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Wellingtonia FREE ISSUE! Issue 5 : Autumn 2009 Newsletter of the Wellington History Group, rediscovering the past of Wellington in Shropshire 1837 SPECIAL 1901 Victorian Edition he was just eighteen had been in some doubt at the years old when Victoria start of her reign. Slearned of the death of Wellington in Victorian times her uncle, King William VI, in reflected what was happening the early hours of Tuesday throughout the rest of the country: 20th June 1837. Her it had its own social and economic coronation took place a year problems, yet the period also later and Wellington, along witnessed many improvements. with countless towns and This edition of Wellingtonia cities throughout Britain, reveals just a few of the many marked the occasion in its facets of Victorian Wellington. own way. We hope you enjoy reading it. Victoria takes Communion during her As a monarch, Queen Coronation, 28th June 1838, by artist Charles Victoria presents historians N HIS SSUE Robert Leslie. The Royal Collection © 2009, with several anomalies. The I T I Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II period bearing her name is ****************** characterised by major Page technological developments, 2. Victorian Times economic power and social 3. Newspaper ‘Clipping’ reform and yet she preferred Railway Cutting the status quo, resisted change 4. Wrekin Road Schools and preferred to ignore the problems caused by Britain’s 5. A View of 1851 class-aware society. Wellington She reigned over a nation 6. Wellington’s Medical that was supposed to idealise Heritage motherhood and the family, 7. Datespotting yet she hated pregnancy and 8. Railway Expansion disliked babies and children 10. Impact of the Railway (apart from, presumably, the nine she had herself). 12. Edward Lawrence As a person, Victoria was 14. Songs of The Wrekin well aware of her position and 15. Ink and Paint prone to egotism, determined 16. Funeral Trip to hold onto political power at 17. Datespotting Answers all costs, yet her reign 18. Major Businesses, 1890s witnessed a transformation of the monarch’s position to that 19. And Finally ... of a ceremonial leader and 20. Announcements; thus preserved the role of the Contact details monarchy which, politically, Produced with financial support from Awards for All churches set up Sunday Schools to VICTORIAN TIMES George Evans teach them to read the Bible and other ‘improving’ books. Boarding schools were common he great Queen-Empress, so for those who could afford them, far as I know, never came and Dame schools for the aspiring There, but her presence was but less well off. Even Prince’s universally felt, even when she Street Methodist school charged was mourning or hibernating in a 2d a week fees. Discipline was palace. England was the centre of strict and corporal punishment the British Empire, on which the frequent. sun never set, the largest empire Adults were never addressed the World has ever known. Now, by Christian names except for barely a century later, people who family, close friends and understand Romans, Genghis underlings. Men carrying walking Kahn, Napoleon, Hitler and Mao, sticks wore suits with waistcoats know little of Victoria’s empire. bedecked with watch chains and My generation was brought up class-identifying hats. Women by Victorians. Our parents, never wore trousers; skirts and grandparents, teachers and coats were ankle length and shopkeepers were Victorians. They elaborate hats, jewellery and were proud of the Queen-Empress; course, Hesba Stretton’s charming umbrellas were de rigueur. everyone stood to attention for the books. The railways to Shrewsbury, National Anthem and prayed for In Victorian times there were Crewe, Stafford, London, Dawley the Queen’s health every Sunday. many paupers. They came in two and Much Wenlock came mid- World maps were coloured sorts – deserving and century. Coaches and other pink for ‘our’ Empire. This undeserving. Often that meant artefacts were made at the large, included around a third of the sober and drunk. Many children short-lived Shropshire Works, later globe; Canada, Australia, India, starved, and women starved Groom’s timber yard. Almost South Africa, Burma, Ceylon, themselves to feed their husbands. every village had a railway station Malaya, New Zealand, Northern Soup kitchens and ragged schools and Wellington passenger and and Southern Rhodesia, Kenya, were set up. Our Union goods stations were the hub of the British Somalia, British Guiana, Workhouse was in Walker Street system. This, with John Barber’s Nigeria, Jamaica and The Gold (later a brewery, now the library) Smithfield cattle market, Coast were only the larger ones. until a new one between Union stimulated a boom in agricultural We also ‘owned’ Gibraltar, Road and Street Lane was built. machinery manufacture (Corbett’s Singapore, Hong Kong, many Banks emerged and expanded. and Bromley’s) newspapers Pacific islands and goodness Their managers often resembled (Wellington Journal), publishing knows how many more. Britain Captain Mainwaring of Dad’s (Houlston’s) and small specialist was the ‘Mother Country’. Army. The North and South Wales shops for farmers, their wives and Wellingtonians often visited the Bank became the Midland (now people from the industrial towns Empire. Men volunteered for the HSBC) and had a huge hardwood to the east. Army and were posted, like my counter, across which all business Victorian manners were formal. grandfather, to India. The was transacted by men in suits. Crime was rife but heavily Northwest Frontier was quite as Everybody was graded in punished by instant dismissal, wild as it is now. Men joined the classes and ‘knew their place’. The gaoling, flogging, deportation or Royal Navy, then as large as all the middle class expanded and lived hanging. Both drunkenness and other navies in the world put in rented villas to suit their teetotalism were common. Health together, or the Merchant Navy, income. Mrs Beaton was the guru and unemployment insurance again the largest on Earth. for housewives, who had few were by ‘Friendly Societies’ Other men – and women – labour-saving devices. Many (Oddfellows, Foresters, Buffaloes became missionaries, spreading private schools (including and Rechabites). Governments the Christian Gospel to far-flung Wellington College and Hiatts) didn’t govern so much as now. countries, whether they liked it or supplemented church schools Most people were proud to be not. These intrepid characters (National and Methodist). British and of the Queen and raised money locally and set off to Respectability was much sought- Empire. Black, brown or yellow exotic places to set up churches of after and demonstrated in dress, people were hardly ever seen. ‘We’ various denominations, returning manners, church attendance and went to ‘them’; they weren’t occasionally with pictures and speech. invited here. artefacts like Bible quotes written Families were large, especially Wellington was very different on bamboo to raise more money. among the poor, who were usually but is still a small, friendly market They also took Bibles and, of semi-literate at best. Many town. 2 Wellingtonia: Issue 5, Winter 2009 NEWSPAPER ‘CLIPPING’ Allan Frost RAILWAY CUTTING rice wars are nothing new. Did a ghost really appear When the railway network at All Saints church? Or was it Pexpanded during the middle all a misunderstanding? of the nineteenth century, there was keen competition between the 1842 different railway companies to HOST ALARM!-For several attract passengers. days and nights lately, the This story shows how Gtown of Wellington and desperate competing companies neighbourhood for some miles round were to dominate. It was first have been greatly agitated with the tale published in the Wellington Journal that there were strange sights beheld in & Shrewsbury News some twenty Wellington Church and Church-yard. years after the event. The rumour having begun, many ‘In the year 1854, two of the most went to see, and returned confirming powerful railway companies in the the report, but could not tell what they United Kingdom (the Great Western saw, it was a non-descript, sometimes a and the London and North Western) long figure, sometimes short, and then were pitted against each other in the Top of All Saints tower in the late round or square; at any rate, it was like most violent and uncompromising 1800s. Did the ‘ghost’ appear here? an Ignis Fatuus. The tale increased, competition ever known in a similar and– ‘All who told it added something to do with it, by the escapement of the connection or ever since. Between the new, And all who heard it made gaseous fluid in some way or other, towns of Wellington and Shrewsbury, a enlargements too, In every ear it they knew not. At length, however, the distance of 10 miles, both companies spread, on every tongue it grew’ humble individual who was watchman had, as they have still, the right to use till at length of an evening and at night, of the belfry (lest elfs and hobgoblins the railway in common. It was in this great numbers of people were should frolic and dance to a merry section that, in the year referred to, the congregated together in the Church- peal), having some of the mental crux of the fierce competition was yard to the number of one or two ability of Archimedes, though perhaps experienced. hundred, they clipp’d the Church to he knew it not, bethought himself of a The fare between the two towns, turn away the Ghost, but all would not small window which looked out of the which was originally 10d [almost do. belfry into the body of the Church, equivalent to today’s 5p] each way, Some thought they saw a warrior which corresponded with an opposite gradually dwindled down to a penny, dressed in full armour, standing at the window, upon which the fine lights the lowest railway fare for 10 miles on top of the tower of the Church, from the gas lamps shone brilliantly, record.