Confusion as coronation postponed and king has emergency operation

“The branch office of The Northern Echo was besieged by inquiries. Immediately after three o'clock, a message from the head office of The Northern Echo at Darlington was received conveying the Press Association's wire. By 3:15pm this official message was posted on the windows of Messrs Dunn and Son’s establishment in Newgate Street. This was the first official announcement in the town, and the Echo message was read copied and quoted with interest. It conveyed the intelligence of the operation, the coronation postponement, but the king’s desire for country celebrations to proceed.”

In Middlesbrough, the news came like a bolt from the blue. In Thirsk it was received like a thunderclap.

“Great consternation was caused at Richmond,” said the Echo. “The surprise was all the greater from the fact that extensive preparations for rejoicings and festivities of every imaginable kind had been made in Richmond and throughout the Dales and Vale of Mowbray villages.”

Edward VII and headlines from The Northern Echo as his coronation in 1902 was postponed

The last coronation 64 years earlier, of the king’s mother, Queen Victoria, had been a disorganised shambles, with the ceremony lasting five hours, the coronation ring being painfully forced onto her wrong finger, and the “remarkably maladroit” Bishop of Durham trying to hand over the orb at the wrong time. Consequently, King Edward VII’s coronation was meant to be superbly organised, showing the nation at the centre of an empire with guests from around the globe and every corner of the country having formed local committees so that practically every street was involved.

But then, on the Tuesday lunchtime ahead of the Thursday morning ceremony, the king’s surgeons decided that his abdominal abscess needed immediate attention or he would die.

A house in Beaumont Street in Darlington dressed up for the 1902 coronation. It shows John Routh holding a horse with the Reed family in the carriage. John was the great-grandfather of Carol Johnson, who was the wife of Charles, the former deputy leader of the local Conservatives

As the mayor of Darlington, Cllr ED Walker (above), said: “At the eleventh hour, when we were on the threshold of great rejoicings, a terrible fly should make itself patent in the ointment of the rejoicings.”

But what to do? The word from the palace was that proceedings should go ahead, but how could the nation rejoice when the monarch was at death’s door? But how could the people not celebrate – the Darlington mayor pointed out that 10,400 medals had already been distributed to the town’s schoolchildren bearing the date “June 26” and 1,700 gift packs had gone out to the poor, and there was no way they could be recalled..

In Durham, the four days of celebrations were immediately cancelled forthwith.

Other towns decided to make no snap decision, and the Wednesday broke with better news. At 11.50am, the Echo’s Bishop Auckland office received a positive condition check by telegram which was “received with cheers” at the Auckland Coronation Committee, before being posted in shop windows. It meant at least some of the festivities could go ahead.

Thornaby needed no second bidding. It had a 70-stone ox in need of 20 hours of cooking, and one of the shipyards had made a special rotating and self-basting spit. It hungrily fired up its stoves in a wooden shed on a recreation ground at 3.45pm while other places were still humming and haaing about what to do.

The next day, Thursday, June 26, was supposed to be coronation day and the start of the revelries. Instead confusion reigned.

“Comprehensive programmes were cut deeply into, half abandoned, and wholly abandoned, and in all cases where they were preceded with were carried out with the sorrowful feeling that but for the fact His Majesty is lying stricken, the note of the festivities would have been one of gladness,” said the Echo. “Holidaymaking, albeit general, was restrained.”

The Darlington medals had the wrong date on them

In Darlington, 9,500 children, with their “beautiful and artistic button badges”, gathered in High Row where they were conducted from the Town Clock balcony by a musicmaster in singing the national anthem before processing in glorious weather down to South Park for sports and for entertainment by fabulous music hall artists: there was Wirson, a “chair pyramidist”, the Ramlos triple bar grotesques, Francisco the juggler and equilibrist, the Artino trio of ringwalkers, Mademoiselle Raffin’s monkeys, plus Valosky, the Russian skater and jumper, and many more…

At Haughton, there were 300 for a knife and fork tea, followed by sports on green with prizes presented by eldest resident, Miss Malcolm. At Mickleton, there was a novelty cricket match between men and women. At Shildon, 3,000 children were presented with medals; at Chilton, 700 children were presented with mugs and at Redcar, 1,600 boxes of chocolates were given to the youngsters.

At Thornaby, they also distributed tins of chocolate with likenesses of royal couple, and tucked into their roast ox. “That the beast was succulent and tender can be vouched by our reporter,” said the Echo as the townspeople consumed 80 yards of sandwich bread.

There was laughter. At West Cornforth, they opened a crate expecting to find 700 suitably inscribed coronation mugs but instead found 700 brownware teapots.

There was confusion. Hurworth set off its bonfire and fireworks; Hurworth Place distributed its medals but cancelled its bonfire and tree planting at the Tees bridge and Croft didn’t fire its bonfire.

But downriver at Middleton St George, “the programme was carried out in its entirety, favoured by glorious weather and the hearty co-operation of the inhabitants”. Mr Pilkington of the Devonport Hotel catered for 800 on the village green, all of whom received enamelled coronation mugs, and the day finished with a bonfire at 10pm and a display of fireworks from Tower Hill.

A fabulous picture of coronation festivities in Shildon: it is not clear if this was in June 1902 or in August when the coronation was actually held

Yet at Bishop Auckland, it was a little lacklustre. The Echo said 2,900 children wandered into the Bishop’s Park for tea but “there was no formal procession, and there were no banners nor sports”. Spennymoor abandoned its programme but at least the 400 aged folk still got their dinner in the Market Hall of roast and boiled beef and mutton, while in Northallerton, prisoners in the jail got an unexpected treat: hard labour – walking 16 or more hours on the treadmill – was suspended and even those on No 1 diet of bread and water received half a pound of “delicious cooked beef with 16oz of potatoes and 9oz of bread”.

And in Durham, there was nothing. “This decision was arrived at on Tuesday evening very shortly after the receipt of the news of the king’s serious illness,” said the Echo, “and in view of subsequent events and in the face of the favourable bulletins which have since been issued, it is now felt in many quarters that the decision was arrived at far too hastily.”

Children arrived in the Market Place all dressed up desiring the sports to take place. “Any hopes, however, in this direction were speedily reduced to chaos and many a little foot, after patiently waiting the course of events, wearily and disappointingly trudged home again,” said the Echo.

But, as the evening wore on and perhaps the odd drop of alcohol was consumed, the sight of all the unfired bonfires proved too tempting. “Contrary to expectations”, said the Echo, the bonfires at Trimdon Grange and Deaf Hill went up at 10pm and 11pm, drawing huge crowds, and then at 1am gelatine, was fired in Station Road doing considerable damage with “some large panes of glass being smashed to atoms”.

At Willington, said the Echo, “the bonfire which had been erected by Messrs Straker and Love (the company which owned the nearby pit) and was considered the largest in the county was not to be lighted, and for several days a bodyguard had been on watch but in spite of their efforts some unknown person in the early hours of yesterday morning is supposed to have lighted it and at 10am the fire was still being witnessed by large numbers”.

Consett’s 40ft bonfire was also torched. From the town’s lofty vantage point, it got bird’s eye view of the coronation confusion across the county. “Less than a dozen bonfires could be seen from Consett during the night as against 22 or 23 on the occasion of the late Queen’s Diamond Jubilee,” said the Echo, referring to the celebrations five years earlier of the last great royal occasion.

Hats off for King Edward VII as he is driven over the County Bridge on his way from a shooting party in upper Teesdale in 1907