Fatal flaw that led to tragedy at market

This mountain of beef had come all the way from Aberdeen for the Northern Counties Fat Cattle and Poultry Society annual show which, in December 1863, was being held in the new, half-built Covered Market in Darlington. The Gold Challenge Vase winning monster was vast – 90 stones heavier than the Pease family’s runner- up and quite beautiful to the reporter’s eyes.

He wrote: “We dipped our fingers into the soft, velvet sides of the prize ox and had just turned from it ... when a sudden crash fell on our ears, and immediately before us, not more than three yards off, we perceived a wide chasm, and a number of men at the very brink transfixed for the moment with terror, and not knowing which way to turn.

“The cause was A FRIGHTFUL ACCIDENT AT THE SHOW.”

A girder holding up the newly-laid market floor had given way, plummeting some men – “happily no females”

– and three cattle about 12ft into the cellar beneath.

Getting its priorities completely correct, the farmer’s bible first informed its readers that the cattle – Nos 27, 28, and 29 in the show catalogue – were unharmed.

Then the paper turned its attention to the humans who had fallen through the floor with the cattle.

“There appeared to us eight or ten men writhing with pain and struggling to rise out of the midst of rubbish in which they so suddenly found themselves engulfed,”

said the D&S.

The most seriously injured was “Mr Robert Robson, farmer of Newton Morrell (near Barton), whose face was ashy pale, and whose leg appeared to dangle loosely as he was being carried out of the hole”.

In fact, Mr Robson’s broken right thigh bone could be seen protruding through his skin, so Dr William Haslewood tied the 55-year-old’s legs together with towels, to create a splint, and put the unfortunate chap into a horsedrawn cab, which bounced him over the cobbles to a relative’s house in Northgate. There he was seen by another eminent medical man, Dr Stephen Piper.

“I administered stimulants, champagne, brandy, ammonia and all those things we usually give in such cases,”

said Dr Piper. “After attending to him, I told the family he could not live long and if he had any affairs to settle it should be done.”

The D&S reported that “the dying man made a will of his property and then resigning himself to his fate, rapidly sank”.

He died two days later.

This was more than just a tragedy for poor Mr Robson.

It was a disaster for the controversial town council and potentially career-ending for the young architect whom the council had rather dubiously employed.

Because, by and large 150 years ago, the townspeople didn’t want this new Covered Market that the local Board of Health packed with Peases and Backhouses, Liberals and Quakers, were imposing upon Darlington. The people liked the broad and wide spaces of their open market. They had no truck with this new-fangled health and safety nonsense that said it was bad for factory chimneys to smoke all fresh produce on the open stalls or for dogs to marinade the meat as they passed.

The townspeople looked at the planned town hall and accused the councillors of self-aggrandisement, and they certainly didn’t see the need for the gigantic clocktower Joseph Pease was intent on erecting.

In 1860, the board had held a competition among local architects to design the new complex, but it had rejected all the 18 entries and awarded the contract to an unknown architect from Manchester, a 31-year-old called Alfred Waterhouse, who just happened to be a Liberal, a Quaker and related by marriage to the Pease and Backhouse families on the board.

Poems were written and petitions were raised against the project, and the Darlington Telegraph fumed that the new complex would be a monument to folly, extravagance and jobbery.

Three firms of local builders refused to construct Mr Waterhouse’s designs, which were scaled down in the face of public criticism, and so the £7,815 contract was given to a Londoner, Randal Stap.

Because of the controversy, the board wished to make the prestigious show the market’s first public event, even though the clock tower was barely head height.

The D&S approved when the show opened on Wednesday, December 9. “In the gaslight, the New Market presented a very beautiful appearance,” it said.

The entries filled the market.

How the D&S Times reported the incident in 1863

There were “70 head of cattle, 39 pens of sheep, 23 of pigs, samples of grain and roots, eight hams and bacon, five of butter, one stand of implements, and 815 cages of poultry”.

But the stars of the show were the fat cattle, particularly James Stewart’s Aberdeen monster.

After lunch on the second day of the show, when the price of admission had been reduced, “the place was literally swarming, and the difficulty of moving about was felt by all, especially by the ladies, whose wide skirts increased the difficulty tenfold,”

said the D&S.

But then the girder snapped, the cattle plummeted and poor Mr Robson’s bone was fatally fractured.

His inquest was held the following Thursday. The jury concluded that: “We are of opinion that Robert Robson came to his death from injuries received by the breaking of a metal girder which in our opinion was not of sufficient strength.”

The disaster for the board and their architect magnified. Not only had they pushed on oblivious to the charges of self-aggrandising nepotism, but now they had killed a local farmer.

Quickly, the Peases regrouped. The following Wednesday, railway engineers Thomas Bouch, Alfred Kitching and a number of other scientific gentlemen gathered in the New Market to pass judgement on the girders.

“One of the trial girders broke by a pressure of 26 tons on the centre, the other bent a little at that pressure, this showing that the section made by the architect was correct and that the unfortunate accident was caused by a flaw in the casting,” reported the Darlington Telegraph.

So the blame fell on the local ironfounder, Mr William Hodgson Davison, who had rolled a piece of ash into the molten girder, fatally weakening it.

Mr Waterhouse was exonerated, and went on to much greater things. In fact, he became the greatest Gothic architect of the Victorian era. In Darlington, he built Barclays Bank on High Row, Pierremont, Rockliffe Hall and Hurworth Grange. He built Hutton Hall at Guisborough, and became nationally acclaimed for Manchester Town Hall and especially the Natural History Museum, in London.

Darlington Covered Market was the only building in his career that failed, and he never built solely in iron again.

Even though he was exonerated, if you go into the cellars today, you can see where additional pillars were added to hold up the market floor.

Because of the embarrassment, the market slipped into use at 7am on May 2, 1864. “There was no opening ceremony,” said the D&S. “The only official act was the apprehension of a couple of pickpockets who, by way of inauguration, tried their hands at a lady’s pocket and got them into a pair of handcuffs.”

So this weekend, 150 years later, is the town’s first opportunity to celebrate what is now regarded as its most iconic building.

• Chris Lloyd is giving a free, illustrated talk on the history of the Covered Market tomorrow at 2pm in Central Hall. It would be useful if tickets were booked on 01325-388207.