Kate (2 page)

It was an unrelentingly tough existence for the Harrisons. Never would they have considered that one of their descendants would marry into the royal family. Indeed, it is a near-miracle that their line survived at all. Many mining villages were decimated by epidemics of tuberculosis, cholera, polio, scarlet fever and diphtheria, which raced through the densely populated communities, fuelled by the insanitary outside latrines that were shared by scores of people.

While Queen Victoria lived to the ripe old age of 81 – dying at osborne House of a brain haemorrhage and being buried beside her beloved Albert at Windsor – Kate’s great-great-great-great-grandmother had a pauper’s death. Jane fell victim to consumption, an infection of the lungs more commonly known today as tuberculosis, at her home in Byker Hill on 23 April 1845, shortly after her 50th birthday, leaving her husband a widower with four young children.

After his wife’s death and the expiry of his bond, James joined thousands of families heading 20 miles south of Newcastle to the pit villages of County Durham. They may well have been amongst the first passengers on George Hudson’s new Newcastle to Durham Junction Railway, which opened amidst great acclaim in 1844. Certainly, by 1850 they were living in a miner’s cottage in Low Row, one of four streets in the tiny village of Low Moorsley, seven miles north-east of Durham.

There, Kate’s great-great-great-grandfather John and his younger brother Septimus joined their father down the pit at North Hetton Colliery, owned by the 2nd Earl of Durham, George Lambton, whose father had been a prominent Whig politician and whose great-grandmother had been mistress to the Prince of Wales, later George IV. The Earl, who was the great-grandfather of former prime minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home, made his money from mining on the lands around his Lambton Castle and proved equally as hard a taskmaster as Sir Henry Lawson.

Although the 1842 Mines Act prevented children under ten from working in the mines, the two boys would have joined the workforce the moment they reached double figures. There was a hierarchy down the mines and they would have begun as trappers and drivers before graduating at the age of 17 to become putters, pushing the corves of coal on trams from the coalface to the crane or shaft. The work was just as dangerous as it had always been. In 1853, one of John and Septimus’s colleagues, John Straughan, a 12-year-old driver, was killed when his head was crushed between two moving trams. At nearby Hetton Colliery, 23 stonemasons died in an underground explosion in 1860, and all the horses and pit ponies in the stables perished as flames rampaged through the mine.

At the age of 21, the Harrison boys reached their physical prime and became hewers, the men who actually cut the coal at the face, in tunnels so small they had to work on their hands and knees. Although the job was dangerous, it was sought after, as hewers were the best-paid workers. Perhaps the extra money (the family also took in two lodgers, joiner George Dixon, 33, and William Mitcheson, a 36-year-old labourer) allowed the Harrisons to move on, because soon they had a new home two miles down the road, a miner’s cottage in the village of Sherburn Hill.

John was by this time making his own way in the world: he had moved into a cottage just around the corner from his father’s. On 7 April 1860, he married his girlfriend Jane Liddle, a 20-year-old miner’s daughter from the village, who was already four months pregnant on their wedding day.

In August of the same year, Septimus, 23, wed a girl from the neighbouring village of Houghton-le-Spring, Elizabeth Jenkyns, 19, who was heavily pregnant, at the same church. Their son James was born the following month. They moved into another miner’s cottage in Sherburn Hill, meaning that the three families were all within walking distance of each other.

John and Jane’s first child, Jane Ann, was born in September, followed by a son, Anthony, in 1862, and another daughter, Margaret, in 1863. The family would have been far too busy to mourn the death of Queen Victoria’s beloved Prince Albert in 1861, celebrate the wedding of William’s great-great-great-grandfather the future Edward VII to Princess Alexandra in 1863 or follow his liaisons with society beauties such as actress Lillie Langtry or Camilla Parker Bowles’ great-grandmother Alice Keppel.

By the 1860s, Kate’s great-great-great-great-grandfather James had long since retired from the pit. It can be surmised that following his retirement he spent a good deal of time in the local pubs, for he died of liver failure in 1866 at the age of 70. His illiterate daughter Jane, who cared for her father during his final two weeks, signed his death certificate with a cross.

After James’s death, his family moved away from Sherburn Hill. While Septimus moved six miles down the road to the village of Brandon, John moved with Jane and their children to Hetton-le-Hole, four miles away. They were part of migration to the town: in 1801 there were just 212 people living in Hetton, but by 1861 the population had increased to 6,419. John worked at Hetton Colliery, once owned by former bankrupt and speculator Arthur Mowbray. In 1822, it had become the first colliery to have its own private railway, an eight-mile track from Hetton to the River Wear at Sunderland, designed by George Stephenson, the ‘Father of Railways’. This was the first line in the country not to use horsepower.

Life at the coalface was hard, but John and his family, who lived on Downs New Houses in one of the 1,318 stone cottages in the town, had a better lifestyle than their parents, as the town had chapels, schools, pubs and shops, as well as a wide range of tradesmen, including blacksmiths, tinsmiths, stonemasons and joiners, printers and publishers, even a physician. Above all, the town had something that previous generations of the Harrison family had never experienced: a school. At least one of the children was registered in the 1871 census as a scholar, a tiny sign that the forces of social reform that would eventually change Britain for ever were beginning to make their presence felt.

On 25 July 1874, Kate’s great-great-grandfather, 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. Queen Victoria had died 11 days earlier. Prince William’s great-great-great-grandfather Edward VII rode behind his mother’s coffin as the cortège snaked its way through the streets of London. Its final destination was St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle. After a state funeral attended by the great and good of the Commonwealth, Victoria’s body lay in state for two days before being laid to rest beside that of Prince Albert in the Royal Mausoleum at Frogmore House.

Queen Victoria’s death heralded a new age. Eighteen months later, Edward VII and Alexandra were crowned king and queen by the Archbishop of Canterbury at Westminster Abbey – a little later than expected, as the 59-year-old monarch was diagnosed with appendicitis shortly before the date originally set for the coronation. The King donated osborne House, where his mother had died, to the state and lived at Sandringham House in Norfolk, as he had done before his accession. His son George – Prince William’s great-great-grandfather – and his wife Mary, who by then had four children, including the future Edward VIII and George VI, lived in york Cottage on the estate.

John Harrison would have read about the coronation in the newspaper or heard the news at the local pub. But he would have given little thought to the lives of the royal family and could never have guessed that his great-great-granddaughter would one day be so close to the country’s rulers. He had more pressing matters on his mind, such as raising enough money to make ends meet. John was not long married to Jane, and the couple lived in a cramped cottage in Chapel Street, Hetton Downs, with their three-year-old daughter Jane and baby son Ernest. Jane’s sister Sarah Hill lived with the family and helped out with the daily chores, but it was still a tough existence and the couple hoped that their children would be able to make a more comfortable future for themselves.

They had a second son, John, in 1902, but it was their fourth child – Kate’s great-grandfather – who was to make his mark. Born on 23 June 1904, he was named Thomas after Jane and Sarah’s father, who was a carpenter and joiner. A devoted grandfather, he spent many hours with the young boy and when his grandson was barely out of short trousers, he began to teach him the rudimentary skills of his profession.

Thomas was just five years old when King Edward VII collapsed, suffering from bronchitis, while on holiday in Biarritz. A heavy smoker – he is reputed to have smoked 20 cigarettes and 12 cigars a day – he then suffered several heart attacks following his return to Britain. He died on 6 May 1910, his wife Alexandra and mistress Alice Keppel at his bedside. He had just been told by his son George, Prince of Wales, that his horse Witch of the Air had won that afternoon at Kempton Park. ‘I’m very glad,’ the King replied. They were his final words. George V and Queen Mary were crowned at Westminster Abbey on 22 June 1911. Afterwards, the King and Queen travelled to India, visiting their subjects. During the trip, the King indulged his hobby of hunting, shooting 21 tigers.

Three years later, on 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne of Austria–Hungary, was assassinated by a Bosnian Serb named Gavrilo Princip. The event sparked the beginning of the Great War. Life would never be the same again. Thomas Harrison was too young to fight in the First World War, but it had a major impact on his formative years, as Hetton-le-Hole, which had a population of 13,673 at the turn of the century, became a shadow of its former self. Hundreds of miners from the area volunteered for the Northumberland Fusiliers and the Durham Light Infantry, while the women and children had to adapt to life without them.

At first, Thomas’s father John, who had just celebrated his fortieth birthday when war broke out, remained at home, looking after his young family – he now had another two children, Wilfred, seven, and Norman, five – but eventually he was forced to enlist. In March 1916, the British government, in response to the rising losses on the Western Front – Britain lost 75,000 men at ypres and 60,000 at Loos – and the dwindling number of volunteers, introduced conscription for single men between the ages of 18 and 41. By May, the order had been extended to married men. It was just two months before John Harrison’s 42nd birthday, an accident of birth that would change the course of his descendants’ lives.