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Miss Julia Colson of Swanage

She was a kindly, good-hearted lady, a stalwart of the church, confident and not shy in letting her opinions be known. A woman of independent means, Julia Colson knew that with privilege came responsibilities. In his seventy-ninth year Thomas Masters Hardy (1887-1976), the son of a Swanage builder, thought it important to write down his memories of this “grand old lady.” As a boy he had attended classes run by her and she clearly played a part in shaping his life and the lives of many other young men of Swanage.

Her father was the Reverend John Morton Colson who for forty years was the Rector of St. Peter’s, Dorchester. He married Julia Story of Stockton, Durham, at Stockton on the 27th of April 1826. Julia was their first child, baptised at St Mary’s, Piddlehinton on the 21st of March 1830; she had one sibling, a brother, Thomas Morton Colson, who was baptised in the same church on the 10th of May 1833. (See our story Thomas Morton Colson 1833-1908 in the Swanage Category.)

Her grandfather was the Reverend Thomas Morton Colson (1764-1830), he took over the position of Rector of Studland from his father, The Reverend Thomas Colson, following his death in 1784. The middle name of Morton is in remembrance of Jane Morton, the second wife of the Reverend Thomas Colson.

Census records from 1841 to 1861 reveal the family home was at Swanage and subsequent census returns tell us that following the death of her father in 1863 and her mother’s passing two years later she continued to live in the town until her death in the closing month of 1916. Mr Hardy recalls: “she was a great church worker and used to run a Coal Club and Blanket Club for Swanage and Herston.”

In those days Swanage had a fleet of ketch-rigged sailing vessels, taking away stone, bringing back coal and building materials as well as engaging in other coastal work. Julia Colson was the local agent for the Shipwrecked Mariners Society and she is remembered for attending the wreck of the Netto at Peveril Point ledges in 1900 and making all the arrangements for the welfare of the captain and his crew. When Mr William Brown, Coxswain of the Swanage lifeboat, lost his life in a gale during 1895 it was Julia Colson who broke the news to his widow and family and some years later she had to tell Mrs Brown that her youngest son had been drowned when a sailing boat was run down off Swanage by the pleasure steamer Stirling Castle.
 
For well over fifty years Julia Colson ran a class for teenage boys and taught them reading, writing and drawing. Mr Hardy remembers she had text books on trades and encouraged her pupils to take up subjects connected with their trades, such as masonry and building construction. Mr Hardy recalls “there were piles of drawings of church tracery windows, arches, buildings, also ships and boats – mostly etchings these latter – and she could tell you the names of former lads who copied these same drawings. I think every boy who went to the classes copied the particular etching called ‘The Wolf, Brig of War, off Dover, flying signal flags.”

The classes commenced in the autumn and went on until the spring.  The Sunday classes lasted only half-an-hour as Julia Colson knew the lads liked to take a walk along the cliffs. A dinner was held at the end of each year when roast beef, two large veal and ham pies and other treats were served and the best drawing by each lad was exhibited. There was no charge for the classes; Julia Colson provided everything and each Christmas she gave each lad the Parish Church Almanac and also a pair of mittens that she had knitted herself. There were book prizes for the best class attendance. Mr Hardy recorded an occasion when he could not decide which of his drawings he would put forward for the “party.”  He told a chum that he “would toss a coin.“ Miss Colson overheard him and told him in a stern voice “I will have no gambling in this house” and selected the drawing herself.

She kept a library and her students would take out books, returning them on Fridays. She employed a young lad to work in the garden and run errands for her and he would take books to the lighthouse-keepers and bring back the ones lent previously. On a fine summer’s evening she would have ‘her boy’ row her boat to the stone quay where she would board and he would row her around the bay.

Mr Hardy remembers her arriving at church one Sunday and seeing a silk top hat placed on the font – she knocked it off with her umbrella as she sailed down the aisle. On another occasion the parson’s sermon was rather long, so Miss Colson announced she had to get home to her dinner and left the church.
 
Mr Hardy tells us: “If we met Miss Colson outdoors, we had to give her the naval salute and she would promptly return it, but she wore dark blue glasses and looked straight in front. However, she would reprimand a boy if, thinking she did not see him, he did not salute.

A Miss Bartlett of Wareham was a life-long friend and the two ladies visited each other for their summer holidays. Julia Colson died during the First World War when some of her lads were away in the services but they were well represented by many of her older ‘old boys’ who were present at her funeral.

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