The impact of Shakespeare

It is St George’s Day and it is also the 450^th birthday of Germany’s National Poet. Before you think I am confused, Shakespeare for a time in the early 19^th century was venerated by German writers such as Goethe as having qualities that they believed that Germans  should aspire to. Of course although Shakespeare is English Midland born he has been adopted by many different cultures and is flexible enough to be turned into “West Side Story”, a Japanese film epic of Kurosawa such as “Ran” or modified and set as a recent “Julius Caesar” production in contemporary war torn East Africa. And he may have had North Staffordshire roots as Doug Pickford, a former editor of the Post and Times claimed he had ancestors who moved from Trent Vale to Warwickshire during the 15^th century. Perhaps he was a Stokie after all! As a form of proof I came across the word “sneap” in “Henry IV Part 2”.

I began to appreciate Shakespeare from an early age. I was first exposed to him through a BBC production of the “Age of Kings” and the very funny portrayal of Falstaff by Robert Hardy in 1962. I was given the” Complete Works” for my 10^th birthday and earlier this year when my daughter a volume when she reached that milestone. I hope she treasures it. It could be for her the beginning of a life long passion. Over the years I have seen many memorable productions, Robert Stephen in “King Lear”, Emma Thompson in “Midsummer Night Dream, Simon Russell Beale in “Richard II” as well as some of the infrequently performed plays such as “Pericles” or “Henry VIII”. I firmly oppose the argument that the plays have no relevance to the modern day a view expressed by a Stoke Councillor at a meeting I attended a few years ago. He cited “Romeo and Juliet” as having no significance, a poor choice, as it is a play that features arranged marriages, gang warfare and the relationship between the old and the young. What a fool!

It’s impossible to say when the people of the Moorlands first saw Shakespeare’s play. My guess is that during the 18^th century with improved roads touring companies would have visited. There is a playbill  I have seen of a production of “Othello” at the Red Lion in Leek in the 1840s as well as a 1877 “King Lear” at the Swan where one of the actors was accidentally stabbed. The Mechanic Institute in Russell Street would have had lectures and talks on the plays a tradition that carried on into the next century with courses put on by the Workers Educational Association. Shakespeare before the First World War would have been well embedded into the culture of Leek.

The “Complete Works” I bought for Phoebe contained an essay by the great Victorian actor Henry Irving rubbishing the theory that the provincial, low born Shakespeare could  not have written the plays, but they were created by the well- placed Oxford educated Francis Bacon 1^st Baron St Albans. I have always thought that this belief is founded on pure snobbery.  Three great cultural figures living in the 17^th Century Shakespeare, Newton and Bach all came from provincial towns- a fact that we who live and work in a provincial town should hold on to this April 23^rd.

Do you remember March 1991?

• Good news for the local economy was the confirmation of a new headquarters for the Irish dairy company Kerrygold at Barnfield which would safeguard the future for the concern in Leek, along with the jobs of the 300 workforce. The cost of the undertaking was £7.5 million. The headquarters was opened by the European Commissioner for Agriculture Ray McSharry, assisting him chairman of the Irish Dairy Board Dr Noel Cawley- no relation. The new facility would have the facility to supply 25% of the UK market for pre packed hard cheese and 15% of processed cheese and be ideally placed for good access to retail outlets in the UK and Europe.

• Other good news was news of a major contract to wire the Channel Tunnel won by Thomas Bolton of Froghall. An order for £1.5 million had been placed by the French Government and had been won by the Staffordshire company beating off stiff competition from others including a French company. The contract required Bolton's to supply the cable by the autumn. Work on the tunnel had begun in 1988 with the work competed in 1994. It cost £4.6 billion to build an over run of 80% in the amount originally budgeted. At the peak of construction over 15,000 were employed on the Tunnel. It should be noted that Bolton's involvement in this project completed a notable double as the company had supplied the copper cable for the laying of transatlantic telegraphy cable in the previous century.

• Leek's last foundry closed in March 1991 Sneyd Engineering based in Sneyd Street. The firm specialised in non ferrous castings having been founded as Goodwin Brothers early in the century. It became Sneyd Engineering just before the Second World War. The demise of the company prompted one correspondent to refer back to the War in a subsequent letter “ The war brought a great increase in business, at one period it seemed that half of Leek's skilled machinists were making bronze bearings for the Bailey Bridges, whilst the other half were making gun barrels up at the “Daimler”

• A Tudor Hall long thought to be demolished many years before was rediscovered in the structure of the Red Lion Inn in Market Square. Workmen carrying out repairs found the remnants of Leek Hall. The Red Lion was established as a coaching Inn in 1767 when the incorporation of the early structure into the Inn must have taken place. Chief conservation officer John Leech considered the discovery one of the most important archaeological finds in Leek. It appears that the front of the hall was removed when the Red Lion was built and a second floor added with a flat roof. It had been long thought that the hall built by William Jollife in 1627 had been demolished to make way for the coaching Inn

• The year had begun with the successful prosecution of the First Gulf War when the army of Saddam Hussain had been ejected from Kuwait and pursued back across the Iraq border. A local soldier Steven Tatlow in the 1^st Staffords visited a local school -Valley Primary in Oakamoor- to thank the children for writing. He had received many letters from the kids which had very helpful to him and his colleagues whilst waiting for the final assault and during the days of conflict. Of course no one knew that the second Iraq conflict would occur exactly 12 years later

• For the past year Mr Terence Howell of Hill Top Farm, Brown Edge had been battling to win the right to sleep with his chickens. There had been complaints of the mess that littered the site, but Farmer Howell was determined to assert the right to live by his “feathered friends” “ If I lived on the site it could be tidied up, but if the Council wants war then war it shall have”, he added belligerently 

The strange death of Manuel de Silveria Leek 1836

Manuel Egido da Silveria of Rio da Janeiro disembarked from the Manchester coach a matter of minutes before his death. Mr Brunt the silk manufacturer was worried. The foreign looking gentleman who climbed out of the Manchester coach looked very agitated. It was midday on Tuesday the 7^th October 1836 and the mail coach had arrived promptly outside the Red Lion in the Market Square. The arrival and the departure of the mail coach were always noted with interest. Mr Brunt and Mr Alcock, the ostler, returned to the Red Lion and climbed the stairs to an upper room. At the top of the stairs they met Miss James, the niece of Mr Barlow the landlord, and a serving girl Agnes Hambleton having heard what had sounded like a gunshot. The two men entered the room, which was full of smoke and smelt of gunpowder. In a corner of the room was a toilet, which had been locked from the inside. They tried to force the door. They eventually got it open and lying on the toilet floor was the foreign looking gentleman with a pistol in his right hand. Mr Robins a local doctor was called for but it was obvious that the man was beyond hope. He had shot himself in the right ear and blood and brain matter oozed out of large hole in the left side of his head. They laid him on the bed in the room but he died a few moments later without uttering a single  word.

Who was Manuel da Silveria the name of the man who lay dead on a bed in the Red Lion? He was Brazilian and a man of some importance. He was described in the coroner’s report published in the Macclesfield Courier on the 15^th October 1836 as being a person who held a commission for the newly independent Brazilian Government for the West African country of Sierra Leone. In other words, Manuel Da Silveria was probably a person of some influence and connections; certainly the name had a long connection with Africa and Portuguese influence. A Silveria was canonised by the Catholic Church following his murder by Muslim Slave Traders in Africa in the 16^th century. Several of that name crop up as colonialists running areas of Asia and Africa for the Portuguese Crown in times past. The Brazil that Da Silveria would have known would have been in a state of turmoil during the 1820s and 30s as it sort to free itself of Portuguese rule to eventually proclaim in 1822 the first Brazilian Emperor Pedro 1^st to rule an extremely large empire. The Emperor proved autocratic and after an uprising fled to Britain.

One subject that would have linked Brazil and West Africa where Da Silveria worked would have been slavery. The Portuguese had began to take slaves from West Africa in the late 15th century and slaves were forcibly taken in their millions over the next 300 years to North and South America. By the early 19^th century a country like Sierra Leone, by then a British possession, would have been in the front line in the attempt by the British to drive slave trading out of the continent. During the period that Da Silveria worked there the British launched military expeditions against slave owning chiefs. Perhaps he was ensuring Brazil’s interests, still slave based, were defended? It took Brazil several years to take the decision to abolish slavery and then only after considerable British pressure.

A clue about the wealth of Da Silveria emerged at the inquest when reference was made to him living at a London address and also a Liverpool one. The London address of Portland Place would have been very fashionable in 1836 as the Adam brothers designed the houses only a few decades before. In the case of the Liverpool address the area around Great Charlotte St was rapidly being developed in Liverpool, a city that had very strong slavery associations.

At the inquest a local doctor, Dr Robins, reported examination of the corpse revealed that the bullet had entered the head of Da Silveria through the right lobe of the ear and had travelled upward causing an inch long exit wound. Mention is also made of an old injury on the back of the head, which he had complained about to Henry Numes, a personal friend of Da Silveria and lived in Liverpool. The doctor also suggested that the dead man’s liver showed signs of damage.

Numes gave a vital clue at the inquest, which confirms Da Silveria involvement in West Africa. He said that Da Silveria had moved to Liverpool only 4 months before he shot himself in Leek. He was on long-term sick leave from the Brazilian Government after falling ill with a fever in West Africa. He told the coroner that his friend was of a depressed state of mind as a consequence of his work in Sierra Leone.

Another possible reason for the action taken by De Silveria was that he was under investigation by the authorities and the police accused of a massive fraud against the Brazilian Government. In fact the Consul General for the Brazilian Government and a man called Ruthven a detective hired by him attended the inquest. The matter led to a great deal of interest in the town with over 200 trying to attend the inquest in the Red Lion