Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

It seems we have an excursion here in the beginning of September and I suppose you know that we can go home on that day of going the excursion and I think that I would rather do so as we do not like the place at all for besides having nothing to do such dreadful smoke comes over from Pudsey that it makes everything quite black. The boys are not allowed to go into the gardens as the girls are and the girls have much more of the terrace than we have. I do not like either masters* or boys and therefore I do not like the place at all. The only amusement we ever have is about an hour in the cricket field when Willie and I make dandelion chains for Mr Kramer.

With best love to all believe me ever to remain,

Your affte. son,

H.H. Asquith.

* With the exception of Mr Kramer.

Comment

Comment

Was any particular mill to blame for the smoke?

Another letter two days before:

My very dear Mamma,

I received letters from Elisabeth and Eva this morning. I am sorry to say that very unhappy here and we don’t want to stay much longer we can’t find what to do and it makes us very miserable we often say to each other and Johnny Shaw that we would rather live in the wood than here. I have not time write much more so believe me ever to remain,

Your loving son,

Bertie.

His recollections are more generous:

In the course of a few years we moved our home from Morley to Mirfield, then little more than a village, within a few miles of Huddersfield. It was there that my father, after an illness of only a few hours, died (June, 1860), at the age of thirty-five. He had not been able to accumulate more than a scanty provision for his family, and my grandfather Willans, a well-to-do and large-hearted man, of whom my mother had always been the favourite child, took charge of us, and established us in a house a few doors from his own in the town of Huddersfield. For a short time my brother and I attended Huddersfield College as day-scholars, but we were very soon sent as boarders to a Moravian school at Fulneck, near Leeds, where the ground floor of my education was laid. The life there was homely, and indeed rough, but the Moravians were excellent teachers, and I am gratefully conscious that I owe them much.

In 1864, aged 11, and following the death of his grandfather, the remaining Asquiths moved south, and he became “to all intents and purposes a Londoner.” (Asquith 1928)

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Original

Fulneck,

August 6th, ’61.

My very dear Mamma,

It seems we have an excursion here in the beginning of September and I suppose you know that we can go home on that day of going the excursion and I think that I would rather do so as we do not like the place at all for besides having nothing to do such dreadful smoke comes over from Pudsey that it makes everything quite black. The boys are not allowed to go into the gardens as the girls are and the girls have much more of the terrace than we have. I do not like either masters* or boys and therefore I do not like the place at all. The only amusement we ever have is about an hour in the cricket field when Willie and I make Dandelion chains for Mr. Kramer.

With best love to all believe me ever

to remain,

Your affte. son,

H. H. Asquith.

* With the exception of Mr. Kramer.

P.S. Excuse sending white envelopes as have no black edges.

P.S. Please give my love to Auntie Mardie and tell her I am sorry I could not write to her.

217 words.

Tags

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• Air pollution (11) ·
• Asquith, Herbert Henry (1852-1928) (4), Morley-born Liberal MP (East Fife, 1886-1916), prime minister (1908-16), home secretary (1892-95) ·
• Boarding school (2) ·
• Cricket (10) ·
• Fulneck Moravian Settlement (4) ·
• Fulneck School (1) ·
• Garland (1) ·
• Huddersfield New College (1) ·
• 📌Huddersfield (29) ·
• Mirfield (3) ·
• 📌Morley, West Yorkshire (5), market town and civil parish 5 miles south-west of Leeds, built on seven hills ·
• Private school (2) ·
• 📌Pudsey (11) ·
• Taraxacum (1) ·
• Textile manufacturing (59) ·

All tags.

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