Rebel with a cause

Richard Cooke was a rebel with a cause.
From his office at 46 and 47 Whitefriargate he waged his own campaigns for what he believed to be for the betterment of Hull and its people. Cooke was a journalist, the editor and proprietor of the Hull Critic a weekly magazine which looked behind the headline of other papers such as the Eastern Morning News.
Some of what he wrote was sarcastic, some satirical. And some was aggressive, hard hitting no-nonsense material which looked at a side of life in a fast growing city that was often far from pleasant.
But Cooke’s fame – or notoriety depending on which side of a particular fence you chose to sit -was to be short lived.
He suffered tubercolosis and was forced to leave Hull for the warmer climate of Jersey.
In the mid-18802 the Critic ran a series of articles entitled Hull After Dark which gives a revealing and, at times, disturbing look at life in the city.
Many of the locations mentioned still exist. Here we look at some of those Cooke visited and tell – partly in his own words – of what he found. The next time you visit them think of what life there was like just 120 years ago….
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No 17 Little Queen Street, May 9, 1885.
Kelly was drunk. Very drunk. So drunk that he had little clue as to what was happening to him.
A night on the town led him to this place, the lure of more drink and a promised meeting with a pretty girl easily winning him over. So he found himself in a basement some 12ft square, the house and its inmates being long known to the police as running one of the worst dens in Hull.
Kelly was an inoffensive man, normally quiet and easily pleased. The night he went on the town showed a very different side to his character.
No 17 was a dismal sort of place. Some attempt to brighten it had been made with oleographs on the walls depicting Romeo and Juliet, a Cavalier and his lady in the Reign of Charles 11. And one wall was graced with a picture of a juvenile Cinderella with her broom
The décor was not entirely unattractive.
But this morning there is an addition to the décor – the dark patch of human blood on the floor at the foot of the staircase.
In his drunken state Kelly had been lured here and when every effort to get the last farthing of his money from him by fair means had been exhausted foul measurers were resorted to. While in his state of stupor he was robbed.
Cooke takes up the story: “After his purse had been emptied he was told that his absence would be preferable to his company and an attempt was made to bundle him out. Unfortunately for himself, yet perhaps fortunately for the community at large, Kelly had a revolver and killed the bully of the house on the spot. In his frenzy he shot again, and, but for powerful arms restraining him, he might have done more good service in the interests of morality…it was only when he was driven like a rat into a corner that he turned again. He is impecunious, too and has no means of obtaining the proper legal assistance that he needs. I trust, therefore, that the public of Hull will do their best to supply the poor fellow with that help.”
Cooke despised people like those who lured Kelly into their den to rob him – and made sure his readers were left in no doubt as to that fact.
He wrote of the dead man: “I won’t speak ill of him but I will say that it is in the interests of the honour of humanity that the existing members of his class have not before received similar reward for their actions.
“No epithet is sufficiently strong to express their loathsomeness. They wear fine clothes, abundant jewellery and live a sumptuous, though despicable, sneaking, loafing , bullying life at the sacrifice of some poor girl’s virtue.”

Written by The Editor - 09/01/2009 14:43:17

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