoped one day to visit the city’s American Memorial Library. Then his agent came back, and Stewart rose, shook hands, and wandered back towards the sandwiches.

James Stewart (1975_Glider Flight) — James Stewart being prepared for his glider flight to Coltishall and back in 1975 –*‘”Sure I flew it. Sure I did.”* Photo: Courtesy of Mark Wright.

An Aside: In 2012, a Tibenham housing development was opened, and named “Stewart Close” in memory of James Stewart and his links with the village.

James Stewart visits Norwich and the Norwood Rooms:
“Having revisited his War-time Norfolk air base at Tibenham in 1975, Hollywood film star James Stewart kept his word and joined in with two or three of the subsequent 2nd Air Division reunions. But he did not come back to England as a visiting ‘celeb,’ but as an ordinary ex-flyer, one of the boys. He stayed with his mates in the same hotels, travelled with them by coach as they did the rounds of once-familiar locations, and remained as anonymous as possible within the group. They all liked him for that.

James Stewart (LIbrary_ 1975_EDP) — The former Norwich Central Library in which the American Memorial Library was located. Photo: EDP.

One of his more formal appearances was on the day he and his group went to see the former American Memorial Library – later severely damaged by fire, and replaced by a new Memorial tribute in the Forum – which at the time was housed at the old City library. Here he did pose for photographs, and behaved as a visiting dignitary would in a public role.

I have no doubt, however, that he had his ‘anonymous’ role firmly in mind when he and his colleagues, on another of their four-yearly visits, went to the former Norwood Rooms in Aylsham Road, Norwich – a popular dancing and dining venue at the time – for a veterans’ banquet. My wife and I were also invited, and we saw what happened.

James Stewart (Norwood Rooms) — The former Norwood Rooms, Norwich in which James Stewart made an appearance.

First, he did not sit with the brass and bigwigs on the top table. He stayed at his table on the floor of the hall surrounded by his pals. And second, he was a very reluctant speaker.

When he was finally persuaded to clamber on to the band platform to say a few words, he thanked everyone, including the people of Norfolk, for the welcome they gave the Americans during the War, and he told the story of the powdered eggs. Apparently powdered eggs were the staple breakfast diet in the officers’ mess at Tibenham, and Stewart became heartily sick of them. On other days, however, they were fed fresh farm eggs straight from a local farm. Unfortunately, those were the days on which a bombing mission was scheduled. So that was how they knew what was happening. Dried eggs, and they had their feet on the ground a little longer. Fresh eggs, and it was bombs away!

Later the same evening there occurred one of those rare, unrehearsed and unexpected events that invariably stick in the memory. The band was playing some Glenn Miller favourites, which got the veterans whistling and cheering. It was particularly apt because the film, The Glenn Miller Story, starring Stewart as Miller, was still doing the rounds. The band leader beckoned to Stewart and invited him to take over the conducting role. Stewart shook his head. Then the audience started clapping and shouting, and he reluctantly clambered back on to the stage and led the band through an admittedly slowish version of Moonlight Serenade. It brought the house down.

Some years’ later, our local morning newspaper began a scheme promoting plaques to be fixed to buildings where famous people had appeared. Most of those erected, it seemed to me, related to 1960s and 1970s pop groups. There was nothing to remind passers-by, for example, that Count Basie and his band once appeared at the old Samson & Hercules dance hall in Tombland, Norwich. Or that at the old Norwood Rooms a famous Hollywood film star once clambered on to the stage, borrowed the resident band, and reprised a tiny piece of one of his best-known film roles.

THE END

Sources:
http://flongster.blogspot.com/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jul/14/bruce-robinson-obituary
James “Jimmy” Stewart | Norfolk’s American Connections

NOTICE: ‘Norfolk Tales, Myths & More!’ is a ‘non-commercial’ Site seeking only to be informative and educational on topics broadly related to the history and heritage of the County of Norfolk in the U.K. In pursuing this aim, we endeavour, where possible, to obtain permission to use an owner’s material. However, for various reasons, (i.e. identification of, and means of communicating with an owner), contact can sometimes be difficult or impossible to established. NTM&M never attempts to claim ownership of such material; ensuring at all times that any known and appropriate ‘credits’ and ‘links’ back to our sources are always given in our articles. No violation of any copyright or trademark material is intentional.

Myngs: The ‘Pivateer’ from Salthouse!

By Haydn Brown.

On 20 March 2007, the conservators of Norfolk County Council completed the restoration of some historic 16th-century records to their former glory; these had been buried in a village churchyard at the outbreak of the Second World War to prevent them falling into German hands. These documents confirmed much about Vice-Admiral Sir Christopher Myngs’s Norfolk origins and featured in a public exhibition in 2007. Included in this exhibition were items relating to the Salthouse hero, such as his baptism which appears in the Salthouse register for 1625. Other exhibits on display, apart from Myngs’s baptism entry, were deeds relating to the property which he purchased in Salthouse, a copy of a letter which he wrote on board ship, and a transcript of a description of Myngs’s funeral.

Sir Chris Myngs (Lowestoft_RMG) — Flagmen of Lowestoft: Vice-Admiral Sir Christopher Myngs, 1625-66. Image: Royal Museums Greenwich,

From these, and other records it can be deduced, with no 100% certainty you understand, that apart from young Christopher Myngs (1625- 1666) actually being born in Salthouse, Norfolk, his birthplace was believed to have been in the Manor House. He was the son of John Myngs, shoemaker, who had been married at Salthouse on 28 September 1623. The Register also recording that John Myngs was “as of the Parish of St. Katherine in the City of London”. It appears that John Myngs, in turn, was the kinsman or son of Nicholas Myness [sic], a son of Christopher, who was baptised on 8 March 1585 at Blakeney (Marshall, Genealogist, 38-9). – “a good old Norfolk family” according to Bloomfield in his ‘Topographical History of Norfolk’.

Sir Chris Myngs (Birthplace_Val Fiddian 2005)2 — The Manor House in which Christopher Myngs was born in 1625. Image (c) Val Fiddian 2005.

The maiden name of John Myngs’s wife, and Christopher’s mother, was Parr, Her family may also have owned the Manor House. That being the case then the following extract, taken from F.N. Stagg’s ’History of Salthouse’ – researched in the 1930s, would be of interest:

“The Parrs, I think we can safely say, lived in the Manor House—in which case Sir Christopher Myngs was born there. When the latter acquired some small degree of wealth, he bought a property in Salthouse and everything points to it having been what is now called the Hall [here there is a large asterisk in the margin and a ‘no’, and Stagg’s words ‘what is now called the Hall’ crossed out. The handwriting that is not Ketton-Cremer’s and may be that of Stagg himself supplants it with: ‘The building in Long Chats Lane [Long Church Lane] opposite the Hall’. If so, it must have been in that [Manor] House that his daughter Mary died in 1697-8, but Myngs’ second wife Rebecca must have disposed of it probably soon afterwards to one of her husband’s maternal relations, the Parrs.”

There may be little doubt that Cristopher Myngs was the “son of a shoemaker”, for even Samuel Pepys himself says so in his letter of (28 March 1665…) –‘ that his father was indeed a shoemaker and was consulted by the Navy Board about the uses to which leather shavings might be put.’ Bloomfield’s reference that the Myngs family may have been of “a good old Norfolk family” need not mean that Christopher’s father could not have been a shoemaker; Christopher did go to sea as a ‘mere cabin boy’…… proud that he rose in rank due to merit’. However, all this may be erroneous, along with Pepys’s story of Myngs being of ‘humble birth’ – this term possibly an explanation for Myngs’s popularity at the time? More importantly perhaps is the belief that Christopher Myngs was also a relative of the future Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell who was born, some 25 years after Myngs, at the nearby village of Cockthorpe. Here, there are strange coincidences between Myngs and Shovell – and they have little to do with the possibility that the two men may have been related.

Sir_Cloudesley_Shovell,_1650-1707 — Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell. Image: Wikipedia

Myngs was reputed to have been of ‘humble birth’, son of a shoemaker, possibly related to a knight, and went to sea as a cabin boy! Sir Cloudesley Shovell was reputed to have been that knight – but the latter was also born, or so it was said, into only ‘middling circumstances’ and was ‘apprenticed to a mean trade……of a shoe-maker’, and also went to sea as a cabin boy.’ What strange coincidences! One could be forgiven for wondering whether it was a prerequisite for 17^th century Norfolk lad’s to first serve St Crispin [Patron Saint of Shoemakers] in order to obtain successful entry into the British Royal Navy!

So, as a young boy, Myngs may well have joined the British Royal Navy to serve first as a ‘mere cabin boy’, then as an ‘ordinary seaman’; but he did rise rapidly through the ranks thereafter, and this could well have been due to family connections? It has been also suggested that another reason for his rapid career rise was because, as his career progressed, he sided with Parliament and was its supporter; not to mention that the Council of State thought highly of him and, he was also recommended for promotion by the flag officers under whom he served. Myngs was also a friend of Sir John Narborough who was descended from an old Norfolk family. He married Elizabeth Hill, whose father was John Hill, a Commissioner of the Navy. After her husband’s death, Lady Narborough married none other than Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell. Well, Well Well!

Battle_of_Scheveningen_Jan_Abrahamsz._Beerstraten) — *The Battle of Scheveningen* (10 August 1653) during the First Angl0-Dutch War. Painting by Jan Abrahamsz Beerstraaten.

Myngs first appeared prominently during the first First Anglo-Dutch War (1652-1654) as captain of the ‘Elisabeth’ when he captured a Dutch convoy, including two men-of-war taken as prizes. From 1653 to 1655 he continued to command the ‘Elisabeth’ before being given command of the 44-gun frigate ‘Marston Moor’; whose crew happened to be on the verge of mutiny! After quelling the crew’s insubordination, the ship was sent to Port Royal to safeguard England’s new possession – Jamaica. Here, he became the subcommander of the naval flotilla on the Jamaica Station (Royal Navy), with the ‘Marston Moor’ as his flagship. Not bad for a lad from Salthouse.

On his arrival in Jamaica, Myngs assessed that the best defence was to take war to the Spanish. However, the ‘Marston Moor’ was the only English warship available so he decided to recruit local buccaneers. By using the tactic of attacking instead of defending, his buccaneers were to defeat countless Spanish attempts to capture Port Royal. Every potential attack was repulsed before it could begin; then Myngs would successfully counter-attack and regularly defeat the enemy ports nearby. The Spanish government considered him a common pirate and mass murderer, protesting to no avail to the English government of Oliver Cromwell about his conduct. Maybe the Lord Protector of the British Isles was influenced by the opinions that ‘one man’s pirate is another man’s privateer’, and that the Spanish interpretation of Myngs’s behaviour came from a nation that was given half the world by the Pope to rape and pillage. Also, the towns that were sacked by Myngs were cruelly controlled by the Spanish as they loaded their ships with gold. There was also some evidence circulating that suggested that some local populations welcomed the Spanish being given a bloody nose in return!

In February 1658, he returned to Jamaica as naval commander, acting as a commerce raider (privateer) during the Anglo-Spanish War. During these actions he received a reputation for unnecessary cruelty, sacking and massacring entire towns in command of whole fleets of buccaneers. Later in 1658, after beating off a Spanish attack, he raided the coast of South-America; but failed to capture a Spanish treasure fleet despite having a plan of hiding off the coast in wait. Unfortunately for Myngs the timing was not good because most of his fleet’s crew were ashore obtaining fresh water; this was when the Spanish treasure fleet appeared. The Marston Moor and another ship passed through the Spanish fleet and hung on its rear before unsuccessfully attempting to scatter them.

Myngs then proceeded to raid Tolú and Santa Marta, both in Columbia, again with only moderate results. It was then Myngs decided to change tactics. Previously, his large group of ships had pre-warned the local population who would retreat inland with their possessions. But he now divided his squadron into smaller flotillas and so increase the chance of surprise. He also would pursue them inland, sometimes using land troops as marines. Myngs then used his new tactics on three ports on the coast of Venezuela – Cumana, Puerto Cabello and Coro in present-day Venezuela. The latter contained a Spanish silver shipment valued at 250,000 English pounds – roughly £32.5million today. However, Myngs decided to split the money with his buccaneers to keep them interested for future expeditions, rather than with the Governor, Edward D’Oyley, and the English treasury. On his return to Port Royal, D’Oyley had him arrested on charges of embezzlement and acts of piracy, returning him to England on the Marston Moor in 1660 to face trial. However, in the confusion of the restoration of Charles II at the time, the charges were dropped.

Sir Chris Myngs (HMS Centurion_Wikipedia) — HMS Centurion. Image: Wikipedia.

In fact, the Restoration government retained him in his command and, in August 1662, sent Myngs back to Jamaica, as commander of the HMS Centurion, to resume his activities as commander of the Jamaica Station – despite the fact that the war with Spain had ended. This was part of a covert English policy to undermine the Spanish dominion of the area, by destroying as much as possible of the infrastructure. In 1662 Myngs decided that the best way to accomplish this was to employ the full potential of the buccaneers by promising them the opportunity for unbridled plunder and rapine. He had the complete support of the new Governor, Lord Thomas Hickman Windsor, who fired a large contingent of soldiers to fill Myngs’s ranks with disgruntled men. In the October of 1662, the buccaneers’ first target, Santiago in Cuba, fell easily despite its strong defences and much loot was brought back.

Other legendary buccaneers of the time, such as Henry Morgan and Edward Mansvelt, admired Myngs’ personal abilities and success and in 1663 some, including Morgan, accompanied him on next big expedition, as did many other Dutch and French soldiers. In fact, there were some 1400 buccaneers gathered in Port Royal; these were what could be termed semi-lawful sailors and soldiers but to Spain, they were just ordinary pirates whilst to England buccaneers were a lot more than that. These buccaneers were to be aboard a powerful fleet of 14 ships which had been assembled for the next assault on the Spanish which would be the attack on the Bay of Campeche and San Francisco. At one point during these attacks, Myngs was severely wounded and compelled to leave Edward Mansvelt in charge of his fleet and pirate army.

As expected, these raids again outraged the Spanish, who denounced Myngs as a common pirate and a mass murderer with a reputation for unnecessary cruelty; they threatened war with England and this forced King Charles to send a new governor Thomas Modyford to Jamaica with orders to stop the raids. The outcome was that this was to be the last Caribbean raid for hot-blooded Captain Myngs; he returned to England in 1664, still ambitious, but yet to be fully recovered from the injuries he received during the attacks on Campeche and San Francisco. Despite all that had happened to Myngs, the Government still promoted him to Vice-Admiral of the White under the Lord High Admiral James Stuart, Duke of York and Albany. Myngs flew his flag during the Second Anglo-Dutch War at the Battle of Lowestoft in 1665, and for his share in that action he was knighted.

Sir Chris Myngs (Battle of Lowestoft_Adrianen Van Diest) — *The Battle of Lowestoft*, Adriaen Van Diest Image: Wikipedia.

In the same year Myngs then served under Edward Montagu, 1st Earl of Sandwich, as Vice-Admiral of the Blue then, after the disgrace of Montagu, he served under the next supreme fleet commander, George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle. Myngs was on detachment with Prince Rupert’s Green squadron, when on 11 June 1666 the great Four Days’ Battle began; however, he was able to return to the main fleet in time to take part on the final day of this battle. Unfortunately, when Myngs flotilla was surrounded by that of Vice-Admiral Johan de Liefde he was mortally wounded by musket balls fired by a sharpshooter when his ‘Victory’ was challenged by De Liefde’s flagship, the ‘Ridderschap van Holland’.

Myngs was shot through the throat. He refused to leave the deck, even to have the wound dressed, but remained standing, compressing it with his fingers till he fell, mortally wounded by another bullet which, passing through his neck, lodged in his shoulder (Brandt, Vie de Michel de Ruiter, pp. 359, 363; State Papers, Dom. Charles II, clviii. 48; Pepys, 8 June 1666). The wound was, it was hoped on the 7th, ‘without danger;’ but on the 10th Pepys recorded the news of the admiral’s death. As he was buried in London on the 13th, it would seem probable that he died at his own house in Goodman’s Fields, Whitechapel. Pepys, who was at the funeral, noted that no person of quality was there……… ‘The truth is,’ continued Pepys, ‘Sir Christopher Myngs was a very stout man, and a man of great parts, and most excellent tongue among ordinary men.’ Myngs it seems had brought his family into a way of being great; but dying at this time, his memory and name will be quite forgot in a few months……. nor any of his name be the better by it; he having not had time to Will any estate, but is dead poor rather than rich.’

Sir Chris Myngs (St Mary Matfelon Church) — Christopher Myngs was buried in St Mary Matfelon Church, Whitechapel. This view of the church is around 1830, after Thomas Hosmer Shepherd © Trustees of the British Museum,

Postscript 1:
The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 26 October 1665

Up, and, leaving my guests to make themselves ready, I to the office, and thither comes Sir Jer. Smith and Sir Christopher Mings to see me, being just come from Portsmouth and going down to the Fleete. Here I sat and talked with them a good while and then parted, only Sir Christopher Mings and I together by water to the Tower; and I find him a very witty well-spoken fellow, and mighty free to tell his parentage, being a shoemaker’s son, to whom he is now going, and I to the ’Change, where I hear how the French have taken two and sunk one of our merchant-men in the Streights [sic], and carried the ships to Toulon; so that there is no expectation but we must fall out with them. The ’Change pretty full, and the town begins to be lively again, though the streets very empty, and most shops shut. So back again I and took boat and called for Sir Christopher Mings at St. Katharine’s, who was followed with some ordinary friends, of which, he says, he is proud, and so down to Greenwich, the wind furious high, and we with our sail up till I made it be taken down. I took him, it being 3 o’clock, to my lodgings [Mrs Clerke’s home] and did give him a good dinner and so parted, he being pretty close to me as to any business of the fleete, knowing me to be a servant of my Lord Sandwich’s.

Observations of Pepys’s Entry:
Why did he Myngs tell Pepys that he was ‘a shoemaker’s son’? To admit to a very low birth, in a class-conscious age, was most unusual, especially when he was a Knight by then. Did Pepys keep quiet about his own father being a tailor – which would have been of a higher social standing than a cobbler, referring instead to his father as living “on our estate in the country”. Here, perhaps Pepys was bragging about his closeness to Lord Sandwich, so Christopher Myngs throws in a line “Oh I am only the son of a shoemaker” as if teasing Pepys – the English have always been masters of the understatement! Much depends on how far Pepys wanted to appear. He was the son of a tailor, but also cousin to Lord Sandwich. Perhaps Pepys is a little too pompous a climber to indulge in irony, Myngs on the other hand is obviously more comfortable in in own skin and “with some ordinary friends, of which, he says, he is proud”!

Postscript 2:
The above account of Christopher Myngs’s life and career is very imperfect. The actual details of Myngs’s career are only to be found in the Calendars of State Papers, Domestic; and, more fully, in the State Papers themselves. There are also many notices of him in Pepys’s Diary, for it can be said that he was a friend of Myngs.

THE END

Sources:
http://www.salthousehistory.co.uk/index.html#stq=myngs&stp=1
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1665/10/26/
http://www.thewayofthepirates.com/famous-buccaneers/christopher-myngs/
https://earlofmanchesters.co.uk/cromwells-pirate-the-incredible-naval-career-of-christopher-myngs/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Myngs
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Dictionary_of_National_Biography_volume_40.djvu/18

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A Murder at Honingham Hall

By Haydn Brown.

Honingham Hall – A Brief Background History:
The small village of Honingham, together with the site of its former Hall, is situated in the English county of Norfolk and located 8 miles to the west of Norwich, along the A47 trunk road. The Hall itself was originally commissioned by Sir Thomas Richardson, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench in 1605. After passing down the Richardson family it was bought by Richard Baylie, President of St John’s College, Oxford, in about 1650 and was then acquired by William Townsend, Member of Parliament for Great Yarmouth in about 1735, before passing down the Townsend family. In 1887 it was inherited by Ailwyn Fellowes, 1st Baron Ailwyn and in 1924 by Ronald Fellowes, 2nd Baron Ailwyn who sold it in 1935.

The front of the former Honingham Hall just before it was demolished. Credit Archant.

The Hall was then bought by Sir Eric Teichman, a diplomat who, at the age of 60 years, retired there. At some point during World War II he allowed a large section of the Hall to become a Barnardo’s home, retaining a substantial section of it for himself, his wife, their cook and a small retinue of staff. He must have anticipated a peaceful retirement but, ironically, after so many dangers and difficulties faced on his past travels, Sir Eric died in December 1944 from a bullet to the head. It was fired by an American soldier who was stationed at the nearby US Airforce base; he was caught, along with a fellow soldier, poaching on Sir Eric’s estate. Sir Eric was buried in the St Andrew’s Churchyard where his grave may still be seen. The house closed as a Barnardo’s home in December 1966 and was demolished shortly afterwards.

Sir-Eric-Teichman (Honingham Hall)2 — The front of the former Honingham Hall in its prime. Image: National Trust.

Sir Eric Teichman:
He, the victim of this unfortunate crime, had been a British diplomat and orientalist who was educated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University. At the time of his death, Sir Eric was serving as adviser to the British Embassy at Chungking.

Sir-Eric-Teichman1 — **Sir Eric Teichman** GCMG CIE (born **Erik Teichmann**; 16 January 1884 – 3 December 1944 in Norfolk, England. Photo: Wikipedia.

Teichman had been described as “one of British diplomacy’s dashing characters”, flamboyantly enigmatic and explorer-cum-special agent some claimed; he had embarked on a number of “special missions” and “fact-finding journeys” throughout Central Asia, as early as before World War I. In 1943 he began on what would be his final foreign journey from Chongqing. After caravanning as far as Lanzhou, his truck continued along the outer Silk Road, across the Tarim basin, and over the Pamir Mountains to New Delhi. From there he flew back to England where, only a few days later he met his death.

The Perpetrators, Murder and its consequences :
It was on Sunday 3 December 1944 when Private George E. Smith, aged 28 years, of Pittsburgh and Private Leonard S. Wijpacha of Detroit, USA, took a pair of M-1 Carbines from the armoury on their base with the intention of ‘going hunting‘ as they would have described it. Hunting for what with such powerful rifles? The two soldiers were probably the last people on earth to have given this a thought as they set out. It was early afternoon as the two entered Sir Eric’s Teichman’s estate at Honingham and were to pass close by the house as they scanned the trees and undergrowth thereabouts fpr their prey.

Sir-Eric-Teichman (M-1 Carbine) — An example of an Americal WW2 M-1 Carbine. Photo: MJ Militaria.

It can only be imagined what Sir Eric Teichman was doing inside. Lunch was over and quiet would have descended on the big house. It was quite probable that he sat before a cosy fire, more than content with life. But all this certainly changed from the moment he heard the sound of shots outside. It is more than reasonable to suppose that this disturbance would have annoyed him and, being the sort of character he was, he would have gruffly risen from his armchair, mindful of going out to stop this “damned poaching.” As he left the Hall, he told his wife that he had heard some shots in the nearby wood and was going to investigate!

At the moment when Sir Eric was storming out of the Hall towards the sound of gunfire, Smith and Wijpacha were positioned behind two adjacent trees, taking pot shots at one particular squirrel which was jumping from branch to branch trying not to be the next casualty. The two poachers were almost facing each other when Smith noticed ‘this old man’ approaching from behind Wijpacha, calling out “Wait a minute… what are your names?” That was the moment when Smith shot Sir Eric through his right cheek, with the bullet exiting by way of the left shoulder-blade, shattering his jaw on the way through. If Sir Eric had been more upright, his height would have been nearer 6ft, but he was stooped at an angle of about 30 degrees as the result of an old injury caused long ago through a riding accident. Nevertheless, when he was shot, he fell on to one of his arms and seemingly died quickly through shock and a haemorrhage from the bullet wound. The next action of the two soldiers was telling – neither went over to the body but instead made a hasty departure back to base,

Being winter, night fell early and when Sir Eric had still not returned a worried Lady Ellen organised a search party to comb the grounds. It turned out to be a long search in the dark and quite late when they found the master, huddled in bracken some 300 yards from the house. Thereafter, events moved quickly, the police were called, the bullet extracted and confirmed as one fired from a .38 carbine; then the local American airfield was sealed off, and within a very short time Smith and Wijpacha were arrested. The swiftness of their arrest would not have been surprising when it was later revealed that Smith himself had been court-marshalled eight times previously; he must have been high on the list of suspects! He almost immediately confessed with the words “I shot him”, but then retracted this at his trial, arguing that it had been made under duress.

Both Smith and Wijpacha were subsequently court-martialled at USAAF Attlebridge, which commenced on 8 January 1945, and lasted five days due to the repeated hospitalisation of Smith. As part of the preparations for the trial, Smith had been subjected to an earlier psychiatric examination from Major Thomas March of the US Hospital at Wymondham College in Norfolk.

It was sometime close to 9 and 10 January 1945 when The Times newspaper reported on the arrests, Smith’s formal charge of the murder of Sir Eric Teichman and his ninth court-marshal! Amongst many other items of detail, the newspaper highlighted Smith’s statement in which it was revealed that he:

“was single and had joined the army in 1942; to date, he had been court-martialled eight times. With regard to the alleged shooting, Smith said that another soldier had asked him to go hunting through the woods. “Some of us had been drinking beer…. I drank about 15 coffee cups of beer; we saw a lot of blackbirds around and we shot some of them. We went up into the woods. I saw a squirrel, and fired one clip of 15 shots. One of us said ‘There’s an old man’. I think I saw him first and made that remark. I don’t remember the old man saying anything to me, nor do I remember saying anything to him. I raised my gun to my side, pointed it at the old man and fired one shot. I saw the man fall.”

By the 12 January 1945 The Times had again followed the story up with a report on Smith’s mental condition at the time, an examination which had been conducted by a Major L Alexander, a specialist in neurology and psychiatry, attached to a United States Army hospital in England. Alexander said that Smith’s [mental] condition could not be successfully faked. In his opinion, [Smith] was suffering from:

“a constitutional psychopathic condition, emotional instability, and an explosive, primitive, sadistic aggressiveness…… His mental deficiency was border-line, and his mental age was about nine years…… His condition was a mentally defective homicidal degenerate…. and Smith acted almost on automatic impulse.”

The Times also reported, from within the report’s findings, a revealing set of statistics about the United States Army. In a reply to a question, Major Alexander said that:

“…….the average mental age of the Army in the last war [WWI] was 12 – That figure was artificial as it excluded Officers and N.C.O’s. The average age now [WW2] was between 13 and 14. The vast majority of enlisted men was in the 14 group.”

Major Alexander went on to say that Smith knew it was wrong to kill, and that:

“a psychopath such as he fell into the group which the law regarded as sane. In his opinion, Smith “should be removed from society” for the rest of his life! This apparently final remark was followed by a statement from a Dr John Vincent Morris, of the Little Plumstead Hall Institution, Norwich, a specialist in mental diseases. He said that Smith was an anti-social type, who deliberately refused to conform to army rules and orders……Smith showed no signs of emotion or regret about the shooting and spoke about it “as a man talked of killing a rabbit.” It was Dr Morris’s opinion that Smith fired the shot irrespective of consequences, because possibly “Sir Eric interfered with his [Smith] pleasure, and he acted under an uncontrollable impulse.”

Little Plumstead Hall Institution (Billy Smith) — Little Plumstead Hall Institution, Norwich. Photo: Billy Smith.

The outcome was innevitable, Smith was convicted and received the ultimate death penalty; his companion, Private Wijpacha charged with being an accessory to murder, was not sentenced to death. It followed that Smith was imprisoned at Shepton Mallet Prison in Dorset to await execution. But why a British prison in the south of England?

Sir-Eric-Teichman (Shepton Mallet) — The entrance to Shepton Mallet Prison in Dorset. Photo: Wikipedia.

Sir-Eric-Teichman (Shepton Mallet)2 — Inside perimater of Shepton Mallet Prison in Dorset. Photo: Mirror. Co.

Between mid-1942 and September 1945 part of Shepton Mallet Prison was taken over by the American government for use as a military prison and as the place of execution for American servicemen convicted under the provisions of the Visiting Forces Act (1942) which allowed for American Military justice to be enacted on British soil. It was staffed entirely by American military personnel during this period when a total of 18 American servicemen were executed at the prison – sixteen were hanged and two were shot by a firing squad. Of those executed, nine were convicted of murder, six of rape, and three of other crimes which carried the death penalty. To enable these executions to take place a new brick-built extension had been added to one of the prison’s wings; it was a structure that looked totally out of place against the weathered stone walls of the old prison building. Inside, a new British style gallows was installed on the first floor of the building and two cells within the main building converted into a condemned cell. Hangman Thomas William Pierrepoint conducted most of these executions, assisted by his nephew, Albert Pierrepoint.

Sir-Eric-Teichman (Thomas Pierepoint) — Thomas William Pierrepoint – Hangman.

It so happened that Private George Smith’s appeals against the death penalty were denied and he was hanged at within the ‘Execution Shed’ at Shepton Mallet Prison on 8 May 1945, (VE Day), despite requests for clemency, including one from Lady Teichman. It was Thomas Pierrepoint, assisted by Herbert Morris, who carried out this execution. It took 22 minutes of ‘suspension’ before Smith was pronounced dead.

Sir-Eric-Teichman (Exedcution Shed (inside)

(The former ‘execution shed’ at Shepton Mallet Prison where Private George Smith was hanged. Photos: Wikipedia.)

Afterwards, he was temporary buried at Brookwood American cemetery; that was until 1949 when his remains, along with every other WW2 executed American servicemen, was moved to Plot E in Oise-Aisne American Cemetery in France; Smith’s grave is number 52 in row 3. At this point, a fuller explanation as to why executed American servicemen were buried in France is necessary.

Sir-Eric-Teichman (cemetery)2 — The entrance to the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery in France. Photo: Wikimedia.

Initially, the remains of American prisoners executed at Shepton Mallet were, as a matter of course, interred in unmarked graves at “Plot X” in Brookwood American Cemetery – also known as the London Necropolis. But in 1949 all eighteen bodies were exhumed. With the exception of the remains of David Cobb which were repatriated to his hometown, the remaining 17 were reburied in ‘Plot E’ at Oise-Aisne American Cemetery and Memorial in France – a private section intended for the “dishonoured dead”. The cemetery is home to the remains of 96 American military prisoners, all of whom were executed by hanging or firing squad. Significantly, no US flag is permitted to fly over the section of the cemetery where they lie, and those beneath the soil lie with their backs turned to the main cemetery on the other side of the road. Their final resting place has been described as a “house of shame” and a “perfect anti-memorial”.

Sir-Eric-Teichman (cemetery) — Plot E for the “dishonoured dead” is across the road on the outside of the main cemetery. Image: Google.

As for Sir Eric Teichman, he was buried in the churchyard of St Andrew’s Church at Honingham; his grave being in the corner plot, directly in line with the now-demolished Honingham Hall. His widow, Lady Ellen Teichman, was buried in the same grave in 1969. The memorial there to the Teichman’s carries no mention to 3 December 1944 – or the murder!

Sir-Eric-Teichman (St Andrews) — St Andrew’s Church, Honingham, Photo: © Copyright Evelyn Simak

THE END

Some Sources:
http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/sheptonm.html
http://thefifthfield.com/fifth-field/albert-pierrepoints-execution-logbook/

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