Chapter 24

Charities, friendly societies and medical provision

On the wall of All Saints Church we may read

A List of Donations and Bequests to the Poor of Cockermouth

In 1693 Terrywastel Piele gave £20, William Wrial gave £10, unknown person gave £5 For the Purpose: The Interest to be paid to the School master of the Free School Cockermouth

For the purpose of paying the Interest thereof to the Poor of Cockermouth the following people paid charity: Terrywastel Piele gave £7, unknown gave £25, Lancelot Stockdale gave £45, Barbara Relph gave £50 in 1725, Thomas Littledate gave £50 in 1730, Sir Thomas Pangley gave £50 in 1727, Mary Winder gave £100 in 1789, Deborah Ritson gave £94, Mrs Fletcher gave £100, Mr Glaister gave £2.10 yearly.

For The Interest to be distributed in Bread every Sunday to Poor Persons frequenting the Church the following people paid charity: Barbara Relph gave £50 in 1725, Richard Baynes gave £100 in 1771, Miss Hudson gave £50 in 1842, Miss Hudson gave £50 in 1849.

For Six Poor Widows or other unmarried Poor Women above 60 years of Age, who may be in want, to live in. The Interest to be divided amongst the Six Poor Women, and for Repairing the House A Dwelling House in Kirkgate Cockermouth was given by Revd Thomas Leathes in 1760. Also Revd Thomas Leathes gave £100 in 1760, Elizabeth Winder gave £50 in 1775, Elizabeth Leathes gave £100 in 1851.

The above Sums are all invested in Government Stock, three per cent consols, except Miss Winders Charity of£50. which is Secured on the Tolls Authorized to be collected in repairing the Road between Cockermouth and Workington.

This Tablet placed in the Church as a Record of the Charities to the Poor of Cockermouth, was Erected and Presented to the Church-wardens by Joseph Fleming, December 24, 1862 Joseph Bowerbank, John Hird Richard Bateman Joseph Fleming; Churchwardens

Such legacies as those listed above must have brought comfort to many during the last 200 years. There was not the provision and organisation for living through bad times which we now have. A bad summer, a failed harvest or a great frost which stopped the waterwheels turning meant for many no work, no fire and little food. It was then that such gifts as the ‘Castle money’ came to the rescue, the interest on the £2000 which Lord Egremont invested in the new market hall. The way in which this £100 or so was distributed varied from year to year. In 1839 one recipient had £10, six others £5 each and twenty six £2. [1] In 1866 fifty people were given £] each. In a particularly bad winter some 100 years ago 2000 received Christmas dinner soup from the fund. During his lifetime General Wyndham distributed the money at the castle, with cake and wine. In 1866 it was being taken to homes a few days before Christmas. Later responsibility for the charity passed to the vicars and wardens of All Saints and Christ Church.

Another noticeable charity was the Widow’s Hospital. The Rev. Thomas Leathes, rector of Plumbland left the house adjoining the Swan in Kirkgate. at the corner of Mackreth Row, as a residence for six poor widows or unmarried women over 60 years of age. (Fig. 65). As shown above he also bequeathed £100. His daughter Elizabeth Winder added £50 (with first claim for the repair of the premises) and another descendant, Elizabeth Leathes, a further £100 nearly a century later. To these was added on enclosure a small allotment of rather poor land. [2]

Unfortunately the house proved too small to accommodate six women and three had to live elsewhere but benefited financially from the legacy. [3] The house was probably occupied in this way into the 20th century. but was then let, and in 1912 an old man lived there for 2s-6d. per week rent, which was paid into the widows’ charity. [4]

In addition to the four ‘bread money’ charities listed there were another two which brought in £10-8s interest, enabling 4 shillings [20p] to be spent each Sunday for poor widows who were at the service, viz. Elizabeth Todd’s gift of £30 and Mary English’s £20. [5] Another example of conditions attached was that the income from Richard Baynes’s £100 should go to poor people who not only attended service but were not in receipt of parish relief. [6]

The 50 shillings (£2.50p] a year from Joseph Glaister was the income from a Maryport Harbour ticket of £200 which he left in his will in 1773, the money being distributed about Christmas time [7] in amounts of not less than 5s [25p].

Early gifts not on the church list include: [8]

Hugh Potter 1669 £52

Sir Orlando Gee 1691 £50

John Mounsey and small legacies 1766 £100

Unknown 1669 £50

Thomas Littledale 1729 £50

There seems to have been quite early grouping of charities for investment. A Charity Commission enquiry stated

• “In 1784 the whole of the stock belonging to the poor was £427-12s-7d. That sum was then laid out, with other charity money, in the funds and now forms part ofa sum of£1335-6s-11Y2d. stock 3% consols. [9] A further regrouping of Cockermouth charities has been made recently and the interest is distributed at Christmas.”

A charity of a different nature was that of Lord Wharton

• “The Minister of Cockermouth receives annually, from trustees of Lord Wharton’s Charity, 30 Bibles and a proportionate number of expositions of the catechism, and reward books; and he distributes them according to the directions of the donor, amongst poor persons at Cockermouth.” [10]

In addition to income from legacies left by individuals there have been a number of organisations providing help in kind for the poorer members of the community. These have existed for varying periods, according to the needs of the time. The Infant Clothing Society was formed in 1818; the Samaritan Society in 1825 (this by the Methodists to distribute money – £ 15-18s-7d. amongst 60 poor people in 1827); and the Blanket Society and Dorcas Society both in 1826. In 1875 the ‘West Cumberland Times mentioned both the Cockermouth and Papcastle Soup and Coal Fund and the Cockermouth and Papcastle Provident and Clothing Society. The latter was in effect a savings club, ladies collecting weekly in their allotted districts and at the end of the year supplying the depositors with clothing or blankets or returning the money to them. The savings gained interest in the Savings Bank and the advantage was that clothing and blankets cost less through the Society – in 1875, 1414 were ordered from the Cockermouth Tweed Company which went to the members at 20 shillings (£1] a pair. [12]

Sometimes help in kind came from an individual, and sometimes it was abused. ‘The Pacquet’ carried this report in 1783

• “Last week, Mr. Wilson, hat manufacturer, in Cockermouth, distributed a large quantity of hats amongst the poor of that place; and while exercised in this laudable munificence, had a number of stuff hats stolen from him by some of the objects who were waiting to receive his bounty.” f13]

In 1878 the Children’s Aid Society provided breakfast in the Public Hall for 100 of the most destitute and gave stockings and clogs to those needing them. In the same year the Good Templars were also providing breakfasts for poor children. Three years later a Free Breakfast Committee was formed to arrange Sunday breakfasts. [14] After the first world war a Clog and Stocking Fund was established, which in 1925 supplied 170 pairs of clogs and 177 pairs of stockings at a cost of £58-1 s 5d., rising to a total of 1169 pairs in 1930, the tenth year of its existence. [15]

Those in a position to help obviously supported such organisations and in times of disaster from storm or flood the whole town co-operated in relief funds. [16] Accident, illness or death in a poor family could also mean disaster. There is no doubt that on such occasions help was often given quietly by doctor, parson or a better-off neighbour, but gradually the idea grew of wage-earners joining together in a ‘friendly society’ designed to help those of its members in temporary need. The most common form of help was in illness or with funeral expenses. Some of these societies were temperance organisations.

In 1829 Cockermouth had four friendly societies and more started before the end of the century. The Oddfellows’ Cocker Lodge, for example, opened in 1857. Just 20 years later it had 75 married and 40 single members, who had contributed over £113 in the previous year, making a total well above £2000 in contributions to that date. The 1877 capital was £591-16s-4d and members received 3% interest in addition to sick and funeral benefits. In 1883 the Lodge was meeting in the Public Hall on every fourth Saturday. [17]

In this year there were also meeting the Freemasons, in their own Masonic Lodge Room in Station Street; the Derwent Lodge of Mechanics in the Bush Inn; and the Forresters in the Joiners’ Anns Inn, all monthly; while the Sir Wilfrid Lawson Lodge of Good Templars were to be found every Wednesday in the Public Hall. [18] There were at various periods Druids, Rechabites and a second lodge of Oddfellows. The Cockermouth Good Intent Sick and Funeral Benefit Society began in 1856. [19] A Temperance Sick and Benefit Society is recorded in the Kelly’s directory of 1897 and there was by then a branch in the town of the British Women’s Temperance Association. A great day for the temperance friendly societies was the annual temperance demonstration and rally at Bray ton Hall, the home of Sir Wilfred Lawson. 16,000 were there in 1875, including three ‘tents’ of the Order of Rechabites and fifty lodges of Good Templars. Many travelled by special trains, some of which needed two engines, not only from Cockermouth and Cumberland but from all over southern Scotland and northern England. [20]

A more local affair was a great temperance rally held on Pardshaw Crags on 17 June 1857 at which about 14,000 people were present. Askew says that many slept there, refreshments were available, and several times additional supplies of liquid refreshment had to be sent from Cockermouth brewery to the nearby Bee Hive Inn. [21] A year later a procession of Rechabites, Good Templars and Bands of Hope walked from Cockermouth to the Eaglesfield Quaker Meeting House, where 400 had tea. [22]

A new charity, Cockermouth and Papcastle Recreation Charity, was formed in 1994 to utilise the proceeds from the sale of the Drill Hall to the Territorial Anny. This money had sat with the Official Custodian of Charities since 1922 and the original trustees had neglected to apply for a scheme to make use of it. The new Charities Act of 1992 obliged the Official Custodian to cease to look after this money and so the funds passed to the new charity, for which there are eight trustees. The charity makes grants twice a year from income, towards the provision of facilities for recreation or other leisure time occupation for the benefit of the inhabitants of Cockermouth and Papcastle. In its first ten years, some £31,000 had been distributed by 101 grants.

An association of townspeople serving a rather different purpose than sick benefit, etc., was the Cockermouth Borough and District Benefit Building Society, established in 1858 to raise, by the subscriptions of members, a fund enabling members to build or purchase houses. Shares were of £30, each obtainable by paying 1 s (5p) a fortnight. Subscriptions were payable at the monthly meeting in the Society’s office on Cocker Bridge. This was on the second Monday and payments had to be made by 9 pm. otherwise fines were imposed, 1 d. per share the first time. 2d. for a second offence, 4d. for a third, 8d. for a fourth, Is-4d, for a fifth. This progression did not continue indefinitely, for a fortnight’s warning was then given that the interest accrued (5s. per cent per year) would be offered for sale. [23]

There is also record of a Cockermouth Permanent Building Society, founded in 1864, with an office in the Court House buildings. [24] By 2006, such societies cover a larger area and there have been many amalgamations. Some have become banks (Bradford and Bingley, Northern Rock, Halifax, with its agency in Station Street), leaving the Cumberland Building Society as the only true mutual society in the town. Relative to property, in 1858 there were 17 insurance companies with agents in the town – the Atlas, General Life and Fire. Imperial Fire, Liverpool and London, Minerva, Mutual Life, National Life Stock. Norwich Union Life, Pelican Life, Rock, Royal Farmers’, Royal Life and Fire, Royal Insurance, Sun Fire and Life, Union, Unity Fire and Life and Western Life. [25] Unfortunately none of the distinctive plaques of these companies are to be seen on Cockermouth buildings.

Another venture was the Cockermouth Co-operative Society, which after only nine years of existence collapsed at the end of 1875, its initial assets of £600 having dwindled to liabilities of £400. [26]

The friendly societies provided financial help in sickness, but there were in the town very interesting movements to give actual medical care. Before these communal efforts, the people of Cockermouth and the surrounding villages relied upon the apothecary’s drugs or traditional herbal remedies and upon the bleeding bandaging and bone-setting of a surgeon who had grown into the job through apprenticeship. The apothecary was probably also a grocer, the surgeon likely to be a barber. In 1858, when the Medical Register was established, only a third of British practitioners were qualified. An apothecary’s shop in Market Place was offered for sale in ‘The Pacquet’ in 1779 and in June of that year the same paper carried an announcement that John Steele, surgeon, apothecary and man-midwife had settled in Cockermouth at a shop below the bridge, and that he had a good assortment of medicines which were entirely fresh. [27] The first provision of an ‘official’ medical service was the appointment of a midwife by the church in the 18th century. A memorial in All Saints dated 1772 referred to the “midwife to the Church of Cockermouth”. One of her duties was to encourage baptism of the infants she helped to deliver. Then in 1780 came the Amicable Society, whose 22-page booklet of Rules and Regulations’, 1810 edition, begins

• “Health, Peace, & Friendship. As it hath pleased our Omnipotent Creator to afflict us, his Creatures, with divers Diseases and bodily Infirmities, that may incapacitate us to endeavour for or obtain necessary Subsistence; we whose Names are hereunto subscribed, conscious of our Duty to that Supreme Being and his Sacred Laws, do hereby firmly unite ourselves for the mutual Help and Assistance of each other, well knowing the uncertainty of health, and the prudent Necessity of using every Means to alleviate those Troubles and Evils we are incident to, do sincerely resolve to raise a FUND, which shall he applied to the Relief of the Members of this Society. .”

Meetings were held monthly “at the house of John Richardson, Innholder, known by the sign of the Ship, in Cockermouth”.

• “Every member that does not appear between the hours of seven and nine by the town clock of Cockermouth, or send his club [2d.] and box money, shall, for the first offence, forfeit two pence, for the second night fourpence, and for the third night be excluded from the society.”

No sleeping members here! There were fines too for not being quiet when silence was called by the president, these again on an escalating scale for repeated offences, and members were fined for disorderly behaviour. At the general meeting on the last Wednesday in June all paid 1s-4d [7p] for dinner, 6d [212] to the box and 6d for ale, distant members being excused attendance for Is-6d. Any member living in Cockermouth and receiving benefit at the time of the dinner was not forgotten – he “shall have a sufficient dinner and one quart of ale carried to him”.

Benefit could not be claimed before a year’s membership. If a member died £5 was paid to his widow or heir. If the wife died first, the member himself received £2 “but no member shall receive such sum for more than one wife’. When the member in turn died the balance of £3 was paid to his heir. All members had to attend funerals, but if they were intoxicated on such an occasion they forfeited Is!

In 1785 the Cockermouth Dispensary was established, providing medical and surgical attendance free to the sick poor of Cockermouth, the Gote and Papcastle. This was made possible by the subscriptions of those better off financially. The 32nd report, in 1817, reveals the serious financial state of the Dispensary and appeals for subscriptions, partly on the grounds of the danger of disease spreading ifnot dealt with, but also pointing out that

• “The opulent, by being removed from the dwellings of the poor, can but very imperfectly conceive the misery and wretchedness of a sick family; but their humanity may very materially mitigate their distress which requires only to be witnessed in order to be relieved.”

The report also notes the

• “gradual and remarkable decline in the frequency and malignancy of contagious diseases”

since the foundation of the Dispensary.

The Dispensary was very aware of its success in this field, as the invitation to subscribers to attend the anniversary meeting in 1814 comments:

• “Every Subscriber who has made it his business to attend these Annual Meetings has had much pleasure in seeing the beneficial effects produced by this most valuable charity; it has become a means of greatly alleviating the afflictions of the poor, and of making this town and its vicinity, perhaps one of the most healthy in the country.

• There is no Poor Person or Family but what may have Medical Advice, Medicine, and Attendance, also Inoculations, and in Midwifery cases a Midwife is provided.” [28]

The affairs of the Dispensary were in the hands of a committee which included physicians, surgeons and governors. A subscriber of ten guineas or more became a perpetual governor and it was the governors who had the power to recommend cases for treatment. A five guinea subscription carried the right to five votes at an election and to have ten patients ‘on the books’; four guineas the right of four votes and eight patients; and so on, down to half a guinea with one patient on the books. Recommendation for treatment was made on a printed form

• “…… is recommended as a proper Object of the Dispensary by ……….. To the acting Surgeon of Cockermouth Dispensary.”

To ensure that only “the sick and maimed poor” benefited, domestic servants and industrial apprentices were excluded from the scheme unless the master could not afford to pay for their treatment. On the other hand, trivial cases and vaccination did not require recommendation and in accidents, emergencies and epidemics the limit to the number treated was ignored.

As in present practice, patients were required to attend the acting surgeon if possible, but if not recommendations had to reach him by Warn for a visit the same day. One rule stated that “Every patient, when cured or relieved, must return thanks to the subscriber who recommended him, and also to the acting surgeon.”

The following are the statistics for two years, ending late July 1815 and 1816:

As time went by the poor were catered for by the Poor Laws and there was a proposal in 1874 [30] that the Dispensary should become the Cockermouth Provident Dispensary, no longer free but with a small weekly charge of Id. A meeting of the original body, held in the Mechanics’ Institute, decided to make the change. The charge for anyone family was limited to 4d per week and in 1876 115 received medical attention. The Provident Dispensary was serving a need up to the last war and the beginning of the National Health Service. (Appendix 16)

Meanwhile there was another development in the medical field. In 1875 a rival organisation known as the “Cockermouth Working Men’s Society for the Payment of Doctors’ bills” was formed, whose members the doctors of the Provident Society were forbidden to attend. The new body’s first annual meeting, held in the Court House in January 1876, reported a membership of 152, of whom 29 were in arrears, so it was obviously a regular subscription society like the new Provident. [31]

The cottage hospital was founded in 1915 and had in 1938 – 14 beds and 2 cots, including 2 private wards. [32] In common with most small hospitals of the time, there was provision for operating. Kelly listed 7 physicians and surgeons as being associated with it in that year. Now it caters chiefly for geriatric patients, with 17 beds.

Before the hospital the town had a nursing home in Harford House, Crown Street,

• “a small hospital given to the town by Mr. Thomas WiIliamson, a retired shipbuilder from Workington.” [33]

Straw used to be spread on the roadway to lessen the noise of passing carts. The building later became the school clinic and in addition housed the school dental service, antenatal clinics, chiropody, etc. At one time there was also a tuberculosis dispensary. (Fig. 75)

There was for long concern regarding the poor condition of Harford House and discussion as to whether the clinic should find more suitable accommodation elsewhere in the town. Finally it moved to purpose-built premises adjoining the hospital and opened on this site in 1987. The hospital acquired a dialysis unit for kidney patients in 1982.

The possibility of a medical centre in the town to house the three practices was also voiced from time to time. This was never achieved but in April 1992 the practice in Kirkgate moved to a commodious building which had been part of Derwent Mill, to become ‘The Derwent Practice’. The other medical practices in town are in South Street and Fitz Road.

We have seen how the mentally handicapped were treated in the old workhouse. From 1932 there was in Dovenby Hall provision by the county for those with varying degrees of mental illness and in recent years a psychiatric unit existed at the West Cumberland Hospital, Hensingham. Much work has been done in recent years to link the residents at Dovenby with the outside world, equipping them to return to more normal living outside the hospital whenever possible. The policy has led to the establishment of a number of small residential units in the community and Dovenby closed completely in 1997. [See Chapter 29: Industry for its future] In Cockermouth itself such a unit was set up in the former URC building in September 1990, with accommodation for a warden and ten residents.

There are in the town a number of day groups for those with learning difficulties, groups for those with problems (e.g. Chest, Heart and Stroke Association); for the elderly or frail who appreciate a day visiting a centre for company and a change, with a meal and transport provided; and Age Concern’s drop-in-centre and other activities for the elderly.

In addition to day centres there are a number of residential homes providing a varying degree of independence, but with the benefit of residential wardens: – Abbeyfield, Kirklands, Manor Court, Victoria Court etc.