Learning from the census

 Having done my ten-yearly duty in filling in the census form (online) I'm reminded of how important previous censuses are to any historian of the 19th century, and how important they are to our knowledge of the Charterhouse.

The first census of England and Wales was in 1801; but it had very limited information.  It was counting heads, not naming them.  The next three censuses were in the same format.  It was not until 1841 that the names of the inhabitants were listed.  So we know where people lived and what their names were; we know their ages (rounded up or down to the nearest 5 years) and whether they born in the county.  We don't know the relationships between what appears to be a family group or who was married, who single; their actual places of birth; or their occupations.  Those drawbacks matter little, of course, in compiling a list of Charterhouse residents,

The 1851 census was an improvement.  This is a page of the Charterhouse return for that year.

The deficiencies have all been remedied.  We have "condition" i.e. relation to head of household; actual age; occupation; and actual place of birth.  There is also a final column to record whether the person is "blind or deaf-and-dumb".  (This very rarely has anything in it.)  The enumerator, who compiled the list, helpfully recorded the residents' former occupations.  

Suddenly we have residents we knew nothing about because they are not recorded in the register.  As I have noted before, when a married man was awarded a room his wife could enter with him but had no entitlement to the room when he died.  It was his room, and so the wife often did not warrant an entry in the register.  With the census we can see that there were many more women living in the Charterhouse than we previously knew about.

The 1861 census follows the same format.  Under "occupation" the enumerator has described them all as "almsman" or "almswoman" and added a former occupation if relevant.  Again, we can add previously unknown wives to the list of residents.

In 1871 the only change is to the heading of the last column.  Only one of those categories is one we might use today, and "blind" is, in fact, the only category which is used in the Charterhouse census returns.

In 1881 the enumerator doesn't bother with former occupations.  The first resident on the list is described as a "pensioner" and the rest are ditto.  It is an odd description; there were no old age pensions then; only former members of the armed forces received pensions, and retired people who had regular income from savings were usually described as annuitants.  

By this stage the column headings give us a clear picture of the "condition" of the residents, particularly of the lone women; if they are unmarried we have a good chance of tracing them back in the censuses.

The 1881 census, like its predecessors, was compiled by an army of enumerators going door to door.  But when it came to institutions like almshouses, along with prisons, boarding schools, prisons,  ships' crews etc, they probably just asked for a list from whoever was in charge.  This means we have to be careful about trusting the entries.  Many of us doing family history have found ancestors who lied about their age or even their marital status, and spelling can be wildly inaccurate when the it was left to the enumerator to make a stab at it.  The Charterhouse records appear to be largely accurate.  But the one person who appears on 5 successive censuses, Matron Jane Burn, was apparently reluctant to tell the Master her true age - or he was reluctant to ask her.  It was inaccurate every time.  Jane died in 1884 aged 93. 

The 1891 census follows the same pattern, the only change being that the instructions at the head of each column are more detailed.  The same is true in 1901.  

The 1901 enumerator has a novel way of recording the "relation to head of family or position in the institution".  All the residents are "inmate-Brother" or "inmate-Sister".  This must have been the description supplied by the Master, W H Fea; and he was correct.  We are all "brethren and sisters of the Charterhouse".

The 1911 census switched from street-based lists compiled by enumerators to individual household forms, but this made little difference to institutions like the Charterhouse, where everyone was listed as part of the same household.  The 1911 is the last census to which we have access; we have to wait until January next year to get at the 1921.  We await it with interest; what will it be able to tell us about the Charterhouse.

Food and cooking

There were some almshouses which provided meals for their inmates, and some, like the London Charterhouse, still do.  But our Charterhouse never did.  Food had to be bought out of the weekly allowance or produced on site.  So what did the early residents eat, and how did they cook it?

The earliest evidence we have comes from information in the accounts in 1584 and subsequent years.  The inmates' accommodation, we learn, included brick-paved kitchens in the wings, a chicken house, a well, a dovecote and a buttery.  (We can't be sure that these facilities existed from the outset, two centuries earlier, but the buildings were the originals.)  Each of the two wings, for men and women, had a communal kitchen with brick flooring.  These would surely have included bread ovens and probably brewing facilities.  It suggests that inmates did not have fires in their individual rooms.  There was a chicken house, which would only have provided eggs for part of the year; hens did not lay all the year round as they are now bred to do.  The dovecote is unusual.  These had to be licensed and on manorial land.  It came as a surprise to learn that the purpose of dovecotes was not to provide pigeons for food.  People only ate the squabs, or young pigeons.  However, the feathers were valuable, and the guano on the floor of the dovecote was used as fertiliser.  The buttery in the list seems to be a hang-over from monastic terminology.  It would have been a store-room for supplies.

What other means of self-sufficiency might there have been?  Bee hives are highly likely.  It's quite possible that goats were kept for milk, and even a pig or two.  There was land available for growing fruit and vegetables, although not all the inmates would have been physically able to get involved in their cultivation.  There is a persistent idea that the medieval peasant diet was drearily monotonous, confined to cabbages, beans and onions with bread; but this is a mistake.  Fruits cultivated included apples, pears, plums, strawberries, elderberries and rhubarb.  A wide range of vegetables were grown, some of which have now fallen out of favour such as orach and skirret; greens of various species were grown or foraged.  It was a largely plant-based diet but it was not necessarily boring.  In addition to what was grown or produced on the site, the residents were within easy reach of the markets of Hull, and traders may well have brought their wares to the almshouse.  We would expect fish to be an important part of the diet too.

A question arises.  If some of the food was produced communally, how was it shared out?  That is something we can only speculate about.

We turn to cooking.  Ovens were used mostly for bread.  Other foodstuffs were cooked in a pot or on a griddle over a fire.  We all have an image of a cauldron and indeed the most common meal of the time was pottage, a kind of stew cooked in the cauldron.  It was a kind of "chuck it all in" stew made mostly of vegetables with grains for thickening.  But the cauldron could also be used in a more sophisticated way.  

This is from Dorothy Hartley's Food in England and shows how one-pot cooking could be an art.

The original almshouse buildings were demolished in 1642, and the Charterhouse hospital buildings which replaced them in the second half of the century are almost a total mystery to us.  We don't know whether there were communal kitchens or fire-places in individual rooms.  The rough sketches of the exterior which exist show no chimneys.  Did the well survive?  In the following century inmates were probably more dependent on the town's cookshops and markets for their food, with a wider range of foodstuffs becoming available.  But we must bear in mind that there were sporadic states of famine because of poor harvests.  Add to that the fact that inmates' allowances sometimes fell in value because of inflation and we have a picture of occasional hunger.

We have a lot more information about the new building of 1780.  Each inmate had their own bed-sit, with an open fireplace as the only cooking facility.  

This example is from the Geffrye Museum's reconstruction of their own almshouse rooms which are exactly contemporaneous with ours.  This one fits in a remarkable way the blocked-up and boarded fireplace I am looking at as I type.  We can see that it is more than a simple hearth; but there was no oven.  And there was no water supply in the rooms.  All water had to be fetched from the bathrooms or the laundry room.

We must assume that the residents had to buy all their food rather than having any produced on the site.  However, a snippet of news from 1884 reports the theft of a hen belonging to the Matron.  It is tempting to think that there was a chicken coop in the grounds, with the Matron of the time, Jane Burn, selling her surplus eggs.

When new "rooms" i.e. additional buildings were put up during the 19th century they followed the pattern of the existing buildings.  Nothing changed. 

Intriguingly, I found a single reference to "small ranges" being removed.  At some point at the end of the 19th century or the start of the 20th some or all of the fires were replaced with cooking ranges along the lines of the one pictured.  These would at least have provided an oven.  But for some reason they were not kept for long.  It was back to the old open fires.

Space for food storage was obviously limited, and it restricted what residents would have eaten and how they would have shopped.  Milk would not keep for long, bread would go stale quickly, and meat and fish (when they could afford it) would be bought within 24 hours of it being cooked.  In that respect the Charterhouse residents were in no worse position than the rest of population.  But the situation persisted here long after kitchen equipment had improved in the outside world.  It was not until 1960 that the trustees decided that improvements to the living conditions at the Charterhouse were urgently needed.  In a "modernisation" which effectively halved the number of people who could be accommodated, the single rooms were converted into two-room flatlets, a bedroom and a living-room.  Crucially, the living-room now had a sink and tap, and an electric socket.  Many of the residents used the alcove next to the fireplace as a mini-kitchen, buying a famous cooker of the day, a Baby Belling.

Equipped with these little cookers, a growing number of residents sought permission to have the fireplaces removed and replaced, at their own expense, with electric fires.  I have met people who, as children, visited their grandparents here and tell of the cosiness of the flats and the satisfaction of the residents.

But it wasn't enough.  There was a much more ambitious regeneration project in 1978; the Victorian buildings were demolished and replaced with flats with all mod cons, including kitchens which residents could fill with modern cookers, fridge freezers etc.  (But not washing machines; although at least there were now washing machines in the laundry room.)  The rooms in the remaining old buildings were remodelled to make one and two bedroom flats, with kitchen and bathroom.  

Sir Arthur Atkinson

 Sir Arthur Atkinson was for many years a trustee of the Charterhouse, and the Chairman for much of that time.  Yet there is no reminder of him here; no memorial and nothing named after him.

Sir Arthur Atkinson

He had a similar role in many of the charitable organisations in the city, but now seems to have been forgotten.  A ward was named after him at the old Sutton Annexe of the Infirmary, of which he was Chairman and President, but few know who Atkinson was.  Is there any memory of him at Northumberland Court, where he was a trustee of the United Charities Almshouses for many years?  Or in Hull Trinity House, where he was an honorary brother?

So who was Sir Arthur Joseph Atkinson?  He was born in Hull on 20 July 1864, the son of Joseph Atkinson, a shipowner who had founded the firm William Brown, Atkinson & Co.  (Joseph Atkinson cropped up in my earlier research into the building on Salthouse Lane, Hull, which was for many years the Sailors' Home.  He was the driving force behind the home and was Chair of its management committee for all that time.)  Arthur was sent off to be educated at the Leys School in Cambridge and then, at the age of 16, began to work in his father's company and train for its eventual control.  

In 1891 Arthur married Bertha Blain Haughton.  By 1911 the couple were living in Elloughton where Joseph was seriously ill.  He died in 1912 and Arthur took control of the family company.  He was later to form the Sea Steamship Co Ltd and continued to be associated with both companies all his long life.  During the 1914-18 war he made use of his enthusiasm for motor cars by raising and commanding the East Riding Motor Volunteers (M.T., A.S.C.); he retired from that with the rank of Major.  It's thought that this unit did not go overseas, and this chimes with the fact that Atkinson continued to be involved in politics during the war.  He was Sheriff of Hull in 1917-18.  

Elloughton Dale

After the war Atkinson clearly lead a busy life from his home at Elloughton Dale near Brough, involved in business, politics and community work.  He was President of the Hull Chamber of Commerce and a Justice of the Peace.  He was knighted in 1929.  By 1932 he was Chair of the United Charities trustees (known today as Northumberland Court almshouses) as well as being a Trustee of the Charterhouse, offices he held for many years.  At the Charterhouse he became Chair in the 1940s and held the post through the period when decisions had to be made about the restoration of the buildings.

This advertisement from 1933 and shows another of Atkinson's involvements, the Infirmary.  It's a mine of local history information.  The tickets cost the equivalent of about £38 today.  Was 9, Scale Lane Atkinson's business address?

Bertha Atkinson, Arthur's wife, died in 1948.  The couple had two surviving children.  Arthur, now 84, seems not to have given up much of his charity work. 

In April 1949 he gave a party for "72 old folks" of the Charterhouse, to celebrate its re-opening.  The piece does not say where it was held, but it is likely that it was in the hall, completed just before the outbreak of war.  This was another venture that Atkinson had supervised.  He was still Chair of the Trustees in 1950 and, at the age of 86, had become president of the East Riding Antiquarian Society.

In 1954 he gave a party for the residents of the Fountain Road almshouses (the United Charities) to celebrate his 90th birthday.  The newspaper reported that he "still has a commanding face and resolute features and a good head of grey hair".  

Sir Arthur Atkinson died on 17 February 1959 aged 94.  He was, perhaps, a figure from an earlier age; but he left a huge legacy of service to the city and deserves to be better remembered.

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.