‘An appeal to the charitable’: a distressed master mariner of 7 North Street, St Leonards on Sea

The Hastings and St Leonards Times, 18 January 1884, has the following:

AN APPEAL TO THE CHARITABLE. – An appeal is now being made to the public for the purpose of giving George Robinson, a local man, living at 7 North Street, St Leonards, a fresh start in life. The facts of the case are as follows: Mr Robinson was master of the schooner London for 21 years, and owner for three years. The vessel was for many years engaged in the coal trade to Hastings. On the eve of December 11 last our readers will remember that there was a disastrous gale…

The 92-ton vessel was proceeding from Hartlepool to Rye with a cargo of 156 tons. A number of colliers, all based in the Hastings area, regularly made the three day voyage from the northeast of England. The Shipping and Mercantile Gazette, 26 Dec 1883, has a detailed deposition by Robinson describing the shipwreck. No lives were lost, but the ship was uninsured.

George Robinson had married, 1861, at St Mary in the Castle, Hastings, Martha Sabina Easton. He was a mariner, his father a farm bailiff, while her father was a butcher. Both were of the parish.

The 1881 census has a crew of five on the London, of Rye, at anchor off Dungeness; he was married, 41, master, born Westfield, with a Hastings-born mate, a Danish able seaman, a London-born ordinary seaman, and a 17-year-old Dover-born boy.

In the same census his wife was at 7 North Street, age 44, master mariner’s wife, born Westfield, with four children, and a solicitor’s clerk as a boarder.

The 2 May 1884 issue stated that £64 4s 6d was raised, from which was deducted £5 11s 6d for collecting, printing, advertising and postage. We are told that ‘Geo. Robinson and family return their grateful thanks.’ The money left over was equivalent to about £6200 today. This was in a notice by Putland and Son of 7 London Road. Stephen Putland Jr. was a coal merchant who also owned his own colliers, which were winched up at high tide at a slipway at the bottom of London Road for unloading, as of course there is no harbour. Putland was helping out the family of a man who had once been a competitor.

George Robinson was dead by the 1891 census, when his widow was at 7 North Street with four children and two grandchildren. Age 54, she had no occupation stated, but three of the children did: a clerk, a dressmaker, and a grocer’s apprentice. She died in 1921.