Black Diamonds: the Rise and Fall of an English Dynasty - Catherine Bailey

This is the first book by Catherine Bailey, a successful and award winning television producer and director with a range of critically acclaimed documentaries to her credit. A meticulously researched work, it traces the history of the Fitzwilliam family, in the earlier half of the twentieth century, when they were one of the Britain’s richest families. Their wealth was chiefly based on coal and their history is inextricably linked with the fortunes ...
...was the palatial Georgian gem, Wentworth House, situated five miles from Sheffield and in the heart of mining country, being surrounded by around seventy collieries, some of which they owned. With its 365 rooms, 1000 windows and five miles of corridors it remains, to this day, the largest private house in Europe.

In its hay day, the staff consisted of some 300 outdoor and 85 indoor servants. With its huge reception rooms, gilded stucco ... more

This is the first book by Catherine Bailey, a successful and award winning television producer and director with a range of critically acclaimed documentaries to her credit. A meticulously researched work, it traces the history of the Fitzwilliam family, in the earlier half of the twentieth century, when they were one of the Britain’s richest families. Their wealth was chiefly based on coal and their history is inextricably linked with the fortunes of that industry.

The Fitzwilliams’ ancestral home was the palatial Georgian gem, Wentworth House, situated five miles from Sheffield and in the heart of mining country, being surrounded by around seventy collieries, some of which they owned. With its 365 rooms, 1000 windows and five miles of corridors it remains, to this day, the largest private house in Europe.

In its hay day, the staff consisted of some 300 outdoor and 85 indoor servants. With its huge reception rooms, gilded stucco pre-Adam ceilings, Palladian pediments, gold candelabra, priceless art and artefact collections and formal gardens extending for acres, it was a majestic backdrop to the evolving Fitzwilliam history of cruelty, family feuds, forbidden love, class war and tragedy.

This story of the Fitzwilliams starts in 1902 with the succession of the 7th Earl and the mystery surrounding his origins. His father, the oldest son of the 6th Earl, had the misfortune to suffer from epilepsy, which in those days was regarded as a form of madness and the family wished to prevent him from marrying lest the “ lunacy” continued down the line of succession. Nevertheless, marry he did and initially fathered two daughters. During his wife’s third pregnancy, the family departed for a remote area of Canada where his only son was born. His father having died in 1877, this son succeeded his grandfather despite vigorous opposition from family members who alleged that he was a changeling, smuggled into a Canadian log cabin to provide the heir that his mother had failed to produce.

Having succeeded his father in 1943, the rather disreputable but well liked 8th Earl was tragically killed in 1948 in an air crash, along with his mistress, Katherine “Kick” Kennedy (John F Kennedy’s sister) whilst en route to a secret assignation in the South of France. The 8th Earl dying without male issue, the succession passed to his cousin, the 9th Earl, an eccentric and dissolute character who survived for only four years after succeeding to the title and also without issue.

The two brothers next in line took the battle as to who should inherit the title to the Courts because the elder had been declared illegitimate by his own mother when he disregarded her expressed disapproval of his choice of wife, a 'sin' for which she never forgave him. Eventually the younger son was adjudged the rightful heir and on his death in 1979, the earldom became defunct.

The author was hampered in her research by an act of the 10th Earl who in 1972 arranged for all the family documents to be burned. This was history’s loss but may be understandable with so many skeletons in the family closet. The story therefore is rigorously researched mostly by means of interviews with and documents provided by contemporaries, newspaper reports and other official and non official sources.

Intertwined with this narrative of Fitzwilliam family history is the story of the miners and mine owners, the growing class conflict , industrial unrest and struggle for power culminating in the nationalisation of the pits in 1947.

The squalor of the many mining communities around Wentworth presented a stark contrast to the opulence of the house and the wealth of its occupants. The pit villages belonged to the colliery owners and therefore the colliers were tied to their employers in every way. Here families survived on less than subsistence wages in living conditions which were little better than slums. The miners, who usually started work in the pits at 13 years of age, were subject to inhuman demands and dangerous working conditions. Accidents and loss of life were common occurrences and the dependants of those who were killed were left without homes and often without any compensation

If the demand for coal dropped, there were be no work and, in those days before state benefits, no money. The situation was exacerbated after the First World War when the Treaty of Versailles stipulated that part of Germany’s reparations should be paid in deliveries of free coal. The main beneficiaries were countries which had formerly been large importers of British coal.

The Fitzwilliams were widely regarded as exemplary employers when judged against the standards of their peers and were much loved both by their mine workers and those employed on their vast estates. However this did not save them from the post nationalisation ravaging of Wentworth’s grounds, when Manny Shinwell spearheaded the move to introduce compulsory mining excavations so close to the house that it was thought the foundations would be undermined. It was a move as vehemently opposed by the local population (who enjoyed almost total freedom of movement in the grounds) and the National Union of Mineworkers as by the 8th Earl.

It was this “desecration” which ultimately prevented the National Trust accepting the family’s offer to give Wentworth to the nation in 1947. Eventually, in 1988, the daughter of the 10th Earl put the house on the market. Ironically this was the same year that many of the pits in the South Yorkshire coalfield closed down, “the culmination of a bitter and bloody clash between the country’s miners and Margaret Thatcher”. Today little is known of its reclusive owner.

Whilst I admire the painstaking research which has gone into this work and find it outstanding in many respects, I have to say the end result is a hybrid rather than a pedigree. I am not sure if the author really identified whether she wished to write a family saga, an economic history or a political chronicle.

The narrative trips between the Fitzwilliam family exploits, harrowing in depth accounts of the miseries endured by the mining communities and detailed records of Whitehall’s political machinations in its dealings with the unions, with an abandon which can sometimes leave the reader confounded. It is a style which may be perfectly suitable for a television documentary where the viewer is guided from scene to scene with visual aids but, in book form, where information can only be absorbed more slowly, it is unhelpful. I found myself constantly turning back to remind myself of previously described events in each of the arenas!

Unfortunately the author also indulges in descriptive passages which obviously are not matters of fact but flights of her imagination. For example, during preparations for the arrival of King George V and Queen Mary at Wentworth in 1911 – a visit which was meant to help heal some of the industrial unrest at the time – the author describes the housekeeper’s actions…. “Walking through the corridors (she) missed nothing. From time to time she stopped to adjust the arrangements in the vases of flowers or to knead the bowls of pot pourri to release their aroma into the air.” This is such an unnecessary piece of embroidery when so many facts about such things as the menus and entertainment are included and are a matter of record.

Ms Bailey also strays into a romantic novel/ society gossip style at times. Of the affair between Kick Kennedy and the 8th Earl, she exclaims, “ the affair was madness from the start.!” Referring to the “women’s problems” of Obby, the wife of the 8th Earl, the reader is told, “the village gossips were correct in spreading rumours of miscarriages but they were unkind to blame Obby for failing to produce an heir. Poor Obby had the most dreadful time!” After a four year absence, ‘Kick’ Kennedy, returning to England on the Queen Mary is described as “ staring out across the horizon , hoping to catch her first glimpse of land, her excitement … tinged with trepidation”

Such Mills and Boone-type trivialisations seemed to diminish and undermine such serious and worthy aspects of the book as the verbatim, first hand accounts of retired miners and others, portraying all aspects life in pit villages in those troubled years.

Overall I would say that Ms Bailey’s style is more suited to the production of television documentaries and she would be well advised to stick to that medium in the future. However, my reservations aside and despite the fact that the book can be rather hard going at times, I would recommend it to those who enjoy 20th century British history and have a will to persevere! It certainly gave me more of an understanding of the labour movement at the time and the spicy glimpses into aristocratic scandals and shenanigans were quite intriguing!

Published by Viking, this is only available in hardback at present, the recommended retail price is £20.00 but it is currently advertised by Amazon at £13.20. ( ISBN 978-0-670-91542-2) 

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