Hull's History

Banks for working people were formed in the late eighteenth century. The first Savings Bank was attributed to the Rev. Henry Duncan of Ruthwell, Dumfriesshire, in 1810. In 1817 an Act of Parliament regulated these “savings banks” and allowed for new ones to be formed. In Hull the Mayor chaired a meeting which set up the Hull Savings Bank, and its first premises were over the old Corn Exchange in Market Place. It soon moved to Bowlalley Lane.

The banks were what we would now call “not for profit”. None of the people running them were to gain any financial or other benefit. There were to be no shareholders. All profits were to be ploughed back for the benefit of savers or the upgrading of facilities. In 1818 there were 465 Savings Banks in the country.

The Hull bank opened for only a few hours per week. The 1823 Directory lists “Savings Bank, Exchange Alley, attendance Tues. from 11 to noon, and Saturday from 6 to 8 evening”. This was the ususal pattern for all the Savings Banks for many years, and it limited their usefulness to the people they were meant to serve. The secretary of the bank in 1823 was George Carlill. In 1829 it moved to new premises in Posterngate. For many years the Actuary to the Hull Savings Bank was Francis Fullerton. Branches of the bank were opened in many parts of the county; in 1834, for instance, there was a branch in Market Weighton opposite the Devonshire Arms, with Thomas Ombler as its secretary.

The working class did not develop a habit of saving. This was partly down to the fact that they did not earn enough to make saving a possibility, but the restricted opening hours of the banks also made them inaccessible. The government recognised this. In a House of Commons debate in 1861 Gladstone, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, proposed to turn the network of Post Offices into banks for the poorer classes, and this was put into effect. Nevertheless, the Hull Savings Bank prospered despite the competition.

In 1883 a new building was erected on the corner of George St and Smeaton St. Bulmer's Gazetteer of 1892 describes it. “It is in the Palladian style, and is entirely faced with stone. There are two entrances, the principal one being at the angle, and the other in George Street. Both have porticoes and granite columns. The banking room is 52 by 40 feet, and is elaborately fitted up and decorated.” A branch was opened in East Hull in 1893 and others followed – Beverley Rd in 1901, South Newington in 1910, North Newington in 1925, Derringham in 1948 and Bilton Grange in 1956.

In 1887 the Trustee Savings Bank Association was formed to co-ordinate the work of the banks. The Hull bank continued to be successful. In 1914 it had assets of £3 million deposited in 88,000 accounts. Hull Savings Bank, like its counterparts all over the country, served people who would have avoided other banks. Children were introduced to saving when they were encouraged to open accounts which were administered in primary schools. However, they fell victim to the ethos of the 1980s and 1990s that everything should be an opportunity for profit. In 1975 the Central Trustee Savings Bank had become just another clearing bank. In 1985 the Trustee Savings Bank Act put the group up for flotation and shares were sold. Ten years later it was swallowed up by Lloyds.

© Ann Godden

He had a famous name but it is not clear whether he was related to the Digby Willoughby (1769 – 1856) who was 7th Baron Middleton. His father was Richard Willoughby, and he was born in London in 1853. He came to Hull and married Clara Kellington in 1875. It was later said that he was a tailor who had served his apprenticeship in Jermyn St, London, but by 1881 he was a perfumer employing three people at the Golden Cup, 64 Brook St, Hull. He then switched to selling toys and fancy goods and in 1891 the family lived at 44 Prospect St.

He became a Conservative member of the City Council in 1914, was Sheriff in 1919 and Lord Mayor in 1924/25. He was a member of every council committee going and Chair of several, including the Tramways Committee. When the General Strike came in 1926 he thought that he alone could save Hull from the red revolution which he believed was imminent. He interfered with the management of the tram workers, and came to blows with the manager, Rayner, in the Guildhall. The Council congratulated him on his heroic performance as supremo during the emergency, but the people hated him and for six months he needed police protection. He lost his council seat, but was so highly regarded by his party that a vacancy was immediately created for him. He caused a storm when he chaired a committee entrusted with the arrangements for the Banqueting Chamber in the Guildhall. He commissioned a large, stained-glass window depicting scenes from the Willoughby family history.

Willoughby became Chair of the Housing and Town Planning Committee and was one of the visionaries behind the scheme to redevelop the area which is now Ferensway. This never saw completion, as it was overtaken by scandals which centred around Willoughby. In 1932 he faced trial for demanding money with menaces from a firm of Hull tailors; he had extorted payments in return for contracts for tramway uniforms. At the same time an enquiry was initiated into the purchase of land for housing estates. The Thorpe enquiry was set up on March 3rd 1932. On the same day Willoughby went to Scotland, booked into a hotel in Helensburgh, Glasgow and was found on March 4th having committed suicide by gas. When the enquiry reported, on April 18th 1932, it was shown that Willoughy had been using his insider's knowledge of what land the council wished to buy to approach the owners himself and offer to find a buyer for a 4% commission. He would deny that it had anything to do with the Corporation. In one of the four cases examined he had taken a fee for finding a buyer for land on Endike Lane; the buyer was Alderman Francis Finn. A complicated bit of dealing that involved a builder, Robert Tarran, ended with the land being sold on to the Corporation at a profit for the three men involved. The report said, “The system of turning information into money had become a business pursued almost to recklessness. In less than a month he had made over £1100, and it should have occurred to him that discovery was inevitable.”

Few people have left their mark so obviously on the city of Hull as William Alfred Gelder. He was born in the village of North Cave in 1854, the son of William Gelder, a joiner, wheelwright and, later, timber merchant. By the age of 15 Alfred was apprenticed to his father, but he changed his mind about what he wanted to do. He went to Hull, married Elizabeth Parker in 1877 and the following year established an architectural practice. In 1881 the couple lived at 24, Kingston Terrace and by 1888 had moved to 4 Chestnut Villas, Holderness Road. In 1892 he formed a partnership with Llewellyn Kitchen, the Manchester born son of a commercial traveller, and the firm of Gelder and Kitchen was founded. Gelder was elected to the City Council on 17th December 1895 in a by-election for the Drypool ward, and became an Alderman three years later. By 1899 he was Mayor, an office he held five times.

Gelder had entered the architectural profession at the time of the Victorian development of the city and quickly became its mastermind. The new town plan was largely his work, and was carried out while Gelder was Mayor of the city. The city centre was reconstructed and a new bridge built across the River Hull, the Drypool Bridge. A new road was built through the city centre to link up with this bridge, and was named Alfred Gelder Street. It was said that all this work was carried out without loss to the ratepayers, but it would be impossible today to hold such an office while taking contracts from the council. In the 1930s he was involved with the transformation of Queen's Dock into Queen's Gardens

The firm of Gelder and Kitchen also developed expertise in the design of flour mills, oilseed crushing mills and related facilities, at a time when Hull was a major European centre for the industry. One customer for the revolutionary roller mill was Joseph Rank who, like Gelder, was a noted Methodist. His Methodism led Gelder to design numerous chapels, including the Brunswick Chapel on Holderness Road in 1890 and the Princes Avenue Chapel in 1904. There were commissions for chapels, as well as flour mills, from all over the country.

Gelder was knighted in 1903 as Sir Alfred Gelder, and that year he hosted a royal visit as the Prince and Princess of Wales came to open Victoria Square, unveil the Queen's statue and lay the foundation stone of the City Hall. In 1910 he entered Parliament as the Liberal member for Brigg. He resigned from the Hull City Council in 1912 but continued as an MP until 1918.

In the 1920s Sir Alfred's son Teddy joined the practice. Among the projects in this period were many of the Wm. Jackson & Son grocery stores and the Haworth Arms public house.

Sir Alfred Gelder died in 1941, leaving a very visible legacy to the city.

He has given his name to a substantial area of the west of Hull, and was the archetypal Victorian self-made man. Christopher Godmond Pickering was born in 1842, the son of Christopher Pickering, a tailor, and his wife Jane Gibson. On the 1861 census the family were living at Hales Entry; young Christopher was a fish curer. Ten years later he was married to Rachael Blakestone and lived at 3 Marlborough Terrace, Hessle Road. He was then a fish merchant. In the next ten years he became a ship owner and, in 1881, the family lived at 114 Coltman St (west side). In 1889 he moved out to Hornsea.

Pickering made a fortune very quickly. During the 1880s he owned a fleet of sailing smacks in partnership with Samuel Haldane. They were quick to recognise that the future was in steam, and sold the sailing ships in Europe in order to acquire steam trawlers. By 1914 he headed Pickering & Haldane's Steam Trawling Co. and Pickering, Haldane & Co. (fish and ice merchants), as well as being Chair of several fishing and allied firms.

Pickering invested in land. In 1914 he built a “model village” in the Hessle Road area which included a church, a vicarage, almshouses, a park, a recreation ground and a children's home. The park and almshouses remain, and the Pickering name is remembered in Pickering council ward, Pickering Park, and Christopher Pickering Lodge (an old people's home).

In 1918 he offered the council 75 acres of land for housing at a price of £493 an acre. It was pointed out that he had bought the land at the turn of the century for only £120 an acre, and would realise a profit of around £17, 000 – but the deal went ahead.

He died in 1920.

Now remembered only in the name of a primary school and a street in the west of Hull, Francis Askew was an unusual politician. He was born in Bethnal Green, London, in 1856. The family moved to Dartford in Kent, where Askew was apprenticed to the printing trade. In 1877 he married Lydia Chivers and came to Hull, where he worked at first as a printer and compositor. By 1881 the couple lived at 1, Ellis Terrace, Southcoates, with their two young sons. Ten years later they were at 47, Blake St., Sculcoates.

His involvement with politics began with the Friendly Society movement, which provided working class people with their only means of securing insurance. Askew was also prominent in the United Ancient Order of Druids, and was a member of the Baptist Church. He was elected to the Hull City Council in 1897 for South Newington ward, and in 1908 he became the city's first Labour Alderman. In 1916 he became Lord Mayor.

Tadman's “Hull's Who's Who” of 1935 lists a large number of committees and causes, both local and national, to which Askew gave his time. These were mainly concerned with health, education and pensions, a reflection of his devotion to improving the lives of ordinary people. In 1933 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Leeds University. He died in 1940.