John McCulloch
Hugh Stowell Brown describes how John McCulloch found his father Rev. Robert Brown collapsed in the snow on 28/11/1846
"A day or two afterwards I was summoned home. My father's health had been improving during the autumn ; a visit to Ramsey had done him good, and he had quite resumed his duties. But now the sad news had come that my brother Robert, who had gone out to the Bahamas in the spring of the year, had died of yellow fever; while my brother Harry, a lad of thirteen, was dying at home of gastric fever; and my father had been so affected that in his anguish he asked me to return.
I went and found Harry a corpse, and the household in great grief. There had been no death in the family for more than twenty years, and when it came, it came with crushing effect. I remained at home a fortnight or more. My father's spirit revived. I drove out every day with him, and told him stories at which he heartily laughed. He resumed his duties; the cloud had blown over; the double affliction was borne by him in a patient and submissive spirit; my father's state of mind was better than I have ever knownı it.
So things stood, when on Saturday night, Nov. 28th, I again left home, intending to go to Stratford, and remain there until the College at Bristol should re-open after Christmas. It was a dark, cold, wintry night, with heavy snow, as I drove to Douglas with old John McCulloch, the man-servant, who was to take back the phaeton. I went on board the old 'King Orry,' and remembered nothing of the passage save that it was long and dark. I went on the Sunday morning to Great George Street Chapel, and heard for the first time Dr. Ruffles, who was just then becoming an old man, and whose best days were over. In the evening I took the train to Stratford, arriving next morning. Telegraphic communication was then in its infancy. There was no cable to the Isle of Man; I think that there was no public telegraphy in England at all; but the Railway Companies were introducing the wire for their own uses.
On the Thursday morning I received a letter that appalled me. My father, made anxious by the weather, had gone out just after I had left, intending to follow me to Douglas, and beg me not to go across to Liverpool on such a horrid night. The man-servant on his return had nearly reached the Vicarage, when the horse shied and would not go on. The object that terrified him proved to be my poor father's corpse lying cold in the snow upon the road. He was soon got home, and all that could be done to revive him was done, but he had been dead more than an hour; my opinion is that it was an apoplectic fit that carried him off. Luckily I saw that there was a steamer from Fleetwood to Douglas on the Friday. Leaving Stratford on Thursday afternoon, I got to Fleetwood in time, and was at the Vicarage on the Friday evening. We were all utterly stunned by the disaster.
The funeral took place on the next day, and then we began to reflect on our position. My father had not insured his life; he left nothing but a little ready money, perhaps £100, but happily he did not die in debt. We knew that we should have to leave the Vicarage in the course of two or three months.
We were eight in number—my mother; myself; my brother Will, then serving his apprenticeship as a sailor, and far away in the Pacific Ocean; my brother Tom, sixteen years old; Alfred, seven years; and my three sisters, Dora, Margaret, and Harriet, aged respectively seventeen, twelve, and ten. We had £100, and the poor furniture in the house, and none of us was earning or, myself excepted, could earn a shilling. What was now to be done ? My mother's sister, Miss Thomson, had a little income of her own. It was proposed that she should live with my mother. The parishioners raised a sum of between £300 and £400 for our help; my mother and her children, while under age, were claimants for certain clergy charities. Altogether, perhaps £120 a year might be reckoned upon. With such prospects we entered upon the year 1847, and early in that year my mother removed to Castletown. As for me, the scheme of going to Bristol was knocked on the head, and never had I been more at a loss to know what course to steer.
"A day or two afterwards I was summoned home. My father's health had been improving during the autumn ; a visit to Ramsey had done him good, and he had quite resumed his duties. But now the sad news had come that my brother Robert, who had gone out to the Bahamas in the spring of the year, had died of yellow fever; while my brother Harry, a lad of thirteen, was dying at home of gastric fever; and my father had been so affected that in his anguish he asked me to return.
I went and found Harry a corpse, and the household in great grief. There had been no death in the family for more than twenty years, and when it came, it came with crushing effect. I remained at home a fortnight or more. My father's spirit revived. I drove out every day with him, and told him stories at which he heartily laughed. He resumed his duties; the cloud had blown over; the double affliction was borne by him in a patient and submissive spirit; my father's state of mind was better than I have ever knownı it.
So things stood, when on Saturday night, Nov. 28th, I again left home, intending to go to Stratford, and remain there until the College at Bristol should re-open after Christmas. It was a dark, cold, wintry night, with heavy snow, as I drove to Douglas with old John McCulloch, the man-servant, who was to take back the phaeton. I went on board the old 'King Orry,' and remembered nothing of the passage save that it was long and dark. I went on the Sunday morning to Great George Street Chapel, and heard for the first time Dr. Ruffles, who was just then becoming an old man, and whose best days were over. In the evening I took the train to Stratford, arriving next morning. Telegraphic communication was then in its infancy. There was no cable to the Isle of Man; I think that there was no public telegraphy in England at all; but the Railway Companies were introducing the wire for their own uses.
On the Thursday morning I received a letter that appalled me. My father, made anxious by the weather, had gone out just after I had left, intending to follow me to Douglas, and beg me not to go across to Liverpool on such a horrid night. The man-servant on his return had nearly reached the Vicarage, when the horse shied and would not go on. The object that terrified him proved to be my poor father's corpse lying cold in the snow upon the road. He was soon got home, and all that could be done to revive him was done, but he had been dead more than an hour; my opinion is that it was an apoplectic fit that carried him off. Luckily I saw that there was a steamer from Fleetwood to Douglas on the Friday. Leaving Stratford on Thursday afternoon, I got to Fleetwood in time, and was at the Vicarage on the Friday evening. We were all utterly stunned by the disaster.
The funeral took place on the next day, and then we began to reflect on our position. My father had not insured his life; he left nothing but a little ready money, perhaps £100, but happily he did not die in debt. We knew that we should have to leave the Vicarage in the course of two or three months.
We were eight in number—my mother; myself; my brother Will, then serving his apprenticeship as a sailor, and far away in the Pacific Ocean; my brother Tom, sixteen years old; Alfred, seven years; and my three sisters, Dora, Margaret, and Harriet, aged respectively seventeen, twelve, and ten. We had £100, and the poor furniture in the house, and none of us was earning or, myself excepted, could earn a shilling. What was now to be done ? My mother's sister, Miss Thomson, had a little income of her own. It was proposed that she should live with my mother. The parishioners raised a sum of between £300 and £400 for our help; my mother and her children, while under age, were claimants for certain clergy charities. Altogether, perhaps £120 a year might be reckoned upon. With such prospects we entered upon the year 1847, and early in that year my mother removed to Castletown. As for me, the scheme of going to Bristol was knocked on the head, and never had I been more at a loss to know what course to steer.