With the support of other local historians and conservationists and the NHS trust owning the RSH Hospital Chapel, I founded Friends of RSH Hospital Chapel in 2009. Due to major changes in the NHS, the ownership of the chapel passed from Southampton City Primary Care Trust to NHS Property Services Ltd and support funding to cover our insurance etc dried up. Reluctantly the members voted to close the charity and in 2014 we distributed our capital to other local charities.
Richard
Andrews – mayor of Southampton on five occasions
with
acknowledgements and thanks to Dr Richard Preston, researcher
Born the son
of a wheelwright at Bishop’s Sutton near Arlesford he had rudimentary education
at a dame school and from the age of 8 or 9 walked several miles each day to
work in a saw mill. A few years later a customer of the mill took him as an
apprentice and he became a blacksmith.
Unusual at
the time, by the age of 21 he was married and had a child. Determined to find
work to support his family he walked to Chichester and having no success
returned home. Chichester’s loss was Southampton [and later we discovered also
Winchester’s] gain. With half a crown in his pocket he walked to Southampton
and took employment at a carriage works.
Within 10
years he had his own successful carriage works employing dozens of men. The
entrance to the works in Above Bar is roughly where the HMV shop stands today. The carriages apart from the axles were built entirely in
the works giving him quality control and the ability to custom build to the
specifications of his customers. He favoured the railways seeing them not as a
competitor but a way of efficiently shipping his products to London, Birmingham
and other thriving cities. The Queen ordered miniature carriages for the use of
the royal children thus allowing him to display the warrant coat of arms.
Richard
Andrews decided to go into politics and in a three and a half year period was
to become mayor on five occasions. The first two were to bring great acclaim in
that working closely with the two MP’S [one the Solicitor- General and the
other the chairman of P&O] Southampton thrived and prospered with apart
from the railways and docks developing national institutions such as HM Customs,
Inland Revenue, Board of Trade and HM Coastguard built new premises. Andrews
did much to promote Southampton and its people and during the run up to the
Great Exhibition visited the US and persuaded their government that the
exhibits should be brought into the port of Southampton and taken by rail to
London. Other countries followed the idea not without some cost as they asked
for free harbour dues and berthing but in exchange Southampton Docks were now
well and truly on the map.
Partly for
health reasons he decided to live in Winchester and bought a large acreage of
land and built several houses including a hunting lodge which he lavishly
turned into The Pagoda. Not content with a political career in Southampton, he
also stood as a councillor for Winchester and to some degree took his eye of
the ball of Southampton politics. He briefly flirted with becoming an MP when
the resident MP resigned on being appointed Attorney-General but suffered the
humidity of coming third in the contest.
Andrews was
a great supporter of the abolishment of the Corn Laws and allowed the coach
works to hold public meetings of protest. Perhaps his great ally was Timothy
Falvey proprietor and editor of the Hampshire
Independent and fellow councillor and Corn Law abolisher who tidied up the
speeches, grammar and spelling. Andrews
always had the weakness of a poor education and often his political rivals
would mock his grasp of grammar and with a smile perhaps an
anomaly with the modern day John Prescott [now Lord Prescott - on stepping off an aircraft announced that it was good to be on terra cotta].
The statue to Andrews in Andrews [East] Park was erected in
1860 with some local criticism that it was too ornate and like a wedding cake.
The figure of Portland stone stood the test of time but the supporting Bath
stone eroded badly and was removed for safety reasons in 1971. Local residents
nicknamed the residual statue as “Stumpy Dick” and perhaps in recognition that
he did deserve a little more respect the council placed the statue on a plinth
in 2000.
Hampshire
Pudding Recipe
Line the edge
of a pie dish with good puff-pastry, spread jam at the bottom of the dish, about an inch thick. Beat the
yolks of three and the whites of two eggs thoroughly. Add to them three ounces of soft sugar, pounded
and sifted and three ounces of dissolved butter. Heat these together until they are quite thick,
pour the mixture over the jam, and bake in a moderate oven till the pastry is baked.
The odd case of the undertaker who stored
babies’ bodies at his premises [1876
Southampton]
Stephen
Blundell, a Southampton undertaker, with his wife and an assistant, were
committed for trial on a charge of larceny. It arose from the circumstance
that, in consequence of an offensive smell from the premises and complaints
from neighbours, that the premises were examined by Dr. Osborn, medical officer
of health for Southampton and the Nuisances Inspector, and a number of infants'
bodies, fifteen or sixteen in all, were found. All, with the exception of one
which was found in the shop, were concealed among a heap of saw-dust and dirt
in the cellar underneath the premises. A
few of the decomposed babies had been stored in drawers within the workshop, a
few were in skeleton condition and the most recent was still in a coffin.
Stephen Blundell arose from his sick bed and
produced certificates of still-birth or burial for all cases and no offence under
the Registration Act could be sustained. The prisoners were committed on a
charge of larceny by the court. The principal offender, Stephen Blundell, died
shortly after his committal, and the charges against his wife and assistant were
discontinued.
It
was the practice [and possibly still continues] to place a dead baby into a
freshly dug grave [hopefully with the agreement of the next of kin of the
existing body] which helped poor families who would not be in a position to
purchase a grave. Blundell had charged 5 or 6 shillings for this service but
clearly did not fulfill the burial and there does not appear to be any
explanation as to why he stored all the bodies.
Remembering severe winters at Southampton
The severe
freeze we experienced in January 2010 was lessened to some degree as many of
our homes, shops and offices are heated but if we turn the clock back a few
years [and yes those were periods of climate change] the severity must have had
major consequences on the residents of the town often with coal stocks frozen
and little or no heating.
February l8 1855 newspaper report
State of the River Thames on Friday. -The river
about Greenwich was much covered with ice: the navigation is completely
stopped. The masters of the vessels frozen up in the piers, between the Custom
House and the Pool, have adopted every precaution, in laying out extra mooring
chains, in case of the ice breaking away the corporation mooring chains. In
many parts of the river below the bridge the ice has set in so firm between the
shore and the vessels moored near mid-stream, that the crews walk to and from
their vessels to the shore. All the labourers along the shore are thrown out of
employment and great distress prevails.
Southampton Water was almost
covered with floating ice on Thursday. A brig, in coming down from Eling, at
the top of Southampton Water, had a hole knocked in her while ploughing through
the masses of ice, and was in danger of sinking. The boats in the stream had to
be guarded from the ice by hurdles placed at the bows. In Southampton Docks
scores of mullet were caught with the hand and in hand nets. They floated about
by hundreds on the surface, alive, but perfectly helpless, being benumbed by
the intense cold.
5th April 1888
newspaper report
Severe snowstorms and gales have been
experienced in many parts of the country during the week. The traffic on the
Didcot, Newbury, and Southampton Railway was interrupted for several
hours on the 20th inst. by a snow-block
in a deep cutting near Compton. A goods train which left Didcot Junction
between two and three o'clock was snowed up, and a snow-plough and a large gang of men were at work for some time
before a passage through the snow
could be affected.
22 March 1899 newspaper report
Low-lying houses at Southampton
were flooded, the inhabitants escaping on rafts and boats from the second story
windows. The cross channel services were performed with great difficulty. The
marine promenade St. Hellier, Jersey, was greatly damaged. Railways inland were
disorganized. The Trafalgar broke from
her moorings, and was only just saved by tugs from collision with the Terrible.
The battleship Terror arrived at Portsmouth with her funnel, weighing 20 tons,
damaged. The ship was in a terrific roll in the Bay of Biscay. Tremendous tidal
waves Inundated the North Wales coast and flooded the country in many parts.
e dock at Southampton was frozen and the
steamer to the Isle of Wight was ice-bound. Ice-breakers vainly endeavoured to
free, the Thames, Humber, Mersey, Severn, and other rivers and canals for
traffic. Railways in North Wales were snowed up.
Commemoration 70th anniversary of bombing raids in Southampton 
Captain George Smith RN
General Juan Manuel Rosas
Southampton Docks film [1937] I am grateful to Geoff Claydon for uploadinga 1937 cine film
