Yorkshire Almanac 2025

Unedited excerpt

The excerpt in the book is shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

Perhaps the readers of this column would notice that at od one of the meetings in celebration of the Temperance Jubilee in Leeds attention was drawn to the fact that it was in Leeds where the Band of Hope movement had its origin and received its name, and where, also, the first Band of Hope melodies were composed. Between 30 and 40 years ago, just about the time the first Band of Hope was organised in the town, the Leeds Mercury contained a specimen of typography in the shape of a tree, drawing attention to the evils of intemperance. Mr. T. Harper, of Cawood, Selby, who says he has been a reader of the Mercury for half a century, asks for the reproduction of of the tree, and it is given below:-

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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

It doesn’t work for me at the moment – line ten is one character shorter than line nine. What were they smoking?

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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 ·
• Band of Hope (1) 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 ·
• 📌Leeds (249) W/G ·
• Newspaper (28) W/G ·
• Teetotalism (6) W/G ·
• Temperance movement in the United Kingdom (1) W/G ·
• Temperance movement (10) W/G ·
• Tree (3) W/G ·
• Typography (2) 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

It doesn’t work for me at the moment – line ten is one character shorter than line nine. What were they smoking?

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Similar

29 September 1830: Tory Radical Richard Oastler: “free” white workers in the Bradford mills are worse off than their enslaved black counterparts in the colonies

25 August 1840: Debating the teetotal vegetarian Frederic Lees at Rotherham, the Wesleyan James Bromley calls the pledge unchristian, and “alcohol-free” wine undrinkable

1 May 1878: The Mercury quotes Clifford Allbutt (Leeds Infirmary) on the commendable beastliness of northerners

11 March 1879: Calling for magistrates to lose their jurisdiction over pub licences, the teetotaller Wilfrid Lawson suggests that Tory Radical William St James Wheelhouse serves the Yorkshire Brewers’ Association

11 July 1829: A Leeds Mercury subscriber asks why Christians do not seek to refute the claims of the Rev. Robert Taylor and Richard Carlile’s “infidel home missionary tour”

18 September 1880: An elderly reader of the Leeds Mercury recounts in its children’s column a pre-1839 alternative to flogging in a one-room school

25 September 1880: Thomas Harper reveals to the Leeds Mercury’s young readers a mnemonic song of monarchs (except Oliver) used in the village school at Weldrake (York) in the 1770s

13 October 1855: The Mercury publishes a letter from a chemist claiming that Leeds’s bakers adulterate their bread with a poisonous whitener

19 September 1835: The Leeds Mercury attacks property valuations under the recent Municipal Corporations Act, which facilitate the political careers of men from the centre of town

10 October 1908: Morley-born Liberal PM Asquith gives a speech on alcohol licensing at the Leeds Coliseum, as suffragettes, suffragists, unemployment activists and mounted police entertain outside

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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

Via Leeds Riot Map:

A great number of the tickets were overstamped “Men only”, and the door stewards were commanded to not allow any woman not holding one thus stamped; this was because the organisers knew that the suffragettes could disguise themselves to make them appear fully respectable members of a Liberal audience. Meanwhile, in Victoria Square, a large meeting of unemployed took place by the Leeds Permanent Committee on Unemployment, chaired by a man, Mr. Kitson. As the PM Asquith approached the Coliseum, some 600 or so men moved up the hill to where Ms Baines was declaring that unemployment was “more a woman’s question than a man’s, for it was the wife that had to meet the landlord’s demand for rent”. Precisely what happened next, and what was intended, remains unclear. The press, in the form of the Evening News and the Leeds Mercury, agreed that Ms Baines was heard to say “Break down the barricades and compel a hearing”, but it is not clear if this was intended as an explicit incitement to the men to interpret her literally. Whatsoever, there was a rush of people which was subsequently interpreted as a riot, although the only recorded damage was a broken pane of glass. It seems one stone was thrown which a policeman claimed had hit him, but no injury was recorded, to him or anyone else. In Leeds, Kitson and five suffragettes were arrested. Trial proceedings dragged on into the next year and the excitement subsided, but Jennie Baines is recorded the honour of being the first suffragette to be imprisoned after conviction.

Who was Vera Lambert? Who was Mr Kitson? Presumably no relative of Lord Airedale. I hope I’ve tagged the right Gladstone.

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