I recently wrote about my Great Grandfather’s move from Bognor in Sussex to Oxted in Surrey and pondered about what made him make this move. I had been researching his life in South Bersted, just outside of Bognor on the main Chichester Road. He had become what I had presumed to be a successful entrepreneur running a dual business of Coach Builder and Innkeeper, licensee of the White Horse Inn. Why would you uproot a family of three children to a new village in Surrey? Initially I thought it may have been connected to his new wife whose family originated from Dorking.
I was not completely wrong.
I have been subscribing to Find My Past because it is the only way to access the 1921 Census returns. Their search engine comes up with interesting ideas and other items that might involve a name that is being researched. I was seeking the census return for my Great Grandfather, Henry George Spillett, to continue the Oxted story. What was offered me at the same time was a lot of newspaper archive pages with some astounding, worrying and sad stories about Henry Spillett’s life in 1893.
The year 1893 for my Great Grandfather was a terrible one. It should have been a joyous one, Henry Matthew Spillett was born. Later that year young Henry’s Mother, Ada Spillett, became ill with cancer and she died in 1895 with cancer and exhaustion. At this point my Great Grandfather had given up his business at the White Horse Inn and had moved to Canada Villas in Bognor. I’m uncertain where this was because there is no such address. However there is a Canada Grove in Bognor and I wonder if it may have been located there.
What happened in 1893 follows. Henry George Spillett was struggling to make his business pay. He decided to secure the contract for the Post Office mail cart between Bersted and Chichester. He was successful and was paid an annual fee of £69 per year. He had to provide the horse and cart and also pay a cart driver. How many times per week the cart did this journey I do not know. The distance was only five miles and so a return journey could be done overnight quite easily. So long as you had a good horse.
In the same year Henry Spillett also secured the contract for the Bognor to Cosham Post Office mail cart. Cosham is a suburb of Portsmouth and is a distance of 22 miles. For this Henry Spillett was paid a contract price of £209 per year. Of course, he had to provide the horse. This run was four times the distance and a good horse was imperative.
Money was tight for Henry Spillett and he inevitably cut corners. This might be evident in the following stories that I have gleaned from various newspapers of that year from the British Newspaper Archive.
Bognor Regis Observer 3 May 1893
At the Fareham Petty Sessions, John Diffey summoned by Inspector Bartholomew, Royal Society for the Protection of Animals, for ill-treating a mare by working her in an unfit condition. Henry George Spillett of the White Horse Inn, Bognor, was charged with causing the animal to be worked. Diffey did not appear. P.C. Symes said that on the 6th April he had seen Diffey, who had been driving the horse, at the stables of the Ship Inn. Witnesses examined the horse and found several wounds, all of them raw and chafed by the harness. The condition of the animal was very poor. The mail cart was that which ran between Bognor and Cosham, a distance of 21 miles and he had driven from Bognor that night. Inspector Bartholomew said that the next night he said to Diffey that he had no right to drive the mare in such condition, when he replied “I can’t help it, if I don’t somebody else will.” Spillett subsequently admitted that the horse was not in proper condition and that he was going to sell it. Spillett now said that he had had the harness altered to avoid rubbing the sores, and denied that the mare was in a poor condition. Diffey was fined 6 shillings and 14 shillings cost. Spillett was fined £1 and 16 shillings costs.
Corners were being cut at the expense of the health of the mare. Diffey knew that if he didn’t drive the mail cart then Henry Spillett would find somebody else. Everyone was needing to earn out of this contract. The Cosham contract was worth £5 per week and so the fines were a dent in their pockets at a time when business was not going well for Henry Spillett.
Sadly, the mare’s painful life continued.
Hampshire Post 7 July 1893
Cruelty to a Horse
At the City Bench at Chichester on Saturday, John Diffey of 32 Steyne Street, Bognor, was summoned by Inspector Ford of the RSPCA, for cruelly ill treating a mare on the 21st June in Chichester. It was stated that this was the same horse in respect of which the defendant had been fined at Fareham. The defendant had driven on the morning in question from Cosham. The defence was that all the matter with the mare was that the hair was rubbed off. Diffey was fined £1. 5 shillings and 3d. Henry Spillett, the owner of the mare, was charged with causing it to be so worked; but the Bench dismissed the case against him because he had not seen the animal after June 19th.
It seems that it may well have been the same horse.
However, the story does not stop there. In the same year five weeks later:
Portsmouth Evening News 22 August 1893
(At Fareham Petty Sessions)
The Bognor Mail Cart
William Staker, of the Norfolk Mews, Bognor was summoned by Inspector Bartholomew, RSPCA, for working a mare at Cosham on the 14th July whilst the animal was suffering from a wound three inches in length on the withers. Mr Staffurth, solicitor, Bognor, appeared on behalf of the defendant. The defendant was driving the mail cart back from Cosham to Bognor and on being stopped by PC Sharp an examination of the mare was made with the result that a raw sore under the harness was found upon which the animal was put into the Ship Inn Stables. Mr Bartholomew stated that the wound was deep seated, while the animal was lame in both fore feet, there being a bony enlargement on the near fore leg, and a contraction of the tendons of the off fore leg. All four legs were cut, apparently from the weakness of the animal. Mr Irish, veterinary surgeon, had no doubt that the wound was of some days standing. For the defence, Mr C Gibbons, brewer, Bognor, said that he saw the horse in its stable on the 15th July, and the wound was not then raw, and had probably not been touched with harness for a fortnight or three weeks; it was a high withered mare, and he thought that harness would not touch the wound.
The owner, Mr Henry George Spillett, the keeper of the White Horse, Bognor gave similar evidence
Then the summons against Spillett was heard, for causing the working of the animal.
The defence was that the animal was all right when it left Bognor. The Bench fined Staker 10 shillings and Spillett 30 shillings plus 39 shillings costs, there being a previous conviction against the latter.
Staker had obviously replaced Diffey as the cart driver. I wonder if he knew about the previous two convictions? Perhaps not. This was probably why the Bench was so firm with my Great Grandfather and his fine and costs. I cannot help but think that the police and the RSPCA were actively trying to catch Henry Spillett out. Three times in one year, the same mare possibly, the last offence only three weeks after the second.
So, why was my Great Grandfather not realising that he was not just harming a horse but also in danger of losing his contracts with the Post Office. These questions do get answered in his next court appearance.
My Great Grandfather was declared bankrupt in December 1893.
Brighton Gazette 12 December 1893
Competition and Misfortune
At the Brighton Bankruptcy Court, H.G.Spillett, coach builder and innkeeper of the White Horse Inn, S.Bersted, came up for his examination. His liabilities were put down at £414 0s 1d, assets £74 7s 9d and deficiency £339 12s 4d. Bankrupt said his business paid pretty well at first, although he was unable to save any money. He took the premises of the two businesses, which formed one establishment, at a valuation paying £225. At the time he thought that was a fair amount; but now he held an opinion to the contrary. In 1885 the coachbuilding business began to fall off owing to two of his men leaving and starting the same business, in opposition to him, in the same town; whilst the business of the inn decreased by the closing of an adjacent brick yard from whence a lot of men had been accustomed to pay a visit to the house. He then took a contract for driving the Post Office mails between Bersted and Chichester but owing to the heavy strain the work had upon the horses, they became unfit, and he had to give up the contract. In the meantime he had neglected his other businesses, giving too much attention to the mails which were practically the cause of his failure. The examination was closed.
That year should have been a celebration with his new-born son but instead, Henry Spillett suffered devastating losses as his trade at the White Horse diminished and the contracts with the Post Office destroyed him and also damaged his horses.
He moved to Canada Villas in Bognor where two years later, his wife Ada died. A year later Henry married Sarah and by the next Census return in 1901 the Spillett family arrived in Oxted.
So now we know what took the Spilletts away from Bognor. It was the desire to start again and begin from scratch.
On a footnote, I did a quick Census search on John Diffey, the mail cart driver who was stopped on the first two occasions. In the 1921 returns I discovered that he was living in lodgings in Bognor and was employed as a cab driver and driving a motor car.