The lost decoration of the chapel

 The Georgian chapel in the Charterhouse was designed to be somewhat austere.  The walls are plain, although they have become encrusted with memorials over the years.  The windows are of plain glass.  The showy chandeliers which light it date from the late 20th century.  The other major addition has been the organ in 1901.  Any other decoration depends on the tastes of the Master of the time.  Since its building in 1780 the chapel has been renovated or restored several times, the major restoration occurring in the 1940s following damage during the war.  Each time the aim has been to put it back as far as possible to its original condition.  The new heating system is invisible and the sound system unobtrusive.  It is, after all, a listed building.  

So what are we to make of this plaque?  It is dated 1901 and it is fixed to the side of the organ, close to the east window.  It describes the new stained glass, consisting of heraldic panels.  But there are no such panels.  So what happened?  

A former Master was of the opinion that there never was a stained glass window; that the plaque was put up prematurely and the new window was never installed.  I accepted that but now I know it to be untrue.  We have no pictures of the chapel from the early 20th century to prove it, but a more probable explanation is that the window was shattered during the deterioration of the building which took place in the aftermath of the evacuation in 1941.  It took 7 years to restore the Charterhouse and get the residents back in.  There is a photograph dating from the later 1940s, taken by those assessing the damage.

The window has been boarded up.  It isn't clear what the rectangular patch in the centre is.  The whole window could have been removed for safe-keeping, but no one has heard of it since so this is very unlikely.  

And yesterday I came across the evidence that the stained glass was indeed installed and was certainly there in 1926.  The Hull Daily Mail published a lengthy piece on the Charterhouse, including a kind of "secret shopper" account of a service in the chapel.

I'm not sure what a "severly [sic] heraldic window" is, but the description is clear enough.  So the conclusion has to be that it was destroyed during, or in the aftermath of, the war.

The colourful window would have been partly a fiction anyway.  There are no "original arms of the de la Pole family" distinct from the arms of William and Michael.  The simple device with its its three leopards' heads was the same for all three.  The arms of the Charterhouse, shown at the top of the plaque, were designed by the 1780 Corporation but not registered with the College of Heralds.

There remains a question in my mind.  The glass of the east window looks old.  It has that rippled effect which characterises glass that was not made my modern factories and has been in situ long enough to have "flowed" slightly.

There is another puzzle about past chapel decorations.  

This letter to the Hull Daily Mail by the Master, Rev Arthur Chignell, appeared two years before the description of the chapel above.  The chapel is being painted under the supervision of the principal of the Art School, and the men are busy on "a frieze of angel faces".  There are plans for the spandrels adjoining the pulpit (which is certainly not "time of Charles II" as the piece says) and around the doorway.  Chignell knew that the trustees would not stump up the money for all this and so was seeking contributions from the public.

It sounds inappropriate, tasteless, even tacky.  There is no mention of such decoration in the 1926 description; and we can see from the 1940s photo that it didn't happen.  Perhaps he couldn't raise the cash.  Perhaps the trustees vetoed the idea.  We can only be grateful.

Pubs and publicans

 It might come as a surprise that the Charterhouse has owned a number of pubs in its history.  In 1822, for instance, there were 5.  The reason is simply that the lands bestowed on us by Michael de la Pole and his son became part of the port city which began its growth in the 18th century, and plots of valuable land were leased to what we would now call developers.  Pubs were profitable and the income from leases was very welcome.  The Church of England, along with the Roman Catholic church, has never had a problem with the sale and consumption of alcohol - in moderation, of course.

Among the oldest of the pubs on Charterhouse property was the Blue Bell Inn, close to the Minster.

It has its origins in the 17th century and is the only one of our pubs still in existence.  Jane Crake, who was admitted to a room in the Charterhouse in 1855, knew it well.  Her husband John was the licensee up to his death in 1841.  There is no record of Jane being the publican; another man is listed after John's time; but she is described as that on the 1851 census, and in our register.

The Charterhouse itself was very close to two pubs on land we own.  On the corner of Charterhouse Lane and Wincolmlee was the De La Pole Arms, leased in 1802, by Thomas Wilson.  

De La Pole Arms

Sun Inn

On the other side of the road, at the corner of Charterhouse Lane and Bourne St, was the Sun Inn.  Between them, these two establishments must have made hefty profits from the residents and been responsible for some of the evictions on the grounds of habitual drunkenness.  The Sun Inn was familiar to one resident, Ada Carver, for a different reason.  Her husband, John, was the licensee in 1911.  That fact must have helped her to get admitted in the 1930s.  

Both the De La Pole Arms and the Sun Inn were demolished in the 20th century.  Where the Sun stood there is now a patch of mature trees.

The original Grapes

Almost as close to us as the Sun Inn and the De La Pole Arms, although not on our property, was the Grapes on Sykes St.  In 1871 and 1881 the publican was John Brigham Salvidge.  He retired to a room in the Charterhouse in March 1894.  In the 1930s the building was replaced by a new pub, which was later renamed, imaginatively, the Charterhouse (causing some confusion to the postmen).  It closed in the 2010s and is now a hostel.

Quite a few Charterhouse residents were formerly publicans.  I've found some, but there will be more with names too common to research.  Hannah Grant, who was admitted in 1840, is listed in the directories of 1829 and 1834 as licensee of the Unicorn on Salthouse Lane.  Very little is known about this pub.  Equally obscure is the inn which was apparently run by William Addey.  On the 1861 census he is described as an innkeeper and lived in Queen St - where there were no pubs.  He entered the Charterhouse in 1880, and on the 1891 census his occupation as "retired publican".

John Bardsley was the licensee of the Rose & Crown Inn at 5 Blackfriargate in 1881 but went on to describe himself as a retired manufacture of mineral water.

William Hird was licensee of, first, the Coach & Horses on Mytongate.  He gave that up in 1830 and took on the Crown and Cushion which was situated on the junction between Silver St and the Land of Green Ginger.  Hird and his wife Martha Knowles were born in Lincolnshire; their 14-year-old son William died "after much suffering, borne with extraordinary patience" in 1843.  The couple were still there in 1851, but ten years later they were in Aldbrough running a board and lodging house.  Two years later they entered the Charterhouse.  William died in 1864, Martha three years later.

John Cribb was born c. 1795 on the Isle of Wight but he was in Hull by 1830 and by 1834 was a beer retailer in Air St.  The 1830 Beerhouse Act had liberalised the law so that beer and ale could be brewed and sold from domestic premises, and Cribb's home in Air St was listed as a beerhouse in 1838.  By 1842 this had become the Tanner's Arms and Cribb was listed as an ale and porter dealer.  Like many other publicans John Cribb didn't rely on the pub trade for his livelihood; he also worked as a tanner, and the name he gave his pub surely reflects that.  From 1859 to 1869 he had the licence of the White Swan in Wincolmlee, but perhaps that didn't work out because on the 1871 census he was described as a tanner.  He was admitted to the Charterhouse in 1873 and died in 1881.

George Coggrave is more elusive.  He was born in Howden c. 1806 and at some point before 1856 he had the licence of the Full Measure in Lower Union St; it was transferred from him in that year.  On the 1861 census he is a licensed victualler living in Vincent St but of which pub or where is unknown.  In 1871 he was an unemployed barman.  He entered the Charterhouse with his wife Emily in 1874 and died in 1880.

The Bean

Christopher Hewson was a sailmaker for most of his life, but in 1881 we find him living at 17 Bean St with his wife and a servant, running The Bean.  (This is it today, a later incarnation).  As with so many others it was a temporary break from his real business.  He was back to sail-making by 1891.  He was admitted to the Charterhouse in 1901.

King William IV

We have a fuller history of Robert Fewster, who combined being a builder and joiner, employing 7 people at one point, with running the King William IV in Bond St.  But he went bankrupt twice and lost the pub for good.  He entered the Charterhouse in 1874.

Ship & Plough

Another who dabbled in pub management was William Duffield Hardy.  Born in Bishop Burton in 1823, he became a tailor in Hull, described in 1870 as a "clothier of Lowgate".  By 1881 he was a Master Tailor employing three "hands".  But in 1873 he took over the licence of the Ship and Plough on Salthouse Lane.  We don't know how long he kept it, or whether he took an active role in its management.  Hardy married his housekeeper, 16 years his junior, in 1882 and by 1891 he seems to have retired as a tailor while his wife is described as a tailoress.  He entered the Charterhouse in 1892 and died 4 years later.

A surprising pub landlord was James Henry Wright; surprising because he was prominent as a Master Shipwright at the same time.  Born in 1828 in Kent, he made his career in Hull and became a leading light in the Good Intention Society, a shipwrights' trade union founded in 1824.  It regulated wages and ensured that the master shipwrights didn't undercut each other in bidding for work.  The owners fought against it and tried to defeat a strike in 1857 by bringing in labour from other ports.  Although Wright must have been a busy man, by 1871 he was publican of the King's Arms on Witham, although he lived on Princess St.  The census described his as Publican and shipwright.  

King's Arms

It's not clear how long he kept the licence of the pub, but it closed in around 1902, which fits with Wright's admission to the Charterhouse in 1903.

Another who tried combining pub management with another career was Samuel Morton.  Born in Leicester in 1837, by 1871 he was living in Hull and working as an iron moulder.  Ten years later he was the licensee of the Grapes Inn on Lime Street, and living with his family on the premises.  We don't know how long that lasted, but by 1891 he was back working as an iron moulder, and stuck with that until entering the Charterhouse in 1907.

Grapes Inn, Lime St

Next there is Joseph Jennings.  In 1891 he describes himself as a publican and lives at 24 King St.  But we can't find his pub there.  

Rose & Crown, West St.

The 1892 Bulmer's Directory has him as the victualler of the Rose & Crown on West St.  Jennings became a Charterhouse resident in 1874.

Richard Purdon had a chequered history.  He was born c.1790 in Wilberfoss.  On the 1841 census he was in the Hull Borough Gaol.  Ten years later, married to Harriet, he was a labourer living in Temperance St.  The 1861 census record is lost, but he entered the Charterhouse in 1864.  When he died, in 1867, the death notice in the local paper said he was "formerly of the King's Head Inn, Mytongate".  

Samuel Ripley's venture into the pub trade was just as brief.  He was born in Kirkstall c.1821 and married Eliza.  For most of his working life he was a "forge hammerman" (by 1891 that became a "forge steam hammerman") but on the 1881 census he was a licensed victualler.  In July 1887 the local paper published the routine list of the transfer of pub licenses, and this tells us that Ripley had been the licensee of the Founder's Arms on Drainside.  He entered the Charterhouse in 1895.

Samuel Cheeseman was licensee of two pubs, one after the other.  He was born in 1850 and followed his father's trade as a twine spinner before becoming the "hotel keeper" of the Granby Hotel on Wellington St at some point in the 1880s.

Granby Hotel

By 1901 he had moved on to running the Brittannia Hotel on Mytongate.

  By 1901 he had retired.  He was admitted to the Charterhouse in March 1913.  Interestingly, Samuel's mother. Isabella, had also been a resident, dying in 1909 aged 90.  Samuel died in January 1922.

Greenland Fishery, Church St

John Coultas was born in Blacktoft near Goole in 1808 and became a tile maker in Goxhill, Lincolnshire, before coming to Hull and taking on the license of the Greenland Fishery on Church St.  There were several pubs of that name in the city.  John stayed there until at least 1871.  He became a Charterhouse resident in June 1879 and died in October 1882.

William Arthur Hodgson, born in 1862, was a cabinet maker for most of his life but went bankrupt in 1901.  Five years later he took up the license of the Yorkshire Arms on Witham and was there until the pub closed at the end of 1912.  He and his wife were living on Russell St in 1934 and entered the Charterhouse some time between then and 1939,

Robert Carrick, in a surprising career change, was a pub licensee for only 5 years.  He was an East Riding man, born in Lelley near Preston in 1802.  He lived in Preston until the 1860s working as a farm overseer and bailiff, before moving to Prince St in Hull.  In 1870 he took over the license of the Spread Eagle in Lime St and held it until 1875.  Three years later he was admitted to the Charterhouse.

Unravelling the stories of residents

 Our 19th century register gives us the basis of a database currently containing 1,398 names.  Quite a number of those names have only come to light by checking the register against the censuses.  When a married man was awarded a room his wife, who entered with him, was often not recorded; she turns up on the census, either with her husband or as a widow awarded a room in her own right after her husband's death.  If I go on to research the life of a resident more fully, I will often need at least 3 family history websites, plus online forums and general searching.  Occasionally an interesting story will emerge.

A case in point is that of James Beecher, who was awarded a room on 26 August 1886.  Sure enough, he is on the 1891 census. 

I now know that he was a mariner and that he was born in Morton, Lincolnshire.  And I can add his wife, Mackenzie, born in Beverley, to the database.  They should be easy enough to find.

The first problem was that the name was not Beecher, but Beacher.  Perhaps the mistake had been the Master's when he wrote the name in the register.  Once that was cleared up, the story could be extricated.

James Beacher was born on 5 September 1815 in Morton near Gainsborough and was baptised 25 days later in All Saints Church, Gainsborough.  He was in Hull by 1837 when he married Ellen Pickering on 21 July at All Saints Church, Sculcoates.  On the 1841 census the couple were living in Catherine Square, Sculcoates.

A chunk of the 1851 census for Hull is missing, and it includes the Beachers, so I had to pick them up again in 1861.  They were then living at 10 Lucas Square, Sykes St, with their 4 children.  James is described as a merchant seaman.  A decade on and they are still there, with James described as a mariner.  The photo shows another square off Sykes St, which would have been very similar.

Ellen Beacher died in 1877.  James, however, is on the 1881 census, married to Mackenzie, living at 9, Groves Terrace, Sutton.  James is now a lighterman.  However, there is no record of a marriage between James and Mackenzie.  What is the story here?  Were they in a relationship even before Ellen's death?  Unmarried couples were common enough but would she have been accepted into the Charterhouse with James if their status was known?  Mackenzie died in 1894, and because she is not in the register the date is not recorded there.  James died a year later, on 6 August 1895.

Mackenzie remained a mystery.  With a name like that, and the birthplace of Beverley, she was findable - she was Mackenzie Creasor, who was baptised in Beverley in 1817.  Her only other appearance in the records is as the mother of Sarah Creaser [sic] who was baptised in Beverley on 29 December 1831.  No father is named, and Mackenzie would have been very young when her daughter was born.  I can find no other record of mother or daughter.

Two other residents show that mysteries remain.  One such is James Colvin.  He was admitted to the Charterhouse on 2 June 1870, and, as well as in the register, on the two censuses on which he appears his surname is written as "Coloine".  It took a while to discover the true spelling, and so to learn a bit about him.  His date of birth, the register informs us, was 15 September 1801.  He married Catherine McIntyre in Hull in 1830 and by 1841 the couple were living in Holden's Entry, Scale Lane.  Catherine died in 1857, and in 1861 James was a shopman at 22 Parliament St, with his grown-up son and daughter.  But all the censuses agree that he was born in Guernsey, Channel Islands.  Guernsey doesn't have the comprehensive, online BMD records that the UK has, but people more familiar with their records than I am say that they can't find anyone by that name.  So I know nothing about his background.

Another apparent foreigner was William Henry Foreman, who entered the Charterhouse on on 6 February 1889 when he was 73.  He became a shoemaker and broker on West St, Hull, by 1851, but in 1861 he was in jail for a misdemeanour - the record doesn't say what.  It probably wasn't too serious because he went back to shoemaking.  On all the records he gives his place of birth as Quebec, Canada.  And that is more intriguing because there is the record of a baptism of William Henry Foreman in Holy Trinity, Hull, in 1816, a date which fits exactly.  Just coincidence?  Or is there a real story behind it?

Not all the residents' stories can be unravelled.  But what research I can do turns them from names and dates in a book into real people with fascinating lives.

The Westerman family

 Catherine Westerman was just a name on our register, a widow admitted to the Charterhouse on 2 July 1896 who died on 5 November 1910.  But as with so many people, a bit of digging reveals an interesting life.

Catherine Brownrigg was born in Hull in 1829 and married Joseph Robert Westerman in 1850.  The young couple were both from typical poor, working families.  On the 1851 census they were living on Waterworks St and Joseph was a hairdresser.

Waterworks St

Ten years later, with two children, they had moved to Howard St in Sutton.  Joseph had a job as a foreman in a cotton mill and Catherine was working as a dressmaker.  Such career changes were common enough.  Men took work where they could find it, and this may have been a step up in income.  But Joseph was more restless than most.  By 1871 they had moved to Linwood Terrace in Sutton and he had become a grocer.  Of course, we only have these ten-yearly snapshots, so there may have been other upheavals as well.

But soon after this the Westermans' lives took a distinctly unusual turn.  Joseph became a shipbuilder.  That must surely have required capital investment; where did he get it from?  The 1881 census shows the couple living at 17 John St with 4 of their children and a servant.  

John St today

We know that Joseph had gone into partnership with William Sanderson as shipbuilders but that this partnership was dissolved in 1879.  We also know that Joseph had a shipyard and dry dock in Hull.  

I can only find two ships built by or for Joseph R Westerman, both of them sailing ketches.  The first is the 71-ton ketch City of London, built in Rye for Westerman in 1883.  That was followed by another ketch, the 79-ton City of Manchester, built by Westerman in 1884.

But that was the last.  On 12 July 1884 Joseph Robert Westerman died of cholera, aged only 52, at his home on John St.  He was not a poor man.  In his will he left £1,910 19s 2d, worth about £126.5k today.  His executors were Catherine and their eldest son, John Albert.  But John Albert died in April 1885, aged only 25.  Two daughters, Mabel and Kate, also died in 1902 and1909.

What happened to Catherine in the aftermath of Joseph's death is something of a mystery.  Two Hull directories, Kelly's (1889) and Bulmer's (1892) show her living at 5 Reed St, Hull, in an "apartment".  But the 1891 census shows her living with a family in Streatham, London, as a "monthly nurse sick".  The term "monthly nurse" usually meant a nurse tending a mother after her confinement; there was a new baby in the Streatham household.  Why was Catherine there?  Was this a temporary favour to someone she knew?  If so, one would expect her to be described as a visitor rather than a servant, as the census has it.  Whatever the reason, it seems that Catherine was not the comfortably-off widow that Joseph's will would lead us to expect.  Perhaps his legacy was consumed by debts.

She was awarded a room in the Charterhouse on 2 July 1896 and lived there for 14 years before her death on 5 November 1910, aged 81.  Her name (as Katherine, a spelling we find nowhere else) was added to the family gravestone in the Hull General Cemetery.  This no longer exists, a casualty of the City Council's remarkable act of vandalism in the 1970s, but the inscription was recorded by the EYFHS.  The life of Catherine Westerman reminds us that behind every name in a list is a person with a fascinating story.

*Thanks to Bill Longbone for some of this research.

Five more women

 In investigating the lives of past Charterhouse residents it is usually more difficult to find out about the lives of women, especially those with common names.  But where an occupation is given and we have some other bit of information to go on, we can use all the data available online to give them some substance.

MARY ELIZABETH FARR was born c. 1852 and married (or didn't - there's no record of a marriage) William Farr, a boiler maker.  In 1881 they lived at 15 Cottingham Terrace, Sculcoates, by the side of the Drain.  By 1891 they had moved buildings at 2, Sykes St, close to the Charterhouse.  It was obviously a hard life in poor circumstances.  She didn't get her name in the papers until: 

Hull Daily Mail, 21 June 1900

That's all we have.  So what happened?  An electric car was an expensive novelty, so what it was doing on Sykes St, why Mary was in it and why she jumped out must remain forever a mystery.

William died in 1898 and Mary continued to live in Sykes St with her daughters Jane and Rose.  She worked as a charwoman.  She was admitted to the Charterhouse on 6 February 1919 and died in 1937.

ELIZABETH JESSOP was born Elizabeth Murphy in Lincolnshire c.1820 and married James Jessop in Hull in 1850.  They had a daughter, Rebecca, in 1855 but James died in 1858.  Elizabeth took a job as Matron of the Hull Lying-in Charity at 4 Reed St, where she and Rebecca lived in furnished accommodation.  

This charity was established in 1804 as a small maternity hospital for those married women who could not afford the fees for private midwives.  It was managed by a committee of ten ladies (said a report of 1898).  As well as the Matron there was a certified midwife in attendance and doctors on call if needed.  The Matron was responsible for the administration of the charity.  

Elizabeth retired in 1896 and was admitted to the Charterhouse on 1 October that year.  She died on 9 May 1911.  

HELEN MARIA HARRISON lived almost all her life in one house, in Prospect Place, Hull.

She was born in 1838 to James and Margaret Harrison.  On the 1851 census James described himself as an estate agent and genealogist.  By 1871 he was the "town clerk's assistant".  Helen herself was always a music teacher.  We have no more detail than that.

On the 1881 census Helen was living with a family on Grimston Street, described as a servant and music teacher.  Was this a desperate need to earn more money or an escape from the parental home?  By 1891 she was back in Prospect Place with her widowed father.  He died in 1893 and Helen continued to live there alone.  She was admitted to the Charterhouse on 6 January 1910 and died in May 1916.

SARAH TASKER was born Sarah Tasker in Wyberton, Lincolnshire.  She married Frederick Tasker in 1863 and in 1871 the couple were in Skirbeck, Lincolnshire, with Frederick listed as shipsmith & innkeeper.  During the following decade the couple came to Hull.  In 1881 they were managing an establishment which was variously described as a cocoa house, a coffee house and refreshment rooms at 55-56 Paragon St.

This was the White Horse Hotel (on the left of the photo), a temperance hotel which belonged to the Hull People's Public House Company.  This group owned 18 of these hotels in Hull, providing meals and non-alcoholic drinks to take people away from the pubs.  Some of them lasted up to the 1920s before conceding defeat and getting a drinks licence.

Frederick died in 1893 and Sarah carried on alone.  In September 1900, so the Hull Daily Mail tells us, she was granted a "billiard licence".  A year later she was manageress of a coffee house at 10, Witham, another of the People's Public House temperance establishments.  

She was admitted to the Charterhouse on 2 January 1907 and died on 3 March 1915.

EDITH WITTY was another resident who didn't marry.  She came from an East Riding family and was herself born in Hornsea on 18 July 1866.  They were in Hull by 1871 in Durham St, East Hull.  Edith's father John was a shoe-maker.  By 1881, at the age of 14, Edith was a domestic servant - a general skivvy - in the household of a bootmaker.  Ten years later she was back with her parents in Dryden's Entry, Salthouse Lane, but still working as a domestic servant.

Dryden's Entry

In 1901 she was a live-in servant again, this time in the house hold of a "Minister of the Catholic Church of Zion" in Grimsby.  (This was an evangelical sect originating in the United States.)

In the following decade Edith seems to have broken away from the domestic servant role.  On the 1911 census she is a visitor in another household, and her occupation is given as office cleaner.

We don't know when Edith was admitted to the Charterhouse.  It's too late for our register, and the published electoral lists show her living alone until the late 1920s.  However, she appears in the Charterhouse on very informative 1939 electoral register.  She died in 1946, so would have been one of those evacuated from the house in 1941 and not returned.

Edith Witty seems to have been one of those people for whom the Charterhouse was originally founded - the genuine aged poor.

Francis Askew and his brother Charles

 

Francis Askew

Francis Askew was one of the great and the good of Hull.  As a trustee of the Charterhouse he is of interest to us.  And his connection goes further than that.

Francis was born in Shoreditch, London, in 1855.  He was one of 6 children, his brother Charles being the oldest.  Both brothers were in Hull by 1881.  Francis went into the printing trade, and he also entered public life, serving in various societies and on charitable projects.  By 1912 he was an Alderman and, in 1916, he became the city's first Labour Lord Mayor.  Like Charles, he was a pillar of the Methodist church.

We don't know when he became a trustee of the Charterhouse but he took that role by 1910.  In December 1910 he caused a stir at a trustees' meeting.  Askew “stated that on a recent Sunday he had occasion to visit a friend of his, who was an inmate of the Charterhouse, in response to a request to do so, and found that on reaching the Charterhouse the front gate was chained and locked, and that he was unable to gain admission until, as he learned some considerable time after, a service was concluded and the gate was unlocked. Mr. Askew said that he understood that it was the regular practice to stop all means of ingress and egress at the Charterhouse during a service in the Chapel.” The Master [William Hay Fea] was to be asked for his observations. Fea replied, in a letter, that it had been the practice for many years. All the inmates were required to attend services unless excused by the Master. The front door of the Hospital and Chapel opened almost directly onto the street, so locking the door was for the “safety and comfort of the sick and infirm” (who were, presumably left alone during the service) and to prevent interruption from outside. “..... boys and youths of the neighbourhood frequently entered the forecourt to do damage, steal the flowers or make a disturbance by hammering loudly on the front door and then running away.” The Trustees decided that the practice of locking up the Charterhouse was undesirable and must stop.  Fea tried to fight the decision but lost.  It might be significant in light of later events that Askew had a personal friend in the Charterhouse.

Charles Aldis Askew was born on 30 January 1853.  He married Maria Burden in Lewisham in 1878 and, like his brother, appears on the 1881 census in Hull, living at 12 Crystal Terrace, Southcoates.  He was a machine fitter's labourer.  By 1891 the couple had moved to Newington St, Hawthorne Ave, and had a son, Henry, who seems to have been their only child.  Charles had become a machine driller.  Twenty years later Henry had moved out but nothing else had changed.  Charles, unlike his brother, stayed out of the limelight.  There is no record of any involvement in politics or in public service except for a report in the Hull Daily Mail on 16 June 1897, where he is listed as present at a half-yearly meeting of the Hull Savings Bank board (though not as a trustee).  At some point in the 1930s he was admitted to the Charterhouse.  He is listed there in the 1939 electoral register, but not in 1926.  

Did his relationship with Francis have anything to do with his admission?  Probably.  Francis died in 1940, but Charles was blessed with longevity.  

The Hull Daily Mail of 24 July 1947 reports on a party at the Charterhouse with 95-year-old Charles as the oldest guest.  But in the next few years he moved out, to Dunbar House, a retirement home on Saltshouse Road.  It's not clear why.  Perhaps it could provide a level of care which was not possible at the Charterhouse.  It was at Dunbar House that he celebrated his 100th birthday, as the Daily Mirror reported on 30 January 1953.

He had moved again by the time of his death on 27 March 1954, to Hugh Webster House on St Luke's St, a nursing home.  

Charles left £262 11s 1d (over £6,000 in today's values) in his will to his son Henry, a retired headmaster.  

Because Charles Askew had moved out of the Charterhouse by the time of his death we cannot claim him as our only known centenarian.  But his story, with that of his brother, sheds light on our 20th century story.

Paupers' Graves

 

Most of the Charterhouse residents who are recorded in our 19th century register, like those who died in earlier centuries, have no marked graves.  Many were laid to rest in the Hull General Cemetery, their graves recorded but with no headstones.  The Sculcoates workhouse had a contract with the cemetery to bury their dead in the pauper's section (left) but almshouses like the Charterhouse had no such contract so their graves are more scattered.  Funerals and burials cost money so were carried out as cheaply as possible.  In 1862 the Master's daughter, Emily Bromby, wrote a begging letter to a contact of Richard Haworth for the £2 it would cost to have this inmate "respectably" and "decently" buried.  Even if an inmate left enough money for the funeral there would rarely be a headstone.

An exception was when there was an existing grave of a family member, and the deceased could be interred in the same grave and an addition carved on the headstone.  That has helped to rescue at least one resident from obscurity.  Jane Foster appears on our register with the bare details.  She was admitted on 9 September 1876 aged 76 and died on 27 December 1878.  We can be sure from that simply that she was either a widow or a single woman or she would not have been given a room in her own right.  But the name is too common to enable us easily to find out more about her.  Until, that is, Bill Longbone of the Friends of Hull General Cemetery turned up a gravestone.

It was hard to photograph but the details are clear.  Jane was the widow of William Foster, who died in 1855.  We have enough information to find out more about her.  She was born Jane Richardson in Hull and married William Foster of Hull on 30 June 1823 in Rise, East Yorkshire.  William was a brewer and by 1841 the couple were living on Vincent St, Hull.  In 1851 William was employing two "hands" and they had a domestic servant.  They also had two daughters.  His small brewing operation was apparently moderately successful.  On 5 March 1852 a court case was reported in the Hull Packet; William had been the victim of a robbery.  The thief had stolen a gold watch, a gold chain and a hat.  

After William's death it seems that Jane did not try to carry on the business.  In 1861 she was living on Shaw St, Drypool, with her daughter Harriet and Harriet's husband, and was described as an annuitant, i.e. a pensioner.  By 1871 she was a lodger, along with another annuitant, in the home of a mariner.  Five years later she got a room in the Charterhouse.

I have compiled a database of 1,179 Charterhouse residents - a small fraction of the total.  All of them, like Jane Foster, were interesting individuals who deserve to be remembered as part of our social history.