Golden Dawn members: WILLIAM RANSTEAD, his life-by-dates from 1896 to August 1900
THE LAYOUT BELOW which I pioneered with Isabel de Steiger many years ago. I hope it isn’t too difficult to follow: what William was doing, will be in italics. My comments, and the sources, appear in my usual Times New Roman.
For more information on Margaret Ranstead and the children; and William’s employer, the Gandy Belt Manufacturing Co Ltd; see the life-by-dates file covering 1891 to end 1895.
Below I’ll be referring to William’s entry in the New Zealand DNB as a source: it’s at
https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/3r3/ranstead-william
CONTINUING THE LIFE-BY-DATES 1890s
MID-FEBRUARY 1896
William was the first member of The Clarion’s board to hear about what became known as The Clarion Van. The van in question was the van he had at Tilston, already used as a soup kitchen in Liverpool during the winter of 1895. When he found out what it was wanted for now, he offered the van for use with the scheme, with a tent and other equipment.
Comments by Sally Davis: Julia Dawson described a scheme using the van to William when he spent an evening with her and her husband Harry Myddelton Worrall. Van’s were already used by some campaigning organisations to put up posters. The Worralls’ genius was in suggesting that a van could make a summer progress through rural areas, stopping at small towns. It would be manned by volunteers who would make speeches and hand out pamphlets explaining socialism. Julia’s own, radical, contribution was that most of the volunteers who accompanied the van should be women.
Sources:
The Clarion Sat 29 February 1896 p72 where Julia made her first announcement of the scheme to her women’s column readers, and called for a lot of help from them: funds; donations in kind (a horse, particularly – William couldn’t supply one of those); volunteers; and suggestions as to what route the van should follow.
The Labour Annual volume 3 1897 p184 with an account of the scheme by Julia Dawson stating that the travelling van had been her husband Harry’s idea.
Earlier uses of a van for publicity:
Fellowship is Life: The National Clarion Cycling Club 1895-1995 by Denis Pye. Clarion Publishing 1995 p37: the Land Restoration League used a red van at outdoor events; and the Land Nationalisation Society a yellow one.
APRIL 1896
An article on agriculture, written in The Clarion by William as Candid Friend, led to a lot of correspondence.
Exasperated comment by Sally Davis as a person interested in food security. I’ve allowed a lot of coverage to William’s article and its aftermath, for two reasons: most of the issues William raised in 1896 about British agriculture have not been resolved and are thus just as relevant today; and the sequence of article and responses is another indication that the Ransteads’ decision in 1900 to become farmers in New Zealand didn’t come out of the blue.
Sources:
The Clarion Sat 25 April 1896 p130 in which William took issue with a pamphlet by Sir Arthur Cotton advocating intensive agriculture, based on Cotton’s own experiments with wheat. In his article William put forward a scheme to bring work to rural areas: that parish councils should be given the powers to borrow money to buy estates that came up for sale; which would be divided into smaller plots and sold or rented to young people. In a first reference to something he wrote about again, he said that the UK had become dependent on imported apples rather than growing its own. And he noted that the Independent Labour Party had put off discussing Leonard Hall’s motion about land nationalisation. William was annoyed about the ILP’s reluctance to tackle the issue as for him, the nationalisation of land had to be “first on our programme of national reform”. He had written the article in The Clarion hoping to start a discussion, though he said in it that he thought it was about time some action took place rather than just talk.
Sir Arthur Cotton (1803-99) is in DNB 1901 Supplement volume 2, ODNB, at www.gracesguide, and has a wikipedia page. After a career as a drainage engineer and surveyor in the Madras [Chennai] Presidency, Cotton had retired to Surrey. The pamphlet William had been reading was originally a talk given at the Balloon Society on 3 February 1893 and then printed for Cotton as Lecture on Agriculture by R J Clark of Dorking. In 1896 the Clarion published the 3rd edition as its Clarion Pamphlet Number 11; probably at William’s instigation.
Replies to William’s article began to be published the Clarion’s postbag eg The Clarion Sat 23 May 1896 p166. William was reading the letters with care and he too started to write to the letters page, eg The Clarion Sat 30 May 1896 p174 in which he suggested that those who were interested in agriculture could gain a lot from reading issues of the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society.
One Clarion reader, Henry R G Gogay (who became a regular writer to the letters page) took the trouble to visit Cotton: The Clarion Sat 4 July 1896 p214: A Visit to Sir Arthur Cotton, by H R G Gogay. William responded to Gogay’s description of Cotton’s experimental fields as “Wm Ranstead” in The Clarion Sat 11 July 1896 p222. In his reply he stated that he wasn’t sure that England would be able to feed itself, even if Cotton’s ideas on intensive agriculture were put into practice.
A few sources for Gogay though there’s a lot more online than I’ve put here:
At www.salvationarmy.org.uk the Grotesque Removal Laws, an article which refers to another article in the Salvation Army’s magazine The Darkest England Gazette issue of 20 January 1894: The Grotesque Removal Laws: A Tale of Today; written by Gogay as a Poor Law Guardian at St Saviour’s South London.
At the Wellcome Collection online, you can see 40th Annual Report of the vestry of St Mary Newington, issued in 1895. On p14 vestryman Gogay mentioned in connection with the statistics for deaths in Newington.
William’s letter on Gogay’s visit to Sir Arthur Cotton brought some replies in The Clarion 18 July 1896 p230 including one making reference to Kropotkin’s The Coming Reign of Plenty. William duly wrote back in The Clarion 25 July 1896 p237. He ended his letter by explaining that one of the reasons he’d moved to the country was to “get at facts first-hand”. His conclusions, based on his observation and reading, were that farming in England would become unprofitable, unless 2 things were done:
- tariffs on imported agricultural goods were introduced; which he didn’t want
- the national Government enacted his parish council scheme, enabling people who had left the land in search of regular work to return.
Pyotr Kropotkin’s article The Coming Reign of Plenty was published, in English, in The Nineteenth Century volume 23, issue of June 1888. It was included in the anthology Fields, Facts and Workshops Tomorrow published London: Hutchinson and Co 1899.
In general, The Clarion’s readers were an urban bunch: references to agriculture in The Clarion declined in the next few months and the subject was hardly mentioned in the years after. Someone at The Clarion was keeping an eye out for Sir Arthur Cotton, however: a letter from him, originally in the Manchester Guardian, was printed in The Clarion 21 January 1899 p24 General Cotton’s Experiments in Agriculture. Perhaps the ‘someone’ was William.
BY MAY 1896
William had joined the Cyclists’ Touring Club.
Sources:
CTC Monthly Gazette volume 15 issue of May 1896 p239 in a list, presumably of members: W Ranstead of Tilston.
On the CTC, by Sally Davis: originally founded in Yorkshire in 1878, the club renamed itself the CTC in 1883, by which time it had around 10,000 members – women included – and offices at 139-140 Fleet Street. As well as organising cycling days out and recommending pubs and hostels, it was a campaigning organisation, working for the legal and other recognition of cycling. Its successes included the Local Government Act of 1888 which established the cyclist’s right to use the roadway; gaining access for cyclists to the royal parks; and improving the state of the roads. It still exists, as Cycling UK.
Sources: wikipedia; and www.cyclinguk.org.
LAST WEEK OF MAY 1896
Julia Dawson and her family went to stay with the Ransteads at Tilston.
Comment by Sally Davis: Julia doesn’t state who exactly went to stay with the Ransteads, but – unlike the Ransteads – her family was a small one, just her, her husband Harry Myddelton Worrall, and their only child, Dorothy, then aged 10. Harry Worrall was born in Liverpool in 1861 and grew up in Litherland; he may have been a childhood friend of William and his sisters. On leaving school he’d gone to work for one of Liverpool’s shipping companies in its accounts department. He had married Julia Dawson in 1885. On their visit to Tilston, the Worralls were met at the station by William and his son Jack (John Morris Ranstead born 1884) in a pony and trap. Later they met Bessie (born 1888), riding a red Clarion bicycle; and Tommy (Thomas Lawrence, born 1889) on a donkey. Julia noted that as well as the pony trap, the Ransteads owned a governess cart. Two carriages! – owned by a couple who in childhood will have gone almost everywhere on foot. However – see below – having a carriage brought its own problems.
Sources:
The Clarion Sat 23 May 1896 p168 and Sat 30 May 1897 p176.
Julia was intending to “wander along the flowery Cheshire lanes, romp with the children” and discuss intensive agriculture with William and Margaret; but of course her main purpose was to take a good look at their van, which Margaret Ranstead was in the process of filling with all the items donated so far by Clarion readers for its summer journey.
SATURDAY 13 JUNE 1896
William and Margaret cycled over to Chester Town Hall to see the Clarion van off on its first summer journey; after speeches and music beginning at 4.30pm.
Sources:
The Clarion Sat 30 May 1896 p176 giving readers full details of the sending-off event and announcing that ‘Lone Scout’ – the Ransteads’ activist friend Robert Manson – would take charge of the van for its first week. The Clarion Sat 13 June 1896 p196 requested that Clarion readers who were going to the send-off wear something to identify themselves – red pins, or a Clarion badge.
The Clarion Sat 20 June 1896 p198 and p200 account of the sending-off, at which Robert Manson and John Edwards (of the Fabian Society in Liverpool) made speeches; and Julia Dawson shook a lot of hands but was too overcome to make a speech. As well as the Ransteads, Alexander Thompson – The Clarion’s writer/editor Dangle – was there with his wife Fanny. The band played the Marseillaise as the van moved off, followed by 50 cyclists and a large crowd on foot.
If William could cycle from Tilston to Chester, he was still in one piece at that point.
SUMMER 1896
The Ransteads had two accidents while out with their pony and trap. In one, the trap ran over William’s foot and he had to have his leg in a splint for a while. In the other Margaret, and Robert Blatchford’s wife Sarah, were both thrown out of the trap; but neither was badly hurt.
Source for what I read to be two accidents rather than one: My Eighty Years by Robert Blatchford – Nunquam. London etc: Cassell and Co Ltd 1931. On pp214.
SUMMER 1896
William’s much younger sister Helena Mary Ranstead married Charles Alfred Francis Dimoline. As their father had died many years before, William – if able to walk – will have given the bride away.
Source: freebmd marriage registration and information at //ancestors.familysearch.org. Charles and Helena had five children.
Charles Dimoline (1869-1935) spent most of his working life in the offices of the Gandy Belt Manufacturing Co Ltd; so in 1896, if he had joined the firm by then, William was his boss. Charles became the firm’s secretary, probably in 1901 when a new limited company was launched, and ended his career as its managing director.
Sources: freebmd; probate registry; census returns though he turned out to be rather elusive on those and I haven’t been able to find out much about his family background.
Charles Dimoline at Gandy’s:
Stock Exchange Year-Book 1908 in list of miscellaneous companies: Gandy Belt Manufacturing Co Ltd. The list of its current directors doesn’t include anyone called Gandy or anyone who was a director in the 1880s. Company Secretary: C A Dimoline.
Timber and Wood Working Machinery volume 25 1913 p715 with Dimoline still company secretary only.
Proceedings… of the Chartered Institute of Secretaries volumes covering 1906 to 1915: C A F Dimoline, Secretary and Works Manager of the Gandy Belt Manufacturing Co Ltd. There’s a date -1903, probably the year he was elected a member of the Institute.
Liverpool Echo 26 February 1935 p8 death notice for Charles Alfred Francis Dimoline, who “for some years until retirement was MD of the Gandy Belt Manufacturing Co”.
Rubber Journal volumes 89-90 1935 an obituary saying that he’d been “associated” with Gandys for 40 years.
Liverpool Echo 16 May 1935 p4 a few details of his Will.
25 OCTOBER 1896
Edward Francis Fay, one of The Clarion’s owners, who wrote for it as The Bounder, died, aged 42.
Sources:
Leeds Times Sat 31 October 1896 p5; death notice. The Clarion issue of Sat 31 October 1896 p345, the front page, which has a black-bordered rectangle In Memoriam Edward Francis Fay. Plenty of other coverage of his life in the rest of that issue and in the next few weeks some of The Bounder’s more memorable articles were reprinted.
The Bounder: The Story of a Man, by His Friend anon but generally assumed to be by Robert Blatchford. Published 1900. Part 1.
Comment by Sally Davis: William may not have known Fay as well as he had come to know the other three proprietors of The Clarion, as Fay lived in London. However, a man dying so suddenly at such a young age...
21 NOVEMBER 1896
A short letter about apple imports and prices was published in The Clarion, signed “Farmer Bill”.
Comment by Sally Davis: see above, William had written to The Clarion about apples before; so I assume ‘farmer bill’ is him. The writer also mentioned the amount of land that was being turned over to pasture, saying that it should be planted with orchards.
Source: The Clarion issue of 21 November 1896 p374.
1 JANUARY 1897 NEW YEAR’S DAY
The Ransteads went to a Cinderella party at Liverpool Socialist Hall, 228 Falkner Street. Their children Bessie, Jack, Willie and Tom performed part of the entertainment,“piano pieces and nigger (sic) songs in costume”.
Source including the use of the word nigger, which of course caused no comment at the time:
The Clarion 16 January 1897 p24 Julia Dawson’s women’s column in which she covered three Cinderella club meetings.
Comments on the Cinderellas by Sally Davis: it hasn’t been easy to find information on them, because they were organised very locally; but they were events for working-class children, a party, with food and fun – fun being something the children had precious little of in their lives. The idea came from Robert Blatchford and pre-dated the founding of The Clarion. Any group could organise a Cinderella party but in The Clarion, Julia Dawson promoted the ones founded by socialists and organised a national umbrella group; for a few months in 1897, her husband Harry Worrall was secretary of the Liverpool socialist Cinderella.
Other sources from the time:
For example Julia Dawson’s women’s column: The Clarion Sat 2 Jan 1897 p8 women’s column; 23 January 1897 p32; and pretty regularly through 1897. The national organisation: The Clarion Sat 24 December 1897 p424 with a list of recent donations.
Harry as secretary: The Clarion 5 June 1897 p182 postbag; letter from Harry Worrall calling for volunteers. Though most Cinderellas took place in winter, the Liverpool socialist Cinderella was organising an afternoon of games etc at Sefton Park on Sat 12 June; with cricket and swimming.
Mrs Dean taking over as secretary of the Liverpool Cinderella: The Clarion Sat 24 December 1897 p424.
More recent sources:
Via www.cosmobooks.co.uk an article in Journal of North West Labour History 2017 about Robert Blatchford as the originator of the idea; saying the first Cinderella event was held in Manchester in 1889.
Modernism and British Socialism by Thomas P Linehan 2012 p113: confirming the Cinderellas as Robert Blatchford’s idea and tying down the date of the first event to October 1889 in Manchester. Linehan quotes Alexander Mattock Thompson, that there may have been 33 branches of the national organisation at one time.
A Cinderella club was mentioned in Leeds Mercury 18 April 1890; quoted in a blog by retired professor of history Dr Bruce Rosen of Tasmania at vichist.blogspot.com. He notes that the Cinderellas were closely connection to the Labour churches, a Christian socialist movement started in Manchester in 1891 by John Trevor.
The Liverpool socialist Cinderella:
Mrs Brown is a Man and a Brother: Women in Merseyside’s Political Organisations by Krista Cowman. Liverpool University Press 2004: pp62-63.
For more on The Clarion and the Cinderella clubs, and William Ranstead’s involvement, see below August 1897.
BY 1898
William had joined the Land Nationalisation Society and become a member of its General Council.
Sources:
Report of the Land Nationalisation Society 1883-84 published by the Literary Depot 185 Fleet St: p3 lists the Council members, none of whom are living on the Wirral though there is one (not William) in Liverpool. On p25 the Society’s contact in New Zealand was named and on p26 the newspaper the Otago Witness was mentioned as one that was giving the Society’s aims a fair hearing.
Still no sign of William as a member in the Report of the Land Nationalisation Society 1890-91; published at the Society’s office at 14 Southampton Street: [p2] list of Council members.
17th Annual Report of the Land Nationalisation Society covering 1897-98 and published 1898: p4 in the list of Genl Council Members: W Ranstead of Tilston; Joseph Edwards of Labour Annual, who lived in Liverpool; GD member Rev T Travers Sherlock BA of Smethwick though I’m not suggesting that he and William ever met; and just noting T J Cobden-Sanderson of Hammersmith.
20th Annual Report of the Land Nationalisation Society, published 1901: p3 does not have William’s name amongst the members of the General Council.
Comment by Sally Davis and see entry for April 1896: I think William’s decision to join this Society was a reaction to the lack of enthusiasm for land reform at that drastic scale amongst socialists. The Independent Labour Party was reluctant to discuss it; the Land Nationalisation Society was trying to do something about it.
The Land Nationalisation Society was the idea of Alfred Russel Wallace and he had launched it with a speech given in January 1882.
Sources for the Land Nationalisation Society:
//people.wku.edu is the Alfred Russel Wallace page at Western Kentucky University. One of the items there is a reproduction of Wallace’s speech, given on 16 January 1882 at the Westminster Palace Hotel and published at the time in the Echo newspaper. Wallace’s arguments hit at the basis of landed society: he said that private ownership of land is inherently wrong; so that all land should be owned by the state, though any buildings standing on a particular piece of land should be owned by the residents. These principles were set down as the aims of the Society and Wallace continued to advocate them as the Society’s president for 30 years. His book on the subject was reprinted 10 times during his lifetime.
Land Nationalisation by Alfred Russel Wallace was dedicated to the working men of England – something William might have appreciated. Published London: Swan Sonnenschein and Co. And New York though not until 1892: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
At website //cooperative-individualism.org the pages of The School of Cooperative Individualism there’s the reprint of a letter by Wallace that William might have read in the Liverpool Daily Post of 4 December 1883: What Land Nationalisation would mean in England. The pages also have a copy of The Nationalisation of the Land published London: Kegan Paul Trench and Co 1884 having originally an article in Contemporary Review December 1883. Its author was Samuel Smith, at that time one of Liverpool’s MPs.
Sources for Samuel Smith: wikipedia; original DNB Supplement 1912. Smith was like William Ranstead’s father John: born in Scotland but finding work in Liverpool. He arrived in Liverpool to work for a cotton broker in 1853 and became an authority on cotton trading, writing about it as ‘Mercator’. He was elected to Parliament in December 1882 via a by-election but lost the seat in the General Election of 1885.
Perhaps as a result of Samuel Smith’s promotion of land nationalisation, a branch of the national Society was set up in Liverpool in 1885. However, I haven’t been able to spot William at any of the meetings I’ve read about:
The Democrat: A Weekly Journal for Men and Women 1 April 1885 p5 reported the visit to Liverpool of one of the Land Nationalisation Society’s most active speakers and writers, Helen Taylor. She gave two talks, which The Democrat noted didn’t get much coverage in a city it described as “beer and bible”. However, as a result of her visit, a local branch of the Society had been formed.
The Democrat: A Weekly Journal for Men and Women 26 September 1885 p103 reported on one of the Liverpool branch’s meetings, at which W A Newcombe gave a talk on the Land Laws and Homestead System of Australia and New Zealand. The report named those who took part in the subsequent discussion; William wasn’t one of them.
The Democrat: A Weekly Journal for Men and Women 7 November 1885 p151 reported another meeting, at which William Knight spoke about emigration and property ownership. Again, William wasn’t mentioned as one of the people who discussed the subject after the talk.
FEBRUARY 1897
William was hoping that this year’s Easter meeting of Clarion cycle clubs would be held in Chester.
Source: The Clarion Sat 20 February 1897 p63 in the Cycling Notes column: text of a letter from William saying the choice of venue was now a 2-horse race between Chester, and Larner Sugden’s suggestion of Leek – which happened to be Sugden’s home town. The National Committee was due to meet shortly, to decide between them. William was laying 5-4 on, that Chester would be picked.
Comment by Sally Davis: I’m puzzled as to why William was writing to The Clarion about the Easter meeting: I thought he was on the National Committee and could vote on the choice himself. Maybe he had resigned from it. In any case, let’s hope he didn’t actually place a bet: Leek was chosen. It turned out to be a poor choice, being too hilly for good and easy cycling. William got his way in 1898.
EASTER 1897 – 15 to 19 April
William went to the Clarion cycling clubs’ weekend at Leek.
Sources for the Leek meeting:
The Clarion Sat 24 April 1897 p135 in the Cycling Notes column, report on the Easter meeting, in Leek. The writer, Haydon Perry, mentioned a chat he’d had with William during the weekend, so William did attend it despite it not being his preferred venue. It was during this meeting that the National Committee of the Clarion cycling clubs was disbanded by Robert Blatchford, on the grounds that it didn’t do much. He was wrong about that - it did do something rather important:
MAY 1897
William wrote to The Clarion’s other proprietors, proposing that the newspaper take over the cycling clubs’ ‘bikes in bulk’ scheme.
The Clarion Sat 22 May 1897 p164 in the main editorial, text of William’s letter which referred back to the scheme having been set up by him and John Dalby Sutcliffe two years before. Because the National Committee had run the scheme, some other arrangements had to be made now.
4 JULY 1897
William, Margaret and their children welcomed 26 members of the Liverpool Clarion Cycling Club to Tilston.
Source: The Clarion Sat 17 July 1897 p231 in the Club Stewpot cycling column, a letter from the Liverpool club’s W Bevan describing how they ate the Ransteads out of strawberries and picked a lot of potatoes.
AUGUST 1897
William, and The Clarion’s Julia Dawson, were attempting to compile a directory of the UK’s Cinderella clubs.
Source: The Clarion Sat 14 August 1897 p264 Julia Dawson’s women’s column in which she reported that she and William had been hoping that the directory would be published; but that so far, too little information had been sent them to justify the costs. It seems that not much more information was forthcoming: the idea of a full, published directory was abandoned and instead, Julia started publishing details of those clubs that she knew about in her column. She persuaded The Clarion’s board to let her have space for a monthly column on Cinderella club activities; the first of those columns appeared in November 1897.
Sources: The Clarion Sat 9 October1897 p398 and subsequently; 23 October 1897 p344; and Sat 13 November 1897 p362.
Wikipedia on the Cinderella clubs but the page has a notice about the lack of proper sources.
Possibly earlier but certainly WINTER AND SPRING 1898
Differences between William and other senior figures at the Gandy Belt Manufacturing Co Ltd led to his resignation from the firm, and an attempt to set up a rival.
An advert for shares in the company William was trying to set up appeared in late in February 1898. The company was looking for £10,000 via shares at £1 each. It would manufacture belts for machinery. A list of seven names was in the advert, of men (they were all men) who had bought shares so far; headed by William Ranstead of Tilston, who would be the new company’s managing director at a salary to be agreed by the shareholders. One of the seven men had been a director of the Gandy Belt Manufacturing Company when it was founded in 1886 – Thomas Pugh Richards, an engineer and manufacturer of machinery. The other names were all new, presumably contacts of William’s, rather than the other directors of Gandy Belt Manufacturing Co Ltd. Though I can’t exactly say I was watching out for these seven men, when I was reading through The Clarion from late 1893 to 1900 I don’t think I came across any of their names – these were businessmen, not socialist activists.
Sources
Source for the disputes within the Gandy Belt Manufacturing Company: William’s NZ DNB entry. It says that relations between William and others in the company had been deteriorating for some time; but doesn’t say what the arguments were about.
For the share issue in Ranstead Belting Company Limited. The advert may have been in other magazines but I saw it online in The World’s Paper Trade Review volume 29 issue of 25 February 1898 p2.
Thomas Pugh Richards in Maurice Gandy’s firm: The Engineer 27 August 1886 p177 where he was listed as one of the seven shareholders in the Gandy Belt Manufacturing Co Ltd.
Like Maurice Gandy, Thomas Pugh Richards (1842-1901) was an inventor: at different times between the 1870s and 1900 he held patents on a circular saw; a vent peg; a fan with pump; and a safety tap for kitchen boilers. All of these he made in premises at 3-5 Salthouse Lane Liverpool. Perhaps Richards was thinking to design a belt manufacturing mechanism that he could patent and the new company would use. Richards and his family lived in West Kirby. His sister-in-law Mary Sutcliffe was living with them on the day of the 1891 census; so maybe Richards was related by marriage to John Dalby Sutcliffe of the Clarion bicycle committee.
Sources for Thomas Pugh Richards:
The circular saw: English Patents of Inventions, Specifications 1876 covering patent numbers 3911 to 4080. Number 4040 issued 19 October 1876 for “Improvements in and Applicable to Circular Sawing Machinery” issued to Thomas Pugh Richards of Liverpool; with his description of how it worked.
The vent peg:
Official Journal of the Patent Office volume 6 14 December 1886 p1548 Thomas Pugh Richards and John Davies of 3-5 Salthouse Lane Liverpool as joint patent holders of number 12,618 issued 5 October 1886 for an “improved vent peg”.
The fan plus pump – which might have been useful in Gandy’s factory:
Illustrated Official Journal (Patents) 19 March 1890 p203 patent number 4044 issued to Thomas Pugh Richards of 1 (sic) Salthouse Lane Liverpool; for a rotary, eccentric action pressure blowing fan, and air exhausting fan, and lifting and forcing pump.
The tap:
The Ironmonger… 28 September 1895 p10 an advert for Edge and Richards’ “patent safety valve taps” with a sketch showing inside of the tap sideways on. Sole manufacturer: T P Richards of 3 and 5 Salthouse Lane Liverpool. Same advert in The Ironmonger… 16 January 1897 p36.
The Engineer volume 80 issue of 4 October1895 p347, thinking back to the extreme cold of January-March 1895, suggested that the safety tap was a good idea to prevent burst pipes, and gave a description of how it worked; made by “Messrs Edge and Richards” of Salthouse Lane Liverpool.
Kelly’s Directory of Merchants, Manufacturers and Shippers volume 11 1897 p2636.
Freebmd; 1891 census at a house on Eaton Road West Kirby; probate registry entry 1902. I checked Ancestry’s records of the United Grand Lodge of England but I couldn’t spot him as a freemason.
JUNE/JULY 1898
William’s Ranstead Belting Company went into liquidation.
Comments by Sally Davis: I can’t help thinking this was a hare-brained thing to do! Setting up a company as direct rival to the one you’d left, in such a small field of expertise; and without a patent of your own. An aspect of the affair that I find rather curious is that William did not attempt to attract investment from The Clarion’s readers: the share-issue was not advertised and as far as I can see not even mentioned in the paper. It was not that The Clarion objected to shares and investment on principle: at the same time as William was trying to raise money, the Hightown Socialists’ Land and Building Society Ltd had its share-issue published in The Clarion on Sat 12 February 1898 p52 and for several weeks afterwards. The money was raised: later in the year there was a different advert from the Society saying that it was ready to hear from potential customers. Was it that The Clarion didn’t mind a building society – which could provide a safe place for saving or help its readers buy a home – but wasn’t so keen on William’s company which, though it might provide employment, would only benefit its shareholders? Or did William want to keep these two aspects of his life completely separate?
Though the Ranstead Belting Company only survived for a few months it left William personally in debt: perhaps he had leased some premises and/or machinery, and taken on some staff. When they realised how bad the Ransteads’ situation was, the editor/directors of The Clarion paid William back all the money he’d invested in the newspaper – about £1000. It seems that wasn’t enough. The Ransteads had to put the land at Tilston up for sale – a dreadful blow.
Sources:
London Gazette 5 July 1898 p4090 notices under the Companies Acts 1862-90 include one for the Ranstead Belting Company. Two EGM’s of the company had been held at 67 Lord Street Liverpool, on 17 June 1898 and Fri 1 July 1898. William Ranstead, as the Company’s chairman, was putting his signature to two resolutions passed at those meetings:
– that the Company should go into voluntary liquidation
– that H Noel French should be the Company’s liquidator.
Solicitors’ Journal volume 42 issue of 9 July 1898 p641 in a list of Winding-Up notices, one issued by H Noel French of Lowndes and Co solicitors of 67 Lord Street Liverpool as liquidator of the Ranstead Belting Company. The company’s creditors had until Sat 30 July 1898 to put forward claims.
Advertising the land at Tilston for sale: Fabian News volume 8 issue of July 1898 p20. For the fact that the family moved away from Tilston: Isabel Ranstead’s birth registration.
For the repayment of William’s investment in The Clarion: My Eighty Years by Robert Blatchford. London, Toronto, Melbourne, Sydney: Cassell and Co Ltd 1931: p207.
MID-1898 TO MID-1900
I do not know how or even if William was earning a living; and there’s some evidence that they had had to leave Tilston.
Source for the family moving back to the Wirral: birth registration in the Birkenhead registration district of William and Margaret’s youngest child and second daughter, Isabel; first quarter 1899.
MARCH 1899
Whatever else he was doing, William was able to help organise the coming summer’s tour by the Clarion van.
Source for William’s help: The Clarion issue of Sat 1 April 1899 p98 in Julia Dawson’s women’s column. She thanked the group of men who had worked out the logistics of the van’s progress through South Wales; including “Farmer William” – which makes me wonder if the Ransteads had been able to hang onto the land at Tilston. The Clarion van which would make this year’s trip was not the horse-drawn one lent by the Ransteads and used in 1896. During the winter of 1896-97 Julia had raised enough money for a purpose-built van with an engine. Several men volunteered to go with the van in South Wales in 1899, but that William wasn’t one of them. During the spring and summer, Julia received regular reports from the main volunteer, John Bruce Glasier; but he never mentioned William being present.
John Bruce Glasier (1859-1920) was a socialist activist, land tenure reformer and founder member of the Independent Labour Party, succeeding Keir Hardie as its chairman in 1900. In 1893 he had married Katharine St John Conway, a frequent contributor to The Clarion.
Sources for him; not so much on her:
Wikipedia; and //spartacus-international.com which goes more into his background in Glasgow and changes of surname. He’d been a draftsman but lost his job (as did many others) when the City of Glasgow bank failed in 1878. He opposed both the Boer War and the first World War. From 1905-09 he was editor of the Labour Leader.
The papers of John and Katharine are now at Liverpool University: see //libguides.liverpool.ac.uk.
9 DECEMBER 1899 while William was out of the country
William’s youngest sister Jessie Ranstead died at the comparatively early age of 37.
Source: inscription on Tomb 1424 at Wallasey Cemetery, Rake Lane; transcribed at //freepages.rootsweb.com/~ormandy/religions/rakelanec.html
Death registration Birkenhead district last quarter 1899.
THE TRIP TO NEW ZEALAND
SOME TIME IN 1899
Before late November – probably long before then – William, and Harry Myddelton Worrall, set out for New Zealand on the steamship Oroya.
Sources:
In his article in The Clarion Sat 10 March 1900 p74 William mentioned which ship they had travelled on.
The Australian Handbook 1899 which also covers New Zealand; on pv an advert for the Orient Line royal mail service between England and Australia, going on to New Zealand and sailing once a fortnight. Oroya is on the Orient Line’s list of ships.
At //teara.govt.nz/en/the-voyage-out/page-6 a note that the voyage from the UK to New Zealand was taking about 40 days by the 1890s.
That William was in New Zealand by 25 November 1899: his article in The Clarion Sat 10 March 1900 p74 where he said that he’d just received the Clarion of 25 November, which had been sent on to him.
That Harry Worrall was with him is mentioned in two of William’s articles:
The Clarion Sat 6 January 1900 p5 where he’s referred to as “H.W.” and issue of 10 March 1900 p74 where he’s called “Worrall”.
Comment by Sally Davis on Harry Worrall’s presence. I’m not sure why he went, but one possibility is that he managed to get his employer to send him. On leaving school he had gone to work for one of Liverpool’s ship-broking firms and was a book-keeper in 1891 and working in the export department in 1901; by 1911 he was an import/export agent for foodstuffs – New Zealand’s main exports. See below for the reaction of his wife Julia Dawson to the idea of emigrating anywhere. When Harry returned home, he and Julia remained in England. It was just Harry Worrall and William on this trip; their wives and families were not with them.
Comment by Sally Davis along the lines of ‘why New Zealand’? There are two parts to that, I think:
1) why go on a fact-finding tour to a predominantly agricultural country? I think that William wanted to move on in his life, from being a businessman, to being a farmer, and had perhaps been thinking of making that move for some time. But after all the reading and observation of farming in the UK that he had done in recent years, he had decided that being a farmer here was too difficult, for many reasons, some of which he’d already outlined in The Clarion. He and Margaret may also have been thinking of his children, and the kind of life they wanted for them.
That being so,
2) why New Zealand? Canada was closer and consequently cost less to get to. Much of Canada’s great plains area was being developed as agricultural land and its government was encouraging people to come as farmers.
Though I’m sure that William and Margaret read as much as they could on the subject of where to emigrate, part at least of the answer to my second point can be found in The Clarion. Reading through the Clarion’s issues in the late 1890s I thought I noticed more reports on New Zealand than, say, on Australia or South Africa; but then, I was looking for them! I’m not sure the Clarion’s editors intended it, but what they printed about New Zealand gave readers like William an idea of it as a better destination than the alternatives, for working people, and for socialists. For example, in February 1898 The Clarion reported the New Zealand government’s decision to set aside £120,000 of tax revenue for care of the old; though there was no information in the report on how the money would be spent. In April 1899 it quoted from an article originally in the Wellington Times about a sermon by Bishop Julius in which he’d announced that all New Zealanders were socialists, equating this tendency in them to their search for God. And in October 1899 it reported that the New Zealand Court of Arbitration had ruled that men belonging to a union were to be given preference by employers hiring staff.
There was coverage of other possible destinations, though not a great deal and some of the reports of life in Australia were decidedly negative. And in South Africa, there was a war going on – the Boer War broke out on 11 October 1899.
It wasn’t all plain-sailing with New Zealand; after The Clarion reprinted an article originally in Atlantic Monthly, about land ownership in New Zealand, headed ‘Utopian Australasia’, Henry James Turner of Palmerston NZ wrote in to warn Clarion readers that land prices in New Zealand were now rising, to pay for large infrastructure projects intended to open up more land for farming. There was enough, though, in The Clarion and probably elsewhere, for William to decide to go there and see for himself whether the country lived up to what he had read.
Sources:
The Clarion 26 February 1898 p66; Sat 7 October 1899 p320.
The remark by Bishop Julius: The Clarion Sat 5 August 1899 p248 though I think William may have already left England by this time so won’t have read it until much later in the year.
Wikipedia on Churchill Julius (1847-1938), Church of England priest. After short spells as a vicar in Somerset and Islington, London, he was archdeacon of Ballarat from 1884 to 1890 before being appointed Bishop of Christchurch, where he got the cathedral finished. He became New Zealand’s first archbishop, in 1922, and stayed on in the country after his retirement in 1925.
A warning to those thinking of going to Australia: The Clarion Sat 23 December 1899 p416 A Christmas Thirst: A Clarionette’s Experience in the Western Australian Bush. By a writer calling himself The Bottler, it referred back to 1895 when the writer had got lost in the outback during the Coolgardie gold-strike.
See the wikipedia page on Coolgardie, now best known as an ex-mining ghost town. It is 558km east of Perth. Gold was discovered in the area in 1892 and by 1894 Coolgardie was the third largest town in the colony; but the gold finds began to decline in the early 1900s and by the first World War virtually everyone was gone.
And the hint of trouble ahead with land prices in New Zealand: The Clarion Sat 1 July 1899 p212; and Sat 11 November 1899 p358.
William was by no means the first active socialist to visit Australasia. Union organiser Ben Tillett was in New Zealand and Australia in 1897 on a lecture tour. His time in New Zealand was reported on in detail in The Clarion and no doubt those who were interested could read about it in other publications as well. Just noting here that Tillett was a docker in London in the 1880s, a member of the Fabian Society and the Social Democratic Foundation, both of which the Ransteads were also members of at different times; perhaps they knew him.
The Clarion’s coverage of Ben Tillett’s trip:
The Clarion Sat 3 April 1897 p106. Issue of Sat 18 September 1897 p298 postbag: long one from Fabian Black in New Zealand on Tillett’s time there. In July 1897 Tillett had left New Zealand for Australia. Issue of Sat 27 November 1897 p380 report on Tillett in Australia.
Ben Tillett: his wikipedia page. He had come to national notice as an organiser of the 1889 London dock strike. He had stood – but failed to get elected – in general elections in 1892 and 1895.
At //mrc-catalogue.warwick.ac.uk the introduction to Tillett’s papers says that Tillett was living in Bethnal Green by the 1870s. The Ransteads lived in East London from 1883 to 1888 or 1889.
THE TRIP AROUND NEW ZEALAND
William and Harry Worrall went around both the North and the South islands, often by bicycle, and staying in hotels. William interviewed a wide range of people about life in New Zealand, including the Liberal Prime Minister Richard John Seddon; and visited the State Farm at Levin, which gave work to unemployed men.
Source, though not for Harry being with him all the time, that’s an assumption I’m making: William’s entry in the NZ DNB, which notes that he was particularly excited by the recently-passed Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act, which he thought would spare working people the hardship of going out on strike.
Comment by Sally Davis: I haven’t found enough information to construct an intinerary but William was on the South Island, in Christchurch, on the day of the New Zealand General Election, 6 December 1899. He was on the North Island by its autumn 1900.
Sources: The Clarion Sat 3 March 1900 p74; wikipedia on the 1899 general election in New Zealand.
Wikipedia on Levin; on the North Island 95km north of Wellington.
William must have been pleased to interview a fellow Lancastrian, and one who had risen to the political heights from an unpromising start. Richard John Seddon (1845-1906) had been born in the village of Eccleston, south of Preston, and had started his working life in Liverpool, gaining a certificate as a mechanical engineer. He’d gone first to Australia, arriving in New Zealand in 1866 to work in its gold fields. Later he’d owned a shop. He’d moved from local to national politics during the 1880s, joining the Liberal Party in 1890 and representing the constituency of Westland from then until his death, and dominating New Zealand politics.
Source: his wikipedia page.
PROBABLY DECEMBER 1899
William visited Wainoni, a 30-acre estate on the River Avon outside Christchurch; where Alexander William Bickerton and his family were the centre of an experiment in communal living.
Alexander William Bickerton (1842-1949) was professor of chemistry at the college that is now the University of Canterbury, Christchurch; though he was on a long leave when William met him, after disputes with his employer, and was eventually sacked by the college, causing him to abandon the intentional community for more reliable sources of income. He and his wife Anne Phoebe had been in New Zealand since 1874. The intentional community at Wainoni had been started in 1896 and by the time of William’s visit had about 30 members including some of the Bickertons’ children.
Sources:
William’s account of the visit in The Clarion Sat 24 March 1900 p96 New Zealand Notes by William Ranstead: A Federative Home. As well as farming, the estate had some light industry.
Wikipedia entry for Alexander William Bickerton, now perhaps best known as mentor of Ernest Rutherford.
An account of Bickerton can be read at //teara.govt.nz in the NZ DNB, even though he left the country in 1910.
Even if all William had read on the subject over the past few years was The Clarion, he would have been aware of attempts to set up – usually in rural areas – a community of like-minded people. It’s just possible, though pretty unlikely, he might also have heard of people with experience of living in them, if he had kept in touch with people he’d met in the GD after he had ceased to be an active member. GD members Edward Berridge, Charles William Pearce and Isabella Duncan Pearce were members-at-a-distance of the Brotherhood of the New Life, set up by Thomas Lake Harris on the east coast of the USA but based in California by the late 1890s. And Edward John Dunn’s sister Charlotte and her husband Samuel Veale Bracher were helping to set up the Whiteway House community near Stroud in 1899. The Whiteway House colony was founded on principles expounded by Tolstoy which William could have read about in The Clarion.
The theosophist community at Point Loma, just outside San Diego, was an altogether bigger enterprise than most intentional communities, with more financial resources and many more people living in it, including ex-GD members Dr Herbert Coryn and William Arthur Dunn. Herbert Coryn’s brother Sidney and his wife Agnes were living in Liverpool around 1891; perhaps the Ransteads knew them then. All the Coryn family were very active in the Theosophical Society in the early 1890s, and supported William Quan Judge in the mid-1890s.
It’s surprising how many intentional, specifically socialist, communities The Clarion knew of; and how many were founded by men (it was men) who worked in newspapers. The year 1897 had a particularly large number of references to them.
The Clarion Sat 2 January 1897 p8 in Julia Dawson’s women’s column, she mentioned one colony of a very specific kind, not really socialist in the political sense: Iszl Farm near King William’s Town which had been set up by a group of Dominican sisters. The interest for Julia was in reading that the sisters had done nearly all the building-work themselves, with the help of some local labourers; and that one of them did all the blacksmithing that the site needed.
The Clarion Sat 27 February 1897 p69 in the postbag: a letter calling for interested people to help found a socialist community near London.
The Clarion Sat 3 April 1897 p106: A Visit to the Ruskin Colony; which was in Tennessee. The Clarion’s Robert Blatchford was a great admirer of John Ruskin and there were regular articles in the paper on Ruskin’s life and work.
Wikipedia on the Ruskin Colony, a socialist colony founded by newspaper editor Julius Augustus Wayland in 1894. It moved several times and fell apart 1901. A maximum of 250 people were involved.
The Clarion Sat 7 August 1897 covered two intentional communities; one which had been runnning for a year or two, and one in its very early stages:
1 = p250 long article on the colony of Colonia Cosme, based on its annual report. The colony was in Paraguay, though the names of its committee members were all English. The members had now got secure tenancy of their land. They had representatives in England and were, presumably, looking for new members.
2 = p254 a letter which for William was much closer to home and even closer to where he worked: the Ransteads’ friends Joseph Edwards and wife Eleanor Keeling had bought a small amount of land near Wallasey station, and were proposing to set up a small socialist settlement there. Joseph had drawn up three building plots, one for him and his family, and two others. Each plot had room for a house and 350 square yards of garden. Joseph was inviting Clarion readers to take up the other two plots; for a downpayment of £100 and a contribution to the building of an access road.
The Clarion Sat 27 November 1897 p378 a letter referring to a second colony in Paraguay, known as New Australia. The letter was assuring Clarion readers that the colony still existed although it had to admit that a lot of people had left, causing those who were still there to modify their original ideas of every single item and animal being owned by all the members as a group: they’d found that didn’t work with livestock.
Source for Colonia Cosme, near Caazapá, Paraguay and New Australia; though you’ll need a translator: es.wikipedia.org on immigration to Paraguay from Australia. The two colonies were set up by different sub-groups within about 500 people who were encouraged by English journalist William Lane to leave Queensland. Both were specifically socialist colonies. The Spanish-language wikipedia page calls the settlers in Paraguay ‘huelgas’ – strikers. I think they may have left Queensland after the failure of the Queensland shearers’ strike of 1891. New Australia was founded in 1893.
Sources for the strike, which was an important step on the route to the founding of a Labour Party in Australia: plenty of them but I read a wiki on the Queensland Shearers Union; and the wikipedia page on the strike.
As you can see from the information above, intentional communities often failed after a few, difficult years, despite all the idealism and enthusiasm. The Brotherhood of the New Life lasted longer than most, perhaps because it didn’t attempt to be self-sufficient, and - again perhaps - because it was focused on the personality and leadership of Thomas Lake Harris. The Brotherhood owned a thriving vineyard in the California wine country – Fountaingrove; Charles William Pearce was the vineyard’s agent in the UK. Even Point Loma lasted only 40-odd years; residents started drifting away in the years following the death of Katherine Tingley, its charismatic founder and chief fund-raiser. Its buildings remain, though, and are now the campus of the Point Loma Nazarene University.
BY LATE 1899
William had made up his mind – though whether he had written to tell Margaret isn’t clear! He and his family were going to emigrate to New Zealand and set up as farmers there.
Source: the article he wrote for the readers of The Clarion, which was published with the title “The Socialist Canaan: Life and Laws in New Zealand”. It will probably have been written before his visit to Wainoni; and appeared in The Clarion 6 January 1900 pp5-6. He began the article by saying, “this is the country I’ve been in search of for a long time. It’s a treat to live in a country where there’s nothing to kick at”. He went on to explain why he thought so, under a series of headings which demonstrated how deep and how wide his investigations had been:
- Land Policy, with the Lands For Settlements Act allowing the national government to step in when a landed estate came up for sale. A government agency, the Land Office, would divide the estate into smaller lots and fix the price at which they would be sold, on 25-year leases with the option to buy the freehold. The Government Advances to Settlers Act 1891 meant that interest rates payable on land were low; and you could borrow up to 60% of the land’s value if you can put up freehold property as collateral.
Comment by Sally Davis: this was not quite land nationalisation; but as near as William was likely to get.
- most railways are owned by the State.
- the liquor laws are subject to a referendum held every 3 years.
See //nzhistory.govt.nz/politics/temperance-movement/beginnings for more on the very active temperance movement in New Zealand. The Alcoholic Liquors Sale Control Bill of 1893, introduced into Parliament by Richard Seddon, essentially left it to each district to vote on the matter. In The Clarion Sat 10 March 1900 p7 William reported that he and Harry Worrall had, perforce, become tea drinkers, due to the difficulty of finding places that sold beer.
- jobs in the civil service are by examination, open to men and women.
Comment by Sally Davis: William didn’t mention that an Act of 1893 made New Zealand the first country in the empire to allow women the vote on the same terms as men. Source: wikipedia on New Zealand general election 1893.
- education is free and non-denominational.
- there are no strikes! There is a court service for arbitration in disputes.
- there’s a public trust office.
- there’s a government department that does life insurance.
- there’s inspection of all foodstuffs leaving the country.
Comment by Sally Davis: was that part of what Harry Worrall was there for? – to check inspection standards on behalf of potential importers?
William went on to argue that New Zealand’s climate was more suited to people from Britain than other possible emigration destinations. And he ended by stating in so many words that he would be moving to New Zealand.
William included an address in Wanganui, in his article, so he was wanting readers to contact him. Surely, though, he can’t have expected the extraordinary enthusiasm his praise of New Zealand would cause. Suddenly, hundreds of Clarion readers wanted to go to New Zealand and William was receiving so many letters of enquiry, wanting further information, that he gave up trying to answer them individually and sent general replies for publication in The Clarion. Not everyone was carried away: I don’t think I noticed a single comment, for or against, by the Clarion’s editorial staff and they certainly didn’t encourage readers to up and off to the other side of the world. Quite the reverse - I think they may have written to William privately, asking him to tone his comments down; because in a column published in March 1900 he joked that the editors were afraid they’d lose all their readership to New Zealand. Harry Worrall’s wife Julia Dawson, in her women’s column in The Clarion, made her opposition more public: she wrote that she would not leave England while she could fight here for better working conditions, and that other people should do the same. I note that the Clarion’s editors allowed her to say that, probably voicing what they felt themselves. Some Clarion readers then started writing to Julia, rather than William, asking about emigration. She sent a packet of letters on to him but included one of her own in which she urged him to be more cautious, not to raise hopes in people that might turn out to be false.
Sources:
Wikipedia on Wanganui; on the west coast of the North Island at the mouth of the country’s longest navigable river.
The Clarion Sat 13 January 1900 p12 Julia Dawson’s women’s column; Sat 31 March 1900 p99.
Perhaps Julia was afraid her husband would be carried away like William clearly was, and insist that she emigrate to New Zealand with him.
William’s joke – if it was one: The Clarion Sat 14 April 1900 p117.
For his general reply to the enquiries he could no longer keep up with: The Clarion Sat 31 March 1900 p99. He did give information on the kind of immigrants New Zealand was looking for: as its economy was essentially agricultural, it was people with agricultural skills who were most needed. This should have given most of the Clarion’s readers pause for thought: very few of them were farm hands. But even after this comment, the enthusiasm didn’t abate and some readers started to book their passages and wind up their English affairs.
3 FEBRUARY 1900
The Clarion printed William’s account of his visit to the State Farm at Levin. William used his connection with the newspaper to obtain interviews with several of its senior officials.
Source: The Clarion Sat 3 February 1900 On p40 “Wm Ranstead”: A State Farm in New Zealand. He wrote that the State Farm was run by a Government department which found work for unemployed men.
10 MARCH 1900
The Clarion printed another article by William about his New Zealand visit.
Sources and just noting that readers were so eager for more information that the article of the 10th was advertised as ‘coming next week’ in the issue of the 3rd. The Clarion Sat 3 March 1900 p71 and Sat 10 March 1900 p7.
24 MARCH 1900
William’s account of his visit to the Bickertons’ estate was published in The Clarion.
Source: The Clarion Sat 24 March 1900 p96 New Zealand Notes by William Ranstead: A Federative Home.
31 MARCH 1900
A report from William was published in The Clarion in which he tried to give general answers to the flood of enquiries that had reached him. This was where he stated that agricultural skills were what New Zealand the most needed. He also mentioned receiving Julia Dawson’s letter of caution and her reminder of The Clarion’s motto – ‘you can’t be too careful’.
Source: The Clarion Sat 31 March 1900 p99 a rather shorter article: New Zealand Notes.
14 APRIL 1900
An article by William appeared in The Clarion in which he suggested that “thirty of us” – that is, 30 Clarion readers – should raise some capital, emigrate to New Zealand, and apply to the New Zealand government for about 3000 acres of land, on which they would set up a socialist community. The community would be based around a village, which the members would build themselves, and would have an economy based on dairy farming.
Source: The Clarion Sat 14 April 1900 p117 New Zealand Notes.
William said that the village would be socialist, not communist; though he envisaged the village as a socialist cooperative, there would be room in the way it was run for individual initiative. He suggested that, in its early stages, the community should just be of men on their own; once houses had been built, families could come. William understood that dairying was easier in New Zealand than in the UK, as cattle could stay outside all year in its mild climate; and that dairy farming had been revitalised in New Zealand by the invention of refrigerated ships. Butter would be a major source of the village’s income: the village would have its own butter factory.
12 MAY 1900
A notice from William was printed just above the main editorial in The Clarion, saying that the New Zealand Agent General and local shipping agents were in the process of organising cut-price travel to New Zealand for those readers who had contacted him wanting to join the socialist village.
Source: The Clarion Sat 12 May 1900 p148. William had been busy. He had given the New Zealand Agent General a list of names and addresses. The officials at the Agent General had suggested that they travel in groups of around 50.
BY JUNE 1900
A scheme had been set up by three shipping companies who were willing to offer the Clarion readers reduced fares. Four ships would be involved. The Ransteads would be travelling as part of the scheme, on the SS Wakanui.
Source: The Clarion Sat 9 June 1900 p179 New Zealand notes, in which William gave what would be his permanent address in New Zealand – Fendalton, at Christchurch. Shaw Savill; the Albion Company; and New Zealand Shipping Company were the three companies involved in what was now quite an exercise in logistics; but they insisted that they would only take a maximum of 150 people between them, organised through the New Zealand government’s shipping agency. William had been told that some people had not waited for the possibility of assisted passages but were already on their way, being able to pay the full fare; but there was a snag – there were no longer any jobs available on the State Farm at Levin.
Comment by Sally Davis: one thing William did not mention in any of his reports to The Clarion was that he had already bought some land in New Zealand – presumably the land where the socialist village would be built. Had he told Margaret?
??JUNE 1900 – though it seems rather tight timing
William set out for England to wind up his affairs and prepare his family to emigrate.
Comment by Sally Davis: Harry Worrall disappeared from William’s reports in The Clarion several months before this; perhaps he had already gone home.
11 AUGUST 1900 at Leasowe Castle, Wallasey
There was a party, with 17 guests, to say farewell to the Ransteads.
Sources: framed card,, with a quote from Omar Khayyam and a picture of the Van of progress; now in the Ranstead Collections in New Zealand. Short account of the event, by the person writing as ‘Slender’, in The Clarion Sat 18 August 1900 p267, though without a guest list so I don’t know exactly who was there. There was music, and Robert Manson made a speech.
THURSDAY 16 AUGUST 1900
The SS Wakanui left England, taking William, Margaret, their children, and a large number of other Clarion readers to New Zealand.
Source:
The Clarion 9 June 1900 p179.
The rest is New Zealand’s story. More or less...
CODA: 1914
William happened to be in England when World War 1 broke out. Despite being in his mid-50s, he enlisted in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force.
Source: at //sites.rootsweb.com, a transcription of a list in a Nominal Roll book at the New Zealand Defence Archives, of men who enlisted in the NZ Expeditionary Force in London. W Ranstead is on the list. The England-based Expeditionary Force members left England on 12 December 1914 en route to Egypt, where William served on a hospital ship.
Copyright SALLY DAVIS
12 April 2025
Email me at
Find the web pages of Roger Wright and Sally Davis, including my list of people initiated into the Order of the Golden Dawn between 1888 and 1901, at:
www.wrightanddavis.co.uk
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