How eccentric William, 92, ended up in jail
Eugene Byrne looks at the life and career of a stubborn and eccentric Clifton character who ended up in prison 150 years ago this week – at the age of 92.
ON the afternoon of Tuesday April 15 1873 William Mathias was in the smoking room of the Adam & Eve tavern on Wine Street in the company of some friends when the Sheriff’s officer, a Mr Dodds, arrived.
Mr Dodds quietly explained his business to Mr Mathias, who then rose from his seat and putting down his long-stemmed pipe, told his friends what was happening:
“Gentlemen, the hero of Boyce’s Buildings, after all the wars he has waged, is now in the custody of the Sheriff’s officer of Bristol!”
He then went on to relate at some length his “persecutions and trials”. Indeed, he went on for four hours, by which time a large number of people had gathered to listen, often bursting into roars of laughter at his jokes.
Mr Dodds was understandably growing impatient. When Mathias said that he planned to remain in the pub until closing time, Dodds politely but firmly explained that it would be inconvenient for him to have to wait so long and that he had sent for Mr Mathias’s daughter.
Elizabeth Mathias arrived in a cab which then took the three of them to the New Gaol.
Elizabeth Mathias was distraught, but her father was nonchalance itself. Upon arrival at the prison, he announced that he would go to bed immediately and he was allocated a cell.
He was 92 years old.
The incarceration of William Mathias 150 years ago was the talk of all Bristol – not only because he had been thrown into prison at an advanced age, but also because he was a well-known local character, usually referred to as “The General”. It was also, some said, because dark forces – vested interests – were trying to get him out of the way because he was an obstacle for various building developments in Clifton.
“The General” was regarded by most as a colourful individual, and perhaps a little eccentric, too. He had money. He originally came from Haverfordwest in Pembrokeshire where he had been a banker, but the stories he related were altogether more glamorous.
He claimed that as a young man he had been caught by the press gang and forced into the Navy. He had travelled extensively and had once been granted an audience with the Czar of Russia. In taverns and in lectures he held audiences in thrall when he related his adventures.
His confinement in the New Gaol was not uncomfortable. He was a personal friend of the governor, Captain James Gardner, and in any event he was not seen as a common criminal anyway. The Victorian class system held sway even in prison, and Mathias was treated as a “first class debtor”. He could send out for his meals, and many other things he wanted, and could receive visitors and send letters.
He did. He wrote to the local press after several months inside: “My health continues good, and my friends will be pleased in learning this fact. I feel it deprivation only, not punishment, here.”
The story of William Mathias, and of how he ended up spending six months in gaol at the behest of the Court of Chancery, is the sort of things that Charles Dickens might have contrived, except that we still don’t know the full story.
He inherited Boyce’s Buildings from his uncle, Thomas Boyce. The buildings are still here today, on Boyce’s Avenue.
This was at a time when Clifton was undergoing rapid development and expansion. Anyone who could afford it wanted to get away from the smoke and smells of the city and up to the fresh air of Clifton. There was, as plenty of commentators at the time and since noted, also the appeal of snobbery. You got a better class of person in Clifton.
It was the money to be made in building in Clifton that was probably at the root of Mathias’s problems. That and his own stubbornness.
The trouble had really started in the 1840s with a dispute over the public right of way between Boyce’s Buildings and what is now Victoria Square. While Mathias admitted that there was a footpath, he disputed that carriages had the right to pass.
He had a wall built to prevent this supposed invasion of his property. It was pulled down by persons unknown at night.
He built another wall, which once more was destroyed nocturnally. This pattern repeated itself several times.
So now he built an arch over the path – it’s still there today, one of those many quaint architectural touches that grace Clifton – and into it he set an iron gate.
Again, the gate was removed and again he replaced it. He loudly complained that he was being persecuted by the Corporation and by the Society of Merchant Venturers.
In this, he had a lot of support from Clifton residents. Many of them were as angry as he was that the demolitions of his walls and gates were being carried out, doubtless by hired men, while noone knew the identity of their paymasters.
Things came to a head in 1861 when he was charged with assault.
Eliza Hobbs, a nursemaid employed by a wealthy family in Horfield, had gone along the path pushing a perambulator – that is, a pram - which at this time was a newfangled invention.
She lifted it over the iron gate and Mathias gently pushed her on the shoulder and told her to go back. Or so he said. In court Miss Hobbs claimed that he had hit her in the face with his walking stick. He produced a witness saying he had done nothing of the kind and that the infant in the pram was never in any danger.
The court action was nominally in Miss Hobbs’ name, but in reality it was brought by the Corporation.
In the hearing the court was told by surveyor George Ashmead that there had been a gate across the roadway 37 years previously and that no carriage could have passed through it.
The question now was whether or not a pram was a “carriage”.
To make things even more absurd, the court fell to arguing over another novelty of the time – crinoline skirts. By this time, they had become very wide indeed. What would happen if a woman pushing a pram through the gate met a woman in a wide crinoline? Indeed, what would happen if two women in wide crinolines were trying to pass one another.
The jury couldn’t agree and the case against Mathias collapsed. The Council decided to take another case against him, but a petition supporting him, signed by thousands of people, protesting against his vindictive oppression gave them second thoughts. Mathias retained his right to set up a gate.
Mathias was, and remained, a local hero for years to come. He acquired his nickname “The General” for his clever tactics in his wars with the authorities. At the time, and for years afterwards, his dispute over the right of way was known as “The Battle of Boyce’s Buildings”.
He ended up in prison in 1873, though, for contempt of the Court of Chancery. This arose from a separate dispute over a roadway that he had interfered with. Refusing to comply with the court order he was imprisoned for six months.
When he was released there was relatively little fanfare and he lived out his last years at his home at 9 Albemarle Row, looked after by his loving and long-suffering daughter Elizabeth.
He died in 1878 and was buried at St Andrews, Clifton. He had once been a wealthy man, but his legal disputes and the continued erection and demolition of walls and gates had used up his fortune. He left everything he had to Elizabeth; the poor woman inherited less than £200.