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In a small community nothing sparks a family feud more than the question of paternity of an illegitimate child, especially when it concerns the son of a prosperous well-established Eastby family and the daughter of a less prosperous one. Such was the case between the Heyworth’s and the Stancliffe’s which ended in court with Solicitors from Skipton and Burnley and a Barrister from Bradford.

In February 1881, Susanna Stancliffe of Park House, Eastby, who was 18, told her father William she was pregnant and that 20-year-old Johnny Heyworth of Croft House, Eastby, was responsible.

The Heyworth’s had lived in Eastby since the 18th century and Johnny was the third of four sons of John Heyworth, a well-to-do farmer and butcher, and his wife Ann (Holgate). Of his elder sons, William was an export clerk in Manchester, and George, who was 28, had taken over Studfold Farm in Eastby. Over the years John Heyworth had also been elected to various posts in Eastby, as Parish Constable, Highway Surveyor and Overseer of the Poor.

Although Susanna’s father William Stancliffe had lived in Eastby as a young man he migrated to Burnley where he was a Joiner and Machine Maker. Later he married Sarah Stockdale from an Embsay family who had also moved to Burnley and their two children Richard and Susanna were born there. In the later 1870’s the Stancliffe’s came back to Eastby where William leased 32 acres of farmland and moved into Park House, on the opposite side of Barden Road from the Heyworth’s at Croft House.

Both the Heyworth’s and the Stancliffe’s were regulars at the Mason’s Arms in Eastby, which was kept by the widowed Elizabeth Greenwood and her eldest daughter Annie, and much of the conflict is recorded in their diaries, as they found themselves caught in the middle of the dispute. Not only were the Greenwood’s related to the Heyworth’s but Elizabeth’s son Richard Greenwood was the best friend of the accused Johnny Heyworth, and it would be Richard’s evidence in court that was to prove decisive.

On 10th March 1881 there was a reckoning at Park House. Annie Greenwood wrote in her diary that Johnny Heyworth, who denied being the father, was taken to the Stancliffe’s by his elder brother George Heyworth to confront Susanna, but she stuck to her account that Johnny was the father of her expected child.

The next day it was the talk of the Mason’s Arms, where prominent Eastby butcher George Garnett was defending the Heyworth’s ‘saying Johnny was in the clear’.

Other Eastby families were slowly drawn in, with the better off farmers and trades people seeming to side with the Heyworth’s, and the less well-off siding with the girl’s family.

On 12th March William Stancliffe and Susanna’s uncle William Stockdale from Burnley were in the Mason’s Arms ‘reciting their grievances and anxieties’, and Susanna went to stay with her uncle and aunt in Burnley, returning shortly before the baby was born.

However, the tide of opinion seems to have been slowly turning away from the Heyworth’s and in favour of Susanna Stancliffe, and by early June several callers were speaking indignantly about the Heyworth’s and their general behaviour. William Turpin Chippindale, landlord of the Elm Tree, ‘spoke of the Stancliffe affair, and said Johnny should pay’. Interestingly, there doesn’t seem to have been any expectation that Johnny should marry Susanna. Elizabeth Greenwood on a social call to the home of John and Sarah Mattock at Rockville, principal Embsay Grocers, said that Mrs Mattock spoke disparagingly of the Heyworth’s.

On 21st June 1881 William Stancliffe called in the Mason’s Arms to say that ‘Susanna had got a daughter, a fine baby, but he seemed troubled’. On 24th June Annie Greenwood called to see Susanna and the baby, named Carrie, and wrote: ‘They are both doing nicely & it is such a bonnie Baby & so like Johnny Heyworth.’

Another prominent Eastby family were the Newall’s of Bower House, and Albany Newall, Richard Greenwood and Johnny Heyworth were close friends and had gone to school together. The following day Annie provocatively wrote ‘I told Johnny Heyworth and Albany Newall that I had been to see the Grand Baby at Stancliffe’s’.

William Stancliffe continued to call at the Mason’s Arms every few days, and on 12th July he was discussing the coming trial with the Embsay Constable P.C. Marsden. On 20th July Elizabeth wrote ‘A Lawyer from Burnley here in the Stancliffe & Heyworth.’ No doubt engaged by the Stockdale family to get justice for Susanna.

Two days later Annie wrote that butcher George Garnett was in the Mason’s Arms again ‘awfully enraged about the coming trial. I told him Dick [her brother Richard] had got a summons. He was nearly wild & more so when we talked about Johnny seizing Ada.’ Ada Tibbot was their 17-year-old servant and his ‘seizing’ of Ada raises questions about whether the liaison with Susanna was consensual.

The court case was held on 23rd July at Skipton Petty Sessions. Mr Thomas Nowell of Burnley appeared for the Stancliffe’s, and despite the Heyworth’s employing a Barrister, Mr West of Bradford, the evidence Richard Greenwood gave resulted in Johnny Heyworth being ordered to pay Susanna Stancliffe 5 shillings per week for 14 years.

However, it was not the end of George Garnett’s antipathy to Richard. Annie wrote that ‘Garnett came down storming and called Dick a slink’. But their mother Elizabeth said ‘him & all the Heyworth’s have been against Dick & used filthy language to him because he was one of Susanna Stancliffe’s witnesses’, and that he went to court ‘to speak the truth’.  Several others in the Mason’s Arms were also criticising Garnett’s behaviour, and other tenant farmers, like the Stancliffe’s, spoke of their conflicts with the Heyworth’s.

Things took a different turn on 10th August when P.C. George Renton of Bolton Abbey, and P.C. Mellin Marsden of Embsay called at the Mason’s Arms to report that they were looking for Johnny Heyworth who had ‘run away to escape paying Miss Stancliffe her 5s’.

Johnny Heyworth was missing for some time and may have gone to stay with one of his Heyworth uncles in Manchester or Rochdale.

Annie continued to visit Susanna Stancliffe and her baby, who seemed to be thriving, writing on the 15th November that the baby was ‘such a fat grand one’, but the baby developed croup and died 5 days later on 20th November.

The next day Annie visited the Vicarage and had a long talk with the vicar’s wife, Mrs Eliza Kidd. They talked ‘of Stancliffe’s baby, she had got an awful opinion of them from the Heyworth’s I suppose’ [Johnny Heyworth’s sister Martha was a maid at the Vicarage], but I told her of the Heyworth’s, and what they were.’ After the Vicarage, Annie wrote that she ‘called in Stancliffe’s & looked at the baby, it was lovely in death. They were very upset because it had not been Christened and they would have to bury it behind the Church. Poor little thing, it looked fit for Heaven.’

On 22nd November William Stancliffe went to Bolton Abbey Priory Church to arrange for the child’s burial because he thought the Embsay vicar Rev John Tyrwhitt Davy Kidd would refuse, and the funeral took place two days later.  A week later Annie wrote: ‘Miss Stancliffe sent me a Memorial Card of poor little Carrie, now safe in the arms of Jesus.’

Eight years later, Susanna Stancliffe married William Dewhirst, a Warehouseman of Bradford, on 23rd October 1889, and their only daughter Ethel May was born on 15th September 1890. In their later years they ran the Oddfellows Arms at Lidgett Green, Bradford where William died in 1926 leaving £1,377 5s 2d. Susanna died in 1934, aged 72.

Susanna’s father William Stancliffe continued to live at Park House Eastby where he died in 1910, followed shortly after by her unmarried brother Richard.

As for Johnny Heyworth, he married Ada Newall, daughter of prosperous Samuel and Adelaide Newall of Bower House, on 11th September 1889 at Embsay Church. They lived at Croft House and had two children Maud Adelaide and John Samuel Heyworth. Ada died at Croft House in 1939, as did Johnny in 1947.

David Turner, Embsay with Eastby Historical Research Group – January 20