The squid finder of Scarborough
THE Victorian era was the great age of the genteel amateur collector. As the empire expanded, people grew more and more curious about the world around them, both at home and abroad, and curio cabinets around the country bulged with objects that reflected that fascination.
One such magpie was William James Clarke (1871-1945), whose collection of charms and amulets from British folklore forms the basis of the current exhibition at Scarborough Art Gallery, Fears, Foes & Faeries.
Clarke was a scion of a family of Scarborough entrepreneurs: his father, Richard Clarke, founded the long-running Clarke’s Aerated Waters and Bottling Company Ltd in 1889.
The business was situated on North Street, and for a brief period in the late 1950s sold Scarborough Spa water; however, this proved unprofitable, and the company mostly stuck to the soft drinks for which it is still fondly remembered by older Scarborians.
William, however, appears to have had little or no involvement in the family business.
He attended Miss Mary Graham’s Nursery School from the age of four, then Mr Wheater’s Grammar School on Albemarle Crescent.
It was here he met and was taught drawing by George Massee, a keen naturalist. Massee encouraged the young William’s interest in the natural world, and when he started a Naturalists’ Club, based at the Unitarian Church, in 1880, William was one of its first members, although it proved shortlived.
Clarke then moved to Frederick York Richmond’s School in Haddo Terrace. Richmond formed a branch of the Union Jack Field Club and gave it the use of a room at the school. The club set up an aquarium and museum and Clarke eventually became curator of the museum and keeper of the aquarium.
In 1883, at the tender age of 12, he gave a talk on reptiles at a soirée held in the Grand Hotel – then only 16 years old itself – to raise funds for the club. Reptiles appear to have been an enduring interest – as an adult Clarke kept several snakes as pets.
After leaving school he was a founder member of the Scarborough Field Naturalists Society, becoming President for the first time at the age of 23. He went on to be President a further four times, and was Secretary in 1895 and held that same post for 11 years between 1902 and 1913. He was a committee member as late as 1943, just two years before his death.
As a teenager, Clarke was apprenticed to Theakston’s Printing Works on St Nicholas Street, but soon decided the life of a printer was not for him, and set up a shop dealing in natural history specimens, fishing tackle and taxidermy at 44 Huntriss Row.
Clarke was first and foremost a naturalist and wildlife photographer, but also took a keen interest in folklore. He amassed a collection of over 500 charms and amulets from around the world, all now in the Scarborough Collections, some 100 of which, mostly from Britain, form the basis of Fears, Foes & Faeries. Clarke seems not to have recorded what it was that ins p i r e d his interest in British folklore, but it seems likely that it was prompted by the role played in it by birds and animals: the collection includes moles’ feet (said to ward off toothache), dried toads (to deter witches) and, of course, rabbits’ feet, for luck.
In his tiny, precise handwriting, he meticulously recorded the use, date and location of each charm using pen and ink or pencil on the back of old business cards, and kept them in wooden display cabinets.
He also compiled four detailed notebooks, each containing observations on local folk customs, quotes from published sources and news cuttings. He conducted lively correspondence with other folklore collectors, although he is not known to have contributed to any formal journals on the subject.
The earliest items in the collection date from 1891, when he was 20 years old, and he continued collecting right up to his death in 1945 even though, by then, folklore had become unfashionable.