The Reverend George Sanger & the Burning of the Church
Compiled from "The Middlesbrough News & Cleveland Advertiser", "The News", "The Middlesbrough
Evening Gazette". - by Mr B Swales, a member of the Cleveland Family History Society
It seems George Sanger had been promoted to the parish of Carlton in 1866 after previously preaching at North Shields and Stokesley. When he arrived at Carlton, he found the Church, "in a remarkable state of decay", which could easily have tumbled around the heads of the congregation. The roof was little better than a sieve; in fact no builder could be found who would risk his life on the rickety old roof to repair it!
On one occasion the vicar, and congregation had to bail water out of the church, which was ankle deep in the aisle, instead of holding the morning service. The floor of the church was in fact two feet lower than the ground outside, which allowed water to seep into the church and soak through the flooring. John Walker Ord, a Cleveland historian of the time described the nave and chancel as “little better than a shepherd’s hut
It seemed useless to repair the church, so the vicar, along with several local influential people, decided to build a new one. The vicar himself prepared the plans. The new church was in the form of a cross, built of stone from quarries in the neighbourhood, and had a north and south trancept, with a vestry in the south one, a handsome wooden bell turret surmounted by a small metal cross. The entrance included a pretty porch of polished wood, eight very chaste tracery windows were fitted and glazed with cathedral glass, the east window was exceedingly large - in fact one of the finest church windows in Cleveland, a proper ventilation system and improved apparatus for warming the church. It had a slated roof on the exterior while the inside was of polished wood.
The vicar himself carved most of the wood and stonework and the seating accommodated over 200 people, double that of the old church. It sounded a fine church, one that a village would be proud of, even The Times newspaper commented on the building work and praised the vicar's stone and wood carvings. There was some objection to the abolition of the old fashioned pews, this and other occurrences created a good deal of ill feeling. The church was opened on 18 March 1879.
For two years the services went harmoniously and were well attended; the vicar was highly spoken of by
all except a few. Around the beginning of October 1881, the vicar received the following letter:-
“Carlton - To the Rev. George Sanger –
This is to give you notice, you beggar parson, that if you do not get out of this place we will beggar you.
We will make you rue the day you came to Carlton and entered on your wretched new improvements. We
will worry and tease you to death, and if that won't do, won't stop at putting a bullet into you".
The postmark showed that it had been posted in Carlton village. Strong stuff indeed, more like a story from the American west than of a small English country village! The Rev. Sanger treated this letter as a joke, and after showing it to Miss Kingston and Miss Bush - two young ladies staying with him - he put it into the fire. A week later the vicarage greenhouse was broken into and the whole of his plants were destroyed. The vicar made very little complaint.
Then in the early hours of Wednesday morning, 19 October 1881, events came to a head. A fire was discovered in the church by some cottagers who lived nearby and they immediately raised the alarm in the village. A crowd quickly gathered outside, but by then the fire was raging so furiously that nothing could be saved and before four o'clock the roof had fallen in along with the bell tower. Nothing but the bare walls were left standing. Later the same day the Rev. Sanger received another threatening letter, to the effect that if he was not out of Carlton before Wednesday next, "a bullet would be put through you".
After the events of October 1881, police suspicion soon fell on the Rev George Sanger himself, indeed he was arrested two months later. At the Stokesley Petty Sessions, held in the Town Hall between 6 and 14 January 1882, the full story unfolded
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The Rev George Sanger became vicar at Carlton-in-Cleveland in 1866, and from the outset his relations with the parishioners was not a happy one. He was reserved and taciturn, seldom speaking to the villagers, but he was accepted by the majority of the village for better or worse because he was a powerful preacher. He was by trade a joiner/carpenter also a clever mechanic, expert bookbinder and skilful at making fireworks - which he made for every 5 November.
His domestic affairs were not however to the villagers liking. For many years the household of the vicarage consisted of Mr Sanger, a Mrs Bush (housekeeper), her husband and a large family. The husband, the parishioners observed, played a very subordinate part, in the household and acted as a kind of gardener. In 1880 Mrs Bush gave birth to a child at the vicarage, who only lived for a few weeks. Prior to this the gardener/husband had been turned out of the vicarage returning a few days later only to be promptly packed off again! He eventually ended up in the Leeds Workhouse. Meanwhile, the eldest daughter of the Bush family emigrated to Winnipeg, Canada, along with three of her brothers. In October 1880 Mrs Bush
followed her daughter to Canada taking more of her children with her, leaving at the vicarage a 14 year old daughter Alexandra, and two sons, Arthur 11 and William 5. The three children called the Rev Sanger "uncle", but were not related at all. Mrs Bush's place at the vicarage was taken by Miss Mary Kingston, 20 year old daughter of a Great Broughton farmer. Some weeks before the church burnt down it became common knowledge in the village that Miss Mary Kingston was pregnant and the Rev Sanger was the father, and the young Miss Alexandra Bush was also in the same condition. These facts obviously brought the vicar into disrepute, and his relations with his flock became more strained than ever.
When the first threatening letter arrived at the vicarage, and was duly burnt, one of the churchwardens thought this suspicious, because he thought the envelope was in the vicar's own handwriting. Even before the fire of 19 October 1881, the vicar was preparing to leave his parish, and on 22 October he left Carlton with Miss Kingston, Miss Bush, Arthur and William Bush, for Redcar, to stay with William Lowes, a tobacconist. After staying in Redcar for about two weeks George Sanger and the two young ladies fled to London, under the assumed names of Mr and Mrs Wilkinson and Mrs Davis. During their stay in London the Rev Sanger married Miss Kingston on 8 December at Holy Trinity Church, Lambeth. The police eventually traced the vicar to London, where he was arrested on 28 December 1881, and charged with setting fire to Carlton church.
He was brought before the Stokesley Petty Sessions between 6 and 14 January 1882. The court was almost filled with villagers from Carlton, who had trudged the distance through a pelting storm. Several local people were called to give evidence.
Thomas William Harrison, a coachman at Busby Hall, took Dr William Guthrie Forbes past the church about 2 am on their way to the house of a Mr Marwood, they saw no sign of a fire. Thomas Routeledge, a local labourer who lived close to the church, raised the alarm around 3 am after seeing fire in three different parts of the church. He was soon joined by John Ramsdale, Sexton of Carlton, who had the only other set of keys for the church. He immediately went to raise the vicar, who merely asked, "Is it much?". He later arrived at the scene with Miss Kingston and Miss Bush, and laughed and
joked with them while the church burnt.
Matthew Waite, a Carlton joiner, said it was his job to trim the church lamps and at the time of' the fire
there was a gallon of paraffin in the Church. A widow named Sarah Ann Brown claimed she saw the vicar leave the church the night before the fire and, "crouch under a hedge so as not to be noticed”. Charlotte Mellor, "a fashionably-dressed young woman", stood next to the vicar, Miss Bush and Miss Kingston while the church burnt, and said they didn't seem
very concerned. This fact was also noted by 12 year old Mary Garbutt.
As the hearing progressed it became clear that the prosecution had failed in making out a sufficient case to justify sending the prisoner for trial, even though no forcible entry was found on the doors and windows; only two men kept keys for the church, the vicar and sexton. It was also claimed he was seen coming out of the church the previous evening with what looked like, “A bottle of paraffin", and the fact that he was not the most popular member of the village. The prosecution claimed he fired the church to spite the villagers, and he only married Miss Kingston so she couldn't testify against him.
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There was no direct evidence against him, just circumstantial, assumptions and suspicions. The Rev George Sanger was discharged, and as he left the Town Hall with the young Arthur Bush he was met with quite an ovation, and was cheered by two or three hundred people all the way up the street to the Black Swan Hotel, where on the steps he turned and thanked the crowd for their sympathy. As he drove out of Stokesley he was again loudly cheered, but he was a ruined man and his career as a minister of the church seems to have been brought to an end.
He was also brought before an ecclesiastical hearing, found guilty of fornication and suspended from duties for four years. George and Mary Sanger continued to live in the vicarage and over the next few years had four more children. Some villagers despised him, some shunned him and whenever he walked through the village his head was always bowed. He spent his time quietly bookbinding and walking on the hills.
During the summer of 1894 he started holding services amid the ruins of the burnt out church, but by September he fell ill, and realising he may not recover, he wrote a poignant letter addressed to the villagers – which was pinned to the blacksmith's door, situated in the centre of the village. Being much touched by this appeal, a parish meeting was called and a suitable reply was sent. During his illness he was visited by many of the old parishioners. George Sanger died on 3 November 1894 and was buried in the churchyard. Around 150 people attended his funeral. According to the Evening Gazette, Nov 9th, 1894,
“the grave is situated near the porch of the ruined church, and lies east west alongside the church between
and Austrian Pine and a wild rose tree, at a place where the first rays of morning sun are felt.”
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The Trial - Report from The North Star
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