The Tower Suffragette by Penny Dolan

Inside Harrogate Library, at the start  of March,a new display was put up, decorated with small flags and  badges, and arranged by the Local Studies group. As I studied the labels, printed images and photocopied extracts,  the story seemed like a glimpse an exciting Edwardian detective adventure. Secret meetings? Foreign infiltrators? Concealed figures hurrying across the dark and lonely moor? Undercover surveillance? What made the incident interesting was that, I learned, it involved a famous local Suffragette.

I had learned about the Votes For Women movement many decades ago, after seeing the horrifying posters about force-feeding and the ‘Cat and Mouse’ Act inside  Bruce Castle Museum in Tottenham, London. Whenever my grandmother took there - one of her favourite outings, I stared at the images again, had nightmares again, and was felt revolted by the thought of food. Those images still have that awful power. And, in addition, searching for this image today, I noticed that many of the poster images seemed to be without their original wording.

                                                 

 Recently, I spent time with the Suffragettes again, reading ‘Old Baggage’, author Lissa Evans' enjoyable historical novel, set in the twenties and thirties. Though the book looks back at the bravery of the women, the plot also speaks about the mix of ideology, ‘sisterhood’, money and class within the organisation, and at the lives of all those unmarried women once the 'European War' was over. Evans' novel also warned me of the biased descriptions and attitudes I read in a local newspaper article (June 1914) quoted below.

                                                      
The main subject of the display was Leonora Cohen, who was known as 'The Tower Suffragette', born in Leeds in 1873. Canova Throp, her father, who was a sculptor and stone carver, died when Leonora was five. His wife, Jane Lamie, worked  long hours as a seamstress to support Leonora and her two younger brothers. As a child, Leonora worked alongside her mother, and at sixteen, trained as a milliner. She went on to become a milliner’s buyer, travelling from Yorkshire to London.                                                        

                                                         

 These experience taught Leonora about the working conditions of women, and the inequalities of men and women's wages. Her mother, who had suffered from poverty and injustice, was the one who inspired her radicalism, saying “if only we had a say in things”. Leonora’s telling statement was that “a drunken lout of a man had the vote simply because he was a male. I vowed to change things.”

In 1900, aged twenty-seven, she married Henry Cohen, a jeweller’s assistant, and childhood friend. He was Jewish and Leonora was not, so his parents disapproved of the marriage. Leonora’s mother disapproved too, fearing that marriage would distance her daughter from the Suffragette cause, in which the women were both now involved. However, Henry knew and supported Leonora's beliefs and married her, despite being warned by a friend that “if I had a wife like yours, I should tie her to the table leg.” In 1902, she gave birth to their son, who died at a year old and then a surviving daughter. For a few years, the family lived quietly. 

Then, in 1908, Leonora joined the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), popularly know as the Suffragettes, and at one point became one of Emmeline Pankhurst’s bodyguards.Three years later, In 1911, Leonora was arrested after throwing a rock against the window of a government building. She was pummelled on the jaw by a police officer, knocked down by a police horse and sentenced to seven days in Holloway prison.

In 1913, Leonora made headlines again when she staged an angry public protest after Asquith’s capitulation and dropping of the Reform Bill. Taking the tube, she went to the Tower of London where because of her quiet elegance, she was assumed to be a lady teacher escorting a group of visiting school boys into the Jewel Tower. On reaching the display of jewels, she drew out the iron bar concealed under her coat and smashed the glass case containing the Insignia of the Order of Merit and other treasures. Sent to Leeds Assizes and again imprisoned, the press named her "The Tower Suffragette.'

After this incident, the Cohen family moved from Leeds to Harrogate, a thriving spa town whose health facilities, churches, concerts and entertainments brought many visitors - and an ideal place to conceal a few extra visitors. They set up The Reform Food Boarding House, a vegetarian establishment, at Harlow Moor Drive, as a refuge for fellow suffragettes and sympathisers. 

Number 31 is one among a long row of impressive four and five storey boarding houses, situated just by the Valley Gardens where visitors promenaded after taking the waters, and close by the Royal Baths and the busy main centre of town. However, across the road, in the other direction, was a wild uphill expanse of open moor, pasture and woodland. In fact, the boarding house was an ideal situation in more ways than one.

In 1914, notoriety arrived: Leonora Cohen gave shelter to the “tiny, wily, elusive Pimpernel” known as Lilian Lenton. A famous firebrand, Lilian had already been imprisoned for window smashing, and in 1913, was involved in several arson attacks, the most famous being on the Tea House in Kew Gardens.

                                               

Imprisoned in Holloway, Lilian had gone on hunger strike, refusing food and liquid, and was force-fed until she became seriously ill. Though Lilian was then released, under the notorious ‘Cat and Mouse Act’, she was to be re-arrested after seven days, when her health would be said to have 'improved'. 

Instead, Lilian left London, travelled to Harrogate avoiding any re-arrest, and took refuge with Leonora at the Reform Food Boarding House, among friends and sympathisers. However, wisely or unwisely, while speaking at a meeting on The Stray, a large grassy area in the town, Mrs Cohen, told listeners “We have Lilian Lenton in Harrogate.” As soon as word got out, the authorities made plans to swoop on the boarding house and, attracted by “the hysterical wantonness of the militant’s misdemeanors”, the raid made news.

The account quoted below, appearing in the loyal, local newspaper ‘The Harrogate Advertiser’, and is very much written in the populist and racist language of the time. Ot also reflects that the piece was written at a troubled time, at home and on the continent, and as what was then known as the European War began.  

Reporting on the Harlow Moor Drive incident, The Harrogate Advertiser described how: “The front door opened and two men took up positions at the gate, holding it ajar. Another went across the road to a gate a few yards down the Drive which opens on to Harlow Moor. He pushed the gate back, and wedged it. That was the setting of the scene.

A small group of spectators, including two plain clothes officers, had not long to wait for the actors, for in a few moments there emerged from the house a most laughable and grotesque company. Like as the animals are recorded to have entered the Ark, so these latter day fanatics came down the steps two by two.

There was a man for every woman and several of those doughty cavaliers, it was noted, were of a marked semitic cast of countenance. The women without exception advertised a quite new and unexpected suffragette trait - modesty. They had shrouded their their faces with wraps, with antimacassars, with tablecloths and impenetrable veils. No Moslem woman was ever more chary of exposing her features to the gaze of men than these bashful suffragettes! Quite 40 people engaged in this masque, Then over the Moor in divers directions, they scuttled like so many rabbits and were quickly swallowed up in the gathering gloom. Then follows a typical press law-and-order press complaint: Might not they have been arrested for obstructing the police in their duty of watching a criminal? It has been said that a coach and four can be driven through every Act of Parliament. To the police who perforce stood by impotent at the time the extraordinary procession passed, we can only say - ” (Extract from The Harrogate Advertiser, June 1914)

One can almost imagine what was said, when it was revealed that the police, arriving to capture that wily female Pimpernel, were outwitted. Lilian, dressed in a boy's suit given to her by Leonora, had slipped out of the boarding house and escaped, racing over Harlow Moor to freedom. Lilian was not re-arrested  and survived in liberty for that day, at least.

                                       

In 1916, Leonora Cohen and her family returned to Leeds, where she remained active in both the Suffragette and the Trade Union movements, and by 1924, was appointed the first woman Magistrate in Yorkshire. Many years later, Leonora appeared with two other still-living Suffragettes on the cover of the Radio Times, to publicise the BBC's ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’ series about Votes for Women story.  Her scrapbooks and memorabilia are now kept in The Abbey House Museum in Leeds. 

                                        

Leonora Cohen, the Tower Suffragette: a most amazing woman! 

 

However, I want to end this post by mentioning the 'Tower Suffragette' display that so caught my attention, and thank the Local Studies team for the work that created those three boards at Harrogate Library, building shown below.

                                

 The display is part of a year-long local project, celebrating the anniversary of Women’s Suffrage through the lives of Leonora Cohen and two other local women: Dr. Laura Soby Veale, a pioneer lady doctor, and Lady Frainy Bomanji, wife of a shipping magnate and local philanthropist. 

This August, their stories, and others, will inform 'Winning Women', a specially-designed walking tour led by enthusiastic local expert Harry Satloka and friends, probably starting opposite Betty’s Cafe and close by the War Memorial. Visitors can enjoy a slice of the town’s history as well as a slice (or two) of delicious local cake. Though please note that many other establishments are available.                            


Penny Dolan

VISITING HARRY'S HARROGATE by Penny Dolan

 I am sure that many History Girls have acted, in one way or another, as historical guide for a location, an event, or on a specific study trip. Sharing your enthusiasm with others can be a real pleasure. However, it can also be interesting to be part of an audience being guided around too. All that role demands is your attention, an amount of physical strength and speed of foot, and perhaps a pen and a neat and handy note book. 

Last Sunday, spurred on by idle curiosity, I took a guided tour around my own home, the spa town of Harrogate. I had often seen small groups gathered by the War Memorial, directly opposite the famous Betty’s Tearooms, macs and bags marking them out as visitors. I had also seen, close by, on a tasteful notice-board, details of Harry’s Free Walking Tour.  

Who was Harry, I wondered and what did he have to say about the place?

I joined the queue. Exactly on time, a cheerful man strode across the Parliament Street crossing, wearing a neat blue waistcoat, smart shorts and good walking boots and wielding a tall wooden pole, topped by an unmistakeably easy-to-spot blue and yellow disc, He rested his staff against the flower beds, stretched out his hand in greeting and introduced himself, asked for people’s names in return. His enthusiasm indicated we were in for a good time.

Once, twenty years ago, when we first moved to the town, there were venerable people who were the Harrogate Town Guides. They were, I believe, knowledgeable and independent-minded individuals who were probably under the auspices of the excellent Chief Librarian, who was a local historian. They gave their time up on a voluntary basis and were, as far as I know, part of the life of the town. However, somebody official – a councillor or tourism expert or someone, inspired by the new mood of accountability - decided that the Guides should be brought into some kind of formal group. Maybe they were offered helpful training? Given a set script? Handed forms and rotas to fill in and suchlike? Whatever happened, the result was simple. The Guides stepped away from the new requirements and never returned. Gone. Is that not an excellently tempting scenario, whether true or not?

Anyway, the space they left was there for Harry to fill, freelance and under his own rules, all these years later.

Last Sunday, most of his ‘guests’, as Harry called us, were weekenders from around the North of England. Often his guests are from other countries: one woman there was a Canadian, visiting partly because her RAF parents met in Harrogate during WWII. I liked the way Harry had of making everyone feel welcomed and involved and when I awkwardly admitted being local, he simply beamed and asked what I liked best about the town. Clearly, Harry’s Walk was going to be a briskly positive experience for everyone.

While we stood on a patch of damp grass, Harry quickly described the wider geographical context: what lay to the north, south, east or west of the town. After crossing the road, we paused again. This time he ran us through the area’s early history. We heard of Romans in York; Vikings sweeping down from Lindisfarne, the rule of the Anglo-Saxons, the arrival of William of Normandy’s knights and the building of nearby Knaresborough’s historic Castle, now a picturesque ruin overlooking the gorge of the River Nidd. Harrogate, meanwhile, was little more than a hamlet in a marshy area within the Forest of Knaresborough.

Then, in 1596, William Slingsby, a local gentleman who had visited other spas, discovered a local spring that had similar health giving properties. Over the period a variety of springs or wells were discovered, some sweet and some ‘stinking’ water and Harrogate started to grow. Even so, a large area of common grassland known as The Stray was retained and restricted, and still sweeps distinctively through the middle of our town.

Harry, and his amiability, had certainly kept the interest of the crowd. He led us down Montpelier Hill, indicated Slingsby’s Gin Shop, pointed out the now-empty newspaper office where ghost signs still promised a weekly List of Visitors to the town. We passed the famous Harrogate Toffee shop, skirted the Crown Hotel and turned down a cobbled street an iconic Harrogate setting that often appears in tv dramas about Yorkshire, especially any where there is a posh narrative thread.

Meanwhile, we arrived outside the pretty Pump Room, now a museum. On one wall was a push-button spout and stone basin: this was the old sulphur-water well. Despite the smell, the water was – and sometimes still is - considered an effective digestive treatment, yet nobody reached forward to take a sip from the small glass Harry offered.

Sometimes, as he talked, Harry unrolled a long strip of cloth that was wound around his pole, revealing copies of old printed images from Harrogate’s history: a swift and useful way of sharing information with his small group of listeners. Harry had found most of the pictures while studying in the local history section of the town library in preparation for his walks.

Harry then escorted us around the grassy space known as the Crescent Gardens, pointing out the Royal Baths, once a renowned hydrotherapy centre but now a Chinese restaurant, and told us about the Turkish Baths, the only remaining part of the Royal Baths complex in operation. Although the entrance was tucked away from where we stood, he unrolled a picture of the lavish tiled interior, suggesting it as a place worth visiting, although maybe not for this Sunday afternoon’s visitors as booking and swimwear are essential.

Across the road was the Royal Hall, a grand concert and reception hall. Back in 1903, it was ‘The Kursall’ or ‘Cure Hall’, with entertainment seen as a cure for low spirits. The name was changed before the First World War.  

Harry then described about something that I would have been delighted to witness: there are, though I had never noticed them, two tall green goblet-like structures high above the entrance to the Royal Hall.  Once, he explained, great jets of orange flame burst upwards from these goblets to show visitors that the next entertainment was about to begin. How stunning a sight that must have been! The hall was renowned for its early use of gas lighting, thanks to an incredible local entrepreneur, Mr. Samson Fox, mentioned in one of my past History Girls posts.

Harry pointed out the Majestic Hotel behind, higher up the hill, often seen in the background to a popular Harrogate travel poster and then we walked steadily on, past the now-empty Town Council Offices, built in 1930, towards The Old Swan, that most historic of Harrogate’s hotels, and renowned as the location of ‘missing’ crime writer Agatha Christie’s rediscovery.

I admired the ease and professionalism with which Harry handled the group, sending one person ahead to wait, marking a specific point, while he brought the general crowd and any stragglers firmly and merrily along, chatting and answering questions all the while. 

Harry had been a butler and was always involved in hospitality: from childhood within his parents pubs through to a career that included looking after prestigious guests at The Ritz in London and, more recently, as a manager at a Betty’s Tearoom in Yorkshire. Each of these posts demanded more and more hours indoors. Now Harry was doing what he liked best: enjoying life out in the fresh air and sharing his love of his adopted town of Harrogate with visitors.

Harry looped us back, past the Mercer Art Gallery with free entry to all its exhibitions, and in to the Valley Gardens. We strolled through a beautiful, well-kept and old-fashioned grounds with its formal flower beds, a covered Promenade, a winding stream, boating pond, a small elegant cafe, and more, still overlooked by the ornate towers of what was once the Royal Baths Hospital.  As we walked, he explained that Harrogate was home to several governmental organisations during World War II, especially the RAF. 

Winston Churchill was a frequent visitor to Harrogate too. I once heard tales of Winston running races in his bath chair down the steep curve of Cornwall Road, but was that true? Would the library know? Back we turned, back in the direction of the War Memorial, glancing across at the back of the old Winter Gardens. This buildin, now the grandest pub interior in the Wetherspoon’s chain, is well worth a quick glance inside if you can add a moment's imagination.

One has to grab the good moments and still-existing sights in this tourist town now. Sadly, many of the town’s public buildings have been sold, or are up for sale or for redevelopment. What the town will look like in the future, I did not know and I did not want that grim thought to be part of the day’s experience. Onward.

The last stretch wound through the charming shopping area known as the Montpelier Quarter, then up the hill again. The walk had lasted about an hour and twenty minutes, moving at a happy pace, and had included more information than included here. It was also free, although donations were accepted. 

Harry ended his Walk with the heart-rending story about the solitary young Swiss immigrant who, in 1907, came to Yorkshire, eventually founding Betty’s famous Cafe. It was a most suitable ending and maybe if you are ever in town, you can join Harry’s Walking Tour, and hear the tale from Harry himself?

Additionally, what made the guided walk valuable to me, though I knew much of the history, was the space and time it gave to reflect on Harrogate, and to appreciate its odd but interesting past.

Even if it was told by a History Boy.

Penny Dolan

WILLIAM FRITH: THE PEOPLE'S PAINTER by Penny Dolan

By the time this History Girls post appears, a major and comprehensive bicentennial exhibition - WILLIAM FRITH: THE PEOPLE'S PAINTER - will just have opened at the Mercer Gallery in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. The exhibition runs until the 29th of September 2019. 

By then, living locally, I'll have called in with my notebook and scribbled thoughts on his detailed paintings because William Powell Frith's great crowd scenes, full of colour and life, are an excellent, if sanitised, visual resource for any writer of Victorian historical fiction.

Frith was born in Aldfield, a small village close by the Fountains Abbey Estate in Yorkshire. His father was an inn-keeper in the popular spa of Harrogate and ambitious for his son.

In 1835, aged 16, Frith was sent to the Royal Academy School in London. This was followed by further study at Henry Sass's academy where he suffered the tedious art-teaching approaches of 1830's, established "The Clique", a small rebelious group that included Richard Dadd. Even so, by 1840, Frith was regularly exhibiting paintings of idealised historical scenes and building a reputation in London.
 
However, by 1851, Frith had grown weary of costume and  pageant and "determined to try his hand at modern life with all its drawbacks of unpicturesqueness of dress". 
 

It is that very, detailed "unpicturesqueness" which gives interest and charm to his work todaay.
Frith went to Ramsgate Sands to work on studies of the holiday makers and also to try, unsuccessfully, to make use of "Talbot-typing" or photography. 

Frith worked on the painting for a further two years in his studio; the overcrowded beach at Ramsgate became Life at the Seaside and was a huge success when he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1854.

(Life at the Seaside. Detail from the Victorian Web)
www.victorianweb.org

More panoramas followed. His next masterpiece showed the throng at the carnival that was Derby Day.  The subject was well-chosen: the popular social event happened close to London and was widely attended by all layers of society, which in turn would add interest to the whole as well as offering Frith ideas for groups of characters.

He later recreated these small group scenes with models back in his studio, but he had also taken along the photographer Robert Howlett, instructing him to "take photographs from the roof of a cab of as many queer groups of figures as he could see", even though Frith, like many, kept quiet on his use of photographic images. After fifteen months hard work, Derby Day was ready and exhibited to much acclaim in 1858. 


Frith was a master in choosing his subjects: he took the railway, the great topic of the age for his next "modern" work, showing the busy arrivals and poignant departures on view at Paddington in The Railway Station, which was exhibited to great acclaim in 1862, just four years later.  The large sweep of the painting, and the many small stories being played out within the whole, made Frith's work a great triumph: Ruskin praised the artist's "feat of organisation of all the details", although the details of railway travel had been rather tidied up in the painting.

The success led to a highly profitable commission from a dealer to work on a series of three modern London Street scenes. Unfortunately, Frith had to put the wonderful idea on hold.

Queen Victoria invited Frith to paint The Marriage of the Prince of Wales in 1863, a request and honour that was impossible to refuse.

Despite what might have been thought the reward of the royal command, in truth Frith's aristocratic "models" proved far less easy to manage than his usual sitters, and the £3,000 fee he was granted was barely a third of what he has hoped for from his intended London series. Consequently, only a few early sketches exist for The Times of the Day, intended be Frith's own Hogarthian view of Victorian London.

Afterwards, he did complete a series of four paintings - The Road to Ruin - on the highly popular moral topic of the dangers of gambling, followed by a series of five pictures on the perils of Speculation, The Race for Wealth. Both subjects discreetly echoed scanadlous news stories of the time. He was certainly an artist with his finger on the nation's pulse.

Frith's last "modern" painting, Private View at the Royal Academy, showing the great and the good with what now seem like over-crowded walls of paintings behind them. It was exhibited in 1881. From then on, Frith returned to the familiar topics of his early paintings, and to smaller-scale works such as the birthday party of a four-year-old girl, titled Many Happy Returns of the Day which is still popular in card-shops today.

Frith was truly a people's artist. A known raconteur, and great friend of Charles Dickens, his work displays the same storytelling power: his canvasses are filled with characters from all levels of society, allowing Frith to reveal, rather slyly, the social tensions and complexities of his age. When his large paintings went on tour, rails were erected to keep the public back from the canvasses and extra staff brought in as protection. Furthermore, the mass-produced engravings of Frith's made him one of the most commercially-successful artists of the age, and copies of his works could be found hanging in parlours across the whole Victorian world. Frith, whose life was almost the same length as Queen Victoria's, even found the energy and time to write his own three-volume Autobiography before he dying in 1909.

William Powell Frith's "modern" Victorian scenes still have the power to attract, interest and nostalgically involve the viewer today and I am looking forward to seeing his work will be on display at the Mercer Gallery's bicentenary exhibition. 

I feel as if I half-know the crowds at Ramsgate, Paddington and Derby Day, who will certainly be there,  but I wonder who else I'll find when I go Victorian people-watching?

www.harrogate.gov.uk/museum


Penny Dolan


Thanks to the Mercer Gallery and to Christopher Wood's book on "Victorian Painting" for additional information and to the Victorian Web for the Life at the Seaside detail.

"William Frith: The People's Painter! by Jane Sellars MBE and Richard Green will be published to coincide with the Mercer Gallery exhibition.
.








 

A Tale of Time, Cakes and Travel, or how Bettys came to Harrogate, by Penny Dolan

This is Harrogate, and a queue lines up under a glass shop-canopy that protects them from the brisk, damp Yorkshire weather.

These patient people are waiting for a table within Bettys Tea Rooms where, served by waitresses in starched pinnies, they intend to enjoy morning coffee, lunch, or afternoon tea in a genteel, well-heeled style. Meanwhile, at the shop counters, everyday customers can call in and buy bread, cakes or pastries, or a wide range of tea, coffee and chocolate confectionery.

Like The Stray, the stretch of open grassland that runs round part of Harrogate, Bettys is part of the local tourist industry that likes to offer an image of a stylish spa town, still flaunting the somewhat faded flag of its early twentieth century elegance.

Across the town centre, the antique shops and rare booksellers are few, the plate-glass store-fronts stand empty, the trendy restaurants have come and gone and the town hall has been sold off for luxury apartments so in some ways, Bettys represents a kind of permanence in Harrogate. This is, I feel, a suitable state of affairs as Bettys - the company – reaches its hundredth birthday this year.

Unlike poor Patisserie Valerie and her too-many premises, Bettys has always held tight to her Yorkshire roots and limited the number of its cafes. There are, even now, only six: on Parliament Street in Harrogate; at Harlow Carr Gardens, Harrogate: in Ilkley and in Northallerton; at Stonegate in York and also at St Helen’s Square in York, which boasts an interior inspired by the famous cruise liner, the Queen Mary.

As in all traditional stories, Bettys begins with a poor orphan child, born in 1885. though not in Yorkshire. 

Little Fritz Butzer, the son of a miller and master-baker, was born in Switzerland, His mother Ida died when he was an infant and not long after, fire destroyed his father Johann’s mill. Although his older sister was adopted by relatives, Fritz, only five-years-old, was sent back to the family village to be fostered.

He lived with a farmer who, despite promises, neglected the boy’s care and education and used him as a farm labourer. As soon as possible, Fritz left the farm and went to work as an assistant baker. Over the next years, he worked his way around Switzerland and then into France, learning about confectionery and the skills needed to be a chocolatier.

Even so, how - given his next move - can he have learned so much within what must have been about eleven years? Because, in 1907, at twenty-two, Fritz set off for England, unable to speak much of the language.

Unfortunately – or fortunately - on reaching London, he’d lost the paper giving the address of his destination. All he remembered – says the story - was that the place sounded like “Bratwurst”, a kind of sausage so Fritz was put on the train to Bradford. As an area of Bradford is still called Little Germany, this may not have been as random a suggestion as it sounds and, besides, many were seeking work in the industrial towns of the North. Fritz was employed by Bonnet and Sons, a Swiss confectioner in the city, but he was clearly an ambitious young man.

He moved on to the prosperous Yorkshire spa town of Harrogate, an “Inland Resort” that catered for a variety of visitors, who came to stay for health cures, rest and relaxation, shopping and entertainment and – of course – indulging in the best of food and drink. Originally, the annual visitors came as a diversion during the late-summer Yorkshire hunting season but, by the twentieth century, Harrogate was an upper-class destination all year round. The town’s most glittering season came in 1911, when it was visited by Queen Alexandra and various members of European and German royalty. Offering elegant hotels, prestigious musical performances inside the gilded Kursall, both Winter Gardens and Valley Gardens as a place for sociable promenades, Harrogate was a busy enough place for the enterprising young baker to make his mark.

Fritz married Claire Appleton, his landlady’s daughter, and before long had wisely changed his name to the more anglicised Frederick Belmont. In the summer of 1919, financed by his wife’s family, he set up the first Bettys bakery in Harrogate and in the 1920’s, but the tearooms he established were in Leeds and Bradford.

Then, in 1937, rather boldly, Frederick Belmont chose York for his new venture. It was already the home of three famous Quaker chocolate companies - Rowntrees, Terrys and Cravens – and site he chose was in the heart of the city, directly opposite the Terry’s cafe in St Helen’s Square.

The York Bettys flourished, and like all his other tearooms, would have prided itself on the quality of its offerings, the elegance of its catering, the impressiveness of its window displays, the superiority of its music and the luxury of the private reception rooms. Bettys was distinctive, and at at time when women could not meet away from home in pubs or bars, a valued female environment.

However, during WWII, Bettys in York took on a different character: a smart cocktail bar was installed upstairs and, away from the need for blackout, a bar down below the stairs. At that time, Yorkshire was home to many local air-bases and Bettys became popular with the bomber boys and the Canadian and American pilots. A framed mirror, where the airmen inscribed their names with a diamond pen, is still on show in the York tea-rooms. Not many of those boys would make a return visit to Bettys bar.

Nevertheless, throughout the war, Betty’s survived both bombs and the threat of army requisitioning. Did the supposed glamour of the local aircrews attracted the ire of the military? Or, behind the scenes, did the RAF high-ups defend Mr Belmont’s accounts of the number of meals he served, and the menus he simplified to fit rationing standards - and so keep their favourite Bettys bar open?

Eight years after the end of the war in Europe, Frederick Belmont died. His nephew, Victor Wild, took over as a managing director and oversaw the next decades. There were changes: although Bettys in Leeds became an espresso bar in the 1950’s, it did not survive the era of the mods and rockers and Bettys in Bradford closed too, bringing an end to the cafe in the industrial cities. It was followed by a time of expansion: in 1962, Wild heard that C.E.Taylors, the Yorkshire tea and coffee merchants, was for sale, Wild took action and Bettys became “Bettys and Taylors”. The Wild family remains involved in the company which, after trading for a century, flourishes online, through diversifying into Bettys Cookery School and cookbooks and publications, and, at an everyday commercial level, through the nationwide “Yorkshire Tea” and similar products.

Put together, the Bettys tale does read rather like a novel but there is rather a nice twist to the tale. When the new company was created, two establishments changed hands and brands. Over in Ilkley, the then-Taylor’s Tea Kiosk became another Bettys.

The other change was more significant: it fulfilled the dream Fritz Butzer had dreamed a hundred years before. The Imperial Cafe in Harrogate, which was then owned by Taylors, became a Bettys Tea Room, which is where, when a treat is needed, you can enjoy the most delicious cakes.

I must warn you that visiting Bettys is not at all cheap, but as a wise and rational friend once explained as we sat having a lovely, long and all too rare book chat. “Don’t think of the tea and scones as expensive. Just think of it as renting a table for a couple of hours.” And that, now and again, works for me.

As for the mysterious Betty? There are several ideas as to whom she might have been within the history section of Betty’s website - thank you for all the information -, but there’s also doubt as to whether she even existed. 

With Fritz’s own life-story being as full as this – an orphaned immigrant travelling through France, becoming a baker and confectioner on the journey and creating cafes up here in the North of England - maybe Betty doesn't really need a tale of her own, even for if this year is her hundredth birthday? 

Although it is very tempting to make another one up. . .  Once there was a young orphan girl . . ?

Nevertheless, HAPPY BIRTHDAY BETTYS,

and, additionally, 

in my mind,

all those neat waitresses and waiters in their black and white uniforms,

and the busy shop staff

and all the Bettys-behind-the-scenes bakers,

and the workers and packers in the Taylors factory

deserve a very, very loud cheer and more too.

Hope they will be having a great and grand party sometime this hundredth year too!

And in response to any pedantic queries about the missing apostrophe?

Bettys doesn’t have one.  Officially.

Penny Dolan

pennydolan1@twitter

A TRIP TO THE BATHS by Penny Dolan

When visiting friends and family come to see us, we can take them to several local places: Fountains Abbey, Brimham Rocks, Bolton Abbey or  Sutton Bank and the North York moors, and so on and so on.Yet I rarely take visitors to what was – or is – one of the treasures of Harrogate town: the famous Turkish Baths. 

As you can imagine, one must know one’s guests rather well before suggesting a session in such steamy surroundings.

However, as a good long-time friend was staying, it seemed the right moment to try a trip to the Baths. It was a while since I’d been there and that was when nudity was the expected dress code. However, following what were referred to as “improper incidents” during some sessions - none that I attended - the baths were discreetly rehabilitated and redecorated rather than being demolished or re-purposed.

Now, over the phone, staff gently suggested that swimsuits are optional and as there were several available in the back of my wardrobe, this eased matters. And swimsuits definitely were the chosen style all round that day, although on other occasions, one could certainly try for authenticity.

The Turkish Baths were created in 1897, as one part of the huge and imposing complex of treatment rooms known as the Royal Baths. This Victorian edifice was created by a consortium of local hoteliers and business men, keen to attract a better class of visitor to their new Borough.

I can’t help feeling a little grieved that over the last decades, the Council has sold off several sections of this distinctive building. The Winter Gardens are now occupied by Wetherspoons – though that is still graced by a grand staircase – while the magnificent assembly rooms have become a grand Chinese restaurant, and are therefore no longer available to general sightseers searching for past history.

When the Baths were the Baths, guests – or patients - entered the grand foyer with its octagonal mahogany “serving” counter, and the black marble columns supporting the magnificent domed roof overhead. Then, after disrobing in either the Parliament or Montpelier rooms, the patients were could take the famed waters. (Though one sees bottled Harrogate Water everywhere now, the original well, before it was sealed, had a horridly sulphurous quality and a particularly strong effect.) 

Pump Room Museum

Back then, the waters were drunk, or bathed in or used for a great variety of other hydropathic health treatments, of which – if one studies the photographs in the Pump Room Museum -   the Turkish Baths certainly seems the most relaxing.

The setting of the baths is still quite lovely, full of Islamic arches, screens and alcoves, all decorated with the original richly patterned tiles. 

After showering, one progresses between the three heated chambers – the warm Tepidarium, the intermediate Calidarium, and the hottest room, the Laconium. 

The plunge Pool, courtesy of TripAdvisor

 The dry air grows hotter and hotter and the tiled floor is soon almost too hot to bear. One can dream in the swirling mists of the steam room, take a warm or cool shower or take a dip in the cold plunge pool - an experience which may be authentic and traditional, but is not one I’d suggest at all: I consider it an option, not an obligation.

While I lay there toasting - and hoping my guest was still resting on one of the white couches in the relaxation room - I could not help thinking of  and admiring the bolder travels and expeditions of other History Girls, those who are off seeking sites of distant caravansera, hammams and bathhouses. all far more ancient than this Victorian re- creation.

 

I must add that my guest and I were so rested we were barely able to stagger uphill to Betty's for afternoon tea and toasted tea-cakes.

Penny Dolan

Parks and Gardens by Penny Dolan

Most visitor trips to Harrogate will almost certainly pass The Stray - an open stretch of grass that borders the town centre – and then drop down Montpelier Hill to the “famous” Valley Gardens, our local park.

With a streamside walk, ice-cream parlour and ever-changing floral display, the Valley Gardens give a prosperous, comfortable air of the visitor side of town, where the day trippers mingle with conference delegates and others queuing outside Betty’s tea-rooms.

Public parks are such an ordinary, accepted part of our urban lives and so at the mercy of the British weather that we barely notice them. 

Parks are stages: they only appear in the media as places where an event is to happen, has happened, or a crime has taken place. Rarely in their own right.

While parks can house concerts and celebrations of all sorts, in general our public parks and squares are low-key places. Push-chairs are pushed in them. Kids play in them. Joggers jog in them. Friends have casual picnics in them. Teens skulk and prowl in them and lovers meet their loves.

Parks come in a variety of styles. Some are windswept, muddy grounds, like the “Rec” of my childhood on Wood Green’s Noel Park Estate. Others, like leafy Wanstead Woods, still have a pleasant wildness about them. However, thanks to Lottery funding and a keener eye on the “health and safety” of the equipment, some parks seem to look better than they have done before. There is more and safer play equipment, more defined sports spaces and more awareness of what people need from parks.

Yet that renewal will depend on where you live. Parks are run by local councils, for the greater good of the people and if ever there’s a principle that’s getting twisted out of shape by austerity Britain, it’s “greater good”.  Anxiety about that, and about how and why public parks came about set me searching.

For a park, the Valley Gardens has a curious history. Way back in the 18th & 19th centuries, money was to be made in the upstart spa of Harrogate by offering health treatments, particularly taking the waters, one of which is very potent brew.  The visitors were encouraged to promenade between draughts of the stuff, which gave them a chance to mingle and meet.

However, in my personal view, the original liquid with its sulphuric tang - most unlike the currently marketed bottled “Harrogate Water” - probably had such a strong effect that the consumers needed a polite space to cope with the gastric turbulence.  It was probably a bit too dangerous to wander discreetly on The Stray which the young bucks had already grabbed for random horse racing. 

Harrogate grew. With the 1841 Harrogate Improvement Act, local businessmen began promoting the town and its now-enclosed wells as a resort.  Hotels and theatres were built, the railway arrived, the Royal Baths Hospital was established and royal relations - just over the way in Harewood House – added glamour and gentility. No wonder the idea of the Valley Gardens covering the less sweetly named Bogs Field was a winner.

Both town and gardens rose to prominence in the early twentieth century. Set just below the Hospital, the Valley Gardens was used by invalids and convalescent officers sent home from the Great War to regain their health.

Health, in general, was one reason for the growth in public parks. When, in the mid eighteen hundreds, people flooded in from the countryside to the Victorian mills and factories. The polluted air and poor living conditions made some of those in authority worry about the health and the morals of the workforce.

Open air began to matter, and the idea of parks - once the private preserve of the wealthy - were seen as a way of raising the standards of the population. Urban planning encouraged this. There was legislation: the 1875 Public Health Act, the 1881 Open Spaces Act and the 1884 Burial Grounds Act, all encouraging improvements in land use within towns and cities for the good of the urban population. 

The Temperance movement were great enthusiasts. The great Titus Salt’s model village at Saltaire has a park among its public amenities, but no public house. 

Civic dignitaries and social reformers saw parks as a way of reforming of the population, of turning the people away from gross pursuits and providing them with healthy leisure activities. Parks would increase physical, intellectual and moral standards among the population. 

Many parks were funded by public subscription, especially those commemorating Queen Victoria’s 1887 Golden and 1889 Diamond Jubilees. Parks often kept the name of their main benefactor, reminding everyone of the importance of philanthropy. 

However, parks were intended as places for all. They offered space for strolling or games, and inspirational beauty in the form of fountains and lakes and “landscape”. They added a kind of cultural education through classical and commemorative statuary, entertainment through bandstands, and horticulture knowledge through their plant displays and botanical glasshouses. At a grander civic level, parks were the settings for galas, pageants, all levels of pomp, ceremony and fireworks and even opportunities for art displays and exhibitions. Do you remember the host of painted elephants around London’s parks a few years ago? Of course, parks and squares were hedged with Rules and Regulations to ensure correct behaviour.

Needless to say, the donating of parkland was not entirely an altruistic gesture. The grand houses had become more difficult to maintain, especiallywith property taxes. Some family estates that were built in the countryside had now been encircled by city streets. Donating an unwanted property had advantages, especially when the public park had your name attached.

So now, as spaces, parks come tangled with other issues. They carry so many shades of class and privilege and gentrification and middle-class entertainment that it’s easy to dismiss the benefits they bring. Yet, if ever there's a sunny summer day, the city parks fill up with people of all sorts enjoying themselves, especially those with no garden for themselves. Then parks show themselves as  good things.

But could these same parks - so much part of our history - slip away, be rationalised? Like the libraries, where only one per city is seen as necessary? When the poor can always take the bus?  And will the parks be maintained, still? The angry-eyed park- keeper – that icon of comics – may have become a set of CCTV cameras, but good parks still need the care-givers, the gardeners, the cleaners, the grounds-people to keep them pleasant places. How is that to be managed? Or won’t it? A volunteer system can be a great resource but, in my opinion,  only works as a long-term systemwhen strengthened by a solid core of continuing professional expertise.  

Or will our public spaces be taken over, entirely sponsored, enclosed? Will the “greater good” legacy lost? Are urban planners and architects truly required to take good public space into account?   

One can have wonderful initiatives, of course, but will the Royal Wild Flower meadows be enough? How much open space will be left in the Olympic Park a few years on?

There’s another aspect, too. A park is a place for conversation, for people to meet, to gather together, freely and for free. Surely that’s valuable too? Or does the human voice not need to be heard? Already when spaces become corporate, emptying when business is done, the life of that area disappears.

Right now, in Istanbul, a conflict rages. It was sparked, I read, by plans to build a shopping mall over the one remaining public park, although other problems are obviously involved. 

But that aspect of the Turkish protest did set me wondering about our own urban parks - the ones that aren’t the renowned parks of London. 

Do parks matter, still? Or could we lose that heritage by casual indifference and neglect?

And, maybe more happily, how's your own favourite park?

Penny Dolan.

Author of A Boy Called M.O.U.S.E. (Bloomsbury)

www.pennydolan.com