Black Diamonds: The Rise & Fall of an English Dynasty

by Bailey, Catherine

  p. xxii ‘The Fitzwilliams had a secret life’: author’s interview with Peter Diggle, November 2005.

  ‘My grandmother made me promise …’: author’s interview with Lady Ann Bowlby, March 2004.

  ‘That generation of the family were very proud …’: author’s interview with Ian Bond, April 2006.

  CHAPTER ONE

  p. 3 ‘In addition to the main family seat …’: the will of William, 6th Earl Fitzwilliam, Probate Registry, London.

  ‘Milton looked very tall and good-looking …’: Charles, Viscount Halifax, to his sister, Emily Meynell Ingram, 25 February 1902, Borthwick Institute for Archives, University of York, A2.267.3.

  p. 4 ‘He had a perfect horror …’: Fitzwilliam v Fitzwilliam, Royal Courts of Justice, February 1951.

  CHAPTER TWO

  p. 5 ‘Gold and green …’: Wentworth House furniture inventory, 1902. Private Collection.

  p. 6 ‘As late as the 1920s, a boy from Greaseborough …’: Roger Dataller (pseud.), A Pitman’s Notebook, Jonathan Cape, 1925.

  p. 7 ‘There was no electric light …’: conversation with Elfreda, Countess of Wharncliffe, recorded in 1977 by Roy Young.

  p. 8 ‘They did nothing else except lamps …’: ibid.

  p. 9 ‘Agnes and I were over at Wentworth …’: Charles, Viscount Halifax, to his sister, Emily Meynell Ingram, 2 March 1902, Hickleton Papers, Borthwick Institute for Archives, University of York, A2.267.3.

  ‘Affairs at Wentworth seem in a most wretched state …’: Mary Sutton to Edward Wood, 9 March 1902, Hickleton Papers, Borthwick Institute for Archives, University of York, A2.140.

  ‘Agnes tells me the rows …’: Charles, Viscount Halifax, to his sister, Emily Meynell Ingram, 7 March 1902, ibid., A2.267.3.

  p. 10 ‘I think in my yesterday’s note …’: Kathleen Doyne to her Aunt Berta, 21 February 1902. Private Collection.

  ‘They’d done nothing …’: conversation with Elfrida, Countess of Wharncliffe, recorded in 1977 by Roy Young.

  p. 11 ‘She made the milk go sour …’: ibid.

  ‘They wanted to kick him out …’: ibid.

  p. 13 ‘Tied with a pink silk ribbon …’: Sheffield Archives, Unlisted Material, Wentworth Woodhouse Muniments, Box 236.

  CHAPTER THREE

  p. 14 ‘a spurious child …’: Thomas Bayliss, King’s Bench Division, Royal Courts of Justice, 10 March 1902. Case name: ‘Re a Solicitor – Ex parte The Incorporated Law Society’.

  ‘The Home Secretary was required to attend …’: a custom established after the ‘warming pan’ incident of 1688, when Mary of Modena, second wife of James II, was accused of smuggling a changeling into the bedchamber as heir to the throne.

  p. 15 ‘Lord Milton, their elder brother …’: Sheffield Archives, Unlisted Material, Wentworth Woodhouse Muniments, Box 236.

  ‘Billy’s birth certificate …’: ibid.

  p. 16 ‘Certain members of the family …’: Thomas Bayliss, King’s Bench Division, Royal Courts of Justice, 10 March 1902, Case name ‘Re a Solicitor – Ex parte The Incorporated Law Society’.

  ‘“Gentlemen”, wrote …’: Dr Millar to Messrs Walters and Co., 9 New Square, Lincoln’s Inn, 7 March 1901, Sheffield Archives, Unlisted Material, WWM, Box 236.

  p. 17 ‘Hannah Boyce’s statement …’: ibid.

  p. 18 ‘1872 July 26 – the first cry …’: ibid.

  ‘Among Billy’s documents …’: letter from Hannah Boyce to Mr Barker, 30 January 1901, ibid.

  p. 19 ‘Dear Lady Countess Fitzwilliam …’: Hannah Boyce to Maud, Countess Fitzwilliam, 26 February 1913, ibid.

  ‘Lady Fitzwilliam has received the enclosed …’: Billy to Mr Barker, 9 March 1913, ibid.

  ‘On 10 March 1902 …’: Yorkshire Post, 11 March 1902, ‘Earl Fitzwilliam’s identity – strange allegations by a solicitor’.

  p. 20 ‘There had been a serious falling-out …’: ibid.

  ‘In lieu of the questions submitted …’ Sheffield Archives, Unlisted Material, WWM, Box 236.

  p. 21 ‘You cannot be surprised …’: Daily Telegraph, 11 March 1902.

  p. 22 ‘As vouched for …’: Fitzwilliam v Fitzwilliam, Royal Courts of Justice, February 1951.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  p. 23 ‘One of the hard lessons …’: letter from Harriet, Countess Fitzwilliam, to her daughter Lady Frances Doyne, 17 January 1877. Private Collection.

  p. 24 ‘My grandfather never spoke about his father …’: author’s interview with Lady Barbara Ricardo, February 2004.

  ‘I couldn’t believe there was so little …’: Michael Shaw Bond, Way Out West: On the Trail of an Errant Ancestor, McClelland & Stewart, 2001, p. 12.

  ‘I imagined …’: ibid.

  ‘Searching through …’: ibid., p. 14.

  p. 25 ‘Fits are treated as madness …’: G. Battiscombe, Shaftesbury, Constable, 1974, p. 259.

  ‘When Christ healed …’: G. E. Berrios and Roy Porter, A History of Clinical Psychiatry, Athlone, 1995, p. 165.

  ‘In the first century …’: ibid., p. 166.

  p. 26 ‘Dr Beau, who conducted a study of sixty-seven epileptics …’: Owsei Temkin, The Falling Sickness, The Johns Hopkins Press, 1971, p. 262.

  ‘Even as late as the 1880s …’: Berrios and Porter, A History of Clinical Psychiatry, p. 170.

  p. 27 ‘William may have to …’: cited in Bond, Way Out West, p. 14.

  ‘Please do let me know …’: ibid., p. 13.

  ‘I see no prospect …’: ibid., p. 22.

  ‘This Asylum for the Insane …’: cited in W. Parry Jones, The Trade in Lunacy, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972, p. 106.

  p. 28 ‘Modelled on grand country houses …’: Andrew Scull, The Most Solitary of Afflictions: Madness and Society in Britain 1700–1900, Yale University Press, 1993, pp. 300–301.

  ‘It is painful …’: J. Conolly on the 9th Report of Commissioner for Lunacy, 1854, cited in Parry Jones, The Trade in Lunacy, p. 180.

  ‘At Ticehurst …’: Charlotte MacKenzie, Psychiatry for the Rich, Routledge, 1992, p. 105.

  ‘In 1857, lifting the veil of secrecy …’: Crichton Royal Asylum, 18th Annual Report, 1857, quoted in Scull, The Most Solitary of Afflictions, p. 298.

  p. 29 ‘They are encountered …’: ibid.

  ‘I am sorry to say …’: cited in Bond, Way Out West, p. 14.

  ‘William, I am happy …’: ibid.

  ‘I hope the ups …’: ibid., p. 21.

  p. 30 ‘Dear Father and Mother …’: Milton to Lord and Lady Fitzwilliam, April 1872. Private Collection.

  ‘It is almost impossible …’: The World, 5 March 1902.

  ‘silent of hosts …’: unpublished memoir, cited with the kind permission of David Peake.

  ‘A good many of them were frightened of him …’: Lady Mabel Smith, Royal Courts of Justice, Fitzwilliam v Fitzwilliam, February 1951.

  p. 31 ‘Maurice fell …’: cited in McKenzie, Psychiatry for the Rich, p. 101.

  p. 32 ‘3 roasted oxen …’: quoted in Bond, Way Out West, p. 28.

  p. 33 ‘I have been thinking …’: Henry Wentworth-Fitzwilliam to his sister Frances Doyne, July 1860. Private Collection.

  p. 34 ‘There appears some reason …’: Harriet, Countess Fitzwilliam, to George Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, April 1861, Northampton Archives.

  ‘My son’s conduct …’ Earl Fitzwilliam to Lord Chichester, April 1861, cited in Bond, Way Out West, p. 24.

  ‘He wishes you to read …’: Countess Fitzwilliam to George Fitzwilliam, April 1861, Northampton Archives.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  p. 36 ‘With respect to the charge …’: The Standard, 10 May 1862.

  ‘The diamond earrings …’: ibid., 3 May 1862.

  ‘He offered the broker …’: ibid.

  p. 37 ‘His lawyers …’: ibid.

  ‘Sailed at 5 …’: Cheadle’s Journal of the Trip Across Canada 1862– 1863, Graphic Publishers, Ottawa, 1931, p. 15.

  ‘I am sorry I did not look up …’: Milton to Henr
y Went worth-Fitzwilliam, 20 June 1862. Private Collection.

  p. 38 ‘Weather blowing stormy …’: Cheadle’s Journal of the Trip Across Canada 1862–1863, p. 16.

  ‘Turned out towards 11 …’: ibid.

  ‘About 1 o’clock …’: ibid. P.19.

  p. 39 ‘Very cold and raw …’: ibid., p. 20.

  ‘When starving …’: Robert Ballantyne, Hudson Bay Company, Boston, Phillips, Sampson, 1859.

  p. 40 ‘Their journey …’: Viscount Milton and W. B. Cheadle, The North-West Passage by Land, London, Cassel, Petter and Galpin, 1865.

  ‘He was leaning …’: ibid., p. 9.

  p. 41 ‘So long as …’: quoted in Bond, Way Out West, p. 224.

  CHAPTER SIX

  p. 42 ‘Poor squinny …’: The Diary of Lady Frederick-Cavendish, ed. J. Bailey, London, 1927, vol. 2.

  ‘The Fitzwilliams and the Devonshires …’: David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, Yale University Press, 1990, p. 10.

  ‘In the course of …’: The Diary of Lady Frederick-Cavendish, vol. 2, p. 19.

  ‘I am worried …’: ibid.

  p. 43 ‘It is no light thing …’: Mary Butler to Lady Frances Doyne, 1 June 1867. Private Collection.

  p. 44 ‘When I knew …’: Mary Butler to Lady Frances Doyne, 13 June 1867. Private Collection.

  ‘It was very kind of you …’: ibid.

  ‘Will you thank …’: ibid.

  ‘You may be certain …’: Mary Butler to Lady Frances Doyne, 8 July 1867. Private Collection.

  p. 45 ‘Dearest Fanny …’: Harriet, Countess Fitzwilliam, to Lady Frances Doyne, 5 July 1867. Private Collection.

  ‘I never knew her …’: conversation with Elfrida, Countess of Wharncliffe, recorded by Roy Young in 1977.

  p. 46 ‘Admitting defeat …’: Harriet, Countess Fitzwilliam, to Lady Frances Doyne, 9 August 1867. Private Collection.

  ‘The late Lady Milton …’: statement sworn before the Commissioner of Oaths, 1900, Sheffield Archives, Unlisted Material, Wentworth Woodhouse Muniments, Box 236.

  p. 47 ‘On Tuesday …’: Harriet, Countess Fitzwilliam, to Lady Frances Doyne, 28 December 1871. Private Collection.

  p. 48 ‘The voyage …’: Lord Milton to Lord and Lady Fitzwilliam, April 1872. Private Collection.

  ‘25th May …’: Matilda Kingdon, unpublished diary. Private Collection.

  p. 49 ‘the half-breeds came …’: ibid.

  p. 50 ‘Re-reading Dr Millar’s statement …’: Sheffield Archives, Unlisted Material, WWM, Box 236.

  ‘My intercourse …’: ibid.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  p. 53 ‘“Yes,” it read …’: undated. Henry Wentworth-Fitzwilliam papers. Private Collection.

  p. 55 ‘In 1900, they were short of proof …’: November 1900, ‘Lord Milton Supplemental Instructions to Mr Butcher, Walters & Co.’ Sheffield Archives, Unlisted Material, Wentworth Woodhouse Muniments, Box 236.

  ‘From a young age …’: Henry Wentworth-Fitzwilliam to Lady Frances Doyne, July 1860. Private Collection.

  ‘Only those …’: Laura, Viscountess Milton, to Harriet, Countess Fitzwilliam, n.d. Private Collection.

  p. 56 ‘In a sanctimonious letter …’: Harriet, Countess Fitzwilliam, to Henry Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, 22 February 1874. Private Collection.

  ‘I fear that dear William …’: Henry Wentworth-Fitzwilliam to Lady Frances Doyne, 14 January 1877. Private Collection.

  ‘There was little …’: cited in Way Out West: The Story of an Errant Ancestor, McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, 2001, p. 235.

  p. 57 ‘As Michael Bond …’: ibid.

  p. 58 ‘I asked her to furnish …’: Mr Barker to Billy, 7th Earl Fitzwilliam, 20 March 1902, Sheffield Archives, Unlisted Material, WWM, Box 236.

  ‘As Billy’s solicitor discovered …’: Mr Ponsonby to Mr Barker, 21 April 1902, ibid.

  ‘Pink bedroom …’: Furniture Inventory, Sheffield Archives, WWM, T72.

  p. 59 ‘Claim followed counter-claim …’: see Correspondence Between Parties’ Solicitors, Sheffield Archives, WWM, T72.

  ‘4th and 5th housemaid bedroom …’: Furniture Inventory, Sheffield Archives, WWM, T72.

  p. 60 ‘Dear Charley …’: Henry Wentworth-Fitzwilliam to Charles Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, 27 March 1902, Sheffield Archives, Unlisted Material, WWM, Box 236.

  ‘The inkstand …’: Mr Barker to Mr Cowper, 14 January 1903, Sheffield Archives, WWM, T72.

  p. 61 ‘The case set up …’: ibid.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  p. 65 ‘I don’t know who …’: Roger Dataller (pseud.), From A Pitman’s Notebook, Jonathan Cape, 1925, p. 200.

  p. 66 ‘As kids we …’: Jim Bullock, Bowers Row, EP Publishing, Wakefield, 1976, p. 183.

  ‘Well, aye, aye …’: Dataller, From a Pitman’s Notebook, p. 24.

  ‘The times I liked best …’: Bullock, Bowers Row, p. 30.

  p. 67 ‘I’ve worked in the pit …’: testimony of John Saville, 1842, Children’s Employment Commission, Appendix Reports and Evidence from Sub-Commissioners, 2 vols., London, 1842.

  ‘I ran away …’: testimony of Thomas Moorhouse, ibid.

  p. 68 ‘The roads are very wet …’: testimony of David Swallow, ibid.

  ‘Samuel Scriven saw …’: cited in Alan Gallop, Children of the Dark: Life and Death Underground in Victoria’s England, Sutton, 2003, p. 162.

  ‘In the first decades …’: A. J. P. Taylor, English History 1914–1945, Oxford University Press, 1965, paperback edition, 1992, p. 171.

  CHAPTER NINE

  p. 70 ‘They called it …’: Christian Budget, 8 November 1899.

  ‘Writing in a state …’: ibid.

  ‘Four thousand …’: J. E. MacFarlane, The Bag Muck Strike, Denaby Main, Doncaster Library Service, 1987, p. ix.

  ‘The familiar sounds …’: Roger Dataller (pseud.), A Yorkshire Lad, unpublished memoir.

  p. 71 ‘Putrid and stagnant …’: testimony of Tom Hibbard, Margaret L. Hibbard, The Pit Boy from Denaby Main, unpublished memoir, Doncaster Library.

  ‘A few hours after dawn …’: Mexborough and Swinton Times, 9 January 1903.

  ‘Four companies …’: ibid.

  ‘Suffering was etched …’: J. Wilson, The Story of the Great Struggle, 1902–1903, Christian Commonwealth Co., London, 1904, pp. 42–3.

  p. 72 ‘The children crackled …’: Mexborough and Swinton Times, 9 January 1903.

  ‘You hadn’t much trouble …’: J. E. MacFarlane, Denaby Main, A South Yorkshire Village, Studies in the Yorkshire Coal Industry, Manchester University Press, 1976, p. 123.

  ‘In the months before …’: MacFarlane, The Bag Muck Strike.

  p. 74 ‘The oldest houses …’: Roger Dataller (pseud.), Oxford into Coalface, J. M. Dent & Sons, 1934, p. 13.

  ‘It’s a dirty hole …’: Phyllis Holcroft, unpublished memoir, 1899.

  ‘People from the other places …’: MacFarlane Papers, Doncaster Archives.

  ‘The houses cost …’: ibid.

  p. 75 ‘Each midden …’: testimony of Tom Hibbard, Margaret L. Hibbard, The Pit Boy from Denaby Main, unpublished memoir.

  ‘Epidemics …’: Mexborough and Swinton Times, July 1901.

  ‘The ruin of the children …’: Christian Budget, 8 November 1899.

  p. 76 ‘The entire village …’: MacFarlane, Denaby Main, A South Yorkshire Mining Village, p. 143.

  ‘As one miner …’: Christian Budget, 8 November 1899.

  p. 77 ‘He was quite dead …’: Roger Dataller (pseud.), From a Pitman’s Notebook, Jonathan Cape, 1925, p. 84.

  p. 78 ‘Dear Margaret …’: B. F. and H. Huckham, Great Pit Disasters: Great Britain, 1700 to the present day, David and Charles, 1973, p. 29.

  p. 79 ‘In 1903, Denaby and Cadeby …’: MacFarlane Papers, Doncaster Archives.

  ‘Those days …’: ibid.

  ‘In the early 1900s …’: ibid.

  ‘Well, he was dead now …’: Bullock, Bowers Row, p. 219.

&
nbsp; p. 80 ‘The dangerous conditions …’: John Benson, British Coalminers in the Nineteenth Century: a Social History, Gil and Macmillan, 1980, p. 65.

  ‘The roads into the village …’: Mexborough and Swinton Times, 9 January 1903.

  ‘The police …’: ibid.

  p. 81 ‘Sprigs of Christmas holly …’: ibid.

  ‘There goes …’: ibid.

  ‘Their eyes …’: Mexborough and Swinton Times, 16 January 1903.

  p. 82 ‘The expected trouble …’: Mexborough and Swinton Times, 9 January 1903.

  ‘My father moved …’: MacFarlane Papers, Doncaster Archives.

  p. 83 ‘When I was a boy …’: Mexborough and Swinton Times, 16 January 1903.

  ‘There were two classes of tent …’: Wilson, The Story of the Great Struggle, 1902–1903, p. 34.

  ‘Someone had hoisted …’: Mexborough and Swinton Times, 16 January 1903.

  p. 84 ‘Many seemed to think …’: Wilson, The Story of the Great Struggle, 1902–1903.

  ‘I was returning …’: ibid, p. 34.

  CHAPTER TEN

  p. 85 ‘Thank God it’s over …’: Daily Mail, 10 January 1903.

  ‘If we are beaten …’: Mexborough and Swinton Times, 16 January 1903.

  ‘The colliery company …’: Lord Beveridge, Power and Influence, Hodder and Stoughton, 1953, p. 11.

  p. 87 ‘The weekly allowance …’: Mexborough and Swinton Times, 9 January 1903.

  ‘It was a terrifying …’: MacFarlane Papers, Doncaster Archives.

  ‘It was the custom …’: Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan, The Glitter and the Gold, Heinemann, 1953, p. 68.

  p. 88 ‘One woman …’: Daily Chronicle, 9 January 1903.

  p. 89 ‘The poor mother …’: J. Wilson, The Story of the Great Struggle, 1902–1903, Christian Commonwealth Co., London, 1904, p. 35.

  ‘Fields of crops …’: Roger Dataller (pseud.), From a Pitman’s Notebook, Jonathan Cape, 1925, p. 219.

  p. 90 ‘Fred Smith, a miner …’: unpublished memoir, printed in the Ivanhoe Review, Bulletin of the Archives and Local Studies Section, Central Library, Rotherham, No. 6, Spring 1994.

  ‘Six miles or more …’: ibid.

  p. 91 ‘Crossing the Worksop Road …’: ibid.

  ‘There was a ballroom …’: Brian Masters, The Dukes, Blond and Briggs, 1975, p. 195.

  ‘The Duke’s annual income …’: David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, Yale University Press, 1990, p. 710.