Yorkshire Almanac William Allison (11) rides two miles on a donkey from Cundall to Brafferton to help celebrate the marriage of the future Edward VII to Alexandra of Denmark

10 March 1863: William Allison (11) rides two miles on a donkey from Cundall to Brafferton to help celebrate the marriage of the future Edward VII to Alexandra of Denmark

William Allison. 1920. “My Kingdom for a Horse!”. New York: E.P. Dutton and Company. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

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

The marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales was the great event of 10th March 1863, and my part in the celebration of it is recorded in the Diary, 10th March:

This morning we went to Brafferton, Mrs Gray riding the donkey at first, but we were met by the carriage, and so I rode the donkey, which kept up with the carriage. In the afternoon we had a procession round the town, me among the number. In the evening we had a magic lantern and fireworks. We all sang God Save the Queen. There were flags out of all the windows.

Some few weeks later, during the holidays, I was taken to Ripon to see the Prince and Princess drive through the town, and that was my first sight of them. Of course people were enthusiastic. How could they be otherwise over such a charming young Princess? but loyalty to the Crown was not then nearly so deeply rooted and sincere as it is now. It was reserved for Disraeli, a good many years later, to bring home both to Queen Victoria and her people the true strength of their respective positions, which act and react for mutual dignity and co-operative power.

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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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23 February 1863: The Rev Samuel Gray of Cundall tries to make school interesting for a nervous William Allison (12)

14 February 1863: William Allison (11) witnesses hare-coursing at Cundall

28 February 1863: William Allison (11) goes mouse-hunting with a fellow-pupil at Cundall (Ripon)

11 August 1875: The Whitby town crier’s unique act for the municipal dog show

10 September 1855: Leeds celebrates the fall of Sevastopol during the Crimean War

20 January 1536: Thomas Cromwell’s dissolvers of monasteries, Richard Layton and Thomas Legh, report allegations of whoring and theft by William Thirsk, Abbot of Fountains

30 April 1704: Whitby’s Church of England parish register records a wedding celebrated, perhaps illegally, at the Quakers Meeting

9 July 1849: Sarah Ann Haldren of Hoxton (London) meets her end at the home of her new husband, William Wilkinson Walley of Holbeck (Leeds)

12 September 1865: An unexpected gesture from Richard Scurr, watchmaker, at the Thirsk burial of John Pick Allison, solicitor

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The funeral date is from the parish register.

His mother died shortly afterwards:

Less than two months after [another] letter was written my mother was dead – 12th July 1866 – and I had thus lost both parents within a year.

It is better not to dwell on mournful incidents of the past. Again Mr Jex-Blake had broken the bad news to me with kindly words, and as I waited at Rugby station that time I saw a black railway engine with just a green patch on it. I interpreted this to mean that my mother was still alive, and she was so on my arrival at home, just sufficiently to know me, but two nights later I was sent hurriedly to the Rectory to summon Mr Kingsley, whose house door had been left open so that I could go straight in and up to his bedroom. He woke up and came along within ten minutes. The end was very near, though it did not actually come until late in the following afternoon.

Let us pass on, for the blow had fallen, and reminiscences of it are futile.

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