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The Newcastle Book of Days

The History Press

January 1st

1756: On this day, Ralph Carr opened the Bank of Newcastle – the country's first provincial bank. Other towns and cities had businesses which called themselves 'banks', like Woods at Gloucester and Smiths of Nottingham. Those institutions carried out a range of financial services and business dealings. But Carr's innovation was a new and risky venture – the Bank of Newcastle was the first institution outside of London and Edinburgh to rely solely on the business of banking. With £2,000 in capital – drawn equally from four partners – the company took premises in Pilgrim Street. Bank of Newcastle banknotes depicted the city's coat of arms and a view from the Bigg Market towards St Nicholas's Church. Initially, there were some difficulties in getting all merchants to take the notes seriously – Ralph Jackson records in his diary, in March 1756, that 'Mr Surtees paid me in Bank Notes (viz the Bank of Newcastle) but Mr Featherston would not take them ...' In the first year, the Bank of Newcastle issued notes amounting to over £15,000, received deposits for £10,000 (including gaining the custom of Lord Ravensworth, and the trustees of the Infirmary), and made just over £1,000 in profit. While it had initially been a risky venture, the experiment proved so successful that it was replicated all over the country. Locally, Carr's enterprise became known as 'the Old Bank' to distinguish it from competitors. Carr's bank remained in business until 1839, when it was taken over by the Northumberland and Durham Bank. (Diary of Ralph Jackson; Monthly Chronicle of North Country Lore and Legend, 1889

January 2nd

1548: On this day, an inventory was taken of all the munitions and ordnance of war held within Newcastle. These give us a fascinating insight into the machinery of sixteenth-century warfare, as well as Newcastle's often surprising provisions for conflict. Most of the foot soldiers were equipped with black bills (a hooked blade on a 5-6 feet long stick) or bows – there were 2,000 of each! Others had pikes (400), and demilances (250) with smaller numbers of staves. Also held in the city were weapons made by converting farming equipment – hedging bills, scythes, sickles and axes. Cannons were now an important part of the city's armoury, with one 'saker' and forty-four 'bases' – both early forms of cannon – and 1,700 iron shots of various types for them. Two hundred smaller guns, called 'hackbuts', were also available. The inventory also lists chemicals such as serpentine powder (gunpowder), and the ingredients to make it: saltpetre, sulphur and charcoal, plus mortars and pestles. Added to the munitions were tools – an array of spades and pick axes, mining equipment, leather buckets, coils of thick rope, and cressets (metal cages for making lit torches). And to carry it all? Newcastle had fifty new carts and six old ones, twenty privy carts, and gear for 100 horses. (Welford, R., History of Newcastle and Gateshead, 1884)

January 3rd

1430: On this day, Roger Thornton, 'the Dick Whittington of Newcastle', died in his lavish house in Broad Chare. As the legend tells it, 'at the Westgate came Thornton in, With a hap, and a halfpenny, and a lambskin'. We really don't know whether his beginnings were this humble, though his brother was probably John Thornton, a town bailiff. But wherever he started, Roger Thornton's rise was staggering, as he worked his way up to be (according to King's Antiquary, Leland) 'the richest marchant that ever was dwelling in Newcastell' and a substantial landowner, able to marry his children into noble households. He really was connected with 'lambskin' – he made his money trading in wool, as well as coal, wine, and lead. But he is best remembered for his work for the medieval town. He was Mayor nine times, and served as a collector of taxes and customs, a bailiff and commissioner of enquiry, and four times as Member of Parliament for Newcastle. In 1400, he was involved in the deal that made Newcastle a county, and five years later he spent 1,000 marks of his own money defending the town against the Earl of Northumberland's rebel forces. In later life he donated a lot of money to charitable and religious ventures, like the Maison Dieu (hospital) of St Katherine in Sandhill, a chantry at All Saints' Church and the east window of St Nicholas's Church. He is buried under a fine brass in All Saints' Church. (www.historyofparliamentonline.org)

January 4th

1770: On this day, a rather unusual advert appeared in the Newcastle Chronicle: 'This is to acquaint the public that on Monday the first inst., being the Lodge (or monthly meeting night) of the Free and Accepted Masons of the 22nd Regiment, held at the Crown Inn, Newgate, Mrs. Bell, the landlady of the house, broke open a door (with a poker) that had not been opened for some years past, by which means she got into an adjacent room, made two holes through the wall and by that stratagem discovered the secrets of Masonry, and she, knowing herself to be the first woman in the world that ever found out that secret, is willing to make it known to all her sex. So any lady that is desirous of learning the secrets of Freemasonry by applying to that well learned woman Mrs. Bell (that lived fifteen years in and about Newgate Street) may be instructed in all the Secrets of Masonry.' We don't know whether this is a genuine story, promotion for the pub, or something else. It has been suggested that the story is a hoax, designed to ridicule and silence Mrs Bell. Perhaps she really had learned a bit about the Masons, and even boasted about her knowledge, but this advert would have made her very unpopular with some of the loacals. (www.masonicworld.com)

January 5th

1967: At 5.15 a.m. on this snowy morning, the body of Angus Sibbett was found on the backseat of his car, under a bridge in South Hetton, County Durham. He had been shot three times. The two men accused of Sibbett's murder were his work colleagues, Michael Luvaglio and Dennis Stafford, who worked for a company supplying fruit machines to Newcastle businesses (Luvaglio was the boss's son), hence the crime soon became known as the 'One Armed Bandit Murder'. Luvaglio and Stafford were thought to have believed that Sibbett had begun to siphon money off from the business. Although they had been in The Birdcage public house in Newcastle for most of the night in question, and despite the fact that the blood in Sibbett's car did not match theirs, the jury controversially found Luvaglio and Stafford guilty, reasoning they would just have had time to make it to the crime scene. The two men continued to fight to clear their names long after their release from prison in 1979, and the case has been challenged twice, taken to the House of Lords, and reviewed a further time. Sibbett's life and death was (very loosely) the inspiration for the gangland film Get Carter. (Wade, S., The Torso in the Tank and Other Stories, Black and White Publishing, 2005)

January 6th

1954: On this day, the Lord Mayor received a letter from the French Consul suggesting a formal friendship tie between Newcastle and Nancy, capital of the Lorraine district. After some formal visits, the two cities were formally 'twinned'. The Civic Centre retains links with Nancy's local government, and BBC North has ties with local TV station FR3 Nancy. This was not Newcastle's first twinning – in the late 1940s, ties were made with Groningen (Netherlands), and Gelsenkirchen (Germany). More recently, Newcastle has been twinned with Haifa (Israel), Newcastle (Australia), Bergen (Norway), and Atlanta (USA). In 1961, the Russians judged a link between Newcastle and Rostov-on-Don 'a waste of time and money'.

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1955: On this day, the comedian and actor Rowan Atkinson was born in a nursing home on Jesmond Road, Newcastle. He didn't stay long – his father was a farmer, and Atkinson spent the first seventeen years of his life in Consett, County Durham. Still, it was at the Theatre Royal on Grey Street, aged eleven, that he first experienced live theatre; a pantomime starring Terry Scott. In 1972 he started at Newcastle University, studying electrical engineering. He recalls: 'I wasn't a terribly exciting student. I lived in a hall of residence – Henderson Hall – for all my time there and I worked very hard for that degree. I did some revues at Newcastle but they weren't very good ones really. They consisted mainly of Monty Python rewrites as I recall'. (Gibson, J., Spirit of Tyneside, John Donald Publishers Ltd, 1990)

January 7th

1594: On this day, thousands of people gathered to witness the execution of Catholic priest Edward Waterson. A Londoner, as a young adult Waterson travelled to Turkey with some merchants. While there, he was reputedly offered a prestigious bride – if he would convert to Islam. He refused, but started thinking about his faith, and, returning back via Rome, converted to Catholicism. Unfortunately, that set him on a collision course with the policies of Protestant Elizabethan England. Returning in the summer of 1592, he travelled around, preaching and performing Mass for almost a year before being arrested. Found guilty of performing as a Catholic priest, he was sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. According to a Catholic Archdeacon who witnessed the event, the horses refused to drag the hurdle (to which Waterson was bound) to the scaffold, and when he finally got there, the ladder jumped around of its own accord, and couldn't be used until Waterson himself made the sign of the cross over it.

Waterson was not the first to suffer this fate in Newcastle – only six months earlier, another priest, Joseph Lampton, went the same way. It was recorded that the executioner got halfway through drawing the unfortunate man's intestines out when he staggered away, horrified at his own actions. A local butcher stepped up to complete the sentence.

Edward Waterson was beatified in 1929. (Challoner, R., Memoirs of Missionary Priests, Burns Oates and Washbourne, 1924)

January 8th

1842: On this day, 200 workmen were given a slap-up meal with extra strong ale at the Unicorn Inn in the Bigg Market, accompanied by a lively band. The occasion was the completion of the Victoria Tunnel, a stone and brick tunnel 7 feet 5 inches high and over two miles long. This connected the Spital Tongues (or Leazes Main) Colliery, which opened in 1835, with the River Tyne, thus avoiding the cumbersome horse-drawn cart transportation of coal through town. The tunnel was officially opened on April 7th. Unfortunately, while the tunnel did its job well – carrying coal wagons moving under gravity, with the aid of a stationary steam engine – the Spital Tongues Colliery only lasted until 1860. The tunnel was left unused, and both ends were soon lost in housing developments. Nothing more happened until 1928-9, when the Victoria Tunnel Mushroom Company took an interest. The company did not last long, but the council continued to rent the tunnel to mushroom growers until 1950. In 1939, almost the whole length was converted for use as an air-raid shelter for the people of Newcastle, with seven entrances positioned along the way. This was a massive undertaking, with the provision of electric lighting, chemical toilets, seating for 9,000 people and bunks for 500. Doubtless it was uncomfortable, but a civil servant's report of the time notes that this being a mining district, those sheltering would be 'fitted constitutionally' to withstand the conditions! (Jones, M., Victoria Tunnel: Newcastle's Hidden Heritage, Ouseburn Trust, 2010)

January 9th

1537: On this day, Newcastle's Augustinian Friary was surrendered as part of the Dissolution of the Monasteries. This monastery, founded in 1291, had seen some illustrious visitors over the years, partly because it was on one of the main roads to the North. King Edward I stopped there only a few years after it opened, giving each of the brethren 3s 4d. Richard II must have been unimpressed when he came through town as he ordered the bailiffs of Newcastle to take steps to tackle locals' dumping of 'excrements, filth, and garbage, near to the house of the Austin Friars, to their great annoyance and peril.' When the friary was seized in 1537, it was somewhat diminished, with only seven brethren and three novices. Unusually, the importance of the place did not diminish immediately after the Reformation. Thomas Cromwell specifically asked that the site be left intact, so that it could be used for the King's Council of the North, when they needed to be further north than York (Elizabeth I decreed that this should be at least twenty days a year). At about the same time a tower was added to the building, for the storage of the town's weaponry (which still survives), but by the end of the century the buildings were in disrepair and during the Civil War it was handed to the Corporation. Thirty years later they built the Holy Jesus Hospital on the site; only one sacristy wall remains of the Augustinian Friary.

January 10th

1932: On this day, Jesmond's real tennis court was opened to the public. This historic sport, the ancestor of lawn tennis, is played on a court around 34 metres by 12. The heavy cork ball can be bounced off the walls within play, so real tennis courts are usually indoors. Jesmond's court, also notable for its row of large circular windows, had been built in 1894 as a private facility for the Noble family, who lived in Jesmond Dene House. They hired a professional tennis player, and built up a list of those allowed to use the court. In the 1900s, the professional was Charles Lambert, one of the best in the world – and on this court, in 1904, he beat the world champion Edgar Lambert. During the First World War, the open space was used to make balloons for airships. Afterwards it reverted to the family, but in 1931, when Lady Noble died aged 103, the house and grounds were given to Newcastle City Council. The court became public, with a club set up to keep things running smoothly. The first match was between Charles Lambert and another (visiting) professional, and caused some consternation because it was refereed by an amateur. However, real tennis remained a niche sport, very much in the shadow of the immensely popular lawn tennis, which was played just outside the real tennis building. But the court was kept going, on a joint use agreement with a badminton club. During the Second World War, it was mothballed and used for storage, and thereafter badminton had the court to itself – until 1981, when real tennis made a comeback. The court is now one of only twenty-six in the country, and forty-five in the world. (www.jdrtc.co.uk)

January 11th

1828: On this day, the self-proclaimed medical expert William Henderson died. Henderson was a pitman, and, while in Newcastle Infirmary convalescing from an injury, he met and married a young nurse. When the House of Recovery was opened in 1804, she became its matron, and he (in spite of a complete lack of training) its inspector. Eventually he felt he had learned enough on the job to start calling himself a doctor, and in 1827 J. Marshall of the Old Flesh Market printed his work, Every man his own doctor ... with rhymes to gratify the mind. Henderson claimed this book, costing 3s 6d, would 'make the pupil a wiser man, his voice may give the sound and say, 'tis worth a hundred pound!' – although whether anyone but him thought so is open to question. (Sykes, J., Local Records, Volume II, 1833)

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2002: On this day, psychic Uri Geller started his world tour in Newcastle. The previous month, he had worked to break Newcastle United's London losing streak by asking people to channel their positive vibes through looking at his picture in the Newcastle Evening Chronicle (which was behind the scheme). He also ran several times around the stadium during the match. United won, making Geller immensely popular with the fans. The Chronicle had previously tried calling in the aid of an exorcist and two witchdoctors. (Newcastle Chronicle / www.uri-geller.com)

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Excerpted from The Newcastle Book of Days by Jo Bath, Richard F. Stevenson. Copyright © 2013 Jo Bath with Richard F. Stevenson. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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