Kate Read Free

named John like his father, was born. Within five years of his birth, the Harrisons’ family had swollen to ten children, forcing them to move to a new home in the town’s Lyons Street. Their happiness, however, was short-lived. On 23 December 1881, Jane died of tuberculosis at just 42. Her husband, who was by her bedside when she died in their home, was left a widower with ten children aged between two and twenty-one.
    The following year, John’s eldest child, Jane Ann, left home, marrying a 21-year-old miner from the village, John Anderson, at the local parish church. Margaret, 19, became the woman of the home, caring for her father and younger siblings.
    It was a hard life with very little reward for those on the bottom rung of the ladder, the antithesis of the luxurious lifestyle enjoyed by Queen Victoria and her children. In 1887, Victoria marked 50 years on the throne with a sumptuous banquet served on golden platters, a procession through London in a gilded carriage, a glittering ball and a thrilling firework display.
    The following year, 18-year-old Isabella died of the same disease as her mother. There was still no treatment for tuberculosis and it cut a swathe through working-class homes. Once again, her father sat by the bedside of a dying loved one. He was grief-stricken at having lost his wife and a daughter within seven years of each other, and within five months he too was dead from the same disease, most probably caught at his daughter’s bedside. The date was 29 January 1889 and he was just 54 years old. Before a year had passed, his 17-year-old son James, who worked as a coal putter, would become the family’s fourth victim of tuberculosis within a decade.
    Kate’s great-great-grandfather John was an orphan at the tender age of 14. He and his two unmarried sisters were forced into lodgings. But the family’s run of bad luck did not end there. At about 11.30 a.m. on 13 December 1895, John’s eldest brother, Anthony, was killed in a mining accident. The father of two, who was a hewer at Hetton Coal Company’s Eppleton Colliery, was hailed as a hero after trying to rescue two of his colleagues, deputy John Brown and putter Robert Lawns, but he paid with his life. He was commended in the 1895 Mines Inspection Report:
I should like here to say a word or two in appreciation of the courage and gallantry shown by the men who were amongst the rescuers. The three hewers, as well as the manager, under-manager, overman, and back-overman, all showed that they possessed the qualities which in the past made pitmen famous for heroism in the time of danger; such conduct as theirs should not go without commendation, and I am pleased to have the opportunity in this report, to show my appreciation of it, and I regret that one of them should have lost his life in the plucky attempt made to rescue Brown and Lawns.
    Such a run of tragedy seems extraordinary by today’s standards and would be enough to destroy lesser men. But John Harrison had lived a tough life in which illness and death were by no means unusual.
    At the age of 22, on 23 February 1897, John married domestic servant Jane Hill, 21, the daughter of a joiner at the colliery, at Houghton-le-Spring Register office. They moved into a miner’s cottage on Chapel Street in the suburb of Hetton Downs. Eleven months later, they celebrated the birth of their first child, Jane, named after her mother and grandmother. For the young couple, it marked a new beginning. Another generation of the Harrison family had been born and it was the end of the nineteenth century, the dawn of a new era. The next century would bring terrible wars and extraordinary advances that could never have been foreseen. The Harrisons could not possibly have realised, either, how much their personal fortunes would change and how close they would come to the gilded world of royalty.

Chapter 2
The Harrisons 1901–53
    I t was 2 February 1901. The weather was bitterly cold and snow was falling.