Contrasting lives: Sarah Herdsman and Henry Jollands

 Sarah Herdsman died in the Charterhouse on 14 February 1914 of "senile decay" at the age of 82 and was buried in the Western Cemetery.  There would seem to be little remarkable about her; a single lady who had lived the last 19 years of her life in room 103 of the Charterhouse.  Yet Sarah would have had some interesting stories to tell.

She was born in 1832 in Beverley, the daughter of farm workers.  By 1851 she was a housemaid in the household of Edmund Smith at 11, High St, North Ferriby.  Smith was a retired officer in the Indian civil service and a director of Payne & Smith's bank.  He, his wife, 2 daughters and 8 servants formed a prosperous household.  

High St, North Ferriby

Ten years later Sarah had become a cook in the somewhat more modest household of Thomas Firbank, a JP and retired merchant at 8 Charlotte St, Hull.

It's hugely frustrating that we have only these ten-yearly snapshots from Sarah's life, so we don't know what took her from Hull to London.  All we know is that in 1871 she was the cook in the Mayfair of the small household of the great Florence Nightingale.

Florence, aged 50, is Director Nightingale - and then a scribbled additional word which may be Nurses.  She has a personal maid, a cook (Sarah) and two housemaids.  She had set up the Nightingale Training School At St Thomas's Hospital in 1860.  It is now part of King's College, London.  

How long Sarah worked there we don't know.  She doesn't appear on the 1881 census, and has been replaced as Florence's cook.  We don't catch up with her until 1891 when she was living (or at least staying) "on own means" with her nephew in Scarborough.  When, and why, did she return to Hull, a place where she did not have deep roots?  On 10 January 1895 she was awarded a room in the Charterhouse, so she apparently did not have enough money to maintain a household of her own.  Did she regale her neighbours with tales of her famous former employer?

Henry Jollands led a very different life.  We first find him in the Spilsby workhouse in Lincolnshire, aged 11, in 1861.  (Confusingly, he shared a name and year of birth with another boy in the same county.)  Our Henry was born to a mother, Sophia, described by the workhouse authorities as an "imbecile" i.e. having severe learning difficulties and had been there all his young life.  Sophia then disappeared from the records, to turn up again in 1901 in the Lincoln Union workhouse.  

1881 census

Henry married Ellen Simpson in 1877. He next appears on 19 November 1880 in the Stamford Mercury: “I, Henry Jollands of Boston, will not be answerable for any debts collected by my wife Ellen Jollands after this date 19 November 1880. Henry Jollands.” On census day, 3 April 1881 Henry is in the lock-up on Victoria St, Grimsby, in the custody of Police Superintendent Geoge Jarvis and his wife. Oddly, he is described as “Head prisoner [illegible] one in lock-up”. What he was doing there becomes clear 5 days later in the Lincolnshire Chronicle: Henry Jollands of Clee, brought up on remand, charged with using threats to his wife, was ordered to find sureties, himself in £20, and one in £20, in default one calendar month.” 

Victoria St, Grimsby

Clearly it was not a happy marriage.  Ellen disappears from the record - fortunately for Henry, as it turns out.  By 1888 he was in Hull marrying Caroline Clark, almost 20 years his junior, and he seems to have become a family man, with 8 children eventually.  In 1891 they are living with their children in Peel St, Hull, where Henry is some sort of dealer. Ten years later they are managing a lodging house at 56 Salthouse Lane, and in 1911 he is the caretaker of a Catholic school and living at 5 Blundell St.

Peel Street

We don’t know when the couple entered the Charterhouse, but they are there on the 1926 electoral list. Caroline died in 1933, Henry in 1939.

The Garden

 We have a very big garden; so big that it's impossible to get it all in one photograph.

The scale of it is also hard to judge on aerial photographs because trees hid a lot of it, so it's best seen in a clip from this 1928 map.

The garden is marked in red.  It sits to the south of the building which used to be all the Master's house and is now partly his house and, on its western side, residents' flats.  Today only the patch directly to the east of the house is the Master's garden; the rest is open to all of us.  But for most of its existence this whole area was for the exclusive use of the Master and his family, with residents entering only at his invitation.

The brickwork of the wall around the garden shows that it may well have been built in two stages since there appears to be a an extra few feet of height added.  The wall would have been part of the rebuilding of the Charterhouse in the second half of the 17th century after its demolition at the start of the Civil War.  This appears to be when the Master's House was erected and, probably, when our famous mulberry tree was planted.  (There are no records to provide a narrative for this.)  The accommodation for residents was on the northern side of the street, then an unpaved road.  (This range was replaced again in 1780.)  At this stage there were no surrounding buildings, so increasing the height of the wall may have been the response to having neighbours.

The size of the house and garden might have been appropriate when the Master had a large family and servants, but this was seldom the case.  Masters, even if appointed whilst young enough to be family men, stayed until they died, perhaps outlived by a wife.  Visiting grandchildren would have appreciated the garden.  For residents, however, it was the only space, apart from the chapel, where all of them could meet together, and they could only do that if summoned by the Master.  

One such event was held on 29 January 1858 when a tea party was held to celebrate the royal wedding.  Others which may have occurred were not reported until the Mastership of Arthur Chignell from 1919 to 1951.  Rev Chignell supplied the local paper with write-ups of these events.  

1921

This is a snip from a typical piece of self-publicity on 18 August 1921.  The local worthies who attended were, as always, named.  A marquee was erected in case the weather was unco-operative, but there is no mention of chairs for the 120 residents.  

1933

In September 1932 the party was hosted by the Sheriff and his Lady.  Chignell's description of the event is pure propaganda for the joys of living at the Charterhouse.

A similar event in June 1933 is an "annual tea-party", attended by the Lady Mayoress but hosted by Rev Chignell.  This time the weather did not co-operate, but the old folk apparently enjoyed the opportunity to get together.  

The war put paid to these parties, of course.  The Master had his own air-raid shelter in the garden, which survived until the 1980s.  The Charterhouse was closed in 1941 and did not reopen until 1948.  The Master's House and the garden remained closed for another 8 years.  In the debates  about what to do with the ruined house, some wanted to use the space occupied by the house and garden to provide more accommodation for residents, but this didn't happen.  An elderly visitor recalled, a few years ago, that while he and colleagues were laying electricity cables for a nearby building they were frequently "threatened" by hordes of feral pet rabbits in the garden.  While he may have been exaggerating, it seems that pets liberated during the war had bred in the wilds of this space.  A recent drought brought out parch marks on the grass showing that there had been structures on the lawn.  We know that there had been a greenhouse which the Master allowed pupils at the neighbouring school to use for their science studies, and some recall that, lacking a playing field, they were able to use the garden for their sports days.

In the 1970s it was recognised that the rebuilt house was too large for the sole use of the Master and his family.  The western range was converted into flats for residents, and it was probably at this point that the garden ceased to be the "Master's garden" and became an amenity for all residents.  A small patch was retained for the private use of the Master.  We continue to make good use of the garden, at least during the warmer months, for both social gatherings and individual enjoyment.