In its time our “People and Faces” spotlight has fallen in many places.

We have featured sportsmen and musicians, tradesmen and actors even councillors, licensees, policemen. We have looked from many angles, as many walks of life.

On this occasion, without apology, we turn the spotlight on one of our colleagues – journalism’s elder statesman in Nelson and Colne.

To us in this remarkable profession compounded of facts and more facts, imagination, printers ink, type metal, hot tea and more sweat on the brow than most people give us credit for he is “Joe” – Mr Joseph Sunter.

Joe Sunter, though, is more than a journalist. He is a man of determination, and a man of no mean literary ability. Under the surface, he is something of wit and raconteur. Without a doubt, he is a character .

To his younger colleagues, he is a friend and counsellor.

To all, he can be a mine of information about almost any facet of journalism – and Colne -one cares to mention. In this respect it is enough to say that when he has been troubled by ill-health as has too often been the case in recent years, the office has been strangely lacking in something without the rattle of the typewriter from his desk.

The story of Joe Sunter the journalist must, of course, predominate in any review of his life , for he has been one of us 50 years . It was in 1911, when he was 16, that he started as a junior reporter on the “Darwen News”.

There is little in common between the polysyllable journalism of those days and that of 1962. Hours were long, wages were low, and the best that could be said of the good reporter in those days was that he was a capable stenographer, able to start at the beginning of the story and make a full note until the end of it.

For good or ill, the whole concept of reporting has changed in Joe’s lifetime-but what applies as much today as it did then is the fact that journalism is more than a job. To those who love it, it is a way of life.

Three years on the “Darwen News” were sufficient to develop that the love of the life in Mr Sunter But when the course of history started to change in 1940 he had no hesitation in volunteering for service ; he joined the Army in September of that year, and served until 1919.

Discharged from the Army, he joined the “Nelson leader,” then under the editorship of the late Mr Tom Morgan. Two years later he moved to the “Lancashire Daily Post,” as district reporter, with an office in Railway Street, Nelson.

From there he went to the Burnley office of the “Northern Daily Telegraph,” transferred some time later to the Accrington office, and then in 1929 at the age of 34, moved to Colne to take the editorship of the “Colne Times.”

Whilst at Burnley, week in week out in the season, he covered Burnley football during the golden years of Dawson, Bob Kelly, Cross and Weaver. At Accrington his job brought him in close touch with Accrington Stanley, at a time when ex-Nelson player Joe Eddleston was with the team.

Earlier still, working at Nelson, he was one of the Pressman covers Blacko Bar disaster, which remains to this day one of the worst accidents local roads have ever seen.

Joe Sunter, as an editor was one who worked with his staff. He could command intellectual respect, yet he was always available to give help and advice. And he was as much accessible to his readers as he was to the staff.

He was, of course, principally a literary type of editor. He specialised in a well turned leading article or some concise note on the towns affairs, and he took it upon himself to become closely associated with the life of Colne.

He was a founder member of the Colne Rotary club, in fact. He was a committee member of the old Literary Society, giving papers before the society as well as regularly attending meetings. He made it his job as an editor to keep in close touch with the town’s civic affairs.

For more than 30 years, Mr Sunter was editor at Colne. Last year, at the age of 66, he retired from the position, but without the necessity of laying down his pen. In a part-time capacity he still writes regularly if not so voluminously as before.

There are, of course, other aspects of Joe Sunter. Side issues, as it were, at all bound up in some way with his journalistic career.

He is a man who is very well read, with a tremendously wide knowledge of literature, able to quote accurately, aptly and with discrimination from an astonishing range of authors.

What may surprise even his closest friends is that, in this respect, his is almost wholly self-taught. From the age of 12 he was brought up in an orphanage near Bolton, for the Thornaby-on-Tees family of ten to which he belonged broke up on his father’s death.

Orphanage life, if tolerable, was spartan, and admitted of none but the barest necessities – of which literature was hardly one. A book of poems which he received whilst there possible sowed the seeds of a love of books and reading, but that love was nurtured solely by himself and his devoted reading in years to come.

Possible too, three early assignments in his “Darwen News” days helped. G. K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, and George Bernard Shaw were three of the distinguished speakers whose lectures he reported as a junior, and one would expect men of this calibre to have some effect on a young man with a thirst for knowledge.

His shorthand he learned from an assistant in the governor’s office at the orphanage and it was this man who first introduced him to Esperanto. This apart, however, it has been left to Joe Sunter’s determination and courage to carry him to a post of responsibility.

His joining the Army in those first days of the war could possibly be put down to that wave of patriotism which swept the country immediately after August, 1914. But not his subsequent conduct.

With the Royal Irish Regiment he took his part in the Gallipoli landings. Then he was sent to France and was wounded at Ypres. He was still in hospital blue in 1918 when he married.

Even then, a life which had given him more than his share of ups and downs, was reserving the cruellest blow. Soon after becoming editor of the “Colne Times” at a time when he had achieved considerable success at an early age, he found his wife was suffering from an incurable disease.

For 26 years, whilst carrying on with his job, and through the second world war when the newspaper’s staff was reduced to two and A.R.P. duties had to be carried out as well, he nursed her.

Courage of a different sort from that needed to wade ashore at Sulva Bay and face the enemy guns in Flanders, but courage all the same.

He displayed that wiry toughness of his later, when he broke his leg and crawled for help – and then insisted on going to the office on crutches. He has displayed it since then when….notwithstanding, he has insisted on remaining associated with his newspaper.

With his memories and a life-time’s accumulation of books for company, Joe now lives alone in a small cottage in Keighley Road, Colne. Not far away lives his son Barry, a teacher, and from time to time he visits his daughter Dorothy, at her home in Cheshire.

Any regrets after a lifetime in journalism?

Can there possible be? Journalism is a way of life, and the most bewitched and attractive calling in the world. Joe Sunter knows that as well as us.

Roger Siddall.

Originally uploaded by timsunter

Address is given as High Street, Howden. Isabella was 32 years old when she died and cause of death is given as “Phthisis 3 months”. Joseph Sunter is the informant and also gives his address as High Street Howden.
Phthisis is the old term for TB.
The certificate is evidence which would indicates Joseph and Isabella were living in Howden in 1883 – just a few hundred metres from where Jane had given birth to Charles Hull Snowball.
When Isabella died Charles must surely have known Jane with her young son. I now suspect it was at Howden, rather than Bishop Auckland where Jane Ann and Charles met.

1877 Hannah Pedley Sunter Birth

Originally uploaded by timsunter

Hannah Pedley Sunter was born to Joseph and Isabella Sunter in 1877 in Bishop Auckland.
I ordered this certificate to find out where the Sunter’s were living in Bishop Auckland and to further investigate what the relationship was to Jane Ann Snowball and the Hulls. There had been a suggestion that the Hull family set up Joseph as a furniture salesman in return for taking Jane off their hands.
Isabella died early in 1883. Joseph remarried to Jane Ann Snowball later that year. This certificate shows that before the marriage Joseph was working as a ‘Grocer’s Warehousman’ and living in Edward Street, Bishop Auckland.

What our ancestors were up to according to the 1901 Census…

Sunter

1901 Census which shows that Charles Sunter is aged 19, a railway Stoker, and living at 5 Victoria Street, Thornaby. 

Thornaby is in Stockport and just to the South East of Unicorn Yard and Brunswick Street.  I cannot find Victoria Street on Google Earth although there is a Victoria Road.

The household is composed of:

• Jane A Sunter, head, widow, 57, Leadgale
• William Sunter, stepson, single, 29, Labourer Iron Works, Yorkshire Heights Swaledale
• Charles Sunter, son, single, 19, Railway Engin (sic) Stoker, Howden Le Wear
• Dorothy Sunter, daughter, 13, Yorkshire Redcar
• Gertrude Sunter, daughter, 11, Yorkshire Redcar
• Olive J Sunter, daughter, 10, Stockton
• Joseph Sunter, son, 6, Thornaby
• Edward Sunter, son, 3, Thornaby

Rick McGarry points out that Jane had a further son, James, in 1901. This implies that she must have been pregnant at the time of the census. Presumably William and Charles are a source of income for the family.

 Marsh family

John William Marsh (33), Jane Marsh (34) and Emma Marsh (7) are living in Leeds, Yorkshire. John is listed as being born in Leeds and is a Pit Sinker; Jane was born in Liverpool; and Emma is listed as being born in Rotherham, Yorkshire.

Emma’s sister, Amy (15), is living at 76 Kieghley Road, Halifax. She is a servant in the Driver household. James driver, the head of the househod is a 28 year old Gas Engineer’s Cashier. His brother in law, Thomas Ask is a solicitor’s clerk.

Merediths

Edward Meredith (24) is living in lodging at 25 Norton Road Stourbridge. He is boarding with Walter and Caroline Knowles. Edward is a carter for a wine merchant (the career his is to follow for the rest of his life). Walter is a carter for a corn dealer. There are several other carters and a glass blower living in nearby houses.

Edward’s parents, Joseph and Ann, and his brother – also Joseph – are living in Kingsford Lane, Kinver. Joseph snr is an ‘ordinary agricultural labourer’. Joseph jnr is a ‘Groom domestic’.

Hills

The Hill family (12 of them) are Farm bailiffs at Castle Hill Farm, Wolverley. Alfred Hill is a Farm Bailiff and has responsibility for running the farm. Alfred, 19, and Fred, 15 are farm labourers. Frances May – “Auntie May” is an 8 month old baby.
 
 

Edward (34), Ada (34), Gertrude (1) and Edward Meredith (4) living at 3 Bath Cottages, Cecil Street Stourbridge. They have three singers lodging with them. 
Joseph and Ann Meredith are living alone at Bird’s Barn, Kingsley, Wolverley.

Hill

Alfred (61), Alice (56), Edward (21), Sidney Walter (16), Amy Maud (14), James Earnest (12) and Frances May (10) are living at Beehive Farm, Golden Cross Lane, Catshill near Bromsgrove. Alfred , Sidney Walter and Edward are listed as farm workers and then more specifically as ‘haulers’ working on their own account.

Sunter (and Marsh)

Charles Sunter (29) is living with his soon to be wife, Emma Marsh (17). She is pregnant. They are boarding with Emma’s parents John William Marsh (45) and a Lodging House Keeper, his wife Jane (46) and their other daughter Amy Dawson who is registered on the census as married, although her husband is not with her on this night. Charles is an unemployed ‘fireman, locomotive’.

Of Charles’s family Jane Ann Sunter, his mother is in the Middlesbrough Workhouse. She is 46, a widow and working as ‘relife (sic) foster mother’ helping to look after 12 boys aged from 5 to 15. Ironically she is not looking after her own children:

Joe Sunter (16) and Edward (13) are living at the Edgworth National Children’s home near Bolton. Joe is listed as an office boy – it is believed he went on to be editor of the Colne Times. Edward became a Congregationalist minister and died in 1964 near Halifax.

A third son, James (9) is living at Long Melford in Suffolk with watch maker Robert Henry Miles (55) and his wife of two years Unity (57). Robert’s son, Reginald Victor Miles (15), a post office messenger is also living with them, along with another boarder Albert Blake, also aged 9.  

Grace Elizabeth (26) married Alexander Crombie (45) in 1908. They are living with their one year old daughter Annie Rebecca at ‘Cottage rear f 89 High Street, Esplanade, Recar, Yorkshire’.

Of Dorothy (23), Gertrude (21) and Olive (20) there is no trace in the 1911 Census. There are possible records of a marriage of a Dorothy H Sunter in 1926 and Gertrude Sunter to John McKinnel in Stockton in 1923.

Jane Ann Sunter also had two step children from Joseph’s first marriage to Isabella.

William Sunter (38) is now living at Redcar at 3 North Terrace Coatham. He is a Labourer cycle manufacturer. He is boarding with 55 years old widow Margaret Graham and her son ‘Jn’ who is 25 and whose occupation is described as ‘slater house’ – possibly slaughter house?

A record of Hannah Sunter cannot be found on the 1911 census.

Which leaves further research questions: 

• Where were Fred’s uncle and aunt’s Meredith?
• Who is missing and where were they?

By 1881 the Merediths, Joseph and Ann were living at Checkhill – not far from where Ashwood Nurseries are today. The Hills were alive and well and living at Highgrove – between Kinver and the Whitington pub.

But tragedy was not far away for the Meredith family. Two young children were to die, whilst there mother was to suffer a still born child within two months.

The family bible records that Ellen L Meredith, just 1 year old when recorded in this sentence, was to die on January 12th 1884. Within a month on 5th February a second blow hit the family. George Meredith, aged just eight days short of his third birthday. Two months after that and a child was delivered still born to Joseph and Ann. A truly tragic time.

The excellent website A Vision of Britain Through Time produces statistics based on enumeration districts gives a good breakdown of age in Kinver at this time. This shows that the distribution of ages was not unusual. Many families did have young children.

.

Sadly though the infant mortality rate was also high. One can only assume that the child death rate was also high. But it is doubtful whether the higher child death rates at the time made the loss any less traumatic for the parents of those involved.

1881 Census – Checkhill Kinver

Joseph Meredith, Head, Married, 39, Ag La, Staffordshire, Wollaston

Ann Meredith, Wife, Married, 39, Staffs Enville

Joseph, Son, 10, Scholar, Staffs Kinver

Maria, Daughter, 8, Staffs Brierley Hill

Caroline M Meredith, daughter,6, Scholar, Staffs Brierley Hill

Edward Meredith, son, 3, Staffs Brierley Hill

Ellen L Meredith, Daughter, 1, Staffs Enville

1881 Census – Highgrove, Kinver – High Grove Farm (Ecclesiatical District of Whittington)

Alfred Hill, Head, Married, 28, Shepherd, Staffordshire, Wolverley

Alice Hill, Wife, Married, 26, Warwickshire Stratford on Avon

Ada K Hill, Daughter, 4, Worcestershire, Hagley

Alice M Hill, Daughter 2, Worcestershire, Hagley

The facts…

Charles is born on 12th March 1882. The Snowball family website states that Charles is the offspring of the marriage of Joseph Sunter and Jane Anne Snowball.

Joseph and Jane got married on 14th September 1883 – a full 18 months after Charles was born. So he was illegitimate.

Remember Joseph was married to Isabella. She was living away from the area in the 1881 census. Was the relationship on the rock even then.

Isabella died in the first quarter of 1883 leaving the way open for Joseph to marry Jane.

Could Charles have been Isabella’s son? I don’t think so. In the 1901 Census data Jane is a widow and head of household. Isabella and Joseph’s son, William, is listed as her stepson. Charles is listed as her own son.

What would the effect of this be on Charles? William, surely, would have known the full story – Charles must have known. Given the social norms of the time what effect would this have had on Charles’ outlook? Could this help to explain the mystery disappearance when Lofty was a child?
 

1851 William Sunter has married Hannah.  They are my great, great grandparents.  The family still live at Lodge Green where William is a Grocer and Draper.  They have a young family – Thomas (6), James (4) and Joseph (2).  William and Hannah Sunter are my great great grandparents.

1861 Thomas James and Joseph are all working as lead miners.  Joseph is just 12 years old.  William and Mary now have expanded their family with William (9), George (7), Mally (2) and Ann (2 months).

1870 final quarter – Joseph Sunter and Isabella Guy get married in the distric of Reeth, North Riding of Yorkshire (vol 9 p1031).

1871  In addition to being a draper and grocer, William is now also the postmaster at Lodge Green.  The children are growing up and Joseph, now aged 22, has married Isabella.  Together they lodge at the family home.  Joseph and Isabella Sunter are my great grand parents.

1881 There is no census record of Joseph.  However Isabella appears to be living at 106 Edge Land, West Derby, Lancashire and is a milk dealer.  There is a son, William, who is 9 and a ‘scholar’.  Hannah is her daugher, she is aged 3 and was born and Bishop Auckland.  Matty Sunter lives with her.

1883 first quarter.  Isabella dies.

1891 Joseph has remarried – to Jane Anne Snowball.  They have moved to 21 Grove Street, Stockton on Tees.  A short distance from where Lofty was to be born in Brunswick Street.  Joseph’s son William from his marriage to Isabella is now 19 and living with them.  Joseph and Anne have a young family – Grace, Dorothy, Gertrude and Cleva.  Charles is 9 years old but is away the night of the census.  Joseph and Jane are my great grandparents.

1901 Joseph has died.  Widow Jane now lives with her family in Victoria Street, Thornaby, Stockton.  Charles, her son, is 19 and is a stoker on the railways.

1911 Charles is now lodgin at Unicorn Yard, West Street.  The family which runs the lodging (and there are 20 people living there) is called Marsh.  At the head of the family is John William Marsh who is married to Jane.  They have a daughter Emma who is just 17 years old.  The positioning on the census has Charles as the first of the lodgers listed – could this be because he is having a relationship with Emma?

The answer is almost certainly yes.  Charles marries Emma in 1911.  Charles and Emma are my grand parents.

19th November 1917 – John William Sunter is born at 62 Brunswick Street.  John is my father.

Forgive me whilst I jump around a bit here.  Stick with me and it will make sense.

First of all in 1861 in the Hamlet of Lodge Green, Gunnerside, Melbecks (and each of these names are used to fill in census forms between 1841 and 1901) we have the following data:

• William Sunter, 37, head, Gunnerside, , 1824, Grocer and Draper

• Hannah Sunter, 36, wife, Blades Yorkshire, abt 1825, Grocer’s wife

• Thomas Sunter, 16, son, Gunnerside, abt 1845, Lead miner

• James Sunter, 14, son, Gunnershide, abt 1847, Lead miner

• Joseph Sunter, 12, son, Gunnerside, abt 1849 lead miner

• William Sunter, 9, son, Gunnerside, abt 1852, scholar

• George Sunter, 7, son, Gunnerside, abt 1854, scholar

• Mally Sunter 2, daughter, Gunnerside, abt 1859, scholar

• Ann Sunter 2months, daugher, Gunnerside

This is important.  Look at the whole family and then look at the next posting…Census 1871

 Rather horrifically it also appears that at 12 years old Joseph was a lead miner!