I recently published a story about James Henderson who averted a railway disaster and it seems as if this family grave in Radnor Street Cemetery is going to yield further stories. In fact, cemetery colleague Noel had got there before me! Published in the Winter 2017 edition of Swindon Heritage is the story of Martha Henderson and where Noel’s research led him.
Jug’s link to world’s first rock band!
If it’s got ‘Swindon’ written on it, it’s always worth a closer look!
An item listed on eBay recently made a previously unknown connection between Swindon and a bizarre musical instrument.
The item listed was a silver-plated jug (picture, above) with the inscription
Presented to Miss M R Henderson
By her colleagues at College St Girls
School, Swindon and other friends
With best wishes for her future happiness
And I couldn’t resist digging a little deeper.
Who was Miss Henderson and what was her story?
Research revealed that the silver jug had been presented to a Martha Richardson Henderson when she married, sometime between 1903 and 1909, making the jug over 100 years old.
Martha, who was known to the family as Queenie, was born at Paddington in 1882, the daughter of a senior GWR engineer driver. Soon afterwards the family moved to Swindon and lived at 51 Rolleston Street, her father becoming an Inspector of Locomotives.
By the time Martha was 18 she was working a local board school as a pupil-teacher, the same job that Swindon’s suffragette, Edith New, did from the age of 14, and a similar role to today’s teaching assistants.
Martha’s husband-to-be was Frederick James Scoble who was born in Canada to parents born in Mexico and Brazil; quite an exotic mix!
Martha’s untimely death from pulmonary tuberculosis in 1926, at the age of just 43, must have been devastating to her family; she is buried in Radnor Street Cemetery, along with her sister and parents.
This seemed to be the end of the story, but Richardson as a middle name seemed slightly odd, especially for a woman, and it took my research in a new direction.
When the rest of her family tree was mapped out, it revealed that all her brothers and sisters had the same middle name. So where did it come from?
It was actually her grandmother’s maiden name, which is not a huge revelation, but the story of Martha’s great-grandfather, Joseph Richardson, perhaps reveals why the family were so keen to preserve the connection to the female line.
Joseph was a truly amazing person.
He was a stonemason and a self-taught musician who had a singular obsession.
During his work as a mason he noticed that stone from Skiddaw, a mountain the the Lake District, made a distinctive ringing sound when struck, and over the next 13 years he walked the mountain, collection stones that produced various notes.
His obsession nearly bankrupted him, but he had enough stones – some over two feet long – to make an eight-octave instrument called a lithophone, or specifically: the Musical Stones of Skiddaw.
The instrument was a hit with the public and he toured the country, with himself and his three sons all playing the same instrument simultaneously. They even played for Queen Victoria on more than one occasion.
Joseph Richardson’s place in the history books was now sealed – he had created the world’s first rock band! – and when he died in 1855 he was buried in the same cemetery as Isambard Kingdom Brunel at Kensal Green.
So the next time you see an object with ‘Swindon’ on it, take a closer look.
And the next time you are in the Lake District, pop into the Keswick Museum & Gallery, where you can still see (and sometimes hear) Joseph’s amazing creation.
Swindon Heritage – Winter 2017.