Morpathia: The Hollon Tea

“At Rangoon, in the Burmese empire, deeply lamented and regretted, John Spottiswoode Trotter, esq. Capt. In the 6th Native Infantry, and commander of the whole force of Madras Pioneers in the expedition under Sir A. Campbell.

“After a service of 20 years in various countries of the east, and in many campaigns in which he bore a distinguished part, this gallant officer at last fell a victim to fever brought on by fatigue and over-exertion in the late conflict with the Burmese.”

Captain Trotter’s wife, an Indian lady, died at about the same time. They had a little girl called Mary. She was brought to England and placed in the care of her uncle, Dr William Trotter.

Morpeth Antiquarian Society possesses a sampler that she worked as a young girl, showing that she attended the Borough School, now Wellway Accountants – though that was actually the Infants’ School, the Girls’ School being at the back of what is now the adjoining car park.

The Corporation had had to borrow to defray the cost of the new schools and in February 1843, when Dr Trotter was mayor, his Annual Ball was for the Building Fund of the Borough Schools, and was led off by Robert Hawdon, Esq., and Miss Trotter.

In the 1841 census, Dr Trotter’s household consisted of himself, physician, aged 45, Mary Trotter, 20; Thomas Freeman, 40, male servant, born in “foreign parts”; and two female servants. The 1841 census is not good for ages, which can be five years out either way. Although we do not know how Mary was brought to England, the entry for Thomas Freeman is suggestive.

The doctor was an occasional poet and it was at about this time that he wrote a ballad called The Wallflower, which Mary set to music.

The Newcastle Courant of November 26, 1842, carries an advertisement for it from a Newcastle music seller. The paper describes it as, “a new song ... said to possess much merit”.

At Christmas 1841, the Newcastle Journal reported that, “Miss Trotter has given a load of Coals to each of the Inmates of the Morpeth Alms House, and to several of her poor neighbours, to make a cheerful hearth at Christmas.” She did so every year thereafter, and sometimes with gifts of warm clothing as well.

Fourteen years later, on November 5, 1855, Miss Mary Trotter married Richard Welch Hollon, Esq., at the Presbyterian chapel in Morpeth.

Richard was a druggist in York, but came originally from Newcastle. He was successful in business, a councillor in his adopted city, and Lord Mayor in 1863/4.

Mary did not forget her home town and sent money every year to the mayor or other acquaintances for distribution to the poor. After Dr Trotter’s death, she donated the clock on the tower of St George’s Presbyterian Church in memory of him and her parents.

In the same year that he was Lord Mayor, Richard presented a lifeboat to the little fishing village of Filey. He and Mary were present at its first launch and he explained to the assembled crowd how they had once been in “the most imminent peril at sea during a storm ... and since then Mrs Hollon suggested to me the appropriateness of ... presenting a lifeboat to some place where it might be needed.”

The vessel was called Hollon and he later sponsored two more, Hollon II and Hollon III, for the Filey lifeboat station.

There are photographs of the couple in the Mayor’s Parlour at Morpeth Town Hall – he wears a fur-lined robe and she first court dress. Mary’s dark hair gives just a hint of her Indian heritage.

She died at York on March 22, 1880. Later that year, Richard instituted the Mary Hollon Annuity and Coal Fund in her memory, for the benefit of the poor of Morpeth and the adjoining township of Bullers Green. The trustees were the town council.

One of his conditions was that, every year on the anniversary of his and Mary’s marriage, the annuitants should be given a good meat tea – a custom still maintained to this day.

His first idea was to build almshouses, but he decided instead to place an investment with the Corporation, as trustee, to produce an income of about £300 per year and provide 13 poor women and 12 poor men with an annuity of £2 10s per quarter, any surplus income to be used to supply coal and other comforts to the poor of the town generally.

Annuitants had to be over 60, sober and of good moral character, never lived in the workhouse or received parish relief, and have resided in the municipal borough for at least 15 years.

The headmaster of the Presbyterian Day School in Cottingwood Lane, Mr James Fergusson, lived at North Place in Bullers Green. He realised that Mr Hollon probably did not know that much of Bullers Green was not in the borough: “He ascertained that the late Mrs Hollon, when she was Miss Mary Trotter, living with her uncle, Dr William Trotter, had distributed her charity to people in both Morpeth and Bullers Green.

“He communicated this to Mr Hollon and not only was the Trust Deed amended accordingly, but Mr Hollon, at Mr Fergusson’s suggestion, appointed a man called Christopher Burns, a severely crippled man, but a self-taught scholar, as one of the Founder’s Annuitants.”

As part of the entertainment at the third Hollon Tea on November 6, 1882, Cllr F.E. Schofield sang The Wallflower. The Morpeth Herald thus explained its origin:

“The top of the street wall of what was till lately the Workhouse Garden was forty years ago, covered with a perfect bed of that beautiful plant, which was an object of general admiration.

“Dr Trotter and his niece, Miss Trotter, looked out on it daily, and conjointly they wedded it to verse and music, which have thus been revived by their being sung at the third annual tea of the Mary Hollon Annuitants.”

The Herald also published the words:

Where the wallflower lives on high, / O’er the sculptur’d oriel stone

Steals a perfume on the sky, / With the night wind’s hollow moan.

Thus ’tis oe’r the waste of years, / Comes an undistinguished throng,

Ruin’d hopes and mingled tears, / And gentle wishes cherish’d long.

Hopes tho’ ruin’d, lovely yet, / Tears for one, tho’ dead to me;

Thoughts I may not e’er forget, / Wishes that can never be.

Ask not if they’re good or ill? – / All are sad and pleasing all –

Nor how many haunt me still? – / Count the raindrops as they fall.

Since then, many inhabitants of Morpeth have established funds under the same rules as the Hollon Annuity Fund, so that there are now 29 funds and 97 annuitants.