The extraordinary life and death of John Jackson

In an earlier post I focussed on a particular episode in the life of John Jackson.  Now I want to expand on what we know about this fascinating man.
He was born in around 1772, but not in Hull.  We don't know where.  With a name like John Jackson he is very difficult to research.  The first certain sighting of him is on 2 November 1813, when he married Alice Cowan at Holy Trinity, Hull.  He was described as a merchant.  Since he was about 41 at the time it was probably not his first marriage.  Alice was 20 years younger than her husband.  Two years later, on 29 July 1815, their daughter Elizabeth was baptised at St Mary's, Hull.  Their abode was given as Bishop Lane.  It seems that the child died in infancy, and a few years later another daughter was born and given the same name - a common practice then.  It will have been during this period that the couple had the run-in with Robert Bamford while Alice was heavily pregnant.  John, it seems, already had debt problems.

Homes of the Jackson family - North Walls, Bishop Lane and Bowlalley Lane

By 1823 the family had moved to 16, Bowlalley Lane, where Baines' Directory describes John as a merchant.  It's likely that his merchandise was books, and that he was also printing and publishing his and others' work.

16 Bowlalley Lane

At some point he joined the Radical movement.  This had arisen in the 18th century as a growing demand for electoral reform, both in national and local government.  1819 saw the Peterloo Massacre at one of the many large protest gatherings; they were rural riots in the 1820s.  In Hull there was a particular focus on corruption in local government.  Accounts dwell on the role of James Acland, but by the time he came to Hull, Jackson may already have been at the forefront of the reform movement.  The 21st edition of Acland's weekly publication, the Hull Portfolio, on 24 December 1831, led with a letter from Acland to Jackson: "Dear Sir.  At a Public meeting of the People of Hull, held at the scite [sic] of the Old Gaol, now some weeks since, a certain declaration to His Majesty was unanimously resolved upon.  You were the Chairman at that Meeting, and as the proceedings were of my suggestion I trust I may be permitted to enquire, whether the document in question (which was signed by thousands) has been duly forwarded by you to His Majesty - if so by what means, and, if otherwise, why."
Acland must have known perfectly well what was going on; the Portfolio was printed by Jackson at his Bowlalley Lane premises.  Shortly afterwards the People of Hull became a formal group as the Hull Political Union with John Jackson as its first president.  The implication is that Acland was the instigator of the Political Union and pulling the strings, while Jackson was simply his puppet.  That has certainly become the official version, and Jackson's name appears nowhere in the accounts of the time.  But there is a strong possibility that John Jackson played a bigger part than history records.
James Acland was a hugely disruptive presence in the city.  In a very short time he was stirring up almost nightly demonstrations.  His full story has been well documented, including his ferry scheme and his standing for Parliament.  He was imprisoned in 1832, and it became clear that he had created a great deal of personal animosity from people who had been his allies, including John Jackson.  In 1832 Jackson published a pamphlet, written by F. Adams with a preface by John himself, setting out the ways in which Acland had broken his promises and conned his friends out of money which he never paid back.
Jackson had money troubles, probably exacerbated by his involvement with Acland.  He was jailed for non-payment of taxes in 1833.  But his political activity continued.  In August 1836 a letter to the Hull Advertiser referred to his "stern republicanism".  At some point in the 1840s he, Alice and Elizabeth moved to North Walls, where the 1841 census records him as a Clerk.  But Jackson was in jail at that point, and is recorded on the census there too.  (It was not uncommon for that to happen.)  It is likely that he had continuing problems with debt.
The 1832 Reform Act had brought very limited electoral reform, but the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act delivered much more fundamental changes, and the first election in Hull after it, in 1836, swept away the old regime.  The corruption in the running of local charities including the Charterhouse was tackled.  John Jackson got his name onto the waiting list and was elected to a room in the Charterhouse on 7 February 1844.  Since the choices were made by the

Council, this shows that he had friends, or at least sympathisers, among the Aldermen.  But it was apparently the fourth time that his name had been put forward, and John could not resist a dig at those who had voted against him, as the Hull Advertiser noted on 15 March.  Alice went in with her husband, although her name is not recorded in our register.  In the Charterhouse the couple would have come face to face with Sarah Bamford, twenty years after she had been awarded the room in circumstances which John had complained so bitterly about.  She was still only 76.  And she was to outlive John.
John Jackson died in horrific circumstances on 15 January 1850.

The local paper printed an account of the inquest, which makes grim reading.  The exact circumstances couldn't be known, but his end was the stuff of nightmares.  For Alice it was a double tragedy.  She had lost her husband and she was now homeless.  She was not given a room, and was evicted.  She appears on the 1851 census as a merchant's widow in North Street, Sculcoates.

(Photo of 16 Bowlalley Lane and contributions to this research by M Gilchrist.)

Doing the books

James Acland, the radical Hull publisher, took an interest in the Charterhouse, as we reported in a previous post.  At the end of a long article about it he published the full accounts for 1822.
Accounts are not everyone's idea of bedtime reading, but they can throw a great deal of light on what is going on.  We start with a list of the properties which were bringing in the funding of the hospital.  These were the lands gifted by the founder, Michael de la Pole, and his son, the 2nd Earl of Suffolk.

The Hessle lands were rented by just four people.  Mark Green had 63 acres, mainly of farmland, and paid £128 14s during the year.  Green also appears to have kept a public house.  Sarah Burn and Samuel Burstal had a few acres.  The only reference to the chalk quarry is the note that "The stone pit is in the lands rented by J.R. Pease, Esq. and J. Barkworth".  Pease had a total of more than 40 acres, part of which had been "converted into a ship-yard, but not found to answer, and, in consequence, reduced to its former state".  Pease paid more rent for his lucrative lands than Green did for his.
In Willerby, Richard Pickering paid £130 for more than 73 acres (c. 30 hectares) of "sundry fields", and about 140 acres in Cottingham were shared among four people.

The list of properties in Hull includes 5 public houses and a number of other shops and houses.  Thomas Temple ran a large pub chain, one of which he leased from the Charterhouse in Blue Bell Entry.  He died in 1822.  There were other lease-holders on the west side of High St, including builders George Jackson and Samuel Stubbs.  The Blue Bell Inn itself was part of this portfolio.  Charles Thompson was an Anlaby merchant who had a 20-year lease on a property on High St.  Thomas Wilson leased the De La Pole Arms public house on the corner of Charterhouse Lane and Wincolmlee, along with (in 1802) five houses and a malt kiln.

The accounts (or was it Acland himself?) then turn to an overview of the numbers of inmates since 1717 and the weekly allowances they received.

The numbers are not consistent but are mostly in the 20-30 range.  Until 1754 the weekly allowance was only 1s.4d. (around £7.74 in today's purchasing power), rising to 2s. (£10.25).  In 1780, with a new building, the allowance went up to 3s.6d, (£15) per week.  The number of inmates are recorded as no more than 42, although the new building had 44 rooms.  By 1803 the numbers had risen to 56 (in fact, the new wing was not finished until 1804) and by 1821 there were 57 inmates receiving 6s. (£17) per week.
A long list of the rents collected throughout the year follows.  Then we come to the "weekly disbursements".  There were, as we have seen, 57 "poor people" in the hospital, each receiving 6s. (c. £17) a week.  A sweeper (presumably a cleaner) got 5s. a week.  And then we read that £17.7s.0d was paid "extra on 19th July, by recommendation of the Bench".  This was in celebration of the wedding of King George IV; the residents had their allowances doubled for that week.

The £15 for "occasional relief" implies that additional small sums were sometimes paid out when needed.
All of this tells us little about daily life at the Charterhouse; but the next section, Incidental Charges, is more informative.  Thirty-one items are listed.  The largest single charge is for coals, at £121.13s.3d. (almost £7,000 in today's spending power).  In addition, turves cost £22.4s. (£1.275).  Together these two items were the fuel which formed a vital part of the inmates' weekly allowances.  Every room had a fireplace which provided the only means of cooking as well as heating, so fuel would have been necessary even in warm weather.  17s. was paid to a man called Neale for distributing the coals and turves.  Water also had to be bought in, at a cost of £10.10s, with another 15s. to Wilson for distributing it.
Some of the charges relate to building work, but it's not clear whether this is connected to work at the hospital or to properties elsewhere.  Two bricklayers were paid a total of £157 (c.£9,000) and a joiner and a painter also received their pay.  Sand cost £1.5s. - what was that for?  Nearly £8 was paid for work on the Cottingham and Hessle drains.  We can only guess what Webster the upholsterer did for his £8.15s.3d.  Perhaps Mr Miles, the whitesmith, got his 1/6d for repairing a kettle.  Mr Kay, the plumber, clearly did some substantial work, but what Mr Young did for his £51.2s. (nearly £3,000) is not stated.  The chimney sweeper got 12/-.  But who was "Bennison" (he doesn't merit even a "Mr") who got £1.4s.?
We have two favourite items; £1.5s. was paid for lamp-lighting; and then, last in the list, is 2/- for "surplice washing".  We know from other sources that in the first year of his tenure the Master, Kingsman Baskett, had his surplice laundered twice, at a cost of 4/-.  Thereafter, it was an annual event.
Under Constant Expences [sic] we have the Master's salary of £200.  That is the equivalent of about £11,500 in today's values, but he also got the house; and perhaps the £1 for water was also the Master's expense.  Other staff costs appear in the previous section; the clerk and the porter get £1.1s. each.  There is no matron at this stage in the hospital's life.  Curiously, £1.1s. is paid to the Town's-husband.  This was a term almost unique to Hull, an officer of the Bench or Corporation who looked after the town's money and kept the accounts, among other duties.  It's not clear what services he supplied to the Charterhouse.
Among the last items in the accounts, mainly details of arrears of rents, are Sundries Received.

 

The first two of these sundries defy explanation.  The third is easier.  Consols were government bonds; for some years the Charterhouse had invested income in these bonds, and clearly the interest was useful.

And finally, the summary of the audited accounts.

A tale of radical politics versus corruption

The starting point was a report in the local paper from February 1850 about the grisly death of Charterhouse resident John Jackson.  It said that he was "formerly notorious Radical as a Radical bookseller" and "a linguist, and a man of considerable literary knowledge".  Clearly Jackson was an interesting man and warranted further investigation.

There are newspaper references to John "Radical" Jackson as early as the 1830s - his "stern republicanism" was referred to in a letter to the Hull Advertiser published on August 5, 1836.  In 1833 he was jailed for non-payment of taxes, and he was in prison again in 1841.  Perhaps this radical trouble-maker was involved with the most prominent local radical of the time, publisher James Acland.  Marianne Gilchrist discovered, with a trawl of Acland's Hull Portfolio; or, Memoirs and Correspondence of James Acland  of 1831, that Jackson was indeed an associate of Acland, often writing letters for Acland to publish, and that both men took an interest in the Charterhouse.
One letter in particular stands out.  Here is an extract:

 “There is a widow placed in the Charter-House here in the name of Bamford, whose husband, it is said, bequeathed her a well-furnished house and six hundred pounds besides, in money. It will naturally be asked what extraordinary merits this widow possessed, which procured her this comfortable situation. I do not suppose, nor will I insinuate, that this scandalous perversion of those funds, which ought to be regarded as sacred and belonging exclusively to the poor, was occasioned by any personal merits of hers. Well then, who or what was her husband? Aye, now we come to the clue of the business.  Her husband was a barber, and shaved well I dare say. He was also employed by the worshipful Corporation of Mayor and Aldermen, to carry before them some bundle or other, in their procession to Church.  High merits these, no doubt! But we must add to them that of being tax-gatherer.” ….

He goes on to explain that Bamford worked for the Aldermen William Hall and Christopher Bolton and when Jackson’s wife was pregnant and seriously ill he turned up with a constable to “execute a warrant of distress” for a debt of £20, months after it had been proved to be an illegal demand.

These are serious allegations, but they are all true.  Sarah Bamford is on our register, admitted to the Charterhouse in 1824 aged 56.  She is one of the batch of residents who were already there when the register was started in about 1836, following an investigation into corruption by the new local council.  Like many of those admitted in the period, she was too young to be eligible.  She was born Sarah Long and married Robert Bamford on 8 November 1798.  Robert was a hairdresser, and 9 years younger than his wife.  
More of Jackson's details prove correct.  Robert Bamford shows up on a record in 1816 as a tax collector; and the 1823 directory lists him as mace-bearer, giving his address as 6, Broadley Square.  He died in August 1823, and an entry in the Prerogative and Exchequer Court of York Index in February 1824 indicates that he left enough money to make a will necessary.  His widow Sarah was admitted to the Charterhouse in the same year, despite the fact that she was not eligible according to the rules governing the foundation.  She was too young and could not be said to be poor.
This had become the norm from the latter part of the 18th century.  Aldermen took it in turns to nominate someone to a vacancy and used the opportunity to reward retired employees or repay favours.  One of the Aldermen raised concerns in 1823, but it was left to "radicals" like Acland and Jackson to publicise the extent of the corruption.  In 1833 Thomas White (if that was, in fact, his real name) published a pamphlet with a full list of the residents and their circumstances; and in 1836 an inquiry verified White's list.  The new Corporation tried to reform the process of filling vacancies, but old habits died hard.
We may wonder why someone who had a house and a legacy would want a single room and meagre allowance in an almshouse.  We know that some people collected the allowance but didn't live in the room, a practice which took a long time to eradicate.  Some may well have rented out their own house while living in the subsidised accommodation.  
The final irony in this story is that in 1844 John Jackson was himself, with his wife Alice, awarded a place in the Charterhouse.  Sarah Bamford was still there.  One can only speculate how the two of them got on.  In 1850 John died a horrific death in his room.  It seems that he had set the bed alight; it and the curtains were on fire and John was in his chair with all his clothes burned away, as if he had staggered from the burning bed.  He died a few hours later.  His wife, Alice, who had been away at the time, was evicted - normal practice at the time.  Sarah Bamford outlived the man who had "outed" her; she died in 1859.