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Issue No. 175

April / May 2020

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month ago, I was wondering what all the fuss was about. A fortnight ago, I was getting a bit twitchy. Today (March 20), I am wondering if anything will ever be the same again. I wouldn’t presume to attempt to offer words of wisdom in this situation, because I am not qualified to provide them. All I can say is that the more we keep calm while not being allowed to carry on with normal life, the better; but then you know that already. I am increasingly finding myself turning to the older members of my close-knit village community for wisdom. A fine bunch they are; rural, hearty folk full of vim and vigour who are as likely to panic in the face of national crisis as they are to jump off a cliff. When I have knocked on their doors this week, it has been to make enquiry after their welfare and extend offers to shop, go to the pharmacy and the like. But this is not a one-way street. In return, I get to soak up the stoicism which comes with the experience of war and post-war years, the challenges which have followed in the decades since, and the years of experience which put everything - global pandemic included into perspective. Calm in the eye of a storm is a condition peculiar, I find, to the young, who consider themselves immortal; and to the elderly, who are well aware the end is nigh, so they might as well get on with it. They just keep buggering on, as Churchill put it, with the calm resolve of people who have generally seen worse. Doubtless, the coming weeks will bring immense challenge and - very sadly - grief to many families, but bombs are not dropping from the sky and we’re not reduced to powdered egg just yet. Stay as safe as you can dear reader... and keep buggering on. Jane Pikett, Editor

Some of our contributors JOHN GRUNDY The ordinary household goods which paint a rich picture of Bellingham’s heritage. Page 8

ANTHONY TOOLE Tony is Biddlestone-bound, exploring the Selby family estate and its links with Rob Roy. Page 18 MIKE PRATT Mike reflects on the thought processes prompted by a fossil which holds clues to billenia of history. Page 26 IAN KERR Ian celebrates the puffin, beloved seabird of the Northumbrian coast. Page 28 SUSIE WHITE Susie uncovers some of the wonderful secrets of Bradley Gardens, a hidden Tyne Valley gem. Page 34 DEAN BAILEY Dean travels north of the region in search of the perfect potato for chips. Page 50

Consulting Editor Stewart Bonney Editor Jane Pikett

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GONE IN SAINTLY FISHINGFOOTSTEPS Northumberland in all its glory: Wildlife and wild country, Northumbrian heritage and history, and the people whoAmake it special journey in the steps of people past and present who make this place what it is

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Issue No. 175

April/May 2020

F I N E W R I T I N G • G R E AT P H O T O G R A P H Y • Q UA L I T Y R E A D I N G

The region’s best-selling countryside magazine FEATURES

Stuart Miller

John Grundy Exploring the illuminating ordinariness of exhibits at Bellingham Heritage Centre

As we grapple a pandemic, we explore cholera’s arrival in the Victorian North East

28 26

Susie White Uncovering the beautiful secrets of Bradley Gardens

Ian Kerr The story of Holy Island’s Snook

22 34

Dean Bailey In search of the perfect chip

Location of key features by page numbers

Jane Hall

Steve Newman

The until recently hidden story of Bamburgh’s wartime hero

A walk on Low Newton’s not-so wild side

64 50

Anthony Toole Tony takes a walk in the footsteps of Rob Roy (possibly...)

Roy Keorner The strange story of son and heir Thomas Garbutt Knott

PLUS

GARDENING �� 38 GALLERIES �� 46

Mike Pratt Thoughts prompted by a fossil

Ian Kerr Celebrating our beloved puffin

REGULARS

Steve Newman Exploring the archaeological wonders of Inner Farne The Northumbrian

NEWS �� 56

BOOK REVIEWS �� 59 FEEDBACK �� 62

Pandemic panic is nothing new A virulent disease prompts unprecedented panic and economic collapse. Not coronavirus, but cholera, which first entered Britain through Sunderland in 1831. As we grapple our own 21st Century pandemic, STUART MILLER relates the story of another

The Blue Girl: Ellen (aka Isabella) Hazard is depicted as the classic victim of cholera. This was originally published in The Lancet in 1832

he diarist Charles Greville, on the outbreak of cholera on Wearside 1831-1832, said: “The conduct of the people of Sunderland was more suitable to the barbarism of the interior of Africa than to a town in a civilised country.” Notwithstanding the racism of the time, when the startling events of that brief period are considered it is clear that Greville’s judgement was very unjust. By the early summer of 1831, a cholera epidemic which originated in India in the mid-1820s had spread across central Asia, Russia and reached the Baltic. In June it appeared at Riga, where hundreds of British ships were waiting to sail, that fleet including many colliers from Sunderland. The government extended a 15day quarantine regulation, which had been introduced in April to cover ships from Russia, to include vessels from

Germany and the Baltic. The government also provided for the establishment of local Boards of Health to institute basic precautions and report cases of cholera to the Privy Council. In October, the respected Ulster physician Dr William Reid Clanny, inventor of an applauded miners’ lamp, and Dr James Butler Kell, an army surgeon with the 82nd Regiment stationed in Sunderland, concluded that a river pilot called Robert Henry had died of so-called ‘Asiatic’ cholera. Kell was one of the few doctors in the UK who had seen cholera before, having been in Mauritius in 1829 when the British garrison was afflicted by the disease. Thus, he would recognise the symptoms of muscular spasms, violent diarrhea and a darkening of the features. But the Board of Health would not

accept this diagnosis, perhaps partly as a result of a generally held bias against under-estimated army doctors. The dubious distinction of assumed first victim, therefore, is taken by 12-yearold Isabella Hazard, who lived ‘a musket shot away’ from Robert Henry and died on October 17. Her burial register entry was marked as ‘the first victim’ by the vicar of Holy Trinity Church who proceeded to indicate all cholera victims with a cross. The first official victim, however, was 60-year-old keelman William Sproat, who lived in a low, damp cellar near the Fish Quay. He was quickly followed by his 10-year-old granddaughter, his son William and infirmary nurse Eliza Turnbull, who had helped to bind and carry his body to the dead house. Thereafter, the number of cases multiplied rapidly, mostly in the overcrowded riverside parish of Sunderland. On November 9, they included the famous Jack Crawford, hero of the Battle of Camperdown. The initial reaction was rapid. On November 1, the Privy Council was notified by the Sunderland Board of Health. The government sent the experienced Dr Daun and Lt Colonel Keogh to supervise. The gentlemen and medical practitioners of Sunderland and Bishopwearmouth visited and reported on all cases, and took steps to clean the filthy streets. Keogh declared a 15-day quarantine on all vessels seeking to leave the harbour. However, this triggered a sequence of events which led to Greville’s sneer mentioned above. Closing coal exports from Sunderland was devastating for the local economy. Pits, coal keelmen, ballast keelmen and collier crews employed thousands, as did support trades supplying the ancillary needs of the trade, from sailmakers

The Northumbrian

A Sunderland Magistrates notice, which accepted the reality of the epidemic

and rope makers to tavern owners and prostitutes. This was also the point in the year when the price of coal in London was at its highest. Tyneside entrepreneurs would take advantage of Sunderland’s closure, while miners and keelmen had a reputation for violence in response to unemployment or pay cuts. The medical men were divided. Some were contagionists who believed disease was generated from crowded populations in workhouses and the infamous ‘hulks’ (narrow alleys and closed courts). Wherever people lived close together, disease could occur, they said. Others, the majority, were miasmatists, who argued that filthy conditions created an ‘atmospheric distemperature’ in the air; the ‘miasma’, from which descended the epidemic diseases which afflicted rapidly growing industrial towns and cities. In a sense, both were right; crowded conditions and filth do contribute to the generation and transmission of disease. But they were unaware of the microbic life which bears epidemic diseases which are variegated and distinct from each other.

Dr William Reid Clanny

The Northumbrian

without understanding local circumstances, this was a shocking development. The medical profession in particular was cast in a poor light. But they were genuinely divided. They were also heavily reliant upon the wealthier classes for their income, whatever sympathetic assistance they provided for the poor. Two men, however, stood apart. Clanny disassociated himself from the collective insanity and Kell quarantined the army barracks, where, remarkably, there were no victims throughout the entire affair. Clanny was a powerful figure, able to pull the medical community together on November 12 to agree to a document which confirmed Asiatic cholera in The miasmatists, including Clanny and Sunderland. However, the disease had not Kell, said quarantine was irrelevant when been imported, they said, so quarantine cholera originated in the atmosphere, and was irrelevant. It had been generated from it was not applied on the landward side of the atmosphere, so the urgency was to Sunderland, so what was the point? All the clean streets and pursue basic hygiene doctors, gentry and businessmen agreed while caring for the afflicted and burying that interrupting trade would aggravate the dead in land set aside for the purpose. squalor, lessen physical resistance to Of course, the cholera pursued its disease and increase drunkenness and business regardless of the arguments disorder. The result was a spasm of around it. Most stricken was the small, meetings on November 9, 10, and 11 at crowded parish of Sunderland at the which the existence of cholera was denied. heart of the coal trade. One commentator The Select Vestries of the parishes of wrote that it “raged principally among the Bishopwearmouth and Sunderland met lower orders whose dissolute habits and and agreed that this was not ‘real’ cholera, poverty rendered them speedy victims to not the Asiatic or Indian type, but a local its attacks”. Throughout November and ‘British cholera’. So the information given December, 418 victims were diagnosed in to the Privy Council was wrong, and the a population of 40,000. Of them, 215 died. quarantine unnecessary. The Board of Health officially declared On November 11, there was a meeting the town free of the disease on January 9, of doctors, gentry, coal owners and their 1832. By then, the cholera had moved on agents at The Exchange in High Street. to Tyneside, thence to the rest of Britain. In the background were letters to local The disease returned to Britain in 1849 newspapers on behalf of significant local and then 1853-54, bringing with it much influencers such as the Marquess of higher mortality. Having said that, cholera, Londonderry, playing down the risks and despite grabbing the headlines, was a the need for quarantine. Superficially, and relatively minor player in deadly diseases. The big killers were its big sisters tuberculosis and typhus. However, cholera provided the shock factor which was a significant element in the jigsaw of the evolution of public health policy. So, the sorry story of cholera in Sunderland was, in a sense, a step towards the modern sanitary well-being of us all. As for Charles Greville, he spoke from a privileged, pampered distance, in complete ignorance The top half of Clanny’s compromise notice of the real situation published on November 12, 1831 in Sunderland.