The postcard (photographs 1 & 2) is dated 31st August 1912 and shows Embsay Church from the diagonal field-path coming from Eastby which you will all recognise. Apart from the growth of the trees around the church, it is almost unchanged, showing the familiar three stone stoops at the junction of two of the three fields (my photograph 3).
The postcard was written by Dr Thomas Parker Greenwood who was born at the Mason’s Arms Eastby in 1868 and was on a visit to his former home, which was then run by his Aunt Sarah Parker and her daughter Polly.
After initially attending Embsay National School, Thomas won a scholarship for the new Grammar School on Gargrave Road which had opened in 1877. He later trained for the medical profession in Edinburgh and, after qualifying as a doctor, worked in Asylum’s in Bedfordshire, Herefordshire, and Storthes Hall near Huddersfield before being appointed Assistant Medical Officer at the Nottinghamshire County Asylum at Radcliffe-on-Trent in 1911.
The postcard is addressed to Miss Ellen Lever who was the Matron at the Radcliffe-on-Trent Asylum. Also working there as a nurse was Miss Catherine Marwick, who Thomas went on to marry in 1913 (photograph 4 below), and who was with him on his visit to Embsay and Eastby in 1912.
The text of the Postcard reads:
31 August 1912
This is a little picture of my ain country. The little meadow into which the stone stile leads to Church is mine* & the path to the old Church is the one I trod as a school boy in the fresh cool mornings to Skipton School.
Hope you are getting on well. Weather fine now – Going into Lancashire on Monday & then to the seaside. My visit to Ilkley had no result he would do nothing and evaded us –
Please keep this card for me./ T.P.G.
*The three strips of meadow through which the path goes are called Little, Long, and Great Laithe Grass which Thomas inherited when his mother died in 1909. In the postcard he affectionately recalls walking through them as a schoolboy on his way to Skipton.
He goes on to mention that he is about to go for a brief holiday to the Lancashire seaside, but ends by writing enigmatically that his “visit to Ilkley had no result he would do nothing and evaded us”. This refers to a tragic family event that also had links to his profession.
His sister Sarah Greenwood had married Robert Thackray, a small scale Ilkley grocer, in 1889 and went on to have two children. Their son Harry died in his first year but their daughter Lizzie survived and she can be seen as a bridesmaid in the photograph of Thomas’s wedding in 1913, when she was 23.
Sarah had suffered from ‘mental depression’ for several years and following her mother’s death in April 1909 had been admitted to High Royds Asylum at Menston but returned home at the beginning of November ‘apparently fully recovered’. However, 8 weeks later, on 28th December she left their home at Lister Street Ilkley in the early morning without waking her husband, climbed the steep railway embankment near their home and at about 7:30am threw herself in front of the Skipton to Ilkley train. The Leeds Mercury of 29th December 1909 reported that her mutilated remains were found at 7:40am by William Pinder, a platelayer, and both her legs and one of her arms had been severed.
An inquest was held the following day at Ilkley Town Hall with the Coroner’s verdict that ‘Sarah Thackray, 47, being of unsound mind placed herself in front of a train on the Midland Railway & was instantly killed.’
Probate records show that Sarah left £838, a significant sum at that time, which was made up of part of her inheritance from their mother who died earlier the same year. Thomas’s visit to Ilkley two and a half years later, probably with his elder brother Richard, was no doubt to see their brother-in-law Robert Thackray who had re-married the previous year and was then living at 34 Middleton Road, Ilkley. In 1912 a house on Middleton Road would have cost no more than £150.
From the wording of the postcard it seems that their visit was more than just a social call, and possibly about their sister’s inheritance. Whatever the reason, it prompted Thomas to write “he would do nothing and evaded us”. Perhaps Thomas wanted to ensure that the inherited money went to his sister Sarah’s daughter Lizzie.
Dr Thomas Parker Greenwood continued to work at the Asylum at Radcliffe-on-Trent for the remainder of his life, and died in 1923 aged 55. The postcard ends with the words ‘Please keep this card for me’. He and his wife Catherine went on to have three children, including a son Thomas Parker Marwick Greenwood whose children and grandchildren also kept the postcard, which they kindly allowed me to copy.
David Turner, Embsay with Eastby Historical Research Group
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