3 September 1810: Mr Jackson, Dewsbury druggist, gets drunk while visiting a prisoner at Rothwell
Leeds Mercury. 1810/09/22. Leeds, September 22. Leeds. Get it:
.Unedited excerpt
The excerpt in the book is shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.
On Sunday the 2d instant [the nearest Sunday is the 3rd], Mr. Jackson, druggist, of Dewsbury, paid a visit to a friend in Rothwell jail. There he thoughtlessly indulged too freely over the bottle, and, on his setting out to return home, in a state of intoxication, had to pass near a Methodist meeting-house. The people here being engaged in their religious service, he judged it a fine frolic to ride in, and go near the pulpit and disturb the congregation at their devotion. For which imprudent act he was taken into custody and carried back to the prison, where he was kept in confinement during the night.
Having appointed to meet Mrs. Jackson (who was on her return from the funeral of a sister) at Wakefield that evening, to go home with her to Dewsbury, he scrawled a note to her, which was unfortunately not delivered till next morning.
Sorrow for the loss of her sister, and alarm at the non-appearance of her husband, preyed upon her mind during the whole of the night, nor was her anxiety alleviated by the receipt of his letter.
In this state of mind, she proceeded in a chaise for Dewsbury on Monday morning, where she arrived in a wretched situation, and was soon seized with the pains of premature labour.
For several hours she was alone in the house where she was delivered herself, and in this terrible state, weltering in her blood, was she found in the evening, almost in a state of exhaustion, by her wretched husband. All means tried to save her proved ineffectual – she languished till Thursday and then expired.
The melancholy event deprived her husband of his senses, and derangement was soon accompanied by a violent fever, which terminated his existence the next Thursday.
Such a series of shocking events gave rise to various rumours, which caused some gentlemen of the neighbourhood to send for the coroner to make inquiry respecting the causes of these deaths. A minute examination of the body of Mr. J. and of various witnesses took place before the coroner, his jury, and three medical men, who all declared themselves perfectly satisfied that the reports were totally without foundation.
Mr. Jackson was much and deservedly respected. Two infant children are left without parents.
Comment
Comment
Via Howard Benson (Benson N.d.). I wonder whether this is to some extent a fictionalised Methodist morality tale – editor Edward Baines was a non-conformist described by William Cobbett as “the great liar of the north.”
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Tags
Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.
- Alcohol (drug) (62) W/G ·
- Baines, Edward (1774–1848) (7), Nonconformist editor and proprietor of the Leeds Mercury, politician, author of historical and geographic reference works W/G ·
- Bleeding (2) W/G ·
- Cobbett, William (1763-1835) (6), populist pamphleteer, journalist, politician and farmer W/G ·
- 📌Dewsbury (21) W/G ·
- Horse (72) W/G ·
- Inquest (15) W/G ·
- Leeds Mercury (18), leading Whig newspaper founded by John Hirst in 1718, bought by Nonconformist-Liberal Edward Baines in 1801 and used to advocate some types of social and political reform, remained in the family for two more generations W/G ·
- Methodism (38) W/G ·
- Newspaper (28) W/G ·
- Pregnancy (9) W/G ·
- Preterm birth (2) W/G ·
- 📌Rothwell, West Yorkshire (5) W/G ·
- 📌Wakefield (37), cathedral city on the River Calder in the West Riding/West Yorkshire W/G ·
Comment
Comment
Via Howard Benson (Benson N.d.). I wonder whether this is to some extent a fictionalised Methodist morality tale – editor Edward Baines was a non-conformist described by William Cobbett as “the great liar of the north.”
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Similar
15 October 1838: Apologies from “imprisoned” Huddersfield workers are read to the great Chartist rally on Peep Green (Hartshead Moor), accusing middle-class radicals of betrayal
Comment
Comment
Shirley is set in 1811 and 1812, and Luddism became a serious threat in the West Riding in early 1812. Easter Sunday was 29 March that year, so Whit Tuesday was 19 May – although Charlotte Brontë’s imagination, perhaps inspired by weather reports in the Leeds Mercury, which she consulted extensively, locates it in the last week of May. John Lock and Canon W.T. Dixon say (p.63) that the scene reworks a confrontation between Patrick Brontë and a drunk when he led the Whitsun procession in Dewsbury in 1810 (Lock 1965), but Herbert Wroot (p.78) has found in the Dewsbury Reporter of 12 December 1896 the report of an interview conducted by P.F. Lee in which the Rev. James Chesterton Bradley, the original of “Mr. Sweeting,” says that Charlotte Brontë reused more or less literally an actual episode:
At the head of the steep main street of Haworth is a narrow lane, which on a certain Whitsuntide was the scene of a similar event to the one related in this seventeenth chapter of ‘Shirley.’ The Church School procession had defiled into the lane, ‘had gained the middle of it,’ when ‘lo and behold! another – an opposition procession’ – was entering the other end of the lane at the same time, ‘headed also by men in black.’
It was interesting, Mr. Lee went on to say, “to hear from Mr. Bradley how Patrick Bronté, seeing the situation, at once assumed the offensive, and charging the enemy with his forces soon cleared the way.”
Wroot also says that “immediately upon the publication of the novel, Briarfield was identified, by all acquainted with the district, as Birstall” (Wroot 1966).
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