My paternal great-grandfather’s steadfast support of my grandfather had already cost Charles Stokes Read dear. He had been brought in as a director of the Vis Vitae Bread Company of London and was also a member of an influential club when he and Reverend Pigott met as recruits in the Salvation Army. The two men immediately hit it off. Just two years apart in age, perhaps it was their differences that drew them together: the cleanshaven, charismatic younger son with no family money but a romantic, adventuring background and the bearded, wealthy London merchant and paterfamilias. When they met, Charles was a pillar of the upper middle class with eight equally prosperous siblings and a brood of children that would, in time, increase to nine.
Within months of joining the Salvation Army, Charles and Sarah had donated the family jewels, followed by increasingly large donations of cash. This largesse came to an abrupt end when ‘major’ Pigott resigned rather than be drummed out of the Army. Charles and Sarah had left immediately too, taking with them a small group of well-heeled former Salvationists – but leaving their donated money behind.
Over the next few years, Charles and Sarah would continue to pay for their close ties to my grandfather. Charles was fired from the bread company, blackballed by his club and ostracised by his brothers and sisters, who decided he was mad. In the early 1900s, he was forced to retire, and moved those of his family who were willing to come to the Abode of Love, now led by my grandfather. Charles’s two eldest sons and his eldest daughter turned their backs on their parents.
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Why a reporter from the Daily Mail was skulking outside the notorious Abode of Love that particular Sunday evening of 7 November 1908 has never been established. The editor would vociferously deny the paper had been tipped off about what was about to happen, but there his reporter was, admiring the ‘picture of rest and peace in its beautiful rural surroundings’ on that unusually mild Sunday evening. He noted how at five-thirty exactly lights shone through the Gothic windows of the strange community’s chapel; at six the sound of women’s voices raised in song floated towards him; and at seven, how all became silent and dark once again.
The reporter was just about to leave when he heard the sound of a car approaching. He watched a huge vehicle stop just before it reached the community’s locked gates and discharge four men, who began walking up and down outside the community. The reporter approached the vehicle. He saw several men still inside, one of them in a policeman’s uniform. He glimpsed a policeman’s helmet and an inspector’s cap. He asked if they were going to the Abode of Love, and if so, why?
When they didn’t answer, the reporter returned to his spot beneath the community’s protective high stone wall and watched as the vehicle drove past him again and on to the Abode gates, finally turning into the yard of the Lamb Inn, the public house hard by the community wall.
Unaware of what was going on outside, the faithful spilled out into the corridors and passages as Eden emptied. At that point, one of the Kitchen Parlour approached Charles’s 27-year-old daughter Millicent – someone had tapped on the window of the music room.
Curious, Millicent followed the woman outside just in time to glimpse three men moving through the dark gardens. The women hurried back into the house and told Charles. Sarah begged her husband not to go out, but he brushed her hand from his arm and disappeared through the front door. He had barely reached the stableyard before three men jumped him from behind. Two held him while the third produced a policeman’s helmet filled with hot sticky tar mixed with feathers, and rammed it down over his head. As Charles stumbled about in shock and fear, one of the men who had been holding him clouted the top of the helmet, trying to force it over his eyes. His attackers then seized the frightened and bewildered man and began to drag him toward some bushes. Just then, Millicent ran up, with her mother in hot pursuit.
Hearing their voices, Charles, fearing for their safety, shouted for them to go away. The two women refused. ‘If you go away, we will take no more notice of it,’ Sarah called out to the men.
The intruders took off over the wall as Millicent pulled the helmet from her father’s head. His hair was matted with tar and had feathers stuck in it. Streaks of black ooze ran down his cheeks and into his moustache and beard.
Other community members rushed up. One ran to fetch the local constable. Two began helping Charles back to the house. And then there came the sound of someone climbing back over the wall. A man, dressed as a policeman, dropped down into the darkened garden. It was Michael Sale, one of the men charged with tarring and feathering my great-grandfather. He was presumably dressed as a policeman to disguise himself.
‘I dare you to arrest me,’ he proclaimed as he was seized.
He was held until the village constable arrived. Police Constable Catley asked the intruder why he was in the grounds.
‘I came to tar and feather old Pigott,’ he replied. He went on to state that when he hadn’t been able to spot Pigott quickly, he had decided to attack the first representative of ‘the beastly place’ he came across.
Michael Ormerod Sale, an advertising agent of Eaton Terrace, and his accomplices in the attack, grocer Foster John Pinnall of Camberwell and labourer John Green of Holborn, were quickly taken to the police cells in nearby Bridgwater, where they were charged with assaulting Charles Stokes Read and being on enclosed premises for an unlawful purpose.
The following morning, the streets around the town courthouse were in chaos as the locals fought for admittance and a glimpse of the injured man and his wife as they arrived to give evidence. Charles, looking shaken, his face burned from the tar, and his hair, moustache and beard ragged from where the tar had had to be cut out, limped slowly to the entrance, his wife on his arm. Sarah carried a picnic basket. Once inside, she insisted on taking the basket down to the cells, where she distributed sandwiches and a hot drink to the three men accused of attacking her husband.
In court, the ringleader, Sale, testified that he had planned the whole thing, including recruiting his accomplices, with the sole purpose of teaching ‘old Smyth-Pigott’ a lesson. Pinnall and Green said Sale had simply invited them on an ‘outing’ and that they had no idea what had been planned.
The magistrates found Sale guilty of assault and trespass, and sentenced him to one calendar month’s imprisonment with hard labour. Pinnall and Green were found guilty of trespass and fined £5 each. With no hope of finding such a large sum, Sale’s accomplices joined him in the cells for a month’s hard labour.
The effect on the community was devastating. It seemed incomprehensible to these gentle people that they could be so hated. In the years that followed, resentment grew between the Read family and that of Belovèd over the way Charles had unwittingly become a scapegoat for his leader – until, during my childhood, the Reads’ resentment had grown to include even the silver Charles had brought to Somerset.
But, as so often happens in these situations, the attack on such a kindly and gentle man forged ties between the Agapemone and the village of Spaxton that were never loosened. The village already benefited from the community’s continuing largesse – annual deliveries of coal and joints of beef, plus the dried once-used tea leaves. In the wake of the attack on my great-grandfather, the village became the community’s unofficial security.
My mother told me of one occasion when she had been enjoying her lunchtime drink in the Lamb Inn when a curious reporter had dropped in, eager for titillating details of the strange community next door. ‘You got me there,’ the landlord replied, scratching his head perplexed. ‘We never see sight nor sound of any of them.’ His reply was echoed by a chorus of muttered ‘Aye’s from the little group of farm labourers hunched over a game of dominoes and pints of scrumpy cider.