Thomas Hardy and Richard Jefferies on steam threshing machines

Having blogged about the explosion that killed four men at Stonton Wyville, and then about the dangers posed by the boilers that powered steam threshing machines, I thought I would see how two masters of 19th-century rural literature wrote about these machines.

Here's Thomas Hardy in Tess of the d'Urbevilles:

Close under the eaves of the stack, and as yet barely visible, was the red tyrant that the women had come to serve—a timber-framed construction, with straps and wheels appertaining—the threshing-machine which, whilst it was going, kept up a despotic demand upon the endurance of their muscles and nerves.

A little way off there was another indistinct figure; this one black, with a sustained hiss that spoke of strength very much in reserve. The long chimney running up beside an ash-tree, and the warmth which radiated from the spot, explained without the necessity of much daylight that here was the engine which was to act as the primum mobile of this little world. By the engine stood a dark, motionless being, a sooty and grimy embodiment of tallness, in a sort of trance, with a heap of coals by his side: it was the engine-man. The isolation of his manner and colour lent him the appearance of a creature from Tophet, who had strayed into the pellucid smokelessness of this region of yellow grain and pale soil, with which he had nothing in common, to amaze and to discompose its aborigines.

What he looked he felt. He was in the agricultural world, but not of it. He served fire and smoke; these denizens of the fields served vegetation, weather, frost, and sun. He travelled with his engine from farm to farm, from county to county, for as yet the steam threshing-machine was itinerant in this part of Wessex. He spoke in a strange northern accent; his thoughts being turned inwards upon himself, his eye on his iron charge, hardly perceiving the scenes around him, and caring for them not at all: holding only strictly necessary intercourse with the natives, as if some ancient doom compelled him to wander here against his will in the service of his Plutonic master. The long strap which ran from the driving-wheel of his engine to the red thresher under the rick was the sole tie-line between agriculture and him.

And here's Richard Jefferies in his essay The Countryside: Sussex:

To-day the sparrows are just as busy as ever of old, chatter, chirp around the old barn, while the threshing machine hums, and every now and then lowers its voice in a long-drawn descending groan of seemingly deep agony. 

Up it rises again as the sheaves are cast in—hum, hum, hum; the note rises and resounds and fills the yard up to the roof of the barn and the highest tops of the ricks as a flood fills a pool, and overflowing, rushes abroad over the fields, past the red hop-oast, past the copse of yellowing larches, onwards to the hills. An inarticulate music—a chant telling of the sunlit hours that have gone and the shadows that floated under the clouds over the beautiful wheat. No more shall the tall stems wave in the wind or listen to the bees seeking the clover-fields. The lark that sang above the green corn, the partridge that sheltered among the yellow stalks, the list of living things delighting in it—all have departed. The joyous life of the wheat is ended—not in vain, for now the grain becomes the life of man, and in that object yet more glorified. 

Outwards the chant extending, reaches the hollows of the valley, rolling over the shortened stubble, where the plough already begins the first verse of a new time. A pleasant sound to listen to, the hum of the threshing, the beating of the engine, the rustle of the straw, the shuffle shuffle of the machine, the voices of the men, the occupation and bustle in the autumn afternoon! 

I listened to it sitting in the hop-oast, whose tower, like a castle turret, overlooks and domineers the yard. In the loft the resounding hum whirled around, beating and rebounding from the walls, and forcing its way out again through the narrow window. The edge, as it were, of a sunbeam lit up the rude chamber crossed with unhewn beams and roofed above with unconcealed tiles, whose fastening pegs were visible. A great heap of golden scales lay in one corner, the hops fresh from the drying. 

Up to his waist in a pocket let through the floor a huge giant of a man trod the hops down in the sack, turning round and round, and now his wide shoulders and now his red cheeks succeeded. The music twirled him about as a leaf by the wind. Without the rich blue autumn sky; within the fragrant odour of hops, the hum of the threshing circling round like the buzz of an immense bee. As the hum of insects high in the atmosphere of midsummer suits and fits to the roses and the full green meads, so the hum of the threshing suits to the yellowing leaf and drowsy air of autumn. The iteration of hum and monotone soothes, and means so much more in its inarticulation than the adjusted chords and tune of written music. 

Laughing, the children romped round the ricks; they love the threshing and flock to it, they watch the fly-wheel rotating, they look in at the furnace door when the engine-driver stokes his fire, they gaze wonderingly at the gauge, and long to turn the brass taps; then with a shout they rush to chase the unhappy mice dislodged from the corn.

This last paragraph is typical of Jefferies' ability to surprise you with an unexpected observation. And I note that he has accepted the steam threshing machine into the agricultural world, whereas to Hardy they remain something entirely alien.

The Stonton Wyville boiler explosion led to manslaughter charges

Back to the inquest into the deaths of the four men killed by the explosion of the boiler of a steam threshing machine at Stonton Wyville in 1862.

The Gimson who gave evidence to the inquest, as the Leicester Guardian for 1 March 1862 reported, was Josiah Gimson from the Leicester engineering family. He described the condition of the engine which made it, or at least the way it was operated, sound dangerous (Josiah was the father of the architect and furniture designer Ernest Gimson, incidentally.)

Having heard his and others' evidence, the inquest jury returned its verdict. The Leicester Advertiser (8 March 1862) described what happened:

The coroner told the jury he should not make many remarks as it was a case entirely for them. They were to consider whether the parties died from the effects the explosion, why it happened and whether it happened from negligence or from accident or from some deficiency in the boiler or want of skill on the of the parties in charge. 

The jury retired and after deliberating two hours returned the following verdict: 

We find that William Woolman George Woolman Thomas Lee and Samuel Ashby killed by the explosion of steam thrashing machine boiler January the 13th 1862 and that the deaths were owing to the culpable negligence of William Bloxam and Henry Butcher. We also beg to suggest that machines of this kind are now use and many eases are managed inexperienced hands the propriety of appointing an inspector to report on their safety – Thomas Burnaby foreman

The coroner told the jury that was a verdict of manslaughter, but the jury said they did not intend to return a verdict of that kind, although all agreed in the words of the verdict. After some time the coroner, finding there was no chance of the jury agreeing, said he would enter the verdict received and leave it for the magistrates to take it up if they thought fit.

They did think fit, and Henry Butcher, the owner of the machine whose boiler exploded was tried for the manslaughter of the four men at Leicester Assizes, which were held in the courtroom at Leicester Castle. This was sited in the castle's medieval great hall, which lies behind the Georgian facade you see in the photo above.

 The Leicester Journal of 25 July 1862 reported his acquittal on these charges.

So that's the end of the Stonton Wyville story, but I wondered how common such accidents with steam threshing machines were. I did a little googling, and what I found was alarming.

Here's a piece written for the Prairie News Room from North Dakota by Steve Hoffbeck:

From the 1880s through the 1920s, steam-engines powered threshing machines. The boiler-men tending these tractors had the serious task of preventing pressure build-ups that could shatter boilerplates into shrapnel and release the fiercely-hot steam.

In the fall of 1889, about fifty men in threshing crews perished in such explosions. Similarly, in 1895, there were 'numerous boiler explosions' in the state, 'in which numerous lives were lost, and many persons [were] maimed and disfigured.'

At times, these tragedies happened because careless or incompetent operators refused to use good sense. Newspaper headlines shrieked: ;Water Is Low, Boiler Lets Go,' telling of a boiler-man who brought catastrophe 'by running his engine short of water to rush the head of steam,' his body 'blown to atoms.' In another boiler-explosion, the deathly headline read: “Blown Into Eternity.”

The deepest blame went to farmers who used 'old and worn' machines. Indeed, the 'gradual deterioration of boilers' was the number-one cause of their failure. Corrosion caused weaknesses in boiler-metal so that the simmering strain of high-pressure steam would find a fatal defect, perhaps a single rivet, leading to explosive rupture. Engineers also faced dangers from worn-out safety valves or inaccurate pressure gauges.

Reformers called for inspectors to examine boilers, believing that the explosions were preventable. And state law eventually did provide for inspections, seeking to halt the 'terrible slaughter.'

Was the situation any better in Britain? I'm sure the British Newspaper Archive will help me find out.

A boiler explosion at Stonton Wyville in 1862 killed four men

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After covering its lost gardens and the drought of 1947, we're going back to Stonton Wyville.

Reader's voice: At least it's not bloody Snailbeach again.

Jeremy Benson, who has visited every village church in Leicestershire and put together a Bluesky thread with photos of each one, told me Stonton Wyville was one of those villages where he struggled a bit to find something interesting to say.

But I think he found something very interesting, because he put me on to another forgotten disaster. Over to the Leicester Advertiser for Saturday 18 January 1862:

Dreadful Boiler Explosion. - Four men killed at Stonton Wyville

One of the most dreadful boiler explosions occurred on Monday last, the 13^th inst., at Stonton Wyville, that has ever been reported in this district. Stonton Wyville is a small agricultural village in the county of Leicester, about six miles from Market Harborough. 

Mr. Dunmore, a farmer, has a stackyard upon his farm, about half a mile from the village, and on Monday hired a small thrashing engine, which is owned by a man named Butcher, who resides at Debdale Wharf, Gumley. This engine was about three or four horsepower, but from the remains of it, it did not appear in working order, and this was confirmed by the evidence we could glean. 

It appears the pump as it is called that feeds the boiler with cold water, was in a bad state of repair, and had been repaired on several occasions. About twelve o’clock in the day they were obliged to stop working to again repair this pipe, and were wrapping it with string and red lead. nearly the whole of the men, 13 in number, were gathered round the engine while the repairs were going on and it was while they were thus engaged that the explosion took place.

The report goes on to give details of whose body parts were blown off and where they landed, which I shall spare you. But I can say that Thomas Lee, William Woodman and Samuel Ashby were killed at once, and George Woolman died a few hours later. The inquest was held at the Fox and Hounds Inn at Stonton Wyville - there is still a Fox and Hounds Farm there, so this was probably that building.

One point of interest about this inquest is that it had called for expert evidence about the condition of the boiler:

Mr. Gimson, engineer, of Leicester, was present, and made a thorough examination of the wreck of the engine, and will give his evidence at the adjourned inquest, so it would not be fair to give his opinion stated privately, at the present time.

Gimson and Co. was founded in 1840 by Benjamin and Josiah Gimson on Welford Road in Leicester. The firm, says Wikipedia, was listed as "Engineers, Ironfounders, Boiler Makers & General Machinists". it later moved to the still-standing Vulcan Works in Leicester.

So it looks as though the expert witness was Benjamin or Josiah Gimson, or perhaps another member of their family. This is the Gimson family that produced Sydney Gimson, who helped turn Desford Approved School, into a force in Leicestershire junior chess, and Boris Johnson's serial biographer Andrew Gimson.

The Leicester Advertiser report said the inquest was due to be reconvened on 29th January 1862. I'll see if I can discover what happened then.

Drought on the Leicestershire-Rutland border, 1947

Early in 1947 England was hit by serious flooding, but by September there was a different problem: drought.

The video above comes from this part of the world, and there's more detail in this cutting from the Leicester Mercury (28 October 1947):

Harborough Villages Short of Water 

A water shortage in several villages near Market Harborough has reached serious proportions and arrangements never been more extensive in the 12 years Mr R. W. Turner has been surveyor to the Harborough Rural District Council.

The shortage is particularly acute at Husbands Bosworth but wells have also dried up at Saddington, East Langton, Shangton, Stonton-Wyville and Slawston. 

To all these villages the Rural District Council is sending emergency supplies on alternate days, when a lorry with a 500-gallon tank is met by villagers with buckets baths and other receptacles.

I remember following a village heritage trail around Husbands Bosworth and being surprised at how late mains water came to the village.

And Stonton Wyville gets another mention on Liberal England, but it's odd to see the name hyphenated like that.

BBC Radio Leicester finds The Lost Gardens of Stonton Wyville

Stonton Wyville is a Leicestershire village so obscure that I don't have my own photographs of it, though I do remember having tea at Mill Farm there in the 1990s.

But BBC Radio Leicester has been there - click on the link to hear this short feature:

Stonton Wyville is officially recognised as a ‘shrunken medieval village’, as in the past it certainly must have been much larger.

Today, Stonton Wyville parish includes a church, a manor house, a rectory and a farm.

But if you know where to look, there are still the remnants of a banqueting house with its own moat and even its own extensive pleasure gardens.

BBC Leicester’s Ben Jackson went for a look around with historian Peter Liddle.

 Oh, and the Time Team once found an Anglo-Saxon settlement near the village.

King Charles's Well at Tur Langton

After the Royalists were defeated at the Battle of Naseby, Charles I fled north to Leicester.

According to Roy Palmer's Folklore of Leicestershire and Rutland:

At some stage he visited Tur Langton, where he watered his horse at what is still called King Charles' Well. (This was once the only source of water in the area, and even during the drought of 1976 it did not run dry.)

Today I went to Tur Langton and found the well. It stands three fields from the village, along the footpath towards Stonton Wyville.

On the way you come across some old quarrying, which has marked the landscape, and the local livestock takes an interest.

When I arrived at the well there was a fine red kite circling overhead. Until recently these scavengers were rare in Britain, but it would be surprising if one did not watch Charles and his horse.

The well itself looks unhealthy - a horse would have to be thirsty indeed to risk it. The brick surround, says The Megalithic Portal, dates from 1813.

Time Team comes to Market Harborough

Or Stonton Wyville, to be precise.

The Leicester Mercury reports:

Tony Robinson and Channel 4's Time Team are filming in Leicestershire this week. And they've achieved a series first ...

It's taken 160 programmes and 13 years, but TV's Time Team achieved a remarkable first in south Leicestershire this week. Tony Robinson, the artist formerly known as Baldrick, and his crew of archeologists, have uncovered evidence of an Anglo-Saxon settlement about 1,200-years-old, near Market Harborough.

They've unearthed the foundations of an old meeting hall, a workman's hunting knife and so much broken pottery it looks like they've been cleaning up after a Greek wedding.

It has taken 15 series for the team to find a bona fide Anglo-Saxon settlement, says Tony, "so you'll have to excuse us if we're looking a little bit pleased with ourselves''.

Stonton Wyville is one of those village that never really recovered from the Black Death, but Mill Farm used to do very good teas. I believe that, sadly, the tearoom is now closed.