An 1857 escape attempt from York Castle prison, a catalogue of weapons held in Clifford’s Tower after the civil war and details of the Archbishop of York’s underwear in the 1870s: it’s all there in recently catalogued material in York’s city archives. STEPHEN LEWIS reports.

AS attempted jailbreaks go, it wasn’t the most cunning. Thomas Garside, who was being held at the York Castle prison, simply hid in a hole in the castle’s exercise yard with a flag draped over him, and hoped no-one would notice. Sadly for him, there was an informer and his plan was foiled.

We know all about it from the detailed journal kept by the prison’s gaoler. It was February 1, 1857 - a Sunday. “On the officers going to lock the prisoners in the day rooms... one man was missing, viz Thos Garside” the gaoler wrote in his journal that day. “When I arrived in the yard, he was found. He had been hid under a flag, which had been removed and a hole made large enough to hold him.

“One of the prisoners told John Reynolds (a warder) where he was. He was pulled out by Reynolds who... held him by the arm. The prisoner desired him to let him go, which he did. Immediately Garside turned round and struck him, Reynolds, with a stone which he held in his hand over the right eye.... The surgeon was sent for immediately, who came and sewed up the wound. I have sent the prisoner into solitary for three days...”

York Press:

The treadmill in York Prison. Picture: From the collection of the late Hugh Murray

If you are surprised that a Victorian gaoler should have been literate and educated enough to write such an account... well, don’t be. The job of gaoler at this time was quite a sought-after one, says Justine Winstanley-Brown, project archivist at the York city archives where the journals of the York gaolers are kept. “It was the gaoler you would bribe to get better conditions,” she says. “They used to run them (gaols) as their own little fiefdoms.”

York Castle prison in the mid 1800s wasn’t a prison in the sense we understand it today. It was more a holding cell. Most of the ‘felons’ being kept there were awaiting trial, Justine says: their guilt or innocence had yet to be determined.

York Press:

The massive wall which surrounded York Prison

Nevertheless, life in the gaol was clearly quite harsh. The city archives have five volumes of gaolers’ journals spanning the years 1824 - 1863, and they include details of births in prison, suicide attempts and punishments.

Needless to say, Thomas Garside and other prisoners who tried to help him in his escape attempt were all punished .

On February 2, the day after Garside’s escape attempt, the gaoler records that two men who had helped hide him and who had threatened to ‘knock out the eyes’ of any prisoners who informed about where he was, were sent to solitary for three days. On February 4, meanwhile, Garside was flogged. He “received 24 lashes on the order of the magistrates,” the gaoler recorded.

The gaolers’ journals are amongst the latest collections in the archives to have been digitally catalogued so that anyone can now go along to see them.

Simply go to the first floor of York Explore library, ask for the journals, and they will be brought through into the secure reading room, where you can leaf through them at your pleasure.

Since the city library and archives reopened earlier this year, archivists have continued to catalogue and open up to public access more of their collection.

Among the other recent items catalogued which you can now ask to see are:

 

The collected papers of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society

This is a a wide-ranging collection of documents passed to the city archive in the 1960s, which includes everything from a list of the weapons held in Clifford’s Tower in 1669 to the extraordinary passport used by a wealthy young man, 21-year-old Sir John Rewnar Atkinson, during a ‘grand tour’ of Italy between 1829 and 1831.

This was a period when it was fashionable for young men of wealth to take in the sights of Italy, and Sir John certainly got about. He visited Rome several times, Sicily, Naples, Milan and countless other Italian cities and districts, all of which left their stamps and seals on his passport. It is an extraordinary document, unfolding into a strip of paper taller than a man.

York Press:

Sarah Tester, of York archives, with Sir John Rewnar Atkinson’s passport, used for a grand tour of Italy from 1829-1831

As to those weapons stored in Clifford’s Tower in 1669: they included 127 old swords and scabbards, 39 pikes and nine willow staves, but also ‘one tonne of match’ (ie fuse); 55 short matchlock muskets; pistols, carbines, shot (ie bullets) and ‘81 hand grenadoes’. Hand grenades? In 1669? This was just nine years after King Charles II had been restored to the throne, and Clifford’s Tower was clearly still being used as an armoury. Little wonder it was badly damaged by an explosion and fire a few years later in 1684.

 

The records of the York Female Friendly Society and the York Citizens Committee

The Female Friendly Society was founded in 1788 by a group of the leading women of York, including Faith Gray and Catherine Cappe. According to Sarah Tester, York’s community collections archivist, the aim of the society was to provide a safety net for girls and young women by providing sick benefits, pensions and grants to enable them to get medical care. The society continued to accept members right up until the formation of the NHS.

One of the interesting things about these collections is that they reveal how wealthy families often remained influential in York for decades or longer. In 1913, 125 years after the founding of the Female Friendly Society, two of the women involved with it seem to have belonged to the same family as one of the founders, Faith Gray.

Mrs Edwin Gray and her daughter, Mrs Helen Faith Gardener, were also influential members of the York Citizens Committee, formed in 1914 to provide support for women whose men were off fighting at the front, and others affected by the war.

Photographs of Mrs Gray and her daughter show them to have been formidable, richly dressed women with serious faces and carefully coiffed hair. Members of the upper echelons of York society no doubt.

York Press:

 Helen Faith Gardener, left, daughter of Mrs Edwin Gray, right

 

The records of RW Anderson and Sons Ltd, Coney Street tailors from 1866 onwards

The city archives have no fewer than five boxes of accounts, records, pattern books and other material relating to Anderson and Sons.

Flicking through some of the records of sales and orders is surprisingly revealing. In the late 1800s the business numbered amongst its clients the likes of the Archbishop of York, the Earl of Harewood and the Yarboroughs of Heslington Hall. The firm’s order books give you a real insight into the wealth of these people and the clothes they were wearing.

In 1869, amongst a string of other purchases, the Earl of Harewood ordered waistcoats, several pairs of ‘jersey smalls’ and a blue lapelled coat which cost £2 10s. In 1872, meanwhile, His Grace the Archbishop of York (as the order book describes him) ordered Oxford trousers, blue livery frockcoats, waistcoats and a great many pairs of drawers at 4s apiece. “He got through lots of drawers!” admits Sarah Tester.

The book also records payments made. On July 23, 1873, the Archbishop paid £106 7s. A year and a half later, on December 26, 1874, he made another payment, this time of £101 1/6d. That was a lot of money in those days. The Archbishop obviously lived well...

 

• Each month, city archivists at the new York Explore archive on the first floor of the central library are cataloguing and opening up to public view more of the community collections they hold. The collections include everything from the records of the Yorkshire Music Festival and the Yorkshire Fat Stock Society to George Leeman’s deeds and papers, the records of the York branch of the Boy Scouts Association and the letters of artist William Etty.

You can see any of these collections for yourselves in the new archive reading room on request.

To find out for yourself what collections are available, you can search the online catalogue by at exploreyork.org.uk/

The central library and its family and local history rooms are open seven days a week. The archives reading room, where you will be able to examine original archive material, is open Monday-Wednesday from 9.30am-5pm, and Saturday 9.30-4.30.