Francis Edwards ~ The Cornish Historian

The Man Who Photographed the Miners: J. C. Burrow in Cornwall and Wales

Part Two

(If you missed Part One, you can find it HERE)

Reading time: 25 minutes

The original cover of Burrow’s most famous publication, 1893

Distinctly remarkable…

1893 was an important year for John Charles Burrow. The photographs he took underground at the Dolcoath, Cook’s Kitchen, East Pool and Blue Hills Mines, were published in his ‘Mongst Mines and Miners. This work not only gained him recognition and celebrity in Cornwall, but also respect, and fascination, in the world of professional photography, and from the general public.

His photos, such as the one below, also brought awareness of the working conditions underground to many people living outside of the mining districts. I might add, they still do.

66 Fathom, Blue Hills, St Agnes. Three miners are hammering a new prop into position to support a lode of four to five feet. Image courtesy Kresen Kernow, AD460/1/35. This image originally appeared in *‘Mongst Mines and Miners*

Examples of Burrow’s work were displayed in London that year at the 38th Exhibition of The Photographic Society of Great Britain, where he won a bronze medal for his efforts¹.

Positive reactions to Burrow’s skill, and his results, were immediate. The Morning Post described his exhibits as “very interesting”². Other reports were equally appreciative, and more detailed. The miner, as George Orwell wrote in 1937, is

…second in importance only to the man who ploughs the soil…a sort of grimy caryatid upon whose shoulders nearly everything that is not grimy is supported.
From The Road to Wigan Pier, in Orwell’s England, ed. Peter Davison, Penguin, 2001, p68

Therefore, anyone who can successfully, and faithfully, record the labours of an industry that makes civilisation possible, is also important. This was realised by the London Evening Standard:

…the underground pictures of Mr Burrow have supreme merit. The greatest difficulties to portray such scenes…snatched from the darkness of subterranean passages fathoms deep…by the skilful manipulation of limelight and magnesium lamp.
October 11, 1893, p2

The Times likewise noted that

…photographically considered and for their general interest they are distinctly remarkable.

This was actually quoted in the Cornish Post and Mining News of September 29, 1893 (p8), beside Burrow’s photo of the stull at 412 Fathom, Dolcoath Mine, Camborne:

*Cornish Post and Mining News*, September 29, 1893, p8. This image also originally appeared in *‘Mongst Mines and Miners*

As we saw last week³, though Burrow took this shot in 1892, interest in it increased in the most tragic circumstances. In September 1893, the stull at 412 Fathom collapsed, killing seven miners working to repair it. Postcards of Burrow’s photo did a brisk and morbid trade in the Camborne area, and the image was also used by H.M. Inspector of Mines for the South West, Joseph Martin, during the inquest into the accident.

It was Burrow’s recognition in London, and the Dolcoath Disaster, that probably brought his abilities to the attention of the government.

There was trouble in North Wales.

O Arglwydd Dduw Rhagluniaeth: The Llechwedd Strike of 1893

*North Wales Chronicle*, May 27, 1893, p2

The Llechwedd Slate Quarry near Blaenau Ffestiniog was the scene of a bitter and protracted strike from May to September of 1893⁴. It began when a quarryman, Griffith Jones, was threatened with the loss of a day’s pay unless he returned to his work station. Jones, who had already worked seven and a half hours that day, refused, and went home. When he returned to Llechwedd the next day, Jones was told he had been suspended for his defiance. In a mass show of solidarity, the entire Llechwedd workforce, totalling 500 or so, downed tools, and vowed that

…we will not return to work without a distinct understanding that we shall all be allowed to return without a single one being left out, and that the present dispute be satisfactorily settled.
Qtd in the North Wales Chronicle, May 27, 1893, p5

Pay day, Llechwedd, 1890s⁵. Quarrymen hand-drilled underground in the pitch black with chains round their legs to prevent falls, often spending their entire working lives in the same slate chamber

Today, the Llechwedd Slate Caverns are a tourist attraction in Snowdonia

The quarry owner, John Earnest Greaves (1847-1945), let it be known that those on strike could consider themselves severed from his employ, and he furthermore reserved the right to employ only men he wanted to employ⁶.

John Earnest Greaves in 1897. From his Wikipedia entry

Thus were the battle-lines drawn, and were to remain as immovable as the Western Front for the next five months. Committees were formed, spokesmen nominated, and delegates presented grievances. In the first flush of optimism, the Quarrymen predicted a “short battle”⁷, and even had an unofficial anthem, the hymn ‘O Arglwydd Dduw Rhagluniaeth’ (‘O Lord God of Providence’).

The Llechwedd Quarrymen had the official, and financial, support of all quarry-workers in the Ffestiniog, Penryndeudrath, and Bethesda areas. Local firebreathing ministers took up their cudgels too, describing the “present fight” as

…one between gentlemanliness and oppression, justice and tyranny, capital and labour.
North Wales Chronicle, August 19, 1893, p7

The strike was also recognised by The North Wales Quarrymen’s Union, who gave the Llechwedd workers’ plight a nationalist agenda. The Greaves family was from England⁸, and while the Union was

…willing to respect aliens who might come amongst them, but if their object was to tyrannise over them and act towards them unjustly and unfairly, then it behoved them to lift up their voices against those aliens.
North Wales Chronicle, August 19, 1893, p7

(It may be worthwhile to point out to my readers outside of Wales that the Ffestiniog area was, and still is, proudly Welsh, and proudly Welsh-speaking. In 1893, all the Quarrymens’ meetings were conducted in Welsh, and their correspondence to the Llechwedd officials had to be translated into English before it could be read⁹.)

The Quarrymen also had the support of the up-and-coming young Liberal MP for Caernarvon Borough, David Lloyd George¹⁰.

Sadly, it was not enough.

Slate cutter, Llechwedd, 1893. Image courtesy Kresen Kernow, ref. AD460/24

Over 1,100 men, women and children formerly reliant on wages from the quarry were now without regular income. The strike, and by extension their plight, was dismissed in the Press as

…one of the most ridiculous in the annals of labour disputes…
North Wales Chronicle, May 20, 1893, p8

Greaves, by contrast, was portrayed as a

…most generous and considerate employer…
North Wales Chronicle, May 20, 1893, p8

(Indeed, the Chronicle‘s reporter was threatened with a “muzzle” by the strikers for airing such opinions¹¹.)

Furthermore, The North Wales Quarrymen’s Union was condemned as a “beggarly organisation”, spouting “sheer nonsense”¹². It was responsible for the “long weeks of suffering of the families of Llechwedd”¹³.

Perhaps understandably, with these conflicting voices, the community of Llechwedd became divided, and irrational.

*North Wales Chronicle*, June 17, 1893, p8

The Hospital in Newmarket Square, Blaenau, was senselessly vandalised by drunken quarrymen for no other reason than it having been founded by Greaves¹³.

Llys Dorfil, The Square, Bleanau. Formerly the Hospital. With thanks to Llio Wyn and Gareth Jones, Bleanau Ffestiniog UNESCO World Heritage page, Facebook

One man who crossed the picket line and went back to work was “severely condemned”¹⁴. What ‘severely condemned’ might be a euphemism for is illustrated by a serious assault on another ‘scab’. He was dragged from his workplace, beaten, and almost thrown over a precipice, where he would have

…met with instant death…
North Wales Chronicle, July 8, 1893, p8

Other men tried to return to work on false pretences. In short, hunger was beginning to win out over principles and, as the North Wales Chronicle of September 9th smugly noted, finally, the strike was “terminated in favour of the masters” (p8). It was later noted that prominent strikers had been refused readmission to the quarry, with many leaving the area¹⁵. With yet more gloating, the Press opined that

This result was inevitable from the very start.
North Wales Chronicle, September 9, 1893, p5

Maybe, maybe not. But was there not perhaps something in the quarrymen’s grievances? Was their discontent justified? Could something be done to introduce improvements

…into the quarrying, in addition to adding greatly to the pleasure the workman himself would derive in following his occupation.
North Wales Chronicle, December 1, 1894, p6

Certainly, H. M. Government thought so.

The Commission

The old railway station, Camborne, c1895. The new buildings are under construction on the left. Burrow probably began his journey here in 1893. Image courtesy Kresen Kernow, ref. corn05120

The then Home Secretary, Herbert Asquith, commissioned an investigation into the Merionethshire Slate Mines (of which Llechwedd was one) in November 1893¹⁶.

Herbert Henry Asquith, 1852-1928. From his Wikipedia page

The Chairman of Asquith’s Commission was Clement Le Neve Foster (1841-1904), the Inspector of Mines for North Wales. Both he and Asquith were probably already familiar with Burrow’s work. As we saw last week, Asquith had been kept abreast of the events of the Dolcoath Disaster – and possibly Burrow’s photographic association with its inquest – by Cornwall’s mining inspector, Joseph Martin. Foster himself had several mining links with Cornwall; what’s more, his father had been a founding member of The Photographic Society of Great Britain, which had awarded Burrow for his ‘Mongst Mines and Miners in 1893¹⁷.

Whatever the reason, or whoever recommended him, someone must have thought it desirous to have the quarries’ working environments photographed, and Burrow was drafted onto the Commission for this purpose sometime in late 1893. It’s unknown whom he travelled to North Wales with, or whether he transported his cameras, plates, tripods, lenses, limelight burners, oxygen and hydrogen canisters, and magnesium flash equipment by himself. It’s possible he had the tools of his trade sent on ahead, but I can’t imagine Burrow letting his precious, and expensive, gadgets stray too far from his side. Even without this paraphernalia, the journey by rail would have been testing, with many changes from Cornwall culminating in a seemingly endless run of stops along the Cambrian line (Aberdovey, Llanbedr, Llandanwg, Harlech, Tygwyn, to name but a few), before the final change at Minfordd for the Ffestiniog branch line.

Victorian photographers were regularly lampooned for the amount of implements they required. From: *To Photograph Darkness*, by Chris Howes, Alan Sutton, 1989, xix

If Burrow did travel solo, it raises an interesting point: who did he get to position and operate his limelight burners? Would he have had to use an interpreter? How were his wishes conveyed to the quarrymen?

The Government’s subsequent Blue Book was published in 1895, under the lengthy title of Report of the Departmental Committee Upon Merionethshire Slate Mines; With Appendices. In the interests of brevity, this publication will hereafter be referred to as The Report.

Mercifully, The Report is not as dry a read as its title might suggest. On the contrary, it provides a fascinating snapshot of 1890s life in the quarries of North Wales in general, and Llechwedd in particular. And life was hard. There were no toilets for the workers, above or below ground; men used old workings as latrines¹⁸. Typhus was a threat, men slept two to a bed in filthy barracks, often in the clothes they worked in, and many cottages were damp, having been erected on undrained peat¹⁹.

Ruined miners’ cottages, Llanberis, Snowdonia²⁰

Even travelling to and from work on the Ffestiniog Railway was hazardous to health. Men waited on damp sidings in cold, sweaty clothes, there being no bathing, changing or drying provisions at the quarry, before being crammed onto draughty carriages²¹. This of course exacerbated the many respiratory diseases associated with the inhalation of dust underground. Diet was poor, and the men existed almost exclusively on stewed tea. (Much was made, incidentally, of the miners’ diets, with public lectures on cooking and nutrition subsequently being given in the Ffestiniog district ²².)

I could go on, but this post is not primarily concerned with the working conditions of Victorian slate miners, as seen through the eyes of a 21st century Cornishman. Suffice that The Committee made forty-three recommendations for improvements. Perhaps The Report‘s key finding was that

…the occupation of the Merionethshire man is more risky than that of the average miner of the United Kingdom.
The Report, xvii

Following this, accidents, and deaths, are

…inseparable from the present method of working…
The Report, xv

They certainly were. From 1875-1893, 65 of the 163 deaths in the Merionethshire mines were caused by falls of ground²³. In the slate chambers, which men gradually hollowed out over periods of years, the rock roofs could extend over a hundred feet above them, making dangerous runs of debris likely.

Luckily for the reader, Burrow was on hand to capture this perilous working environment:

Image courtesy Kresen Kernow, ref. AD460/23

Above is plate one, figure one of The Report. As Burrow was later to point out, this is the first use of a photograph in a Government Blue Book²⁴. The caption read:

Steps in a worked-out chamber of Llechwedd Mine, for the ascent and descent of the workmen...

As we saw last week²⁵, Burrow probably had his subjects (who, judging by their suits, are members of the Commission) pose in the darkness, with their candles and lantern extinguished. Such light could cause a ‘halo’ on a plate and ruin a take. Burrow would later etch a false ‘light’ onto the plate. What is immediately apparent however is the sheer height of the chamber, and the unsupported nature of the walls.

Here’s another of Burrow’s underground images at Llechwedd. Plate 2, fig 3:

Image courtesy Kresen Kernow, ref. AD460/22. A version is also displayed at the entrance to Llechwedd Slate Caverns today

The caption read:

Upper part of a working-place at Llechwedd…The man on the right-hand side, supported by a chain round his thigh, is using a crow-bar to prize off a block of slate…the man on the left is standing upon a little stage made of two boards, resting upon two iron pegs, and is boring a hole with a jumper…The manager is standing on the tram road…[which]…is fifty feet vertically above the foot of the working face. If the workmen depicted were to slip, they would tumble and roll over a rough and rugged face of rock of nearly that height.

If the written description of extracting slate in the main body of The Report (xii-xiii) doesn’t satisfactorily convey the dangers of slate-mining, Burrow’s photo delivers it, if you will, in black and white.

The Commission visited many quarries, including the nearby Oakeley concern. Burrow went too. Here’s plate three, figure five:

I am grateful to Mr Erik Scott, a quarryman of over twenty years in the Ffestiniog district, for providing me with this image.

The caption read:

Ladder, 86 feet long, erected in one of the chambers of the Oakeley mine in order to examine the roof, which is known to be insecure. The ladder is held in position and stiffened by the guy ropes.

Then there is this image by Burrow, which didn’t make the final cut of The Report:

It’s a postcard, and is described as ‘hauling slate’: it must come from Burrow’s time in Wales.

My contact at Blaenau Ffestiniog Library, Carmen Martin, informed me they actually have postcards of Burrow’s underground images from the quarries. Obviously, Burrow’s plates had a dual purpose: the official, Government-sponsored one, and to make him some money. Equally obviously, Burrow must have taken more, unpublished images. Like this one:

Again,
I am grateful to Mr Erik Scott, a quarryman of over twenty years in the Ffestiniog district, for providing me with this image.

Slate-getters appear to be hand-boring in an underground cavern – from precisely which quarry, it’s uncertain. What other precious images might Burrow have taken? Sadly, many were lost after his death, under the most banal circumstances: the plates were actually used to build a greenhouse²⁶. We can only cherish what we have, and hope for new discoveries.

…we do not yet know its fullest possibilities…

The book Victorian Slate Mining (Landmark Publishing, 2003), by Ivor Wynne Jones, who was a journalist and director of the Llechwedd Slate Caverns attraction, of course covers Burrow’s time in Wales. I am grateful that several people recommended it to me in the course of my research, and for anyone wanting a fuller picture of the industry at this time, go there²⁷.

As with Burrow’s work in Cornwall, his work in the quarries of Blaenau Ffestiniog brought the realities of life underground to a wider public, not just through the publication of the The Report, but also through public lectures on the subject. Lectures which were, of course, illustrated by slides of Burrow’s photographs²⁸. Needless to say, his images are still doing their job to this day. There may have been other men producing underground photography at this time, but none went as deep down, and therefore took as many risks, as Burrow. None contended with the challenges of heat and moisture that he did, and none, it must be said, produced such stunning results²⁹. It was recognised at the time, and continues to be so.

Burrow once remarked that “we do not yet know” photography’s “fullest possibilities”³⁰. Through a comprehensive biography of Burrow’s life, we may finally comprehend the fullest extent of his brilliant career. In Cornwall, his images in ‘Mongst Mines and Miners perhaps overshadows his work in Wales: I was certainly ignorant of his time there, and even the Archivist at Kresen Kernow told me he was unfamiliar with this aspect of Burrow’s profession³¹.

And there is much of interest. Did Burrow try his hand at painting, before photography³²? What about his years as a rifleman for the DCLI³³? Or, most tantalisingly, what about the story behind the images he took in a Bristol colliery in the 1890s³⁴?

Surely the greatest photographer of Cornwall’s greatest industry is deserving of a full appreciation of his life and times.

Afterword

That many quarrymen were blackballed in the aftermath of the Llechwedd Strike of 1893 is still well known in Blaenau Ffestiniog. After publishing this post, I was contacted by a resident, Gareth Jones. His grandfather and brother, both prominent strikers, were accused, yet acquitted (to much public rejoicing) of assaulting others “who remained at work after the strike had occurred”³⁵. They were represented by none other than David Lloyd George. Neither worked in Llechwedd again, one man suffering permanent exile to the Durham coalfields. I’ll remember this story as much as I remember Burrow’s.

Many thanks for reading

References

As covered in the Morning Post, September 23, 1893, p5, Lloyd’s Weekly, September 24, 1893, p8, and the London Evening Standard, October 10, 1893, p2. The Photographic Society of Great Britain became The Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain in 1894 and is now, of course, The Royal Photographic Society. See: https://rps.org/about/history/
September 26, 1893, p5. The Post, however, focused its praise more fulsomely on the “most artistic productions” of Italian pastoral youth by Count Wilhelm von Gloeden, who certainly had an interesting life, and career. See: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1101782/head-of-sicilian-boy-photograph-von-gloeden-wilhelm/
See last week’s post on Burrow here.
Those wanting a more detailed account of the strike are directed here: The Llechwedd Strike of 1893, by Ivor Wynne Jones, Llechwedd Slate Caverns, 1993. My summary is based on the reports contained in the following editions of the North Wales Chronicle: May 20, p8; May 27, p5; June 10, p5; June 17, p8; Juy 1, p8; July 8, p8; July 22, p7; July 29, p10; August 19, p5, 7; September 9, p5; October 21, p5.
Image from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tallmanbaby/48847787056/in/photostream/
The Greaves family has owned Llechwedd Quarry since the 1830s. See: https://llechwedd.co.uk/tales-from-the-mountains/heritage. For more on John Earnest Greaves, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ernest_Greaves
North Wales Chronicle, May 27, 1893, p5
The patriarch of the Greaves slate dynasty, John Whitehead Greaves (1807-1880), had been born in St Albans. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Whitehead_Greaves
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaenau_Ffestiniog#Welsh_language, and the North Wales Chronicle, May 27, 1893, p5.
North Wales Chronicle, August 19, 1893, p7
North Wales Chronicle, May 27, 1893, p5
North Wales Chronicle, August 19, 1893, p7
North Wales Chronicle, September 9, 1893, p5
North Wales Chronicle, June 17, 1893, p8
Liverpool Daily Post, May 7, 1894, p7
Report of the Departmental Committee Upon Merionethshire Slate Mines (hereafter The Report), Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1895, vii.
For more on Foster, see here: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography,_1912_supplement/Foster,_Clement_Le_Neve. For Peter Le Neve Foster’s involvement with The Photographic Society of Great Britain, see here: https://rps.org/about/history/
The Report, xxix.
The Report, xxi.
From: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/538954280387175557/
The Report, xxii, xxix.
The Report, xxi. For the lectures, see the South Wales Echo, April 9, 1894, p2.
The Report, xiv-xv.
Cornish Post and Mining News, February 20, 1896, p8.
See last week’s post on Burrow here.
Chris Howes, To Photograph Darkness: the History of Underground and Flash Photography, Alan Sutton, 1989, p181.
For an interesting review of this book, see: https://treasuremaps.weebly.com/reviews/victorian-slate-mining-by-ivor-wynne-jones. Jones’s obituary is here: https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/obituary—ivor-wynne-jones-2874794
See the North Wales Chronicle, December 1, 1894, p6.
Howes, To Photograph Darkness, p162-82.
Cornish Post and Mining News, February 20, 1896, p8.
Email correspondence, August 2, 2022.
See: https://cornwallartists.org/cornwall-artists/john-charles-burrow
See Burrow’s obituary in The Cornishman, November 5, 1914, p5.
For example, Kresen Kernow, ref. AD460/25.
North Wales Chronicle, October 21, 1893, p5.

The Man Who Photographed the Miners: J. C. Burrow in Cornwall and Wales

Part One

Reading time: 20 minutes

‘Mongst Photos and Photographers…

A few weeks ago, I took my son on a camping trip to North Wales. We weren’t especially fortunate with the weather, and anticipating this I had arranged what I’d hoped to be an interesting indoor activity: an underground tour at Llechwedd Slate Caverns, near Blaenau Ffestiniog.

Underground at Llechwedd. One of my better efforts.

At its peak, in the 1880s, the Llechwedd Quarry employed over 500 men, women and children, and annually transported over 23,000 tonnes of finished slate worldwide¹. I emphasise finished slate, because, according to my tour guide, around 90% of what was brought to the surface by the quarrymen was classed as waste and consigned to the massive heaps we can still see in the area today. In other words, 90% of the miners’ efforts were for nothing.

Some of the many slag heaps around Llechwedd

Before descending 500ft, or 83 fathoms, the tour guide gave our party the obligatory health and safety briefing. Whilst talking, he made reference to an old photograph, displayed amongst a selection of slate-cutting paraphernalia. A group of quarrymen (or pare in Cornwall), are hand-drilling whilst precariously balanced on a sheer face of slate. The chains around their thighs are a token gesture to safety: it’s a 50ft drop below. Standing officiously above them is the shift supervisor or foreman. It was taken in the 1890s:

Image courtesy Kresen Kernow, ref. AD460/22

As the image was so clear, clearer than the one above, I was surprised when our guide informed us that this photo had actually been taken underground. The miners were working in pitch blackness, and the foreman wore black so the workers could never know when he was watching them.

The image had been captured by means of flash photography. Now I was really interested.

To my mind, in the 1890s, there was only one man in the United Kingdom using flash photography underground, and you’d have to scour half of Europe to find another one².

This, of course, was John Charles Burrow (1852-1914). And he was a Cornishman. But didn’t he only ever photograph Cornish miners?

Our guide at Llechwedd didn’t know who had taken the photo. Being familiar with his work, however, I was convinced that only Burrow could have done it.

On returning home, I contacted Kresen Kernow, and discovered that they had images by Burrow taken in slate mines – but the location, or provenance, of these pictures wasn’t stated. On speaking with the Archivist, David Thomas, he told me there wasn’t “much knowledge” of Burrow’s work in Wales, but, as the man travelled a lot, a visit there would not be untypical³.

If Burrow had been to Llechwedd, why did he go there? Who sent him? When did he go there? How did he get there? Who went with him? What were his methods?

To begin to answer these questions, we need to trace the story of Burrow’s work in Cornwall: work which, in the words of David Thomas, made him

…one of the world pioneers of underground photography…
Email correspondence, 2nd August 2022

*Cornish Post and Mining News*, April 4, 1891, p1. Burrow advertised his services prolifically

Before he was twenty, Burrow had already found his life’s calling. Before he was thirty, in 1881, he was living in Camborne and set up as a “Photographic Artist”; his most well-known residence, and place of business, was “Camara”, on Trelowarren St⁴.

In short, Burrow had over twenty year’s experience in the medium before producing his most famous work in the 1890s. And he was not working, as it were, in the dark. Burrow was in regular contact with other photographers, and was actively engaged in the main issue vexing the professionals of the time: how do you photograph in the dark⁵?

It might be stating the blindingly obvious, but we know that Burrow was actively engaged with the current theories, debates, and conundrums because, simply, he succeeded in photographing in the dark.

He succeeded brilliantly.

To achieve this, allied to undoubted skill, tenacity, patience, and courage, Burrow used the very cutting-edge of photographic equipment for the time. It is less well-known that he had also been underground from a young age, and had personally vowed to capture mining life on its lower levels:

…my surprise at the difficulties and dangers of the miners’ work…led me to determine that whenever it became practicable I would show to the world what it meant to extract metals from the hard rocks so far below the surface.
J. C. Burrow, interviewed in the Cornish Post and Mining News, February 2, 1896, p8

The opportunity came in late 1892. He was commissioned (or challenged) by the Camborne School of Mines to take underground scenes at the Dolcoath, Cook’s Kitchen, East Pool and Blue Hills workings⁶. (Dolcoath was first, and remains the focus of this post.)

To his above resolve, Burrow carefully selected the tools of his trade. His lens of choice was new on the market, manufactured by Carl Zeiss in 1889⁷. His camera, a Kinnear light bellows on a sliding tripod, would have been the latest, 1890s, model⁸. For the flashlight, he used magnesium powder. This bright burning metal, only discovered in the 1850s, was seemingly invented for photography. A powdered – and at times volatile – variant, flashpowder, had only been patented in 1887⁹. His plates were of the new (late 1870s) ‘dry’ variety; previous to this innovation photographers had to prepare slides on the spot, and the exposure time for them could be excruciating for any sitter¹⁰.

Millbank, Lands End, 1898. Note the array of equipment. Back, l to r: William Thomas, co-author of *‘Mongst Mines and Miners*, Herbert Hughes, underground photographer of Staffordshire collieries, and J. C. Burrow. The gentlemen in front remain unidentified. Image courtesy Kresen Kernow, ref. corn03899

To this formidable armoury, Burrow contrived what may have been a personal touch. He decided to take several limelight burners to Dolcoath with him, in order to more comprehensively illuminate his tableaux. Limelights, popular at the time in theatres, required an operator and canisters of oxygen and hydrogen to burn a light-emitting block of quicklime¹¹. Burrow may have heard of the application of limelight to photography via the professionals’ grapevine¹². Or, possibly, he was personally well-versed in the properties of limelight: in November 1892 he used limelight displays for an evening’s entertainment of the Barncoose Board Schoolroom¹³.

Deep down…

Such was the novelty and interest surrounding Burrow’s commission to photograph underground at Dolcoath, his adventure was serialised over three weeks in The Cornishman¹⁴. The reporter is probably William Thomas, a lecturer at Camborne School of Mines. These articles carry something of the flavour of the Victorian reportage of a newly-discovered land, society, and people; clearly the vast majority of The Cornishman‘s readers had little in-depth knowledge of Cornwall’s primary industry.

Both parties – Burrow’s, and the Dolcoath workforce – show equal amounts of fascination for each other. The sight of Burrow’s equipment, camera, flashlight, tripod, limelight and pressurised cylinders of oxygen and hydrogen excites no little curiosity¹⁵. Likewise, the mining natives’ rhythms of speech and dialect are dutifully recorded: one miner had just

…clunked some tay to keep un from chacken weth thust after chowen es crowst…
Qtd. in The Cornishman, January 5, 1893, p7

Before proceeding, Burrow’s party, comprising a guide, Thomas, and two or three School of Mines students (there to learn their trade, and carry equipment), have to ‘go native’ and don miners’ outfits and hard hats. There was to be no posing in Sunday best here¹⁶. This was a necessity: like many a trip to a strange land, danger might lurk around any corner…

Dolcoath Mine, looking over the Tuckingmill Valley, 1893. Image courtesy Kresen Kernow, ref. corn00352. Below is the same view today

When Burrow and his companions visited, Dolcoath was the deepest, and richest, tin mine in the world. With around 1,300 employees and an engine-shaft over 455 fathoms (or half a mile) deep, this was a subterranean land of mystery and riches. For example, at 412 fathom the tin-lode was valued at £600/fathom¹⁷. That’s over £53,000 today.

The risk in Burrow’s venture is evident before they have even descended: there was a delay due to blasting, and the area of the mine they are to visit, at 300 fathoms, has to be made safe. Even then, the method of descent is anything but secure. Burrow, his equipment, and party travelled down in a skip or gig, an “oblong iron box on wheels” with an open front, that normally carried up to four men¹⁸. Their journey sounds like the scariest rollercoaster ride in history:

Imagine yourself swung over a cliff half a mile high, and being lowered in an iron cage, to the bottom by a rope.
The Cornishman, January 12, 1893, p6

This being done in pitch blackness, down an open rock shaft, with full knowledge that skip ropes have failed, and men had recently plummeted to their deaths¹⁹. As Thomas observed, with fine understatement,

One could be excused feeling timorous…
The Cornishman, January 12, 1893, p6

This journey must have left a similar impression on Burrow, for he decided to photograph the skip, containing Joe Semmens, Dolcoath’s timberman, and a young companion. Here it is:

Joe Semmens and companion, the skip, 300 fathom, Dolcoath, late 1892. Image courtesy Kresen Kernow, ref. AD460/1/13

With yet more understatement, Thomas noted that Burrow merely “secured” this photo²⁰. But we must remember that this image, to my knowledge the first ever taken underground at Dolcoath, may have been one of several attempts by Burrow to ‘secure’ it²¹. He had to, by candlelight, set up his camera, have his assistants position and operate the limelight burners, and pose the sitters for a blinding, smoking, magnesium flash exposure of two to four seconds, all the while contending with heat, water, and vapour threatening to spoil his efforts²². And this was a relatively straightforward shot. I always wonder how he photographed Dolcoath’s Man Engine:

Man Engine, Dolcoath, 1890s. Image courtesy Kresen Kernow, ref. AD460/11

For this, Burrow used yet more limelights, and a triple flashlight; he also had to get the miners to extinguish their candles before taking the shot, and stand, eyes open in the blackness, waiting for the flare. Candlelight caused an eerie glow, or halo, on the plate negatives, and could ruin a take. Burrow, with his eye for authenticity, later scratched a ‘candle’ on to his negatives²³:

Detail of the above, with Burrow’s false ‘candlelight’ on his subjects’ hard hats

How he positioned himself, his assistants, and his camera, to get the shot, is unknown. One can only imagine the difficulties, and marvel at the result.

Burrow also had the nature of his sitters to contend with. Besides never whistling, one of a miner’s many underground superstitions concerns light. It is considered unlucky to leave a light burning when you leave an area of the mine, with fire and explosions being a constant fear. Also, too much light in a level will discourage work by illuminating hazards normally concealed in darkness²⁴. This gives us some impression of the twilight world Burrow revealed: the men who reside there actually fear light, and prefer the shadows.

Burrow’s subjects were “astonished” to hear that the light generated by his burners was the equivalent to 400 of their candles, but their guide remarked that “it would not do” to have such “strong” light underground²⁵.

And so the expedition continued on its precipitous route, dropping equipment into pools, banging heads, avoiding yet more blasting, and marvelling at the miners’ labour²⁶. Another trip down in a skip, followed by passing the equipment to each other down a rickety ladder (all by candlelight), and the party came to 412 Fathom, the deepest, hottest, and richest area of the mine. Here Burrow photographed the impressive oak stulls, supporting a mass of attle, or waste rock, above the level. No photograph had ever been taken at this depth before, anywhere:

412 Fathom, Dolcoath, late 1892. Image courtesy Kresen Kernow, ref. AD460/8

It was noted that this image would appear in Burrow’s forthcoming book, ‘Mongst Mines and Miners²⁷. Tragically, it would also be reproduced for very different reasons.

Abide With Me: the Disaster of 1893

*Royal Cornwall Gazette*, September 21, 1893, p5

One Wednesday, September 20, 1893, a pare of eight men descended to 412 Fathom, Dolcoath. They had been instructed to repair and strengthen the stull, a new piece of lumber having been sent down ahead for the purpose²⁸. The stull was judged to be stable enough, but only “suspiciously” so²⁹. It had been thought best to carry out the repairs prior to their need being serious and the stull itself truly dangerous. Indeed, one miner had been on that level only a day before, and remarked it as being so safe that

…I should not be afraid to sleep there 12 hours.
Qtd. in The Cornishman, September 28, 1893, p6

He was lucky. At around 1pm, for reasons never conclusively ascertained, the stull gave way. 110 cubic fathoms of waste rock crashed onto the eight men. That’s a displacement of 678 tons. The force of the blast was so great it knocked over and badly injured other miners working in the vicinity. An empty tram was knocked off its wheels, coming to rest on top of an unfortunate tinner.

Two hours later, the alarm was raised at grass, and rescue parties began work immediately. There was 14 fathoms, or 28 yards, of unstable debris blocking the level from both ends. The men doing the digging knew their efforts would be all but futile. One miner remarked that

…I would not give a pipe of ‘bacca for any of them.
Qtd. in The Cornishman, September 28, 1893, p6

And the operation was truly grim. By Friday night, the smell of decay underground was so bad that disinfectant was sent for. As the rubble was worked through, severed limbs were discovered. A day after the accident, one trapped man, William Osborne, was heard, but could not be reached in time. The hymn he was singing, ‘Abide With Me’, turned to groans, and then silence. It was later sung at his funeral.

Relatives of the eight haunted the shaft; in one instance it took four miners to subdue an hysterical mother. Prayers were regularly offered in the many Methodist Chapels of the district. At night, it was said that dogs made “hideous noises” in the streets of Camborne³⁰.

Seven men were killed: William Osborne, John Pollard, Charles White, John Jennings, Frederick Harvey, James Adams, and Richard James. Most left families, and all were God-fearing men. It took until Thursday October 12 to recover all the bodies.

One survived, with little more than a few scratches. Richard Davis (or Davies), 20, was rescued after forty hours underground, and staggered into his house in Troon, like a ghoul, early on the Friday morning. Here he is:

From the *Cornish Post and Mining News*, October 6, 1893, p7

Davies in later life, pictured with the Holman Works Choir of 1924. See: https://cornishstory.com/2021/02/10/holman-echoes-of-an-age/

This was the worst disaster in the history of Dolcoath Mine, and directly led to

…the formation of a County fund to provide adequate assistance for the bereaved in the cases of fatal accidents in Cornish mines.
Cornish Post and Mining News, October 6, 1893, p7

The official inquest returned a verdict of accidental death. Burrow’s photo of 412 Fathom, taken nearly a year previously, was used at the hearing by H.M. Inspector of Mines, Joseph Martin. (Martin had been keeping the then Home Secretary, Herbert Asquith, abreast of events.) It was compared to sketches made of the accident, and exonerated Dolcoath’s Captain, Josiah Thomas, of any charges of negligence toward his men. All the inquest proved was how

…elaborate are the precautions which are taken at Dolcoath to ensure the safety of the miners…
Cornish Telegraph, October 12, 1893, p4

Burrow’s stamp, on the reverse of a postcard of one of his photos, Kresen Kernow. Many of Burrow’s images only now survive as postcards, and he must have made a brisk trade from them

Burrow’s photo also proved morbidly popular with the public too, and copies, as postcards, were “eagerly snapped up” as memento mori from his Trelowarren Street shop³¹. In fact, such was the demand for Burrow’s image, the Cornish Post and Mining News published it twice³², with the following caption:

What Burrow made of all this is unknown. It’s very possible he was already making preparations for his next commission.

In North Wales.

Part two can be viewed HERE.

Many thanks!

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llechwedd_quarry
In fact, as Burrow is at pains to point out in his ‘Mongst Mines and Miners (1893, p11), two other men, Herbert W. Hughes and Arthur Sopwith, were producing underground mining photography at this time, in the Staffordshire collieries. W. E. Debenham had taken subterranean images of Botallack Mine in the 1860s. See Chris Howes, To Photograph Darkness: The History of Underground and Flash Photography, Alan Sutton, 1989, pp162-82.
Email correspondence, 2nd August 2022.
1871, 1881, and 1911 census, Ancestry. Burrow currently lacks a biographer. There are brief summaries of his life and work to be found here: the Minerals Engineering blog, Kresen Kernow, and Cornwall Artists. This post in no way attempts a full appreciation of his life.
Howes, To Photograph Darkness, pp170-82.
J. C. Burrow and William Thomas, ‘Mongst Mines and Miners; or, Underground Scenes by Flash-light, London, 1893, v. Burrow lists the tools of his trade on pages 7-11. Burrow’s commission is mentioned in The Cornishman: December 29, 1892, p6.
Helmut Gernsheim, A Concise History of Photography, third ed., Dover, 1986, p19.
See: http://www.antiquewoodcameras.com/ottewill.html
Howes, To Photograph Darkness, pp18-47, 100-5.
As Burrow makes clear in his interview with the Cornish Post and Mining News, February 2, 1896, p8. For more on this process, see Howes, To Photograph Darkness, p79-82.
See: https://min-eng.blogspot.com/2015/05/an-appreciation-of-jc-burrow-pioneering.html
Howes, To Photograph Darkness, p83-5.
Cornish Post and Mining News, November 11, 1892, p5. Burrow’s dexterity with limelight was evidently much in demand; in 1899 he provided the effects “beautifully” for an opera in Redruth (Cornubian and Redruth Times, January 20, 1899, p5).
December 29, 1892, p6, January 5, 1893, p7, and January 12, 1893, p6.
Cornishman, December 29, 1892, p6.
Cornishman, December 29, 1892, p6.
Cornishman, December 29, 1892, p6.
Cornishman, January 12, 1893, p6.
Cornishman, January 12, 1893, p6.
Cornishman, January 12, 1893, p6.
Burrow admitted in 1896 that around nine out of every ten images taken underground were useless failures. Cornish Post and Mining News, February 2, 1896, p8.
See Howes, To Photograph Darkness, p176-7.
‘Mongst Mines and Miners, p10-11. Of course, as Thomas makes clear in The Cornishman, as hair-raising as travelling on a gig or man engine can be, such devices greatly eased the miners’ labours. They were far more inviting a proposition than the endless scaling of ladders, and left the men less susceptible to serious, and deadly, chest infections, when encountering cold moist air on coming to grass. January 5, 1893, p6. On candle ‘halo’, see Howes, To Photograph Darkness, p175.
Cornishman, January 12, 1893, p6.
Cornishman, January 12, 1893, p6.
Cornishman, January 12, 1893, p6.
Cornishman, January 12, 1893, p6.
The main narrative of this section is taken from the following articles: Royal Cornwall Gazette, September 21, 1893, p5, and October 19, p2; The Cornishman, September 28, 1893, p6, and October 5, p3; Cornish Post and Mining News, 29 September, 1893, p8, and October 6, p7; Cornwall and Devon Post, September 30, 1893, p8; and the Cornish Telegraph, October 12, 1893, p4-5.
Royal Cornwall Gazette, September 21, 1893, p5.
The Cornishman, September 28, 1893, p6.
The Cornishman, September 28, 1893, p6.
Cornish Post and Mining News, 29 September, 1893, p8, and October 6, p7.

Works in Progress, May 2022

Derry, 1913. Nationalists preparing to burn an effigy of Sir Edward Carson. Courtesy of Chris McKnight, Facebook

Dear All…

I realise it’s been some time since my last post on Paul Rabey the Younger, and no new articles as yet! I can only apologise; the demands of a full-time job and a family means I always research and write my work whenever I have a spare moment. But never fear, new and interesting items for you to read will be appearing soon…

A Cornish Wife Sale

In fact, you can now read one of my articles in its entirety in the 2022 Journal of the Cornwall Association of Local Historians. Copies are available from Kresen Kernow and the Courtney Library, Truro Museum, or can be ordered from crown.house@polperropress.co.uk. The grim and harrowing tale of the events and lives surrounding a wife sale that happened at Redruth Market in 1819 are given a sensitive case-study!

It’s my first appearance in print, and I’m rather proud of myself!

Effigy Burning

A new article has also been submitted to Cornish Story Online. This examines the phenomenon of effigy burning in 1800s Cornwall. People who enjoyed extra-marital sex, or were abusive toward their spouses, or happened to be unpopular authority figures and employers, could all expect to have their effigy paraded through the streets of their town by an angry mob playing cacophonous music. The effigy would then normally be fired over a barrel of tar.

Effigy burning was a frequent feature of Cornish life in the 1800s, and firings occurred from Treen, in the far west, all the way up to Callington and Launceston. The authorities were often powerless to stop these demonstrations. My article examines the motivations behind effigy burnings, and addresses the reasons why burnings increased in frequency as the century wore on. I also provide plenty of juicy examples!

When this post goes live, I will share it with you all!

Rugby Special

My current, and rather demanding, project is a departure from my normal areas. Camborne RFC‘s 1977-78 Centenary Season was a particularly successful and memorable one: the “Chiefs”, or 1st XV, won the double of the Cornwall Merit Table and the Cornwall Knockout Cup. They played over fifty matches, and took on the might of such teams as Saracens, Cardiff, Gloucester, and Pontypridd. The season paved the way for a golden period of rugby success, and the team remains highly rated to this day.

I am tracking down the former players, clubmen, barmen, fans, ballboys and opposition to tell, in their own words, the story of the 1977-78 season.

This is still in the research stage and is, trust me, my most ambitious project to date! But I have a feeling it’s going to be a very popular and satisfying one.

So, I hope this is plenty for you all to look forward to!

Thanks, as always, for reading and enjoying. Watch this space…

Francis

Paul Rabey and The Foreign Girls’ Protection Society: They Died With Their Shoes On, Part Five

Reading time: 20-25 minutes

(If you missed part four, you can find it here…)

Harriet Refuses to Listen to the Procuress, G. Stiff, 1846¹

A Commission on the Sale of Flesh and Blood²

In June 1868, a solitary teenage girl sailing from Antwerp to London was found onboard with a letter directing her to Number 22, Somerset Street, Portman Square, London. The address in question was that of a well-known, ‘quality’ brothel, filled with a large number of young “foreign ladies”. This particular joyhouse was run by a Madame Durant, who enjoyed a profitable arrangement with procurers of young prostitutes across the Channel. Madame Durant took great offence when the hapless Belgian teenager was intercepted by the authorities, and conveyed to Mansion House, which at the time was the seat of the Mayor of London, before being sent back to Antwerp. Madame Durant went to Mansion House in person, threatening legal proceedings, and demanded the release of the girl, whom she took to be her property. Durant’s concerns were, of course, purely fiscal. The non-delivery of her Belgian girl meant she “would sustain a very serious loss”.

Shamefully, this expose into the Victorian traffic in human flesh did not result in multiple arrests, the foreign girls being released from their enslavement, or the closing of the brothel. Ironically, proceedings against the Somerset Street vice-ring was refused on the grounds of cost: £100 was a price the Marylebone Borough could ill-afford to initiate the action. Instead, a letter was written to 22 Somerset Street, requesting that they “abate the nuisance”. I’m sure the missive was very successful.

The import and export of girls for the purposes of prostitution is one of the more unsavoury aspects of Victorian society, and was unfortunately more rife than was once thought. For example, Mary Kelly, believed to be the final victim of Jack the Ripper, is thought to have spent some part of the 1880s in France, as a prostitute, held against her will³.

The ambivalence of the authorities to this practice was sometimes reflected in the media, which expressed outrage that such dens of iniquity might “ruin a fashionable street”⁴, implying, of course, that running brothels and kidnapping girls for the purposes of vice was acceptable in less well-to-do districts. However, many of the public also felt that “unprotected” girls faced “social degradation” from traffickers utterly lacking in “virtue and morality”⁵.

Some members of the public actively campaigned to heighten social awareness of, and stamp out the practice of, the activities outlined above.

The Foreign Girls’ Protection Society

The Victorian age was the great era of philanthropic societies, each with their own particular agenda. By 1869 there were over 200 such organisations in London alone, it being a middle-class trend to be seen to be helping the less-fortunate. There were countless temperance societies, a Labourers’ Friend Society, and the brilliantly named Metropolitan Drinking Fountain Association⁷. Every group sought to improve an aspect of society its members believed to be in some way inadequate, unhealthy, or immoral.

The Foreign Girls’ Protection Society was just such a body. Claiming to have been in existence for over a decade, it was charitably run out of a house in Brompton as a haven for any unfortunate continental young lady rescued from a life of sexual exploitation. The events centred around Somerset Street’s house of ill-fame prompted the Society’s secretary, Henry Bedwell, to publish the following plea:

*London Evening Standard*, June 29, 1868, p1

Bedwell served a committee comprising the following gentlemen: Major Thomas Ross, of Kilravock House, Norwood; William Hicks, Solicitor, of 18a Orchard Street, Portman Square; Henry Weston, of the same address; J. L. O’Doherty, an ecclesiastical agent living on the notorious Somerset Street; John Woolams, of Cavendish Square; a Mr Mills, of New Broad Street; John Davies and Henry Wills, a mining secretary, both of New Broad Street; and Mr Barber, of Baker Street, Portman Square. The girls themselves were cared for by a “Superioress”, Eliza Evans⁸.

If this series of posts has taught us one thing, it might be this: never take a Victorian gentleman’s good intentions at face-value. The Foreign Girls’ Protection Society was a fraudulent sham.

There is no reference to it before June 1868; the claims to its being in existence for ten years is totally spurious. The society’s name and supposed worthy intent was used to extort various goods and services from several London businesses and tradespeople. Bedwell, ostensibly the secretary, had in fact “carried on a system of swindling”⁹ for over two years previously. Now, under the guise of an active member of an honourable society, he procured for himself a horse and brougham, and a set of brushes for the girls – there were never any girls, and Bedwell simply pawned the brushes. He also tried to procure goods from the Blind Institution of Oxford Street, again to be pawned for ready cash¹⁰.

Thankfully, Bedwell was caught before he could milk his con any further. In court, it was proven that both Hicks and Weston had never lived at the Orchard Street address. Eliza Evans, the erstwhile ‘Superioress’, was in fact merely Bedwell’s servant. Nearly all the gentlemen on the Society’s ‘committee’ “emphatically” denied having any connection whatsoever with Bedwell, or to his Society, in “any way”¹¹.

Indeed, Messrs Woolams, Mills, and Davies all came forward at Bedwell’s trial to denounce him and his use of their good names. Major Ross put a notice in The Times to the same effect¹². Henry Weston might have done the same, but he was already dead at the time of Bedwell’s trial, and Bedwell took this opportunity to implicate Weston in his scam¹³.

Bedwell was sentenced to five years¹⁴.

The Fall Guy?

Although the mining secretary Henry Wills stated that he knew Henry Weston¹⁵, it was never made clear at Bedwell’s trial that the other gentlemen knew each other, as much as they all claimed to have never known Henry Bedwell. Was Bedwell acting on his own, and merely drew up a list of respectable names to lend his scheme some front? Or were all the members of The Foreign Girls’ Protection Society on the take, and callously let Bedwell take the fall, which was easy enough, given his reputation as a rogue? The authorities believed the former version of events, but, perhaps, given the close proximity of their addresses, these men were in some way connected.

In fact, there is a link between some of the reluctant members of The Foreign Girls’ Protection Society: Major Thomas Ross, William Hicks, Henry Weston and John Davies. They all knew each other before the advent of The Foreign Girls’ Protection Society, at least by April 1868.

We can prove this because they all knew, or were aware of the activities of, another man.

And that man, was Paul Rabey, the Younger.

The Kilravock House Con

Kilravock House, Ross Road, SE25. Nowadays divided into flats, it’s thought to be the inspiration for Pondicherry Lodge in Arthur Conan-Doyle’s *The Sign of Four*¹⁶

Major Thomas Ross, of Kilravock House, Norwood, had, states his biographer, been

…in business since he was a young man, and had dealt successfully in the ownership and management of property.
Eric Kings, Major Thomas Ross of Kilravock House: His Life and Times, 2006, p57

Now in his seventies, and it being known in London’s polite society that he was keen to invest in mining stock, Ross allowed himself to be taken in by Rabey, who was by now residing at Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury¹⁷.

Tavistock Square. Later the address of Virginia Woolf¹⁸

Ross, believing the Cornishman “to be a gentleman”¹⁹, befriended Mr and Mrs Rabey²⁰, often having them call at his home. On one of these visits, Rabey told Ross that he was the owner, or very shortly to become the owner, of the Wheal Emily Silver Mine, near Callington²¹. All he needed to secure the lease was a loan of £100, which Ross, somewhat obligingly, handed over. Rabey also convinced Ross to buy a number of shares in Wheal Emily; the mine was, Rabey said,

…such a good thing.
Royal Cornwall Gazette, May 13, 1868, p6

On the morning of April 1st, 1868, Rabey visited Ross, tapped the breast-pocket of his coat and told Ross that

…my mind is easy now, as I have got the lease here all right.
Royal Cornwall Gazette, May 14, 1868, p6

Rabey, banking on Ross and a female friend who was present, Ann Lloyd, to implicitly trust a gentleman, then brazenly offered to show them his lease for Wheal Emily. They declined. His word was enough.

Rabey, of course, never owned Wheal Emily, and there was no lease in his pocket. But this didn’t stop him from selling Ross 150 shares in the mine for £337, and then a further 2,000 shares at £1 each. Rabey also prised £75 worth of shares out of Ann Lloyd²². Today, that’s a total of over £290,000.

Ross might have been old, but he still had teeth, and made inquiries about Wheal Emily in the City. It must have caused him some consternation to discover that the mine was owned by a Mr Langford, who had in fact granted no lease to Rabey, or anybody else.

Ross’s digging told him that, originally, John Davies had filed a suit in Chancery to obtain the lease of Wheal Emily from Langford. Henry Weston had filed the suit for Davies, and received 40 shares at £1 each in the mine as payment. Weston had then sold these shares on, but had to take them back and return the money once it was discovered that, whoever had originally given him the shares had no authority to do so. Weston complied, and was left out of pocket²³.

Ross, Davies, Weston: three members of The Foreign Girls’ Protection Society.

Was Rabey’s bill, or suit, for Wheal Emily, the same one Davies had filed via Weston? Had Rabey somehow got Davies to file the suit on his behalf? Was Rabey not only playing Ross, but Davies and Weston also? The fact that Weston was paid for his efforts with worthless shares rather suggests it.

Maybe, maybe not. But Thomas Ross still had enough business sense to realise he was being ripped off.

Trouble Brewing

Shortly after Rabey’s visit to Ross and Ann Lloyd, the following notice could be read in the ‘papers:

*London Evening Standard*, April 8, 1868, p1

The Thomas Evans mentioned here was Rabey’s brother-in-law, who authorised the sale of the shares on Rabey’s behalf – needless to say, he lacked the authority to do so²⁴. In the same way that, as in Bristol, J. K. Thomas was Rabey’s front man, so Evans was here²⁵.

However, the solicitor whose name appended this notice was William Hicks, of Orchard Street, Portman Square. The same William Hicks implicated, along with Ross, Davies, and Weston, in The Foreign Girls’ Protection Society scandal. The same William Hicks whose clerk was, in fact, Henry Weston²⁶. The same William Hicks who, when the story about The Foreign Girls’ Protection Society broke, was not present at Orchard Street, Portman Square. Nor, for that matter, was Weston²⁷. The notice regarding Rabey, however, proves that Orchard Street was Hicks’ normal place of business.

Perhaps, in this instance, Rabey was attempting to punch above his weight. In the same way that the association with The Foreign Girls’ Protection Society was not to stick to Ross, Hicks, Weston or Davies, these men also washed their hands of Paul Rabey the Younger. It seemed that way to the media:

They Died With Their Shoes On

As Paul Rabey and, a few weeks later, Henry Bedwell discovered, it didn’t pay to cross Messrs. Ross, Hicks, Weston and Davies.

Events happened fast. There was to be no delaying of the trial by claiming illness, counter-charges, or last-minute back-handers to the plaintiffs²⁸. On May 6, 1868, at the Surrey Sessions, Paul Rabey the Younger was sentenced to five years for defrauding Thomas Ross. His previous conviction at York in 1861 counted against him, as did his “questionable” dealings in Bristol²⁹.

He was held at the Woking Male Invalid Convict Prison, and appears there on the 1871 census.

A previous inmate had been William Strahan, another white-collar criminal who had embezzled his clients’ funds in the 1850s³¹. Even behind bars, Rabey shamelessly hounded Ross’s estate, with he and his wife issuing suits to recover the money he claimed he was still owed for the spurious Wheal Emily shares³².

Rabey had also vowed revenge.

On his conviction, he is supposed to have bitterly cried out,

They will die in their shoes!
qtd in Cornubian and Redruth Times, October 16, 1868, p4

It was an unfortunate characteristic of Rabey that, when he vowed to take a man down, he pursued his quarry with a certain ruthlessness. Witness the experiences of William Harvey and William Brunt³³.

This facet of Rabey’s personality was recognised by a malicious letter-writer to a Cornish newspaper:

It is a remarkable fact that the chief instigator of the proceedings against Mr Rabey was three months afterwards found dead in Plymouth under awful circumstances, and another person concerned died suddenly at his dinner table a few days ago.
“One who was present at the trial”, Cornubian and Redruth Times, October 16, 1868, p2

Henry Weston, at the time of The Foreign Girls’ Protection Society scandal, was

…found dead in a water-closet at Plymouth.
London Morning Herald, August 10, 1868, p2³⁴

Major Thomas Ross was also dead by September 1868³⁵. His biographer doesn’t state whether he died whilst eating dinner. Indeed, whilst a whole chapter is dedicated to Ross’s involvement with Rabey, the matter of The Foreign Girls’ Protection Society is accorded a brief paragraph³⁶. We can now see that Ross had rather more involvement with other ‘members’ of the Society than he was perhaps given credit for.

It’s also unknown whether either Ross or Weston died with their shoes on, and whether Rabey’s alleged outburst as he was sent down turned out to be a horrible coincidence, or something much darker.

Others believed Rabey to have been “ruined” by The Foreign Girls’ Protection Society. In the same way that Henry Bedwell had been forsaken by the other members of the Society, so it was argued that “poor” Rabey had been made a “pack horse” to “hide their dishonest acts”³⁷. Which, when you consider his career, is rather ironic.

No one listened to these claims that Rabey had been the “victim of foul play”³⁸. He was the victim of his own greed. No proof of foul play has ever been uncovered in the deaths of Weston and Ross, and the reputations of Ross, Weston, Hicks and Davies survived 1868 unblemished.

Paul Rabey the Younger was to die in Woking Prison in June, 1872. He was 54³⁹. Again, it’s also unknown if he actually died with his shoes on.

Many thanks for reading

References

Source: The Project Gutenberg version of G. W. M. Reynolds’s The Mysteries of London. See: https://victorianweb.org/victorian/art/illustration/stiff/39.html
For this introductory section, see The Era, June 28, 1868, p14.
See Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: the Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, Black Swan, 2019, p306-16.
The Era, June 28, 1868, p14.
The Era, June 28, 1868, p14.
See: https://www.scotsman.com/whats-on/arts-and-entertainment/history-scotlands-dry-temperance-towns-1483804
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philanthropy#Great_Britain
London Morning Herald, August 10, 1868, p2.
London Evening Standard, August 31, 1868, p7.
London Morning Herald, August 10, 1868, p2.
London Morning Herald, August 10, 1868, p2.
London Morning Herald, August 10, 1868, p2, and Eric Kings, Major Thomas Ross of Kilravock House: His Life and Times, Local History Publications, 2006, p61.
London Morning Herald, August 10, 1868, p2.
London Evening Standard, August 31, 1868, p7.
London Morning Herald, August 10, 1868, p2.
See: https://www.londonfictions.com/arthur-conan-doyle-the-sign-of-four.html
Kings, Thomas Ross, p58.
See: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/223983781446635985/
Royal Cornwall Gazette (hereafter RCG), May 13, 1868, p7.
Rabey married Jane Evans in Manchester, 1850. Liverpool Mercury, August 2, 1850, p7.
See: https://www.mindat.org/loc-885.html
Kings, Thomas Ross, p59.
RCG, May 14, 1868, p6.
RCG, May 14, 1868, p6.
See Paul Rabey and the Bristol Con, here.
RCG, May 14, 1868, p6.
London Morning Herald, August 10, 1868, p2.
See my previous posts on Rabey. He managed to delay a trial for the recovery of a debt at least twice, had the man he owed money to imprisoned on false charges, and later escaped gaol by buying off the plaintiff at the last minute.
Taunton Courier, May 13, 1868, p7.
See: https://institutionalhistory.com/homepage/prisons/major-prisons/woking-prison/
See: https://institutionalhistory.com/homepage/prisons/major-prisons/woking-prison/woking-invalid-convict-prison-inmate-list/william-strahan/
Kings, Thomas Ross, p57-61.
See Paul Rabey and the False Imprisonment here, and Paul Rabey and the Bristol Con here.
Weston’s death was formally registered in September 1868: England & Wales Civil Registration Death Index, 1837-1915, vol 5b, p185. To date, further detail on the circumstances of Weston’s passing have proved frustratingly elusive.
England & Wales Civil Registration Death Index, 1837-1915, vol 2a, p148.
Kings, Thomas Ross, p61.
Cornubian and Redruth Times, October 30, 1868, p4.
Cornubian and Redruth Times, October 30, 1868, p4.
England & Wales Civil Registration Death Index, 1837-1915, vol2a, p29.

Paul Rabey and the Bristol Con: They Died With Their Shoes On, Part Four

Reading time: 20-25 minutes

(If you missed Part Three, you can find it here…)

‘G for Gentleman’, engraving by William Nicholson (1872-1949), 1898

Bankrupt

Paul Rabey the Younger was now bankrupt. Again. Under the bankruptcy regulations, Rabey couldn’t manage a company, start a company without court consent (which was unlikely), or indeed manage a company under a different, or assumed, name.

But none of this stopped Rabey. The way he probably saw it, he needed the following to be able to operate:

Expendable, or start-up, income;
Something to sell for a profit;
Someone to sell it for him, a front man;
Someone with the same name, and, preferably, equally dubious morals;
People gullible enough to buy what he had to sell;
A new area in which to operate, hopefully beyond the reach of William Harvey¹.

Ready cash, and another Paul Rabey?

Redruth Town Council Offices, Penryn Sreet. Formerly Barclays Bank and, in Rabey’s day, Messrs. Williams & Co. Bank²

Rabey the Younger found the answers to the above rather close to home. As we observed in our previous post, Rabey’s father, Paul Rabey the Elder, was retired after a notable, and highly profitable, career in mining. He held an account at Messrs. Williams & Co. Bank in Redruth, and in early 1865 gave his son, Paul Rabey the Younger, permission to draw on this account³. In return, the ever-wily son gave his father what was later described as a “counter-undertaking”⁴, meaning in this instance that

…the business in the mines was the father’s only and not the son’s.
Bristol Mercury, March 31 1866, p3

Rabey the Younger now had working money. He could also conduct business once more and justifiably claim it was all the work of Paul Rabey – the Elder.

A location, and a front man?

Queen’s Hotel, Queen’s Road, Clifton, Bristol⁵

By the spring of 1865 Rabey had chosen a new location for his activities. Why he selected Bristol is unknown, but presumably he needed a large, wealthy city in which to conduct business. Bristol in the 1860s was certainly large and wealthy, thanks to its relatively new rail links to London and a port capable of building the biggest steamships in the world. With its massively expanding population and increased opportunities, money must have been flowing in and out of the city⁶.

It was also a city Rabey had no previous connections with. As we saw in my first post, he operated in many areas over the years⁷. And I also mean ‘previous’ in a criminal sense: for example, back in 1861 Rabey was sentenced to twelve months in prison, at York. His crime? Fraud⁸.

Whatever the reasons, Bristol it was to be. Rabey arrived in the city in May 1865, his father’s gelt enabling him to employ a liveried servant, travel about the town in a coach and pair, and, after a brief stay at the Queen’s Hotel, reside in the fashionable areas of Clifton, such as Brighton Park and Rodney Cottages. Paul Rabey the Younger looked the part. Now he needed someone to do his business for him⁹.

Georgian townhouses, Melrose Place, Bristol

And that someone was John Kempson Thomas (1819-1877), a stockbroker of Melrose Place, Clifton⁹. A businessman with over ten years’ experience, he was also perhaps not unfamiliar with irregular trading practices¹⁰. It’s unclear whether he knew Rabey was a bankrupt who couldn’t legally conduct business, or whether he was indeed ‘in’ on the whole scheme. Thomas was later to state in court that he only became “aware of the fact that Paul Rabey’s father was living” after he began acting on behalf of Rabey the Younger¹². If that’s true, he can’t have therefore known the son’s money was in fact his father’s. Thomas also stated to the authorities that he only conducted business at the “order” of Rabey the Younger¹³. It was all him, Your Honour…Maybe Thomas was a true front man, who asked no uncomfortable questions of his clients, or he was in denial of all knowledge of any sharp practice between himself and Rabey.

Perhaps tellingly, Thomas was later accused himself of selling worthless mining shares to a Bristol businessman. These shares had come into his possession by way of…Paul Rabey, the Younger. Thomas talked his way out of trouble, and was acquitted¹⁴.

Something to sell?

Liskey Hill. Now, South Wheal Leisure is around here somewhere..?

If you can find any surviving relics of South Wheal Leisure Mine, on Penwartha Coombe, Perranzabuloe, you’re doing very well. The site of the original Wheal Leisure Mine is now a carpark near Perranporth RFC, but South Wheal Leisure has vanished without trace.

Wheal Leisure, c1910. Courtesy of Clive Benney, Memories of Perranporth, Facebook

By 1865, South Wheal Leisure was heavily in debt; indeed, it was

…doing nothing, and not a single ounce of ore had been raised for a considerable period…
Western Daily Press, April 6, 1866, p3

This worthless mine, however, is what Paul Rabey the Younger was to attempt to sell shares in, on the Bristol stockmarket. His cousin, John Rabey, lived in the count-house and cottages above the mine, and moreover owned the land: he could warn any unwelcome visitors off his property. And, if shareholders were to visit, the Rabeys hit on the following ruse:

…certain men were set to work with barrows, and a few hundreds of coal were burnt to set the engine at work; but when the shareholders’ backs were turned, the engine was stopped and the men discharged.
Western Daily Press, April 6, 1866, p3

As one ex-employee put it, the mine “would go quiet till some person came again”¹⁶. If, on the odd occasion, a gentleman with an interest in South Wheal Leisure happened to visit and found the mine idle, they were told that, on the day in question, there was a general holiday in the mining districts¹⁷. Of course, this was a brazen lie.

If South Wheal Leisure’s status as a profitable, functioning mine is obviously questionable, the other concern which Rabey peddled in Bristol, Bolingey Hill Consols, simply did not exist.

There are no ruins, relics, photographs, nor a location on mindat.org. It was described as little more than a

…piece of land with a hole in it, and a windlass and bucket…worse than valueless.
Hereford Journal, March 31 1866, p7

Valueless or not, these mirages are what Rabey was selling. Soon, advertisements like the one below appeared in Bristol broadsheets:

*Bristol Times and Mirror*, February 22, 1866, p1

What Rabey the Younger was selling, of course, was the timeless lure of a get-rich-quick scheme. Invest, and ultimately reap the profits. The only person to genuinely get rich quickly, though, was Rabey himself. And to do this, small, anonymous advertisements weren’t nearly enough. Rabey also needed personal charm and considerable powers of persuasion – and he must have had these qualities in spades.

This charisma was put to work on potential investors in his mines. And these men required but two criteria for Rabey: that they be wealthy, and that they know little or nothing about mining.

The Victims

William H. Brunt, a music-seller on St Augustine’s, regularly received visits from Rabey. Brunt was no stranger to investing in Cornish mines, previously buying shares in Wheals Laxton and Martha. Unfortunately, he wasn’t especially successful in these earlier speculations, yet he allowed himself to be taken in by Rabey, who ordered an harmonium from him, claiming it was for a chapel in Cornwall. (Rabey was never afraid to splash his cash if it would provide dividends.)

When Rabey called on Brunt he was of course conveyed by carriage, and these visits often involved Rabey boasting of his wealth, displaying his healthy billfold, prosing on about his latest expensive trinket, and assuring Brunt all the while that he “was no man of straw”. Rabey told Brunt that he

…should be worth £20,000 or £30,000 at the end of the year.
Western Daily Press, April 6, 1866, p3

£20,000 in 1865 is over £2 million today. Rabey also showed Brunt samples of ore allegedly taken from South Wheal Leisure and waxed lyrical on the value and promise of his mine (Rabey was obviously banking on a Bristol music-dealer having scant knowledge of ‘profitable’ ore). Brunt was hooked, and bought 125 shares in South Wheal Leisure for £532 – that’s £71K today. He then scooped up 500 shares in Bolingey Hill Consols for £200. (These were all shares owned by Rabey’s father.) Rabey the Younger was doing a roaring trade¹⁹.

Rabey must have made a similar impression on the following Bristolians: James Bigwood, a merchant²⁰, Mr William Atchley, a solicitor, a Mr Pring, William Chilcott, a bullion merchant, and Mr Hyde²¹.

All were taken in by Rabey’s patter, and to further assure these businessmen he was no ‘man of straw’, some or all of them even visited South Wheal Leisure, and came away smugly satisfied with their investment²².

Rabey later admitted to making over £14K (that’s £500,000 today) from the Wheal Leisure and Bolingey shares. He skillfully rigged the market by buying shares back from his investors and then selling them on again, ever-increasing their price – and his profits. In the meantime, his mines stood idle, not earning a penny²³.

Rabey was obviously now swimming in money, boasting his phony shares would soon be worth £10 each²⁴. However, as a bankrupt, he couldn’t be seen to be conducting business, managing a firm, or making money.

So how did he do it?

The Play

Bristol Harbour Hotel and Spa, Corn Street. In Rabey’s day, this was the Bristol Joint Stock Bank²⁵

Rabey wasn’t just conning the Bristolians, he was attempting to pull the wool over the eyes of the authorities, and his creditors too. Through the good offices of John Kempson Thomas, stockbroker, he had opened four separate bank accounts for his dealings, all under the the simple name ‘Paul Rabey’²⁶. Thomas then authorised the sales of the shares (which were held in Paul Rabey the Elder‘s Redruth account, but which Rabey the Younger was authorised to draw on), and the profits from these shares were entered into the accounts under such fantastical names as “Mexican Shares”, or “Turkish Consolides”²⁷. For example, £1,786 (£238K today) was paid into the Bristol Joint Stock Bank by

…Paul Rabey, without saying “senior” or “junior”…
Bristol Mercury, March 31, 1866, p3

Similarly, with the cost-book for the fictional Bolingey Hill Consols, Rabey the Younger also merely signed it ‘Paul Rabey’. It must have caused him no little consternation, therefore, when the Bristolians convinced him to append “Junior” to his moniker. There were two Paul Rabeys, after all – Brunt for one had met the elder Paul Rabey in Cornwall. Later, in court, it was discovered that “For Paul Rabey, Senior” had been surreptitiously added to the cost-book also²⁸.

Whose were the shares to sell? Rabey the Younger’s, or Rabey the Elder’s? In whose real name were the accounts? Who was conducting the business? Whose shares in South Wheal Leisure were being sold in Bristol? Who really was the purser of Bolingey Hill Consols? Come to mention it, where the hell was Bolingey Hill Consols?

Who really benefitted from this smokescreen? Paul Rabey the Younger, of course. A wealthy, yet infirm, gentleman. Would I deceive anyone, he said, being

…a cripple, with one foot in the grave, and not knowing how soon I might meet my God..?
Western Daily Press, April 6, 1866, p3

His play was beautiful. But it was short-lived.

William Harvey again

William Harvey was one man certainly not taken in by Rabey – truly, once bitten, twice shy. After the way Rabey had treated him in the past, he must have wanted revenge. And he got it²⁹.

By the summer of 1865, over £1,800 resided in the Redruth bank account of Rabey the Elder: profits from the sale of valueless shares. As noted above, £1,700 (£250,000 today) of this filthy lucre was transferred to the account at the Bristol Joint Stock Bank, named for Paul Rabey, without specifying Elder or Younger³⁰.

Harvey was the court-appointed assignee in Rabey’s bankruptcy and, under the terms of that bankruptcy, Rabey was unprotected for six months. This meant that, if Harvey could prove, between January 1865 to the end of July of that year that Rabey had money, it should be distributed amongst Rabey’s creditors, of whom Harvey was one also.

Harvey, convinced the £1,700 in the Bristol account was Rabey the Younger’s, pounced, and ordered the account to be frozen, pending an arrangement to have the money shared out accordingly. This must have been a happy moment for Harvey, but he should have remembered that Rabey was not parted from cash easily³¹.

Harvey knew Rabey to be an absolute fox in business, and a vindictive one at that. But even he must have been utterly gobsmacked by the Rabey family’s next ruse.

Paul Rabey the Elder accused Harvey of wrongly freezing the Bristol account, claiming the £1,700 was his. Not his son’s, but his. An interpleader case was undertaken, and suddenly, Harvey was standing in the dock at Taunton Assizes, to explain his actions to the learned gentlemen.

The Interpleader

Shire Hall, Taunton, home of the Somerset Assizes in the 1860s³²

Simply, an interpleader action is a civil procedure whereby a holder of property (in this instance, Rabey the Elder), initiates a suit between two or more claimants to the same property. Here, the two claimants were his own son, and William Harvey.

If all this sounds bizarre today, then rest assured, it was out of the normal run of affairs at the time also. “Suspicious”, observed the Royal Cornwall Gazette³³, whilst the London Morning Herald thought the whole matter “Extraordinary”³⁴.

It was made even more bizarre in court by the antics of Rabey the Elder. He was rumoured to have a “very defective memory”³⁵, and certainly played as much to the gallery. The old man denied he had ever heard of the accounts in question, or, indeed, had ever heard of Bolingey Hill Consols (which is undoubtedly surprising, seeing as his name was on that mine’s cost-book). Could such a senile old man really have made such an action against Harvey?

Rabey the Younger also gave evidence – he had to be carried into the courtroom – but was almost as vague as his Father. He needed to be. Rabey was in trouble. His time in York gaol for fraud was dredged up, as were his two recent bankruptcies, the false imprisonment of the accused in the case, William Harvey, not to mention his time in Bristol as a “gentleman without a shilling”³⁶, selling dodgy mining shares and possibly forging a signature in the Bolingey cost-book.

It was the opinion of Harvey’s counsel that held sway with the jury:

…the whole matter was a “juggle” between the father and son, and that the money in dispute belonged to the creditors, and ought to be divided amongst them.
Royal Cornwall Gazette, March 29, 1866, p8

The Judge added that Rabey the Younger’s shares

…were such that no man in his senses would touch them with a pair of tongs. Whose was the action?…should [Rabey the Elder] die tomorrow into whose pocket would the £1,700 sought to be recovered go? Why, into the pocket of the son.
Royal Cornwall Gazette, March 29, 1866, p8

Harvey, finally, had won, and he took steps to distribute the £1,700 to Rabey’s creditors³⁷. Presumably, he also claimed the £125 Rabey owed him. Though victorious, Harvey must have lived the rest of his life regretting ever meeting Paul Rabey the Younger.

Similar emotions had been stirring in Bristol.

I have done with Bristol…

Several of the Bristolians duped by Rabey had also been called as witnesses in the interpleader hearing, but they must have heard rumours beforehand that South Wheal Leisure and Bolingey Hill were perhaps not the soundest of investments. It’s not inconceivable that William Harvey tipped them; in any case it’s never revealed how the Bristol men discovered that they had blown their money.

Whatever the reasons, by July 1865 these whispers reached the ears of the music-merchant, William Brunt. Previous to this, relations between him and Rabey had been pleasant: Rabey was making money off Brunt, and Brunt believed he was making money thanks to Rabey. Now, though, he was having reservations, and one day addressed Rabey thus:

Mr Rabey, there’s some talk about these shares; they are not so valuable as they are represented. You seem to have a great opinion of these shares, will you take them off my hands?
qtd in the Western Daily Press, April 6, 1866, p3

Rabey, who had up until then had been “all civility and politeness”, turned nasty:

…the shares are not worth sixpence a piece. If you open your mouth to say a word against the mine I will ruin you: I will have the skin off your back. I have done with Bristol, and am going back to Cornwall.
qtd in the Western Daily Press April 6, 1866, p3

Understandably perplexed, Brunt travelled to Cornwall and visited Rabey the Elder, hoping the elderly, respectable parent would intercede with his venal son. But, of course, no such thing happened, and Brunt returned to Bristol even more out of pocket, and to worse news.

Under the cost-book system in Cornish mining, shareholders in the mines were liable to answer a ‘call’ to make up any monetary deficits in the output of the said mine³⁸. These calls were proportionate to the number of shares they owned. Although Rabey was ostensibly a purser, he held no shares in the mines he fronted (they were all in Rabey the Elder’s account in Redruth and, lest we forget, he also bankrupt). To exact vengeance on Brunt, Rabey did the following:

He got a number of tradesmen who had supplied the goods for the working of the mine, to bring actions for the recovery of the value of these goods against the unfortunate shareholders…Mr Brunt might be sued for thousands.
Western Daily Press, April 6, 1866, p3

Rabey was out to ruin Brunt, by getting others to do the dirty work for him. Brunt, however, refused to cave in, publicly repudiated the shares, and took Rabey to court in April 1866. He accused Rabey of

…intending to deceive the plaintiff [Brunt, and] fraudulently representing that…the mine was free from debt, and that there was a balance in hand for carrying on the working of the mine.
Western Daily Press, April 6, 1866, p3

This was a major undertaking for Brunt; in blowing the gaffe on Rabey, he must have known his own status as a gentleman and sound man of business would take a knock also.

And so it was to prove. Under examination, Brunt was ridiculed. His previous failings in mining transactions were laid bare for the amusement of the public gallery, as was his further gullibility regarding the Rabeys. He must have blushed to his roots and cringed to his entrails at the hilarity generated by his stating he was “quite taken up” with old Mr and Mrs Rabey when he visited Cornwall⁴⁰.

Taken in, more like.

But Brunt toughed it out, and Rabey the Younger’s Bristol con was brought to light, as it had also been several days previously in the same court regarding the Rabey the Elder’s interpleader hearing. Again, Rabey the Younger’s previous charges and his handling of Harvey were discussed, along with his nefarious dealings in Bristol. This must have been as uncomfortable for Rabey as it was at times excruciating for Brunt. If he was convicted of fraud again, he could expect a weightier sentence. What to do?

What Rabey the Younger always did. He struck a deal.

The Backhander

While court was in session, an “arrangement was effected”. Rabey made a gallant show of faith in the validity of both his mines and his shares, and purchased the shares back off Brunt, for £225. Brunt instantly dropped all charges. Rabey the Younger was free⁴¹. And very wealthy.

Altogether, Rabey lost £1,925 in Bristol. But he still had shares to peddle, and, if we are to take him at his word (admittedly a chancy undertaking), he made £4K from the Bristolians⁴², giving him a gross profit of £2,075. That’s over £277,000 today.

His reputation in Bristol was, by now, utterly poisonous. The name “Rabey” had become within that city’s polite society a byword for all that was criminal and corrupt in the world of business⁴³.

But none of this bothered him. He’d come away from Bristol considerably wealthier than when he’d arrived, and there was always another city, and another wealthy fool, to take advantage of.

Would his luck hold in London?

Click the link below for the final instalment of They Died With Their Shoes On:

Paul Rabey and The Foreign Girls’ Protection Society

Many thanks for reading!

References

William Harvey had been falsely imprisoned by Rabey; Rabey still owed him £125 in damages. Rabey’s bankruptcy had forestalled this payment, and now Harvey was the court-appointed assignee in Rabey’s bankruptcy. If he could prove Rabey was again solvent, he could claim Rabey’s assets on behalf of Rabey’s creditors, and get his own money. See my previous two posts.
See: https://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/wm10MZM_Barclay_Bank_Redruth_Cornwall_UK
Royal Cornwall Gazette (hereafter RCG), March 29 1866, p8.
Bristol Mercury, March 31 1866, p3.
See: https://www.bristol247.com/news-and-features/features/18-historic-photographs-of-bristols-hotels/
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol. For more on the first rail links between Cornwall and England, see Elizabeth Dale’s post here.
See: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2022/03/20/they-died-with-their-shoes-on-the-career-of-paul-rabey-the-younger-part-one/
Rabey had been selling spurious shares in a mine called The Old Truro Consols, that hadn’t been worked since 1844. From the Newcastle Guardian and Tyne Mercury, July 27, 1861, p3.
Bristol Mercury, March 31, 1866, p3.
1861 census.
Thomas is listed as a stockbroker in the 1851 census. His involvement in a forgery case can be found here: https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=t18660226-289
RCG, November 9, 1865, p8.
Bristol Mercury, March 31, 1866, p3.
Bristol Times and Mirror, 12 and 13 August 1868, p3.
From: https://park4night.com/lieu/67146//perranporth-1-wheal-leisure/united-kingdom/cornwall/Daily%20parking%20lot%20only#.Yj680fvP3rc
Western Daily Press, April 6, 1866, p3
Western Daily Press, April 6, 1866, p3
From https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bristol_St_Augustine%27s_Parade_1890s.jpg
Western Daily Press, April 6, 1866, p3
1861 census.
RCG, March 29, 1866, p8.
See my first post on Paul Rabey: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2022/03/20/they-died-with-their-shoes-on-the-career-of-paul-rabey-the-younger-part-one/
Bristol Mercury, March 31, 1866, p3.
RCG, March 29, 1866, p8.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyds_Bank,_Bristol, and: https://www.natwestgroup.com/heritage/companies/stuckeys-banking-co-ltd.html
RCG, November 9, 1865, p8.
RCG, November 9, 1865, p8, Bristol Mercury, March 31, 1866, p3.
RCG, March 29, 1866, p8, London Morning Herald, March 28, 1866, p8.
See: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2022/03/27/paul-rabey-and-the-false-imprisonment-they-died-with-their-shoes-on-part-two/
RCG, March 29, 1866, p8.
See: RCG, February 3, 1865, p7, RCG, March 29, 1866, p8, and https://the-cornish-historian.com/2022/03/27/paul-rabey-and-the-false-imprisonment-they-died-with-their-shoes-on-part-two/
See: https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/somerset-news/shire-hall-taunton-fascinating-history-1443289
March 29, 1866, p8.
March 28, 1866, p8.
RCG, March 29, 1866, p8.
RCG, March 29, 1866, p8.
Notices were placed in the newspapers, one for example being on page one of the Royal Cornwall Gazette, May 24, 1866.
See: John Rowe, Cornwall in the Age of the Industrial Revolution, 2nd enlarged ed., Hillside Publications, 1993, p23-5.
See: https://www.prints-online.com/gentleman-arrested-debt-14118143.html
Western Daily Press, April 6, 1866, p3.
Western Daily Press, April 6, 1866, p3.
RCG, March 29, 1866, p8.
Western Daily Press, May 18 1866, p2, and August 12, 1868, p3.

The Two Paul Rabeys: They Died With Their Shoes On, Part Three

Reading time: 10 minutes

(If you missed Part Two, you can find it here…)

Rabys Row, Scorrier. Alas, the street sign has disappeared¹

Bankrupt…again…

As we saw in the previous post, William Harvey had successfully sued Paul Rabey the Younger for false imprisonment in April 1864. Rabey had been ordered to pay Harvey £125 in damages. That’s around £13K today. Of course, Rabey had absolutely no intention of paying Harvey. But he had every intention of making quick money, and by questionable means, if that’s what it took.

To avoid paying Harvey, Rabey opted for the morally dubious (but not entirely out of character) expedient of declaring himself bankrupt, claiming that he had no assets. His bankruptcy claim was filed in early October 1864.

Of course, it was one thing for Rabey to claim he had no assets. However, as a mine purser and shareholder, indeed, as a gentleman, it most certainly had to be proven that he was truly, and utterly, broke.

(Even Rabey holding shares in his mines is open to question. As William Harvey wryly observed, “Sometimes he is, and sometimes he is not. It depends whether he is sued by any creditor for a debt due from the mine”. In short, if Rabey’s mine was profitable, he was a shareholder; if it was doing badly, he wasn’t².)

Proving his insolvency would be tricky, as Rabey no doubt realised. After all, his previous period of bankruptcy had only ended in March, 1863³.

Therefore, for the purposes of a successful bankruptcy, forestalling Harvey indefinitely, and generating income, Rabey needed assistance.

And the person he turned to was his father: Paul Rabey, the Elder.

Paul Rabey the Elder

Radnor Manor House, near Scorrier. Home of the Rabeys in the 1860s⁴

Born in 1789, Rabey Senior was by now an elderly man; indeed, he was to die in June 1867⁵. In his day, though, he had been a mine agent⁶ and a Mine Captain, being in charge of operations at South Wheal Leisure (in a more successful period of its existence), as well as previously being Captain of Wheal Seton, Camborne, and Wheal Damsel, Carharrack⁷. Besides this, he also owned, and leased, an amount of land⁸, leading one commentator to note that old man Rabey had, indeed,

…amassed a considerable sum of money and property…
Bristol Mercury, March 31, 1866, p3

during the course of his long career. For example, his effects on his death in 1867 were valued at around £450 – that’s £53K today⁹. In short, he was nobody’s fool, regardless of the performance he once gave in court of an old man with a “very defective memory”¹⁰. This performance (in defence of his son and namesake), with its almost comical display of senility (at one point Rabey claimed that he didn’t know “any more than what’s up in the moon”¹¹), raised several knowing laughs from the public gallery. But Rabey the Elder rather gave the game away when he finally let slip the advice he had given to his son:

He was to buy cheap…and to sell dear…
Bristol Mercury, March 31, 1866, p3

If ever you want the capitalist spirit of the age captured in one pat epithet, look no further¹². Rabey the Elder’s son had, of course, taken this lesson to heart.

Was the Father as big a rogue as his son, or was he, in his dotage, manipulated by his immoral offspring?

Read on…

Sleight of hand

Exeter Post Office, Queen Street. Home to the Bankruptcy Courts in the 1860s¹³

Rabey the Younger’s action for bankruptcy was filed in October 1864¹⁴. Including the £125 owing to William Harvey, Rabey claimed to have other debts totalling £945 (£127K today), and “not a farthing” to pay them¹⁵.

He certainly didn’t. Before filing for bankruptcy, in June 1864, Rabey transferred all his assets, 3,900 shares in South Wheal Leisure mine (out of a total of 5,671 shares), to Rabey the Elder¹⁶. Rabey the Younger was now the penniless purser of a mine in debt (South Wheal Leisure was in the process of “winding up”, ie being closed down¹⁷), and he had no shares with which to trade – the shares were worthless anyway. He was now free to declare himself bankrupt.

Rabey the Elder, suddenly the proud owner of meritless shares in a failing mine, stated at the Exeter Bankruptcy Court in November, 1864 that he “could not remember” when he became a shareholder in South Wheal Leisure. This selective amnesia didn’t stop him from selling on the shares – shares of utterly no value – for a profit, naturally, and an “arrangement” existed between father and son that any shares unsold could be transferred back to Rabey the Younger, at a convenient date¹⁸.

It’s perhaps obvious, then, that the two Paul Rabeys were in cahoots with each other. It’s a trick pulled again, later in our story. Rabey the Younger dragged the case out for as long as he could (he avoided at least one hearing by claiming illness¹⁹), and he may have begun to think himself clear of his financial obligations to William Harvey. At the hearing in Exeter, his other debts were viewed with the highest suspicion, inasmuch that they were probably “fictitious”, and that the whole process had been instigated by Rabey the Younger in order to “render” Harvey’s judgement against him “useless”²⁰.

Strong Opposition

“Being nervous and cross examined by Mr Garrow”, by Thomas Rowlandson, 1806. Copyright British Museum

William Harvey would not go away. He was actually the Official Assignee in Rabey the Younger’s bankruptcy case, meaning he was the court-appointed individual responsible for dealing with Rabey’s assets, distributing these assets to pay off his debts, and checking on his activities. He also had a vested interest in fighting the bankruptcy tooth and nail to get the money he was owed. And he was very nearly successful, for Rabey the Younger’s discharge from his debts was almost refused altogether.

It was the belief of the court that Rabey had previously used his father’s money

…in the ostensible purchase of shares…if the speculations turn out well, he reaps the benefit…he will transfer them to the father as security…if the worst comes to the worst he can make himself bankrupt again…and…enter into possession of his father’s property…
Royal Cornwall Gazette, February 3, 1865, p7

The court believed Rabey the Elder was being manipulated by his “clever and unscrupulous” son²¹. With hindsight, they were almost definitely wrong, and it’s also rather surprising Rabey the Younger wasn’t charged with bankruptcy fraud.

He was, though, finally declared bankrupt on January 26, 1865, for a period of two years – the normal duration was twelve months. He was also ajudged to be unprotected from the bankruptcy for six months, meaning his creditors could move against him to reclaim their debts during this time, if it could be proven he was in any way solvent²².

For the next two years, Rabey couldn’t direct a company, start a company without court consent, or indeed manage a company under a different name. He couldn’t legally conduct business. But, to Paul Rabey the Younger, these were mere challenges for him to overcome.

Harvey, no doubt seething, would have to wait yet again for his money. But as assignee he could officially monitor Rabey the Younger’s movements very closely. Someone needed to.

By the late spring of 1865, Rabey was operating again, this time in Bristol…

Click the link below for part four of They Died With Their Shoes On:

Paul Rabey and the Bristol Con

Many thanks for reading!

References

A branch of the Rabey family was living at Rabys Row, Scorrier, in 1890. (See: Cornubian and Redruth Times, June 13 1890, p5.) I have yet to discover when this street was so named, and if it was definitively named in connection with the Rabeys. However, it seems reasonable to think so, considering the proximity to Radnor and the obvious status of Paul Rabey the Elder. For the woodcut image, see: http://resourcesforhistoryteachers.pbworks.com/w/page/125659502/Conducting
From the Royal Cornwall Gazette (hereafter RCG), August 26, 1864, p7.
RCG, February 2, 1865, p7. He was also declared bankrupt in 1856: North Wales Chronicle, September 13, 1856, p2.
As mentioned in the Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, August 9, 1866, p3.
England & Wales Civil Registration Death Index 1837-1915, vol.5c, p166, Ancestry
Census, 1851 and 1861.
Western Daily Mercury, August 23, 1862, p7.
RCG, July 18, 1845, p1.
1875 England & Wales, National Probate Calendar Index of Wills and Administrations, 1858-1995 for Paul Rabey, Ancestry.
Bristol Mercury, March 31, 1866, p3.
Bristol Mercury, March 31, 1866, p3.
Indeed, Eric Hobsbawm’s 1975 book on the era is entitled The Age of Capital 1848-1875.
See: http://britishpostofficearchitects.weebly.com/1850—8384-queen-street.html
RCG, February 3, 1865, p7.
RCG, February 3, 1865, p7.
Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 2 December 1864, p9.
Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 2 December 1864, p9.
Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 2 December 1864, p9.
RCG, February 3, 1865, p7.
RCG, February 3, 1865, p7.
RCG, February 3, 1865, p7.
RCG, February 3, 1865, p7.

Paul Rabey and the False Imprisonment: They Died With Their Shoes On, Part Two

Reading time: ten minutes

(If you missed Part One, you can find it here…)

Punishment cell, Newgate. By Thomas Miller, 1852¹

Promising to stay poor

South Wheal Leisure Mine, of which Paul Rabey the Younger was purser, was struggling throughout 1864. As one former worker stated, “It was very poor, and promising to stay poor”². No ore had been raised at all for a year, the mine was in debt, and all the miners were either laid off, or had simply quit because they hadn’t been paid. The tinners, for their part, appear to have just quietly accepted their lot and gone in search of more promising setts, but the mine’s agent, William Harvey, from Cardrew Downs, was owed money. A lot of money – £36. That’s around £4,800 today.

Chapel Hill, Bolingey, looking towards Wheal Leisure and Perranporth

Blood from a stone

Determined to get his money, in early 1864 Harvey sued an adventurer in the mine, one Teague – but this went against Rabey’s advice. Why would a purser not want his agent to be paid? When that purser is Paul Rabey, there were several reasons. Firstly, Rabey hated to be parted from money, even money that wasn’t his. Secondly, he seems to have had a morbid fear of appearing in court: he didn’t want to appear as a witness against Teague, as there was a real danger of his South Wheal Leisure account books coming under legal scrutiny. (Indeed, Rabey claimed to be too ill to appear in court three times throughout 1864-5.) In the event, Teague quietly paid Harvey off out of court; Harvey also successfully sued another adventurer for £18 in April 1864.

However, when Harvey met Rabey in his carriage on Blackwater Hill on April 16, 1864, he asked him for the remaining £6 (£800 today) that he was owed. Rabey refused point blank, and rode off³ .

Rabey would have viewed Harvey as a threat, rather than a needy colleague. Firstly, he was legitimately in debt to Harvey, and for all his displays of wealth Rabey resented opening his wallet unless he could gain advantage from it. Secondly, it would have been obvious to Rabey that Harvey was litigiously-minded and determined enough to sue people for what they owed him. After all, Rabey would have doubtless done the same had the tables been turned. Who knew what dirty linen of Rabey’s might be washed in court? Rabey preferred to appear in the public eye on his own terms, if at all.

What happened next is what we may consider to be a classic Rabey manoeuvre, the move of a “clever and unscrupulous” man⁵: to strike first, and hard.

Trumped-up

That same evening, April 16, Rabey paid Harvey a visit, with a local policeman. The officer of the law, at Rabey’s instigation, searched Harvey’s premises, and found (as Rabey told him he was sure to find), a box of scales and weights for Wheal Leisure, which in fact Harvey had bought and paid for with his own money two years previously. For convenience, he kept them at his home, as Rabey well knew. Rabey claimed to the policeman they were his, and the bemused Harvey, after some ineffectual protests, was arrested and led from his home to the (now long vanished) lockup at Scorrier.

Harvey’s wife, we can imagine, was understandably distraught; his children, upset. Perhaps curious neighbours peered through windows or stood by, adding to Harvey’s shame. His mood would not have been improved by Rabey maliciously adding the following commentary from the comfort of his carriage:

…bring out the black guard rogue…
Royal Cornwall Gazette, August 26, 1864, p7

Harvey was conveyed from Scorrier to Truro, and led handcuffed through the streets (on a busy Saturday evening) to the lockup there on Pydar Street⁶.

He was held in prison until Monday morning, when he faced the magistrate to hear the charges brought against him⁷.

Without any probable cause…⁸

Hall for Cornwall, Boscawen Street, Truro. In the 1800s the magistrates’ courts were housed here⁹

That Monday, Harvey stood in the dock to discover that Rabey had further twisted the knife. Harvey was now not only accused of theft, but also fraudulent book-keeping: a charge of £2 19s had allegedly been entered into the accounts by Harvey for a non-existent employee of South Wheal Leisure. Harvey stated that, yes, he had indeed made this entry; it was in fact for his son, who had done some work for Rabey, but Rabey had convinced Harvey to enter the payment under a false name because

…it would not look well in his account…[that amount] for a boy of his age…
Royal Cornwall Gazette, August 26, 1864, p7

Rabey was now using his own sleight-of-hand to ensnare Harvey, as Harvey now claimed. The £2 19s had in fact gone to Rabey, as was later proven in court, and Harvey also soundly demonstrated that the scales were not Rabey’s.

Understandably, the case was thrown out.

Harvey was free to lick his wounds, but he was still owed £6 from Rabey, and would no doubt be fostering a great deal of personal resentment. On May 6, 1864, he charged Rabey with false imprisonment, and sued for damages¹⁰.

Three months later…

I note the date that Harvey filed his charges against Rabey, for it was over three months before the case was finally heard, at the Stannary Court in Truro, on August 19. Rabey had already achieved one postponement by claiming illness; he tried the same trick in August, yet the hearing went ahead, in his absence. Such was Rabey’s contempt for the actions against him, no solicitor represented his interests in court either.

Harvey won the case, and Rabey was ordered, in absentia, to pay £100 in damages which, with costs, came to £125. The jury were of the opinion that Harvey was

…an honest man, and has been badly used.
Royal Cornwall Gazette, August 26, 1864, p7

Rabey was shown to have plotted the accusations against Harvey, and Harvey’s subsequent incarceration, with malice aforethought. Witnesses testified to overhearing Rabey say that Harvey

…is a d____d rogue, and I will have him up again, if I rot in hell for it…It is better for anyone to begin with the devil, than to meddle with me.
Royal Cornwall Gazette, August 26, 1864, p7

If Rabey had sought to blacken Harvey’s name, then his own reputation fared little better during proceedings. His conduct, it was noted, should

…not be tolerated in this kingdom.
Royal Cornwall Gazette, August 26, 1864, p7

He was motivated purely by “the most malignant feelings”, the charges against Harvey were “trumped up”, and the whole affair was succinctly summarised as a “gross outrage”¹¹.

Whither Paul Rabey?

As noted earlier, Rabey wasn’t even present at his own trial, allegedly being ill in London. Presumably, he couldn’t have cared less about the outcome. The important thing was, his account books, over which there was much “suspicion” (Rabey had apparently told Harvey they’d both be in gaol if the ledgers were ever openly scrutinised), were safely out of the public eye¹³.

He also had no intention of paying William Harvey.

If nothing else, Rabey’s actions against Harvey, and his subsequent repeated ducking of his own trial, brought him time to plot his next schemes. He also may have hoped that Harvey had been warned off any thoughts of crossing him in future, but here he was mistaken, as we shall see. This unsavoury tale also demonstrates that Paul Rabey was a genuinely unpleasant individual, who sought to destroy anybody who opposed, or tried to uncover, him. It’s a characteristic that reappears in our story.

Early commentators on white-collar crime believed it was undertaken without animosity on the part of the offender, or of physical injury and/or alarm to the party being defrauded¹⁴.

Paul Rabey the Younger did not fit this common perception…

Click below for part three of They Died With Their Shoes On:

The Two Paul Rabeys

Many thanks for reading!

References

See: http://www.victorianlondon.org/prisons/newgate.htm
Western Daily Press, April 6, 1866, p3.
Royal Cornwall Gazette (hereafter RCG), August 26, 1864, p7.
See: http://cornishstory.com/2020/06/11/blackwater/
RCG, February 3, 1865, p7.
Like the Scorrier lockup, this has long gone. See: https://www.prisonhistory.org/prison/truro-town-prison/?fbclid=IwAR0BkB08wdpdDqL5siP5nBp_3awLPFAeB7Vl8kNGFb8d5cQHTe5W01C1RDM
From RCG, August 26, 1864, p7.
From RCG, August 26, 1864, p7.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall_for_Cornwall
From RCG, August 26, 1864, p7.
RCG, August 26, 1864, p7.
See: https://www.npr.org/sections/npr-history-dept/2015/02/12/385310877/how-scams-worked-in-the-1800s?t=1647549718867
RCG, August 26, 1864, p7.
See Sarah Wilson, “Fraud and White-collar Crime: 1850 to the Present”, in Histories of Crime: Britain 1600-2000, ed. Anne-Marie Kilday and David Nash, Macmillan, 2010, p147.

They Died With Their Shoes On: The Career of Paul Rabey the Younger, Part One

Reading time: 15 minutes

The London Stock Exchange, by Lockhart Bogle, 1891

The Hook¹

The men of substance from Bristol were on to a good thing. There was William H. Brunt, a music-seller from St Augustine’s Parade. There was Mr Hyde, a banker, and William Chilcott, a bullion merchant. There was James Bigwood, a merchant on Great George Street². There was Mr Atchley, a solicitor, and a Mr Pring. They were businessmen, with experience of the stock market, and they had travelled to Cornwall to view, and inspect, their latest investment: South Wheal Leisure Mine (not to be confused with the considerably larger Wheal Leisure concern), at Penwartha Coombe, Perranzabuloe, near Bolingey.

The hill from Bolingey towards Penwartha Coombe, where South Wheal Leisure was located

What they saw, in June 1865, did not disappoint. Miners were hard at work, the main shaft had a fully-functioning engine housed above it, and the impression that the whole concern was a family-run business must have further assured them. The purser’s cousin owned the account-house and the land around it; Brunt for one met the purser’s elderly father, and was quite charmed. The purser had also shown Brunt, and maybe the other investors, samples of ore from Wheal Leisure before their journey to Cornwall. He had also made it known the mine was very profitable, not in debt, and that a ‘call’ on shareholders to make up any financial shortcomings incurred during operations, was highly unlikely³.

The investors had seen what they wanted to see, and doubtless strolled away from the slopes of Penwartha Coombe anticipating some easy money to be had from the backs of these Cornish tinners. Brunt, for example, had purchased 125 shares in South Wheal Leisure, paying the purser £532 for them. Furthermore, the purser had intimated that he was starting a new mining venture, to be called Bolingey Hill Consols, which Brunt, amongst others, should be anxious to invest in. Brunt quickly snapped up 500 Bolingey Hill shares, for £200.

A bonds and share certificate for the Old Trewether Company of Endellion, 1854⁴

And why not? The purser, a disabled Cornishman in his mid-forties, resided at a notable Clifton residence in Bristol, employed a liveried servant, tooled about the town in a coach and pair, and presented the very image of a successful Victorian businessman. He splashed his cash on diamond rings, harmoniums, and impressive quantities of port and sherry. He told all who would listen in Bristol that his income would soon be around £20-30,000, thanks to his shrewd mining ventures, and that buying shares in his mines was, in modern parlance, a no-brainer.

The problem for the Bristolians was this: the purser in question was Paul Rabey, the Younger.

The Player

Though virtually unheard-of nowadays, Paul Rabey (or Raby) the Younger is deserving of the accolade of Cornwall’s most notorious con-man. Born in Gwennap, in 1818⁵, and raised at Radnor, near Scorrier, in his day he was recognised as

…one of the cleverest men in the county of Cornwall in mining transactions, which was saying a great deal.
Royal Cornwall Gazette, March 29, 1866, p8

Rabey was blessed with an incredibly “acute” mind, and one prosecuting lawyer had to grudgingly admit that he was as able

…to conduct business for his own benefit as any man that he had heard of in the whole course of his life.
Western Daily Press, April 6, 1866, p3

Shame, then, that he was as crooked in his business ministrations as the night is dark.

Wherever he went – and Rabey was as peripatetic as he was a rogue – he left ruined dreams, decimated bank accounts, and simmering resentment. In 1856 he was to appear in York as an insolvent debtor; his previous addresses up to this point were listed as Sheffield, two residences in Birkenhead, another two in Anglesea, three in Manchester, Kingston-Upon-Hull, Bath, another two in London, Liverpool, New Brighton (Merseyside), Chelsea, and Westminster. Oh – and Portreath⁶.

Such was the regularity of his appearances in various law courts throughout the 1860s, that reports of these hearings in the ‘papers carry their own sense of weary resignation. For example, the heading

appears at least twice⁷. Or this, from the London Morning Herald⁸:

It got so that his activities needed no introduction to the regular reader⁹:

Such was Rabey’s notoriety, he was actually cited in public lectures that sought to caution the unwary public on the dangers of bubble-schemes, market rigging, and various dubious business practices¹⁰. People taken in by his get-rich-quick enterprises were embarrassed to admit to being so foolish, even when under oath in court¹¹.

All of which begs the following questions: how did he operate, and how did he get away with it? Some historical context is needed.

Victorian White-collar Crime

William Strahan. The web-page of the Institutional History Society describes him as ‘The Bent Banker’¹²

The Industrial Revolution and expansion of Empire changed British society for ever. It also gave rise to a new variety of financial crime, known at the time as ‘high art’ crime. The railway boom of the 1840s saw a number of attempts to exploit the trend for investment, and many fraudulent ‘bubble’ companies were set up solely to dupe unwary financial speculators. That people were easily gulled by these outwardly respectable crooks-in-suits was largely due to the prevailing culture of the era, namely a belief that all members of Victorian society’s respectable upper- and middle-classes were just that: respectable and, above all, honest.

One of the central tenets of the newly-formed police force was to protect the middle- and business-class from what was seen as society’s criminal elements, ie the lower, working-classes. Crime therefore came to be viewed as the preserve of poor people, committed on the better-off: it would be unthinkable for a gentleman, or gentlewoman, to break the law.

But break the law, they did, with financial fraud becoming the crime of choice for ‘respectable’ criminals. London bankers Strahan, Bates and Paul misappropriated their clients’ money in 1855; likewise the directors of the Royal British (1858) and City of Glasgow (1878-9) Banks stood in the dock to answer for their embezzlements. One of the ‘brains’ behind the Great Train Robbery of 1855 kept a fashionable address in Shepherd’s Bush; another member of the gang was a corrupt barrister¹³.

On the whole, though, people trusted ‘respectable’ citizens because they appeared to be just that – respectable¹⁴.

No one appeared more respectable than Paul Rabey the Younger, and this appearance could not have been further from the truth.

Indeed, his career could have been written by Charles Dickens. Think of the younger Ebenezer Scrooge, and, like Scrooge, in the end, Rabey’s past caught up with him. But there was to be no redemption.

It’s beyond the scope of these posts to itemise every shady deal and every shameless con-operation Rabey carried out¹⁵. Instead, I’m going to focus my attention on the years 1864-1872, the later period of his colourful career. This ought to serve to illustrate the (often questionable) business practices of the high Victorian era, and serve to remind the reader that mining wasn’t just a risky business for the men below the ground¹⁶.

As with my previous work on the Cornish Food Riots of 1847¹⁷, I’ve divided my work on Paul Rabey the Younger, entitled They Died With Their Shoes On¹⁸, into separate posts, of which this is the first:

Part two, Paul Rabey and the False Imprisonment, can be read HERE.

Thanks for reading and following

References

The narrative for this section is taken from the Royal Cornwall Gazette (hereafter RCG), 29 March 1866, p8, and the Western Daily Press, April 6 1866, p3.
1861 census.
For a brief explanation of the Cost Book system in Cornish mining, see John Rowe, Cornwall in the Age of the Industrial Revolution, 2nd enlarged edition, Cornish Hillside Publications 1993, p23-5.
See https://spink.com/lot/18021000293
England, Select Births and Christenings, 1538-1975, film #1595598, ref ID p139, Ancestry
North Wales Chronicle, September 13, 1856, p2. Debtors’ known residences were listed publicly in the hope any creditors in those areas would be made aware, and could act accordingly.
RCG, November 9, 1865, p8, and March 29, 1866, p8.
March 28, 1866, p8.
RCG, August 9, 1866, p5.
Such a lecture was advertised in the Western Daily Press, September 10 1868, p1. The lecturer, Mr H. I. Brown, was one of Rabey’s victims; see the Bristol Times and Mirror, 12 & 13 August 1868, p3.
See the Western Daily Press, May 18, 1866, p2.
See: https://institutionalhistory.com/homepage/prisons/major-prisons/woking-prison/woking-invalid-convict-prison-inmate-list/william-strahan/
Michael Crichton fictionalised the story of The Great Train Robbery; it was also made into a memorable 1978 film starring Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland.
See Sarah Wilson, “Fraud and White-collar Crime: 1850 to the Present”, in Histories of Crime: Britain 1600-2000, ed. Anne-Marie Kilday and David Nash, Macmillan, 2010, p146-51.
Kresen Kernow hold records of his earlier exploits, references as follows: STA/693c/1441, 1443, 1446, 1460.
See “A Risky Business: Death, Injury and Religion in Cornish Mining 1780-1870” by John Rule in his book Cornish Cases (Clio, 2006), for more on the hardships of Cornwall’s mining population.
See: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2022/01/09/the-cornish-food-riots-of-1847-background-and-context/
Rabey once wished his enemies would “die in their shoes!”. The reason for this will be explained in my final post. (See: The Cornubian and Redruth Times, October 16, 1868, p4.)

Trouble in Clay Country: The Food Riots of 1847, Part Five

Reading time: 20 minutes

(If you missed the Prologue, click here.)

The evil disposed²

Charlestown United and Bucklers Mines, St Austell, have long vanished from the face of the earth. There’s now a kitchen furniture dealership and various other businesses on Bucklers Lane, Boscoppa, near the old location of the mines. Back in 1847, though, these workings were a ferment of unrest. On the morning of June 11, the Captain of Bucklers, Hancock, became aware that some of his men had “risen”³, and by that he didn’t mean coming to grass at the end of their shift. Approaching an open shaft, he came upon around 30-40 men, led by Charles Faull, 25, of Treleavens Cross, and Richard Kestall (or Kestell, or Kestle), 28, of Crantock⁴.

Both Faull and Kestall were said to be earning good wages at a prosperous mine, but, as they had heard the price of bread had yet again risen in St Austell,

…it was no use for them to work any more…
The Royal Cornwall Gazette, 6 August 1847, p1

They, and their mining colleagues, were going to town to put matters right. They were also going to get reinforcements from among the men of the poorer-off clay works. These were two things Hancock found difficult to understand. What business would you have with them, he asked, for they are

…poor men [who] are differently situated from what you are, with the wages you are getting.
The Royal Cornwall Gazette, 6 August 1847, p1

But the miners were not to be talked down, and became increasingly impassioned, with Kestall telling Hancock that

…we’ll go in and rob the shops and shove the b_____s in the common sewer…
The Royal Cornwall Gazette, 6 August 1847, p4

St Austell, 1835. Courtesy of Barry West, St Austell History Group

A short while later, Kestall and Faull, their band now numbering over two hundred, arrived at the Blue Barrow Clay Works. They used persuasion and a bit of force to commandeer 24 of the 30 men on shift that day at Blue Barrow. This ever-burgeoning force was the “evil disposed” and their “poor dupes” who “intended interference” at St Austell market⁵.

Parley? What parley?

There was to be little in the way of negotiating prices, or bartering with the authorities. Whereas, in previous disturbances, looting was a last resort, those who had heard what the miners were about that day in St Austell plainly came to town expecting “meditated plunder”⁶. Local women, to the “disgrace of their sex”⁷, walked the streets laden with baskets and containers of any stripe, in gleeful anticipation of some pillaging. They certainly encouraged their male counterparts to action, and were as conspicuous throughout the events as the miners.

2pm. 3,000 people are in the town centre, with an estimated hard core of 300 rioters. The tradespeople, as we have seen previously, did what tradespeople are wont to at any sign of people marching for food: they shut up shop, with the flour merchants and butchers to the fore.

Nonetheless, with the situation deteriorating, various minor incidents broke out. At Hannah Rowe’s bakery, going towards the old West Turnpike from Fore Street⁸, a swarthy band of individuals armed with a pick-hilt entered, demanding loaves and throwing bread to the crowd outside. Undeterred, Rowe slung the ringleader out on his ear, he threatening to “scat her brains out”⁹. John Badge, a flour merchant on Fore Street proper, had a menacing visit from William Bunt, 46, a blacksmith at Bucklers Mine¹⁰. When Badge flatly refused Bunt’s demand that he sell his flour cheaply, he was told that “you’ll be the next we come to”¹¹.

Bunt left, with the threat hanging in the air. Badge rapidly put his shutters up, and doubtless had a worrying few hours.

All of which begs the question: where were the authorities?

Enter Nicholas Kendall

British (English) School; Nicholas Kendall (b.1800); Royal Institution of Cornwall; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/nicholas-kendall-b-1800-14110

In fact, the authorities knew the miners were rising not long after Kestall and Faull marched out of Bucklers Mine. The High Sheriff of Cornwall, Nicholas Kendall (1800-1878), of Lanlivery, received word and was in St Austell before lunchtime. Kendall was also Conservative MP for East Cornwall, a County Magistrate, and also a Captain of the Royal Rangers Militia¹². He was also, it must be said, a man of no little physical courage and resolve. Even when you strip away the somewhat fawning eulogies he received in the wake of the events, there’s little doubt his industry and purpose ensured there was to be no repeats of what had happened in Pool and Redruth. The magistrate in Redruth, Magor, had had days to prepare for a mob of several thousands to march into the town, and matters there still degenerated into a full-on riot. Kendall, by contrast, had hours.

It was all he needed. By 1-2pm, with fellow magistrates Sir Joseph Sawle and Thomas Hext, Kendall had rustled up 55 soldiers of the 5th Fusiliers from Bodmin, mobilised the Coastguard, and deputised 30 Special Constables. Although the Redcoats had been observed marching toward St Austell, once present in the town they did not, for the time being, “show themselves”¹³. Kendall possibly wanted some element of surprise.

St Austell Town Hall and Market House, Market Square, erected in 1844¹⁴

Setting up base in the new Town Hall, Kendall was soon informed of a disturbance by his Under Sheriff, Thomas Coode, of Pondhu House. Coode’s residence provided a suitable vantage point from which to observe the throng below, and what they saw was not promising. A crowd of four hundred, many brandishing sticks of “an enormous size”¹⁵, were crying out that they were headed for “Warne’s Mills”¹⁶, and dashed off in that direction. Kendall and Coode, realising, too late, that the soldiers were too distant to be deployed effectively, sprinted out of Pondhu House in hot pursuit.

Warne’s Mills

In the crowd of miners and clay-workers was Joseph Hore, 35, a man with a “peculiar eye”¹⁷, a feature which counted against him later, and Matthew Roberts, 21, from St Breward¹⁸. They, and their fellow-looters, rifled a few shops en route to the mill and, once arrived, took to the doors of that building with boots, pick-hilts, and whatever came to hand.

It’s important to note that, at this point, there had been no delegates nominated, to address the town’s authorities and/or merchants as to the crowd’s demands. All pretence toward diplomacy had, for the time being, been suspended. It was down to Kendall to restore it.

Mounting a wall, whilst the horde below him hacked, sweated and swore at the entrance to Warne’s Mills, he addressed them, later stating that:

…under ordinary circumstances nothing would induce me to hold a parley…but as I knew there was great distress in the country I would gladly hear all they had to say…
Royal Cornwall Gazette, 6 August 1847, p4

He advised they send a deputation and, after some grumbling, Kendall was told he could expect their demands in an hour’s time, back at the Town Hall. (The doors of Warne’s Mills were obviously pretty impregnable, and the men were getting nowhere with them; if they’d forced entry, there would have been no deputation.) In the interim, Kendall warned them not to “keep up a row during that time”¹⁹, or else, of course, all bets were off.

The Town Hall

No sooner had Kendall and Coode returned to the Town Hall, hoping to have bought some time, when they were alerted to news of yet more looting close by. Again, Kendall chose to go with minimal back up: this time, he had one Special Constable with him, a civilian sworn in hours earlier, to go and pacify who knows what mayhem.

It was a mistake that could have cost him. As he spoke to the looters in rather schoolmasterly tones, ordering them to disperse “in the Queen’s name”²⁰, the miners turned and, in his words, several “squared up” to him, raising their sticks to put one through his jaw²¹.

Maybe Kendall flinched; I doubt it. In the nick of time, a force of several Constables arrived, and a scuffle ensued. Two rioters were rapidly disarmed, clobbered, and dragged off to the nearby clink, which in those days was situated in the Town Hall. Matthew Roberts then made a dash for Kendall, drawing back his own cudgel for a hardy swipe but, to his amazement, Kendall himself squared up to the man, grabbed him by the throat, sneered “how dare you”²² into Roberts’ face, and threw him off to one side, for another Constable to deal with. Coolly wiping his hands, Kendall returned indoors to meet the delegation.

Stalled negotiations

Kendall was clearly a force to be reckoned with, and after the set-to outside the Town Hall, his blood must have been up. The delegates got short shrift, being told that lowering the price of corn was “perfectly impossible”, under the current circumstances. Corn was so scarce, he lectured, that

…we ought to be obliged to the persons who would bring us corn in this neighbourhood at any price…
Royal Cornwall Gazette, 6 August 1847, p4

Which is all well and good, if you can afford it.

He then went on to echo the earlier opinions of the Captain of Bucklers Mine, that the most riotous that day were actually more affluent than the more peaceably-minded. Kendall believed their motivations to march for food and riot were therefore wholly spurious, and driven more by a desire for general anarchy than any genuine need. He did, however, promise to call a meeting with Sir Joseph Sawle with a view to setting up a subscription fund for the town and outlying areas. This was agreed on, but when the spokesmen demanded the immediate release of those taken prisoner, they provoked Kendall’s ire:

…you mistake your position; I am the commander, and not to be commanded…
Royal Cornwall Gazette, 6 August 1847, p4

Faces in the crowd

But the crowds outside hadn’t heard Kendall’s stern words as regards the prisoners. When he went forth yet again to address them on the outcome of the negotiations, the hundreds in Market Square yet again demanded their release. Kendall must have surveyed his barrackers with mounting frustration.

There was that man Hore again, with his distinctive eye. And there was Philip Matthews, 27, a labourer from the Penhale Clay Works, with his mate, 22 year-old John Payne (or Paine), from Tresayes. Kendall spoke to William Bunt, who had earlier threatened John Badge, telling him to get off home before things got serious. Bunt’s reply stayed with him:

It as well to be shot as starved.
Royal Cornwall Gazette, 6 August 1847, p4

Near to where Kendall was standing was John Cock, 28, from Western Hill²⁴. Shouting over Kendall, he warned anyone who would listen that

…if you meddle with us, it will be death to every one of you; we will have life for life, and blood for blood.
Royal Cornwall Gazette, 6 August 1847, p4

This line upstaged Kendall, and Cock was cheered to the rafters.

Obviously, the miners were spoiling for a fight, and there was much more big talk from big men circling the Town Hall that afternoon. One man who was advised to discard his weapon replied in the negative, for “by and bye it may be useful”²⁵. Another recorded statement was that “we are prepared to die, we may as well go now as at another time”²⁶. William Hancock, a 24 year-old from Broadlane, Roche²⁷, told Under Sheriff Coode that force would be met with force.

Really, it all boiled down to who had the biggest fists.

And that was Nicholas Kendall.

Bayonet point

A Barnett London Brunswick Rifle, with bayonet. The British Army’s rifle in the 1840s

“I have done”, Kendall later remarked, “that which I would have given hundreds of pounds not to have done – I have read the Riot Act”²⁸. Remorseful or not, he read it in front of the Town Hall, and within minutes, the militia had the crowd surrounded. Coode announced that the soldiers had already loaded and primed their muskets, and had further received orders to fire into the crowd, rather than over their heads.

If this was bluff, nobody, for all the fine speeches earlier, was prepared to call it.

With bayonets fixed, and doubtless a few fingers on triggers, the streets of St Austell were cleared, people rushing ahead of the Redcoats’ deadly march. Kendall was still active even here, identifying key malcontents for further investigation.

One of these was William Tellam, 27, from Carnsmerry, whom we’ve met before²⁹. In Wadebridge on May 12th, Tellam had been identified as one of a group that had brutally assaulted Edward Stephens, a local magistrate, during a food riot. He must have been one of many hundreds, if not thousands, to be have present at more than one disturbance in 1847 – he was just one of those unfortunate enough to have been caught.

The aftermath

At the Bodmin Summer Assizes of 28 July, the rioters were damned, for choosing to disturb the peace “to a most outrageous degree”, and exploiting the famine “which did not bear upon you as it did upon others”³⁰. Kendall, by contrast, was feted as a hero, by the authorities and citizens of St Austell alike. He’d saved the day, uniting “kindness and forbearance with a proper manly firmness”³¹. He also kept his word, chairing a meeting at the Town Hall on the Monday to organise a relief. Invited to attend were St Austell’s principal residents, magistrates, and the neighbourhood’s mine owners and adventurers.

No miners or clayworkers were invited. In other words, those most in need of aid were denied a voice. Martin Luther King once said, “riot is the language of the unheard”³². Riot, they did. But still nobody listened.

Instead, several rioters were imprisoned.

England and Wales Criminal Registers, 1791-1892, County Assizes, 28 July 1847. From Ancestry. The names of those acquitted are Richard Webb, Elias Newcombe, William Osborne, Richard Julyan, John Bennetts, and Jacob Hancock. William Tellam’s sentence is on the next page

For “riot and assault” (see image above), Charles Faull and Richard Kestall both received two years hard labour. Matthew Roberts and John Cock, 18 months hard labour. William Hancock, 12 months hard labour. John Payne and Philip Matthews, 6 months hard labour. William Tellam was sentenced to nine months for his involvement in the St Austell riot, and a further 18 months for the assault on Stephens at Wadebridge – with hard labour.

The outbreak at St Austell was the final food riot of 1847. The now numerous – if belated – relief funds throughout Cornwall, combined with a bountiful harvest and “flourishing” crops³³, meant that the scenes of violence and desperation seen in many major Cornish towns, finally ceased.

Of course, these were not the final food riots to have ever taken place in Cornwall. That accolade perhaps belongs to the events in Redruth, in 1920. But I’ll tell you all about that some other time…

Afterword: The Making of the Cornish Working Class?³⁴

Whilst researching the Cornish Food Riots of 1847, two questions occurred to me. The first was, could these events, as a whole, be taken as a general Cornish insurrection or uprising, to rival those of 1497, or 1549?

The answer, obviously, was no. No army of rebels marched on London, with discontented noblemen at their head. Nobody was shot. No Cornish people, to my knowledge, even crossed the Tamar in search of redress for their hardships. The people who marched and rioted, put simply, weren’t marching and rioting against the Government per se; they marched for food, and rioted, or tried to riot, against those who denied them.

What we are seeing in the events of 1847, perhaps, is class conflict. At St Austell, the authorities couldn’t understand why better-off workers were rioting, when, after all, they could almost certainly afford grain. It was almost as if they were acting on behalf of the poorer clayworkers, who the authorities believed were the “deluded ignorant”³⁵, and were duped into acts of lawlessness. Alternatively, you may argue that this represents solidarity, and organisation: the twin problems of food shortages and high prices were the problems of all of Cornwall’s working class, not just its most destitute members. Working people from St Just joined people from Breage and Helston. Men marched with women; children carried bags of flour for looters in Redruth. To be prepared to riot, and face the military, on yours and others’ behalf, or, in the words of William Bunt, it is as well to be shot as starved, maybe represents a liminal class consciousness.

You might say the authorities realised this too. In excluding members of this nascent working class from their discussions of relief funds, you might level E.P. Thompson’s famous accusation at them, that they were guilty of “the enormous condescension of posterity”³⁶. Relief from hunger was solely the business of the people who could provide that relief, and not that of the people most in need of said relief. Instead, they were the evil disposed and deluded ignorant in St Austell, or misguided fellow-creatures in Redruth. Therefore these people needed to be treated with at a distance, and with some caution. More research is needed in these areas.

My second thought was, was there a genuine ‘famine’ in Cornwall, akin to the Great Hunger in Ireland, with thousands starving to death? Determined to find an answer, I decided to look at parish burial rates, choosing, somewhat fittingly, Breage and Helston, from the years 1845-1850.

	1845	1846	1847	1848	1849	1850
Breage	99	100	83	82	80	83
Helston	68	59	68	65	60	57

Parish Burial Rates, 1845-1850. Figures taken from Cornwall Parish Records³⁷

I was expecting to see a significant spike in burials for the years 1847-8, but was surprised to discover no real increase. Indeed, the figures for Breage drop in 1847-8 from a peak of 100 burials in 1846; Helston’s rates are relatively constant. Admittedly, this is a very small sample, and the numbers don’t tell us how people died. But why, if there was such apparent shortages of food in Cornwall in the late 1840s, don’t the figures markedly increase?

The answer is this: people left.

The Hungry Forties see the first instances of the Great Cornish Migration of the nineteenth century. For example, between 1841-51, the parish of Breage and Germoe lost 27% of its population³⁸. The nonconformist and radical West Briton newspaper positively advocated emigration from the late 1830s as a “radical ‘improving’ cause”³⁹. Even the West Briton‘s Tory counterpart, The Royal Cornwall Gazette, was advertising reduced steamship fares in 1849⁴⁰. All this burgeoning culture of emigration, combined with the food shortages and the cholera outbreak of 1849⁴¹, made people leave Cornwall and not want to come back. One man, Samuel Robins from Penryn, broke a promise he made to his sister to return home from Australia in 1847. The account his sister had given of all things Cornish was so “wretched”, he decided to stay put⁴². Richard Kestall, the St Austell rioter, also left, starting a new life in Glamorgan⁴³.

Judging by the number of people who, after reading this series of posts, have contacted me to remark that their ancestors left Cornwall in the late 1840s, many hundreds must have done the same.

All in all, the year 1847 was a desperate one for Cornwall.

Many thanks for reading

References

From Cornwall Live. See Lee Trewhela’s article on the strike of 1913 here.
From The Royal Cornwall Gazette (hereafter RCG), 18 June 1847, p2. The main sources for this post are RCG, 18 June 1847, p2, and August 6, 1847, p1&4.
RCG, 6 August 1847, p1.
1851 census.
RCG, 18 June 1847, p2.
RCG, 18 June 1847, p2.
RCG, 18 June 1847, p2.
1851 census.
RCG, 6 August 1847, p4.
1851 census.
RCG, 6 August 1847, p4.
According to his entry on Wikipedia here.
RCG, 6 August 1847, p4.
Image from Tripadvisor, here.
RCG, 6 August 1847, p4.
RCG, 6 August 1847, p4.
RCG, 6 August 1847, p4.
1851 census.
RCG, 6 August 1847, p4.
RCG, 6 August 1847, p4.
RCG, 6 August 1847, p4.
RCG, 6 August 1847, p4.
From the St Austell Town website: https://www.staustelltown.co.uk/st-austell-town-facts/
1851 census.
RCG, 6 August 1847, p4.
RCG, 6 August 1847, p4.
1851 census.
RCG, 18 June 1847, p2.
See part two of The Cornish Food Riots of 1847 here.
RCG, 6 August 1847, p4.
RCG, 6 August 1847, p4.
King said this in two speeches, at Stanford University in April 1967, and Grosse Pointe University in March 1968. With thanks to @Str8OutaKernow.
As noted in the RCG, 23 July 1847, p2.
From E.P. Thompson’s seminal 1963 work, The Making of the English Working Class (Penguin, 1991).
RCG, 18 June 1847, p2.
The Making of the English Working Class (Penguin, 1991), p12.
See https://www.cornwall-opc-database.org/
Philip Payton, The Cornish Overseas, Cornwall Editions, 2005, p132.
Philip Payton, “Before the Mines: Early Cornish Emigration to South Australia” in Garry Tregidga (ed.), In Search of Cornwall, Cornish Studies, Third Series, Volume 4, University of Exeter, 2021, p18.
RCG, 19 January 1849, p1. From a tweet by Charlotte MacKenzie, January 18, 2022.
See Bernard Deacon’s post on the outbreak here.
Philip Payton, “Before the Mines: Early Cornish Emigration to South Australia” in Garry Tregidga (ed.), In Search of Cornwall, Cornish Studies, Third Series, Volume 4, University of Exeter, 2021, p21-2.
1851 census.

The Fugitive: James Jewell: A Prologue to Part Five of the Food Riots of 1847

Reading time: 5 minutes

(If you missed Part Four, click here.)

Unlike his less-fortunate compatriots, George Stapleton and William Francis², James Jewell chose not to wait around at his home in Crowan, so the authorities could issue him with a summons³. As the military surrounded the rioters in Higher Fore Street, Redruth, on June 4, he slipped town. Unlike the many hundreds, possibly thousands, complicit in the looting of Warmington’s Stores that were able to melt anonymously away, Jewell must have realised his foremost role in the events made him a marked man.

We don’t know what route he took, whom he talked who, or who gave him shelter. Quite possibly, he slept rough. Maybe he begged shelter in the mining districts he came across, or at remote farmsteads. Perhaps, as a baptised Methodist⁴, he sought succour among a kind of underground railroad of fellow Bible-Christians. What we do know, is that he was most definitely a wanted man, and that a warrant was out for his capture.

By June 11, two constables had traced their man to St Austell, but enquiries there realised nothing. The elusive Jewell had escaped again, but not for long. Saturday June 12 saw him captured, in Liskeard, and returned to Bodmin Gaol to await trial. He was sentenced alongside Stapleton, Francis, and the others who had been arrested in the wake of the tumult in Redruth. He received nine months hard labour⁵, but not before acquiring a certain notoriety.

It was believed at the time that Jewell was one of

…the leading men…with others from the west [who were] amidst the disorderlies…
Royal Cornwall Gazette, 18 June 1847, p2

The ‘disorder’ under discussion here was not events at Pool or Redruth, or even Helston or Penzance. Jewell, possibly with others from the ‘west’, was believed to have been fomenting unrest in the east of Cornwall too: namely, the riot that took place in St Austell, on Friday, June 11.

Alas, whether or not Jewell (or others) stirred up the miners on his sojourn through Clay Country is unknowable. It’s more likely he kept his head down, and his mouth shut. In fact, it turned out there were plenty of people in the area desperate enough, and hungry enough, to defy the authorities…

The final part of The Food Riots of 1847 can be read here:

Trouble in Clay Country

Thanks for reading

References

From the Bodmin Jail website: https://www.bodminjail.org/discover/about-bodmin-jail/historical-timeline/
See my previous post, Hellfire Corner, here. Jewell told a flour merchant that he’d be “d____d” if he left the town empty handed. Royal Cornwall Gazette, 9 July 1847, p1.
According to the 1841 census, Jewell was born in around 1829, in Crowan.
See: England & Wales, Non-Conformist and Non-Parochial Registers, 1567-1936 for James Jewell, Piece 0559, Helston (Methodist), 1804-1837, Ancestry.co.uk
Kresen Kernow, Quarter Sessions Rolls 1847, QS/1/14/284.

Part Two

Distinctly remarkable…

O Arglwydd Dduw Rhagluniaeth: The Llechwedd Strike of 1893

The Commission

…we do not yet know its fullest possibilities…

Afterword

References

Part One

‘Mongst Photos and Photographers…

Deep down…

Abide With Me: the Disaster of 1893

References

Dear All…

A Cornish Wife Sale

Effigy Burning

Rugby Special

A Commission on the Sale of Flesh and Blood2

The Foreign Girls’ Protection Society

The Fall Guy?

The Kilravock House Con

Trouble Brewing

They Died With Their Shoes On

References

Bankrupt

Ready cash, and another Paul Rabey?

A location, and a front man?

Something to sell?

The Victims

The Play

William Harvey again

The Interpleader

I have done with Bristol…

The Backhander

References

Bankrupt…again…

Paul Rabey the Elder

Sleight of hand

Strong Opposition

References

Promising to stay poor

Blood from a stone

Trumped-up

Without any probable cause…8

Three months later…

Whither Paul Rabey?

References

The Hook1

The Player

Victorian White-collar Crime

References

The evil disposed2

Parley? What parley?

Enter Nicholas Kendall

Warne’s Mills

The Town Hall

Stalled negotiations

Faces in the crowd

Bayonet point

The aftermath

Afterword: The Making of the Cornish Working Class?34

References

References

A Commission on the Sale of Flesh and Blood²

Without any probable cause…⁸

The Hook¹

The evil disposed²

Afterword: The Making of the Cornish Working Class?³⁴