Paul Salveson: Lancashire's Romantic Radical: The Life and Writings of Allen Clarke / Teddy Ashton (2009)

The subtitle here – The Life and Writings of Allen Clarke / Teddy Ashton – alludes to the fact that Allen Clarke (1863–1936) sometimes used the pseudonym Teddy Ashton, in fact it could be said that it was a form of literary alter ego: when he used his birth name he tended to be more politically serious, in fact the working-class intellectual he was; 'Teddy Ashton', though, wrote in a simpler way, often humorously.

Allen Clarke was born in Daubhill, Bolton, and died in Blackpool. His socialist message was essentially conveyed through journalism, and after initially working for a few papers he created his own Teddy Ashton's Journal in 1896, which became the very popular Teddy Ashton's Northern Weekly in 1898, selling mainly in Lancashire cotton and market towns, including Manchester: it included the 'Tum Fowt Sketches', plus a romantic serial novel, and although light on politics was of course determinedly socialist. Teddy Ashton's Northern Weekly ran into financial difficulties in 1906, was renamed Fellowship, and folded in 1908.

Clarke also wrote a number of books, notably The Effects of the Factory System (1899). Using another pseudonym, Ben Adhem, he wrote more philosophical works. He was interested in spiritualism and published Science and the Soul (1904) and What Is Man? (also 1904), tending to embrace eastern beliefs. He dabbled with anarchism and was influenced by Tolstoy, with whom he corresponded and from whom he received encouragement. But Clarke's 'Daisy Colony' experiment failed and left him in debt.

In addition, Clarke wrote plays, short stories, and Paul Salveson reckons that he wrote over twenty novels, although most of these were published as serials and never published separately. Most noteworthy are John o' God's Sending, or the Lass of the Man and Scythe (set during the Civil War, named after the famous pub in Bolton and published in 1891 and 1919 (extended form)); The Knobstick (1892, set during the Bolton strike of 1887); and 'A Daughter of the Factory', which was unfortunately only published serially but whose main character has gypsy blood and who reminds me of Nottinghamshire novelist James Prior's gypsy-like New Woman creations.

Allen Clarke sounds like an amazing person: he supported women's rights, children's rights, was anti-war (which caused a rift with Robert Blatchford), anti-imperialist, pro-animal rights and vegetarianism, and was anti-vivisection. He was also a keen cyclist and windmill enthusiast, which reminds me of course of Karl Wood (although Wood's dreadful politics were very different).

I only stumbled on the existence of this book by chance, but I'm very fortunate in doing so: Paul Salveson has done an excellent job here, revealing many things about an important literary figure who (in spite of the Little Marton Windmill memorial) is probably essentially remembered only by a limited number of Blackpool locals.

This is a fascinating, even vital book, and I have only two niggles: I noted that it's in exactly the same format as my booklet on Nottinghamshire windmills, although this 118-page book is even more uncomfortable to read because of its size; and there were a few repetitions, probably due to the different times in which the book was written.

My other post on Allen Clarke:
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Little Marton Windmill, Allen Clarke and Cornelius Bagot

William Thornber, Blackpool

'The

Parish Church

of Saint John

(Grade II Listed)

The first Church of St. John was built on this site in

1821 as a Chapel of Ease to Bispham. It became a

Parish Church in 1860.

Its third curate was the Rev. William Thornber

(1829–45)

Blackpool's first historian.

His grave, and that of William H. Cocker another

Blackpool pioneer and its first Mayor, remain to the

east of the present church completed in 1878.

The original vicarage, completed in 1829, stood

across the street on a site behind the Empress

Buildings.

Kindly donated by

Blackpool and Flyde

Historical Society'

Among Thornber's writings are The History of Blackpool and Its Neighbourhood (1837), and, er, according to the British Library catalogue, Traditions of the Foreland of the Fylde. Elizabethan era. Penny Stone; or, a Tradition of the Spanish Armada (1886), which includes a biographical sketch of the author.

The Temple of Arts, Blackpool

 

 'The Temple

of Arts

One of the oldest surviving buildings in the

town centre.

Built in 1847 it became John Eastman's Temple

of Arts photographic studio in 1853, said to

have been the first in Blackpool.

The outer wall was originally adorned by three

carved figures – 'The Three Graces', Faith,

Love and charity. Created by the artist

Samuel Wood they were subsequently hidden

for many years until uncovered in 1976.

Sadly they were damaged during building

renovation in 1988 and were replaced by

a plastic replica.'

Alistair Cooke, Blackpool

'ALISTAIR

COOKE

(K.B.E.)

Legendary Broadcaster, Journalist and Writer,

Alistair was renowned for his 'Letter from America'

broadcast which ran for 58 years from 1946 until his death

in 2004. In 1917 at the age of 8 years he moved from Salford

with his family living here at number 10 Vance Road.

He became and American citizen in 1941

and received his Honorary Knighthood

in 1973.

Kindly Donated by

June and Trevor Lockwood

Iona Hotel

2010' 

Maria Vero, Layton Cemetery, Blackpool #8

'In

Loving Memory

of

MARIA,

WIFE OF DAVID R. VERO,

PASSED AWAY 20^TH FEB. 1913,

AGED 76.

SHE WAS A MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL SOCIETY

FOR WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. (MANCHESTER BRANCH)

AND LEFT THIS WORLD AN ANCIENT TEMPLAR,

AND BRITISH WOMAN.'

Again, I can find no information on this person other than that on the gravestone, although the concern with women's suffrage is interesting. David R. Vero and Maria were no doubt also very involved with the temperance movement, but there is nothing else to discover. And what does 'British woman' mean exactly?

Many thanks to The Friends of Layton Cemetery for their amazingly enthusiastic help with all our grave enquiries.

Ada Boswell, Layton Cemetery, Blackpool #6

'In loving Memory of

ADA,

THE BELOVED WIFE OF

TOBIAS BOSWELL,

OF SOUTH SHORE.

WHO DIED MAY 11^TH 1901.

AGED 48 YEARS.

GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN.

QUEEN OF THE GIPSIES.

ALSO OF THE ABOVE

TOBIAS BOSWELL,

WHO DIED APRIL 5^TH 1908,

AGED 52 YEARS.'

I have almost no information on 'The Queen of the Gipsies', least of all why she was so called.

Many thanks to The Friends of Layton Cemetery for their amazingly enthusiastic help with all our grave enquiries.

James Wayman and Samuel Pilling, Layton Cemetery, Blackpool #5

'RAISED BY FRIENDS

TO THE MEMORY OF

THE

REV. JAMES WAYMAN,

BORN AUGUST 15^TH 1840,

DIED DECEMBER 8^TH 1899.

HE WAS A GOOD MINISTER,

AND USEFUL CITIZEN.'

'Useful citizen' today seems an odd way to describe someone, and I wonder if it seemed odd at the end of the 19th century too. James Wayman was also the co-founder of the Blackpool Times in 1877, with Samuel Pilling:

'IN

LOVING MEMORY

OF

EMMA

WIFE OF THE

REV. S. PILLING,

BORN DEC^R 9^TH 1844,

DIED MAY 5^TH 1927.

ALSO OF THE ABOVE

REV. SAMUEL PILLING

BORN DEC^R 29^TH 1844,

DIED JAN^Y 11^TH 1930.'

Many thanks to The Friends of Layton Cemetery for their amazingly enthusiastic help with all our grave enquiries.

George Washington Williams: Layton Cemetery, Blackpool #3

'GEORGE

WASHINGTON

WILLIAMS

AFRO-AMERICAN

HISTORIAN

1849–1891'

George Washington Williams was born in Bedford Springs, Pennsylvania. In 1874, he became the first African American to graduate from Newton Theological College. Supported by Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison, he founded the monthly journal The Commoner in Washington D.C., publishing eight issues. His most noted works are A History of Negro Troops in the War of Rebellion and The History of the Negro Race in America 1619–1880.

Many thanks to The Friends of Layton Cemetery for their amazingly enthusiastic help with all our grave enquiries.

Samuel Laycock: Layton Cemetery, Blackpool #2

'SAMUEL LAYCOCK,

BORN JANUARY 17^TH 1826,

PASSED TO THE HIGHER LIFE

DECEMBER 15^TH 1893.

THOU ART NOT IDLE: IN THY HIGHER SPHERE

THY SPIRIT BENDS ITSELF TO LOVING TASKS,

AND STRENGTH TO PERFECT WHAT IT DREAMED OF HERE

IS ALL THE CROWN AND GLORY THAT IT ASKS

ALSO OF HIS BELOVED WIFE

ELIZA,

WHO DIED FEBRUARY 27^TH 1917.

IN HER 82^ND YEAR.'

Unlike Spencer T. Hall's grave, Samuel Laycock's mentions nothing of his literary works, or anything of his life for that matter. Laycock was born in Marsden near Huddersfield, now in West Yorkshire, and was the son of John, a hand loom weaver. Samuel began his working life in a mill at the age of nine, and continued as a mill worker of different statuses until the American Civil War (1861–1864) caused him to be unemployed. He wrote dialect poetry about life in the mills, his earlier publications being Lancashire Rhymes; or Homely Pictures of the People (1864) and Lancashire Songs (1866). Laycock worked as a librarian at the Mechanics Institute in Stalybridge from 1865 to 1971, and later moved to Blackpool due to poor health. Eliza was his third wife, and the future novelist Arthur Laycock was one of their children.

Many thanks to The Friends of Layton Cemetery for their amazingly enthusiastic help with all our grave enquiries.

My Samuel Laycock posts:

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Samuel Laycock: Layton Cemetery, Blackpool
Samuel Laycock in Stalybridge

Spencer Timothy Hall: Layton Cemetery, Blackpool #1

'HERE RESTS, LIFE'S LABOURS O'ER,
THE EARTHLY REMAINS OF
SPENCER TIMOTHY HALL. PH.D., M.D., M.A,
"THE SHERWOOD FORESTER,"
AUTHOR OF "THE FORESTER'S OFFERING,"
"THE PEAK OF THE PLAIN," "BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
OF REMARKABLE PEOPLE," AND OTHER LITERARY WORKS.
BORN AT SUTTON-IN-ASHFIELD, DEC. 16^TH 1812,
DIED AT BLACKPOOL, APRIL 26^TH 1885.
"WHO, WALKING OFT WITH NATURE, HAND IN HAND,
TURNED ON HER WHEN SHE SPOKE, A RAPTURED EYE,
AND THEN, RETIRING IN HIS INMOST HEART,
THERE PONDERED ALL HER TEACHING O'ER AGAIN,
UNTIL, O'ER FILLED WITH GRATITUDE AND JOY,
HE TRIED TO ECHO THEM IN HYMNS TO GOD.
AND CHEERING WORDS AND WORK FOR SUFFERING MEN."

ERECTED BY HIS EARLY FRIEND, C.P.'*

* Dr Rowena Edlin-White informs me that 'C.P.' is 'Charles Plumbe (1813- ?1899), a cousin of Samuel Plumb the poet. Apart from being Post Master in Mansfield he produced two newspapers, The Sherwood Gatherer and later, The Midland Gazette. Apparently also a poet in a small way, I have yet to find anything by him. He appears to have been the last survivor of the Sherwood Forest Group'.

Many thanks to The Friends of Layton Cemetery for their amazingly enthusiastic help with all our grave enquiries.

Blackburn Cemetery #2: William Billington

William Billington's grave is obviously far more difficult to vandalise, and only his nose has been attacked here. The sculpture appears to have been taken from a photograph of the man who came to be known as 'The Blackburn Poet'.

'ERECTED BY PUBLIC SUBSCRIPTION TO THE MEMORY OF
WILLIAM BILLINGTON
(AUTHOR OF SHEEN AND SHADE [1861], LANCASHIRE
SONGS, POEMS, AND SKETCHES [1883], &c.*)
WHO WAS BORN APRIL 3RD 1827, AND
DEPARTED THIS LIFE JANUARY 3RD 1884.'

 

'DEAD AND YET LIVING – LIVING IN THAT VERSE
OUR CHILDREN SHALL REHEARSE,
CLEAVING TO WHAT IS FAIR AND GOOD AND WISE.
LET THE DROSS PASS AWAY,
LET MEANER THINGS DECAY –
THE POET NEVER DIES.'

 

 

The other side of the memorial bears a representation of Billington's Sheen and Shade.

 

Billington initially supported his family by factory work, which he hated, and eleven years after the death of his first wife (in 1857) he re-married and several years later started running a beer house because of his ill health. His (illiterate) second wife deserted him and their young child because of his intellectual interests. The beer house on the corner of Bradford Street and Nab Lane was known as 'Poet's Corner' and attracted visiting poets such as John Critchley Prince and Richard Dugdale. It was also a centre for debates.

 

Billington was a founder member of the Blackburn Mechanic's Institute, advised trade unions, and travelled around the north-west reading and selling his poetry.

 

*Billington also published the poem Pendle Hill in 1876 and Michael Ian Watson published a very brief account of the poet in about 1980: William Billington : the Blackburn poet.

Blackburn Cemetery #1: John Thomas Baron

The sorry state of the grave of John Thomas Baron (1856–1922) in Blackburn Cemetery, apparently due to vandalism rather than disrepair. Baron was a (mainly dialect) poet who was born at 42 Chapel Street, Blackburn, and often used the pseudonym 'Jack o' Ann's' after his mother. Although he never published any books of his poetry, his many works appeared in a large number of papers such as the Blackburn Times, the Blackpool Gazette, and the Preston Chronicle.  His younger brother William also wrote poetry and used the pseudonym 'Bill o' Jack's' after his father.

The Art of Theodore Major

Theodore Major is a relatively little known painter about whom the writer John Berger said 'his canvasses deserve to rank among the best English paintings of our time'.

Comparatively little has been written about him, although a notable (and very difficult to find) exception is Mary Gaskell's self-published Theodore Major: His Lneigife and Works ([Appley Bridge], [1976]), which is in two distinct sections: the first nineteen pages concern Gaskell's father Theodore, whereas the second section contains one hundred and nine black and white photos of his paintings, which — although named — gives no indication of their date.

Gaskell states that he said that his painting was his life and art his religion, and he had many strong views, hating 'Pop music, pop painting, ignorance, gimmickry in art, cruelty and double-talk'. Leaving school at thirteen, Major went to work in a tailor's shop, a job for which he was totally unsuited and, ill, he became unemployed.

He began evening classes at art school until he grew tired of representational painting and branched out into experimental work. He met his future wife Kathleen at art school when he was teaching art in the evenings. Mary – their only daughter – was born in 1944, and her birth caused the family to be forced out of their accommodation. They went to live in Appley Bridge in 1950, where they stayed and where Theodore made a studio of the largest bedroom.

He was, however, producing so many paintings that in time he bought the neighbouring semi-detached house to store them.

Gaskell expresses regret that Major hadn't been invited to give lectures, 'possibly to a television audience, or a University', and devotes several pages to his writings concerned with generalisations about the nature of art, one paragraph of which gives a good idea of his aims:

'Art is the spiritual language of man; a language which extends the limits of his mind and consciousness; a key to "shock" the mind into awareness and growth; a door into a future understanding of ourselves, and finally into an understanding of ALL things.'

L.S. Lowry is an obvious point of comparison with Major, although Gaskell argues that there are more differences than similarities between the two. She claims that while Lowry viewed humanity as if from a hill, her father saw people from a crowd, and showed real pity for his subjects.

Many of Major's Lowryesque paintings were already in black and white, and although there is little evidence of the order in which they were painted, Major, apparently as a result of the atrocities he saw in the world – albeit vicariously through the media as he never went abroad and travelled little in Britain – states that his paintings grew darker and more menacing. Human skeletal shapes became common and Gaskell calls them:

'a universal symbol [...] without race or sex [...] no clothing to betray period or country'.

She also sees them as Major's symbols of the emptiness of the lives of people in the modern era. At sixty-two Major underwent a serious illness and felt an urgent need to communicate the dehumanising influences to the people he considered victims of society: he believed that the state, religion and the educational system stunt the growth of a child's mind and personality.

Gaskell reveals more of Major's artistic aims, of which these are a few examples:

'I wish to DISTURB and extend consciousness in the mind of the viewer.'

'I wish to shock into "awareness" the sensibilities of people; to attack accepted standards; to awaken the mind to spiritual values'.

David Buckman's obituary of Theodore Major in the Independent (27 January 1999) sheds a little light on the twenty years missing between Gaskell's book and Major's death, and a little more on the man himself. In 1992, having paid the full poll tax on his house, he refused to pay tax on the house he owned next door, and which he used as a store. The council threatened to imprison him, he told them to jump in the canal, and he was excused on the grounds of his age (eighty-five) and health. But the most interesting thing, not actually mentioned in Gaskell's book, is that the growing mumber of his paintings which necessitated him buying the other house was not due to the fact that he couldn't sell them but because he refused to sell them to rich people!

Clearly, Major is a fascinating artist with many outsider qualities. But some of his views are clearly wrong-headed. The most bizarre statement he makes is that many great artists and writers 'could only come to full stature in the British Isles', as if that country has some automatic kind of superiority: this statement is all the stranger because many of Major's paintings show a marked influence by European artists: Matisse and Picasso, for instance, are written all over many of his canvasses.

Art brut (Outsider Art) and associated:
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Rémy Callot, Carvin (Nord)
Carine Fol (ed.): L'Art brut en question | Outsider Art in Question
Kevin Duffy, Ashton-in-Makerfield
The Art Brut of Léopold Truc, Cabrières d'Avignon (34)
Le Musée Extraordinaire de Georges Mazoyer, Ansouis (34)
Le Facteur Cheval's Palais Idéal, Hauterives (26)
The Little Chapel, Guernsey
Museum of Appalachia, Norris, Clinton, Tennessee
Ed Leedskalnin in Homestead, Florida
La Fabuloserie, Dicy, Yonne (89)
Street Art City, Lurcy-Lévis, Allier (03)
The Outsider Art of Jean Linard, Neuvy-deux-Clochers (18)
Jean Bertholle, La Fabuloserie, Yonne (89)
Jean-Pierre Schetz, La Fabuloserie, Yonne (89)
Jules Damloup, La Fabuloserie, Yonne (89)
Camille Vidal, La Fabuloserie, Yonne (89)
Pascal Verbena, La Fabuloserie, Yonne (89)
The Art of Theodore Major
Edward Gorey's Yarmouth Port, Cape Cod, MA
Marcel Vinsard in Pontcharra, Isère (38)
Vincent Capt: Écrivainer : La langue morcelée de Samuel Daiber
The Amazing World of Danielle Jacqui, Roquevaire (13)
Alphonse Gurlie, Maisonneuve (07)
Univers du poète ferrailleur, Lizio, Morbihan
Les Rochers sculptés de L'Abbé Fouré, Rothéneuf, Saint-Malo
Robert Tatin in Cossé-le-Vivien, Mayenne
La Demeure du Chaos, Saint-Romain-au-Mont-d'Or, Rhône (69)
René Raoul's Jardin de pierre in Pléhédel, Côtes d'Armor
Emmanuel Arredondo in Varennes Vauzelles, Nièvre (58)
Musée de la Luna Rossa (revisited), Caen, Calvados (14)
La Fontaine de Château-Chinon, Nièvre (58)

St Vincent Beechey in Worsley

 

'IN MEMORIAM
ST. VINCENT BEECHEY, M.A.
SCHOLAR OF CAIUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE,
BORN AUGUST 7TH 1806, DIED AUGUST 14th 189[9]'

St Vincent Beechey was the vicar of Fleetwood and Thornton-Cleveleys in Lancashire and later the vicar of Worsley, then also in Lancashire but now in Salford. He is the founder of Rossall School, Fleetwood, about which he wrote the 100-page book The Rise and Progress of Rossall School: A Jubilee Sketch (1894). Perhaps surprisingly, the book isn't at all turgid but endeavours to be amusing, although there are far too many exclamation marks. The following sentence, which uses a well-known expression of the time from Uncle Tom's Cabin to describe the school, is fairly typical:

'Under [the Council's] fostering care my child seemed to grow of itself, like Topsy!'

Link to Beechey's book:
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St Vincent Beechey: The Rise and Progress of Rossall School

David Town and Paul Bagshaw's 4 Days (2003)

4 Days is filmed in Southport and directed by David Town and Paul Bagshaw, two former teachers who moved into the video industry. The cast is almost exclusively made up of amateurs from Southport, Lancashire. I had a few doubts before watching this very obscure feature film, but was pleasantly surprised.

 

The story is a family drama involving three generations in which the father is in a battle to win control over his father's leisure industry empire in Southport. In the process, his son is kidnapped by (it transpires) men working for the grandfather, who is really a kind of evil godfather. The result of the battle is unknown as the murder (and I think we have to assume there was one) takes place off-screen: only a gunshot is heard.

 

There's a little wooden acting largely disguised by self-effacing head gestures and clever evasive camera movements, but that doesn't spoil a rather compelling film.

 

After 4 Days and The Mirror, Bagshaw (who began Channel 10 in 1989) decided that stories taken from real life were more effective, and The Secret (2007) is based on a situation he encountered when teaching, where a mother had to tell her 17-year-old son that she was in fact his grandmother and his sister his mother.