Old News

Friday 4 January 1884

LECTURE

On Wednesday evening, the Rev. J. F. Shafto, of Hunmanby, gave a lecture in the Wesleyan School-room, Filey, which was crowded, on “Outcast London.” The lecture was illustrated by diagrams, and the scenes on the canvas were so graphically described by the lecturer that the audience was kept spell-bound. A vote of thanks was enthusiastically carried at the close to Mr. Shafto. Mr. Shafto said that he intended giving the lecture at Hunmanby and North Burton, and the collections at all the places would go to the support of Dr. Stephenson’s Homes in London, without anything being deducted, as any expense he had been at he should give to the institution.

The Scarborough Mercury

Thomas Bowman STEPHENSON

FamilySearch Tree

My Methodist History

Now we expect children to be masked all day at school and injected with unknown, possibly poisonous, substances.

Anniversaries

1879 · Harold BROWN · 94PX-M88

Harold was born in Leeds. His mother, Elizabeth Clay AYRTON, died when he was five years old and his father married widow Sarah Kearney, née PATTEN. Harold become a schoolmaster and lived for some years in West Avenue, Filey. The First World War was the death of him. He served with distinction and the following links give details.

Jesus College, Cambridge

Beck Isle Museum

War Memorial – The Hollies, Leeds

Three headstones in Lawnswood Cemetery, Leeds, remember Harold and members of his large family. Find him on the FamilySearch Shared Tree. (He married Dorothy Josephine ELLISON at St Oswald’s, Filey, in November 1904.)

1620 · Frances BUCKE · L71N-LWP

One of ten children born to Sir John BUCKE and Elizabeth GREEN. Filey Genealogy & Connections is more informative than the Shared Tree.

1837 · Charles NEWTON & Hannah CLOUGH · MP6H-X65 & MJ62-NB8

Charles was born in Helmsley and married Hannah in Hull, but descendants formed relationships with Filey families – including FENBY, SKELTON & STEPHENSON.

1916 · Samuel TOWSE · 909 Towse G769

Samuel was a grocer and sub-Postmaster in Filey. Born just a few miles from the town, he married a Lincolnshire lass in Scarborough in 1864. They had at least seven children, five of whom married but the grandchildren count in my database is currently stuck on eight. The Shared Tree offers a further three (from four marriages).

In loving memory of EMILY, daughter of SAMUEL AND EMILY TOWSE,

who entered into rest February 24th 1896, aged 25 years

‘With Christ which is far better’

WALTER and LILY TOWSE

In ever loving memory of SAMUEL TOWSE, died Jan 4th 1916, aged 76.

‘Forever Lord I abide with Thee’

Also of EMILY, beloved wife of SAMUEL TOWSE, died Dec 21 1922, aged 85.

‘At rest’

1939 · Tanton FELL · L7XG-6LC

Tanton the Second’s life began life in Huggate in 1880. His distinctive given name derives from his second great grandmother Mary TANTON.

I will put the Towse and Fell stones on FamilySearch as soon as I can.

Journal

1974 OXFORD

Friday

Out of the rain, sucking chocolate. Two more imperfect books from work – Having Been a Soldier signed by the author (Colin Mitchell) and Lyall Watson’s Supernature with the first 30 pages missing. Dan had a large volume of Michaelangelo’s Drawings. The drawing on the front cover, he said, is in the Ashmolean but never on show. In the book it is wrongly numbered 336 instead of 363 which makes it, Dan said, an imperfect book. But of course, it’s miles above our cut off price of 3 or 4 pounds even if he hadn’t been joking.

Dan continues to be my only workmate. He had a book about George Eliot and related the fascinating episode of her honeymoon in Venice when her husband, twenty years or so her junior, leapt out of the bedroom window into a canal and was fished out by gondoliers. For Want of a Golden City prompted me to ask if he’d been to Scarborough and visited the Sitwell’s home there. He hadn’t but told me of a recital at the Oxford Town Hall when old Edith, vicious bitch by that time, was reading to Walton’s Façade. At the end of the performance, sitting in her invalid chair, she waved a walking stick at the audience. A friend of Dan’s was actually acquainted with Sachaverall and went walking with him, I think at Renishaw. On returning to the house he went to the bathroom and, in wet shoes, slipped and fell heavily, damaging his ribs. The doctor came and asked, “well, Mr Robinson, have you broken anything?” “Yes,” exclaimed the distraught man, “an Eighteenth-Century washstand.”

Mark of Man 79 · Jetty