John Duffield 1800-1872 and the Darlaston Riot

John, the second son of John and Maria, was baptised in Darlaston on 1st June, 1800. On the 15th July, 1822 John Duffield married Phoebe Simkin (or Simpkin) in Tipton. They had eleven children, all born in Darlaston, as shown in Appendix 2. John must have been a Wesleyan for a time, as their first four children were baptised at St. Lawrence, and the next three, Phoebe (1831), Jabez (1833), and Miranda (1835) were baptised in the Darlaston Wesleyan Chapel.

John worked variously as an ironfounder, stamper, piercer and lockmaker in Darlaston. White’s Directory of 1834 shows John Duffield as a Gun Cock Stamper of Bilston Street, Darlaston. In about 1836 John bought some houses and a yard on Bilston Street. The 1841 Census shows, living at Bilston Street, Darlaston, John Duffield, 40, Ironfounder, his wife Phoebe, 35, and children Silas, 15, John, 15, James, 14, Miriam, 12, Phoebe, 10, Jabez, 7, Saml, 2, Wm., 9m, plus two apprentices David and Sam Mason both 15.

In 1846 their son James married Miriam Groves and his family is discussed in more detail below.

In 1851 John and Phoebe were still living in Bilston Street, Darlaston and now had two more children. In the household were John Duffield, 50, Stamper and Piercer, his wife Phoebe, 47 and children John, 25, Maria, 21, Phebe, 19, Jabez, 17, Samuel, 12, William, 10, Israel, 7, Alfred, 5, There was also William Price, 5mo, Grandson, the son of their daughter Phoebe who was to marry the father, William Price, in 1853.

White’s Directory of 1851 shows John Duffield as a Stamper and also as a Beer House Keeper of Bilston Street. In about 1860 John Duffield sold his Public House on Bilston Street to Job Haynes, a butcher of Bilston Street. Later disputes centre on whether an adjacent Yard of about 450 square yards was included in this sale. Haynes does not appear to have run the pub himself, probably letting “The Bolt Makers Arms” in Bilston Street to Thomas Wilkes who appears there in the 1861 Census as a Bolt & Nut Forger and Retail Brewer.

In the 1861 Census the Duffield family is shown in Cramp Hill, Darlaston. This may be the same property as previously, as it seems that before the sale of the Pub their original property fronted both Bilston Street and Cramp Hill that runs at right angles to it. John Duffield was now aged 60 and worked as a Stamper and Piercer with his sons Samuel, William, Israel and Alfred all living at home and following the same trade. Phoebe Duffield, wife of John, died of cancer on 30th October, 1861 at Cross Street, Darlaston and the death was reported by her daughter Phoebe Price.

In 1864 Job Haynes, owner of the ex-Duffield pub on Bilston Street died. Soon after this his widow Mrs. Miranda Haynes let the pub and yard to Daniel Harper. Daniel Harper was a bricklayer, who in 1855 had married Mary Wilkes, daughter of the Thomas Wilkes who held the pub at the time of the 1861 Census. It was thus just a transfer of the tenancy from Thomas Wilkes to his son-in-law, still under the ownership of the Haynes family.

In 1865 John Duffield’s son Israel married Mary Ann Steward, daughter of William Steward a tailor. At about the same time John Duffield sold the yard, adjoining the pub that he had previously owned, to this William Steward. The Duffields (who lived on Cramp Hill) were described as living in houses to the rear of this land so the yard must have lain between the pub in Bilston Street and the Duffield houses on Cramp Hill.

Thus, both Daniel Harper and William Steward thought that they had the right to the yard. Being a bricklayer, Daniel Harper built a wall around the yard, and the Duffields knocked it down. This was repeated several times over the following months. There was a County Court case over the ownership of the land that was due to be heard in April 1866 but the Court decided that they had no jurisdiction in the matter and referred it to the Assizes that were not due until July.

On 16th April, 1866 Daniel Harper again built the wall. He was in the yard at 5 in the morning of 23rd April with a labourer named Samuel Bevington when William Steward leading a mob including several Duffields and many others, came over the wall. They were armed with various weapons and had their pockets filled with stones. Steward had a stick, James Duffield had a crowbar, Price had a plumber’s hammer and many of the others carried sticks. Harper was armed with a besom-stale (broom handle) and Bevington with a pikel (pitchfork). There was some evidence that Harper had started the violence by hitting one of the Duffields over the head with the besom-stale that was broken by the impact. Steward then hit Bevington over the head with his stick, cutting his head open and knocking him down. Israel, Alfred and Samuel Duffield then began to kick and punch Bevington and Steward called out “Kill the *******”. James Duffield put the crowbar into the wall and overturned it. Bevington recovered his senses but Israel Duffield hit him with half a brick that stretched him senseless on the ground. It was thought that Bevington was killed but Mrs. Haynes fetched a doctor to him and he was revived, although at the time that the protagonists appeared before the Magistrates, he still remained under the surgeon’s care. Price hit Harper with a plumber’s hammer that rendered him unconscious for some minutes and he was also struck with a brick. The whole incident took about 15 minutes and by the end a crowd of 50 or 60 people had gathered “and there was great alarm in the neighbourhood”.

On 1st May, 1866, some two weeks after the fracas, the main protagonists were brought before the Wednesbury Magistrates. The headline in the Staffordshire Advertiser was “A BLACK COUNTRY METHOD OF ASSERTING LEGAL RIGHTS”. James, John, Israel, Samuel and Alfred, all sons of old John Duffield, together with William Price (married to John’s daughter Phoebe) and William Steward (whose daughter was married to Israel Duffield) were all charged with having on 23rd April, 1866 forcibly entered upon a certain tenement and appurtenances in Bilston Street, Darlaston, in the occupation of Daniel Harper; with having at the same time and place unlawfully assembled and created a great riot and disturbance to the terror and alarm of Her Majesty’s subjects; with having wilfully damaged a wall belonging to Daniel Harper; and with violently assaulting Samuel Bevington. After hearing the evidence of Harper and Bevington (who was accommodated with a seat in consequence of his weakly condition) it was decided that there was a prima facia case and all the defendants were committed for trial at the Quarter Sessions. They were bailed on their own recognisances if householders and the others had to find a surety of £20.

Those charged were brought to trial at the Staffordshire Quarter Sessions on 4th July, 1866. The headline in the Staffordshire Advertiser was now “RIOT AND FORCIBLE EJECTMENT AT DARLASTON”. The charges were somewhat reduced and they were now indicted for “Unlawfully and riotously assembling together for the purpose of demolishing a wall and taking forcible possession of a certain piece of land in Darlaston, in the occupation of Daniel Harper, on the 23rd April last”. It is interesting and probably highly relevant to the eventual sentence that there is no mention in the charge of the assault on Bevington, who it must be assumed had made a reasonable recovery from his injuries – he lived until 1874. At the trial, Counsel for the Defendants applied to have the case held over to the next Sessions, by when the Assizes case regarding ownership of the property would have been heard. This application was rejected and the trial proceeded with Harper giving evidence as to his having occupied the Public House and Yard for the last two years as tenant to Mrs. Haynes, and then describing the events of the 23rd April. Mrs. Haynes was in court but declined to give evidence in case she should prejudice the forthcoming Assizes case seeking to establish the ownership of the yard in question. A number of witnesses testified to their belief that the yard in question had belonged to John Duffield for many years, but there was no legal evidence brought forward regarding the sale. It was contended by the defence that Steward had not used unreasonable force in taking possession of the yard and that the prisoners had first been assaulted by Harper and Bevington. After consultation with Counsel for both sides the Assistant Chairman of the court directed the Jury to find the prisoners guilty. Addressing the prisoners the Assistant Chairman said that it was a pity to see so many respectable young men placed in their position, but considering all the circumstances of the case, he thought that the demands of justice would be met by their paying a fine of £1 each and entering into their own recognisances of £20 each to keep the peace for six months. It seems likely that the Assistant Chairman had decided that who actually owned the land was of no particular relevance to the charges.

On 27th July, 1866 the case of Ejectment brought by Steward and Duffield v. Haynes and Harper was tried at the Staffordshire Assizes before Mr. Shee. The trial was reported in the Birmingham Daily Post. The action was brought to recover possession of a piece of land, about 450 square yards, adjoining a public house at Bilston Street, Darlaston. The plaintiffs (Steward and Duffield) claimed under a purchase made in 1836 of the piece of land in question, and some houses adjoining. The defendants (Haynes and Harper) held possession under a mortgage of the whole property, as they alleged, but not including this piece of land, according to the plaintiffs; and for the defendants it was set up that the plaintiff’s only claim to the land was possession for twenty years. The verdict of the jury was for the defendants (Haynes & Harper). The Oxford Circuit Books (that cover Staffordshire) note that when at Monmouth, Mr. Shee “gave leave to Pltff.” It is likely that this means that the plaintiffs, Steward and Duffield, were given leave to appeal against the Assizes verdict, but no record has been found of such an appeal taking place.

One must assume that the adverse finding of the Assizes, and the costs associated with the case, was a severe financial blow to John Duffield and his family. All his sons moved away from Cramp Hill indicating that the family had perhaps lost or had to sell these houses as well, as a result of the court cases. The 1871 Census shows John Duffield as a pauper inmate and widower aged 72, by profession a Lock Maker, in the Walsall Union Workhouse.

Darlaston had its own workhouse until it was closed in 1838 on the formation of the Walsall Poor Law Union, after which Darlaston residents were sent to the Workhouse in Walsall. This was hardly a desirable place to end one’s days as an inspection by The Lancet in 1867 found that although superficially in good order, the workhouse had many serious defects. The casual ward, intended for seven inmates, was “something like a hound-kennel, though neither half so clean or comfortable" and occasionally housed twenty-seven; the sick wards were ill-ventilated and overcrowded; a single wash-hand basin served the whole workhouse and inmates washed themselves in dirty looking wooden buckets; only two towels a week were supplied to a ward of ten patients; medications for up to 160 patients were not written down and relied on the memories of the two nurses. Significant improvement did not take place until 1896 when a new Infirmary Block was built.


Figure 10. Walsall Union Workhouse, Pleck Road.

John Duffield, aged 73 and described as a General Labourer, died in the Walsall Workhouse of Old Age on 19th September, 1872.

John’s oldest son Silas had married Sarah Parker in Darlaston in 1851, but by 1861 was a Brass Caster in Birmingham. They had 5 children. Silas died in Birmingham in 1882 and his wife in Aston in 1897.

John, the second child of John Duffield, never married. In 1861 he was lodging with his sister Phoebe and her husband William Price in Darlaston and working as a Bolt Forger, but in 1871 and 1881 he was, like his father, in the Walsall Union Workhouse where he remained until his death, aged 66, in 1889.

The next son James had married Miriam Groves in 1846, and worked as a Bolt Forger in Darlaston until about 1866, when the family moved to Walsall and then Wednesbury. The life and family of James is discussed in more detail below.

Their next child was Miriam, baptised at Darlaston in 1829, was with her parents aged 12 in the 1841 Census. No trace has been found of her after the 1851 Census when she was still living with her parents, aged 21, and shown as Maria.

Phoebe born 1831 married William Price in 1853 and they lived in Darlaston until about 1866 when they moved to Wednesbury, as shown by the places of birth of their nine children.

Jabez, born 1833, was a gun lock filer and in 1853 married Hannah Bailey. They lived in Darlaston until 1865 having a number of children baptised there, and then moved to Birmingham and later Aston, where Jabez died in 1887.

Miranda was baptised in 1835 at Darlaston Wesleyan, but no subsequent record of her has been found.

Samuel born 1838 never married. He followed a number of trades in the gun industry and lived in a series of lodgings in the Wednesbury and Darlaston areas, dying in Darlaston in 1911 at the age of 76.

William Duffield was a nut & bolt forger who married Leah Smith in Darlaston in 1865. They moved away from Darlaston, probably in 1866, and their first child was born in Kings Norton in 1866. They had eight children, the last five born in Smethwick. Leah died in 1904 and William in 1906. Their eldest son, William Thomas Duffield married Rose Elizabeth Greenhouse in 1896, and by 1911 they were living at 68 Corbett Street, Smethwick, opposite the Corbett Street Schools. William worked in the Nut & Bolt trade and his wife Rose was in 1911 a Wardrobe Dealer, but by 1921 had changed to being a Greengrocer at the same address, the Greengrocer business being shown under William Thomas’s name in a Directory of 1932. Curiously, John Baker (b.1917) attended the Corbett Street School and recalls often visiting “Duffield the Greengrocer” on his way home from school for a “halfpence worth of Specks” – the damaged or over-ripe fruit that they sold off cheaply. The shop was run from a wooden shed with a lock-up counter behind their house.

Israel Duffield, as previously noted, married Mary Ann Steward the daughter of William Steward on 29th October, 1865. Like most of the Duffield family they left Darlaston after the “Riot” and by 1871 they are living in Smethwick with no children, but by 1881 they are found living in Liverpool with children born in Birmingham and Smethwick. In 1891 the family are back in Birmingham but possibly came via Darlaston as their third and final child was born there in 1883. They remained in Birmingham, where Israel died in 1915, and his wife in 1931. Their eldest son, Israel William Duffield, served with the Royal Garrison Artillery from 1892 to (with some gaps) 1914. He married Mary Ann Rudge in 1906 and they had 3 children. Israel William then served with the RAMC from 1915 before being discharged as medically unfit at the end of 1917. He died in Smethwick in 1919. The other two children of Israel, Jane and Silas, both married and remained in the Birmingham area.

Alfred Duffield, the youngest child of John and Phoebe, was living with his parents on Cramp Hill, Darlaston in 1861 but soon after the court cases left for Manchester where in 1867 he married Sarah Jackson. By 1871 they were living in Aston with one child, and Alfred was working as a blacksmith. In 1881 they were in Birmingham living just round the corner from his oldest brother, Silas. When Silas died, Alfred moved to Aston where in 1891 he and his eldest daughter were living with Sarah Duffield, widow of Silas. Sarah, wife of Alfred, had by 1891 moved back to her home town of Manchester with their three youngest children and the Census shows her with these three children and a 4 year old Clement Duffield.


   
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