Premature Burial- A justifiable Victorian fear

I walked through Rushton Spencer churchyard with a local group and came across the tombstone of Thomas Meaykin buried on 16^th July 1781 and as the inscription reads “ As a man falleth before united men so fell I” Two words in the Greek alphabet follow bia thanatos meaning to die violently. The story of Thomas is a terrible one according to Murray's Handbook for Staffordshire (1868 )

“This is a reference to a tragic story of a youth who dared to make love to his master's daughter, and was supposed to come to a sudden end hereby. At all events he was buried in the reverse of the usual way.”

The local legend is that he was giving a sleeping draught by the master which gave the appearance of death. Meakyn was buried initially in Stone, but when he was re-interred at Rushton and the full horror that he had been entombed prematurely was revealed.

Premature burial! The fear of being buried alive was a real one given the inexactness of medical science then. As the 19^th century progressed , the possibility of premature burial increased. In the poorer urban areas doctors were hard pressed to keep control especially during an epidemic. When a patient was seriously ill or obviously dying they were happy to issue death certificates on application of the relative without seeing the corpse. The leading medical journal of the time outlined the fear in dramatic prose

“The last footfall departs from the churchyard, leaving the entranced sleeper behind in his hideous shell soon to awaken to consciousness and to a benumbed half- suffocated existence for a few minutes or else , more horrible still, there he lies beneath the ground conscious of what he has been and what he still is”

During a panic in the 1880s, doctors received much correspondence from people who had narrowly avoided this fate. One man was about to be screwed down in his coffin . He was aware of what was happening to him, but could not communicate to the undertaker. It was only when someone noticed that the “corpse” had broken out into a sweat that he was rescued.

As can be imagined many people took precautions against the possibility of being buried alive, The author Wilkie Collins left a letter that whoever found his body should call a doctor and make certain. Lady Burton provided for her heart to be pierced with a needle while the composer Meyerbeer arranged for bells to be tied to his extremities when he was dead.

By 1896 there were about 200 books on premature burial. It is not surprising that the superstitious believed that people who had been buried alive returned as vampires to take revenge on the living

The conservatism of Moorlanders- the experience of WH Hudson

In May 1913 the Anglo Argentinian writer WH Hudson was in the area. He was at the peak of his powers and had produced many books on bird watching and nature either in Britain or on Latin America. His most well known book “Green Mansions” was published in 1904 and often cited as the first ecological novel subtitled- A romance of the Tropical Forest- it is a mystical novel on the life of a forest child in the Amazonian jungle who is at one with the animals of the jungle. Hudson was collecting material on Axe Edge for a book “Adventures Among Birds”. Hudson was not impressed by the locals comparing them unfavourably with the more fiery Lancastrians. He blamed their lack of spirit and energy on Methodism.

“Moorlanders are not a happy looking or a lively people. They have colourless faces and for good looks compare badly with inhabitants of the adjoining districts.

The farming methods were backward. “The farmers depend mainly on their lean ill fed cows for a livelihood: they make butter and feed a pig or two with the skim milk. They live on bacon and buttermilk themselves and bread which they make or buy, but vegetables and fruit are luxuries”

“I asked several farmers why they did not cut bracken which was plentiful enough, to serve as bedding for cows, since they could not get straw. They answered that occasionally a farmer did so, but it was not a custom and they thought the cows did just as well without bedding at all!”

Hudson encountered the innate deep rooted conservatism of the area. This entirely coincides with an account from a farmer Tom Mullins born in 1863 whose autobiography is included in a collection of writings of working people called “Useful Toil” published by Penguin in the 70s. Mullins whose book was collected when he was an old man recounts walking to Leek market as 10 year old from his parent’s farm at Rushton Spencer with a basket containing two hundred eggs on one arm and another basket with twelve pounds of butter on the other.

In the 1870s Mullins records that the reaction of the locals when the first steam powered farm machines arrived in the area was one of laughter! The farming methods described are not far removed from the medieval with Mullins quoting a farmer who was so far opposed to anything modern that he even refused to use horses.

Do you remember January 1967?

A report published at the beginning of 1967 sounds oddly familiar to modern ears. Leek was described by a visitor as “ being dead from the neck up”. Architects Shingler Risdon carried out an in-depth assessment of the town with sweeping proposals within its conclusion. The introduction to the report painted a gloomy picture. No major employer had been attracted to Leek since the war. The population had stayed static since the 1930s whilst other Staffordshire towns had grown. The town's young people were leaving as the town provided insufficient opportunities especially for its graduates. There were 26 empty shops in the town centre.

The report proposed a number of bold changes. The bottom end of Derby St near to the monument would be extensively re developed with a new Civic centre, a Magistrate Court, Library and Children's Health Clinic, A 20 mph one way system was devised with a new road connecting Earl Street and Southbank. Derby St would be pedestrianised and a “ new triangular road system around Derby and Hayward Street with the end of the roundabout 44 years before it was achieved.

Leek people looking to book their summer holiday in January 1967 could look at a number of choices to escape to warmer climes. The previous decade saw the start of cheap package holiday to Mediterranean resorts. Typical was a 11 day holiday to the Italian Riviera costing £34 but for the hardy there was a 14 day coach trip to Italy including stops in Brussels, Lake Lucerne, Milan, Florence, Pisa, two days in Rome, Assisi, Rimini, Venice, Innsbruck and Augsburg. The trip included 2,500 miles travel and cost £41. The people of Leek were beginning to follow a national trend as airports such as Luton developed to meeting the need to escape to the sun although Britons were only allowed to take £50 out of the country due to the economic plight of the country.

 

A footballing legend appeared in Leek in the month before his 52 birthday. Stanley Matthews was the manager of Port Vale and bought a young team to play Leek Town before a large crowd of 1,400. The crowd were entertained in a free scoring game in which the visitors won 6-1 . The home team included the uncompromisingly named Boote and Nutting but they were overwhelmed by the Vale. Stan bossed the game and even at this advanced age his vision and touch had not deserted him.

Young people with increasing disposable income were spending their money on themselves. John English hair stylists of Cheadle telephone number 3367 advertised their new style for 1967 – the Grecian Boy. It was promoted this: “PERFECT layer cutting. To ensure lasting style our new 1967 permanent wave with buoyancy which will give your hair that soft rippling waviness which is so feminine, A hairstyle that will require absolutely No BACKCOMBING a very little lacquer, in fact, just a flick of the brush keeps its shape”.

Amongst the bands that were getting off on the right foot in January 1967 was the Mysteries pictured in the Post and Times who had just been booked by Molloys, a London based agency. One of the members of the band was Iain Sutherland who in the 70s was playing with his brother Gavin in the Sutherland Brothers and later in Quiver. The song “Sailing” was taken up by Rod Stewart and was a number one in the UK charts for 4 weeks in 1975.

The moral turpitude of the nation exercised the mind of the Rev Ken Foster of Rushton who used the Leek Deanery magazine to examine the increased usage of a fashionable word “mini” “ Big Girls are trying to look like little girls, the Commonwealth is becoming mini in company with the motor car and a whole system of mini morals are reducing human society to a state.... surely in 1967 we will have to reverse this process and begin to grow up again before it is too late. We see history and life in great sweeps and apply the fertiliser of common sense to our stunted social economy”

The Rushton Mutilation

When two farmers Johnson and Clowes left the Fox Inn at Rushton Spencer one snowy December night in 1879 they little thought of the terrible ramifications over an argument about the sale of geese with another local man named Brooks would have. The pair met farmer Brooks on the road. That night Johnson realised that Brooks was still annoyed at being out bid by Johnson for the birds. But in Johnson’s account nothing was really said and the men went home. A day or so later Johnson heard that Brooks had been attacked and maltreated. Although in the demur way of the press of the time this was not the whole of it as Brooks had been castrated by an unknown assailant. Johnson thought that when the police called a day or so later that he would be called as a witness having seen Brooks prior to the assault. It turned out that the police had arrived to arrest both men on a charge of grievous assault. The judicial process was speedy and both men found themselves in the dock by the end of January 1880. They were found guilty. Johnson in a subsequent interview was very contemptuous of the lack of guidance and support by his legal team. Johnson and Clowes got ten years penal servitude. They rigorously protested their innocence and began to serve a prison term firstly at Pentonville and then at Chatham. It was hard at first as they were in solitary confinement and the two men were used to the outdoor life. The regime was a severe one and the two men were put to work in menial back breaking work. Johnson did not feel any bitterness to Brooks for allowing this situation to develop. Johnson gained some solace from the prison chaplain at Pentonville “ But many a night I burst my eyes thinking about it”. The poor diet and toil reduced both men to shadows of their former selves physically and mentally.

Clowes added a statement ” Our conviction came on us sudden. We could not blame the jury or the judge, for no one at the trial had anything to say for us and Brooks words were not contradicted”.

The two men’s luck changed when Brooks died and in a death bed confession insisted that the two men were innocent. Brooks had in fact wounded himself. The Home Secretary ordered their release and the two men were given a change of clothing and put on a train to North Staffordshire. They were well treated and spent some time in Burslem where the Mayor of the town gave them money before the men went to their homes.

Mrs Clowes told the press that the family had been broken up and she had been turned out of the farm. The children were living with other relatives and she now ran a shop on Biddulph Moor. Johnson had been much changed by the experience.