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Dorset County Gaol

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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 24^th 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.

Sydney Smith – Musician and Composer

Jul 8th, 2010

by Dorset Ancestors.

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Sydney Smith was born on 14th of July 1839 in South Street, Dorchester, the second of three sons born to Frederick and Helen Smith. He was destined for a career and fame in the world of music. Like his older brother, Frederick, he followed in the steps of his father who was a professor of music and dance. Their younger brother, Walter, trained as an assistant bookseller; he died aged just 25 years.

The parents of these three boys, Frederick Smith and Helen Boyton came to Dorset shortly after their marriage at Clifton, Bristol. Frederick Smith was originally from Deal in Kent and Helen Boyton from Clifton. Their father died in 1870 and is buried in Dorchester Cemetery. Sydney’s brothers Frederick and Walter are buried next to their father.

Sydney and his brother received their early musical tuition from their parents. Notices in the Dorset Chronicle in the late 1840’s refer to a series of concerts given by Frederick Smith (on violin) with his sons Boyton (on piano) and Master Sydney (on ‘cello.) [Frederick also had his mother’s maiden name and was known as Boyton Smith.]

In 1855, possibly as the result of winning a Mendelssohn scholarship, Sydney had a place at the famous Leipzig conservatory; he was sixteen. He spent the following three years there studying piano and cello.

Returning to Dorchester in 1858 his talent was recognised by the eminent violinist, Henry Blagrove, who had once been in the employ of Queen Adelaide and was later associated with the Royal Academy of Music. A year later following advice from Blagrove he moved to London and found lodgings in Upper Seymour Street. He quickly established a name for himself as a recitalist and was much in demand in society circles as a teacher of the piano. There followed the best part of three decades when his name was a household word; in today’s world he would have been a much sought after celebrity.

In 1867 Sydney married Hanna Birch. She was originally from Buckinghamshire and the daughter of a druggist in business at George Street, London W.l. She was a singer with the choir of the Philharmonic Society which is probably where the couple met. A year later at 45, Blandford Square, London, their first daughter was delivered and baptised Blanch Edith.

A son, Leonard Sydney, was born to the couple in 1870 and their daughter Linda May was born in 1872. The following year they lost their first child, Blanch, to rheumatic fever and another son, Granville Boyton Sydney was born, followed in 1875 by Eustace and their last child was born in 1878.

In 1886 Hanna died of Bright’s disease after five years of failing health. She was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery on the 16th of July 1886 in the grave of her first daughter. According to her death certificate her passing was notified to the registrar by Blanche Augustine Pinget. Miss Pinget was 25 and had nursed Hanna through her last days but she had an earlier association with the family when she was nurse to the Smith’s children.

Possibly there was more to this relationship because a little over a year after Hanna’s death Blanche Augustine Pinget became the second Mrs Smith at a ceremony at St. John’s Parish Church, Hampstead on the 28th of October 1887. After their marriage the couple lived at 28 Birchington Road, Kilburn.

This move from the fashionable heart of London may have been forced on the couple. Sydney was suffering from a “severe malignant tumour of the spine and ribs.” He had to give up his teaching and concert career which would have resulted in a considerable drop in income and there were no royalties to rely on although he had composed nearly 400 works.

Celebrity quickly dims and this was certainly the case for Sydney Smith. The tragic illness and the resulting hardship forced him to apply to The Royal Society of Musicians for assistance and they helped in a small way.

Sydney Smith, in his day a famous composer of popular music, was buried with Hanna, his first wife and his daughter Blanch in a grave marked by an un-inscribed cross. His star diminished by the changes in musical taste at the end he merited a short obituary in The Musical Times. He is remembered today in musical circles; his work, and that of his contemporaries is kept alive by the Sydney Smith Archive.

We have placed a photograph of Sydney Smith in the photo section.

Edgar Lane – Musician of Distinction

Jul 2nd, 2010

by Dorset Ancestors.

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“Dorset has lost a distinguished musician, one who shed lustre on the profession with which throughout his lifetime he had been associated” (Southern Times, February 11th 1938.) So ran this obituary to one of the two most distinguished musical figures to be associated with Dorset in the 19th and 20th centuries. Nor was Edgar Alfred Lane only remembered and honoured by the provincial papers, as the Daily Telegraph, Daily Express, and Yorkshire Post also paid their respects. Yet today, even in his adopted county, this composer is virtually forgotten, sharing the fate of the brilliant organist-composer he succeeded as organist of Holy Trinity Church in Dorchester – the renowned Boyton Smith.

For some twenty-seven years it was Edgar Lane who would take up where Boyton Smith had to leave off when death plucked at is sleeve but Lane was not native to Dorset. He was born into a Norfolk family in Great Yarmouth on a date usually held to be September 3rd 1865, though his birth certificate proves it was September 23rd 1864. Edgar was the eleventh of the thirteen children of Benjamin Lane and Elizabeth Kemp Lane. His grandfather was James Christmas Lane, while his great-grandfather, another Benjamin, was the captain of a schooner taken prisoner by the French during the Napoleonic wars, but later released after the British victory at Waterloo. Edgar’s eldest brother, Benjamin, had emigrated to Australia even before Edgar was born.

Edgar’s schooling was nevertheless quite elementary, though he was certainly not lacking in brains – or precocious talent. He became one of the youngest church organists ever at Holy Trinity Church, Caister-on Sea, Norfolk when just 11. At Great Yarmouth Town Hall in 1881 he conducted his first concert when only 16 (the census of that year showed he was also working as a coal merchant’s clerk.) When not yet 20 he was appointed sub-organist at Ripon Cathedral. Two years later in 1886 he took up the post of organist and choirmaster at St. Peter’s Church and Magdalen College School, Brackley, Northants, where it is noted he was a keen cricketer. It was here also that he met his future wife, Sarah Jane Clarke, a talented pianist.

Edgar and Sarah appear to have had a peculiarly long engagement, for they were still engaged in 1892 when Edgar was appointed organist and choirmaster at St. Peters in Dorchester and so subsequently began the long residence in the county where he would remain for the rest of his life. The couple eventually married in April 1893, taking up residence in a house in Cornwall Road with an excellent frontal view of the Borough Gardens, where Edgar would relax and play croquet.

Their first child, Geoffrey Edgar, was born in 1894, but about 1896 when their second son Ronald James, was born the Lanes moved to a much more spacious house at 50 High West Street where orchestras and choirs could practice. In that year too the Dorset County Chronicle reported that Lane had been appointed conductor of the Dorset Vocal Association in place of Boyton Smith. To commemorate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897, Lane composed and conducted a special piece ‘For Sixty Years our Queen’ for a concert with massed choirs held at Maumbury Rings. Respectively in 1899 and 1902 the Lane’s last two children, Margaret and Arthur Noel were born.

Those heady ‘90’s, when the older children were growing up, saw Lane emerge as a kindly child-loving family man who loved to indulge his youngsters with “rubbishy rhymes.” His philanthropy was manifest in his arranging each Sunday for Margaret and Ronald to take a fully cooked meal to a lady in reduced circumstances living in Maumbury Road. This lady, Mrs Harding, was none other than Thomas Hardy’s earliest love and the inspiration for ‘A Pair of Blue Eyes.’

In the 1901 census Lane’s occupation is given as “Professor of Music/Organist/Principal of Dorchester School of Music.” That year he formed a choral society in Weymouth and, soon after, the Madrigal & Orchestral Society, whose concerts at the corn Exchange attracted large audiences. He resigned from St. Peters as organist in 1906 to become Warden of St. Mary’s, a church that formerly stood on the site of the present Dorford Baptist. While still in this position Lane was appointed organist at Holy Trinity in 1909.

By this time Edgar Lane had become well established as a private music teacher of organ, piano, violin, cello and singing, as well as pursuing a career as a composer and conductor. Although Lane’s salary from his organ post amounted to no more than £80 per annum, magnanimously he would not charge for lessons if he considered a pupil was hard up or if his or her parents could not afford the fee.

In 1911 the Dorchester Madrigal Society, then in its eighth season, held two grand concerts on May 30th that year, which included a Coronation March in E flat Lane had written. The combined Dorchester and Weymouth Choral Societies staged a performance of “Merrie England” at the Pavilion Theatre that included Edgar’s patriotic song “For the Empire” on December 11th, 1913. When the Great War was just five months old in December 1914, afternoon and evening performances of the sacred cantata “The Daughter of Jairus” were sung in Holy Trinity Church under Lane’s direction (singing the tenor solos himself because there was a shortage of singers.) By this time the Lanes had moved to a sub-let property out at Charminster called “The Yews” and though this meant Lane having to cycle into town, it was a cheaper home to rent.

In the midst of the appalling carnage of the Somme offensive on July 12th 1916, the Dorchester Madrigal Society, in association with the King’s Own Royal Lancaster Regiment, gave two concerts at the Corn Exchange. On December 7th that year, also at the Corn Exchange, Handel’s Messiah was performed. It was during these dark war years that Lane was appointed Music Master and, when military service led to a shortage of teachers, a form master as well at Dorchester Grammar School.

Following the end of the First World War in 1919 Lane established the Weymouth Operatic Society, which was then merged with the Madrigal Society. The years 1922 to 1931 saw Lane mainly pre-occupied with training his choirs and giving singing tuition to children in various schools in the area, though there were the occasional concerts to conduct. One of these, on August 8th 1930, was a performance of Mendelsshon’s Elijah in Colliton Park. It is interesting to note that one of Edgar Lane’s singing pupils was Gertrude Bugler who, as a strikingly beautiful farmers wife in her twenties, was then an amateur actress playing Tess in the productions of ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ in Dorchester.

But 1928 brought personal tragedy. With the death of Thomas Hardy in January, Lane lost a close friend and associate, for it had been through Hardy that the Lanes had acquired their first Dorchester home in Cornwall Road. Lane became involved, as had Boyton Smith before him, in writing incidental music for productions of Hardy’s stories. As the writer’s wealth had grown through publication of his works, he became more of a man of property, including the Cornwall Road house, which he rented out to Edgar Lane. Hardy was then Lane’s landlord as well as his commissioner of works! The second blow for Edgar was distinctly more personal. When grown up Geoffrey, the Lane’s first child and eldest son went to sea, first as a rating in the Royal Navy then later as a purser on a P&O liner. Though said to have never had a day’s illness in his life, Geoffrey Lane contracted pneumonia late in 1928 and died.

For one of Hardy’s last birthdays in the 1920’s, Lane arranged for the choir of Holy Trinity to give the writer a personal recital of anthems and hymns at Max Gate. Later in that decade, when the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VIII, later Duke of Windsor) visited Dorchester and Max Gate, Lane wrote a special piece for the occasion.

In 1931 Edgar formed the South Dorset Festival Choir, but had not been conducting it for long when, soon after his last festival in 1935, failing health forced him from the podium. In 1936, following two serious operations, Lane went to Sussex to convalesce. By 1937 the composer was sufficiently recovered to return to conduct one more concert in the Borough Gardens featuring a march to mark the coronation of George VI he had written while in hospital. But the remission was brief. Soon after this event Edgar Lane again fell ill and on February 10th 1938, following further operations, he died.

Throughout his very busy life Edgar Lane was not in a position to take advantage of the kudos that came from publishing light music and the few years after 1906 found his family in quite dire financial straits. More than did Boyton Smith, Lane suffered from the march of progress in technology as the advent of the home gramophone, its records and radio broadcasting impacted heavily on the popular sheet music market. Furthermore it is not known whether Lane was ever awarded an honorary degree, though he certainly spent many hours of evenings pouring over books in an exhaustive effort to work towards attaining such a qualification.

Edgar Lane’s involvement with Hardy was probably inevitable rather than accidental, since Boyton-Smith proved to be the ‘link-man’ in mutual association with both. But it is also thought that Lane had an even more intimate relationship with the great writer than had Smith, for Margaret Lane has noted that Hardy and her father “had many musical evenings together.” Furthermore, Lane, as we have seen, twice received invitations to take a choir to Max Gate, and two Hardy settings by Lane “Men Who March Away” and “Songs of Joyance” have been located. The latter was written for the Prince of Wales’ visit and the composer also set some of William Barnes’ verse to music. But few recordings and manuscripts of his music have survived: only four of Lane’s own scores have been traced, while four Barnes settings are listed in the 1932 Dorset Year Book. Lane’s daughter accounted for this paucity by noting that much of Lane’s own and commissioned work for Hardy was accidentally included among works of another composer who was destroying them on a bonfire. It is thought that further Lane scores also perished in a fire at Max Gate. However, Lane’s setting of “Fight the Good Fight” which won for the Dorset Choral Association the ‘Prize Tune Award’ of 1925 was included in the inventory taken of the items in Hardy’s study after the writer’s death.

Overall, it appears that Lane’s music was primarily written for public consumption at major ceremonial occasions reflecting the fact that orchestras, bands and choral societies he wrote for were invariably present to mark these important events.

In conclusion it could be said that anyone who, over a career of some 44 years, had held two church organist positions; a church-wardency; a music master/form mastership of a grammar school; founded and coached several choirs; taught voice and four instruments, organised and conducted several concerts and found time to compose his own and commissioned music, play cricket and croquet, keep chickens and turkeys and grow his own vegetables, could wear himself out before his time or ruin his health. Edgar Lane did ultimately ruin his health, possibly as a result of overwork, but he achieved all of the above and a few more.

Lane’s surviving manuscripts, letters, performance billings, etc, together with copies of Margaret Lane’s short biography are now kept in an archive THE EDGAR LANE COLLECTION available for inspection in the general section at the Dorset History Centre, Dorchester.

Frederick William Boyton Smith – Part Two

Jun 23rd, 2010

by Dorset Ancestors.

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Smith had an unusually stylised signature which, while distinctive was yet legible. His forename was scored through with a backstroke from the “B” that also served to cross the “T” in Boyton, before passing through the loop of the “H” in Smith, to extend some way beyond; the hook of the “H” was then doubled back in a broad sweeping arc to entablature the whole name of Smith. (See photo in photo section.)

How well Frederick W.B. Smith and Thomas Hardy knew each other has long been a matter of uncertainty and speculation. What is known for a fact is that the two men were born within three years – and within three miles – of each other, and were virtually fellow townsmen of Dorchester who most likely often saw each other in passing without being aware of each other’s identity. And while Boyton Smith was no writer, Hardy was an amateur musician, having learnt the violin and how to sight-read music from his father who had been a player in the family’s gallery band at Stinsford Church.

The two men however, were evidently in almost daily passing contact from as early as the late 1850’s, for the office of the architect John Hicks, where Hardy was working as an articled apprentice and to which he would have walked each day, was situated in South Street, where Smith was then living. This office was also next door to the home of the great schoolmaster poet and scholar William Barnes. But it is likely that the intermediary who brought Smith and Hardy together was Walter Fletcher, a long-time walking companion of the latter, who also happened to be a friend of both Boyton and Sydney Smith. Fletcher was present during Sydney’s last visit to his elder brother in 1877, and it is probable that, quite independently, Smith was acquainted with many of the same people in Dorchester as Hardy was. He would therefore be familiar with many of the same aspects of life in the neighbourhood, and would have been involved in many of the same organisations.

An example of this close involvement came in 1904, when Boyton Smith was commissioned by the Society of Dorset Men in London to set ‘Praise o’Dorset,’ a poem by Barnes, to music for the occasion of their inaugural meeting. For the 1922 Dorset Year Book the Society’s founder and vice president, William Watkins, wrote a piece in which he imagined himself fifty years on at the annual dinner in 1971 and commented: “..it is glad beyond measure to hear the well-known strain of Boyton Smith’s setting to Barnes’ ‘Praise o’Dorset.”

In 1907 Thomas Hardy OM, JP was appointed President of the SDML, and in a journal letter of November 23rd of that year described Smith’s musical efforts on the organisation’s behalf, giving the composer’s address as Wollaston Road, Dorchester, having moved from High West Street, showing that by that year the composer and the writer were evidently known to each other and in rudimentary contact with each other. This interaction is likely to have increased exactly a year later, when the Dorchester Debating and Dramatic Society (later The Hardy Players) staged a production of Hardy’s ‘The Trumpet Major’ under the direction of a local chemist and JP, A.H. Evans. This production is of interest since it included four settings by Boyton Smith of Hardy’s poetry: ‘Budmouth Dears;’ ‘My Love’s Gone a-Fighting;’ ‘The Night of Trafalgar’ (from The Dynasts,) and ‘Valenciennes’ (from Wessex Poems.) Smith also provided a harmonisation of Harry Pouncy’s setting of Hardy’s ‘The Sergeant’s Song,’ also from Wessex Poems.

The tune of Budmouth Dears seems to have struck a popular chord with London Society, for in a letter to Pouncy in February 1908 Hardy mentions that: “it is true that the song Budmouth Dears has hit the London taste – all reviews quote it nearly.” But it had been one particular scene from The Trumpet Major, enacted in isolation, that had inspired the Rector of Holy Trinity, Rowland Hill, to include it as a piece of whimsy at that year’s May Fair. At this point it is thought that Boyton may again have become involved, since by this time he was Holy Trinity’s organist. In a December 1912 production of The Trumpet Major at the Cripplegate Institution in London, music of the Boyton Smith songs was reproduced in the programme of this performance.

A more intensive collaboration between Hardy and Smith certainly occurred about September 1910 when Smith harmonised some books of traditional carols once owned by Hardy’s father and grandfather. The carols were used in a production of Under the Greenwood Tree under the title of ‘The Mellstock Squire’ in November 1910, on which occasion Hardy received the freedom of Dorchester. Significantly, there exists in the Hardy Memorial Collection in Dorchester a photograph showing Hardy at a rehearsal of this play. The harmonisations of the carols appears to have been completed in early October and were much appreciated by the Dorset County Chronicle as well as Hardy himself, for Smith’s manuscripts were found among the author’s papers in his study after his death.

It appears that Boyton Smith and his father had leanings towards arranging Dorset’s traditional folk music, though many of these pieces never made it to publication. A list produced by the SDML, includes ‘Merry Bleake o’Blackmwore,’ a setting of Barnes by Smith, and ‘That Do Vollow the Plough,’ a traditional air that Smith harmonised. It is likely that this interest in folk music was responsible for involving Smith with the Society, since among the Society’s objectives to promote or encourage were a fuller knowledge of folk-lore, literature, natural history, art and music. Hardy himself, in a letter of 26th December 1907 to A.M. Broadley confirmed he was “…looking for some old Dorset psalm tunes, either composed by Dorset men, much sung in Dorset, or bearing names of Dorset places for the Society of Dorset Men in London.”

Fellow Durnovarians of Boyton Smith became enthusiastic officionados of his music and obviously relished the local associations it invoked. For instance, in the November 2nd, 1905 edition of the Dorset County Chronicle it is noted that at the previous evening’s Old Grammarians Annual Dinner, those present sang their favourite anthem Praise o’Dorset to Smith’s music. Hardy was a member of the Old Grammarians, for he held the position of Governor of Dorchester Grammar School. The Smith setting of Praise o’Dorset was also played during a forthcoming Hardy Players production of The Woodlanders.

Naturally, William Barnes had been a life-long mentor, fellow townsman and friend of Hardy, and it seems likely that Boyton Smith also set further works of Barnes to music as well. After all, Sydney and Boyton Smith attended Barnes’ school, and their parents also had close association with him. Following an enquiry about Dorset songwriters from Major William Arnold, Hardy replied in a letter of November 23rd 1907: “Mr Boyton Smith of Wollaston Road, Dorchester, has lately at the request of the Society of Dorset Men in London, melodised some of Barnes poems which are sung with great success at the Society’s meetings and he might be willing to do the same with any you might choose…Barnes’ poems in Dorset dialect, some of them set to music by Mr Boyton Smith.” That Hardy clearly approved of Smith’s settings of his poetry and incidental music for his productions is shown in the writer’s recommendation of the composer to Major Arnold and Granville Barker as one who could portray Dorset as equally well in music as Hardy had in the written word.

But in return, what was Boyton Smith’s opinion of Hardy’s work? Clearly Smith’s settings were undertaken as commissions from local societies, and not merely because he was inspired to write them as unsolicited labours of love. It is possible that the settings would not otherwise have been a commercial proposition, for he was a typical Victorian composer of light pieces for the sheet-music market. Since even Kipling – who of course was an author and poet – once confessed to Hardy that he did not understand the people and places in his Wessex novels, would it have been likely that an upper-middle class composer like Smith could have appreciated the plots and characterisations of rustic novels? Smith, as far as is known, had no interest in, or little time for reading, but he was not alone in pursuing a career of composing for the Victorian parlour.

On February 23rd, 1911 the county Gazette bore the following sorrowful statement in an obituary column: “It is with sincere and deep regret that we have to record the death of Mr Boyton Smith which, after a short illness, happened at his residence in Wollaston Road on Friday night within a week of his 74th birthday.”

Smith had passed over on the 17th, and throughout the three columns that followed this paragraph, many facets of his character and work were cited. It is recorded that his “masterly knowledge” of organ playing gave the congregation at Holy Trinity the opportunity to hear a proper interpretation of liturgical music. So much was music a life-long love of Smith that he devoted every hour to it. No labour was begrudged, and his genial disposition and inspired enthusiasm met with a ready response from choir men and choir boys of Holy Trinity across the twenty-two years of his association with the church. Indeed, such was his devotion to music that he persisted in it to the limit of his endurance in his declining years, and it was a sad day when, through advance of age and frailty, Boyton Smith was compelled to resign his position as organist. Not least among those who mourned his passing would have been Cannon Hill, who brought to Smith a friendship as close as the friendship towards the minister’s predecessor, Henry Everett, had been.

Smith dearly loved his home town, where he was furthermore a generous and charitable citizen ever ready to help any good cause, his great talent contributing to the object in hand. His acts of kindness were many and this aspect of his personality won him the hearts of many. For Boyton, loftier ambitions would always subordinate to unselfish consideration for his fellow citizens. Yet out of a patriotic duty, he managed to find time for service in the Dorchester Corps of the Volunteers that in those early days saw the enrolment of many Dorchester townsmen. The obituary further noted that Smith had served as the first ever Weymouth representative of Trinity College, London, for a number of years. As a tribute, the music for the first Sunday service at Holy Trinity following Smith’s passing was of a special character. The Dead March (from Saul) and his arrangement in G of the Te Deum was impressively played by his organist successor, Edgar A Lane. On this occasion the special preacher was Arthur Hippersley Smith of Langton, East Yorks, son of the Curate in Charge, Revd. P.A. Hippersley Smith. At evensong canticles were sung to the composer’s favourite tunes, as well as a rendition of his beautiful anthem “I Will Lay Me Down in Peace.” Following the Blessing the choir sang the sublime quartet and chorus “Blest are the Departed” (from Spohr’s “Last Judgement.”) Special services of remembrance were also held at St. Peters and All Saints.

Frederick W Boyton Smith left his wife Penelope and five children behind, the most prominent of whom was his surviving son Sydney, who was by the time of his father’s death the Revd S. Boyton Smith, vicar of St. Clements Church, Bristol. The others were Florence (Mrs Edward Salisbury of Streatham;) Margaret Ada (Mrs G.H. Lock of Shrewsbury;) Helen (Mrs Philip Harding) then living in Canada, and Frances (Miss Boyton Smith.) From these, Boyton Smith had eight grandchildren.

Click on this link to hear Phillip Smith play Boyton Smith’s ‘ Isle of Beauty.’ http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Phillip+Sear+Boyton+Smith&aq=f

Powerstock – St. Mary’s Church

Jun 15th, 2010

by Dorset Ancestors.

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I made my first visit to Powerstock on the first Saturday in June 2006. It was the first real summer’s day we enjoyed here in Dorset that year and just the right time to get away from the county town and visit a country church. I recall three ladies were sharing a bench and the shade from an overhanging tree while their husbands were laid out on the grass soaking up the sun and staring at the wisps of cloud suspended in an otherwise clear blue sky. I returned to the parish on the first Saturday in June this year and again I was blessed with a fine sunny day.

The church, dedicated to St. Mary, sits in a commanding position at the centre of the village above the junction where four lanes meet. The village is small but by Dorset standards Powerstock is a large parish that takes in the hamlets of West Milton, Wytherstone and Nettlecombe.

In the second-half of the 19th century our Victorian ancestors were busy restoring churches all over the country; in Dorset it is difficult to find churches they didn’t work on, sometimes tampering and meddling unnecessarily. St Mary’s at Powerstock didn’t escape their attentions but here the restoration was justified to remedy a dilapidated structure that was too small to accommodate a growing congregation.

No sooner was Thomas Sanctuary installed as vicar of Powerstock than he determined to have better education for children of the poor and better church accommodation. Work on the church started in 1854, under his supervision, and took five years to complete. Sanctuary was vicar here from 1848 to 1889 and his wife is thought to have designed and painted the holly and ivy decoration on the walls in the nave.

During Sanctuary’s time as vicar some of the most distinguished prelates of the 19th century came to Powerstock including Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford and Winchester, and Dr. Magee, Bishop of Peterborough; also Dr. Fraser, Bishop of Manchester and Dr. Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln.

St. Mary’s dates from the middle of the 12th century and consists of chancel, nave and west tower. Aisles were added to the nave in the 14th century when alterations were made to the tower, which was altered again and heightened a century later. The 1850’s saw the north aisle and arcade added but both retain 14th century features. The south aisle and porch are modern.

The chancel was completely rebuilt during the 1850’s improvements, except for the magnificent mid 12th century chancel arch, of which Pevsner tells us “is the most elaborate Norman chancel arch in any Dorset parish church.” The arch is lop-sided, leaning to the south a result of work done in the 14th century when two hagioscopes or squints were made in the wall south of the arch. During the 1850’s makeover two galleries were removed from the west and south sides.

The partly restored 14th century north arcade of three bays and two-centred arches is generally similar in date and detail to the south arcade. The north aisle, said to have been rebuilt in 1858, incorporates four 14th century windows each with two lights – one in the east wall and three in the north wall.

The south aisle is part of the 1850’s expansion and restoration and incorporates a 15th century doorway into the south porch, which has been described by one expert as “a rich work of great merit which would suffice alone to give the fabric very special distinction.” The windows in the south aisle are modern. The 13th century font was reinstated in 1972 having for a time been removed to the churchyard. Special mention should be given to the baptistery window in the west wall. Known as The Sanctuary Window it was designed by Thomas Denny and dedicated at a service on 17th of October 1991. It was presented by the widow of Mark Stapleton Sanctuary. The late Saxon or Early Norman piscina in the chancel was found on a farm not far away in 1925; a vestige of the original building – around its base there is a cable mould similar to the chancel arch.

The west tower is of three stages with an embattled parapet and the arch leading into the tower was opened up during Thomas Sanctuary’s improvements. The west doorway dates from the 14th century. The bell-chamber has, in each wall, an early 15th century window of two lights and is home to six bells: five; 1st, 3rd and 5th are by Thomas Bilbie of Cullompton and are dated 1772; 2nd is by Thomas Purdue and dated 1712. The number 4 tenor bell bears the initials T.P (probably Thomas Purdue) and date 1684. This bell was recast in 1897 when the bells were re-hung to mark Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. The sixth bell is a recent addition; hung in 1960 in memory of Mr William Sykes.

There are memorial plaques to Thomas Larcombe, churchwarden, 1610; Montague Rush, a former vicar at Powerstock who died in 1821 and one to Thomas Russell who died in 1788. In the churchyard the graves of Thomas Burt 1747; James Burt 1774 and Mary his wife 1784; Thomas Burt 1749 and his wife Elizabeth 1751; William Travis 1646, and another William Travis 1682 and Joan Travis 1717; Richard Sanders 1706; Ester Syms 1701; Henry Smith Snr., 1706; Rebekah, wife of John Mitchell 1712.

For four decades the village of Powerstock was home to Admiral Sir Victor Crutchley VC: he died aged 92 in 1986 at his home at Nettlecombe and is buried in the churchyard beneath a wooden cross with the “For Valour” insignia of the Victoria Cross.

Frederick William Boyton Smith

Jun 10th, 2010

by Dorset Ancestors.

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Today he is virtually forgotten, yet he fathered no fewer than one hundred and ninety three short salon pieces and organ works. Information about his remarkable life is distinctly hard to obtain, yet he was a contemporary and associate of Thomas Hardy, and set many of the writer’s poems to music. Now, after more than a century, the obscure and remarkable persona of Frederick Boyton Smith has been partly rediscovered through exhaustive researches at the Dorset History Centre and lengthy behind-the-scenes correspondence with Ms Susan Bell, to whom the author of this biographical portrait would like to acknowledge thanks for all her helpful information about Frederick Boyton Smith and his brother Edward Sydney Smith.

Frederick W Boyton Smith was born in Dorchester in September or October 1837, and is recorded as having been baptised on October 13th in Dorchester’s St Peters Church. Frederick was clearly born into a musical family, for his father, also named Frederick William Smith, was a musician; his mother, Helen Boyton and her sister Clara (who was a teacher of music) were the daughters of Richard Boyton, a professor and teacher of piano. Helen was originally from Clifton, Bristol, where she married Boyton’s father in September 1835. To avoid confusion with his father, Frederick jr. is usually known as Boyton Smith. The 1861 census shows that Boyton Smith’s father was originally a Kentish man from Deal, had moved with Helen to Dorchester. He is recorded as being ‘a professor of music and dance.’

At the age of four, Boyton is recorded as living with his parents and brothers Sydney and Walter at Cornhill, Dorchester, but by 1851 the family had evidently moved to 16 South Street. However, the census that year does not include Boyton, as by this time he was studying the organ under George Townshend Smith at Hereford Cathedral, and instead is noted in that town’s census as visiting the home of one Mary Ann Watt on census day. It is thought that Boyton was probably a boarder at the Cathedral school rather than living in with Townshend Smith, but it is uncertain whether he received further training in the subsequent years. By the time of Dorchester’s 1861 census the Smiths had moved to 53 High West Street and Sydney Smith had left for Leipzig in 1855 to study piano, violin, cello, harmony, counterpoint and composition.

Boyton Smith, too, by 1861 had left Dorchester to live in with a spirit merchant’s widow called Ann Gare and her two daughters in Chard, Somerset. The connection seems to have been through Boyton, who by now was recognised as a professor of music, possibly working for the British National School where Mrs Gare was Mistress. One of her daughters, Janette, is recorded as being an assistant at the school, which was situated close to the Gare home in the High Street.

While Boyton and Sydney would have learnt music from their parents at an early age the former’s earliest known published piece was a transcription for piano of a two-part song by Mendelssohn called “Greetings” in 1861. The rest of the decade continued to be a productive and fruitful time for Boyton, during which time forty compositions were published. These were variable pieces suitable for the drawing room, many being for the piano, but also including arrangements based on operatic songs and melodies. There are also songs based on the poetry of Longfellow, Kingsley and Goethe and one piece of sacred music. Most of these works were published by Chappell & Co, Edwin Ashdown, Weeks & Co, or Novello. Of especially high value to Gilbert and Sullivan officionado’s is an arrangement of a lost song from a comic opera by Sullivan called “The Chieftain,” first performed at the Savoy Theatre in 1894.

Boyton appears to have had a penchant for giving his pieces titles in French such as “Sur le Lac Morceau de Salon pour Piano.” This reflects a trend for all things French at the time among upper class Victorian ladies and a good deal of published sheet music in the 1860’s either came from Paris or else purported to come from there.

Yet despite his prolific output in catering for the 19th century demand for drawing room pieces, Boyton Smith and his music are largely forgotten, and even in his home town his name is largely unrecognised and his achievements undocumented.

In 1864 Boyton Smith married a Clifton woman. Penelope Mary Ann Rawle, Penelope had been born in Clifton in 1842, but the 1861 census clearly shows that by then Boyton’s future wife was working as a governess at Burton, Winfrith Newburgh. The birth of a son, Sydney, was registered in Dorchester in 1865 showing that the family was living there by then. The Dorchester Holy Trinity Baptism Register notes that Sydney was followed by Florence (1867), Helen (1868) and Margaret Ada (1869.) The 1869 record gives Boyton’s occupation as organist (he was appointed Organist at Holy Trinity) and his address as Alexandra Terrace, Dorchester.

In February 1866 Boyton’s younger brother Walter, a bookseller by trade, died from nephritis aged only 25. By 1871 the family was living at 39 South Street, close to the home of Helen, Boyton’s mother, who had been widowed the previous year. The census shows that another son, Frederick, was added to the family only one month before and the presence of three servants show that by then Boyton Smith was well-to-do in his capacity as a professor of music. Indeed, the 70’s again saw the publication of another forty or so small compositions and works for the organ. These included sacred music such as “Lo! I will Give you Rest;” “Andante con Moto” (an organ piece) and arranged piano duets such as “The Flying Dutchman.”

However, most of the forty compositions of the 70’s hang on lightweight pieces for the parlour in the manner of “L’Echo du Tyrol” fantasy for piano, or “Jeanne de Arc,” a gallop de salon. “The Love Who’s All to ME” was a popular ballad, while “The Ash Grove” was a well known aire. Yet Boyton was also moved to write music designed to help beginners and students, seen in, for example, “The Pianists Daily Practice” and “The Russian National Hymn.”

But the 1870’s also spelt tragedy for Boyton Smith. The family had evidently moved to Melcombe Regis soon after the 1871 census day, for the Cemetery Chapel there records the burial, on January 2nd, 1872, of the infant Frederick at only 9 months and in January 1876 the burial of a later infant son, baptised Frederick Walter aged only ten weeks. The family’s address was then 2 Frederick Place, Melcombe, but by 1881 it was Lawn House in Lennox Street, where Boyton’s other daughters Helen and Ada also resided. Here another baby, Frances, was born in 1881.

During the years in Melcombe Boyton’s occupation is given as Music Teacher, where his pupils would have attended at Frederick Place. During the 1880’s Boyton was still composing and arranging, his tally for the decade being about another 45 pieces. The Boyton Smith’s with their daughter Helen were still living at Lawn House on census day 1891, their youngest daughter Frances by that time being a boarder at the same school in Wyke Regis that Helen had attended ten years earlier. It is possible that by this time too, Sydney, was studying for a BA in Durham, for the same ‘S Boyton Smith’ appears as President of the St. Cuthbert’s Society, on that city’s St. Cuthbert College’s register in 1895.

Though only 50 when he died in 1889 Edward Sydney had by the end of his life established himself as a prolific composer in his own right, searches having brought up details of four hundred and sixty-seven published compositions. We will publish a brief biographical piece about Sydney Smith shortly.

The end of the 19th century saw the publication of a great volume of sheet music for the middle class amateur to play at home. During this period Boyton Smith published his “Fantasia” based on four more Sullivan operas as well as other opera-based arrangements and waltzes. Yet a discernible shift in genre from parlour to sacred music is evident in Smith’s repertoire during the 1890’s. In all, seven pieces of church music for Novello’s Parish Choir Books and organ pieces such as his Grand March in D were published. The latter is still played occasionally as the recessional at church weddings, though its composer’s name has long since become disassociated with it.

Sometime before 1901 Boyton Smith had evidently moved back to Dorchester; for he is listed in that year’s census as living at 56 High West Street. Very near his parent’s former home at No. 53. He was then 64 years old, still a professor of music, though one ‘employed on his own account.’ Living with him was his wife Helen, her 84 year-old spinster aunt Mary Jane Rawle and one servant. The couple’s elder daughter Florence had become Mrs Edward Salisbury living in London with her husband, their four-year-old daughter, and sister Frances, then twenty years old. Florence and Edward had married in 1887 in a ceremony witnessed by both Sydney and Frederick Boyton Smith. Ada had married George Herbert Lock and was living with her husband, two daughters and sister Helen, then 32, in Shrewsbury. In 1893 Ada had published a composition of her own called “Romance for Violin and Piano” under the name of Ada Boyton Smith. Boyton Smith’s son Sydney went into the Church, becoming an Anglican clergyman who married an Irish woman from Enniskillen called Mary Cooney. By peculiar coincidence the 1901 census shows that Mary’s father William was living in Clifton with her and Sydney, so maintaining a Bristol connection within the family.

At the time when Boyton Smith embarked on his career as a composer, other European composers, whether of piano music or more ambitious works for orchestra, were much in vogue, while England was regarded as something of a musical backwater or desert, which not even the great Godsends and legacies of Elgar, Parry or Vaughn Williams could entirely dispel. The only way a young English composer could hope to gain recognition or financial reward was through the composition of pieces for gifted amateurs. Over the decades Boyton Smith recognised the opportunities that the growing popularity of British musical comedy presented. By the beginning of the 20th century this medium had established itself as the most successful school of operetta in Europe. But as the century progressed the nature and character of Smith’s repertoire changed. Music with commercial potential diminished in importance, a luxury of omission Smith perhaps felt he could afford now that his children were financially independent.

Between 1900 and 1919 Boyton published another twenty-eight pieces of music, half of these being sacred music for the Church. But during this period too, another highly important and ultimately world-renown figure was about to enter his life. He was not a composer or primarily anyone with a career in music; nor was he some distant nonentity from afar off, but a world-renown contemporary who had lived and worked in Boyton Smith’s own town and neighbourhood throughout both their lives. Two men who had made names for themselves in their own ways and had perhaps rubbed shoulders without getting to know the measure of each other.

So did Frederick William Boyton Smith join the throng of the many notables who were friends or associates of the great Thomas Hardy…

To be continued…

[Cut and paste or click on this link to hear Phillip Sear play Boyton Smith’s ‘Isle of Beauty.’ http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Phillip+Sear+Boyton+Smith&aq=f

Dorset County Gaol

Purbeck Mysteries and Strange Burials

Simon Garrett – Master Thatcher

Hardy’s Church

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

Sydney Smith – Musician and Composer

Edgar Lane – Musician of Distinction

Frederick William Boyton Smith – Part Two

Powerstock – St. Mary’s Church

Frederick William Boyton Smith

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