Yorkshire Almanac 2026

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

A religious enthusiast, named Hannah Beedham, who pretends the had a trance when in our county hospital two years ago, and whilst in that trance was informed she would die the 1st of August, 1833, has this week been the cause of much folly and idleness. She formerly belonged to the Wesleyan Methodists, but was some time ago discarded by them. Having announced that she would retire to Kelfield to die, she proceeded there some weeks ago, and during the last nine days has kept her bed, under pretence of illness. She, however, has been visited by many hundreds of people from York, and all the neighbouring villages. She sang hymns and prayed – she spoke comfortably to her friends of her visions unseen – she held converse with spiritual beings about her death; but when the time came for her departure she could not quit this lower world – no, nor even the village of Kelfield. A second Johanna Southcote, she now appeared that which she had always been – the creature of ignorance and enthusiasm. York Herald.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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Mayhall:

Many provided themselves with new mourning to attend the funeral, which was to have taken place at the church of the Holy Trinity, Goodramgate, York, on the Sunday following; but even some in York had done the like (Mayhall 1860).

Pen Hemingway has researched the background, including her relative, James Sturdy, the farmer with whom Beedham stayed at Kelfield (Hemingway 2022/03/12).

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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.

• East Riding of Yorkshire (67) W/G ·
• False prophet (1) W/G ·
• Fraud (22) W/G ·
• Funeral (25) W/G ·
• Goodramgate (2) W/G ·
• Holy Trinity Church, Goodramgate, York (2) W/G ·
• Kelfield, North Yorkshire (1) W/G ·
• Methodism (38) W/G ·
• Prophecy (6) W/G ·
• Prophet (1) W/G ·
• River Ouse, Yorkshire (19) W/G ·
• Southcott, Joanna (1750-1814) (3), Devon prophetess and founder of the Southcottian movement W/G ·
• 📌York (165) W/G ·

All tags.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Comment

Mayhall:

Many provided themselves with new mourning to attend the funeral, which was to have taken place at the church of the Holy Trinity, Goodramgate, York, on the Sunday following; but even some in York had done the like (Mayhall 1860).

Pen Hemingway has researched the background, including her relative, James Sturdy, the farmer with whom Beedham stayed at Kelfield (Hemingway 2022/03/12).

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Similar

1 July 1840: The opening of the Hull and Selby Railway terminates the threat to Hull’s port from Goole, Scarborough and Bridlington

5 February 1643: Rioting locals reïnundate Hatfield Chase in protest at flooding and a loss of fishing and fowling caused by Netherlandish colonists and Cornelius Vermuyden’s land reclamation scheme

30 March 1834: Anne Lister seals a surreptitious mock marriage with fellow-landowner Ann Walker during the Easter Sunday service at Holy Trinity, Goodramgate, York

23 September 1846: Wilkie Collins’ Captain Wragge, an amiable rogue, walks out into York

21 September 1549: Egalitarian, republican and Catholic, the leaders of the Seamer Rebellion against the Edwardian Reformation are hanged at York

28 April 1489: Yorkshire tax rebels kill Henry Percy, 4th Earl of Northumberland, at South Kilvington (Thirsk), leading to a very expensive funeral at Beverley Minster

25 September 1066: The Stamford Bridge massacre by Harold Godwinson’s army of Harald Hardrada and Tostig Godwinson’s force – symbol of the end of the Viking Age

8 May 1849: Amid revelations of fraud at the York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway, Richard Nicholson, business partner and brother-in-law of the Railway King, George Hudson, drowns himself in the Ouse at York

16 April 1883: General Booth rebuts the Bishop of Oxford’s claim that the Salvation Army organises mixed darkroom sessions at York

6 February 1906: A reporter gains exclusive access to the entombment of Horatio Bright, a Sheffield steel merchant and lapsed Jew, alongside his first wife and only son

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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The scan is from Chris Hobbs, who has a great collection of information on Horatio Bright. The mausoleum is at 53.389403,-1.645310, and was robbed in the 1980s, after which the bodies were reinterred at Crookes Cemetery, not at Ecclesfield Jewish Cemetery as Judy Simons claims (Simons 2021). Mary Alice and Samuel Bright had died in 1891. Hobbs says that Mary Alice “was embalmed and placed in a glass sided coffin. The mausoleum was decorated with pictures, statutes and ornaments and fitted with mahogany panelling. He even installed a small hand operated organ so that he could play funeral music to his departed love ones on his frequent visits.” The organ story may or may not be true, but our reporter specifically rebuts the first two claims. Given Bright’s atheism, or agnosticism, or personal faith, I’m curious who paid for the Methodist chapel adjoining the plantation in which he was laid to rest:

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