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2010:

Nellie Titterington – Maid of Max Gate Pt.2

Sep 12th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Whatever happened at Max Gate now that her master was dead, Nellie knew she would not be working there for much longer; she would have been thinking about how to keep her pregnancy a private matter.

Nellie’s employment at Max Gate was full time and she lived in. Her hours of work being 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. with one half day off during the week and she had either Sunday morning or Sunday afternoon off  leaving little time for romance. Besides her employer the only other male in the household was the gardener Mr. Bert Stephens: he didn’t live in. There was a procession of distinguished men who regularly visited Hardy and later in her life Nellie commented about some of them quite warmly but most likely the father of her child was a lad from Dorchester. Whoever he was Nellie kept his identity to herself.

The widowed Florence Hardy shut up Max Gate and moved to London where in the closing days of August 1928 she took a flat or suite of rooms at the Adelphi Terrace. She wrote to Nellie telling her she needed the companionship of someone she could trust– Nellie later said this was quite a change of heart for, at Max Gate, Florence trusted no one. Mrs Hardy would have been surprised and taken aback not to have received a reply to her offer of a position.

For Nellie this was a dream job, an opportunity to be reacquainted with her mistress’s celebrity friends from the literary and artistic worlds, albeit from below stairs. So what kept the maid from skipping to the post box with a letter of acceptance?

While Florence was moving into her London accommodation her maid was in Dorset County Hospital, Dorchester where, on the 28th of August 1928, she gave birth to a baby girl.

A member of the extended family has told me “…her family wouldn’t let her keep the child and it was given to….” The birth was registered on September 20th and a certificate issued by the Registrar Mr F.J.Kendall.  In the margin of the certificate is a one word declaration signed by the Superintendent Registrar, Mr Henry Osmond Lock: the word is “Adopted.”  The arrangements for the adoption were well advanced before the arrival of the child who filled a gap in the lives of the adopting couple and ensured the child would be out of sight if not out of mind.

Nellie’s dramatically altered circumstances meant that later when she opened her front door and saw the mistress of Max Gate on the step she could accept Florence Hardy’s repeated offer to join her in London. The move from the steady pace of life in the County town to all the excitement and hurly-burly of life in the capital was just the tonic Nellie needed and she would be free of all the knowing glances and gossiping neighbours speculating in whispers about who was the father of her child.

In case you are wondering, Nellie named her daughter Florence Maxina Eunice, which tells us something of how she felt about her time with the Hardy’s, but later in life she said her days at Max Gate were not the happiest of her life. The inclusion of Eunice in the child’s name confirms Nellie knew who was going to bring up her child. We are left to wonder if Nellie followed her daughter’s life from a distance and if she knew the girl married and had four children.

The extent of Hardy’s fortune came as a complete shock to the two women but the gaiety of London life brought about a dramatic change in Florence. She became an altogether happier, less inhibited person, able to spend her miserly husband’s legacy. During this time Florence forged a friendship with Sir James Barrie, for whom Nellie would cook simple dinners at their flat. When a later quarrel ended the friendship with the author of Peter Pan, Florence and Nellie returned to Max Gate and soon after Nellie left Max Gate for good.

In the spring of 1941 Nellie’s mother passed away. Later in her life Nellie recalls that Hardy would often ask her to post letters for him at the General Post Office in South Street, Dorchester. Florence Hardy used to apologise for this cycle journey into the town, but Nellie didn’t mind because it gave her a chance to look in on her Mother for a few minutes.

In one edition of the Dorset Yearbook there is an article, which is the story in effect a biographic testimonial as related to a woman called Hilary Townsend, by Nellie towards the end of her life when in service caring for the author’s invalid mother. Despite becoming more infirm through arthritis she rarely left the old woman’s side, and still carried out all the domestic duties. One day she told her charge’s daughter: “If I stopped coming to you ma’am I shall die – I know I shall.”

Indeed, her words proved to be a self-fulfilling prophesy. One Saturday in 1977 Nellie Titterington missed her regular visit, saying that she was unwell. By Monday she was dead. The following day, the 24th of May, her younger sister Margaret Grace Hocking went to the Registrar’s office to record that Ellen Elizabeth Titterington a domestic servant of 1 Marie Road, Dorchester, had died.

So departed a highly intelligent, ever cheerful, unforgettable domestic servant who would be delighted to know that people are still talking and writing about her.

——————
[We have looked at the Hardy biographies (Seymour-Smith, Millgate & Tomalin,) the Monographs, Dr Marguerite Roberts work ‘Florence Hardy & the Max Gate Circle’ and Hilary Townsend’s article in the Dorset Year Book series as well as civil registration and census records and found nothing to suggest Florence Hardy knew about Nellie’s child.]

[We have placed a photograph of Miss Titterington in the photo section.]

Nellie Titterington – Maid of Max Gate Pt.1

Sep 7th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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She was a domestic in a class apart: a kindly, no-nonsense servant living towards the tail end of the age of domestic service. But Nellie Titterington was not just another woman in service in a household of the gentry or privileged upper class. She was privy to the private life and foibles of Dorset’s – and one of the worlds – most noted literary figures. For Nellie was the last, the longest serving, most understanding and probably the best parlour maid Thomas Hardy employed in his household.

Nellie Tetterington’s story begins with her birth on the 30th of March 1899 at 5 Brownden Terrace, Fordington, Dorchester. She was named Ellen Elizabeth but known as Nellie. Her parents were John Joseph and Mary Ada (nee Masters) Titterington: her father, a house painter was born in Malta in 1871; he was the son of an Irish soldier who was stationed there. Her mother was born in 1874 at Tolpuddle.  Nellie had an older brother, William, and three younger siblings Doris, Henry and Margaret.

Nellie is likely to have been a bright, high-spirited and pretty child, active and interested in everything and everyone around her. Certainly as an adult she had an interesting life, which she talked about almost incessantly. Nellie was said to have been “alert and neat, with a clean, well cared for complexion and white hair set off with hats.”

What is known is that in the last year of the First World War, when she had just turned eighteen, young Miss Titterington had made up her mind to enlist in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. Having filled out her application documents she left them on the mantelpiece, intending to discuss her move beforehand with her mother. Next day however, an interfering aunt had it in mind to post off the forms without any prior consultation or authorisation from her niece. Only a week later Nellie was amazed to find call-up papers in her letterbox; soon after she was to find herself serving as an orderly to a WAAF officer.

Following the Armistice, Nellie remained in the officer’s service as housekeeper after the officer had moved to a new home in Kent. But Dorset-born people living away from their native patch are especially prone to homesickness, and the officer’s servant was no exception. Put simply, in Nellie’s case the pangs of loneliness she felt emanated from the feeling that she was too far and remote from her beloved mother.

Then in 1921 Nellie’s prospects rose dramatically. Through an acquaintance, Alice Riglar, who appears to have been in service at Maxgate, Thomas Hardy’s country home near Dorchester, she learnt that the position of parlour maid at the house had fallen vacant. Alice then initially recommended Nellie for the position to Hardy, and then informed her of her recommendation in a letter. Before Nellie could begin the job however, Alice wrote again, saying she had second thoughts and asked Nellie not to come after all. It seemed that Alice, concerned about the gloomy, oppressive atmosphere at Max Gate (due mainly to the several trees Hardy had planted so close to the house when moving in) warned Nellie that it would not be “the best of places” as it had “an air of silence.” However, by then Nellie had made up her own mind and was in no way dissuaded by her friend’s misgivings. She therefore left the service of her WAAF officer and returned to Dorset.

Miss Titterington was soon to find Hardy an introspective man who, she said, regarded women not as women but as “shadowy figures fitting into a space like a jigsaw.” Nellie studied him intensely and in time came to understand and respect the writer’s intensely introverted nature. But she also discovered that Hardy was mean with money, had no hobbies and never discussed politics with anyone, though he had a deep, almost mystical reverence for nature.

His parsimony became apparent when Nellie learnt that Hardy would only give each of his staff a Christmas bonus of 2s/6d in an envelope – and even then the cook was instructed to leave hers unopened until later in the day. Hardy’s wife Florence later secretly topped up these bonuses to 10/-. Nellie also spoke of one particular winter evening when Florence had accompanied Lawrence to an event at Glastonbury, leaving Hardy alone with his servants. On this occasion Nellie had stoked up a particularly good fire in the dining room but on checking on its progress a little later she found Hardy removing the coals lump by lump with the tongs and arranging them neatly on the hearth!

Nellie also responded positively to the great man’s love of nature. At one time Max Gate had five owls roosting in the trees over winter and the parlour maid would fetch Hardy to see them. Once, when a hare from adjoining Came Wood strayed into the garden Hardy, Nellie and the gardener together caught it in a net; but then the writer lifted his corner of the net to let the animal escape. On the day of her master’s funeral Nellie noticed that some of the mourners were wearing red fox hunting jackets. Had he been able to see them, Hardy, a fervent abolitionist regarding foxhunting, would have been incensed.

There was one animal at Max Gate however that Nellie probably lost no love over but had to suffer not gladly all the same: Hardy’s rough-haired terrier Wessex. The dog was of a disposition that was both peculiar and nasty, being fiercely protective of his master and as jealously suspicious of most other people as he was evidently devoted to Hardy himself.

Nellie’s approach to dealing with her mistress took much the same form as that towards her master. Florence Hardy was a socially insecure woman with a difficult temperament and other clearly discernable faults. Almost madly suspicious, she would trust no one else with the house keys, and would often accuse one or other of the servants of breaking something or even stealing it. Over time Nellie became accustomed to her awkwardness, and came to pity this second-time-around wife, who married Hardy after the death of his first wife Emma. One particular skill Nellie possessed was flower arranging. Yet when, as often happened, a visitor asked Mrs Hardy in Nellie’s presence who was responsible for the floral display the parlour maid would silently dare the mistress of the house to take the credit for the work. Florence, though much younger than her husband, was nevertheless accustomed to reading whole tracts of books aloud to him in the evenings. It was this devotional side of her nature that made Nellie feel sympathetic towards Florence.

Thomas Hardy died on Wednesday, January 11th, 1928. The following morning Nellie cycled over to ‘Talbothays’ at West Stafford to deliver the news of Hardy’s passing to his sister Kate. Away from Max Gate she had time to think about a growing personal problem.

Nellie was pregnant.

To be continued…..

The Amazing Lady Charlotte of Canford

Sep 1st, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Between Bournemouth and Poole lies the heathland parish of Canford, today an area of intense development pressure. However, for most of the earlier 19th century it was an estate of thirteen thousand acres about to be transformed through the intervention of a businessman and his remarkable wife.

The wife in question was born Charlotte Bertie in 1812, the only daughter of the ninth Earl of Lindsay and his wife Charlotte Layard. When young Charlotte was only six her father died and her mother entered into a second marriage to a hard-drinking, violent clergyman called Peter Pegus, whom the wife and step-daughter were later to turn against. Charlotte junior’s response to the intrusion of this disagreeable step-father into her life was to withdraw into herself with the consolation of reading.

Whether or not this habit and her abnormal family life were contributory factors, Charlotte’s abilities expanded such that she developed a phenomenal intellect and capacity for learning, even by today’s standards. She learnt Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Persian, French and Italian; could play the piano and harp, do copper etchings, and find time to go riding, hunting and shooting. Yet her two younger brothers were mentally retarded.

Charlotte also enjoyed frequent trips to London. It was during one of these trips when she was 21 in 1833 that she was introduced to Benjamin Disraeli, who in turn presented her to a venture capitalist of his acquaintance called Josiah John Guest.

Guest was then 48 but of a very different background and age to Charlotte. He was then the owner-manager of an ironworks his grandfather had established at Dowlais near Merthyr Tydfil, and a year before he married Charlotte he had been elected the town’s MP. Over the first twelve years of their marriage they had ten children: five boys and five girls.

In 1838 Charlotte was presented at the court of the newly-crowned Queen Victoria and by the end of that year Sir John, as he was by then, had been made a baronet. Lady Charlotte also sought a position at court, but in 1844 her husband’s health began to fail after undergoing a gall-bladder operation. It was this change in their circumstances that convinced Charlotte that they should seek to make their home in Dorset.

Subsequently in 1845, the Guests purchased the Canford estate for £335,000, Charlotte immediately taking upon herself the mammoth work of re-organisation. The great architect Sir Charles Barry, who a decade before had designed the new Palace of Westminster, was commissioned to re-style Canford Manor as a Gothic mansion – an undertaking that took several years to complete.

Following the opening of the Liverpool to Manchester Railway the Dowlais Ironworks turned to making railway lines. Charlotte became much involved in the day-to-day running of the company, even adding Welsh to her linguistic tally so that she could converse with the labour force at the works. Her mastery of their mother tongue however, further enabled her – over the course of eight years – to undertake the first translation of the Welsh folklore epic The Mabinogion into English.

Sir John died in Charlotte’s arms in 1851, barely a year after the Guests were able to move into their mansion at Canford. Thereafter Charlotte took total control of the Dowlais Works, but soon after her husband’s death, she was confronted by industrial unrest caused by calls for higher wages in the face of recession and competition from abroad. A settlement was eventually reached without the need for a lock-out.

However, Canford was about to become the beneficiary of an unusual and valuable legacy of Empire. Lady Charlotte’s cousin on her mother’s side was Austen Henry Layard, an energetic, argumentative archaeologist, diplomat and Liberal MP whose father – Charlotte’s uncle – was a civil servant in Sri Lanka. While excavating at a site in Assyria in the 1840’s Layard uncovered a large cache of treasure, most of which went to the British Museum, though a residue of this find went to Canford. Through the familial connection Layard was a frequent visitor to his cousin at the mansion and eventually married one of Charlotte’s daughters, Mary Enid. Her mother again commissioned Barry to add an extension to Canford specifically to house the Assyrian Collection.

About this time Charlotte employed a 27-year-old Fellow of Trinity College called Charles Schreiber as a tutor for her first child and oldest son, Ivor, who was soon to go to university. But when he was struck down by a near-fatal illness Charlotte nursed him back to health, an act which, though the tutor was 13 years her junior, established a solid bond of love between them. In 1855 Charles and Charlotte married. Ivor eventually fulfilled all his mother’s expectations of him, but many of her other children were to cause Charlotte much consternation in the first four years of her second marriage. Ivor took over the management of the ironworks after leaving Cambridge with a first-class degree. In 1885 Charles was elected MP for Cheltenham.

Lady Charlotte’s retirement from managing Dowlais left a void in her life which she filled by collecting a plethora of household articles that included china, tea-caddies, thimbles and snuff-boxes.She travelled abroad widely in her search for new additions to her collection. Disraeli again met Charlotte at a reception in 1870 and through his recommendation Ivor received a peerage the following year.

Throughout the hard winter of 1881 Charlotte was confined to Canford at a time when Charles’ health was in decline from lung problems. That year his wife had undertaken the last of her collecting trips and began the mammoth task of cataloguing her collection. On his doctor’s advice, Charles went out with Charlotte to South Africa in 1884, but died in Lisbon on the 6th of January from the effects of a rough voyage. For Charlotte this tragedy was compounded by the devastating news, borne in a letter from Ivor shortly before, that a fire had broken out at Canford and gutted a large part of the mansion.

Lady Charlotte returned to face the ordeal of the fire damage and Charles’ funeral. She was then 72 and decided that she must split her collection – thereafter known as the Schreiber Collection – 50/50 between the British and Victoria & Albert Museums, though the cataloguing would take up the rest of her life. Apart from two stays with the Layards in Venice she had completed her travels by 1890.

From this time on Lady Charlotte’s declining years were spent with her youngest daughter Blanche, Countess of Beesborough. Lady Charlotte Guest Schreiber died in 1895 and was buried in Canford Churchyard beneath a great white three-tier “mastaba” type granite tombstone topped with a full-length raised crucifix.

Truly a fitting memorial to one of Dorset’s most remarkable Victorians.

 

[We have placed in the gallery two photos by Chris Downer of Canford Magna parish church.]

Mysterious Rempstone and its Hall

Aug 26th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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From almost the earliest antiquity, the parish of Rempstone in Purbeck has been an area of unresolved enigma and dark secrets. Possibly over four thousand years ago Neolithic farmers or traders created a track, possibly a trade route, along the north flank of the Chalk ridge called Nine Barrow Down, connecting the mound of Corfe Castle with the coast at Studland. Centuries later, in the second millennium BCE (Before the Common Era,) pagan priests of the Bronze Age constructed a ceremonial circle of nine stones a little to the north of the hogsback track way, later much damaged by medieval clay workings. The remaining stones today stand half hidden in a block of woodland on the manor estate. Along the ridge itself are the nine barrow graves of Wessex chieftains, while on the hills opposite Rempstone Hall are two enigmatic earthworks of unknown date and undefined purpose.

Then in Iron Age and Roman times the parish became caught up in the plundering of Purbeck’s wealth in extractive mineral resources, as its heathland was turned into an industrial landscape for the extraction and exporting of iron, clay, shale and finished pottery goods. At Church Knowle, only a quarter of a mile west of the manor, lie the remains of a Romano-British villa. By the time of the area’s industrialisation in the Middle Ages, Rempstone was already an ancient manor and hamlet, becoming a farmhouse in the 16th century.

Rempstone Hall itself is an isolated house two-and-a-half miles from the nearest villages of Corfe and Studland. Situated to the east is Kingswood Farm, while to the west lie Rollington and Brenscombe Farms. Over two centuries the Hall has become impounded by mature woodland of oak, chestnut, birch and pine, planted in 1790.

Regarding the name Rempstone, several options have been put forward as to its origin. According to historian John Hutchins the earliest, or one of the earliest, Lords of the Manor was Robert Rempston, who died in 1464, though it has been suggested that he adopted his family name from the pre-existing place name, not the other way round. Another popular theory is that George Trenchard, who occupied the house in the 17th century, called it Rempscombe after the Old English word combe, meaning “narrow valley.” However, as the “valley” from Corfe to Studland is only one-sided, grading into the heath and is anything but narrow, it is difficult to see how this interpretation can be accepted.

Etymologist Eilert Ekwall has argued that Rempstone may derive from the Old English “Hrempi’s Tun,” meaning the home or village of one called Hrempi, though there is no record of such a person; or else it derives from “Hrimpan” (wrinkled.) Most likely however is “Hring-Stun” – Old English for Stone Ring – surely significant, since the stone circle lies only 300 yards from Rempstone Hall.

Whether or not Rempston was the first Lord of the Manor, his immediate successors seem to have been the Miller family of Corfe, who in turn relinquished the estate to the Uvedales of Sherborne. The estate then passed to the Framptons of Buckland. By 1664 Rempstone was in the hands of the Trenchards of Wolfeton, and then finally (i.e. up until the latter 18th century) becoming the possession of the Rose family of Dorchester.

But the modern well-documented history of the estate begins with the highly interesting political and military Calcrafts, a family that had its roots at Grantham in Lincolnshire. The Calcrafts established a dynasty that lasted from 1726, when the second John Calcraft was born, until the last male Calcraft died in 1901. John Calcraft the younger was the supposed son of another John Calcraft of Grantham, though it is more likely he was actually an illegitimate son of Sir Henry Fox, father of the famous Tory politician Charles James Fox. John himself became a prominent Whig politician and MP for Wareham, who bought up much of its property after the town’s great fire in 1762.

In the 18th and 19th centuries the Rempstone estate extended in a broad band right across the Isle of Purbeck from the southern shore of Poole harbour to the coast at Worth Matravers and Winspit.

John Calcraft began a relationship with Elizabeth Bride and bought Rempstone Hall from the last of the Dorchester Rose’s in 1757. Calcraft however was already in possession of several other estates in Lincolnshire, Kent, Wiltshire and elsewhere. At that time Rempstone Hall was a considerably smaller house, consisting of the original 16th and 17th century core building. During the time of John’s son, the Rt.Hon. John Calcraft MP and his wife Lady Caroline Montagu Calcraft no major alterations took place, but in the early 1790’s John Hales Calcraft, John the second’s grandson, considerably enlarged Rempstone by the addition of another wing, ever since known as Lower Rempstone to distinguish it from the earlier Upper Rempstone. More minor additions to the Hall were made in the 1830’s.

During the time the manor was in the ownership of the Calcrafts, the highly formalised, labour-intensive system for household management of the gentry came to full fruition. For example the 1861 census records that Rempstone Hall had ten resident servants, two footmen, two ladies maids, a cook, a cookman, a butler, a scullery maid, and a carpenter. This tally did not include non-resident daily workers and outside servants. Like many country houses, Rempstone was effectively a self-contained self-sufficient community producing much of its own food.

The last of the Calcrafts was William Montagu Calcraft, who died in 1901. His successor was a nephew, Guy Montagu Marston RN, the son of William’s sister Katherine and the Revd. Charles D Marston. Marston carried out repairs to the house in 1906 and 1919, where drainpipes bearing his monograph date from this time. Although outwardly respectable, Marston is better known for his friendships with the poet Rupert Brooke and the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley, who performed ritualistic magic at the house. In 1927 Rempstone Hall came into the possession of Major Douglas Claude Dudley (Jack) Ryder, and it was he and his family who were occupying the house at the outbreak of war in 1939.

At the end of 1940 the military requisitioned the west-end of the house. The squash court became a canteen. Bren-gun carriers were em-parked in the driveway. By the end of 1942 the army had taken over the entire hall. The windows of Rempstone had to be protected with sandbags. One night in 1940 the household received a phone call to say church bells were being rung because it was believed an invasion was imminent. Rempstone Hall itself was never hit, though during the Battle of Britain several bombs fell nearby.

When the war ended many unexploded bombs and shells had to be cleared from the surrounding area. Rempstone continued to be occupied by army and navy personnel until 1949, by which time much interior and exterior restoration had to be carried out. At this time also, the connection between Lower and Upper Rempstone was broken and the lower part sub-let to tenants. Tourist coaches on the road would point out that Rempstone was the house where the D-Day landings were planned, though written proof of this has not been found. However, Rempstonee Hall as the local Army HQ is thought to have been visited by at least some of the wartime leaders.

Rempstone Hall is a residence that over its centuries has acquired more than one ghost, including that, it is said, of the religiously fanatical Lady Caroline Calcraft. Possibly the supernatural disturbances and darker goings-on can be attributed to Cowley’s evil magic rituals, also to an underground stream said to flow beneath the house. This is entirely credible, for there is one other feature that underground streams have been particularly associated with: megalithic stone circles.

John Beard – Educator of Bridport

Aug 17th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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For the townsfolk of Bridport January 4th, 1911 was an occasion of dreary solemnity and from something more than just the depressing effect of wintry weather. People at home drew the blinds of their windows down; businesses put up their shutters. A cortege bearing a plain oak coffin passed through the town en route to the cemetery. Clearly someone special, someone almost everyone in Bridport had taken to their hearts, was no more.

This special citizen who had prompted such an outpouring of reverence and mourning on his last journey was John Beard. Beard was born in Bristol on March 20th 1833 and died in Bridport on December 30th 1910, his allotted 77 years being ones of making outstanding strides in the education and rectitude of generations of Victorian boys growing up in a Dorset market town. Indeed, many prosperous men had John Beard to thank for the special training they received.

As a child growing up in Bristol, Beard became a pupil-teacher at that city’s Red Cross School, where the more advanced boys taught those in the lower forms. On leaving this school he attended Borough Road Training College from 1852 to 1853, from there going on to teach at Chatham for a few months.

But in 1854 Benjamin Templar, then Headmaster of Bridport General Boys School left to take up another head position in Manchester. The position of headmaster at the Bridport school, which had only opened in 1849, was then filled by Beard, an appointment that was to last for the next forty years. Under its new Head, the school would soon make its presence felt in the community – and in the fortunes of a rising generation of its acolytes.

Beard’s own dedication and attendance record were legendary. In his two score years at the school he was known to have been absent no more than about four days from incapacity. He was also possessed of a stoical sense of duty, being so devoted to his job that he often kept working when he should have rested. A colleague once told him: “I’m afraid you are too young (he was only 22 at the time) in fact some of the pupil-teachers are nearly as old as yourself.”

But from the first it was evident that the new Headmaster was an exceptionally gifted man. On the founding of the General School just five years before, it was intended that technical instruction should be in the curriculum. To this end the school even bought up adjoining allotment land for use as an open-air gymnasium. However, at the time no rigid code or syllabus had been drawn up. Beard was therefore not limited by curriculum; he taught mensuration, land surveying and any other subject fitting boys for science and technology-orientated careers.

When he had been in post at Bridport for only four years, Beard met and married Ellen Swain, the youngest daughter of a local captain, at the Congregational Chapel in Bridport’s Barrack Street on June 20th 1858. It was for both parties a marriage as successful as the groom’s academic career. The Beards raised three sons and two daughters, two of the sons themselves becoming teachers, while the third, Ernest, having apparently inherited his maternal grandfather’s love of the sea, became a sailor and emigrant. The grandfather – Captain Swain – was a harbour master at West Bay, a job which Ernest was to take up in a new life in Calcutta. Sadly, Ellen pre-deceased John by twelve years in 1898.

After some time the state began to interfere more in the running of schools. School Commissions had to march in a rigid step according to new rules. Beard was given – and heeded – the advice that he should obtain certificates in sciences, so qualifying him to teach these as a supplement to the ordinary school course. In fact, John Beard was the first teacher in Bridport to qualify as a science master, and was one of only three in the whole county. Besides giving special class instruction, he extended his expertise to private schools and seminaries. Evening schools were begun, though these were dropped after a time. In about 1874 however, John Beard revived evening schools in Bridport, these being attended by 150 to 200 pupils.

Beard also took an active interest in the Working Men’s Institute in South Street, appreciating its worth as another means of combining education with recreational activities. Here his lectures were highly instructive, appreciated and well attended. He always gave of his best when coaching dozens of young men privately for examinations towards lucrative positions or occupations. By the 1800’s Beard’s name was a household word in Bridport.

At the time, the Headmaster was getting through a prodigious amount of work, despite having no assistant master to share the burden, and only two or three pupil-teachers. His institution was almost a secondary school without rates to support it, though many of his former pupils who had become wealthy men regularly sent subscriptions to support the General School. Alas, the grants ultimately dried up, and the sciences had to be discontinued.

Needless to say John Beard was no less industrious during school holiday time. Much of this time was spent touring the continent with his family, collecting any material he thought would be of interest to his pupils. He also visited many places of historic interest and was in Paris at the time the Franco-Prussian War ended. His lessons based on this foreign material were always of exceptional interest during the new term.

In his latter years Beard also found time to write two books, on English History, and another entitled ‘Outlines of the English Language.’ The key to John Beard’s great success lay in the practical and attractive way he imparted knowledge while leaving his students to think for themselves. He further managed to temper a firm, disciplinary approach with an amiable, smiley demeanour and kindly greetings.

In politics Beard was a life-long Liberal, and indeed served for some years as Vice President of the Bridport Liberal Association. Though he resigned when Gladstone presented his Irish Home Rule Bill.

Sadly though, John Beard’s retirement in the company of his wife of forty years proved to be all too brief. Ellen died only four years later, leaving John a widower for the remaining twelve years of his life. At his own funeral in 1911, the Revd. J. Menzies, for so long a friend and colleague of the former Headmaster delivered a last moving address at the graveside in Bridport Cemetery that bleak winter afternoon.

Dorset County Gaol

Aug 9th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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A prison sentence today has been cynically likened by some people to being at Butlins when compared with the austere conditions of penal servitude in the 19th century. Assuredly, conditions were a lot harsher then, and nobody living at the time would likely have doubted that one stretch in prison was an effective deterrent against recidivism. But what would conditions have been like in the county goal at Dorchester during the period from about 1800 to 1950? What follows is an account of those conditions based on documentary research.

Dorchester’s present prison stands behind a high and thick redbrick wall just off the town’s North Square. In 1773 the penal reforms of Thomas Howard were about to change the nature of incarceration here as everywhere else. Prior to 1795 the gaol was a much smaller institution in a ruinous condition elsewhere in the town which, in 1784, prompted William Tyler of Vine Street, St. James, to draw up plans for an entirely new penitentiary for an estimated £4,000. Howard had a strong link with Dorchester, and plans were drawn up for a larger, more secure prison on the present North Square site, the building contract being secured by John Fentiman of Newton Butts for £12,000. By a contractual agreement the work was scheduled for completion in March 1792, but the building was well in arrears by December 1793. It was eventually opened for occupation by inmates in 1795.

When viewed in elevation from the front (beyond the perimeter wall) the main building comprises three elements: a central, five-storey block flanked by three-storey wings to each side. In the central block the floors are accessed via a well of alternating metal staircases. In the north block however, the stairwell is positioned at the end, while in the south block it runs up the middle. In total the prison was constructed in six blocks, the entrance block comprising the keeper’s office, brewhouse and bath-house, all within the retaining perimeter wall. This part fronted by a broad, high archway in austere Portland stone ashlars and with thick, double doors painted black, accesses three courtyards, one each for the keeper, the women felons and the women penitentiaries.

The centre block houses the keeper’s quarters, the prisoner’s visiting rooms, the debtor’s custody area and several single working cells. Above them on the first floor are the chapel, the cells for condemned and refractory prisoners, the debtors sleeping rooms and single sleeping cells. At each corner of this main block are four smaller blocks having single cells for working and sleeping. There are seven inner courtyards for separating each category of prisoner.

According to the penal system and administration of prisons at the time convicts were distinguished both by sex and as felons (those awaiting trial for either jailing or transportation.) Besides these there were other categories such as those in prison for debt, bigamy, vagrancy, idleness in domestic service or apprenticeship, for breach of contract or under the terms of a bastardy order. As far as was possible all these categories were kept apart from one another and the building had separate sleeping cells each 8’5 x 6.5 x 9 feet in size. The debtors had working cells, a day room 18 x 13.5 x 12 feet in size and slept four to a room though they were not kept in separate confinement.

It is noted that the prisoner’s daily rations of food consisted of one-and-a-half pounds of bread, though this was a day old, despite being baked in the prison itself using flour from which bran had not been extracted. Those prisoners who worked however, were entitled to an extra ration of food and from the Keeper’s account records it appears that 9d worth of meat was permitted, later increased to 2/6d worth a week. However, it is probable that this increase reflects the sharp rise in the price of bread caused by the French wars early in the 19th century rather than any increase in amount of the ration.

By 1813 the special meal that had cost 6d in 1794 had risen to 2/6d. Broth to the value of 10d was also served. Children were fed on a special diet, but prisoners were treated to a special meal at Christmas and Whitsuntide. Prisoners brought to the sessions were permitted to buy meat, fish, fruit and pastry, but following conviction only bread was allowed. Sick convicts were given food and drink of better quality, including jelly, wine and gin. In addition to a special diet when ill, prisoners were given rush-lights or candles; those “affected by itch” were given special nightshirts.

Because of sickness special measures were taken to ensure the prison was kept clean. The gaol appears to have been organised into eight wards, each of which was overseen by a warder responsible for sweeping out the cells and washing them out once a week. Several women cleaners were also paid to carry out this work. Sometimes gunpowder was used for fumigating and, once a year, parts of the building were lime-washed. Prisoners themselves were washed upon admittance and provided with clothes. Prisoners working outside the gaol were issued with “small frocks” bearing the lettering “DORSET GAOL” on the back. Women prisoners were issued with dresses, aprons, petticoats and bed gowns, while men had shoes, shirts, trousers, shifts, hose and clogs bought for them.

The cells were furnished with iron bedsteads fixed four inches from a wall and equipped with straw-filled bedding. Prisoners could be subjected to enforced discipline by means of solitary confinement in a dark cell, though the governor was under an obligation to visit such prisoners at least once a day. The Chaplain would have read prayers three times a day and distributed religious books as thought necessary. He had to visit and counsel the prisoners in private to assess their mental states and keep a log of his findings. To prevent escapes, all prisoners had their clothes confiscated each night.

Of course, until as late as 1965 when the death penalty was abolished in Britain, prison would often be just a temporary custody facility pending a time of execution to be fixed for those sentenced to death. As in other county gaols Dorchester would have had its own facilities for carrying out executions: in this case, gallows set up outside the main building. Consequently, the current “cell-block” or overcrowding crisis now facing the penal system could never have arisen over a century ago. At Dorchester those sentenced to death were kept in cells near the chapel. Early in the 18th century, long before the present prison was built executions were very public affairs in public places. Until 1766, when the gallows there were removed, hangings were routinely carried out at Maumbury Rings on the outskirts of Dorchester, that of Mary Channing in 1706 being a particularly high-profile case of the time.

But notable executions were carried out behind the present prison wall as well. Especially tragic was the highly public hanging of Elizabeth Martha Brown on August 9th, 1856, attended by a crowd of several thousand including a 16-year-old apprentice architect called Thomas Hardy. Martha had been found guilty of bludgeoning her husband to death with the kitchen wood-axe in anger upon discovering his adultery. James Seale was hanged on August 10th, 1858, for the murder of a girl called Sarah Guppy, but the last execution of all in Dorchester took place in 1887.

Today, under the prison’s present governor, Serena Watts, its operational capacity is about 260, with all males except category A being held there. There is no segregation unit. The regime includes provision of workshops, and the prison is currently running a programme of full education including courses on thinking, life and social skills and substance awareness. Strong emphasis is also placed upon physical education.

In conclusion, one interesting feature of the prison’s location is the fact that it was built where a Roman townhouse had once stood, but this was either disregarded or overlooked when the foundations were laid. It was not until the grave of Martha Brown was being dug within the prison precincts 64 years later that a floor mosaic was uncovered, though this was not lifted and removed to the County Museum until the burial of James Searle two years later re-exposed it.

Note: Fuller accounts of the Channing and Brown cases can be found on the site.

Note:  The last execution to be carried out at Dorchester was on the 24th of July 1941, when David Jennings was hanged; our thanks to John Grainger for bringing this to our attention.

Purbeck Mysteries and Strange Burials

Aug 2nd, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Before we can delve into some of its secrets, even the name Purbeck is of obscure and uncertain origin. The earliest reference is in 948 AD, where it appears as Purbicinga, later as Purbic in many medieval documents. But other place name authorities variously suggest the Old English pur (a bittern), and the element becc, a point or headland or becca, a pickaxe or mattock.

Besides the uncertain origin of its name, Purbeck is an island of unresolved riddles and ritualised dead. As good a place as any to start would be at the Promontory on the south side of Poole harbour known as the Goat Horn Peninsula. Near to its base are the foundations of a ruined church, with other settlement remains in a shallow valley of what today is oak woodland just west of the Goat Horn railway at or near a place called Newton. But nothing of Newton survives as a viable settlement today. It is a place vanished from the face of Purbeck, yet Newton was to have been the fulfilment of Edward I’s vision for an entire new town and port on Poole harbour.

Oddly, the foundations of the church building were never recorded by surveyors of the Royal Commission for Historic Monuments, suggesting the foundations are not those of a medieval building. Furthermore, the oaks in woodland have been dated to the earlier 16th century, and are therefore too late to have been planted as part of Edward’s planned town. Yet Newton is clearly indicated as a settlement on a map of 1597, suggesting something was built here once – and in any case, how is it that the name Newton has survived?

There exists a document of 1286 stating Richard de Bosco was appointed to lay out a new town “with sufficient streets and lanes and adequate sites for a market and church and plots for merchants…” in a place called Gowtowre (Goat Horn?) Super Mare. But it is generally thought the silting of the harbour and the unfavourable situation of the site detached from the Dorset mainland probably killed the scheme.

What became of the road, which must once have connected the Roman ports and industries in Purbeck with Durovaria (Dorchester)? The question has been exercising the minds of archaeologists for some time, for no trace of a Roman road has yet been found. The explanation, which is common currency at the moment, holds that, as the communication was merely local rather than arterial (as roads emanating from London were). The Purbeck road was simply a flat metalled track, which the Romans did not bother to provide with a cambered hardcore foundation (agger), or with drainage ditches. There was no earthwork, and so the superficiality of the structure would understandably make it less inclined to leave traces after two millennia. Furthermore, the development of the Purbeck industries came mainly after the building of the main Roman road network.

Even more mysterious and perplexing for archaeologists is a discovery on heathland west of the South Haven Peninsula. Concentrated in an area between Redhorn Quay and Jerry’s Point are no fewer than 71 earthen ring-banks ranging from 45 to 150 feet in diameter. Although the banks are about 20 feet across, they are only about one foot high. Another six circles lie just to the south near Brand’s Ford, and 50 (once about 100) more cover the ground south west of Squirrel Cottage at East Holme.

The interiors of the circles are typically flat or slightly concave, hinting that one of two may have been ponds storing rainwater for short |periods, but the function of the others remains completely unknown. Of some significance however, has been the observation that trees established in some of the circles have grown larger than those of the same species elsewhere have. Two circles excavated in the 1960’s were found to contain burnt furze, which may point to a feeble explanation for the enhanced tree-growth but little else. No artefacts, which could have conclusively dated the structures, have ever been found, and the best estimate has been that they are not earlier than the Iron Age or later than 1700 AD. The lower end of the range is based on the finding that one or two of the rings impinge upon Bronze Age barrows and are therefore assumed to be later.

But associated with the northern group of circles are thirteen low sandy mounds, and an alignment of five evenly-spaced stones with a sixth lying off-centre at the north end occupy the centre of the South Haven Peninsula. Some of these stones have fallen, but like the circles and the tumuli they have so far defied explanation.

The 19th century antiquary Charles Warne describes another curious rock of Purbeck, this time entirely natural. This is the Agglestone near Studland, a great anvil-shaped 400 ton boulder which for thousands of years sat perched on a sandy hill (it eventually toppled over in 1970), It is now known that the Agglestone is an example of the outlier or lens of more indurated gritstone weathered out from its enclosing Bagshot Beds, but traditionally it has been accounted for in more prosaic, folklorish terms as thrown or placed by the Devil, prehistoric man, or brought by a glacier. The name may have its roots in the Old English word for hailstone, suggesting that the Agglestone fell from the sky.

While the Agglestone holds only a folklore tradition with no mystery attached, the same cannot be said for Harpstone. The Harpstone is no natural erratic but a seven-foot limestone menhir set up by prehistoric men beside a stream and a coppice in the Corfe Valley south east of Steeple. Isolated standing stones are rare in Dorset (although there are circles and rows) and were it not in Purbeck the Hartpstone’s environment would argue against prehistoric origin. Instead, its presence may indicate early Bronze Age penetration and clearance of the Corfe valley. Yet the “stone” part of the name does not appear in a document until 1340 (as Herpston); if it could be proved the stone part of the name is older, we would have evidence of greater antiquity.

Then there is the gravedigger at Studland Parish Church who in January 1951 struck a stone cist while digging a grave. Lifting the lid, he found the sarcophagus contained a skeleton with its skull detached and the lower jaw placed behind it. The cist, which had been constructed of Purbeck marble slabs, was more than long enough to contain the body fully extended. The decapitation therefore, was not for want of space. In his pathology report Professor John Cameron determined that the skeleton was of a woman in her thirties. A Kimmeridge shale spindle and a number of cockle shells had been buried with her, initially suggesting a Romano-British date, as J.B. Calkin, who had excavated the Studland cist burial, had also excavated a 3rd century grave at Kimmeridge containing a woman buried with her head placed at her feet and with the jaw removed.

But the Rev J.H. Austen had excavated crouched burials in Bronze Age barrows with the jaw placed behind the skull, presenting the possibility that the Studland sexton had stumbled upon a Bronze Age cist burial older than first reckoned. In the DNHAS Proceedings for 1952, Calkin wrote that the Bronze Age people of Purbeck might have had “..a very lively fear of being haunted by the dead” and so had practised the mutilation of corpses to prevent the dead from walking and talking.

On the ridge between Creech and East Lulworth, at the boundary of Tyneham and Steeple parishes, there is an ancient crossroads long known as Maiden’s Grave Gate. This ominous name preserves the memory of an 18th century girl who killed herself and consequently was denied a Christian burial. Indeed, as the law then required she was buried at the crossroads – buried, it was believed, with a stake driven through her heart! At this place too, there stands an oak, into the trunk of, which has been carved two coffins. It seems that only three hundred year ago superstition extended to taking measures to prevent the appearances of ghosts.

Simon Garrett – Master Thatcher

Jul 27th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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He was probably the last in a long line of rural craftsmen in roofing, following a family trade that extended back for eight generations. Simon Garrett, the master Thatcher of Thornford in Dorset, certainly saw many changes during the course of his long life: new housing estates, modern machinery and the complete disappearance of many country crafts that he knew as a young man. Modernity transformed the scenes around his home beyond recognition. In fact some used to say that the one constant thing in an ever-changing world was old Simon himself. He was often to be seen perched precariously on rooftops, skilfully dressing down the finished sections of thatch with his side rake.

He was baptised Archibald Simon Garrett on Christmas Day 1904. It was of course his father who trained Simon to thatch in the 1920’s, just as his father before him had taught him the craft. Together the two men would travel from job to job by horse and cart. As cars made ever more frequent incursions into the Dorset lanes, Simon came very close to following a totally different occupation as a mechanic. Fortunately, for succeeding dwellers under thatch, he changed his mind and chose instead to continue the family tradition.

Although people who saw Simon at work on a warm summer day and heard him chatting good-naturedly to passers-by might have envied him his outdoor life, he did – like most traditional craftsmen – know what hard times meant. The introduction of the combined harvester deprived him of the straw, which was his raw material, and the development of modern roofing methods produced particular difficulties. But by his own hard work and skill he weathered the storm and preserved his craft.

In his later years, while continuing to make a living from his ancient occupation, Simon Garrett also helped to kindle an interest in thatching among the general public. This frequently led him to demonstrate his craft at fetes, fairs and charity events, and he made a point of encouraging the young to ask questions about his work. Importantly for the future of thatching in England, he was happy to pass on his knowledge to young thatchers and lend a hand whenever he could. He also encouraged a lady in his village with her hobby of corn-dolly making, supplying her with suitable reed and so encouraging the revival of another ancient craft.

Busily occupied with his lonely work and magically creating something that is both picturesque and functional, the solitary figure of Simon – possibly England’s oldest working master thatcher during his lifetime – was a familiar sight in Thornford and the surrounding villages. The neat picturesque cottages of this village near Bere Hackett (between Yetminster and Bradford Abbas) in particular bear witness to his dedication – a dedication which comes from being the eighth generation of his family to thatch in this lovely corner of England.

When he marked his 82nd birthday in 1986 Simon had been thatching for 66 years but showed no signs then of retiring. That year Mrs Judy Nash, who lived at Yetminster, wrote to the country periodical ‘This England,’ to nominate Simon Garrett for the Silver Cross of St. George Award. In a letter telling the magazines editor about him, she wrote: “He is a true man of Dorset, who’s efforts I feel deserve rewarding. Without him, part of our heritage would have disappeared.”

Garrett was a man of modesty who would probably have replied that seeing those neat Dorset thatches each day, and knowing that there were a growing number of craftsmen able to carry on the work of looking after them, was reward enough. But people like Simon Garrett, self-effacing and hard-working, are the very individuals who’s achievements should be recognised. They are always too busy and well mannered to sing their own praises. Perhaps his good citizen award let Simon know that his labours were much appreciated by his fellow villagers. ‘This England’ saluted his efforts to preserve the craft of thatching for future generation, while enhancing the English countryside we all enjoy.

But underlying the roofing method of which Simon Garrett was such an excellent master there is a salutary lesson for today’s unsustainable lifestyle. By its very nature, coupled with the thick cob walls and small windows of the traditional vernacular cottages, thatch was a retainer of heat far superior to today’s tiles and slates, and so makes a contribution to energy efficiency in the home that would surely not have been lost on Thornford’s Master Thatcher had someone remarked on it to him. But then the world and era Simon Garrett knew probably had no inkling of what was to come. It is as well that his legacy was to ensure that his time-honoured craft did not die out altogether.

Well done, Simon, son of Dorset!

Hardy’s Church

Jul 19th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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St. Michael’s at Stinsford is often spoken of as “Hardy’s church,” a reference to Dorset’s most famous son; the novelist, poet and architect Thomas Hardy, who said, “I shall sleep quite calmly at Stinsford, whatever happens.”

The writer had discussed his funeral with Stinsford’s vicar the Rev. H.G.B. Cowley but when the time came the literati and establishment of the day had other plans for him. Hardy’s cousin, Theresa, told the press “I am grieved that they are going to take poor Tom away to London. He wanted, I know, to lie with his own folk in the churchyard yonder.”  At the insistence of the great and good his ashes were buried at Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey, something Kate Hardy found “another staggering blow.” It was Cowley who proposed what someone at the time described as “a gruesome though historic compromise:” Thomas Hardy’s heart was removed to Stinsford and laid to rest with his first wife at exactly the same moment as his ashes were being interred at Westminster.

Hardy knew this place well. His parent’s worshipped here, he was baptised here, he was a Sunday school teacher here, and he buried his first wife here. Later after his death his second wife was buried here. As you enter the churchyard through the lych gate to your left there is a row of graves and memorials to Hardy and members of his family. Standing sentry at the end of this line is a modern slate marking the burial place of the Poet Laureate, Cecil Day Lewis, who passed away in 1972 and wished to be buried close to his mentor.

The map of the parish of Stinsford is a square plan representing some 3,300 acres. The parish is a union of the settlements of Bhompston, Bockhampton, Kingston, Stinsford and Coker’s Frome and it is likely they were in existence in 1086, but Frome Whitfield, which transferred to Stinsford parish from Dorchester Holy Trinity in 1894, is the only one to retain any trace of a mediaeval village.

St. Michael’s comprises a nave with north and south aisles, chancel with a north vestry off and a west tower. Built with roughly squared and coursed rubble, with ashlar dressings; the roofs are covered with slates, stone-slates and lead. The chancel and north and south arcades of the nave are of the early 13th century. The west tower was added in the 14th century and the west wall of the south aisle looks to have been rebuilt at this time. The south aisle is mainly 15th century and the north aisle was rebuilt in 1630 and again altered in the 19th century. The north vestry was added in 1868.

The font in which Hardy was baptised was moved to St. Luke, Stanmore, Winchester in 1948. Thomas Hardy discovered pieces of the original Norman Font in the churchyard, it was restored in 1920 and remains at St. Michael’s.

Restoration of churches was something the Victorians did, and on a vast scale. St. Michael’s received more than its deserved share of attention being restored in 1868, 1883 and later in 1910. During one of these restorations the musician’s gallery was removed against the wishes of the Hardy family, who had provided over the years many of the musicians who made up the church band; the family voiced its collective displeasure but to no avail.

 In 1996 a new gallery and organ were installed, the result of the generosity of a Yale University professor Richard Purdy. The endowment was in commemoration of Florence Hardy, the novelist’s second wife.

The nave’s 16th century barrel roof was lost to the Victorian restorers but the chancel arch and the 17th century barrel vault roof, hagioscope and recess, which used to access a stairway to the rood screen survived.

The tower is home to three bells the first dated 1616; the second by Thomas Purdue is dated 1663 and a treble, originally of the 15th century but recast in 1927.

“Hardy’s Church” is the resting place for many others and there are memorials for William Obrien 1815: Susannah Sarah Louisa (Strangeways) Obrien 1827; Rev. William Floyer 1819; William Floyer R.N., 1822; and other members of that family; Marcia (Pitt) Cholmondeley 1808; George, Charles and John son of John and Marcia Pitt of Encombe; Audeley and Margaret (Trevelyan) Grey 1723; William Harding 1834, and Hannah his wife, 1841; Benjamin Bowring 1837; John 1693; and Mell Cox 1716 and William Cox 1704.

In the chancel there is a plaque to Wadham Strangeways 1685, killed at Bridport in the King’s service against Monmouth; also Elizabeth his wife 1683, and Rachel Radford her sister 1682.

Inside the church seems a lot smaller than it looks from the outside: it has a warm, comfortable, almost cosy feel. Hardy would have been pleased to see the gallery replaced though viewed from the chancel arch it looks jarringly modern and would have fitted in better had it been made from a darker or distressed timber.

Hardy had called God “that vast imbecility” so it must have been his sense of history and family rather than his faith that made St. Michael’s church so important to him.
There are photographs of the church and the Hardy memorials in the photo section.

Milton Abbey Mystery – or the riddle of the body-less coffin.

Jul 15th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Joseph Damer, Lord Milton of Milton Abbey, could hardly be numbered among Dorset’s more kindly, considerate or philanthropic squires. The Damers were a gentry family of considerable wealth, but Joseph was a man of ambition and ruthlessness. In 1752, only ten years after his marriage to Caroline Sackville, daughter of the first Duke of Dorset, he acquired Milton Abbey. He immediately set about re-configuring the estate’s landscape to his own egocentric tastes, even evicting the inhabitants of the old village upon expiry of their leases and re-settling them in a purpose-built village (today’s Milton Abbas,) so that time-honoured cottages of old Milton could be flooded by an enormous ornamental lake.

John Damer was the first of Joseph and Caroline’s four children and like his father he married well by 18th century standards. His bride was Anne Seymour Conway, 18-year-old daughter of the Rt Hon Henry Seymour Conway, a prominent soldier, statesman, MP and one-time Governor of Jersey. Anne’s fortune was around £10,000, and the couple received an annuity of £5,000 from Lord Milton. At first the younger Damers made the most of their riches, but it soon became apparent that their marriage was faltering. Anne was increasingly spending more time away from home socialising at parties and entertainment than at home with John. But according to Anne’s biographer Percy Noble, her husband took some share of the responsibility for the marital difficulties himself, caused by addictions to the gaming table and turf, which he had to fund by means of loans from Jewish financiers. This made Damer difficult to live with, yet his shortcomings did not restrain him from complaining that his wife was constantly away from home!

Although heir to a fortune of about £30,000 a year, Damer’s debts were mounting. Falling in with a wild, spendthrift set of gad-abouts frequenting London, he seemed to find some curious satisfaction in annoying Anne. In 1775 she duly returned from a visit to Paris and publicly announced her separation from John – no easy commitment for a woman of her “refined and delicate temperament.” By summer 1776 Damer was in the red by £70,000, a fortune that his despotic father refused to bail him out for, since the latter was already saddled with paying off gambling debts incurred by John’s two younger brothers, a burden that was eating into the Milton estate balances.

On the night of August 15th that year Damer happened to be lodging at the Bedford Arms tavern, Covent Garden. By 3 a.m. in the morning, receiving no answer from Damer’s room a blind fiddler called Burnet alerted Bedford Arms landlord John Robinson, saying he had been disturbed by a peculiar smell in Damer’s chamber. Robinson was soon to discover that the odour was not, as supposed, due to burning by a spilt candle, but cordite from a fired pistol. The heir to Milton Abbey House was slumped in a chair, blood pouring from a wound to his right temple. On the floor between his feet lay a gun with the cocking hammer closed.

An inquest was convened in the inn at 6 p.m. the same day. Coroner Thomas Prickard and a 22-man jury heard evidence from Robinson, Burnet, and John Armitage, Damer’s house steward. Robinson testified that Damer had been a regular customer at the Bedford for a number of years and that he had received an order for supper from him between 7 and 8 o’clock the previous evening, together with a request for Burnet and four women to entertain him. The landlord further stated that, although the note was not the first he had received from Damer, this one differed from the rest in that it was written in a “confused manner” out of character with his usual style. Soon after 11 p.m. Damer, Burnet and the ladies retired to an upstairs room where the fiddler played and the four women sung, though it was noted that Damer ate little of his supper. The group broke up shortly before 3 a.m. when Damer told his steward to dismiss the women.

Burnet then gave an account of his movements from the time he arrived at the inn to when he went to call Damer in his room, received no reply from within, and noticed the smell he took to be a spilt candle. He then informed Mr Robinson who upon reaching the room exclaimed, “Oh my God – he has shot himself!” Armitage made only a brief statement about his service with Damer and that he (Damer) had lent him £26. 5s just two days before. The jury had little difficulty in reaching a verdict of instant death due to suicide while “not being of sound mind…but lunatic and distracted.”

Did John Damer really die by his own hand in the Bedford Arms that August night? Certainly the inquest made some glaring omissions. For example there is no record of a pistol shot ever being heard, and it was found that the shot had not entered Damer’s head. Nor was there any mention of an apparent suicide note left on a table nearby. No witnesses who could testify to Damer’s monetary predicament were called. In fact, only Robinson and Armitage were in a position to identify the body (since Burnet could not see.) It would not have been impossible therefore, for these two witnesses to collaborate in a conspiracy hatched by Damer to fake his own death. This is not as far-fetched as it first appears, for in the London of the time it would have been relatively easy to “borrow” a corpse to be returned later.

For the dispossessed cottagers of Milton Abbas however, it was a virtual certainty that word of the Milton heir’s demise would set the rumour mill turning in favour of the fake-death theory. News of the death sent shock waves through England’s high society, but for villagers embittered by the fragmentation of their centuries-old community, a presumption of faking death to avoid remunerating creditors was bound to arise. It was likely they considered the son to be the same as his despised father and so entirely capable of such a devious plot, although there was never strong evidence to substantiate it.

The fake suicide rumour may have stayed just that indefinitely: a rumour, were it not for an astonishing discovery made 97 years later on the villagers own doorstep. About 1837 some repairs to the north transept of Milton Abbey were in progress, which necessitated opening the Damer family crypt. At the time a man called Frederick Fane of Moyles Court, Fordingbridge was staying at the Abbey when one morning he decided to visit the ancient building to look in on the repair work. While there the foreman, with whom Fane had entered into conversation, alluded to a “fake funeral” having taken place nearly a century before when the Abbey was Milton Parish Church. An extravagant son of Lord Milton, he said, was being sought by the bailiffs when a message arrived stating that the man had died on the continent and was to be brought back for burial here at the Abbey. The foreman then invited the visitor to “see something that would convince him of the truth of the Damer legend.”

Down in the vault the two men stopped beside a coffin with a plate bearing Damer’s name. Fane was then bizarrely invited to attempt to lift the coffin, but on doing so found it was too heavy. When asked to try to lift the coffin beside it, however, he was surprised to find that one could be lifted easily without any exertion. What was the explanation for the difference?

As the foreman explained, the second coffin was much lighter because its body had decomposed, but the first coffin could not be lifted because it had been filled with stones. Here there was hint of a strong vindication of the villager’s suspicions if the opportunity for access to the vault and inspection of remains ever arose. More than 20 years later Fane related his extraordinary experience to a meeting of the Dorset Natural History and Field Club.

If Damer, then, had not faked his suicide, why go to the trouble of staging a fake funeral? Moreover, how do we explain the claims of villagers, who mostly never believed Damer to be dead and buried, that they had seen him alive and well in the grounds on several later occasions?

If the supposed conspiracy was intended to satisfy Damer’s creditors, then it succeeded, but Joseph Damer’s malign attitude to his son’s death provoked almost as much public shock and indignation as the news of the supposed death itself. Lord Milton even vented his spleen on poor Mrs Damer, who deserved only sympathy.

This has been a strange, though true story. But unless or until any real, rather than circumstantial evidence materialises the truth about John Damer’s fate is unlikely ever to be revealed.

As for Anne Damer, following her husband’s departure she went on to live a long and productive life, becoming a noted sculptor, continental traveller and actress on the London stage, acquainted with many royal, political, literary and artistic figures of the period. She died at the ripe old age of 80 in May 1828 and was buried near to other members of the Conway family at the parish church of Sundridge, Kent.

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