The
Music Tavern was situated on Gaskell’s Court, off Churchgate, and
although it was only a pub for perhaps 20 years or so in the
nineteenth century it became one of the town’s most notorious
beerhouses. It grew out of a lodging house on one of the many courts
that led down tiny alleyways off the main streets of Bolton.
Practically all have disappeared, though the entrance to Gaskell
Court can still be seen next to the Churchgate pub, formerly the
Brass Cat.
There
is no mention of any licensed premises on Gaskell Court prior to the
1851 census when 26-year-old John Roberts was named as a beerseller.
He lived there with his 21-year-old wife, Ellen, two children, his
mother-in-law, a brother-in-law, a servant and no fewer than 14
lodgers. By 1859 Sarah Kearsley was announcing in the local press
that she had taken over. The premises were certainly commodious and
Ms Kearsley was able to offer “apartments for families”. [Bolton
Chronicle, 7 April 1859].
Sarah
Kearsley was only at the Royal Music Tavern, as it then was, for a
few years. By Christmas 1862, John Fielding was in charge and he put
on a Christmas tea party for 40 women over the age of 60. They were
entertained by Mr Fielding's three children playing the piano, violin
and the piccolo. One of the attendees was Betty Pearson of Farnworth
who was in her 108th
year. Mrs Pearson's daughters, aged 64 and 76 were also present along
with a woman aged 98 and four others over the age of 80. People born
at the end of the 18th
century – as these women were – had a life expectancy of less
than 40 years at birth. (source: Wikipedia
)
By
the late-1860s the pub was known as the Music Tavern and it was being
run by one of Bolton’s most notorious characters – Isabella
Dewhurst.
Mrs
Dewhurst had previously been at the Churchgate Tavern (no relation to
the similarly-named pub a few doors further up_. However, she had to
leave when the Churchgate was sold and converted into retail
premises. Situated at 33 Churchgate it was much later part of the
Sandwich Inn.
The
Churchgate was notorious in being a brothel as well as a beerhouse,
but it paid well. Her partner George Smethurst was ostensibly its
landlord but Isabella Dewhurst managed to save £100 in sovereigns,
apparently unbeknownst to Smethurst. How she saved the money – the
equivalent of £12,000 today – can only be the subject of some
speculation.
There
was a bizarre incident at the Music Tavern in January 1868 and it
caused Mrs Dewhurst to be hauled in front of the court. She was
charged with permitting disorderly conduct at the house after police
arrived one Sunday and found customers wrestling for beer. The case
was dismissed on a technicality, the summons only having been served
the previous day.
Justice
finally caught up with Isabella Dewhurst in July 1868 when she was
charged with keeping a disreputable house. The case was proved by two
young women, 17-year-old Nancy Mather and Elizabeth Ann Hull, aged
20. Both girls stated that they had gone voluntarily to the pub and
that different sorts of people – often in great numbers - visited
the premises for immoral purposes. Mrs Dewhurst was absent from court
and the case was heard in a side room away from the public but with
reporters present. Her representative, Mr Ramwell, stated that if
girls didn't visit these places then they wouldn't exist. The
Magistrates found her guilty had the options of fining Mrs Dewhurst
up to £10 or jailing her for a month with or without hard labour.
The
Bolton Chronicle of 11 July 1868 takes up the story.:
“The
Magistrates consulted a few minutes and the Mayor then announced they
had decided on committing Mrs Dewhurst for a month, with hard labour
in each of the two cases – the second month to take effect upon the
expiration of the first. His Worship added that Mr Superintendent
Beech deserved the thanks of the Bench for having brought the matter
so clearly before them.”
The
police were then sent to the Music Tavern to bring Isabella Dewhurst
into custody ready to begin her sentence at the New Bailey, the 18th
century prison next to the River Irwell on the Manchester-Salford
border. It was to create great excitement in the town and Mrs
Dewhurst was determined to go down with an air of defiance about her.
But it was not to be.
The
Chronicle's report continued:
“The
defendant was immediately brought into custody, and taken to the
police station. She is well known in the town and is possessed of
considerable means. She was exceedingly well-attired on Monday [the
day of the trial], wearing a silk dress, velvet mantle and veil. A
handsome drag or dog-cart belonging to her was driven to the Police
Office in the expectation that she would be allowed to the New Bailey
in her own conveyances, under police escort; but she was sent along
with two male prisoners, to one of whom she was handcuffed, by the
Bolton to Manchester omnibus, which left soon after three o'clock in
the afternoon. A large crowd of persons witnessed her departure from
the Police Office and they saluted her with loud hootings.”
While
it was the end of Isabella Dewhurst's time as a pub landlord it
didn't end her association with the Music Tavern. Her former
associate Edward Gordon took over the running of the pub after she
was sent to jail. In April 1869, she was involved in another court
case when she was sued by Gordon over the theft of some money from
the pub. Mr Gordon took over the tenancy of the Music Tavern from Mrs
Dewhurst in 1868, but the building was actually owned by Nicholas
Heyes, the landlord of the Welcome Traveller on Union Buildings just
off Bradshawgate. Despite having no further business at Music Tavern
– at least not with regards to the sale of beer - Mrs Dewhurst
regularly stayed there and was accused by Mr Gordon of having stolen
£22 from a cashbox at the pub– a considerable sum in those days.
“Isabella
Dewhurst Back On The Scene”, yelled the Bolton Evening News of 10
April 1869. But after claim and counter-claim from both parties the
judge, J.S.T. Greene found in favour of Mr Gordon but to the tune of
just £7. During the course of the case it transpired that Mrs
Dewhurst already owned several properties from which was receiving
rents. She said she lived in Blackpool for seven or eight weeks at a
time and wasn’t without money. The cashbox in question was her own
and contained rents from her properties.
The
beginning of the end for the Music Tavern came in September 1869. An
Act of Parliament passed that summer gave local magistrates the power
to strip beerhouses of their licences. Prior to that beerhouse
keepers simply paid a fee of two guineas for their licence. Now the
magistrates in Bolton required every beerhouse in the town to
re-apply for their licence on an annual basis and on this the first
occasion they closed down some 50 of them. One was the Music Tavern
and Edward Gordon was up before the bench on the first day of the
hearing. While he claimed the pub had been cleaned up since he took
over the tenancy, the local constabulary claimed it was very much
business as usual.
As
the Bolton Evening News reported on 2 September 1869:
“This
house was the notorious one formerly kept by Isabella Dewhurst. The
present tenant entered on the 14th of July last year, and since that
time, it was alleged, the character of the house had been entirely
changed. The complaint against the house was that it was a notorious
haunt of prostitutes and bad characters generally. The Mayor to the
applicant: How long have you lived in the house? – Gordon: Two and
a half years. - The Mayor: Then you lived with Isabella Dewhurst?
Gordon: Yes, sir. – Police constables Greenhalgh and Fletcher both
gave the house a very bad name. There were two girls in the house,
ostensibly as servants, but they were in reality prostitutes. They
knew as many as four loose girls kept there a few days ago”.
Mr
Gordon’s application was thrown out and the Music Tavern lost its
licence. The pub closed down the following month, but not before he
received at least three more visits from the police, who were keeping
their eye on the pub despite its imminent demise. They found Edward
Gordon selling sherry and wine which, being a beer house, he was not
licensed to do and he was hauled before the court again. He left for
America early in 1870.
Such
was Isabella Dewhurst’s reputation that her name was also used by
the authorities to close down the New Inn on St George’s Road. That
the beerhouse was “the resort and residence of prostitutes and bad
characters generally” didn’t help, but the fact that Mrs Dewhurst
had been seen playing cards there was also brought up at the hearing.
Mrs Dewhurst’s sister, Margaret, was the wife of the licensee,
James Mason.
Isabella
Dewhurst went to live in a property she owned in Coe Street, a very
basic weaver's cottage off Bridgeman Street in a poor part of Bolton.
By 1871, she was joined by her niece, Isabella Banks Walker, the
daughter of her sister, Margaret. Isabella Banks Walker married a
local clerk, Alfred Aldred, in 1873 and the couple went to live at
another of Mrs Dewhurst’s properties in Silverwell Street. It was
there that Isabella Dewhurst died on 16 July 1876. She was 48.
Mrs
Dewhurst's estate, as proved by Alfred Aldred and his brother, a
local accountant named Bold Aldred, came to £1500 – a huge amount
of money in those days. But if Isabella Dewhurst’s gains –
ill-gotten or otherwise – were unable to get her beyond a weaver’s
cottage on Coe Street, the beneficiary of her will, her niece
Isabella Aldred, made wise use of her bequest. In 1878, the Aldreds
bought 66 acres of farmland at Old Clough Farm in Worsley. By the end
of that decade they had emigrated to New Zealand where they were to
spend the rest of their lives. Alfred Aldred died in 1930, Isabella
Aldred died in Auckland in 1937.
AN
UNDESIRABLE CUSTOMER – William Burns, painter, Back-King Street,
was charged with being drunk and disorderly in Churchgate. Isabella
Dewhurst, beerseller, said the defendant came into her house on
Wednesday afternoon, and suspecting him to be a bad character, she
ordered him to leave. He refused to go and she sent for a policeman.
Having been previously convicted he was fined 10 shillings and costs,
in default 14 days hard labour. - Bolton Chronicle, 2 May 1868.
Churchgate pictured in September 2014 (copyright Google Street View). The Brass Cat is the white building in the picture and immediately to its left is the entrance to Gaskell House. In the nineteenth century it led to Gaskell Court, home to the Music Tavern.
Article written 9 April 2015.
Updated 19 October 2019 with more details on Isabella Dewhurst.
