Quaker Alphabet Blog 2014 - S for Joseph Edward Southall

Joseph Southall self-portrait 1925

Joseph Southall was born in Nottingham on 23 August 1861, the only child of Joseph Sturge Southall and Eliza Maria Baker. His father was a chemist and grocer but he died when Joseph was just one year old and his mother brought Joseph back to her Birmingham family home. Joseph was educated in Quaker schools at Ackworth, Birmingham and Scarborough. He showed artistic talent from a young age and from the age of thirteen was taught watercolour painting by Edwin Moore who is said to have remarked, 'Ah, here is a boy with an eye.'

In 1878 Joseph left school and was articled to a firm of Birmingham architects, Martin and Chamberlain. He continued to take drawing and painting classes and when he came of age in 1882 he abandoned his formal training in order to practice carving and painting to fit himself to be what he regarded as a true architect. He kept himself through inheritances from his father and an uncle and went to live in a house in Edgbaston belonging to another uncle where he remained for the rest of his life.

The artist's mother 1902

In 1883 Joseph spent eight weeks in Italy with his mother and a cousin, a turning point in his artistic life. He became an ardent admirer of the Italian primitive style and resolved to study and practice the art of painting in tempera. In 1884 Joseph's architectural drawings were shown by his uncle, George Baker, to Ruskin, who admired them and commissioned Joseph to design a museum for his Guild of St George. However in 1886 this project fell through and Joseph felt that his chance to become the architect he wanted to be had vanished.

Anna Elizabeth Baker 1897

Joseph continued to draw, paint and struggle with the tempera technique. He studied at Birmingham School of Art and exhibited with the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists (RBSA). In 1893 he was greatly cheered when his work was praised by another artist from Birmingham, Edward Burne-Jones. Joseph's work became gradually better known and he was able to sell enough to support himself. With other like-minded artists he formed the Birmingham Group of Artist-Craftsmen and in 1901 was one of the founders, along with Holman Hunt and Walter Crane, of the national Society of Painters in Tempera.

The Blue Sea with frame by Anna

In 1903 Joseph married Anna Elizabeth Baker who was two years older than he was. The couple had been attached since their youth but, as they were first cousins, had deliberately delayed their marriage, making a conscious decision not to have children. Anna shared Joseph's artisitic interests and made elaborate frames for his pictures. Each year the couple would go to Italy or France and also to Southwold in Suffolk or Fowey in Cornwall, where they visited galleries, sketched and painted. Joseph's reputation grew in Britain and in 1910 he also held a very successful one-man show in Paris.

From Fables and Illustrations 1918

Joseph and Anna both remained Quakers and supported their local meeting in Edgbaston. Joseph was often critical and did not suffer fools gladly. His demeanour has been described as 'frosty but kindly'. During the First World War Joseph was active as a pacifist both in Quaker circles and with the Independent Labour Party. He painted much less and turned instead to illustration and political cartoons pointing out the evils of war. He accepted a commission from the Birmingham Corporation to paint a mural 'Corporation Street March 1914' but he gave it a subtly anti-war message, showing the prosperity which the city had enjoyed before the conflict.

Corporation Street March 1914, now in Birmingham Art Gallery

Joseph and Anna in Southwold 1911

As he grew older Joseph received more public recognition and executed several more murals in buildings in Birmingham, but in 1937 he became very ill and underwent major surgery. He never fully recovered and although he continued to paint until his death he did not go abroad again. He died in November 1944 at the age of eighty-three.

The Botanists 1928

Joseph's work has been characterised as 'static' and his preoccupation
was with materials and technique. However he painted some fine portraits, many of Quakers, and Picasso was much taken by his painting of water. He was true to his vision and to his roots and his work can still be seen in the city he lived in all his life. The critic William Rothenstein wrote, 'I have a great respect for Southall, both as an artist and a sterling character, one of the few considerable artists who has remained in his native city.'

The Food Queue, now in Oldham Galllery

Quaker Alphabet Blog Week 39 - T for Esther Maud Tuke

Silhouette of Esther Maud Tuke

Esther Maud was born in 1727 in Westscholes near Halifax, the eldest daughter of the five children of Timothy and Ann Maud. Esther's father was a respectable Friend who worked making plush (a kind of velvet) in Bingley. However his eldest son Joseph was a wastrel whose debts led to the financial ruin of his family. Joseph eventually disappeared to America but the third son, William, showed signs of the same profligate tendencies, and his father was so worried by this that his health broke down and he died in 1752 leaving the family penniless.

On his death bed her father urged Esther to try to resolve the family's problems, and though often in despair she bravely took on this responsibility. Esther started a shop and her brother Timothy kept up his father's plushmaking business so that they could make ends meet. At this time Esther had offers of marriage but felt that she had to stay at home and help her family. She scraped together enough money to send William after his brother to America but although he prospered there he died soon after his return and his business failed. In 1763, however, the family moved to Bradford and their fortunes changed.

Esther again set up a shop and her brother Timothy qualified as an apothecary which improved his

prospects. In 1764 William Tuke, a Quaker tea merchant from York who had been a widower for four years and had five children, asked Esther to marry him. They wrote frank letters to each other telling of their past troubles and spiritual struggles and although Esther hesitated she came to feel that they would be able to understand and help one another. They were married in Bradford Meeting House in 1765 when Esther was 38 and William 32 years old.

William Tuke in old age

Esther moved into William's house in Castlegate, York, over the shop at the Coppergate end of the street. She was soon accepted by her step children, Henry, Sarah (later Grubb), William, John and Elizabeth who were aged ten, nine, seven, six and five when she married their father. It was notable that she did not treat them any differently from her own children, Samuel, who died young, Mabel and Ann. It is a testament to their affection for her that the two step children who had daughters, Henry and Elizabeth, named them Esther.


Her grandson Samuel also remembered her with affection. 'She was lively and spirited, and had a natural facetiousness which made young persons greatly enjoy her society. There was at the same time a dignity of mien and almost awfulness of character, when serious, which gave her an invincible influence over the minds of young persons.'

The family home was often opened in hospitality to visiting Friends. One visitor commented, 'They have, I fancy, no outward dependence but trade and economy; but their liberal notions are not to be described; for they and their possessions are wholly their friends.' When a weary John Woolman visited York in 1772 Esther and William's hospitality extended to finding him a quieter place to stay than their busy home in the centre of the city. When he fell ill with smallpox Esther and her daughter Sarah also shared the burden of nursing him until he died, an experience neither of them ever forgot.

Esther's gift for ministry was recognised when she was 34 and she thereafter travelled extensively in Ireland and throughout the British Isles. She often lamented what she saw as a departure from traditional Quaker testimonies and together with William was forthright in her criticisms. These views did not make either Esther or William popular in their own meeting or supported in their concerns by York Friends.

They were both concerned about Friend's education. Esther supported William when he became involved in the foundation of Ackworth and he helped her when, in 1784, she established a school at York for girls (later re-established as The Mount) and took on the voluntary superintendance of it herself. A house was taken for the school in Trinity Lane, within the city walls and William and Esther moved into it with their remaining, unmarried, family.

Also in 1784, when at Yearly Meeting the Women Friends petitioned, not for the first time, to have their own meeting officially recognised by the Mens Meeting, it was Esther Tuke who headed a deputation from the women including Martha Routh, Rebecca Jones and Catherine Payton Phillips. The story goes that 'the Clerk of the Yearly Meeting felt strongly inclined to address to her the regal enquiry of old, "What wilt thou Queen Esther, and what is thy request? It shall be given thee to the half of the kingdom" '. But in fact there was considerable doubt about whether the request would be granted and even when it was it seemed to Esther 'but the shadow of a woman's meeting' although she hoped for better in the future.

As Esther grew older she became more frail, although for a long time she continued to travel. William had a new venture to pursue in the foundation of The Retreat, a hospital for the mentally afflicted run for Friends by Friends, and Esther supported him as always. She could not take an active part but her brother Timothy was the institution's first superintendent. Esther experienced increasing difficulty in walking and was eventually unable to leave her room. Her last illness lasted only a week and she died, aged 67, attended by her daughter Mabel. William outlived her by nearly thirty years and died in 1822 when he was 89.

Esther's first words in ministry were only few, 'The just shall live by faith', but as the testimony to her states, 'From this beginning, apparently small, she was enabled to increase; and as she grew in years she was thought also to grow in faithfulness and dedication and truly attained to the state of a mother in Israel'.

Quaker Alphabet Blog Week 21 - K for Knitting

 I have just returned from Britain Yearly Meeting where I observed several people knitting during sessions, although usually only during introductions and reports. I sat next to one woman and asked her why she was doing it. She replied that having something to do with her hands stilled her mind and stopped her becoming distracted. That seemed reasonable to me but unfortunately others found her hands' constant movement distracting and asked her to stop.

Illustration to QWG Swarthmore lecture

I have never knitted in meetings, partly because I am not proficient enough to knit without giving it most of my attention, but I do have some history with Friends and knitting. I was part of the Quaker Womens Group who were asked in 1983 to give the Swarthmore lecture. Over the next three years we read, researched and wrote. We met together to talk, edit and make decisions. During that process some of us also knitted and in the end we joked that we had produced not only a lecture and a book but several sweaters. We even used two of them to punningly illustrate part of a quotation from Mary Elson about the London women's meetings ' blessed be the name of the Lord who hath quickened and made alive unto himself and hath knit and tyed and bundled up and hath united us together in one spirit.'

An Ackworth School pin-ball with ribbon

Historically Quaker women and girls have sewn and knitted useful things, such as stockings. Pupils at Ackworth School sewed distinctive 'plain' samplers with geometric designs and subdued colours. They also made round knitted pin-balls (pincushions) in two halves, sometimes with a strip between to make them fatter and with a ribbon attached as a handle. Their designs often included mottos and initials and there are examples made to promote the anti-slavery cause.

Anti-slavery pin-ball front

Anti-slavery pin-ball back

Shetland knitting sheaths

The pin-balls were knitted in silk on very thin needles or 'makkin [making] wires'. To protect the knitter from the sharp ends of the needles and to make them easier to handle knitting sheaths were sometimes used. The narrow end of the knitting sheath was tucked into the right side of the knitter's skirt or apron, and the knitting needle was inserted into the open end among the quills.

Modern finger loom

When Rebecca Jones visited England from1784-8 she kept a memorandum book with a note of her expenses among other things. In Birmingham in 1787 she bought 3 pairs of ivory knitting pins for 2 shillings and 3 ivory finger looms (another way of knitting) for the same price. Rebecca also notes the 'Tokens of Love' which she was given by the Friends she travelled among. These include 'silk for knitting' from Elizabeth Hoyland, a 'Tin Case for knitting' from Esther Tuke and a 'Knitting Sheath' from S. Baker. Rebecca was an accomplished needlewoman so perhaps on her travels she was knitting pin-balls to give as tokens of love to others. She visited Ackworth School too and shared her experience of running a school so there may have been some cross-pollenation of ideas going on there!

Knitting then and now has both practical and spiritual aspects, as the introduction to the Woodbrooke course to be held in October this year called Knitting your Peace reminds us. 'Knitters know that the knitting process is a short cut to the bubble of inner peace. Whilst hands carry out the steady, rhythmic, repetitive movement of making each stitch with needles and yarn, hearts and minds are released to reflect on the here and now within ourselves, within our day, within our lives.'