FRANCIS HUGH MASSY (c1822-1901), THE LAND LEAGUE AND THE UNPOPULAR HUT

I was writing recently about the history of Suir Castle and its Massy family occupants, which I have been putting together with the help of several people who got in touch via this blog. One of them sent me this snippet of Irish life as reported in Hansard, the official record of proceedings at the British Houses of Parliament.

27^th March 1882

SIR WILLIAM HART DYKE asked Mr Attorney General for Ireland, if his attention had been called to the position and case of Mr F Massy, of Suir Castle, Golden: whether it is true that, at the request of the Government, Mr Massy gave a piece of ground for the erection of a police hut; whether in consequence of this loyal act, he has been Boycotted, and deserted by his domestic servants and farm labourers; and whether the Government intend to take any steos for the relief of Mr Massy, and to supply him with assistance to work his farm, now out of cultivation owing to his loyal aid offered to the Government?

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (MR W.M. JOHNSON) The Chief Secretary requests me to inform the right hon. Baronet that his attention has been given to the position and case of Mr Massy, of Suir Castle; that it is the fact that Mr Massy, at the request of the Government gacve a site for the erection of a police hut; and that, in consequence of this act in the interests of law and order by Mr Massy, he has been “Boycotted,” and has been deserted by his domestic servants and by his farm labourers. I have only to add that the Chief Secretary will see that anything in the power of the Government shall be done to alleviate Mr Massy’s position.

Francis Massy, who owned Suir Castle House and its surrounding 330 acres of farmland,  was descended in a different branch from my 5x great grandfather Hugh, First Lord Massy - his great grandfather. It’s a fascinating little exchange in Hansard, not least because it uses the word Boycotted. These days it’s a very familiar idea, the withdrawal of economic support for political ends. But in 1882 the expression was only two years old, having arisen from a situation exactly like Massy’s. Captain Charles Boycott was a ruthless land agent in Co Mayo. When he began evicting tenants for non-payment of rent (they had asked for a reduction because of a bad harvest), the whole community ostracised him: farmhands refused to work his fields, shops would not serve him, tradesmen wouldn’t come to his house, the postman even refused to deliver his mail.

Captain Charles Boycott (1832-1897)

It wasn’t an isolated action, but the first implementation of a policy devised by Charles Stewart Parnell for the Irish National Land League. The Land League aimed to stop evictions and reduce rents. Its tactics were to boycott landlords, and also anyone who applied for the tenancy of a farm from which a landlord had evicted the tenants. Its leadership came up with the verb “to boycott” because they didn’t think the ordinary Irish people would understand the word “ostracise.”

I don’t know whether Massy’s application for assistance was successful. Charles Boycott used the British press to draw attention to this new tactic by the Irish Nationalists. A Boycott Relief Fund was set up and well supported. A force of 50 Orangemen from Co Cavan was dispatched to Co Mayo to save the Captain's harvest, protected from violent protests along the way by around 1000 policemen and a regiment of troops. The whole operation cost around £10,000, for the sake of salvaging Boycott’s crops which were subsequently valued at about £350.

Police guarding the Orangemen’s camp

at Lough Mask House, Boycott’s home, November 1880

It seems unlikely that, two years into this Land War (which lasted until 1892), Massy’s plight would have attracted the same support. The Massy family had come to Ireland with that enemy of Irish nationalism Oliver Cromwell, and seem to have done little to ingratiate themselves with the local population in the intervening 200 years. According to my correspondent, they “had a reputation for being very difficult and tough landlords. Evictions were apparently common and there was quite a bit of ill-feeling towards them amongst the locals.” He had spoken to someone who told him a story of a barracks on Francis Massy's land being blown up, resulting in repercussions for the locals. Offering a piece of land for a police station to suppress the Land League will not have improved Massy’s standing in the community.

A nice little family footnote to this story – the notes for Hansard were being taken by my great grandfather William Henry Gurney Salter, who was Official Shorthand Writer to the Houses of Parliament at the time. Massy and Salter bloodlines would meet in the following generation!

JANE FARQUHAR REID (1833-1920) AND THE GOLDEN WEDDING

I have so far avoided the cliché that every picture tells a story. It seems to me more the case that there are many pictures that don’t explain themselves – that need someone to tell their story for them. A photograph of a big cake decorated with the words “Happy Golden Wedding Anniversary John and Jean Piper” is clear enough; but what on earth, for example, is going on here?

John and Jean Piper on their golden wedding anniversary, 1917

John Piper and Jane Farquhar Reid, my great great grandparents, sitting in a bed! They were married in Sorn in Ayrshire in June 1857. It was something of a shotgun wedding, and their first child Mary was born the following September. Nevertheless, it was an enduring partnership, and their ruby wedding anniversary in 1897 was an occasion for a great family celebration.

John and Jean Piper’s ruby wedding anniversary, 1897

Joining them in the lane behind Barshouse, their home in Sorn, were (for the record), L-R:

Anne Gavine who the following year married their son James; their son Tom (see my earlier post about his bicycle shop); Kate Reid who married their son William; Maggie, who would marry bicycle Tom six years later; their son James, my great grandfather (see my post about his whisky warehouse); John and Jean at the heart of things; behind them John’s brother James (who would die only two years later); Jane’s sister Margaret and her husband (Mr Kirkland); behind them John and Jean’s son William; and the Lymburners (who we know were related somehow to John or Jane!).

That’s the story of that picture. But what about the first one? It’s reputedly John and Jane’s golden wedding anniversary, although it’s also reputedly “around 1918,” which would make it their diamond anniversary instead. It doesn’t matter: the date isn’t the story. Why were they celebrating it with a risqué two-in-a-bed anniversary photograph in their 70s or 80s? The truth, and the story of the picture, is this: Jane was confined to bed, not by age or love but by a cow which had kicked her a few days before.

That’s not the story of John and Jane’s marriage of course. When Jane died in 1920 (at Barshouse, and probably in that bed) their shotgun marriage had lasted 63 years. No doubt it had its ups and downs, but the fondness which started it all persisted to the end. John died only a year later.

JOHN TOUGH (b. 1849) AND THE TRIPS ABROAD

For at least five generations, the Tough family lived and worked in the tiny triangle of Scotland defined by Larbert, Falkirk and the village of Dunipace. They were blacksmiths and joiners, skills very much in demand at the largest local employer, the giant Carron Ironworks. Directly or indirectly the works sustained a massive and thriving economy in the densely populated central belt of Scotland, driving the emerging industrial revolution. There was work and opportunity for all.

You would think there was no incentive to travel out of the area, but my great great grandfather John Tough was out of the country at least twice. The first time was without his consent or knowledge! John’s father (also John) was a roadside blacksmith, and for a few years in the 1840s he found himself working 250 miles away “down south,” in Staffordshire.

I don’t know what took him there. It’s very tempting to imagine that it was in some way connected with that English cradle of the industrial revolution, Coalbrookdale, home of Abraham Darby’s ironworks just over the county border in Shropshire. Darby’s pioneering techniques had inspired the founders of Carron.

Certainly it was a Shropshire barmaid, Betsy Vaughan, who caught John Senior’s eye and who fell for his Scottish charm. They married, and their first three children, including John Junior, were born in Staffordshire. So by the time the family returned to Dunipace (in time for the 1851 census) John was already well travelled.

By 1861, at the tender age of 12, John and his 9-year old brother David were in harness as footservants for the rather grander Gilchrist family up the road in Airth. But as soon as he was old enough and strong enough for hard manual work he started at the local sawmill – first, stoking the steam-driven engines which hauled the logs and drove the circular saws, and later operating the machines himself.

It was responsible and relatively well paid work. In time John married Grace, a girl from nearby Grangemouth, and raised his own family (including my great grandfather, another John). He could afford little luxuries and even save a little money for special occasions; and in the 1890s he took the family away on holiday, to Northern Ireland.

The cross-channel steamer from Glasgow arriving in Portrush (1904)

Although excursions had been growing in popularity and availability since their introduction by Thomas Cook in 1841, a journey from Dunipace to the Giant’s Causeway was still quite an undertaking. Those less well-off would settle for the daytrip “doon the watter” by paddle steamer from Glasgow to Dunoon.

The Giant’s Causeway Electric Tramway passing Dunluce Castle (1890)

But until the First World War a steamer service carried more affluent Scottish holidaymakers direct from Glasgow to Portrush, the resort town for the Giant’s Causeway. In the last two years of the service, 25,000 passengers travelled in each direction. John would have had a journey of several trains to take him as far as Glasgow, and a tramline from Portrush Railway Station ferried holidaymakers to the Causeway itself.

John Tough (b. 1849) seated, his son John (b. 1879) standing

and a daughter (probably either Grace or Bessie)

– Giant’s Causeway, 1890s

However well travelled my great great grandfather was, it must have been the holiday of a lifetime.

HUGH, FIRST LORD MASSY (1700-1788) AND SUIR CASTLE

It’s funny how things come in bunches – buses for example, and some days everywhere you look you’ll see nothing but ambulances, or magpies, or reruns of Friends. I don’t get much feedback at all from this blog, which is perfectly okay with me; but in the last month or so I’ve had three very different contacts from readers of an old post here about Rebecca Delap. It’s led me to some enjoyable detective work and the piecing together of a story.

Suir Castle and demolished mansion from the east, 2004

Rebecca was my 5x great grandmother. She married Hugh Massy on 16th April 1754 and almost exactly nine months later, on 13^th January 1755, their first child Francis Hugh Massy was born at their marital home. They lived in Suir Castle, near the village of Golden in Co Tipperary – the principle Massy residence, the family seat at Duntrileague in Co Limerick was presumably still occupied by Hugh’s father. I described my visit to Suir in that earlier post. Before my visit it had just been a name on a genealogical chart to me, and afterwards all I really knew was that at some point a mansion house had been built beside the old fortified tower; both were ruined when I went to see them.

My image of it was transformed by a picture sent to me by my first correspondent. It’s a sepia watercolour of "Suir Castle and the old mansion house" by the Irish artist George Victor Du Noyer. The chap who sent it thought it looked deserted, and added that it was certainly unoccupied ten years later when it was given no value in Griffith’s valuation of 1850.

Suir Castle and deserted mansion from the west, 1840

He also put me in touch with a fellow Massy descendent, a distant cousin living in the Yukon in northwestern Canada. From her fantastically detailed family tree research I found the names of several of Rebecca and Hugh’s children who had been born at Suir, the most recent (Rebecca’s granddaughter Rebecca!) in 1816.

Then this week a third person got in touch. He’d been walking in the area, found the castle, was intrigued enough to Google it, and found my post. In the course of comparing notes with me he told me of a nearby Georgian or Regency building called Suir Castle House which has changed hands recently and is still after many facelifts a home.

So …  it’s still work in progress, but putting all this together, the four of us can now tell quite a lot of the Suir Castle story. The mansion there may well have been built for newly-weds Hugh and Rebecca Massy. There is no information yet of any earlier event than the birth of their first born. It was a family home for at least two generations of Massy: Hugh and Rebecca, and then their son Francis Hugh Massy (the first to be born in the Suir Castle mansion). Francis Hugh’s eleven children were all born at Suir, and the eldest, Francis, is styled Francis Massy of Suir Castle, suggesting a third generation of occupancy before the mansion was deserted by 1840. (Francis’ father Francis Hugh died in 1817.)

Suir Castle House, c2005

But if the new Suir Castle House is genuinely of Regency date, it was built somewhere between 1811 and 1820. As it happens Francis Massy of Suir Castle got married in 1820, to one Anne Molloy. So perhaps he built Suir Castle House for another pair of Massy newly-weds, himself and Anne. (Unfortunately I don’t know where their children were born: it would confirm all this speculation if it turned out to be Suir Castle House!)

Hugh, Lord Massy, was elevated to the peerage in 1776, and presumably Rebecca became Lady Massy. But Rebecca was Hugh’s second wife, and the Lordship passed through the children of his first marriage. Although the Massy family was a dominant force in Irish society, the Suir Castle branch never achieved the status of the more senior branch of the name. But at least we can piece together some of its history through the buildings it lived in.

Suir Castle, 2004

(and that's another story ...) 

WILLIAM SALTER (1770-1821) AND THE HALF-DONE DONATION

Norwood Manor Day Nursery in Lambeth, London, describes itself as occupying “an old listed mansion.” I haven’t discovered the building’s full history, but I do know that it  didn’t start out as a mansion.

Norwood Manor Day Nursery in 2009,
and its listed railings

It’s built on land which was originally parcelled out by the commissioners in 1810 to one Benjamin Shaw, following the Lambeth Inclosure Act of 1806. This was one of a series of second-wave parliamentary enclosures designed essentially to rationalise the many awkward strips of wild or waste land cluttering up the country and make them more productive or useful. I don’t know Mr Shaw’s story; but in many cases, and perhaps his, commoners were given an alternative piece of land if they owned or used one which was being enclosed. (The history of English enclosure is complicated and controversial. It is seen by some as depriving the peasant class of previously held land rights and forcing them to become, in effect, the urban proletariat; and by others, as a necessary step in making land management more efficient and viable for those with the capital to invest in it, in effect giving rise to capitalism.)

I digress. Benjamin Shaw saw the opportunity for a quick profit and sold the land on, to my 4x great uncle William Salter. William, a pious Dissenter, donated it in 1819 for the building of West Norwood Congregational Church. It was a generous, virtuous act; but it was one for which he didn’t complete all the necessary paperwork. When he was taken seriously ill two years later, a fine chapel and schoolroom had been erected but the land still technically belonged to William. And so therefore did the buildings now standing on it; and William was now so unwell that it didn’t look as he would live long enough to make the proper legal transfer of ownership himself.

So, on the 6^th June 1821 he hurriedly wrote a new will. But it did not, as you might expect, leave the land to the “Society of Protestant Dissenters of the denomination called Independents of the Calvinistic persuasion,” as he called them. Instead, he left it to his wife Mary Elizabeth and his two brothers David and Samuel, on condition that they give the land and buildings to the church; and then only on condition that the land be used and enjoyed for worship by the said society “and for no other use or purpose whatsoever.”

Quite why William couldn’t bequeath the land directly to the church is beyond me. Perhaps there were legal restrictions on bequests to dissenting denominations. But William died only two weeks after making the arrangement, and as far as I know his will was executed according to his wishes. He was only 51.

West Norwood Congregational Church

The church is a handsome neo-classical building with wings which housed school rooms. It still stands today as the Norwood Manor Day Nursery, and no doubt its founders and the donor of the land would be pleased that it is still playing a role of provision for children. In 1981 its low forecourt walls and the original tall plain spearhead railings were given Grade II listed status (although not as far as I can tell the building itself). But that bit about it only being used for Independent Calvinistic worship seems to have fallen by the wayside. I wonder if anyone has noticed?

DANIEL WADE ACRAMAN (1775-1847) AND THE S.S. GREAT WESTERN

I’ve had a soft spot for my Acramans since I found that single part-sad, part-humorous letter from my cousin Edward Daniel Acraman (see earlier posts). He was in Adelaide, a long way from home, when he wrote it, and never got back to Bristol.

Edward was named after his father, William Edward (my 3x great uncle), and his grandfather, Daniel Wade Acraman. Father and grandfather presided together over something of a golden age of Acraman prosperity in Bristol in the first half of the nineteenth century. They had passed like so many English families of the eighteenth century from a rural economy as yeoman farmers to urban industrial activity.

In the Acramans’ case they became iron founders and workers in Bristol, one of the most important ports in England at the time. Daniel Acraman patented a chain cable design in 1823, and by the 1830s the Acramans had a business empire of several companies and partnerships connected with marine engineering, manufacturing and supplying anchors, chains, boilers and other metalwork for shipping.

Bristol Harbour, with Acraman’s Warehouse to the rear on the left

and S.S. Great Western rear right under construction

The city was a centre for import and export, an obvious target for entrepreneurs of the railway boom of the early nineteenth century who were all racing to capture the lucrative freight market. The Great Western Railway, GWR, known to its passengers and shareholders as God’s Wonderful Railway, was formed at a public meeting in Bristol in 1833 took on the task of building a line from London to the city. The project was designed by the engineering genius Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who had already demonstrated his brilliance by his 1831 design for the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, the longest bridge in the world at the time (although it was only completed in 1864, five years after his death).

Brunel was not afraid to think big. He chose a wider-than-usual gauge for his track – 7 feet and one quarter of an inch, compared to the Stephenson standard gauge of 4 feet 8½ inches – and he had big ideas too about the length of journey his passengers could undertake. Why stop at Bristol? Brunel began to see the possibility of buying one ticket which could take you from London to New York. Such a voyage was becoming a technical possibility at the time, and several groups of businessmen were racing to make it a reality. The Great Western Steamship Company was formed in Bristol in 1836, and Brunel set about designing its flagship the S.S Great Western.

S.S. Great Western on her maiden voyage

Of course it was to be no ordinary ship. When it was launched in 1837 it was the largest steamship in the world, intended to prove Brunel’s theory that a larger ship would be more fuel efficient. It was built in the Patterson & Mercer yard at Bristol, and it seems that most of the machinery and ironwork on the wooden-hulled vessel was supplied by Acraman Morgan & Co. (The engines themselves were supplied and fitted by Maudslay, Sons & Field of Lambeth on the Thames.) The Great Western broke all records for a transatlantic crossing and arrived with a third of its fuel unused, vindicating Brunel's design. It became the first ship to offer a regular service between Britain and New York.

The success of the Great Western in pioneering the transatlantic route may have encouraged Acraman Morgan & Co to go into shipbuilding themselves in 1839. But the Acramans were in danger of becoming overextended. They had diversified in 1834 into a different kind of shipping interest, with a  company called Acraman Bush Castle & Co which imported tea from Canton. Having only recently (1832) completed a huge warehouse to accommodate all their ironworks, they had almost immediately had to invest in a large extension to it to store the tea.

Acraman’s No.1 Warehouse, 1832, before ...

and 1836, after tea extension, 

and today, as the Arnolfini Gallery

In all, too much money was going out and not enough coming back in. William Edward Acraman wrote in 1836 to one of his investors, “I wish one of these ships would arrive with some strong cargo [of tea].” But he also revealed that Messrs Bush and Castle were among those investors who had not yet paid in full for their shares in the company. Whether the ships never came in, or the investors never paid, the tea company went bankrupt in 1842, bringing about the spectacular financial collapse of the Acraman empire. The huge Acraman warehouse was sold off in 1846 to pay for the empire’s debts – and bought by the Bush family. It has been known as Bush House ever since.

JOHN SADLEIR (c1832-1919) AND THE GLENROWAN SIEGE

Superintendent John Sadleir of the Victoria Police is a distant cousin – my 6x great grandfather Clement Sadleir was the brother of his 4x great grandfather Samuel. Still, we cling onto such thin connections when we have stories like this one to tell.

Superintendent John Sadleir (1832-1919)

John Sadleir was born in Co Tipperary in Ireland, but emigrated to Australia in 1852. He immediately signed up with a newly formed special police corps in Melbourne and worked his way up through the ranks in a series of postings. He seems to have had a greater than usual understanding of the ordinary people whom he policed, and of their “righteous dissatisfaction” with a “stubborn and unwise central government.” He often felt uncomfortable in his role, caught between the two, for example during the 1854 miners’ uprising at Eureka.

In 1874 he was promoted to superintendent and posted to Upper Goulburn, north east of Melbourne. When in 1878 one of his junior officers, Constable Alexander Fitzpatrick, claimed to have been shot at Benalla by a gang which included the brothers Dan and Ned Kelly, Sadleir found himself at the centre of Australia’s most famous manhunt.

Ned Kelly (1855-1880), in a portrait which he requested,

taken the day before his execution

As the hunt for the Kelly Gang proceeded over the next two years, Sadleir was extremely critical of the high-handed and inappropriate tactics of the police, particularly when they decided to arrest anyone and everyone whom they identified as a sympathiser of the fugitives. Although the Kellys were thieves and murderers, they were also the focus for more legitimate anti-authoritarian resentment about the way in which Crown land was being parcelled out by recent legislation. The Land Acts of the 1860s were intended to encourage settlement, but were open to widespread abuse, something which Irish-born Sadleir would have recognised and understood. Arresting victims of that abuse, on the grounds that they supported the Kellys, only deepened resentment towards the police and made their search for Ned Kelly more difficult.

The search came to an end on 27^th June 1880 when the gang were cornered, with hostages, in the Glenrowan Inn. At 5.30am the next morning John Sadleir’s superior, Supt Francis Hare was injured by a bullet to his left wrist and fled the scene. John took over command of the siege. In the exchange of gunfire which followed, it became clear to the gang that there was no chance of escape. Resigning themselves to capture and death, two members committed suicide; another was fatally injured as he poured himself a drink at the bar of the inn. Several hostages were also injured, two fatally, before the survivors were led to safety and the inn set on fire.

Ned Kelly’s last stand

(drawn by Francis Thomas Dean Carrington

only five days after the event)

Ned came out fighting, wearing a suit of makeshift armour forged and beaten from ploughshares, but it only protected his upper body front and back, and his head. He survived three direct hits on the armour, to the disbelief of the police, before a series of shots to his legs, hip and hand brought him down. As Kelly lay close to death, it was John Sadleir who comforted him, telling him, “You shall have every care and attention, Ned. Do not irritate yourself, keep yourself quiet.”

It was a remarkable act of compassion, again demonstrating Sadleir’s affinity with ordinary people, an admirable quality in a policeman. But his criticism of the handling of the manhunt must have made him enemies. In the ensuing inquiry into its conduct he was heavily criticized and demoted, receiving only the sixth largest share of the reward money for Kelly’s capture (whereas the cowardly Superintendent Hare received the largest amount).

Ned Kelly recovered from his injuries well enough to stand trial and be sentenced to death; he was hung on 11^th November 1880, aged 25. John Sadleir retired in 1896 having risen again to the rank of officer in charge of the Metropolitan District of Melbourne. He published his very readable memoirs, “Recollections of a Victorian Police Officer,” in 1913.

THOMAS GURNEY (1705-1770) AND THE SMART WIDOW

My 5x great grandfather has a genuine claim to fame as the inventor of a system of shorthand; I don’t know why I haven’t written about this yet, and perhaps I will soon. It was while looking into the origins of Gurney, as his system became known, that I became aware of his appetite for marriage proposals.

Thomas Gurney (1705-1770)

I wrote earlier about the unpopularity amongst his many children of his second wife, whom they almost entirely erased from the family history: she is referred to only as Miss R. Their mother was his first wife Martha Marsom, daughter of John Bunyan’s prison companion Thomas Marsom (of whom I have also written). Tom married Martha in 1730. But today I was reminded of an even earlier attempt at marriage, which he used to joke about with his children.

After an evening meal, perhaps during the week (surely not on a devotional Sunday, for he was a devout Particular Baptist) his eye would catch that of Martha, Mrs Gurney. He might wink; she might blush; the children – young Martha, young Thomas, Joseph and John – might smile. They knew what was coming and had heard the story many times.

“I’ve been married to your mother these twenty years now, you know, thanks be to God. Never a cross word!” (Pause for laughter.) “But you know, I should have been married much earlier, if I’d not taken so long before I made my offer. Oh, not to your mother.” (“Oh Tom! Honestly!” chipped in mother Martha.)

“Fools rush in,” he may have added, “where angels fear to tread. Praise the Lord that I was not as fleet as I then wished I had been.” He undid a button of his waistcoat, settling into the tale.

"When I was a young man," he continued, "a dear friend of mine died while still in his prime, leaving a very smart widow." He emphasized the description, and Martha feigned offence at an insult he had feigned at every telling of this story. "I thought to myself, she would make a very desirable wife." (More tutting and eye-rolling from Martha, and grins all round from the teenage children.) "What’s more, I felt that she would not be long without an offer. 

"Therefore I called upon her the day after the funeral –  (“The day after? Really, father! So soon!” his eldest son Thomas interjected dutifully.)  – and I told her all that was on my mind. She immediately broke out, 'Oh, Mr Gurney! I wish you had mentioned this before.'  (“And we wish you hadn’t,” muttered his youngest, John.) 'I wish,' " Thomas Gurney pointedly pressed on in a comic high voice with his recital, " 'I had had any idea of your intention. There is not a man in the world for whom I have so great an esteem, or with whom I should have anticipated so much happiness.' Not a word of a lie, my children, those were her exact words." (Groans of disbelief.)

"Well, I may tell you that I expressed my surprise and confusion that, feeling thus, she should have refused me. She then added by way of explanation, “I am engaged! I am sorry, but I couldn’t help it. You remember Mr So-and-So who was at the funeral yesterday? He returned here afterwards; he stayed and took tea with me; and I could not get rid of him without making him a promise. I am sorry for it, but I must keep my word.'

"Well of course I had to consent that this was her proper course – as you know, my children, one must always keep one’s word, whether one wishes to or not. Never make any rash promises, children." (“Or proposals, father!” his daughter piped up.) "I took my leave; and at the end of three months, she put off her widow’s weeds and arrayed herself in wedding garments.

“I don’t recall,” Thomas Gurney concluded, “that I’ve ever told you that story before. But I am every day thankful that Providence ordered it so; for it has given me, by waiting, one of the most excellent of wives.” (“Only amongst the most excellent?” protested John. “To our most excellent mother!” Joseph raised a glass, and was joined by all present.)

And Martha sat back and smiled, basking in the warm love of her husband and children, but perhaps also in the knowledge that she had later met Mrs So-and-So the very smart widow, and heard her version of the story.

(The version I have, from which most of the above comes verbatim, is the one told by Thomas' grandson William Gurney, who presumably got it from his father, Tom's son Joseph.)

JOAN HODGSON RIVIERE NÉE VERRALL (1883-1962) AND HER FREUDIAN ANALYSIS

Joan Riviere was a first cousin of my great aunt Helen Salter née Verrall. The only description I have of her, apart from photographs, is of a “tall Edwardian beauty with a picture hat and a scarlet parasol.” She was by all accounts a forceful personality.

Joan Hodgson Verrall (1883-1962)

After a carefree, artistic childhood – attending finishing school in Germany, learning the language and becoming a court dressmaker in that country for a while – she went through a very rough emotional patch in 1909 from the combination of post-natal depression following the birth of her daughter and crushing grief at the death of her father.

It was through the work of Helen and her mother Margaret at the Society for Psychical Research that Joan was introduced at about this time to the ideas of Sigmund Freud (who more or less invented psychoanalysis) and Ernest Jones (who was the first English-language practitioner of the discipline).

Joan became fascinated by psychoanalysis, and received treatment from Ernest Jones. Jones was so impressed by her understanding of the science that he invited her to be a founder member of the British Pschoanalytical Society which he founded in 1919. At a conference in The Hague the following year she met Melanie Klein, a Viennese pioneer of child psychology whom Joan championed in later life, setting her in a Freudian context (although she eventually distanced herself from Kleinian theory).

Sigmund Freud, whose writings Joan Riviere translated

At the same conference Joan met Freud himself for the first time and asked him to analyse her. This he eventually did, in Vienna in 1922, when her therapy with Jones reached a blockage. She had already begun her work of translating Freud, and she is widely regarded as the best translator of his work, capturing not only the ideas but the character of his writing.

In addition to her translations of Freud and support of Klein, Joan wrote several important papers of her own, including Womanliness as a Masquerade (particularly in intellectual women, to cover their sense of masculinity) and Jealousy as a Mechanism of Defence. The latter predated similar Kleinian theory by 25 years.

Her therapy with both Jones and Freud was difficult. Freud wrote of her, “She cannot tolerate praise, triumph or success ... she is sure to become unpleasant and aggressive and to lose respect for the analyst.” His concept of Negative Therapeutic Reaction was based largely on his work with her, and later she would write what some regard as her most important original work of psychoanalysis, the 1936 publication Contribution to the Analysis of the Negative Therapeutic Reaction. In it she drew on her personal responses to the analyses of Jones and Freud, her observations of her own clients – she was herself by now a trained analyst – and the theories of Klein. Where Freud saw the reaction as a reluctance to give up the pain of suffering because of a sense of guilt, Riviere argued that it was a refusal to give up control for fear of the inner world of despair which a surrender to analysis might reveal. “This,” she wrote, “has been my own experience.”

WILLIAM WINDLE PILKINGTON (1839-1914) AND THE TWO PARTIES

 
It’s a year exactly since I started writing this blog, so I thought I’d celebrate with a celebration.

My great great uncle William Pilkington was a son of one of the founders of the Pilkington Brothers’ Glassworks in St Helens, Lancashire. It was William’s technical skill and innovation which laid the foundations for the firm’s later international supremacy. His hands-on grasp of the business of glass-making earned him the respect of his 14,000 workers, who used to say, “Mr Windle can do owt.”

William Windle Pilkington (1839-1914)

His wife was from an altogether more modest background. Louisa Salter was the daughter of a Baptist minister in Leamington. The stained-glass windows of Rev WA Salter’s chapel had been donated by William’s aunt Matilda Pilkington, who worshipped at the chapel, in memory of her sister Ann, who died during the building of the chapel. It may well be that this is how William and Louisa met.

They married on 9^th June 1867, in her father’s church, in a ceremony conducted by her father and her uncle Joseph Angus, on a fine summer’s day with the sunlight streaming through those memorial windows. We know all this from the report the following week in the local newspaper, the Leamington Spa Courier, which also highlights the very different approaches of the two families being united by the wedding.

MARRIAGE FESTIVITIES

On Wednesday afternoon the children attending the Clarendon Street British School were regaled at tea, on the occasion of the marriage of Miss Louisa Salter, second daughter of the Rev T.T. [sic] Salter to Mr W.W. Pilkington, of Windle Hall, St Helens, Lancashire. By the courtesy of the editor of the St Helens Standard we are informed that the rejoicings in that industrial town, with which the bridegroom is connected, were of the most enthusiastic character. Bells peeled forth, cannon boomed, and the rattle of small arms – not to mention the feasting of 1000 of Messrs Pilkingtons’ work people in the Volunteer Hall. We understand that Miss Pilkington, of Rivington Villa, is Aunt to the bridegroom. The marriage, which took place at Clarendon Chapel, was distinguished by an unostentatious plainness and propriety.

Children’s tea party and workers’ feast! Propriety and cannon fire! What a rich celebration of the start of their long and happy marriage.