By Sally-Anne Shearn. With thanks to the National Railway Museum; Hoole History Society; Chetham's Library, Manchester; and the staff of Chester Cathedral.
The death of Liverpool MP William Huskisson at the opening of the
Liverpool to Manchester Railway in September 1830 has become a notorious event
in early railway history. Less well known however is the part played in
the events of that day by Emma Anne Blackburne, the Vicaress of Eccles, who
features heavily in the correspondence of Annabel Crewe, part of the Milnes
Coates Archive at the Borthwick Institute.
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| Some of Annabel Crewe's Correspondence in the Milnes Coates Archive |
On the morning of 15 September 1830 eight trains hauled by ‘Stephenson locomotives’ and carrying a total of thirty two carriages waited at
Liverpool, led by railway pioneer George Stephenson himself driving the train in which
rode the Prime Minister the Duke of Wellington.
The scene was set for a grand spectacle but just seventeen miles into the journey, during a stop at Parkside, William Huskisson crossed the track to speak with the Duke and was struck by the approaching locomotive engine 'Rocket' driven by Joseph Locke, crushing his leg. The stricken Huskisson was carried to a train carriage and, accompanied by his wife, was taken to Eccles Vicarage, near Manchester, where he was attended by doctors. His wounds were so severe that they could only make him comfortable and he died just after 9pm that evening.
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| The Opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Science Museum Group Collection copyright: The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum |
Huskisson’s death made front page news, earning him the dubious honour of becoming the world's first widely reported railway passenger casualty. His conveyance ‘to the house
of the Rev. Mr Blackburne’ at Eccles was also widely reported. But it was not
the Reverend himself who received the Huskissons and their friends that day,
but his wife Emma who was alone in the house with her children, and it was Emma
who distinguished herself to such an extent that her conduct on that day would
be remembered at her own death more than fifty years later.
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| A replica of a first class train carriage on the Liverpool & Manchester Railway. National Railway Museum (author's own photo) |
Emma Anne Hesketh was born in 1795, the daughter of Henry Hesketh of
Newton Hall, a wealthy wine merchant. An 1884 book of ‘Railway Adventures
and Anecdotes’ would call her ‘rather strong-minded than otherwise’ and this is
certainly borne out by what we know of her life. At a time when there was
little financial protection for women, the young Emma was responsible for
establishing the Flookersbrook, Newton & Hoole Female Friendly Society
which provided insurance for its members in the event of illness and
disability. In the case of female friendly societies, this included
pregnancy and other specifically female ailments. A report in the Chester
Courant of 3 June 1816 recorded the anniversary procession of the Society, led
by ‘Miss E. Hesketh’ (who also made a ‘neat and appropriate’ speech), and noted
the society’s emblem of a beehive and a pair of joined hands, designed by Emma,
with the mottoes ‘Piety and Virtue’ and ‘Friendship and Industry.’
Following her marriage to the Reverend Thomas Blackburne in 1819 Emma
would play an equally prominent role in her new parish of Eccles, where as the
vicar’s wife she ‘showed remarkable powers of organisation and work’ among a
population of some 25,000 people. A visitor to the area, Catherine
Stanley, who met Emma in 1832 wrote admiringly of her hard work: ‘there is one
person who interests me very much, Mrs Tom Blackburne, the Vicaress of Eccles…
She made one ashamed of the ease and idleness of one’s own life, compared with
hers.’ She quickly recognised that Emma was ‘the ruling spirit’ there, and that
‘under her guidance, and the help of a sound head and heart, her husband has
become the very man for the place.
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| Eccles Parish Church in 1800, just 18 years before Thomas Blackburne became its vicar. Image reproduced with permission of Chetham’s Library, Manchester. |
The important role Emma played in the management of the parish was
recognised equally by her husband’s parishioners. When, in 1837, they
presented Reverend Blackburne with a ‘costly testimonial’ on the occasion of
his moving to Prestwich, Emma was specifically included in their tribute, their
representative praising her for having ‘the heart to feel and the energy to
act’, and adding that without her efforts ‘so much could not have been
accomplished for the schools - so much could not have been done for the
afflicted poor’.
With this in mind it is perhaps not surprising that the role played by
Emma on the 15 September 1830 was so characteristically active. For the occasion
of the grand opening of the railway Emma and her husband had been invited to a
celebration at Hale Hall, near Liverpool, then the home of Reverend
Blackburne’s brother, the MP John Blackburne. In the words of the
Cornhill Magazine, reporting on the events at Eccles in an 1884 article, there
then occurred ‘one of those strange circumstances utterly condemned by critics
of fiction as ‘unreal’, ‘unnatural’ or ‘impossible.’ After arriving at
Hale, Emma, who was then six months pregnant, became ‘possessed by an
unmistakable presentiment’ that her presence was required at home and insisted
on returning to Eccles at once, to the surprise and consternation of her
friends and family.
At such a time this journey was easier said than done, but Emma
persisted and took a carriage to Warrington where she travelled the rest of the
way to Eccles by canal boat, arriving at the vicarage on the 14th to find, to
her surprise, that all was well. Whether Emma truly had a ‘presentiment’,
or the Cornhill Magazine was employing some artistic license, Emma was
certainly there, with only her children and servants, on the morning of the
15th when a Mr Barton of Swinton arrived at the vicarage with the alarming news
that a mob was expected to come from Oldham that day to attack the train as it
passed through three miles of unguarded railway line near Eccles. Their
object was the carriage of the Duke of Wellington, a popular Peninsular war
hero but by then an unpopular Tory Prime Minister. Expecting to find Mr Blackburne, Barton found
Emma instead who took charge in place of her husband, rousing fifty special
constables and the churchwardens to form a ‘guard for the Duke’ on Eccles
bridge. According to the Cornhill
Magazine Emma then set up a small tent for herself and her children on a nearby
hill with a good view of the railway line and settled down to enjoy the grand
opening, along with gathering crowds of villagers.
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| Parkside, where the fatal accident took place. Science Museum Group Collection copyright: The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum |
It was while waiting there that she was said to have heard the first
commotion and confused shouts of an accident at the vicarage. Hurrying
back she found a growing crowd around the vicarage and a ‘sad procession’
bearing Huskisson upon a door. Her husband was then at Manchester and
still had no knowledge of events, but he wrote to his mother in law the
following day to take up the tale, ‘[Emma] made her way through the immense
crowd.’ At her direction ‘they placed him on the sopha in the drawing room and
dared not move him till he died’, adding with some pride that ‘as to dearest
Emma, they all value her as they ought.’
Indeed, Emma was universally praised for her conduct throughout.
The Cornhill Magazine asserting that ‘the accident of a day had brought into
prominence the devoted work of years’. In a biographical memoir of
Huskisson published the year after his death, the author claimed that ‘kindness
would, indeed, have been shewn by any under such circumstances; but few could
have been so capable as Mrs Blackburne to arrange with ready and affectionate
attention, and to perform so quickly and with such perfect judgement, every
thing which it could be hoped might in any way minister to his
assistance.’
Emma’s tasks were
manifold. As well as the need for her own nursing skills, she had to
manage a sudden influx of guests into her small home: Lords Wilton, Granville
and Colvile, Huskisson’s secretary Mr Wainwright, Mr Ransome, Mr Whatton, the
doctors from Manchester, and the following day Lords Gore, Warncliffe, Walhouse
and Littleton, and an additional two deputations from Liverpool. Her
husband, who had finally received word of the disaster while eating his
luncheon in Manchester, returned at once to support his wife and to give
Huskisson the Sacrament, writing in something of an understatement that he
found the house in a ‘tolerable bustle’.
But perhaps Emma’s most important role was as a support to the
traumatised and grieving Emily Huskisson who had witnessed her husband’s
accident and accompanied him in the carriage to Eccles. The Cornhill
Magazine writes that Emily was separated from her husband by the immense crowds
there and, having been mistakenly told he had been taken to a nearby farmhouse,
made her way there first before being redirected to the vicarage, where she
arrived nearly an hour later to find her husband ‘suffering agonies’.
Emma told Catherine Stanley that Emily was ‘alternately in paroxysms of grief
and a still more dreadful calmness’. She remained with Huskisson in the
drawing room, Thomas Blackburne writing ‘never shall I forget that scene, his
poor wife holding his head, and the great men weeping.’
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| William Huskisson's Memorial Tablet. Science Museum Group Collection copyright: The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum |
After Huskisson’s death that evening Emily remained at the vicarage a
further three days. ‘Poor woman’, wrote Thomas Blackburne, ‘how she
lamented his loss; yet her struggles to bear with fortitude are
wonderful.’ Emma’s own account, as given to Catherine Stanley, is less
stoic. Emma told her that the most
painful thing she had to do was to wake Emily from a deep sleep the morning
after his death, ‘She went three times into the room before she had resolution
to wake her outright’ and when she finally did so Emily became so hysterical
that Emma had to be assisted by Lord Granville to calm her, ‘in which task only
he and Mrs Blackburne were in any degree successful’. On the day she was
to leave the house to accompany her husband’s body back to Liverpool, Emily
again gave way to violent grief, locking herself in her room to pray ‘during
which Mrs Blackburne tried in vain to get to her assistance’.
Despite the terrible circumstances of their meeting, Emily would
remember Emma and her kindness with great affection. She had spoken to
Emma at the time of her worry that the pregnant Lady Elizabeth Belgrave (who
had been present during the accident) would suffer from the effects of the
shock. Emma was quick to reassure her, and revealed nothing of her own
advanced pregnancy, but later wrote to her when her baby, whom she named Emily
Anne, was born ‘and Mrs Huskisson answered her that it was the first ray of
sunshine that had come to her, for she had afterwards found it out and it had
weighed heavily upon her.’ Some months after the accident Emily sent the
Blackburnes a bible with gold clasps, bearing the inscription ‘I was a
stranger, and ye took me in’ and from then until the Blackburnes’ removal to
Prestwich in 1837 she also sent £20 at Christmas to be distributed amongst the
poor of Eccles. In her will in 1856 she left Emma £100.
Reverend Thomas Blackburne died unexpectedly in 1847, leaving Emma a widow
with eight children. She settled at Boughton and that we know anything
detailed about her life subsequently is due to her appearance in the set of
letters at the Borthwick Institute belonging to Emma’s distant cousin Annabel
Crewe, the daughter of the 2nd Baron Crewe of Crewe Hall in Cheshire. It
is once again at a time of crisis that Emma comes to the fore, in this case the
illness and death in February 1850 of Annabel’s beloved aunt, Elizabeth Emma
Cunliffe Offley, with whom Annabel had lived since the age of 15. It was ‘dear kind Mrs Blackburne’ who
supported Annabel through the first difficult days, making the necessary
arrangements and becoming her ‘staff and stay’ in the months that
followed. Emma would often refer to Annabel by the nickname ‘IX’, an
honorary ninth daughter.
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| A letter from Emma Blackburne to 'My very dear IX' [Annabel] discussing Warmingham church affairs and the progress of Crewe Hall. Milnes Coates Archive, Borthwick Institute |
A total of seventeen letters by Emma herself survive amongst Annabel’s
correspondence, filled with family news and gossipy anecdotes that give a vivid
insight into her personality. The ‘Dear and Faithful’ as she came to be
dubbed by Annabel and her sister Henrietta remained an important figure in the
lives of the Crewe siblings, who were in age between 13 and 19 years her
junior. She attended Annabel’s wedding to Richard Monckton Milnes, later
Lord Houghton, in 1851 and acted as an unofficial housekeeper and hostess for
Annabel’s brother, the shy and eccentric Hungerford, 3rd Baron Crewe, when he
entertained at Crewe Hall. In Emma’s longest surviving letter to Annabel
she writes of a grand three day entertainment given by Hungerford at Crewe in
1859 for all his tenantry - but evidently organised by Emma. She even dug out an old local song for the
occasion, ‘The band sang well after each Toast,
I had taught them the old Crewe song - which was encored each day, Your brother
was quite delighted with it...I never saw a man so happy as he was, it was
quite wonderful how he remembered to say the right thing to the right person.’
It was also Emma who made arrangements for the grand re-opening of Crewe Hall
after the devastating fire of 1866, following the rebuilding work with interest
and updating Annabel and Henrietta on the latest developments.
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| Emma Anne Blackburne's stained glass window at Chester Cathedral (author's own image) |
Emma would outlive both Annabel and Henrietta, dying in 1886 in her 91st
year, one of the oldest inhabitants of Spring Hill in Boughton. She was
survived by two daughters and five sons and her funeral in Chester was attended
by Hungerford and by Annabel’s husband Lord Houghton. At her death her link to
Huskisson was once again recalled, with many newspapers describing her as ‘the
lady who nursed Mr Huskisson’ and noting that with the death of the ‘good and
kindly’ Mrs Blackburne, had been severed ‘probably the last surviving link in
the chain of connexion with the dark cloud which marred an otherwise auspicious
event’ so many years before.
She is commemorated by a stained glass window in Chester Cathedral with
a dedication that reads,
In loving remembrance of Emma Anne
Blackburne, here married A.D. M DCCCXIX., and of Katherine Margaret, her
daughter, here baptised A.D. M D CCCXXIV., this window is dedicated in the name
of God, M DCCCCII.
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| Emma Blackburne's grave at Overleigh Cemetery, Chester (author's own image) |
Bibliography
Christian Wolmar, ‘Fire and Steam: How the Railways Transformed Britain’, London 2007.
Richard Pike, ‘Railway Adventures and Anecdotes: Extending Over More Than Fifty Years’, 1884.
Flookersbrook, Newton & Hoole Female Friendly Society’
[http://www.hoolehistorysoc.btck.co.uk/HooleSocialWelfare/FemaleFriendlySocieties]
‘Death of Mrs Blackburne of Boughton’, Chester Observer, 17 April 1886.
‘Memoirs of Edward and Catherine Stanley’, edited by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, 1880.
‘Eccles: Splendid Testimonial to the Rev. Thomas Blackburne A.M.’, Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 4 March 1837.
‘At Eccles’, The Cornhill Magazine, 1884.
‘The speeches of the Right Honorable William Huskisson, with a biographical memoir, supplied to the editor from authentic sources’, London 1831.
‘Funeral of Mrs Blackburne’, Liverpool Mercury, 19 April 1886.
‘Death of the Lady who Nursed Mr Huskisson’, The Manchester Evening News, 14 April 1886.
‘Notes and Comments’, Newcastle Evening Chronicle 15 April 1886.
