The 140-year mystery of Sabina's suspicious death

“I’ve always had this inkling, a feeling about this John Bake,” says Gavin Bake, of Darlington. “I really think he had something to do with Sabina’s death.”

In the 19th Century, the Bakes were doing pretty well in North Yorkshire. They owned their own businesses and properties in Grassington, near Skipton, and yet John Bake – the heir apparent to his father and uncle – ended up scratching a living in the south Durham coalfield where his wife, Sabina, died in 1886, aged 42, in a miners’ terrace in the small colliery village of Quarryburn.

John Bake, at the front on the right holding a trumpet, with the Grassington Band before he moved to Quarryburn

A sentence placed in The Northern Echo suggests that Sabina’s sudden and surprise demise had raised the eyebrows of at least one person living locally, and even the Bishop Auckland registrar appears to have had doubts, for when he signed her death certificate nine weeks later, he wrote: “Died suddenly, apparantly (sic) of natural causes.”

Gavin, who has traced his family tree back to 1695, explains: “The Bakes had been well established in Grassington since the 1820s, when they had their own bank account, depositing cheques of £20. John’s father was a well-off carrier. He owned property, and at first John worked for him, but then, in 1865, he married Sabina, a leadminer’s daughter, and went down the pit – it was as if he had married below himself.

“His uncle ran the family carpentry business, and owned his own workshop. He didn’t have a son so John was the only male heir, and yet his uncle didn’t take him on even though he had several apprentices.”

In the early 1870s, the leadmines of Grassington were in decline and in 1873, John, 36, and Sabina, 29 and pregnant, moved to Quarryburn, near Hunwick, between Bishop Auckland and Crook. Their children – Elizabeth, eight, John Henry, six, and Margaret, one – went with them. It is a move that further suggests a fall-out: rather than gain any help, either familial or financial, they are forced to go in search of work.

The terrace of Quarryburn can be seen behind the trees. For south Durham, the houses look quite substantial with long gardens in front

 Quarryburn looks to have been a classic example of the mining terraces that were springing up all over south Durham at the time. It was in the middle-of-nowhere, next to the Quarry Burn Beck, and was built purely to accommodate miners who, like John, worked in the nearby drift mine.

The terrace was demolished in the early 1960s and today, there are only a few bricks in a field off a country lane to show it ever existed, although on a nearby junction is private house which was once called the Brewery Inn – this perhaps offers a clue as to how the miners might have occupied their spare time in this remote location.

At Quarryburn, Sabina (above) gave birth to Joseph, who was followed in 1876 by Sarah Jane.

Then, in late 1879, scarlet fever swept through the coalfield.

“In very early December, the Hunwick school logbook reports children being poorly and then that they were closing because children were dying in the district,” says Gavin. “The school didn’t reopen until the back end of January.”

With an epidemic raging across the area, life was tough in the Bake household in Quarryburn. Three-year-old Sarah Jane died on December 5 of “Tabes Mesenterica” – tuberculosis, which suggests she had been unwell for some time – and she was buried at St Paul’s Church in Hunwick on December 7.

The churchyard at Hunwick

This brush with death seems to have affected Sabina and John because on December 11, they had Margaret, seven, and Joseph, two, baptised at the church.

Just in time. On December 15, Margaret died of the fever.

Once the epidemic passed, the Bakes, like the mining community around them, resumed their lives.

All appeared to be normal until Thursday, November 25, 1886, when a curious sentence appeared in The Northern Echo (above). In the wonderful way of newspapers, it was directly above unrelated sentences about a royal rumour that Queen Victoria was about to consent to the marriage of Princess Victoria of Teck and Viscount Weymouth MP, and the local fact that Butterknowle Brass Band had received a donation of eight guineas from the owner of their local colliery.

The blunt sentence among the inconsequential chit-chat said: “Sabina Bake, 42, of Hunwick, died on Monday night, 15 minutes after seizure by unexpected illness.”

However, before the Echo had even reached the newsstands, Sabina had been buried in the same churchyard as her children.

Despite John’s promptness in arranging his wife’s funeral, he didn’t get around to registering the death until January 26, 1887 – nine weeks and a day after her death.

And despite the abruptness of Sabina’s death, the death certificate does not say there had been any medical inquiry. Instead, registrar David Armstrong gives that unsubstantiated cause of death – “Died suddenly, apparantly of natural causes” – and notes that John had been “present at the death”.

The document appears to break at least two laws of the day. Firstly, since 1874, registered doctors had been required to provide a written statement of the medical cause of a death and, secondly, since 1885, registrars were “required to report any sudden deaths or deaths where the cause was unknown to the coroner” so an inquest might be held.

Yet without any doctor’s examination, Sabina had been buried within 36 hours of her death. Unseemly haste?

“Why would it have been in the Echo when miners’ wives were dying every day?” asks Gavin. “Why wasn’t her death registered for nine weeks, and why was her death not certified by a doctor as the law said it had to be?”

It is all deeply intriguing. What caused the delay: was it the authorities asking questions, or was it that John did not inform them until time had begun to play its part in concealment of any evidence? What doubts led the registrar to write the word “apparantly” under cause of death? And who tipped off the Echo that there was something newsworthy about this young woman’s death?

After nearly 140 years, the trail has gone as cold as the grave, but Gavin has kept it alive through his researches.

Gavin Bake, of Darlington, with his book of family history

“About 40 years ago I asked my dad if he had any information about the family and he knew nothing except he was named after his grandfather, John Henry Bake, who was a poacher, so then I got started,” says Gavin, a retired gas facilities manager who also does pencil sketches of dogs when he isn’t researching family history. “It has been a labour of love, but I’ve enjoyed it. I’ve got it back to 1695, when there were Bakes at Bramley Head at Bolton Abbey near Skipton, and I’ve written it all into a book for my family, and this story is obviously a very big part of it.

“I’ve got quite a big feeling about it…”

If you can shed any light on any aspects of this story – was a delay of nine weeks unusual in registering a death in 1887, or is it unusual to see such a cause of death? – or can you tell us anything about Quarryburn, either email chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk or gav.bake@googlemail.co.uk

John Henry Bake, son of John and Sabina Bake who is Gavin's great-grandfather

ON some lists, Bake is the ninth most unusual name in the country. There are loads of theories about where it comes from, including an Anglo-Saxon “baecc” for beck or stream, or a Viking “bayocke”, for a small hillock.

THE sentence about Sabina in the Echo of November 25, 1886, is directly above that piece of royal gossip – which, we reckon, is completely unfounded.

Princess Victoria Mary of Teck never became engaged to Viscount Weymouth, who was the son of the Marquess of Bath. Instead, in 1891, she became engaged to her second cousin once removed, Prince Albert Victor, who, as the eldest son of the Prince of Wales, was the second-in-line to the throne.

However, six months after the engagement, Albert died suddenly of influenza. Princess Victoria Mary was consoled by his brother, George, to whom she became engaged the following year. They married in 1893 and in 1911 were crowned as King George V and Queen Mary.

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