Drowned Lives

17

Back at the house, I placed the box file and the blue folder on the table to look at them properly. It seemed I was going to have to read Samuel’s manuscript for clues about what he wanted me to do.

But this was also the point of no return. Once I opened the folder, I knew I’d be committed. If I wanted to forget all about it, I could still put my coat on, walk out of the door and go down to the pub instead.

Then the phone rang. Saved by the bell, I thought stupidly. But it was Dan Hyde. After the ritual enquiries after my health, he came to the reason he’d phoned.

He rattled on about cash-flow and budget forecasts and credit control, another hold-up that would delay the launch of winningbid.uk.com. It was all stuff I didn’t understand, and I’m sure he knew it. My name was on the loan agreement, though — and on the lease for the offices.

‘So is it something I should be worried about right now?’ I said.

There was a moment’s silence, then Dan said, ‘You’ll need to start worrying about it very soon.’

I put the phone down and took a deep breath. Then I turned back to the bundle of manuscript pages. They lay on the table taunting me, hinting at mysteries and murmuring of a hidden past, just as Samuel Longden himself had done. A curious old man, Andrew Hadfield had called him. That seemed to sum up Samuel pretty well.

But had Samuel’s mind been up to the task of compiling a rational history on any subject, let alone his own ancestors? There was only one way to find out.

The pages of the manuscript were stapled together in chapters. I separated the first chapter of The Three Keys from the rest and carried it through to the sitting room. I settled down in an armchair with Boswell on my lap, and I began to read.

Samuel Longden began his account in the closing years of the eighteenth century, the height of ‘canal mania’. It was a time of speculation, with a surge of wealthy individuals investing in businesses for the potential profit, and inland waterways were a boom industry.

In South Staffordshire, the Ogley and Huddlesford Canal was built principally for the transport of coal, linking local mines to the Coventry Canal at Huddlesford and to the Wyrley and Essington at Ogley Junction. The first proprietors were notable men from the Lichfield area, corporation members or county officials, often connected by mutual business interests, or by marriages between their children.

There were several pages in the manuscript about the leading proprietors, who seemed to me to have been a set of dubious and idiosyncratic characters. Anthony Nall, the first chairman of the canal company, owned a substantial amount of property in Lichfield as well as several coal mines, but his term as chairman was marked by acrimonious disputes with other proprietors and employees. His main ally was his brother Joshua, a merchant who became Deputy Lord Lieutenant of the county and later Chief Magistrate. He had a farm at Leomansley, where he was said to have lived for many years practising his flamboyant signature.

There was James Allwood, a doctor; Edward Wilkinson, an apothecary; Robert Sykes, landlord of the Angel Inn, the venue for corporation banquets and canal company meetings; and Adam Henshall, who despite serving as a magistrate himself was continually being told to remove the detritus of his grocery business — hogsheads and cakes from outside his warehouse in St John Street, and dung and stone from Market Street.

According to Samuel, an important figure was John Frith, a solicitor who’d been steward to successive dukes and was Clerk of the Peace. He had a flourishing law practice in offices near the Market Square. But Frith was elderly and not physically active, so his junior partner Daniel Metcalf took on the role of chief administrator and legal advisor for the canal company. Metcalf was only twenty-six, but was said to be very ambitious.

Other influential proprietors were the Parker family, merchants and exporters. When financial services became more organised, two Parker brothers, Isaac and Seth, developed into Lichfield’s earliest bankers, and Seth was appointed company treasurer.

But it was the Reverend Thomas Ella who became the central character in the story. He was a prominent Lichfield personality, headmaster of a local school, considered ‘a real gentleman and scholar’, well known for his generosity and public spiritedness. He took snuff, gambled at cards and enjoyed brandy and wine. He dressed well, wearing black stockings of superfine cotton, silver buckles on his shoes, and silk handkerchiefs.

Ella was a Cambridge graduate and had wide interests. He was secretary of a circulating library and distributed periodicals like The Universal Magazine to gentlemen of the neighbourhood. In his later years he founded several charitable institutions. He was happily married, but there had been a tragedy in his family with the death of his newborn son, who lived only three weeks. Ella baptised him at a private service, but the child died ten days later.

Much of the early work in getting the canal scheme under way was done by Ella, described by Samuel as a ‘visionary’ whose efforts were tireless in persuading friends and acquaintances to put up the money. Out of their own pockets these men paid for ‘Land for Wharfs and the making the same and also all Collateral Cuts, Basons, Reservoirs, Engines and all other Works and Conveniences.’

The proposed Ogley and Huddlesford Canal was to be seven miles long, with thirty locks. A 1794 Act of Parliament empowered the company to raise £25,000 from the sale of two hundred shares, and a further £20,000 if necessary — money that would be paid back out of charges for tonnage rates.

Then began the actual work. The design of the project fell to the famous engineer William Jessop, who accepted the role of Chief Engineer, though working simultaneously on several other canals. The survey of the route was carried out by one of Jessop’s assistants, who must have impressed the proprietors with his skill, because he was subsequently appointed Resident Engineer.

Samuel quoted a recorded reference for a resident engineer as ‘A person capable of conducting the business of a Canal through, viz, that he is a good Engineer, can carry an Accurate Level, and has a perfect knowledge of Cutting, Banking, etc, and also that he is a compleat Mason.’ But he added that it failed to mention three important qualifications for the job — diplomacy, for dealing with irate or greedy landowners, the authority to handle uncooperative contractors, and an indefatigable taste for travelling.

Once the chief engineer had drawn up his specifications, he left for the next project, and the job of supervising the actual building of the waterway fell to the resident engineer. He worked on one job at a time, which usually lasted many years. By the time most of them finished their first major job, canal mania would be over.

As a result, the resident engineer became neither rich nor famous. He expected to get the blame if things went wrong, but very little credit when the canal was complete.

Samuel described the resident engineer chosen by the Lichfield proprietors as a young man, only thirty-two years old. Like Samuel, he lived in Whittington, where he’d seen the Coventry Canal being constructed as a child. This may have been his very first experience of the problems of theft and dishonesty, which bedevilled some canal projects.

The new resident engineer was a single man when he was appointed, but shortly afterwards he met his future wife, Sarah, a local woman, and they married in 1796. He was able to settle down near Lichfield and start a family.

Four years later, the proprietors of the Ogley and Huddlesford Canal were shocked to receive serious allegations of fraud against their resident engineer. Before they could act, he’d vanished under suspicion of corruption and embezzlement, leaving behind his wife and a young son.

And Samuel’s chapter ended with the most vital information of all. That resident engineer’s name was William Buckley.