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| The Donkin Memorial in Port Elizabeth with Fort Frederick in the background, before the building of the lighthouse |
Thomas
Willson, his wife Mary Ann and his three male children returned to England on
the Nautilus, a military transport which set sail from Port Elizabeth on 16
February 1822. The family settled out of town at Belmont Cottage, Stockwell,
from where Thomas busied himself writing to Lord Bathurst setting out the
grounds for his complaint against the British government and demanding
restitution of the money he had lost in his ill conceived colonial adventure;
“I have escaped
the chains of perpetual exile in the most horrible prison in the world, fell
Africa! And, what have I received in return for my rash confidence? Nothing,
but obloquy, ingratitude, and maltreatment, from my numerous followers, and
from His Majesty’s Government the most vexatious and mortifying neglect, a want
of due support, and I am grieved to speak the truth (for it will be scarcely
credited) I have not received its pledge! I have in fact received nothing, I am
not benefited by this lamentable and ruinous enterprise the least in the world,
I have not derived the value of a straw! Under the most trying difficulties.” (Willson to Lord Bathurst 27
March 1823)
He
claimed to have lost “upwards of two
thousand pounds sterling, and the enormous waste of nearly six years of the
very prime of my life,” but the Government was not sympathetic. Whilst in
South Africa and as a result of the huge pressure he was put under by his group
of settlers (which included threats to his life) Willson seems to have refunded
many of their deposits from his own capital in the belief that “I was to be reimbursed in Money on my
arrival at the Cape! It was the money only that could afford me the means of
protecting myself from the petty debts of numerous Individuals, whose chief aim
was to incur debt, and to rob me: and the money was the only means of reimbursing
myself for monies advanced, in anticipation of such repayment! This is a
serious loss to me.” (Willson to Bathurst 03 April 1823). The Government’s
position was that the deposit money was used to pay for the rations supplied to
the party by the colonial authorities and neither Willson nor the settlers had
any right to have it refunded. Willson felt sorely treated because he had “incontestible proof that in other
instances, to persons similarly circumstanced with myself, …. supplies were
issued gratuitously, and that by the express Command of General Donkin.” Willson
was making himself such a nuisance that K. Wilmot, a civil servant, wrote from
Downing Street to the Governor of Cape Colony, Lord Charles Somerset, setting
out the essence of his complaint and, in order to refute it, “as Lord Bathurst has not conceded to Mr.
Willson’s demands on the presumption that the Balance in Question would have
been paid by the Colonial Authorities if the full value of it had not been
received in Rations from the public Stores, He begs Your Lordship would be
pleased to give directions that an Account may be immediately prepared, and
transmitted to this Office, shewing the value of the Provisions so drawn by Mr
Willson as compared with the amount of his deposit.” Almost as an
afterthought K. Wilmot also enquired about Willson’s “proceedings as Head of a Party during the time he remained in the
Colony,” perhaps hoping something prejudicial would emerge that would help
them shut him up.
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| A dream of Pyramids; Atanasius Kircher imagines the pyramids of Nubia |
Incredibly
by 1825 Willson was considering emigrating back to Cape Colony and was writing
to Lord Bathhurst and others requesting work as a surveyor and a grant of land
to compensate him for his financial losses. “It can never be worth my while to
hazard a second voyage to the Cape for a trifling consideration,” he wrote to a
Government who must by now have been heartily sick of hearing his complaints, “I
possess still (Heaven be thanked) a moderate independence in England, which
could be employed to much greater advantage in France than at the Cape;
notwithstanding this, if I could have a reasonable proportion of land, and a
suitable employment, it would be an inducement to return to that colony.” It
was that ‘moderate independence’, inherited income of one sort or another, that
allowed Willson the time to both continue to brood over his perceived
mistreatment in South Africa and to dream of some immense project that would
astonish and confound his detractors. What emerged as the pyramids of Meroe and
of Caius Cestius melded in his mind with the memorial to Lady Donkin, the “Colossal Monument of our beloved Sovereign King
George the fourth” that he had planned for Angloville and the lively
contemporary debate about burial reform was the grandiose and bizarre notion of
the Pyramid Cemetery. According to HM Colvin in A Biographical Dictionary of English Architects 1600–1840 the idea
of the Metropolitan Sepulchre was first launched onto an unsuspecting public in
1824, at an exhibition of the Royal Academy. If Willson did exhibit a pyramid
design at the RA it must have been an early and relatively unimpressive version
of the metropolitan sepulchre, one that did not attract any press attention as
I can find nothing mentioning it in any of the newspapers. Willson himself, in
1829, claimed that he had conceived “the plan of the pyramid to contain
millions of the dead” just two years earlier.
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| The Kings Mews, Charing Cross at the time of the National Depository |
The
plan for the Metropolitan Sepulchre seems to have first seen the light of day
at the National Repository, was opened in the Kings Mews on Charing Cross in
1828 by a group of educationalists for the “Purpose of Annually exhibiting to
the public the New and Improved Production of the Artisans and Manufacturers of
the United Kingdom”. It was, according to Richard Daniel Altick in his Shows of London effectively the capitals
first trade show. The National Repository shared its accommodation with Edward
Cross’s menagerie and visitors to the exhibition were accompanied by a
soundtrack of monkeys screeching and lions roaring. The exhibits included silk
looms, kaleidoscopes, rain gauges, musical glasses, models of improved steam
engines, a multipurpose whalebone walking stick containing a mariners compass,
telescopes, opera glasses, and models of proposed urban improvements including
an iron bridge to be erected over the Thames at Charing Cross or Lambeth and a
forty acre “pyramidal metropolitan sepulchre” which Altick says was “suggestive
of John Martin’s more bizarre architecture.” The model of the pyramid ‘to
accommodate hundreds of thousands of bodies’ was probably the most attention
grabbing exhibit. The Kentish Weekly
Post republished, on 20 October 1829, an article from the London University
Magazine:
Grand
Metropolitan Cemetery.— We have seen the plans of the Pyramid which is to form
the principal feature of this novel undertaking. It is intended to be a
progressive work, proportionate to the annual demand for burial. When finished
it will be capable of receiving no less than five millions of individuals; being somewhat larger in dimensions than the
celebrated Pyramid of Egypt. Simple in form, sublime in effect, and curious in
its arrangement; its area will be surrounded by a terrace-walk, an enclosed
wall 13 feet high, and the ground within this enclosure is to be tastefully laid
out for private tombs and monuments, in the style of the famous cemetery of
Pere la Chaise, near Paris. It will present an object of extraordinary grandeur
to the Metropolis.
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| Willson's design for the Metropolitan Sepulchre |
In
November 1829 Willson was startled to read a newspaper account of a French
proposal to build a pyramid in Paris and rushed to write to the London Evening
Standard to claim precedent:
THE PYRAMID. TO
THE EDITOR.
Sir, — There
appears in a Sunday paper the following paragraph: — "A project is on foot
at Paris to construct a cemetery after the plan of the ancient pyramids, to
contain five millions of bodies." I am not very desirous of obtruding
myself upon the notice of the public; but, when such a glaring plagiarism
occurs on the part of our continental neighbours, I feel confident that the
English press will be liberal enough to do justice, and protect the interests
of a British subject. It will, doubtless, be in your recollection that "the
plan of the pyramid to contain millions of the dead" originated with
myself above two years ago, and has been exhibited ever since at the National
Repository at Charing-cross ; and, now that it is upon the eve of adoption in
the vicinity of London, this Parisian plagiarism is not to be tolerated. I
therefore appeal to the liberal spirit of your journal to claim the invention
on behalf of, Sir, your very humble servant, T. Willson, Architect. No. 11, New
Cavendish-street, Portland place, London, Nov 24. 1829
Perhaps
rattled by the prospect of being usurped by the French Willson finally published
his plans for the Metropolitan Sepulchre in 1830 under the title “The Pyramid,
a general metropolitan cemetery to be erected in the vicinity of Primrose Hill”,
a publication which included drawings of his proposed design. In March Bell's Life in London and Sporting Chronicle
reported that Lord Nugent in Parliament had “presented a Petition from Mr. Thomas Wilson, architect, praying to be
heard at the bar of the House in favour of a plan he had completed for the
erection of an immense pyramid, calculated hold live millions of bodies. This
building would, as he alleged, prove both ornamental and useful, and afford
occupation to the living, as well as a place of secure interment for the dead.”
The
burial reform movement had become attracted to Willson’s proposal, perhaps more
for its publicity value than for any practical hope it held out as a solution
to overcrowded and unsanitary churchyards. John Claudius Loudon shared his
thoughts on the Pyramid with the Morning Advertiser in January 1830. As with
other members of the cemetery movement, Loudon applauded Willson’s desire to
abolish burials in churchyards but objected to the pyramid proposal “first,
because I think the risk of mephitic exhalations would be greatly increased;
secondly, because the expenses of burial of the poor would be greatly increased
by such agglomeration of corruption; and, thirdly, and in this perhaps I am
peculiar, because I hate the idea of interment in a vault, or in any way which
prevents the body from speedily returning to its primitive elements, and
becoming useful by entering into new combinations—vegetable, mineral, or even
animal, in aquatic burial.” Willson also attracted the attention of barrister
George Frederick Carden who enrolled him into the burgeoning burial reform
movement. He became one of the early members of Carden’s General Cemetery
Company and attended the historic meetings held in the Freemason’s Tavern in
June and July 1830, chaired by Andrew Spottiswoode MP. After Carden had opened
the meeting by outlining his vision for a London garden cemetery along the
lines of Père Lachaise, open to all denominations and all religions, Willson
was the first person to respond. According to the Oxford Journal of 10 July
1830, “Mr. Wilson (sic) coincided generally in the sentiments expressed by the
last speaker, but he did not think the plan of Pere-la-Chaise suitable for a
general cemetery in this country. He had a plan by which he should be able to
make 50 or 100 acres of land as available for the purpose of burial as 1,000
could be by any other method.”
But
after the initial flurry of interest in the Metropolitan Sepulchre, public
attention moved onto other matters and the leaders of the burial reform
movement became more firmly focussed on the plan to open a garden cemetery at
Kensal Green. During the rest of the 1830’s Willson drifted inexorably into
obscurity. We know that by 1835 he was living at Hotwells in Bristol as he was
once again in correspondence with the Government about reparations for his
African losses, penning the “humble petition of Thomas WILLSON, Gentleman,
formerly Head of a Party of Settlers at the Cape of Good Hope, and now residing
at the Hotwells, Bristol.” The petition rehearses once again the woeful story
of the African adventure, the language being more emotive than ever, the
disputes with the settlers in his party had left him “feeling deeply degraded and oppressed in his feelings to find that his
influence over his followers was entirely annihilated, his hopes blasted, and
his occupation gone, was literally heart broken!” The party “assailed with every kind of Treachery,
violence, ingratitude and deadly threats, he was perfectly overturned from his
position as the Head of the party, and degraded to the very Slave of the
Settlers.” With his “prospects destroyed,
his heart pierced and his spirit crushed, for truly "the iron entered his
Soul", found it impossible to exist under such a state of oppression” and
had been forced to quit his position. He refers to his fortunes after his
return to England:
Petitioner on his
return home had the mortification to find the former walk of his pursuits in
other hands, he nevertheless endeavoured to render himself useful in improving
the state of the Metropolis, particularly in the mode of interring the dead,
and his plans received the approbation of the most scientific persons in Your
Majesty's Kingdom, but he has been again thwarted in this useful work by the
Treachery of a false friend, and has had to sustain, singly, the entire
expences incurred by this project, and is again wholly thrown out of
employment, which makes this appeal to the benevolent breast of Your Majesty
the more needful.
After
the recital of his woes Willson asks “to
be usefully employed and he prays to be admitted into the service of Your
Majesty,” before also going on, once again to request the granting of
freehold lands in the cape as compensation. The official response to the
petition came in February 1836 (the delay having being caused by the first copy
of the petition somehow going astray in the Colonial Office):
Sir,
Lord GLENELG has
directed me to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 6th instant, with
the copy therein enclosed of a Petition which has been by you presented to His
majesty praying compensation for a Grant, to which you consider yourself
entitled, of 10,000 acres of land at the cape of Good Hope.
Upon a review of the voluminous correspondence
which has already passed between you and this Department upon the subject
matter of your Petition to His Majesty, and by which it appears that your claim
to the Grant has been repeatedly and decidedly declared to be inadmissible,
Lord GLENELG regrets to find himself placed under the necessity of referring
you to that correspondence & of informing you that he is unable to arrive
at a different conclusion regarding your case than that which was adopted by
his predecessor in this Department.
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| Ninhead Cemetery in the 1840's |
The
response would have been crushing. Things picked up for Willson in the 1840’s.
He was employed by the Nunhead Cemetery Company between 1842-1843, at a salary
of £100 a year, though in what capacity we do not know. In 1845 his youngest
son and namesake Thomas married Margaret Prosser daughter of the Rev William
Prosser at her fathers church in Leicestershire. Willson himself seems to have
moved to Leicester sometime in the 1840’s. His presence in Leicester may
explain why he did not attend the November meeting of the Society for the
Abolition of Burials in Towns, held at the society’s rooms in Bridge Street,
Blackfriars. The chairman of the society was George Alfred Walker, the
celebrated author of ‘Gatherings From Graveyards.’ According to Illustrated London News of 1 December 1849 “several communications were read and
discussed” at the meeting “including
a letter from Mr. Wilson (sic),
respecting his proposed scheme for a national cemeterial pyramid, and a
voluminous report from the chairman, embodying his views on the subject of
urban burials.” Suddenly Willson resumed his attempts to get his
Metropolitan Sepulchre noticed by the public and backed by the powers that be.
In February 1851 the Leicester Mercury published an article under the title of “A Gigantic Mauseoleum”.
We had the
pleasure the other day of inspecting, at Messrs. Cox and Collingbourn's,
painters, &c, St. Martin's, (opposite Pares's Bank,) large model of an
immense Pyramidal Cemetery designed by Mr. Thomas Willson, architect, of this
town, and which is to be sent up to the Great Exhibition, where, we doubt not,
it will attract great attention in these days of sanitary improvement. Mr. Willson's idea is that even the present suburban cemeteries the neighbourhood of
London will in the course of a few years become very much crowded, and that it
will be found very difficult to obtain additional tracts of land of sufficient
size to prevent the necessity of recurrence to the evils of intramural
interment. To this end he proposes the construction of National Metropolitan
Cemetery Woking Common, Surrey, of from 100 to 200 acres in extent. In the
centre of this, he proposes to erect his great Pyramid-Mauseoleum, occupying an
area of from 18 to 20 acres, and rising in successive stages of catacombs (10
feet high and arched) to the height of 900 feet—each stage of course gradually
diminishing—until the apex reached ; and on the top of that, Mr. Willson's plan
further embraces the elevation of an astronomical observatory in the shape of
an obelisk. This Pyramid would hold above 5,000,000 bodies; great economy in
ground would thus effected ; and, large as the cost would be, that need not be
an insuperable objection, since the erection of the vast edifice would proceed
stage upon stage, as one became filled—and the money paid for catacombs would
probably defray the cost of each stage. How much more useful such an
application the pyramidal form of mauseoleum, than reserving the structure for
the reception some one " mighty Cheops, lying alone his glory." On a
smaller scale, the Pyramid might be usefully adopted in provincial cemeteries ;
while, as heard shrewd member of the legal profession observe, " It would
be just the thing, with its fire-proof catacombs, for a national register of
wills and deeds!'
In
June The Builder noticed “a model of the ‘Great Victoria Pyramid,'
connected with a projected national cemetery on Woking Common” at the
Industrial Exhibition at the Crystal Palace. This was probably the same model
that was presented by Willson the following year to the Leicester Literary and
Philosophical Society as an exhibit for the Town Museum. Willson’s latest
attempt to grip the public imagination was successful enough for him to start a
business venture and in November 1851 the following advertisement appeared in
the Morning Advertiser:
British pyramid
national necropolis, designed by Mr. Willson (registered according to the 7th
and 8th Victoria.) —The sanctity, economy, and durability of this novel and
capacious plan, which gives the option of Earthly Burial,” or Entombment,”
being well known to the public by the Model of the Pyramid in the Great
Exhibition, intended for the Centre of the General Cemetery—the interests and
feelings of families being deeply concerned in suppressing the violation of
their tombs, it is resolved to carry this most requisite NATIONAL WORK into
effect granting debentures of 10lb. each, bearing 4 per cent interest, payable
at the Bank of England. Application for shares, &e, at the Necropolis
Office, No. 81, Charing-cross. HENRY TOWNSEND, Secretary.
The
business was not a success. In July 1853 Willson found himself standing before
Commissioner Phillips at the Insolvent Debtors Court accused by a young man
named James Sykes of defrauding him of £200. Sykes told the court that he had
advertised for a job in the press and “offered
a douceur of £200 to anyone who would procure him a permanent situation.”
His bait landed him Thomas Willson who presented himself to Sykes as an
architect with offices in Charing Cross and “an extensive practice as a patent agent and architect. He also said he
was the principal of the British Pyramid National Necropolis Company, and that
he would offer him a permanent situation in his office, at a salary of £100 a
year”. Sykes accepted the offer of work and paid over his £200 to Willson,
who signed a document promising to repay it in 12 months time. In the office
Sykes “found he had little to do —
chiefly in copying circulars for a monument to the Duke of Wellington and the
Necropolis Company”. By November Willson told him he “must dispense with his services, from the stagnation of business, and
would pay him up, and return the money deposited at the proper time.” He
handed him £23 as salary but there were no signs of the return of his £200.
Sykes took the matter to Bow Street, summoning Willson to appear before the
magistrates, who declined to deal with the matter as presumably they judged it
to be a civil rather than a criminal case. Sykes then sued Willson in the civil
courts and obtained a judgement, but still no money was forthcoming and as a
last resort he summonsed Willson to the Insolvent Debtors Court. Willson was
called to give evidence – he confessed to having already been declared
insolvent in 1817 and admitted that the only gainful employment he had ever had
was with the Nunhead Cemetery Company for a year in 1842. He told Commissioner
Phillips that he had an outstanding claim against the Lords of the Treasury for
£785 being the balance of the £1177 he had deposited with the Colonial Office
when taking his party out to Cape Colony. He said that he was still in
correspondence with the Treasury about this but still had not received his
money. In giving judgement Commissioner Phillips expressed “felt great anxiety about the case on account of the
insolvent, who was now in the decline of life, and who was possessed of considerable
talent in his profession, and who was capable of gigantic achievements.” Despite his obvious sympathy for Willson he
felt he had no choice but to find him guilty of obtaining the £200 from “a very weak minded young man” by fraud.
Willson “who had been harassed and disappointed, fell into the temptation which
the advertisement of Sykes offered” when it “was quite clear there was nothing
for him to do in his office but copying circulars and drawing diagrams.”
Commissioner Phillips said “he would consider the period for which it was his
duty to pronounce a judgment for the fraud committed on Sykes. At the rising of
the Court (half-past five o'clock), the insolvent was called upon, but the
learned commissioner deferred stating the period of imprisonment at that late
hour.” (All quotes from London Evening Standard - Wednesday 20 July 1853). Did
Willson serve a prison sentence for this fraud as the newspaper implies? I have
not been able to trace any record confirming this.
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| Willson's entry in the burial register at St Mary's Acton |
The
next records date from 1861 when the census confirms he was living at 6 Mill
Hill Terrace, Acton with his wife and daughter (now aged 50) and one servant. In
July he placed in the press a notice entitled An Extraordinary Persecution. In 250 words Willson recounts his
grievances against the Colonial Office and claims that King William and the
Earl of Aberdeen both promised to recompense him for the loss of his deposit
money. “He has petitioned in vain for redress but who can contend with the
gigantic power of our Government?” he asks. He appeals to the Senate “and also
to his compatriots, the British Nation, to prevent this singular injustice,
this cruel persecution which is causing him and his aged crippled wife (who has honorably shared in all his perils abroad) to be threatened by an ejectment
from the present habitation.” No doubt the appeal fell on deaf ears.
In
July 1862 ‘his aged crippled wife’, Mary Ann, died. He placed a notice in the
newspaper to commemorate the fact and buried her in the Churchyard of St Mary’s
Acton. In 1865 he was living at Cambridge Terrace in Hammersmith where he was
declared bankrupt on 4th May. The 86 year old insolvent finally died in
Islington, at the house of his son Thomas, in October 1866. His body was buried
beside that of his wife in the churchyard at Acton.
Post Script Willson’s
youngest son, named Thomas after his father also became an architect though with
rather more success as he built several buildings including the St Enoch
Station Hotel in Glasgow for the City of Glasgow Union Railway Company. Thomas
never had any children, his wife died in 1856 in her early thirties and he
seems to have never remarried. He lived in Hampstead and interestingly he was
also a Pyramid dreamer. In 1882, at the age of 68, he produced a design for a
pyramid mausoleum in honour of the assassinated US President Garfield “to give
expression...for all Time...to the profound grief,” caused by the “dastardly
assassin”. Garfield’s widow chose another design for his final resting place.
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