Thomas Henry Hall Caine Was Born in 1853 in Cheshire, the Eldest of Three Surviving Children of John Ca

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Thomas Henry Hall Caine was born in 1853 in Cheshire, the eldest of three surviving children of John Caine, a Ballaugh man who moved to Liverpool to gain work as a ship’s smith, and his wife Sarah. He visited his grandmother, Isabella, and uncle, William, in Ballaugh many times during his childhood, forming a lifelong attachment to the Island’s culture and language.

Schooled in Liverpool, Hall Caine (Hall was his mother’s maiden name, which he incorporated into his own) was an architect’s apprentice but he assisted his uncle, James Teare, in the running of Maughold School after the latter became ill with TB and stayed on after his uncle’s death until a replacement headmaster could be found.

Back in the UK, he supplemented his earnings as a draughtsman by working as a journalist and lecturing on literature. A lecture given in defence of the poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti led to a firm friendship and, after the latter’s death, Hall Caine published his recollections of the poet.

He turned his hand to fiction with the novels The Shadow of a Crime (1885) and A Son of Hagar (1886), both set in Cumbria. Although well received by some critics, the reading public was not impressed. Hall Caine was disappointed and told Rossetti he might give up trying to become a novelist. Rossetti then gave him the precious advice that turned his life around: Write what you know. Write about the Isle of Man.

Hall Caine set The Deemster (1887) entirely in the Isle of Man. It was a success with critics and readers alike and his career took off. He wrote a succession of novels set wholly or partly in the Isle of Man including The Bondman (Iceland/IoM, 1890); The Manxman (IoM, 1894, written in a then rented Greeba Castle); The Christian (IoM/London 1897). By now he was known to many simply as ‘the Manx novelist’. Visitors came to the Island in droves to see the places he wrote about. Almost all of his books were turned into silent films or plays.

Most of his stories were romances, but he also addressed political and social issues, especially the rights of women. His last novel, The Woman of Knockaloe (1923), takes place in the Isle of Man at the time of World War I and points up the tragedy and destructiveness of racial hatred.

Hall Caine finally moved to the Isle of Man with his wife Mary and their family in 1896, purchasing and restoring Greeba Castle, the property still synonymous with him.

In 1891 Hall Caine gave three lectures to the Royal Institution. These were later printed under the title The Little Manx Nation and were dedicated by Hall Caine to his friend T.E. Brown. A quote from The Little Manx Nation appears at the front of this year’s Tynwald Day programme.

In the wake of the collapse of Dumbell’s Bank a year earlier, he was elected to the House of Keys in 1901, representing Ramsey. But he served only until 1908 and refused Lloyd George’s invitation to stand for Parliament in the UK.

It was in his capacity as MHK that, in 1902, a visiting King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra (who was thought to be an admirer of his novels) invited him onto their yacht and to accompany him on their tour of the Island.

He was offered, but declined, a baronetcy, instead accepting a knighthood in 1918. Sir Hall Caine died in 1931, aged 78, at Greeba Castle. He is buried at Kirk Maughold, with a slate obelisk at his grave designed by Archibald Knox. Characters from his novels are portrayed around the base of the monument.

(Sources: New Manx Worthies and others).