Trowels and consonants

In Egypt, 2,300 years ago, King Ptolemy opened the Great Library of Alexandria with hundreds of pieces of papyrus and scrolls of parchment for people to study.

ABOUT 2,060 years ago, Julius Caesar ransacked the Great Library and carried the papyrus and parchment home to Rome to open his own public library. Unfortunately, he was assassinated before he could complete it, but at least Latin gives us the word library – liber is the bark of a tree on which the earliest books were scratched.

Exactly 125 years ago, Darlington caught up with library movement through the opening of the Edward Pease Free Library.

“Befitting pomp and ceremony attended the inaugural proceedings,” reported The Northern Echo. “The places of business in Darlington were closed, a half holiday was observed.

And the people of the town attested at once their gratitude to the departed benefactor.”

Not that before October 23, 1885, Darlington had been an entirely bookless society, especially since the early 18th Century, when printing businesses had started selling books so that the well-off, who were educated enough to be able to read, could build private libraries.

As the century drew on, women in particular had their interest awakened by the newfangled novel. Suddenly, read- Trowels and consonants The Edward Pease Free Library in Darlington is 125 years old this month. In IN ASSOCIATION WITH ing was more than just academic or theological: it was fun.

On February 8, 1793, the first Subscription Library started in Darlington. It cost £2 12s 6d to join – the Bank of England Inflation Calculator says this is £325 today – plus an annual subscription of 10s 6d.

As well as Darlingtonians, there were subscribers from Reeth, Staindrop, Barton, West Auckland, Barnard Castle and Cockfield.

Initially, the Subscription Library was based in a room in the Tollbooth, where the Covered Market is today.

The librarian in the 1820s, Mrs Pattinson, boosted her meagre salary by selling homemade biscuits to browsers. She also had to keep an eye on them, fining them if they returned a book late or damaged – even in olden days, borrowers were wont to rip out a coloured illustration if it took their fancy. Mrs Pattinson had to mark each book inside and out with a large “DL”.

By the late 1840s, it had 3,000 volumes in a room in Central Hall. It was open 9am to 9pm six days a week, and had 125 subscribers.

New members had to be elected – anyone who received a majority of black balls was not allowed to join.

It wasn’t the only library in town. Many religious groups had their own libraries and in 1825, the Mechanics Institute was formed in Regent Street (in the Commercial Street area) with William van Mildert, the Bishop of Durham, donating volumes.

The institute’s aim was to promote learning among the working-class.

With similar goals, the Railway Institute was established in North Road in 1858. It can still be seen next to Morrisons on the Whessoe Road corner, and inside it had its own lending library.

Then the Darlington Gardeners’ Institute had 254 volumes of horticultural books and a librarian on hand every evening from 6pm to 9pm to dispense them to greenfingered readers.

We now live in very different times, but it is impossible not to feel that many of these early libraries were extremely earnest and, controlled by churches and Quaker businessmen, probably a tad boring.

For instance, the Book Committee of the Mechanics Institute voted on which new publications it would buy for its library. In 1850, it boasted that “at a recent committee meeting, out of 28 books proposed, 24 were rejected as not desireable”.

In 1863, the North Road Reading Room was opened in the Mutual Improvement Building by the Christian Workman’s Mutual Improvement Society. The books on its shelves cannot have been a bundle of laughs.

To supply a less highbrow market, there were commercial libraries. For example, Miss Oliver advertised in the Darlington Telegraph of 1855 that her library on the approach to Bank Top station had just acquired the Curse of Clifton by Mrs Eden Southworth, and Fern Leaves and Shadows and Sunbeams by Fanny Fern. These were the best-selling US female authors of the day, condemned by the serious-minded for writing “sentimental” trash about love and pregnancy (which happened, miraculously, without sex).

In the 1840s, there were moves to pass legislation to create “free public libraries” – libraries open to all, funded by the local council. Proponents argued that the reading would be good for the brain, the soul and the liver – it would keep the working class out of the pubs.

Opponents argued that it would be hard-pressed middleclass ratepayers who would be subsidising the education of the lower classes. They also argued that municipal libraries would destroy the businesses of entrepreneurs such as Miss Oliver and harm charities such as the Mechanics Institute.

The Public Libraries Act was passed in 1850. It said that towns with a population greater than 10,000 could put ½d on the rate to build a library – all the books had to be donated – as long as two-thirds of local people agreed in a referendum.

Stockton was the first town in this area to act on the Act.

It opened its free library in 1857.

In Darlington, one of the loudest voices in favour belonged to Edward Pease (1834- 1880). He was the second son of Joseph Pease (whose statue stands in High Row).

Edward never enjoyed the most robust of health. After serving his apprenticeship in the family’s textile mill (where TK Maxx is today) he married and went off to an estate in Bewdley, Worcestershire, to indulge his passion for mulebreeding, fruit-farming and forestry.

He had a “beautiful highland retreat, Kindrochit Lodge, near Braemar”, and he maintained his mansion of Greencroft in Darlington.

In 1869, he commissioned two Darlington clergymen to spend a week touring the country, visiting free libraries.

They reported back that libraries were a very good thing.

Not all agreed. The Darlington and Stockton Times said: “The Free Library contest in Darlington waxes hotter and more bitter. The promoters seem determined to thrust their schemes down the popular throat, and the popular throat seems as determined to reject them.”

In the first edition of The Northern Echo – January 1, 1870 – Edward paid for an address “to the ratepayers of Darlington”, urging them to vote yes in a referendum.

It was held on March 1, 1870.

They voted no: 932 votes for the library; 1,240 against, with 814 neutral.

The library idea was quietly shelved.

There it stayed until Edward’s death on June 13, 1880, in Switzerland.

Edward, said the Echo in its obituary, did many good works, but his poor health had forced him to spend the “trying season” of spring in warmer climes abroad. That March he had visited Cannes and Nice in the south of France with his sisters before taking in the Italian Lakes.

“It was at the Pass of St Gothard that Mr Pease was taken ill ,” said the Echo. He made it to Lucerne, where he expired in the five-star Hotel Schwitzerhof, aged 46.

His affairs proved difficult to unravel. His wife had died three years earlier and so their 14-year-old daughter, Beatrice, was orphaned.

She became the ward of Edward’s eldest brother, Sir Joseph Whitwell Pease, the head of the family.

In 1883, it was announced that Edward’s will left £10,000 (£906,451 today) “for the education of the poorer classes either by establishing or founding or assisting in establishing or founding a Free Library”.

A second referendum had to be held. This time an overwhelming majority voted in favour: 3,420 yes, 599 no, 1,725 returned blank.

So on June 4, 1884, a parade of the great and the good left the Town Hall, toured the streets before marching down the new Crown Street to the site of the Peases’ old mill race, on top of which the library was being constructed (in fact, a couple of years ago, the library was discovered to be subsiding into the mill race).

The Echo said: “The scaffolding round the new building was gaily decorated with flags etc, and a spacious enclosure, provided with seats, was reserved for ladies.”

It being June in England, everyone appears to be wearing the heaviest overcoats.

The Echo reported: “Sir Joseph having adjusted the stone with the mallet and trowel handed to him by the Mayor, mounted the cornerstone and declared it duly laid, and hoped that for many, many years to come it would have its effect upon the people of this place in promoting their education and their comfort in life. (Cheers.)”

The Edward Pease Free Library, filled with 4,000 books from the now defunct Subscription Library and 2,500 from the Mechanics Institute, was opened the following October – exactly 125 years ago.

The lady who performed the ceremonial duties was Beatrice, the orphaned daughter of Edward, who had recently married Viscount Lymington.

The library was, after all, her father’s legacy.

What no one knew at the time, but we shall tell next week, was that the Peases could barely afford to give away £10,000 and that Beatrice’s new husband was a gold-digger who would destroy the dynasty.