Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885

by T. Wemyss Reid

Another peculiarity which marked the Mercury in those days, though founded upon equally admirable motives, was not so happy in its character as this exclusion of betting news. Edward Baines the second regarded the theatre from the old Nonconformist point of view. He looked upon it, as so many did, as being an agent for the demoralisation of the young, and he refused to allow any notice of it to appear in the columns of his paper. This naturally excited the anger and ridicule of a large section of the public, who were not insensible to the change that was gradually taking place on the British stage. But no arguments and no ridicule could move the sturdy old Nonconformist. I remember once pleading with him for some relaxation of this rule. He heard all I had to say with courteous attention, but when I had exhausted my stock of arguments he delivered himself as follows: "My dear Mr. Reid, I feel sure that you are quite sincere and conscientious in the views you hold, but you do not know the theatre as I do. I speak from personal experience when I say that both in itself and in its surroundings it is immoral and demoralising." I stared aghast at this utterance. I knew that I went to theatres occasionally, but until then I had believed that Edward Baines had never crossed the threshold of a playhouse. He saw my look of surprise, and continued, "Yes, I am sorry to say that between the years 1819 and 1822 I attended the theatre frequently in London, and I can never forget the shocking immorality I witnessed both on the stage and among the audience." Dear, simple, high-principled, and most scrupulous soul! It was impossible to make way against his sixty-year-old memories.

But I must not omit to mention one characteristic of the proprietors of the Mercury which had a marked influence upon their manner of conducting that paper. This was their intense love of country. Both Edward Baines and his brother Frederick, though they never called themselves patriots, were among the most patriotic men I have ever known. They were Nonconformists and Liberals, and consequently, in the belief of their ignorant political opponents, they ought also to be Little Englanders of the huckster class. Instead of being Little Englanders, they were all through their lives the advocates of a sane but ardent Imperialism. They loved their country, and they believed in it—believed in it not only as the foremost nation of the earth, but as a great instrument for good among the peoples of the world. It followed that, whilst the Mercury advocated advanced Liberal opinions on most domestic questions, it was always in foreign affairs the supporter of an enlightened and reasonable Imperialism, and on any question affecting international policy it resolutely refused to take the mere partisan point of view. I have dwelt at this length upon some of the characteristics of the Leeds Mercury and its proprietors when I first became acquainted with them because they had a great and abiding influence upon my own character and opinions. At Preston I had learned to sympathise with the democracy, and to believe ardently in the cause of political reform. At Leeds I came in contact with a wider and loftier standard of Liberalism, and, whilst retaining my faith in the principles of my party on domestic questions, I added to it a conviction, not less profound, of the duty of advancing the interests of the British Empire throughout the world by every means in my power. In later years, when I was myself the editor of the Leeds Mercury, some of my excellent friends in London—and notably Mr. Stead—were wont to deplore my tendency in favour of Imperialism in foreign affairs, and to attribute it to the influence upon me of the Pall Mall clubs. As a matter of fact, I was led in this direction by the influence of these two estimable Yorkshire Nonconformists.

My first stay in Leeds in the somewhat anomalous position I have described lasted for little more than eighteen months. During that period I found plenty of work to do as a descriptive writer and reporter, and was brought into contact with some notable and interesting persons. Some months after I had become connected with the Mercury, I renewed my acquaintance with the tragical vicissitudes of colliery life. An explosion occurred at the Oaks Pit, near Barnsley, which led to the sacrifice of three hundred lives. Such a loss of life, exceeding that on many an historic battlefield, was in itself terrible, but the circumstances attending the accident at the Oaks Pit added to the grimness of the tragedy. When I reached the colliery a few hours after the explosion occurred I found that some two hundred of the men who had been working in it were known to have been killed, but that many more were believed to be still alive in the distant workings, and that a large rescue party had gone below to recover them. Having sent my last despatch to Leeds, I went to an inn at Barnsley to snatch a few hours of sleep before resuming work at daybreak. In the morning, as I was hastening back to the colliery to learn what progress had been made during the night, I suddenly saw a dense volume of black smoke shoot out of the mouth of the pit, and, rising high in the air, spread in a fan-shaped cloud of enormous size. Immediately afterwards the dull reverberation of an underground explosion fell upon my ear. A rough collier was walking beside me, and when he heard that ominous sound he turned white, and staggered against the wall which lined the road. "God have mercy on us!" he cried, "she's fired again." It was an awful moment. Both I and the pitman knew that, in addition to any survivors of the first explosion, there were twenty or thirty brave men risking their lives in a work of mercy when this new catastrophe took place.

We ran to the pit at our utmost speed, and when we reached the bank we found ourselves in the midst of a distressing scene. The engineers and workmen who had been engaged at the mouth of the pit were completely unnerved by this unexpected disaster, and were weeping like children. The second explosion had driven the "cage" completely out of the shaft, and it hung in a wrecked condition in the gallows-like scaffolding which surmounted the pit. There was thus no means of descending the shaft, even if anyone had been courageous enough to do so. This renewed explosion was, I ought to say, almost unprecedented in the long story of colliery accidents. In a few minutes the wives and friends of the search party below came thronging around us with agonised inquiries as to the safety of those whom they loved. For a time all was confusion and despair; but very quickly the voice of authority was heard, and the pit platform was cleared of all except the small party that remained on duty and myself. It was, as a matter of fact, a place of danger, for, as a second explosion had occurred, it was quite possible that it might be followed by a third. In spite of this risk, it was resolved to communicate, if possible, with the bottom of the shaft.

By order of the engineer in charge, we all lay down at full length on the platform, and one of our number was pushed forward until his head and shoulders protruded over the black chasm of the pit, from which a thin column of smoke was still rising. He was armed with a hammer, and with this he struck one of the metal guiders of the ruined cage, giving the pitman's "jowl" or signal, "three times three, and one over." Lying breathless, we listened, hoping for some response. But there was only the silence of death. Thrice the brave man repeated the signal, but no answering sound came from the depths of the pit, and sadly we came to the conclusion that all had perished. The signal man was dragged back from his post of peril, and we were consulting eagerly as to the next step to be taken, when a third explosion suddenly took place, shaking the platform on which we stood, and covering us with fragments of burning wood. Several of us were slightly hurt, but no one sustained any serious injury. The painful fact that was forced upon us, however, by this new explosion was that nothing could for the present be done to ascertain the fate of the gallant fellows who had apparently been lost in their attempt to rescue their comrades. It was clear that the pit was making gas, and that a fire was burning somewhere in the workings, which in due time might—and, as a matter of fact, did—cause fresh explosions. In these circumstances nothing could be done except to pour water into the pit in the hope of extinguishing the fire. Sorrowfully the band of workers abandoned the pit-heap, leaving only a couple of young mining engineers to keep watch above the scene of death.

In the middle of the following night—repeated explosions having taken place during the day—a remarkable incident occurred. One of the engineers left in charge—named, if I remember aright, Jeffcock—was suddenly startled by hearing a sound proceeding, apparently, from the depths of the pit. He went to the edge of the shaft, and then heard unmistakably, far below him, the "jowl" for which we had listened in vain on the previous morning. It proved that there was someone living in the pit, and Mr. Jeffcock instantly determined to save him if he could. The shaft was a very deep one. The cage which was the ordinary means of descent had, as I have already explained, been destroyed, whilst the pit-sides had been torn by the successive explosions, so that they were in a highly dangerous state. But undaunted by these difficulties and dangers, Jeffcock carried out his heroic task. Summoning assistance, he caused himself to be lowered at the end of a rope to the bottom of the shaft. Heaven only knows what were the terrors and dangers of that descent. He faced them all unflinchingly. At the bottom of the pit he discovered not any member of the search party, for they had all succumbed, but one of the men employed in the colliery, who, by some extraordinary chance, had escaped with his life not only from the original explosion, but from all those which followed it. With immense labour and risk he brought this man, the sole survivor of more than three hundred, to the pit's mouth, and the next night the thoughtless fellow for whom a brave man had risked so much, and whose own escape from death had been almost miraculous, was carousing in a public-house in Barnsley, and pocketing the coppers which hundreds of curious persons paid for the privilege of seeing him.

One evening, in the summer of 1866, when I was on duty in the Mercury office, I received a telegram which Mr. Baines had despatched from the House of Commons half an hour before. It stated that the Home Secretary had just received information that Chester Castle had been attacked by five hundred Fenians from Manchester, and that troops were being despatched from London to meet them. I saw that a train which left Leeds late in the evening would land me at Chester an hour or so after midnight, and I at once made up my mind to take it. When I reached Chester all was quiet at the station, and there were no signs of a Fenian rising. I asked the chief official on duty if he knew anything about the affair. All he could tell me was that during the early hours of the evening the waiting rooms, and even the platform itself, had been filled with crowds of "working men in their Sunday clothes," who had seemed to be waiting for somebody or something. There were many hundreds of them, and their unexplained presence had greatly puzzled the railway officials. Some time before I arrived they had disappeared.

I went out into the streets of the old city. The darkness of the summer night still brooded over me, but there was light enough to see that at every street corner and every open space a crowd was gathered. They were curious crowds. In every case the men were clustered in a circle, their faces all turned towards the centre. They seemed to be listening intently to someone who, in the middle of each little group, was speaking in low but earnest tones. I made my way to one of the small crowds, and, joining it, tried to hear what it was that the speaker in the middle was saying; but instantly a strange thing happened. The crowd fell apart, melted away into the gloom, and I suddenly found myself standing alone. Thrice did I thus attempt to learn what was passing in these mysterious groups, and every time the result was the same. I accosted individuals in the streets, and questioned them as to the meaning of the curious scene, so unusual in the dead of night in a quiet cathedral city. No man answered me, except in some unintelligible syllable. I was not molested, nobody was uncivil, but from no one could I get a word of explanation. Gradually, as morning began to break, the throng became thinner. It was dispersed like the mist by the sunshine.

By four o'clock Chester was apparently deserted by its strange visitors. I went to the castle, and found that all was quiet there. I went to the police office, and here I was told that the men were undoubtedly Fenians, but that they had been guilty of no violence, and had given no excuse to the police to interfere with them. They had apparently come to Chester from every quarter, Liverpool, Manchester, and Stafford having each contributed a contingent. But few had come by rail, most having entered the city on foot. What it all signified the police declared they could not understand, though they had no doubt that it had meant mischief. At five o'clock I returned to the station, and saw two special trains arrive within a few minutes of each other. These brought down a full battalion of the Guards from London. It was a fine sight to see the regiment marching with fixed bayonets from the station to the Castle. When the last man had disappeared within the Castle gates, we knew that, whatever plot had been hatched, it had miscarried.

The next day I gave in the Leeds Mercury a full account of what I had seen at Chester, and stoutly upheld the theory that a Fenian raid, which had somehow or other miscarried, had been intended. But, on the same morning, almost every other newspaper in the United Kingdom published an account of the affair that had been supplied by a Liverpool news agency. In this account the whole matter was turned into ridicule, and the authorities were said to have been hoaxed, or carried away by their own excited imaginations. But I had seen those strange, mysterious groups, planted so thickly in the streets of Chester under the silent night, and I could not accept the explanation of the Liverpool reporter. Still, for the moment his story was that which was generally believed, and I had to submit to the suspicion of having allowed myself to be befooled. Not until more than twelve months later was the truth revealed. It came out in the course of the trial of certain Fenian prisoners that there really had been a plot to seize, not Chester Castle, but the arms it contained. The conspirators knew that the guard in the Castle was very weak. They hoped to get into the place by stratagem, and to seize the contents of the armoury. Then they meant to capture a train, and, having destroyed the telegraph wires, to carry their booty to Holyhead, where they expected to find a steamer which would land them in Ireland. It was about as mad a plan as was ever devised—as mad as John Brown's seizure of the arsenal at Springfield. But desperate men attempt daring deeds. Fortunately for the peace of the realm, the plot against Chester was revealed to the Government in time, and when the little army of Fenians knew that they had been betrayed, they silently dispersed without striking a blow. It was, I confess, a satisfaction to me when the informer—Corydon, if I remember the name aright—confirmed the truth of my interpretation of that strange scene at Chester; and I had the additional satisfaction of feeling that I was one of the few living men who had, with his own eyes, actually seen a hostile army assembled on English soil.