William and Henry: A sad story

This is a special photograph. Taken in bright sunlight, there is a grizzled old fisherman sitting next to a handsome and beautifully dressed little boy. We are grateful to whoever took the picture. 

From the collection of the Gilchrist family.

So, who are they, when was the photo taken and what happened to the little boy?

On the other side of the picture is an inscription – believed to have been written by Edith Gilchrist sometime later.

From the collection of the Gilchrist family.

Edith Swainson, who married George Gilchrist in 1901, may have been holidaying at the Point at the time the photograph was taken.

 Edith and her family were frequent visitors to the Point. George along with other members of the Gilchrist family were also frequent visitors, staying mainly at the Old Hall.'

‘Mr. Townley’

William Townley was a fisherman who lived for several decades at number 23, the last house on the Point and where the photograph was taken. William was born in 1824 in Poulton le Sands (now Morecambe) and in 1849 married Sunderland Point girl Margaret Curwen at St Helens Church in Overton. Margaret was the 11th child of William and Margaret Curwen who lived at Gravelly. She was 23, William 25.

Through this marriage and their own eight children they became related to many Sunderland Point families which endures to this day.

Here he is again with Margaret and their eldest daughter Ann sometime in the 1890’s again outside number 23. William Townley died in 1905 aged 81.

William, Margaret (sitting), and Ann Townley outside number 23, c1890s: From the collection of Wilton Atkinson.

This is a charming photograph of Ann taken forty years later by Sam Thompson. She was known affectionately as ‘Aunt Ann’ and was still living at number 23. Photo from the collection of Harold Gardner

      Number 23 today (2023)

‘Mr. Copeland’s son’

Henry Coupland aged 4: Photo extract from the collection of Wilton Atkinson

It was confusing at first until cross-referencing with the jottings of James W. Gardner we saw the family name was not Copeland but Coupland. Then it became clear and much more besides.

He is Henry Coupland born in 1895 to Henry and Lillier Coupland of Lancaster.

The date of the photograph must be 1899 when he was four years old. The family - including two-year-old sister Dorothy - were at the Old Hall as described by Edith Gilchrist. We know this from an article in the Lancaster Gazette dated July 1899 about a theft of coal destined for ‘Mr Coupland at Sunderland Point’.

The Old Hall in the 1890s as it would have been known to the Couplands and Gilchrists: Photo courtesy Lancaster City Museums.

The Old Hall today (2023)

The Coupland Family

It’s not known how often the Coupland family visited the Point. There is a tantalising reference to a Mrs Coupland at the Point as early as 1804. She could have been the first wife of Henry Coupland (great-grandfather to Henry in the photo) a famous seafaring captain of Lancaster who would have known Sunderland Point from his many voyages to the West Indies.

Being fanciful, she could be imagined up at the Summer House on lookout waiting for his return. Or perhaps not.

His son Richard, (born in 1814) was apprenticed to Gillows the famous Lancaster furniture manufactures, he subsequently became the principle owner of Bell and Coupland furniture makers with workshops and sales office in Stonewell. Initially living in Moor Lane by the works, he became prosperous enough to have an address of just ‘Belle Vue, Lancaster’. He was also Mayor of Lancaster in 1868/69.

His son Henry (the father of our photo Henry) was born 1857 and educated at the Grammar School where he showed musical and artistic promise. He joined the family business, served an apprenticeship, and took full ownership on the death of his father in 1884.

At Sunderland Point

The only other date we are certain the Couplands were at the Old Hall is 1891 as they are recorded in the census taken in April of that year. There are four names on the return, Henry Coupland (father of the boy in the photo) then aged 34 and unmarried, his sister Emily (29), perhaps her friend Ada Gardner (24), and Elizabeth Barker the cook and domestic servant aged 27.

Later that year - December 1891 - Henry married Lillier Innocent at St Paul’s in Scotforth. Lillier is originally from Sheffield, her father Charles was the proprietor of a restaurant in Morecambe.

Henry Coupland Senior

The little boy’s father is a colourful character, perhaps a scoundrel, who is fighting hard to take over the story. We will do our best to resist.

He is a significant figure in Lancaster life. Like his father Richard, Henry is heavily involved in the 5th Battalion Volunteer Artillery. In the 1890s the weekly orders were published in the Lancaster Gazette calling the volunteers to practices and parades, many are signed ‘Henry Coupland Major, Commanding’. He was later promoted to Lieutenant Colonel.

Belt buckle of the Lancashire Volunteer Artillery: Courtesy of Lancashire Archives

Volunteers on gun parade stand by an ancient muzzle loader: Courtesy of Lancashire Archives

Through the newspapers of the day, he can be found on the committee of Lancaster National Schools, member of the Lancaster Shipowners Company and active on behalf of the Parish Church and the Tory Party.

We warm slightly to Henry when we see he is an active a member of the Caledonian Society attending Burn’s night suppers; and as a member of the Lancaster Choral Society playing the trombone in their performance of the ‘Messiah’ in 1898.

He is also on the committee organising the Coronation festivities of 1902 and providing items free of charge from his business to furnish the Town Hall.

Advertising coronation decorations 1902: Courtesy Guardian Newspapers

Henry Coupland - the boy in the photo

Growing up, young Henry also attends the Grammar School and is later articled to Harrison Moore, surveyors in Lancaster (who first opened office doors in 1865, a direct legacy company exists today).

Like his father, Henry is musical and takes an active part as conductor of a small orchestra which plays concerts for charities. In father’s footsteps he a member of the artillery volunteers. (After 1908 known as the Territorial Force)

In January 1914 he is a 2nd Lieutenant of the 5th Battalion Kings Own Royal Lancaster Regiment (Territorial Force). By December of 1914, after 5 months of the First World War he is promoted to full Lieutenant on active service with the British army in France.

Henry Coupland official photograph, still handsome: Courtesy Imperial War Museum

From the official war biography, he served in France and in Flanders (Belgium). It also tells us that on the 24th of April 1915 he died of wounds, received in action near Ypres, at the clearing station at Bailleul where he is also buried. We can guess the reaction of his parents. He was just 20.

In 1916, George Townley, a grandson of William Townley, was also killed.

Thanks to the Gilchrist family for the photo and information, the Lancaster Guardian newspapers, the Lancashire Archives and Lancaster City Museums.

Henry Coupland Senior - again

We said scoundrel about Henry, and so it seems but we don’t have all the facts, so judgement must rest with a higher court. We were interested and wanted to know what happened to him.

His military experience is put to good use and in 1915 (then 60) he is commanding a company of the National Reservists, stationed at Lewes in Sussex. He returns on leave to Lancaster - around the time news will have telegraphed about young Henry’s death - but not to his wife Lillier who he has deserted, but to a Sarah Graham. A male child is born from this relationship.

As early as 1907 he had committed adultery in Bare, Morecambe with a Lilian Foster.

In 1916 he is transferred to Doncaster and becomes involved in a relationship with 23 year old Mary Ethel Scott, there is another child, a girl who is christened Mimosa Margarette Scott.

In summer 1919, Henry’s wife Lillier launches divorce proceedings in the High Court. The petition is uncontested and completed by the end of the year.

In her divorce deposition Lillier states that during the marriage ‘they lived at divers places (including) the Hall, Sunderland Point, near Lancaster’.

From the Lancashire Evening Post December 1919: Courtesy of the Johnston Press

Returning to her home in Suffolk Mary Ethel Scott dies aged 26 in 1920. Thankfully Henry takes responsibility for the child.

In the census of 1921, Henry (aged 64) is living in Ipswich, Suffolk, he lists himself as secretary to the small Scott family bakery business. On the census with Henry are the two married sisters of Marie Ethel Scott. We assume they are there helping Henry with three-year-old Mimosa.

Now here’s a mystery - Henry has entered ‘Dorothy Coupland’ rather than ‘Mimosa Margarette Scott’ as the name of the 3-year-old child. There is no doubt they one and the same. Perhaps he is hiding her true identity to protect the child and his adultery. Alongside his name, he writes ‘Widowed’ as if Marie Ethel were his wife, which she was not. The scoundrel.

(Perhaps a coincidence, Dorothy is the name of Henry’s only other child with Lillier. In 1921 she is 24 unmarried and living alone with Lillier.)

In 1927 in London, when Henry is 70, he marries 37-year-old Charlotte Ellen Scott - who is Mimosa Margarette’s aunt. (She is the elder sister of Marie Ethel Scott, Mimosa’s mother who had died in 1920).

Henry Coupland’s own death occurs on October 12th, 1936, aged 80 living at The Gables in Bramford in Suffolk with Charlotte and Mimosa.

‘The Gables’ Bramford, Suffolk today: Photo internet free stock.

And Mimosa….

Mimosa kept the surname Coupland was known to her friends as ‘Peg’, died unmarried in 2004. She achieved the position of Assistant Chief Nursing Officer at the Ipswich General hospital. Well done, Mimosa.

We are grateful to the Sheppard family tree on Ancestry.com for some of the information on Henry’s later life.