The Gallant Pioneers: Rangers 1872

by Ralston, Gary

  In the spring of 1897 the headlines in the British press were dominated by world events, including the ongoing funding and engineering crises surrounding the construction of the Panama Canal. German Kaiser Wilhelm II was at loggerheads with his own budget committee in the Reichstag over the country’s naval spending, while famine in India and flooding along the Mississippi in the US had left hundreds of thousands homeless and facing illness and starvation. However, it is unlikely that affairs of state or other political intrigues weighed heavily on the mind of William in March and April of that year as he trudged from one boarding house to another around the favoured holiday resorts that fringe the Severn Estuary, including Weston-super-Mare, Clevedon, Clifton and Portishead. It was not events at the front of newspapers he would have found taxing so much as the pressure of filling the space traditionally given over at the back of the daily publications to classified and display advertisements. As career choices go, it seemed that he had hit rock bottom, accepting in February the kind of employment opportunity that would have made the position of snake oil salesman appear as credible as the post of Prime Minister.

  It was not as if he was selling space on behalf of the standard-bearers of the Fourth Estate – Emmott’s Seaside Advertiser hardly ranked alongside The London Times as society’s great guardian of the truth, as the few copies of the newspaper that did exist were certainly not published by a character with a strong sense of Victorian morality. On the face of it, the position was hardly the most challenging. For 10 shillings a week and a 25 per cent commission it was the duty of William, most often accompanied by his newspaper’s publisher, John Burgoyne Emmott – as it transpired, a conman whose entrepreneurial zeal was clearly in inverse proportion to his sense of ethics – to persuade hoteliers and boarding house owners to advertise in the weekly journal, Emmott’s Seaside Advertiser. The potential advertisers were assured the paper was widely distributed each week to 5,000 households throughout the north of England and the Midlands, from where the bulk of their holidaying guests arrived throughout the year. A standard advertisement usually cost at least five shillings for six months, but on immediate payment of cash it could be secured for half the price. On the face of it, a good deal seemed to have been secured, but nagging doubts soon surfaced among those who had paid up front – and they were confirmed when William and Emmott were arrested in Portishead under suspicion of securing money under false pretences.

  The full story was recounted in May 1897 in the pages of the Bristol Times and Mirror and the Western Daily Press and exposed William as a weak, naïve and impressionable character – sadly pathetic, driven (most probably as a result of recent events in his family life) to accept a job working for a convicted criminal whose ability to sweet-talk over 1,000 gullible souls out of up to £600 in the previous 18 months was as impressive as the depth of his greed and lack of scruples. On Monday 17 May 1897 the story commanded most of page three of the Western Daily Press under the heading ‘Alleged False Pretences in Somerset.’ The story read: ‘A special sitting of the Long Ashton division magistrates was held on Saturday at Flax Bourton for the investigation of charges of obtaining money by false pretences preferred against two respectably dressed men, named John Burgoyne Emmott (45) and William Duncanson MacBeth (40). The proceedings, which were conducted before Sir Edward Fry and Major Thorne, lasted some hours. The original charges against the prisoners were obtaining by false pretences 2s 6d from Joseph John Dobbs at Portishead, on 29 April; 3s from Henry Charles Barrington, at Portishead, on 30 April; and 2s 6d from Albert Thomas Cross, also of Portishead. Mr Dobbs, corn factor, of Beach Road, Portishead, said at the first hearing that on 29 April Emmott came to his house and, representing himself to be the agent for Emmott’s Seaside Advertiser, asked him to advertise his lodgings in that paper. In answer to witness, Emmott said the paper was circulated in the Midlands and had proved such a success in advertising watering places they had decided to take in Portishead and Clevedon. The usual charge, added Emmott, was 5s and upwards per advertisement but as the witness’s house was a small one they would advertise it for 2s 6d. Witness agreed to advertise his lodgings for six months for 2s 6d, the defendant promising to send the paper every week while the advertisement was running. Emmott produced a copy of the paper and witness paid him the 2s 6d.’

  The fraud was repeated with Barrington, who paid three shillings, and also with Mrs Ellen Cross, wife of Albert Thomas, who told how William had first knocked on her door and engaged in conversation on 28 April while Emmott waited at the garden gate. Persistence was clearly a strong characteristic of William’s as he returned twice before finally securing 2s 6d from the Cross family on 30 April. The court then called Arthur Baker, a Birmingham printer, who outlined further details of the fraud. Baker revealed that in 1896 his company printed Emmott’s Seaside Advertiser but that he had never met Emmott before. The work was carried out on a written order received from Emmott in Bournemouth and Baker’s firm, the Aston Steam Printing Works, agreed to publish the paper monthly for a year. However, Baker’s company only printed the paper twice in total and half the initial print run of 1,000 copies was sent to Emmott at a London railway station, with the other 500 retained by the printers awaiting further instructions, which never came. A lengthy correspondence passed between Emmott and his printer throughout 1896 before he finally wrote from Torquay to complain about business being bad and requesting another batch of 500 papers -– his second edition – at a reduced cost of 15 shillings. Surprisingly, the printer agreed and confessed under questioning that, despite extensive experience of publishing in the Midlands, he had never heard of Emmott’s Seaside Advertiser being distributed in Birmingham or its surrounding areas.

  Emmott and William had clearly aroused suspicion in the local community and it came as no surprise when they were arrested by a PC Sharpe in Portishead on 1 May for alleged offences stretching back two months. Details of their arrests were reported in the 17 May edition of the Bristol Times and Mirror as William pleaded, ‘I am only an agent for Mr Emmott, receiving so much per week, and he owes me now over £6 in wages. I did not know [anything] but this paper was printed every week in Birmingham and circulated in Birmingham, Manchester, Derby, Liverpool, Nottingham and several other places. I can’t see how I can be convicted.’ William had been caught with counterfoil receipts in his pockets relating to money received from witnesses in the case. Charitably, Emmott damned William with faint praise, telling police, ‘I wish to say that he is innocent of the charge. He has worked for me faithfully for the last three months, though not successfully. He has handed over all monies, or accounted for them, which he has received.’ Emmott added: ‘I never intended from the first to obtain any money by false pretences.’

  William’s desperation to avoid a longer spell in prison was clear to every reader of the Bristol Times and Mirror as they read over details of his defence. The paper reported he ‘read a long statement, in which he stated that he was engaged in February last at Weston-Super-Mare by Emmott…His salary was 10s a week, all railway expenses paid, and 25 per cent commission on the amount of advertisements, paid weekly. All monies he collected were handed over at the time of receiving them or the same evening. All the working of districts was directed by Emmott and he had no permission to alter the ground without his authority. In canvassing for advertisements he was to make it clear that Emmott’s Seaside Advertiser had a wide circulation in the Midlands as a paper devoted to the advertising of boarding houses, hotels, restaurants etc and that 5,000 copies were distributed weekly in Leeds, Manchester, Derby, Liverpool, Leicester, Northampton, London and several other places and that the advertisements would appear every week for 52 weeks unless ordered for six months only. These things he represented to all he called on and 60 advertisements were taken in Weston-super-Mare alone, some from personal friends, including others for Clevedon, Burnham, Clifton and Portishead…He had been working for Emmott for 10 weeks only and it was utterly impossible for him to know of anything between Emmott a
nd his printer beyond that they were on good terms. The real facts only came to light with the examination of Emmott at the Portishead police station. He declared that he had nothing to do with the paper called Emmott’s Seaside Advertiser further than a paid servant to Emmott as advertising agent. His engagement was to have continued until he had worked Blackpool and district and the Isle of Man.’

  William’s pleas of innocence fell on deaf ears and he was committed for trial with Emmott the following month. Bail was set at £50 for William and £100 for Emmott. Surely, justice was done on Friday 11 June when William was acquitted, but Emmott found guilty of dishonesty. The Western Daily Press noted in its edition of 12 June that the prosecution appeared willing to give Emmott the benefit of the doubt in his dubious publishing venture. It said: ‘A thousand copies [of Emmott’s Seaside Advertiser] were printed and the prosecution admitted that at the time Emmott may have been acting perfectly honestly. The paper, however, started under unfavourable auspices, only 500 copies being taken by Emmott. Last October he was supplied with another 100 copies and no further trace of the publication could be found. In the following March, however, advertisements were solicited and it was upon this the prosecution relied for a conviction…Mr Garland [William’s lawyer] urged that MacBeth acted bona fide and himself thoroughly believed in Emmott’s representations.’ The jury found Emmott guilty, and acquitted MacBeth. Emmott admitted a previous conviction at Liverpool (for felony, in October 1889). Sergeant Sharpe informed the learned judge that he had received a large number of complaints of this kind of conduct on Emmott’s part. Since 1896 the prisoner had collected money from over 1,000 people, receiving between £500 and £600. His Lordship said he was glad the police had taken pains to acquire information about Emmott and he passed sentence of 21 months’ imprisonment with hard labour.

  The second marriage certificate of William McBeath, who married Sarah Ann Lambert on Boxing Day, 1898. There is no evidence to suggest he was a widower, as stated.

  Following his escape from the clutches of the courts, William clearly felt he had little alternative but to seek a new start elsewhere in England, leaving behind whatever family he still had left in Bristol. By the end of 1898 he was in Bradford but, quite probably, ran the risk of falling foul of the law once again when he married for the second time, to a Sarah Ann Lambert, with whom he was sharing an address at No. 28 Marshall Street in the Horton district of the Yorkshire town. There is no doubt that the marriage solemnised at the Register Office in Bradford on Boxing Day of 1898 involved William of Rangers fame – the wedding certificate noted his age as 40, his profession was given as commission agent and his father’s name was listed as Peter MacBeth (deceased), whose occupation had been a ‘stuff merchant’. Intriguingly, however, William listed himself as a widower when there is no documented evidence to suggest that his first wife Jeannie had even died. In fact, it seems she continued to live until 1915, at which point she passed away in Bristol from ovarian cancer.

  The evidence to suggest William’s second marriage was bigamous is persuasive, not least for the lack of any official confirmation of Jeannie’s passing in the first place. Indeed, in the 1901 census she appeared to have adopted the more anglicised Christian name of Jennie and was living in a boarding house in the town of Rochford in Essex. This Jennie MacBeth also listed a middle initial of ‘Y’ (as in Yeates or Yates, Jeannie’s unusual middle name). To add to the weight of evidence, her birthplace was confirmed as Glasgow, just like William’s first bride. She listed herself as a widow who was ‘living on her own means’ and this marital status is likely to have been a front to maintain respectability. It is no surprise she was not listed as living with any of her three children – William disappears completely from the records after 1890, while, in 1901, Agnes would have been 19 and was working as a nursery governess in Torquay. Norman, then aged 11, had been sent north to live with his grandmother, also Agnes, and aunts Jessie and Mary in their home at No. 26 Stanmore Road, Cathcart, further underlining the strife the marriage break up had caused to the family unit. (As an aside, it appears that Norman lived the majority of his life in Scotland until his death in 1973, aged 83. A customs official, he never married and died of prostate cancer at his home in the west end of Glasgow, a stone’s throw from the former Rangers ground at Burnbank).

  Following the trail of Jennie to her sad death in 1915 also adds strongly to the belief she was William’s estranged wife. Significantly, Jennie had returned to Bristol from Essex in the early years of the 20th century and died on 23 January 1915 at No. 18 Canton Street in the St Paul district of the city, only a few streets from the home at Albert Park where William and Jeannie had first moved in around 1880. The death certificate for Jennie MacBeth lists her age as 51 (again, like the 1901 census, seven years out) and her husband’s occupation was listed as commercial traveller, although his name was given as James, not William. The records for Scotland, England and Wales show that no such marriage between a James MacBeth and anyone named Jeannie or Jennie took place in the 40 years before 1915. On the basis of extensive research efforts, it is highly unlikely to have been anyone other than William’s first wife from their marriage in Glasgow in 1878.

  If William was hoping for greater happiness from his second marriage, however questionable its legitimacy, he would not find it, as his life deteriorated towards a sad conclusion in 1917 when he died in the workhouse at Lincoln; penniless, forgotten and most likely the victim of dementia that led him to be officially cast as a ‘certified imbecile’. Soon after his second marriage to Sarah Ann in Bradford they moved to Lincoln, nearer his new wife’s birthplace of Welton-Le-Marsh, a few miles from Skegness. Born in 1859, she grew up in the Lincolnshire village with her five siblings and half siblings. Sarah Ann’s life, like her husband’s, was also fated to be spent in poverty, with several spells in and out of the workhouse at Bradford and Lincoln. On the surface, all appeared well in their lives and by the time of the 1901 census they appeared to be happily settled at No. 34 Vernon Street in Lincoln, a row of modest terraced houses which had been built in the late 19th century and that could nowadays double as the set for Coronation Street, even down to the pub on the corner. Incidentally, there is no disputing the identities of the couple at No. 34 Vernon Street. Sarah Ann’s birthplace is listed as Welton-Le-Marsh in the 1901 census, while her husband’s is given as Callander, Perthshire. The Lincoln Post Office Directory of the time, published every second year, listed William’s occupation as insurance agent and by 1903 the couple had moved along Vernon Street to No. 5, where they lived until at least 1907. By 1909 their address was published as No. 57 Cranwell Street, four streets parallel to Vernon Street and only a mile from Lincoln town centre. From 1907 William’s occupation was listed simply as ‘agent’, but after 1910 the name of MacBeth disappeared from the index of addresses for good.

  Unfortunately, as he approached his 55th birthday, William was heading down to the lowest rung of society, where the only succour for the needy and infirm was provided by the workhouse. Lincoln had had a workhouse, also often referred to as a poorhouse, since around 1740, with accommodation for up to 350 people in an ‘H’ shaped building, made up of two dormitory wings and a central dining area in between. A resident could give three hours notice and leave at any time, but it was not a realistic option for all. A parliamentary report of 1861 found one in five residents had been in the workhouse for five years or more, mostly the elderly, chronically sick and mentally ill. Undoubtedly, William (and also Sarah Ann) fell into this category, because as economic conditions improved in the latter part of the 19th century fewer and fewer able-bodied people were entering workhouses. Indeed, by 1900 many were voluntarily entering the workhouse, particularly the elderly and physically and mentally infirm, because the standards of care and living were better than those on offer outside. Life in the workhouse may have been repetitive, but at least it was healthier than the poorest living quarters outside its walls and from 1870 onwards there was a relaxation of the rules
that allowed books, newspapers and snuff for the elderly.

  Cranwell Street, Lincoln: one of the last places William McBeath called home.

  It was against this backdrop that William was admitted in January 1910 and it is not only his age, listed as approximately 15 years out at 39, that raises an eyebrow. The Creed Register for Lincoln Workhouse, held at the Lincoln Archives, notes the ‘name of informant’ on William’s entry records as simply ‘prison warder’. Unfortunately, very few records for Lincoln Prison, first opened in 1872, survive from the turn of the 20th century and those that do are still closed under the 100-year rule. Workhouse historian Peter Higginbotham2 called on his experience to back the suspicion that William may have spent a short spell in gaol at around this time, most probably for a petty offence. He was quite possibly referred on his release to the workhouse, which was situated only a couple of hundred yards from the Lincoln Assize Court.

  The Creed Register discloses that William was discharged from Lincoln Workhouse on 3 June 1911, 18 months after he first entered, but he was back behind its gates within seven days. This time, on 10 June 1911, the records reveal he was ‘brought in by police’. It is difficult to escape the conclusion, particularly on the back of evidence from later workhouse records, that law officers were fulfilling a social work function by directing William to a more suitable environment. Frustratingly, although the Creed Register and board minutes of the Lincoln Workhouse are available, many of the more in-depth records, including medical reports, remain secured under the 100-year rule, so a clearer picture may not emerge for some years to come.