The Bispham Cliffs, Professor Sylvanus and James Bibby DCM.
Bispham Cliffs. Cover image and text from the Blackpool Herald April 3rd 1914.
Blackpool’s Favourite Natural Promenade in Jeopardy
Erosion Continues at Alarming Rate
‘When will the authorities attempt to do something to preserve the Bispham Cliffs, Blackpool’s favourite natural promenade from destruction?
There has been plenty of agitation in the past with a view to evolving some tangible scheme for checking the serious erosion which is constantly going on, and which is robbing this part of the Fylde seaboard of its most valuable asset. The Bispham Ratepayers Association had had the question before them and discussed it many a time, but so expensive would be the cost of building up sea defence works that the only possible way they can see out of the difficulty is by amalgamating with Blackpool. For the present, however, the protection of the cliffs and amalgamation are questions which seem to have sunk into oblivion as matters of no immediate importance.
If the cliffs are to be saved, the authorities will have to be up and doing. “Procrastination is the thief of all time”, and it is time the authorities shook off their apathy and set themselves seriously to the task of grappling with this serious problem. The sea is gradually undermining and demolishing the cliffs, every week they grow less, and miniature avalanches periodically career down the slopes on to the shore below.
The Blackpool Corporation know the value of the cliffs in the borough boundary, and they have taken efficient measures to protect them by building a strong retaining wall at the base. Every visitor to Blackpool goes to the cliffs, where they can drink in the ozone of the Irish Sea, and enjoy the invigorating breezes. And, moreover, it is a favourite “grandstand” from which to witness Blackpool’s famous sunsets.
The writer the other day took a stroll along the cliffs from Uncle Tom’s Cabin to beyond the Bispham tram station, and was very much distressed to note the rapid way in which this particular area is diminishing. You have to be careful not to walk too near the edge lest a mass of earth should give way beneath your feet, and dump you nearly a hundred feet below. The public, and especially the children, should be protected from this danger. The site of the main portion of old Uncle Tom’s Cabin (No 3) still remains and still defies the ravages of storm and sea. This was really Blackpool’s first amusement place, and how many remember paying “Uncle Tom” a visit in their young days! Of course, the cabin was not on the edge of a precipice then. A wide stretch of greensward lay between the building and the sea, and footraces and archery meetings were held there. Now all that land has gone, swallowed up by the sea. As will be seen from the accompanying sketch, one end of the cabin rests right on the edge of the cliff, and it is impossible to walk round it. On either side the earth is constantly giving way and no one would be surprised to wake up some morning and find that the site of Uncle Tom’s had altogether disappeared.
It is the same all along the cliffs northwards, and one only wonders how long it will be before the tramroad will have to relaid on a more inland track. A little further on beyond Uncle Tom’s, looking North, in the direction of the stand of “Professor Sylvanus” tons of surface earth have recently plunged into the sea, leaving a great gap which threatens to become very much wider in the near future. An idea of this subsidence may be gleaned from our drawing No 5. At the other side of the stand, looking south, extensive damage is also going on unchecked. There have been many serious falls latterly, and as will be seen from sketch No 2, a deep fissure separates a large quantity of earth, which appears almost on the point of slipping away in bulk.
Nearer Bispham, for a considerable distance, and leading right up to the tram station, considerable havoc is likewise being wrought. Our first drawing only shows a part the rapid crumbling of the cliffs. Almost daily masses of earth become dislodged and fall away, gradually reducing the stretch of turf between the sea and he tramroad. The centre sketch was taken immediately behind the Bispham tram station, which is only a few yards from the edge of the cliff. Here an endeavour has been made, apparently with some temporary success, to prevent a fissure from encroaching too far by laying and binding together a number of railway sleepers. Higher up, beyond Bispham, signs of the destruction of the cliffs, one of the finest bits of seaboard in the whole Fylde, are similarly apparent. One can only repeat, “Is it not possible for something to be done to save the cliffs ere the Fylde is robbed of one of its greatest natural charms?” ‘
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Uncle Tom’s Cabin had ceased its existence as an ongoing concern in October of 1907 as its licence was handed in and a new temporary one provided by the Kirkham magistrates for the new premises rebuilt further inland, its present site. A stipulation of the transfer of the licence was that the new building must be completed within two years. It was agreed in this year by the Bispham Council to approach the Blackpool Corporation and though the amalgamation of Bispham with Blackpool was discussed in the following years it was put on hold until after the war when it was eventually completed. Blackpool’s money could now pay for the securing of the cliffs along with an acceptable rise in the rates for the Bispham ratepayers.
Professor Sylvanus
(Joseph Worden)
1861-1919
As indicated on the sketch, and referred to in the report, Professor Sylvanus had a stand on the edge of the cliffs near Uncle Tom’s Cabin. For several years Professor Sylvanus was a popular figure at his stand on the crumbling cliffs of Bispham near Uncle Tom’s Cabin, where he sold herbal medicines and gave advice on health during the summer months. The Blackpool Times of Nov 1 1919 describes him in his obituary as, ‘His “lectures” being always distinguished by a homely philosophy and a wealth of happy anecdote with an engaging personality, great ‘oratorical powers’, and with his ‘ready wit and humorous stories’. Along with his wife he sold his herbal remedies and, according to the same paper, ‘Many visitors to Blackpool did not think their holiday complete if they had not heard “Sylvanus”. He was on good terms with his audience from the moment he began to address them, and for years he had stood on the cliffs during the summer months, always sure of an appreciative crowd.’ Somewhat prophetically in what was to be his final year in 1919, he claimed to the crowds in front of him, ‘You will miss Sylvanus when he is no longer here. You’ll come here and ask “Where’s Sylvanus? What, dead? And you’ll be sorry.”’
He had lived his life with both energy and drama and he was also a charitable man, ever willing to lend a hand and with kind and encouraging words for others and, on his stand on the cliffs in the last year he was to be there in 1919, he had collected more than £10 (£432.52) for the Police Constable’s Fund for Clothing Poor Children.
But ‘Professor’ Sylvanus wasn’t really Professor Sylvanus, he was Joseph Cowper Worden, and not even really Joseph Cowper Worden, but simply Joseph Worden, as the Cowper had been introduced seemingly for effect. He was a big man, over six feet tall and of a broad build and ‘stood out amongst men, and in every sphere of life he adopted his magnetic personality and his fund of happy humour made him popular.’ He was a man of great energy and versatility and of wide interests, a poet, playwright, producer, theatre manager, business man, office clerk and shopkeeper.
He was born in Preston in 1861 and at the time of the census of that year was living at 66 Church St, as a babe in arms, next door to the Black Tiger, a public house. His father is a tailor and his mother occupies herself as a straw bonnet maker. He is the youngest child of four with two elder brothers and a sister. By 1871 Joseph is a scholar and, while he is at school, his elder siblings, along with their parents, are all working as either tailor, draper or milliner, an occupation in the clothing trade that Joseph himself would take up in his own right in the town, after leaving school.
His education was at the private, Catholic schools of both Mount St Mary’s in Derbyshire and nearer to home at Stonyhurst. Here at Stonyhurst his contemporaries were Arthur Conan Doyle, Punch cartoonist Bernard Partridge and father Bernard Vaughan SJ who would advise the young Music Hall Star Marie Loftus to send her daughter Cissie to the Convent at Blackpool, from where she too, like her mother, would become an international star at a young age. It is stated that Joseph was training for the priesthood at one time but gave this up due to illness about which his doctor had advised him to lead a more open life. From then on, with a ceaseless energy for ideas and a talent for writing, his life would take its own varied direction to fulfilment.
He married Mary Anne Rishton from Accrington in Burnley in 1885. Two of his children were born in Preston, and two more when he had moved to Blackpool. The first of his many varied ventures it seems, was to open up a hosiery shop in his home town of Preston, but this ultimately failed. Having paid up his creditors in full, he went about this time, at the end of the 1880’s to Blackpool with his wife Mary Anne and family. Mary Anne is now a school teacher, and the famly for some time lived at 32 Moore St in South Shore. His creative ideas and a talent for writing had at first, no means of being used to provide an income for the family, and he found work as a clerk in the Corporation Electricity Department where he worked for some time before leaving to join the police force as a clerk, and later, head clerk, in the office where he continued an evident desire for writing and amateur dramatics. At last, with some confidence of literary success, he left the police force in about 1892 to tour with the play he had written and produced ‘The Coastguardsmen’. It was largely because of the success of this play that he was invited to become manager of the Victoria pier in 1894 after it had recently opened and where he remained for several years.
Perhaps first as an experiment, his play entitled ‘Our Coastguardsmen’ was performed by Blackpool’s amateur Catholic dramatic society, in which he had most probably been involved in an amateur way, among people who were familiar to him, but the play nevertheless was performed on the big stage at the Prince of Wales Theatre. He had taken the opportunity, no doubt of spare moments, to write at least some of it, in the police offices at Blackpool. Due to the good reception that the play received, it seems that this success had encouraged him to go professional and he resigned from the police force in October. On 14th November 1892 it saw its first professional performance at St James’ Theatre in Manchester and which was met with ‘a very favourable reception’. He himself played the principal character, Hugh Percival. The ‘nautical drama’ then moved to the Prince’s Theatre, Preston in December. In January 1894 he was appointed manager of the Victoria Pier, which had opened in the year previously. ‘Mr Worden’, the Blackpool Gazette quotes, ‘by his ability, good tact, and courteous disposition is admirably fitted to the position and will, we feel sure, fill it with great credit to himself and to the entire satisfaction of the company.’
The wreck of the Norwegian vessel Sirene, which occurred in October and which caused damage to the pier, promenade hulking and created controversy in liabilities, played its part, appropriately perhaps, in the production of the ‘Coastguardsmen’ as some props which appeared in the play had been purchased from the wreck. These reportedly included the vessel’s flag. In 1892 and from the plentiful timber of the wreck there were was expected to be a strong line in walking sticks the following summer.
In April of 1902 his poem to James Bibby who had returned injured for the Boer, (Anglo-African) war, but late died of his injuries, is printed in the Blackpool Times. He was 33 years of age.
In December of 1902 a musical comedy by Messrs Worden and Higgins, entitled, ‘Eulalie the Lodestar’ is ‘now going with a fair amount of swing’.(The Blackpool Times 1902 19th April). It was first seen at the Winter Gardens at the end of November, then moved on to the Opera House, but no information has been found on it with an internet search. Other musical comedies attributed to Joseph Worden are stated as ‘Her Choice’, ‘Twixt Love and Duty’ and ‘Emmot’?, (a title which is not clearly printed) so he has been active in writing and producing during the time.
In January of 1904 he was appointed manager of the extensively refurbished St Anne’s pier, his qualifications being that he was a well known playwright and had managed the Derby Castle in Douglas Isle of Man, for a season and had been manager of the Victoria pier in Blackpool. During this time, too, it is reported that he had also managed a theatre on the east coast. The promenade in front of the pier had been widened and the pier itself had been constructed in the Moorish style with a concert pavilion of 900 seats. The pier head with space for an open air bandstand, shops and walkway has been planned on similar lines to the North Pier at Blackpool. The cost of the renovation would exceed £3,000 (£305,553.14) and it was hoped that the reputation of Mr Worden in bringing in good entertainment, would attract a good class of visitor to the town.
In the Blackpool Times of March 5th 1904, ‘It is stated that a sketch entitled ‘Betsy and I’, the work of Mr J Cowper Worden, a well known local author, will shortly be produced in Birmingham.’ On the 10th August on St Annes pier he will give his own, ‘Story, Song and Sketch’ entertainment. A week later on in August, as manager of the pier, along with ‘Cousin Harry’ (Harry Harcourt) a popular entertainer on the pier, he was given a benefit concert and he received a gold mounted umbrella in recognition of his popularity and the success he had brought to the pier in bringing in the crowds via his skill in providing such popular entertainment, which included plays, music and comedy. The somewhat controversial play ‘Sapho’, which made an insinuation of sexual indulgence, was included in the billing during that week.
On the 27th July of 1904 the first chapter of 12 in his short story, ‘The K C.’ is serialised in the Blackpool Times, a paper which had bought the rights exclusively and promotes it in its 23rd July edition. ‘The KC deals with a Social Problem: Can a man who has openly offended against the canons of society ever rehabilitate himself?’ Interestingly a character in the story is Lemuel Jones a neighbour of his of the same name and who occupied Bispham Lodge next to him at the ‘Cliff’ in Little Bispham.
His final contribution was selling herbal remedies as ‘Professor Sylvanus’ at a stand near Uncle Tom’s Cabin on the cliffs at Bispham where he became a well known and popular figure especially with the tourists. He began this herbal remedy business after taking over from a Charlie Sennatt at the entrance to Central pier, and after establishing his name there, he set up a stand atthe cliffs near Uncle Tom’s Cabin. By 1911 he could describe himself on the census return as a ‘health lecturer and maker of herbal preparations’ and in which his wife Marianne (who perhaps preferred Marianne to Mary Anne), assisted in the business. He had also at some time before 1911, moved from Moore St in S Shore to a more luxurious address at the ‘Cliff’, a large house on the foreshore in Little Bispham. He plied his trade on the cliffs where he became a well known and popular figure, and many holiday makers would make a special trip to see him selling his herbal remedies alongside his wit and engaging stories, until his last year of 1919.
In October of 1919 Joseph Worden was taken seriously ill and was removed to a rest home at 223 on Hornby Road where he remained for six weeks until his death. His death was announced on the 29th October at the home. He had had a strong constitution and when his condition became critical, he nevertheless rallied and lingered on ‘until half an hour past midnight.’ He was 57 years of age. After a requiem Mass at St Kentigern’s Church the funeral took place at Layton cemetery on Monday 3rd November 1919. He leaves a widow three sons and a daughter. A son, Henry Worden JP was currently a Councillor in the town and represented the Brunswick Ward. A second son, Norman recently demobilised from India and will resume his job as a teacher at Birmingham and. Eric recently demobilised from Ireland will live at the Cliff with his mother and sister Hilda.
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James Bibby
The Colt gun section had left in March of 1900 and wasn’t the first contingent to leave from North station as another section had left for the front previously to embark at Liverpool. The officer in charge of this field gun section was Lieutenant Topping, a solicitor of Whitegate Lane and a well-known name in Blackpool. James Bibby was a coachbuilder by trade. It was hoped that Blackpool could have formed the whole contingent. Two guns were needed at a cost of £750 each (£77,218.59) but sufficient funds could not be provided, even after a further appeal by the mayor since there had been a drain on voluntary contributions. While the guns would eventually arrive, to get round the shortage of men, an appeal was sent out to Preston and Lancaster who were able to provide five men each. The Blackpool men were Lieutenant Topping of Springfield, Whitegate Lane, Corporal Bibby, Milbourne Street and gunners Jones, Yates Street, Carlisle, Imperial Terrace, Gilder, High street and Porter, Buchanan Street and then there was trumpeter Hunt of Lytham road. While Britain could not take a lot of credit in a big way for how the Boer, or Anglo African, war was conducted, nevertheless like all conflict, it necessitated the endeavour, self sacrifice, loss and pain that such conflicts inflict upon the participants, combatants or non-combatants. For James Bibby and the members of his Colt gun team the difficulty of the terrain to haul the guns with the constant daily pulling and tugging put a strain on the limbs and meant that an injury to his arm reportedly necessitated the removal of an artery, though this didn’t prevent him from continuing his active service.
Eventually contracting an illness he was returned to Blackpool when he received his DCM but succumbed to his illness and died in the April of 1902. He was given a full military funeral and was buried in the town’s Layton cemetery on the 15th April 1902.
The service record that inspired Joseph Worden’s poem;
Boer War Distinguished Conduct Medal. Sergeant JT Bibby, Colt Gun Section 57th (Buckinghamshire) Company. 15th Imperial Yeomanry.
Sergeant James Thomas Bibby returned home injured from the Boer (Anglo-African) War. He had gone out with the first Colt Gun section from Blackpool and had been quickly promoted from trooper to sergeant. He had been married three times, marrying his third wife only a short time before departing for the war. (Manchester Courier 14th April 1902).
He was the son of Councillor James Bibby of 6 Exchange Street. His medal, along with a diary, in which he describes his service, was sold at auction for £1,995. He was mentioned in despatches 10th September 1901 and received the DCM 27th September 1901.
Sources and Acknowledgements
The British Library Newspapers accessed via findmypast. The bulk of the information has been derived from this source.
Sergeant J Bibby
https://www.cultmancollectables.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=2059
https://www.angloboerwar.com/media/kunena/attachments/2603/4744dc72-da6c-406b-88d0-ee7aaf50079e.jpg
Bernard Partridge https://research.kent.ac.uk/british-cartoon-archive/record/bernard-partridge/
Inflation calculator (to August 2024); https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator
