Collections and Education Manager Dr Caroline Morris uncovers the tragic real-life tale behind a couple of 19th-century bottles
Sometimes when choosing objects and researching their backgrounds you make connections, and sometimes uncover some fascinating stories. This can be especially true in our post-medieval collections of social and rural history.
For example, we have many stoneware bottles with associations with the area brewing and bottling was happening across the Cotswolds on the 18th & 19th century. Luckily for us these enterprising businesses branded many of their bottles.
The name Woolls appeared on several of the vessels in the store, so we added two Woolls vessels that had held mineral water and ginger beer to a small selection of objects to put on display – adding a little temperance to an otherwise boozy case.
The first was a stoneware jug emblazoned with ‘Quench your Thirst with Woolls’ Mineral Waters Cirencester’. The second a bottle was labelled ‘Walter G Woolls Cirencester – Superior Brewed Ginger Beer’
Being a curious soul, I decided to get a bit more information to enhance the interpretation. An online search concentrating on the later 19th century confirmed my suspicions that these two Cirencester Woolls were connected, George was Walter’s father. Next step, directories of the time, either Slaters or Kelly’s. Running my finger down the 1861 directory beginning with Acott stationers & fancy repository on Castle Street, I came to Woolls! Three of them! Charles was a confectioner on West Market Place, Elizabeth a laundress on Gloucester Street, James, a rope maker on Dyer Street. But no Walter or George! So next I tried the 1889 directory, Acott had gone but there they are, Woolls Mineral Water Manufacturer 57 Gloucester Street. Digging further, I found George’s marriage certificate from 1865, when he married Mary Ann Boulton, and he is listed as a grocer. His father was James the rope maker I had found earlier.
Gloucester Street in the 19th century
But the evidence that gave me the most information about George came from a newspaper report and a coroner’s report on his death.
These two stoneware bottles led us into a tragedy.
George was trading from his home on Gloucester Street selling his ‘aerated water’ and living with his large family, with his neighbour Mrs Eldridge popping in to help about the house. He had for some time been ‘in weak health’ which greatly concerned his family. Walter, despite being only 19, had stepped up to all but run the family business by the sound of it. It looks as though he had also branched out into ginger beer.
On the 31st January 1889, the Wilts and Glos Standard reports – “Mr. George Woolls, of 57, Gloucester Street, aerated water manufacturer, inflicted such injuries upon himself that he died on the following day.”
George had been very low spirited and, on this Wednesday, Mrs Eldridge told the coroner, she had seen young Walter bringing his father down from the loft. Walter told her that he had stopped his father from making an attempt on his life. Later in the morning George again went up to the loft and shut the trap door after himself. She told his father James and he tried to enter the loft but found the trapdoor weighted by George standing on top of it. George suddenly leapt off the door allowing his father to open the door. Before he could enter the loft (or Tallet), George threw down his coat having taken the ginger knife out of its pocket, and “inflicted a terrible gash in his throat”; he then moved quickly to the window and leapt out, falling about 18ft onto flagstones. The poor Mrs Eldridge had been racing to find Walter when she saw the fall. Doctors Fowler and Cripps were summoned and the wound was sewn up but they couldn’t ascertain precisely his internal injuries. George was carried upstairs by the doctors and P.C. Shave, but sadly he died the next morning.
Walter’s grave in Chesterton Cemetery, Cirencester
In the doctors’ evidence to the coroner, we learn that the deceased had been strange in his manner but more significantly that he was suffering from kidney disease. After a little further research, I discovered what the 1889 doctors had not – that untreated kidney disease leads to a high risk of mental health disorders such as depression. If George had been around 100 years later, in the 1980s, his disease could have been treated and his life may not have ended so tragically.
Walter took over the business after his father’s tragic death – he is listed as proprietor in Kelly’s directory of 1889 and in the census. Sadly, just 10 years later Walter too was dead aged just 29.
