Henry Peacock

Following  the renaming of the Harrogate Hotel to The Henry Peacock, I was often asked to explain who Henry Peacock was. Now that the public house has gone and his name has been removed from the townscape of Starbeck, I would like to remember him here to save his name from being forgotten

Henry Peacock was born in poverty, in Richmond in the North Riding of Yorkshire, late in the 18th century. His adult life was something like a game of snakes and ladders, gradually climbing the social ladder, only to slide back down again, just as he seemed to be getting somewhere.

Peacock, with his wife Elizabeth came to Starbeck in 1825 when they took employment as master and matron of the workhouse on a joint annual salary of £50 all found.  They had previously served three years in the same roll at the Boroughbridge and Aldborough workhouse. It was said that they took the roll here in an attempt to 'better themselves'.  Elizabeth was a diligent  and hard working woman, but sadly prone to illness, and after less than two years as matron of the workhouse, she died in 1827. Workhouse rules of the day stated that a workhouse must have a master and a matron.  Henry filled vacant the role in August 1828 when he married Jane Dodd, a former maid to Sir Charles des Voeux of Woodhall, baronet and prominent Irish politician. Jane Dodd arrived in Starbeck with a healthy bank balance of £150, the equivalent of a whole three years wages for the couple.  Jane's money was transferred into Henry's name the following November and within two years was all gone.  Things had gone so badly, that having taken out a number of loans from wealthy friends, Henry only escaped payment through the insolvency act.

However, in his duties, Henry was frugal. He was praised for reducing the weekly cost to the parish of keeping a pauper in the workhouse to half a crown (12.5p). He also boosted the parish poor relief coffers by introducing a £10 fine for local tradesmen if they refused to take a workhouse child as an apprentice. To cement his position he was made assistant overseer and vestry clerk for the parish.

Henry could hardly be accused of being a workhouse master in the tradition of Dickens' Mr. Bumble. He often tended to treat the inmates with sympathy and compassion. Of course this was before the poorlaw reform act of 1834 , when more extreme and austere measures were encouraged. As an example, a man by the name of Franklin, who was obviously an intellegent man, suffered a breakdown and was sent to prison for a very minor offence. On his release Franklin found himself in the workhouse, where Peacock, aware of his situation, took pity on him. He helped him eventually get back on his feet, and allowed him special privileges including tea and coffee. Another time, a John Hagley found himself in debtors prison, and to his gratitude was released after Peacock secured him a loan.

Though a devoutly religious man, capable of acts of charity, Peacock was never far from controversy.  Since Elizabethan times it had been the responsibility of the parish in which a person was born to provide for those who had fallen into poverty. A pauper would enter the local workhouse and a charge for their keep would be made to the parish where they were born. 

In 1834, Henry Peacock's mother died in Holbeck, Leeds, after receiving poor relief for four years, and was given a pauper's funeral. Being the mother of a workhouse master and supposedly affluent man, she had little entitlement to either. Matters came to light when a claim was made by the parish of Holbeck, on her birth parish of Pateley Bridge for payment for four years relief and a funeral. Pateley Bridge then made a claim against Henry Peacock. Henry by now in financial difficulties again himself, could not, and would not, and did not pay.  He managed to fend off the authorities for three years, but after his wife Jane fell ill and died in the autumn of 1837, Henry was served three months notice in February 1838 to leave the workhouse. On 20th May 1838, Henry Peacock left the Harrogate workhouse at Starbeck for good.

Now in debt, and out of work, it is fair to assume that Henry himself could have faced life in the workhouse, or even debtor's prison. Not Henry though, he managed to land on his feet again, and three months after leaving the workhouse Henry married yet again. This time, at Knaresborough parish church, he married Mrs. Waudby, widow of William Waudby, owner of the Brunswick hotel.  The Brunswich hotel was the large building facing the stray on the roundabout at the junction of Leeds Road, York Place, Otley Road, and West Park, now known as The Prince of Wales Mansions. Very soon it was noted in the local press that Henry was listed as landlord.

From here Henry could finally realise his lifelong ambitions and make something of himself and gain respect as a 'gentleman', in control of his own circumstances. At the time the hoteliers of Harrogate were a powerful group of men and controlled just about everything in the town. It was as one of this group that Henry began courting public favour.

From 1841 to 1884, with no town council in place, Harrogate was governed by a group of men known as the Improvement Commission. It was as an improvement commissioner that Henry Peacock managed to get himself appointed, rather than elected on 14th October 1841. Although he was re-elected in 1843, he was never a popular commissioner and generally just scraped through by a few votes. His self-elevation to the status of "gentleman", had alienated him from both ends of the social scale, from where he was deemed a social climber. In the election of April 1846 Henry Peacock was defeated, only to be re-appointed in June to serve until the following April, when he was again defeated. Of his re-election in 1848, H H Walker, in his book The History of Harrogate under the improvement Commissioners, wrote that "his election, even at the bottom of the list of successful candidates, represents the triumph of persistence over discouragement". 

Around this time (1848), Peacock was once again slipping heavily into debt. It was also in 1848 that the Brunswich railway station opened just yards from his hotel and as closest hotelier to both Tewit Well and the railway station, his finances should have been gaining a hefty boost. Instead Henry Peacock was mortgaging his hotel. Though he was not up for re-election until April 1851, he last attended an Improvement Commission meeting on November 5th 1849, and was replaced on the 10th January 1850.

There is one final twist.

By the spring of 1850, he had left Harrogate and assignees had been appointed to sell the Brunswick hotel. From here for the next 150 years he seemed to just disappear. A number of historians had written about him, but nobody seemed to know where he went or what happened to him.

While giving a presentation talk to a local history class about him in 2003, I mentioned  that he had disappeared, cloaked by the mists of time. I was then set the task of finding out what happened to him, and with the aid of the internet, I found him. In one final sad twist to the story of Henry Peacock, he died in December 1877 at Richmond Workhouse.