African Lives in the North East. Part 4. Other Information

Continued from:

http://historyandsocialaction.blogspot.com/2020/11/african-lives-in-north-east-part-3.html

Under Fire. Black Britain in Wartime 1939-1945 

In this book published by The History Press, historian of Black Britain Stephen Bourne includes detail from David A. Vaughan’s biography of Harold Moody, the founder of the League of Coloured Peoples. Moody visited Newcastle in 1941 where there was a group of Africans who had been stranded there at the beginning of the War, and who ‘were often lonely and unhappy because of their feeling of isolation from the social life of the community.’ He met a group of eleven representatives including the Nigerian community leader Charles Minto. The group derived much benefit and encouragement from Moody’s visit.’ (Bourne. p. 208).  Stephen also discusses Cummings in his other book Fighting Proud. The Untold Story Of The Gay Men Who Served in Two World Wars (Bloomsbury. 2019) 

Another student at Newcastle University mentioned by  Stephen was the sister of the Nigerian RAF pilot Peter Thomas’s sister. (p.150)

Path’s Across The Water

Internet searching about Charles Minto led me to the  Old Low Light Heritage and Community Centre’s website Paths Across Waters based on its 2017 exhibiiton,  on which are three important essays by the African American historian Vanessa Mongey: A Home Away from Home: The West Indies House, 1941-1945; Students on the Tyne: The Colonial Students' Club in Newcastle; and Spaces of solidarity: the International Coloured Mutual Aid Association and the Colonial House in North Shields; and Challenging Racism and imperialism: Celestine Edwards in Sunderland.

 

These are rich in detail including about Robert Wellesley Cole and his sister Irene, and  Koi Obuadabang Larbi from the Gold Coast, a  28 years old barrister, who had studied law at King’s College (today's Newcastle University), ‘but suspended his career to devote his time and energy to the West Indies House. He was the first Black man to hold the appointment of missioner in the British Sailor’s Society.’

https://pathswaters.wixsite.com

Henry ‘Box’ Brown

Henry ‘Box’ Brown was an escaped slave from America who campaigned in Britain for support of emancipation in the United  States from November 1850 to March 1875. In her book Henry Box Brown. From Slavery to Show Business (McFarland. 2020) historian of Black Britain Kathleen (Kathy) Chater records details about his visit to Newcastle, the Shields, Hartlepool and Darlington in October and November 1852, citing reports in the local press (pp. 82-84.) She also mentions that what looks like the final lecture given in 1865 by James Watkins was in Milfield, nr. Berwick.(p. 53)

Football's Black Pioneers

On 12 November Bill Hern and David Gleave launched their book  Football's Black Pioneers about the first black players to represent each of 92 English Football League and English Premier League clubs. They include: Arthur Wharton, Middlesbrough’s Lindy Delapenha (1950), Sunderland’s Roly Gregoire (1978) and Newcastle’s Howard Gayle.

They also have a website at

https://footballs-black-pioneers.com

Arthur Wharton was subject of an article in Newcastle Evening Chronicle on 1 October.

www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/black-history-blm-north-east-19014776

Clara Jarrett and James Emanuel Brown

The authors of Football's Black Pioneers also have a website on which they are posting stories about individuals of African heritage in Britain. There is an entry of these two Jamaicans who married in Newcastle in 1944, he living at 8 Louvain Terrace near Blyth, and she at the Young Women’s Christian Association in Saville Rd in North Shields.

http://historycalroots.com 

Jacques M’Bondo and Birtley

The same site includes a sketch about Jacques M’Bondo. the African born in the Belgian Congo. He fought for the Belgian Army in the First World War. On 2 January 1918 he was transferred to the Belgian run munitions factory at Birtley, but died on 28^th of pneumonia.

Albert Harper

The grand nephew of  Annie Talbot contacted me about her husband’s father. In 1914  Annie married Albert Harper in Chesterfield. They had a daughter Loyce Doreen Harper born in Stockton on Tees in 1915. Details about Albert’s father Rev. Thomas Greathead Harper (probably from Demerara) is on a blog that cites material I came across about his lecturing in land issues in Croydon in the First World War. Albert lived most of his life in Chesterfield. I wonder why they were and how long they were in Stockton. I am waiting further information.

A Liverpool-Haggerston Castle Connection

A web site about Walton Hall in Liverpool tells us that it was owned by the slave trader Thomas Leyland. It mentions that its grand entrance was situated in Haggerston Rd which may have come from the Castle in Northumberland which was part of the Leyland Estates. It was inherited by Thomas Naylor, a Liverpool banker. It is a complex story which is worth researching, starting with John Marwick’s posting at

www.leightonnews.com/2013/the-history-of-the-naylor-family-of-leighton-hall

http://lostliverpool.blogspot.com/2009/02/where-was-walton-hall.html

Other Liverpool Connections

One of the key elements of slavery and abolition were the family, religious and business networks, and landownership in various parts of the country. The 1826 and 1827 election Poll Books for Newcastle and Northumberland include voters who lived in Liverpool who owned property and land, giving them the right to vote.

·      Tinley Thomas of Walton, who is also listed in Gore’s Directory of Liverpool for 1834 as a ship broker and general agent

·      George Kent who owned property in Tynemouth

What can be found out about any slavery business activities they were involved with in Liverpool?

People Living Today

The calendar group took the decision not to include people who are still alive. If we are to understand the black experience over the decades we need to research, interview and record the reminiscences of those who are still alive and encourage them to write. We know about David Olusoga’s experience growing up in Gateshead, and Chris Mullard’s as Newcastle Community Relations Officer.  A list needs to be compiled which would include for example Lance Gibbs (Sunderland cricketer). The North East Labour History Society’s guides to archive researching and oral history are useful toolkits.

http://nelh.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Archive.pdf

http://nelh.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Oral_History.pdf

Durham Miners

The cover of Dave Temple’s Durham Miners Association 150 Years of Struggle, has a picture of the national Union of Mineworkers Durham Area Dean and Chapter Lodge on the cover. The pamphlet is jointly published by the DMA and Labour Heritage.  Copies can be ordered from Labour Heritage @ £1.50 per copy incl. p&p (reduction for multiple orders) at labourheritage45@btinternet.com

Details about the banner and the DMA’s anti-racism policies can be read at

www.durhamminers.org/international_solidarity

Richard Burgon, MP, discusses the banner in the  context of socialist culture at

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/arts-are-the-lifeblood-of-the-struggle 

Northumberland Collections put on an exhibition about black miners in the North East during this year’s Black History Month.

www.itv.com/news/tyne-tees/2020-10-06/new-exhibition-running-during-black-history-month-at-woodhorn-museum-to-celebrate-black-and-african-caribbean-miners

It included details about Lincoln Cole in Nottinghamshire who was Newcastle United’s Andy Coles father.

www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/andy-coles-dad-black-miners-19143172

There is a national Black Miners Museum project at:

www.blackcoalminers.com

The State of British Black History Early 2020

Interest in British Black History has escalated since the murder of George Floyd in the USA and the world wide support for Black Lives Matters. My assessment of the state of BBH at the beginning of the year in four parts can be seen starting at:

http://historyandsocialaction.blogspot.com/2020/02/reflections-on-current-state-of-british.html

The amount of work being carried out in the North East and elsewhere has been partly stimulated by the Black Lives Matter movement, building on past work. What is clear is that there is fragmented partial networking, and a need for an umbrella group to develop further work, improve dissemination and avoid unnecessary duplication. A lot of what is thought to be hidden is not; just lack of knowledge about it.

African Lives In The North East. Part 3. Tyne & Wear

Continued from:

http://historyandsocialaction.blogspot.com/2020/11/african-lives-in-north-east-part-2.html

 Newcastle University

 The University says that ‘Black History Month offers one important touchstone in the academic year when we can progress those ideas through debate, listening and sharing.’

This year visiting Professor of Social Justice Dr Keith Magee gave the Black History Month Insights Lecture on 20 October A bItter Sweet Journey: from slavery to freedom and beyond the colour line; how Britain’s association with slavery did not end when the practice was abolished in 1834.

In July Ian McDonald talked film students, Dami Fawehinmi and Warren Brown, about Racism, Black Lives Matter and studying Documentary Filmmaking at Newcastle University.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlRoFjqGe3U

A month earlier Dorothy Chirwa, a student called out the University for lack of diversity. 

https://thetab.com/uk/newcastle/2020/06/12/newcastle-university-student-calls-out-the-uni-for-lack-of-diversity-50483

Northumbria University 

Led by Brian Ward, Professor in American Studies,  newly published research has examined and offered practical solutions as to how the US civil rights movement is taught in UK schools. It seeks to balance engagement with Britain’s own racial and imperial histories. It  looks at how Martin Luther King for example was portrayed offering practical suggestions for how teachers can connect the unfinished story of the struggle for racial justice in the US to similar historic, equally incomplete, struggles for racial equality in Britain.

www.asiansunday.co.uk/northumbria-university-study-calls-for-a-change-in-how-black-british-history-and-the-us-civil-rights-movement-are-taught-in-schools

He discusses the issues at

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/uks-school-curriculum-reveals-historical-amnesia-when-it-comes-black-history-168476

This linkage is at the core of the work of Journey for Justice, which was in Middlesbrough in 2016.

https://journeytojustice.org.uk/projects/middlesbrough

Brian Ward’s book Martin Luther King in Newcastle upon Tyne: The African American Freedom Struggle and Race Relations in the North East of England (Tyne Bridge Publishing. 2017) was the basis of the exhibition at Newcastle University in 2017, details of which and a video of Ward speaking can be seen at:

www.chroniclelive.co.uk/whats-on/arts-culture-news/fragile-mementoes-martin-luther-kings-13588653  

Ward has wider interests in black abolitionists in Britain. He gave a talk Before Martin Luther King – Frederick Douglass and Abolitionism in the North East on 18 October in the Berwick Literary Festival.

Statues, Street Names, Plaques and History Boards

Newcastle Council is continuing to look at statues and street names which may be controversial following the drowning of the Colston statue in Bristol. I have shared my thoughts with Bill Griffiths. e.g.

• a history board next to the Earl Grey statue to explain  about his role in anti-slavery
•  plaques to people of African Heritage that are featured in the calendar and others with offering an advisory  consultancy to Nubian Jak Community Trust, the black lives plaque experts.
• assessing whether street names were decided by the Council in the past or the developers and whether some could be changed or boards put up to explain them
• history boards or information carved into paving stones at key locations along  the City’s slavery and abolition trail

The issues about memorials was the subject of India Gerritson’s dissertation Memory Lingers Here”: Are Newcastle Monuments Sites of Collective Memory? It won the 2019 North East Labour History Society’s Sid Chaplin Essay Prize. An article based on it will be published in North East History journal next year.

Continued at:

http://historyandsocialaction.blogspot.com/2020/11/african-lives-in-north-east-part-4.html

African Lives In The North East. Part 2 - Durham University

Continued from:

http://historyandsocialaction.blogspot.com/2020/11/afrucan-lives-in-north-east-part-1.html

I have been working with Mel Earnshaw (Policy Support Advisor (Race and Religion) and Nayanika Mookerjee (Socio-cultural Anthropology) at Durham University  on the Black History Month and the Violence and Memorialisation module which has included walks in the Cathedral, Palace Green and the Market Square, archive sessions with Francis Gotto of the University’s Special Collections, and giving talks. e.g. November 2019 and February 2020. If it had not been for COVID I would have been back in Durham in October. Instead  I gave a talk on Durham County’s links with slavery and abolition as part of the University’s Black History Month. That talk is available here:

Every time I prepare for these activities new ideas come to mind. Following the talk I sent them the following file.

I have also helped Mel with the posting about Lilian Bader including sourcing the photo via Stephen Bourne, a British Black History researcher and writer (see also below).

www.dur.ac.uk/equality.diversity/blackhistorymonth18/bhmdidyouknow

The same section of the website includes a posting Black Lives Matter - How can I help? In which it is stated that ‘At Durham University we want to inspire and foster a community of expression and engagement. We would encourage our community to be active in the fight against racism. Below are ways we as individuals, and collectively as part of a community, can help and use our voices.’

www.dur.ac.uk/equality.diversity/blacklivesmatter

As a result of my involvement with University staff and students and the Special Collections archivist I submitted some papers for the University to consider on the curriculum, research in the Special Collections, tackling racism and classism, diversity, and projects looking at its links with Sierra Leone’s Fourah Bay College and students coming to Durham, and a project on its former graduate George (Coleridge-) Taylor and his great uncle the composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. A particular small project that could be usefully undertaken is a biographical study of Professor Johnson, who was an active supporter of emancipation in the United States.

As these cannot be uploaded please email me at sean.creighton1947@btinternet.com.

I have been in touch with Lamesha Ruddock, a history student active in the Young Historians Project, who was a member of the Institute of Historical Research Zoom panel discussion on 15 October on Student Experiences of Black British History in Universities. She tells me that she is  carrying out a history project about the early black students in Durham and Fourah Bay.

Other Universities in the North East might find some of the papers I submitted to Durham relevant to them.

Durham City Walk

Emeritus Prof Sandra Bell of the Department of Anthropology  and Adrian Green from History at the  University are preparing a guide to accompany a walking route around Durham City that focuses on its industrial past. At her request I have supplied my Palace Green and the Market Square slavery and abolition walk material. I have posed the questions:

 

·      As the City had a large scale weaving industry, is there any evidence that some of the dyes came from imports from the British slave colonies?

 

·      As trade union organisation seems to have begun in the 18^th, was it in the weaving industry?

 

·      From where did the Salvins import cotton for their spinning mill?

 

·      Which people involved in ownership of industries in the County had property in the City?

 

·      Did Guilds in Durham hold processions including to support Parliamentary candidates, or thank out- going MPs?

 

·      Which shopkeepers  sold tobacco, snuff, cotton, coffee, furniture, etc, from the British Caribbean and Central and South American slave colonies?

 

An example of such activities of a shopkeeper is in:

 

http://familyrecords.dur.ac.uk/nei/NEI_exhib_trade.pdf

 

Durham And The Black Curriculum In Schools

 

A separate piece of work has been the publication of The Black Curriculum report by Dr Jason Arday,  Assistant Professor in Sociology  at the University, and Trustee of the Runnymede Trust. He recommends:

 

1) Developing a multi-cultural diverse National Curriculum and curriculum's: Moving away from a very prescriptive curriculum requires teachers to reimagine the History curriculum within the UK and consider how to develop a discourse that interweaves the contribution of Black History to the canon as a form or body of legitimate knowledge.

 

2) Britain is multi-cultural and our past and present History National Curriculum must reflect this: Understanding that within an ever-changing multi-diverse society, conventions of Britishness will always require reconceptualizing to incorporate all of our histories and stories.

 

3) Diversifying History teaching workforces: The dearth of Black History teachers within the teaching profession is problematic and when aligned to discriminatory practices that exclude Black and ethnic minority teachers this remains a significant factor in the narrative of British history that get purported within our classrooms.

 

4) Teaching Black history not only benefits Black students, but it is also beneficial to British society as a whole: The cognition which ensues allows us as a nation to collectively pause and reflect on race relations. Widening the scope of Black history study can also help society to unravel many of the racial stereotypes that linger into the present.

 

https://diversityuk.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/The-Black-Curriculum-Report-2020.pdf

Although dated last January, The Guardian only reported it on 25 November.

Continued at:

http://historyandsocialaction.blogspot.com/2020/11/african-lives-in-north-east-part-3.html

 

African Lives In The North East - Part 1 Developments

 Africans Lives in Northern England Calendar Sells Out

The African Lives in Northern England 2021 calendar has been very successful, and has sold out.

Many appreciative comments have been received from customers. e.g.

‘Really, the calendars are wonderful and such a bargain that there is no way I would sleep tonight if I did not 'fess up to getting more than I bargained for. Thank you so much for such a wonderful product and such great service!’

 

‘It is superb!  Congratulations to all those involved in producing it.’

‘I think it’s wonderful.  Thank you.’

 ‘It is indeed excellent’

I ‘must congratulate you and your group. The quality of paper and reproduction is excellent and the content and choice of images very informative. I am delighted with mine, … The price is extremely reasonable. I hope it is a sell out! Well done!’

‘Most impressive. My grandson, just first year at university will love it and will no doubt fill it with events supporting the Black Lives Matter events doable from Winchester. The calendar has already gone as a rare, open this Christmas present now! Please thank the team who carried this project through.’

The Newcastle Evening Chronicle is planning an article on the calendar.

Proposed Pamphlet

The calendar project group, of which I am a member, has agreed that their next project will be a pamphlet with more details about individuals to be produced for sale next September.

The Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne have created an African Lives section on their website at www.newcastle-antiquaries.org.uk/index.php

This includes more detail, including references and further reading, that could not fit into the calendar. In due course, there may be a separate website for the project. Group member Sue Ward, who also handled the mailing of the calendar, is looking after this aspect. I have been handling the finances. When the final bills are paid the surplus income will be transferred to the Society to hold towards the funding for the pamphlet.

A suggestion has already been made that I should co-ordinate the production of a 2022 calendar for South West London. Hopefully others may want to do the same for other parts of the country.

More Information

Further detail about people of African heritage in the North East is in Part 5 of my recent series of pamphlets on North East slavery and abolition.

Part 1. Digging Up the Hidden Chains. Researching and disseminating information about the North East’s involvements in the slavery business and anti-slavery campaigning 

Part 2. The 'Black Indies': The North East Connections with the Slavery Business

Part 3. The Day of Jubilee is Come – Campaigning against the Slave Trade and Slavery in the North East 

Part 4. ‘In no place in the United Kingdom has the American slave warmer friends than in Newcastle’ – Black Abolitionists in the North East 

Part 5. The Involvement of People African Heritage in the North East 

Unfortunately the urls will not load so if you want copies please email me on sean.creighton1947@btinternet.com 

The North East Slavery & Abolition and State Racism - Truth & Memory

On 6 August I was a member of a discussion panel organised by the Truth and Memory project in South Shields. The session was recorded and can be seen on You Tube at

www.youtube.com/channel/UCCTPlqRxi5JpCOidczUyQwQ

The text of what I said is at:

http://historyandsocialaction.blogspot.com/2020/08/truth-memory-from-newcastles-slavery.html

Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums (TWAM)

Project member Bill Griffiths of TWAM and I have been discussing what more it can do on slavery, abolition and African lives, especially as Newcastle Councillors have asked them to consider helping with a community engagement project.  I have sent him a range of relevant material from the 2007 Remembering  Slavery Project and on black abolitionists. I have also made a number of suggestions, including:

·      putting back on the website the full set of the North East Slavery & Abolition Group newsletters 2008-10

·      flagging up parts of the collection that still need to be looked at, including parish records

·      advising what to look at in new collection acquisitions from 2008

·      approaching churches which have a long history to develop community engagement in which members of their congregations research the church records at TWAM for their role in abolition

·      reprinting the 2007 project pamphlet that was written by John Charlton of which 10,000 copies were given away for free

·      the problems of getting into schools and ensuring that material provided to them for teachers to use is actually known about as staff change

Gateshead

After discussion with me about the need to do a comprehensive review of parish records for information of people of African heritage, Sue Wards discussing with a number of members of the Society of Antiquaries their looking at the records for Gateshead. Of course there may be churches around the Region which still hold their parish records which members of their congregations could look at.

Continued at:

http://historyandsocialaction.blogspot.com/2020/11/african-lives-in-north-east-part-2.html

Re-edited re-the pamphlets on 22 February 2022.

Tagore and Croydon’s Art Collection

 

Among the hidden cultural assets not on permanent display display in Croydon  Council’s Museum are 2 drawings by Rabindranath Tagore:  Five Profiles Overlapping and A Head both  in ink on paper.  These were both donated to the Croydon Corporation by the artist in 1935, it being reported on even in The Calcutta Municipal Gazette.

Born in 1861-1941) Tagore was a Bengali poet, musician, painter and thinker who was very influential on poets like Yeats, William Butler and  Robert Bridges, and on Gandhi.

 The 150^th Anniversary of his birth in 2011 was commemorated in two ways:

·       Prince Charles unveiled a bust  commissioned by the Tagore Centre UK in Gordon Square.

·       Kings’ College London’s India Institute established the Tagore Centre for Global Thought.

A Tagore Festival was held in the Square in May 2013. The Heritage Lottery Fund  approved funding for the Tagore Centre UK  to start a project celebrating his life.

He visited England in 1912. One of his stories was adapted by George Calderon for the romantic comedy  The Maharani of Arakan performed at the Albert Hall that year and elsewhere in 1913.

In 1913 Thomas Sturge Moore (1870 – 1944), the poet, author and artist, nominated Tagore for the Nobel Prize in literature. Moore has trained at Croydon School of Art. Moore also helped with the publication of various translations of Tagore’s his works.

The Maharani of Arakan was published in 1915, the year of Calderon’s death. It contained a character sketch of Tagore, compiled by K. N. Das Gupta, was illustrated by Clarissa Miles and contained photographs by Walter Benington. Having recovered from his war wounds the British actor Robert Coleman played in the 1916 performance of the play on the London stage.

Tagore returned the knighthood he received in 1915 in protest at the Amritsar Massacre, involving the killing of over 300 Indian civilians by a senior British military officer on 13 April 1919. Amritsar was the holiest city of the Sikhs. He tried to arrange a protest meeting in Calcutta and then renounced his British knighthood as ‘a symbolic act of protest’. 

Tagore was back again in Britain in 1926 and helped found Dartington Hall School. While on a European and US trip in 1930 his paintings were exhibited in London. His works were also displayed in Croydon in 1936.

In 1940 Oxford University arranged a special ceremony in India to honor him  with a Doctorate Of Literature. He died the next year.

A blue plaque was put up to Tagore him at 3 Villas at Hampstead Heath in 1961.

Some of Tagore’s sayings are still relevant today.

·       ‘Don’t limit a child to your own learning, for he was borne in another time.’

·       ‘The highest education is that which not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.’

Hopefully the Tagore drawings  will be displayed by the Museum of Croydon along with an exhibition about his life, ideas, and influence,  perhaps in association with the Tagore Centre. 

·       Tagore Centre UK www.tagorecentre.org.uk.

·       The Maharani can be read on-line at: http://archive.org/details/maharaniofarakan00caldiala

 

In a letter in May 1916 D. H. Lawrence, who had previously taught at Davidson School in Croydon,  scorned the writing of Tagore, was contemptuous of Hindus and was clearly an imperialist:

‘I become more and more surprised to see how far higher, in reality, our European civilizations stands than the East, India or Persia ever dreamed of. And one is glad to realize how these Hindus are horribly decadent and reverting to all forms of barbarism in all sorts of ugly ways. We feel surer on our feet, then. But this fraud of looking up to them - this wretched worship-of-Tagore attitude - is disgusting. "Better fifty years of Europe" even as she is. Buddha worship is completely decadent and foul nowadays: and it was always only half civilized.’

Despite these views Lawrence was a friend of  Mulk Raj Anand.

 

Writing The Lives of the English Poor 1750s – 1830s - Review

 

Writing The Lives of the English Poor 1750s – 1830s

Steven King

McGill-Queen’s University Press.  2019. 978-0-7735-5649-2 (pbk)

King is Professor of Economic and Social History at Leicester University. The foundation work for the book was his doctorate in 1989, when he found a set of pauper letters for the area around Calverley in West Yorkshire. Using almost 26,000 pauper and advocates letters and the correspondence of overseers in 48 counties, he shows how the poor claimed, extended and defended their parochial allowances.

Under the Poor Law introduced from 1597, applicants had the right of appeal to the magistrates or the Quarter Sessions. The Settlement Acts reduced the ability of the poor to seek support in areas that were more generous. The system remained largely discretionary, was ‘an essentially local system in which the looseness and ambiguity of the law created an absolute necessity for negotiation.’ (p. 4)

Claimants’ letters show that ‘Poor people knew the stipulations of the Old Poor Law, contested and disputed refusals to engage in negotiation, wrote in sustained fashion to develop their case and shape the support attached to it, and pulled every lever they could to gain and maintain relief.’ (p. 11)

However, under the new Poor Law from the 1830s the use of local negotiation faded, replaced by writing to the central authorities. The 1834 Poor Law generated a massive poor law union correspondence held at the TNA in record series MH12 and brought to public notice by the Living the Poor Life Project (2008-10) headed by Paul Carter, which continues the story beyond the dates set by Professor King. 

‘The New Poor Law inherited a body of the poor with agency and the expectation of agency, with rights and the expectation of rights, with very considerable experience of shaping the system to which they were subject. This situation, above all, explains why its ideals were so quickly diluted in the 1840s. When those ideals were revived under the crusade against outdoor relief in the 1870s and 1880s, the deeply ingrained tradition of advocacy for the poor was also revived, and this last great experiment in poor law policy collapsed. Negotiation and malleability were, and were meant to be the central planks of poor law policy right up to the 1920s’ (p. 353).

The pace of letter writing increasing in the 1810s, which King links to growing migration, urbanisation, and industrial and agricultural change. Most letters were in an oral rather than a grammatical style. His work confirms the view that the ‘labouring poor were probably much more literate than has often been supposed or researched’ (p. 56) In support of this he cites Lyons, ‘Writing Upwards: How the Weak Wrote to the Powerful’ 

Very few sources are cited from the North East. For Northumberland King draws from the three of EP series of records at Northumberland Record Office: Ancroft St Anne overseers’ correspondence, Tynemouth select vestry minutes 1827-33, and Tweedmouth overseers’ correspondence. None are cited from the same series at Durham, County Record Office where there is surprisingly little relevant material.

Among the examples from the area, the Durham overseer wrote on behalf of the widowed Catherine Thompson to Berwick-upon-Tweed in May 1830 noting ‘that she was ‘unable to maintain herself at her advanced age (70) and her son who is with her from the poor wages which are made here is scarcely able to Maintain himself.’

James Rutherford in Livenhope wrote (dated not given) to Ancroft St Anne on behalf of Margaret nelson aged 84/5, who was ‘unable to Rise out of Bed or do the least Thing herself.’ He said that ‘you Cannot Expect her to be supported’ by  a ‘Daughter having the Bondage to uphold’ (p. 286)

John Pratt Sr wrote from Durham to Tweedmouth (date not given) ‘you will forgive my freedom in troubling you at this time – believe me its from real necessity - My helplessness and many infirmities increasing daily – and I am a greater burden to those I stay with – and they being much in the same circumstances Oblidges me too solicit your favours for a small addition to my Mite. In doing so you will much oblidge Your Humble Petitioner’ (p. 177). 

There is clearly scope for a project to examine the lives of the poor in the Northumberland and Durham EP records, as they and their advocates presented their cases, and the responses to their representations. Hopefully it will shed light on the political dynamics of the different parishes, and on whether there were differences in negotiating the system in the agricultural, industrial and fishing communities. As well as the extent of literacy.

One area that King does not explore is the effect of the Enclosure Acts on poverty levels on Poor Law provision. The other areas for research are the degree to which the growth of literacy is reflected and the relationship between the poor and the radicals.

1    Journal of Social History 48(2). 2015

This review is published in North East Labour History 2020, published by the North East Labour History Society. Thanks to NELH for its permission for me to publish it here. https://nelh.net

Sections of the draft review not published because of lack of space in the Journal

The book is a detailed analysis of the letters of the poor and of those who acted as advocates for them including the writing process, the response of the officials, success and failure, the nature of the language used, the use of rhetoric, the citing of custom and practice and rights, appeals to humanitarianism and friendship, the stress on writers honesty, sobriety, hard-working, self-reliance and dignity. A chapter examines life-cycle and gender. The ‘urgency and (often) raw emotion generated by the intensity of life-cycle conditions provided opportunities to obscure, shape, claim, and reshape the offered and perceived self.’ (p. 308) 

Those who paid and administered the poor rate were by no means in agreement. Ratepayers ‘simply held very different, often entrenched, beliefs on their individual and collective philanthropic  duty, the nature and force of custom, their role as men and fathers, and the humanitarian or Christian imperative that had always driven  the relationship between parish residents, migrants, and those with resources.’ (p. 6) There was plenty of room for disagreement and dispute – ‘fractured power’. (p. 7)

The overseers accounts books cannot be relied upon as they were subject to a range of errors, and simply record the outcome of the processing of claims. Vestry books show aspects of the processes behind the decisions, including appeals from claimants and periodic orders from magistrates. 

King notes that ‘there is almost no evidence that writers borrowed from the political pamphlets and radical texts that were circulating at the time. This is perhaps surprising given the deep involvement of poor people in radical movements between Chartism and in wider epistolary acts of resistance.’ There ‘is no evidence at all of class-based analysis of the position of the poor.  This may reflect a deliberate choice between ‘acceptable bounds of contestation’ in writing to parish officers, or ‘a disconnect’ between radical analysis and the way ordinary people thought about the national remediation of their poverty.’  What King does not analyse, because it is not within his remit, is the evidence in the parish records and radical newspapers of group lobbying over the Old Poor Law. 

Letters from advocates included one on behalf of Widow Marshall writing to Kirk Andrew in March 1813 suggesting that ‘her settlement parish might send relief because its officials ‘should suppose she would cost you less here among her friends than you could support her for.’’ (p. 253)

In June 1826 Joseph Thompson wrote from Lanchester to Greystoke in Westmoreland to recount the story of William Miller, a travelling broom maker. Having pitched camp on the public road, the family set a fire, and upon their ‘leaving it for a few moment with 3 children,’ the fire spread, destroying their camp and burning ‘ to a cinder’ a one-year old son. Thompson concluded that the family were ‘greatly necessitated’ and that their presumed settlement parish ought to act immediately for these ‘poor miserable persons’. (p. 139)

An advocate wrote in December 1830 on behalf of the wife of Robert Mole of Northam who was ‘very frail and appears like a shadow’. (p. 288)

Two claimants cited as writing were elderly.

John Pratt wrote to Tweedmouth (1790s?) because of ‘My helplessness and many Infirmities increasing daily’. (p. 288)  

78 year old John Nash corresponded from Potovers between September 1833 and February 1834 about his low level of financial support and the need to be housed until he died. (p. 220)

King’s final sentence of his Preface shows the relevance to today. ‘For a council estate boy the sense that the rules of the state were not, and were not meant to be, fixed and immovable but negotiated and negotiable is heartening.’ For those of us who came into community action through welfare rights in the 1970s, there was much room for negotiation, which has been considerably eroded especially in the last decade. That does not mean that the levels of assistance that could be improved through negotiation were generous. What the welfare rights movement achieved, including through those working for local authorities in the last decades of the 20thC was ensuring that claimants received higher levels of money than if there had not been that negotiating flexibility.

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