150 years ago: the most amazing letter ever written to an editor?

“Dear sir,” wrote Anne Speck, “I was greatly surprised at seeing in the D&S of January 18 the report of the divorce of Speck v Speck. I wish to deny the statements which Speck therein made. He swore that I was in bed with other men. That, I state, is false.

“I deny it.

“If he has got his divorce by swearing falsely, he will have to answer for it at the day of judgement.”

Two weeks earlier, the D&S had indeed carried a report from the Court of Divorce and Matrimonial Causes in London in which John Speck said he had married Anne in Darlington on March 13, 1858. He had then been a farmer, but went on to get a job on the North Eastern Railway which, said the D&S, “kept him out very late, and going home one morning, he found a strange man in bed with his wife”. This caused him to leave his wife and get a job as a bobby.

“He went to Manchester as a policeman and, while there, had occasion to visit a house of ill-fame, when he again found his wife in bed with a man,” said the D&S.

What are the chances of that happening? Of all the towns in Britain and he was posted to Manchester, and of all the houses in that city, he coincidentally called in on constabulary business on the one in which his estranged wife was in bed with another man.

This bit of luck caused him to press for divorce on the grounds of Anne’s adultery with Henry Hugh Hill who, presumably, was the “strange man” and whom Anne named in Darlington as the father of her baby, William Henry Hill.

The judge, Sir James Hannen, granted a decree-nisi.

Not only was Anne not happy with the central allegation that she was in bed “with other men” (her plural), but in her letter to the editor, she also disputed another piece of her former husband’s evidence.

“He also swore that he was a farmer,” she wrote. “That, I say, is false. He was never anything but a labourer since I knew him. “I am, yours truly, Anne Speck.”

READ MORE: FAREWELL TO OUR PRIESTGATE PRINTING PALACE

LAST week we told how after 153 years, The Northern Echo had left its printing palace in Priestgate in Darlington town centre. So many people in the area have a direct connection to the paper, and not just because it comes through their letterbox every morning.

Many families have had several generations who have worked at Priestgate for many years.

For instance, Eddy Eccles, whose son Don lives in Gainford, worked as compositor and stereotype in Priestgate for nearly 50 years until he retired on his 65th birthday in 1972. In 1968, the directors of the company gave Eddy an inscribed gold watch to commemorate his 45 years in Priestgate.

Eddy followed in the footsteps of his father, Joseph, who must have been quite a big wig in the 1920s.

Joseph first was the Echo’s branch manager in Middlesbrough, and Don has a book – the Modern Readers’ Chaucer – that was presented to him in 1916 when he was promoted to “a position on the headquarters staff”, according to the handwriting on the first page.

“He lived in Pierremont Road in Darlington but went by train every day to Durham,” says Don. “Family legend says that he was collected each morning by a taxi to take him to the station.” He must have been very high up to get such treatment!

“I remember my grandfather, who was a leading light in Pierremont Methodist Chapel, was a whizz at Pitman’s shorthand and I remember he was the proud owner of one of the first Biro pens in the area, although, on occasions, it used to splodge ink all over the place.”

Don also has a silver-plated teapot (above), and a milk jug and a sugar bowl, that was given to Joseph in 1928 to mark his 21 years of service with the Echo and its associated papers.

The Echo had a real thing about teapots in the Twenties. It dished them out to long serving employees as well as long standing readers – for instance, anyone who celebrated their golden wedding anniversary in 1920 got a silver teapot from the Echo to mark its 50 years of publication. Are there anymore Echo teapots anywhere?

HENRY BAKER (above) drove the first motorised milk float in Darlington (Memories 611). We’ve been fascinated by the object that he is carrying and now Keith "RKB" Brown, of Auckland Park, has sent in a photo of a very similar device (below).

“It's made of aluminium, is eight inches tall and four inches in diameter, and it belonged to my grandmother, Amy Brown (nee Dowson),” they say. “She used it to measure milk on the family farm at Forest-in-Teesdale.

“It holds two pints of milk which is, of course, a quart.”

In the days before reusable milk bottles, Henry would have had a large churn full of milk in the back of his Harrowgate Hill Dairy vehicle. He would have used the smaller pails to measure out a quart of milk which he would deliver to his customer’s door and pour into her bowl or jug.