Dick Turpin, The Jockey House Inn Murders, The Hopkinson's and a WW2 War Hero

[Malcolm33]

   Every bit of family history research is fascinating and I have come across some incredible stories in the past, but my latest investigation into the Hopkinson Families of East Retford has thrown up some most remarkable finds and one very strange coincidence.

    I cannot tell the whole story in one post so shall begin with how it first peeked my interest.   I knew little of my father's mother Harriet Grant who died when I was only 6 years old.   In July 1981 an aunt now deceased wrote to me as follows:

   "Your grandmother was brought up until able to work, by relations in Retford.   She stayed with these people until she came to work in Bradford.   She told me her relations only kept her as an unpaid servant so she made her way to Bradford & got paid work in Manningham.   The relations were called Hopkinson Iron Founders, of Retford.    Your Gt.Uncle was brought up by other relatives, unknown.”

     Harriet and her younger brother William were orphaned, having lost both parents when they were only 5 and 3 years old.    The story of William Grant itself is quite an account as he joined the Coldstream Guards and fought in several battles during the Boer War.

     In 1983 I tracked down the late Ted Hopkinson in East Retford who was the gt.grandson of Charles Hopkinson the Iron founder and owner of three farms.   Charles was married to Anne Morris who was a cousin of Harriet's mother, Elizabeth.    However the 1881 census shows us that Harriet was a 12 year old living with a Mary Morris at Clarborough and not with the Hopkinsons.  William was with the Beech Family in Babworth.    I guess therefore that Harriet must have been taken in by the Hopkinsons shortly after 1881 and may very well have resided at the Jockey House Farm at that time.

      Ted wrote to me that "Charles also owned 3 farms, one in Ordsall, Retford, one in North Leverton near Retford, and another one at Jockey House, again near Retford.   (I still have the agreement between Charles and the Agent of the Duke of Newcastle who owned the land Jockey House was on, and also an agreement between Charles and his Farm Manager at the North Leverton Farm, and they both make very interesting reading)."

      For now please read the incredible story of The Jockey House which was frequented by Dick Turpin and where two awful murders took place hundreds of years earlier - http://www.biffvernon.freeserve.co.uk/jockey_house.htm

       The coincidence told in that page has an even further twist which I shall explain in my next post in this story. 

[Malcolm33]

  The coincidence that is explained in the page on The Jockey House goes as follows:
"A painter and decorator told the Retford Times on 10th October 1902 - a hundred and eighty years after the murder- that was when he was an apprentice forty years before, he was helping to renew mirror and picture frames at Elkesley vicarage. These are his words referring to that occasion in about 1860:

We ran out of paint and sent up by mail to London for a supply of gold for colouring.    The firm in London sent the colouring back wrapped in an old newspaper.    This newspaper, a London one, contained an account of the inquest on John Baragh who was murdered at Jockey House by Captain Midford Hendry.'

So, by a coincidence, a hundred and forty years after the murder, a man in the vicarage attached to the churchyard where the victim is buried reads his story.   Forty years after reading it he passes it on to a local newspaper and almost a century later it is recorded on microfilm in the local history library."

      The other coincidence is that the Painter's Apprentice was in all liklihood none other than another Hopkinson, namely George Hopkinson who shows up in the 1851 census for Retford as a Painter's Apprentice.     At this point of time we haven't found a connection between George the Painter and Charles Hopkinson the Iron Founder who at that time owned The Jockey House Farm.  I have emailed the Retford Family History Association to ascertain whether the Retford Times of 10th October 1902 named the Painter.     Charles's father was another George Hopkinson, but a Blacksmith.

      This brings us to George Frederick Hopkinson who was the grandson of George the Painter.   Just have a look at the biography of this son of Retford who became a Major-General and the head of the first Airborne Division that landed in Italy.    http://www.paradata.org.uk/article/559/related/10150

       Click on "See Also George F Hopkinson" and this will take you to a page that has a photograph of the General, then click on 'Photos 4' to see pictures of George with King George VI and addressing his paras.    The story of what he got up to at college gives us an insight into the colourful character of 'Hoppy'.