Adventures and Recollections

by Bill o'th' Hoylus End

THE FINAL DAY

The deputation was kept in London day after day, until several weeks had passed. The final day at last arrived, and the deputation was ushered into the gorgeous chamber. The petition was presented, and Mr Leach, in answer to the President, and in a dialect which must have puzzled the Londoners present, said; “We’re bahn ta build a brig ower t’ railway, an’ we think it’s nowt but reight ’at we sud hev it. Ther’s lots o’ horses been lamed at t’ level crossing. Why, I were varry near being jiggered mysel one neet.” Other members of the deputation having given evidence in support of the petition, the party retired. In the end the bridge was erected. Mr Leach and his fellow members of the Local Board were in London about six weeks, and one cannot help thinking that, with an allowance of £1 per day for expenses, they would thoroughly enjoy themselves. At least Mr Leach told me that he did.

MR LEACH’S THREE NIGHTS’ LECTURES

On his return to Keighley, Mr Leach and, indeed, the rest of the deputation was made a god of, in certain quarters. In Jonas Moore’s barber’s shop in the Market-place, Mr Leach described his visit to London to a few “favoured” customers, and provoked unlimited laughter. It was Jonas Moore and Joe Town who induced him to give a public lecture on his travels. An elaborate bill was prepared, “almost as big as a house side,” informing the burgesses of Keighley that Mr James Leach would give “three nights’ lectures in the Temperance Hall, on his life and travels in London during his six weeks’ commission from the Local Board of Health.” A few frequenters of the barber’s shop in the Market-place suggested that Mr (now Sir) Isaac Holden should be asked to take the chair. Mr Holden was accordingly communicated with, and came down to Keighley in his carriage; he finally consented to preside at the lectures. Mr Holden was punctual on the first night of the lecture, when there was an overflowing audience. This was, I believe, Mr Holden’s first, or nearly his first, public appearance, and the occasion served to bring his name very widely before the people. He took the opportunity to speak upon local politics. He mentioned that he had not the least doubt that the lecturer’s intentions were good and honest. The lecture consisted of all the funny stories Mr Leach could remember concerning his visit to London; these he gave in his well-known quaint style, in broad dialect, and the progress was frequently interrupted by the hilarity of the audience. Mr Holden, I can say, was quite “flabbergasted” with the affair, and he looked as if he would have liked to drop through the stage. For the second night’s lecture there was no Mr Holden to preside. It was now Mr Leach’s turn to be uneasy. He sought diligently for a chairman. The audience proposed Bill o’ th’ Hoylus End, as being Mr Leach’s right-hand man; but the lecturer objected, saying Bill would most likely be “drukken.” Finally, Mr Emanuel Teasdale, a politician of the old school of Radicals, took the chair. After a political speech from the chairman, Mr Leach continued his lecture with the same general acceptance, and to an audience quite as large as that of the previous evening. On the third and concluding night, Mr Leach had even greater difficulty in securing a chairman. There was neither Mr Holden nor Mr Emanuel Teasdale. The audience successively proposed “Bawk” (the parish pinder), “Doad o’ Tibs” (bill poster), Jacky Moore (town’s crier), Bill Spink, and others. The lecturer objected to each of these, and, in despair, accepted Bill o’ th’ Hoylus End. I officiated as best I could, and I utter no untruth in saying that I had a good deal to do; for I had to undertake the greater share in entertaining the large number of people present. Mr Leach had well nigh exhausted his stock of lecture “material” on the second evening, and on the third night I had to fill up the time with telling stories and giving recitations. It can be truly said that the three lectures were regarded as a great treat by those who heard them.

MR LEACH’S FUNERAL SERMONS

Perhaps the “funeral sermons” which Mr Leach preached on his two wives in the early part of 1891 were as funny as the London lectures. Mr Leach said I should have to be his chairman at the “sermons,” but when the day came he said he would do without me, as he “durst bet ah’d bin hevin’ whiskey.” I went to the Temperance Hall, but was told by Police-superintendent Grayson, who was there with two constables, that he had special instructions not to admit me into the “precincts of that holy place” unless I was perfectly sober. There was an overflow crowd in the street, and I put it to them whether I was drunk or sober. There was a majority that said I was sober, and Mr Grayson allowed me to pass in. When Mr Leach saw me entering the hall, he called out of the police; but finally allowed me to take a seat at the foot of the stage. At the outset he declined to have me on the platform, until he “broke down,” and said, “Tha’d better come up here, Bill, for ah’m ommost worn aat. Ah’ll gie thee ten minutes ta say summat.” I accordingly mounted the platform and recited a few pieces I had written—“Come, nivver dee i’ thi shell, owd lad” (one of Mr Leach’s favourites), “Biddy Blake,” &c. After the lecture, I went with Mr Leach in a cab to his home. When we got there he said “They’ll be tawkin’ abaat this at t’ Devonshire. Tak’ this shillin’, and go see what they’ve ta say abaat my lecter.” I went to the Devonshire Hotel, and found several gentlemen talking and laughing over the “sermons.” However, Mr Leach had done his best, “an’ t’ Prime Minister couldn’t dew more,” as he expressed it. The delivery of the funeral sermons marked the close of his public life. It was not long after that he showed signs of illness, and I went to live with, and wait upon him. I had often to recite my poems for him, and one he frequently asked for was “The pauper’s box;” he assured me that he would leave me enough to keep me from being buried in a pauper’s coffin:—

Thou odious box, as I look on thee,
I wonder wilt thou be unlocked for me?
No, no! forbear!—yet then, yet then,
’Neath thy grim lid do lie the men—
Men whom fortune’s blasted arrows hit,
And send them to the pauper’s pit.

. . . . .

But let me pause, ere I say more
About thee, unoffending door;
When I bethink me, now I pause,
It is not thee who makes the laws,
But villains, who, if all were just,
In thy grim cell would lay their dust.

But yet, ’twere grand beneath yon wall
To lie with friends,—relations all,
If sculptured tombstones were not there,
But simple grass with daisies fair—
And were it not, grim box, for thee,
’Twere Paradise, O Cemetery!