Ossett - the history of a Yorkshire town

Eli Marsden Wilson A.R.E., A.R.C.E. 1877 - 1965

Ossett Artist

Eli Marsden Wilson was the only son of Alfred Wilson and Emma Marsden and was born on Midsummer’s Day in 1877 at Ossett.  Alfred Wilson was one of the sons of John Wilson (born 1819) who was part of the Wilson cloth making family who lived at West Wells, Ossett.

Alfred and Emma Wilson had six children, all born in Ossett - five girls and one boy.  Alfred worked in the textile industry as a foreman beamer (at the 1881 and 1891 census) and lived in Headlands.  The Wilson family was brought up in a supportive atmosphere of learning - the children were encouraged to take an interest in the arts and everyone played a musical instrument.  Alfred Wilson himself played the cello, which was an unusual choice for Victorian Ossett.  From this family background, the children would break out of the more traditional Ossett occupations of engineering and textile manufacture.  

Eli Marsden Wilson attended Wakefield College of Art before moving to the Royal College of Art in London where he became a pupil of Sir Frank Short – an eminent painter and etcher.  At the turn of the century, there was a revival in the art of etching and by the early 1900s it was a profitable art form.  Eli Marsden Wilson returned to his roots for his first commercial etching, which was a scene showing Ossett Market and a version of this etching can be seen today at Wakefield Art Gallery where it can be viewed by prior arrangement.

Below: The Market, Ossett an etching by Eli Marsden Wilson (exhbited at the Royal Academy in 1905) and the first of seventeen pictures by Wilson exhibited at the R.A.

Sir Frank Short: 1857 to 1945
Frank Short was a master etcher, engraver and lithographer who had a major influence on his contemporaries and pupils at the Royal College of Art. He revived the techniques of mezzotint and aquatint and it was his inspiration, which was responsible for the technical excellence of British print making between the first and second world wars. James McNeil Whistler was an admirer of Frank Short's etchings

Hilda Mary Pemberton: 1871-1957
After his time at the Royal College of Art, Eli Marsden Wilson settled in London.  He lived at first in Chelsea but then moved to Acton, which was close to the thriving Bohemian art community in Ealing.

Eli married a lady called Hilda Mary Pemberton born on the 28th December 1871 in London. Hilda was the daughter of Frederick Blake Pemberton, a noted civil engineer and his wife Lucy.  Hilda was also the grand-daughter of a Major Pemberton who had served, with distinction, in India with the British Army. The couple were married in the June quarter of 1905 in the Wandsworth Registration District of London when Hilda was 33 and Eli was 28.  Sadly, the couple didn’t have children.  It is assumed that Eli met Hilda because she was also an artist with a strong interest in etching as an art form and she was very successful in her own right.

Quaker
From his family roots in Ossett as a Wesleyan Methodist, Eli Marsden Wilson became a Quaker and a pacifist.  He was also a vegetarian, which must have been very rare in the early 1900s.  It is possible that his religious beliefs may have caused him to move to a vegetarian diet. 

The White Feather
The symbol of cowardice and failing one’s country was handed out scornfully to those who refused to fight during the First World War, yet Eli Marsden Wilson became a conscientious objector during WW1 and this caused him to be imprisoned for two years between 1917 and 1919. 

There was opposition at a grass-roots level, but there was sufficient support amongst the well-to-do and well-connected middle classes to ensure the conscientious objectors were dealt with by the tribunals less severely than might otherwise have been the case. Nevertheless, very few applicants gained total exemption, especially those arguing on political rather than religious grounds. Where a claim was successful, the objector would be sent to perform non-combatant duties. When a claim was rejected, they would be sent to the military.  Some objectors refused to answer their call-up papers, and went underground; others joined the ranks but refused to obey orders and so were court-martialled. Many ended up in prisons, or later in work camps set up in local prisons for the duration of the war or generally longer.

In all, more than 6,312 conscientious objectors were arrested; 5,970 were court-martialled and sent to prison, where they endured privations both mental and physical (819 spent over two years in prison). At least 73 COs died because of the harsh treatment they received; a number suffered long-term physical or mental illness.  1,330 “absolutists” refused to do any kind of alternative war work, but never won exemption for this principled stand. Some agreed to join the Home Office Scheme, but later changed their minds and went back to prison.

Prisons in those days were still run on inhumane systems inherited from the 19th century. The silence rule was particularly harsh: almost impossible to keep; yet invoking severe punishment when broken. One CO, a Labour journalist called Fenner Brockway (who later became a Labour Member of Parliament and then a peer) started a rebellion against the silence rule. For ten days all 60 COs in Liverpool's Walton Prison chatted openly, played games and organised concerts. As a result Fenner, as ringleader, was transferred to another prison for eight months solitary confinement, and three months bread and water treatment until the doctor wouldn't allow more. After the war Fenner Brockway made prison reform a crusade. He went on working for peace until he died in 1988, six months before his 100th birthday.

And after the Armistice?  No one was in a hurry to release the COs - certainly not until the surviving soldiers were brought back from the front, which took months. Some COs went on hunger strike in protest at their continued detention: 130 were forcibly fed through tubes (as suffragettes had been) - so forcibly that many were injured by the treatment and had to be temporarily released. Others went on work strikes and were brutally punished for it. In May 1919 the longest-serving prisoners began to be released; the last CO left prison in August. Many found that no one wanted to employ them. Those who hadn't done alternative or non-combatant service were deprived of their votes for five years (though this wasn't always strictly enforced).

After being released from prison, Eli Marsden Wilson slowly began to rebuild his career and in 1922, HRH Princess Mary Louise commissioned him to produce an etching for Queen Mary's dolls house, which can be seen today at Windsor Castle.  Clearly, his stance as a pacifist during WW1 had been forgiven, by the Royals at least.

Above: Margate Harbour, an etching produced by Wilson for Queen Mary's Dolls House

The 1920s
By the time of the Wall Street Crash in the 1920s, etchings had become almost like currency and people bought and sold them like they do stocks and shares or even gold.  Wilson had enjoyed the boom in the popularity of etchings as one of the British school of painter-etchers of the time.  However, the Wall Street Crash changed everything and the market disappeared completely for etchings.  The fashion was no longer fashionable.  Wilson had to adapt to the changing market and so concentrated more on painting rather than print making.  He went to Italy in the 1920s to develop his knowledge and devised some new painting methods.  Landscapes were his favourite - painted in the traditional way.  City scenes of places like Oxford or York, with dreaming spires or fine architecture were also much favoured.

Fortunately for Eli Marsden Wilson, he was commissioned in the late 1920s to paint four large wall panels at the Natural History Museum in London.  These were in the Geological Museum and depicted prehistoric Britain – ferns, trees and dinosaurs, like a predecessor to the scenes in Jurassic Park.  This was a very respectable piece of work for Wilson and he finally cast off the stigma of his enforced stay in prison as a result of his religious beliefs.  The panels that Wilson painted can still be seen at the Natural History Museum today. 

Above: Scene from the Wealden times, during the Cretacous period. Painting, oil on canvas, by Eli Marsden Wilson (1877-1965), before 1935. Original held at the Natural History Museum, London.

Eli and Hilda bought a cottage in a place called Blewbury in Berkshire (now in Oxfordshire).  Here they enjoyed a rural, idyllic lifestyle, which was quite different to their time at Acton in London.  Set in the foothills of the Berkshire Downs, this beautiful village is full of attractive thatched and timber-framed houses. During the 19th century, Blewbury was popular with artists and writers seeking peace, quiet and inspiration. One of them was Kenneth Grahame, author of The Wind in the Willows, and the Tudor-brick house in which he lived from 1910 to 1924 is still to be seen here. Eli was in good company among the other “Blewbury Artists”.  

During the early 1930’s Hilda Mary made an extensive tour of South Africa.  Her studies of The Cape are particularly memorable.  This was at a time when Wilson himself was supplementing his income by tutoring pupils and presumably he had now moved back to live in London full-time.  One of his pupils was Mary Cockburn, who was some 30 years younger than Wilson and like his wife, was from a well-to-do military background. Mary Cockburn became an artist in her own right, she was a talented watercolour painter and successfully saw her work exhibited at the Royal Academy.

Above: "A Street Scene in Paris": an etching by E.M. Wilson, currently in the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Eli Marsden Wilson was a complex man with many interests and skills.  He died at the age of 88 on the 13th November 1965 at his home at 9 Faraday Road, Acton, London.  His long-term friend, Mary Cockburn passed on many of Wilson’s possessions, including letters and photographs to Andrew Wilson Clay the great-grandson of his sister, Annie Lois Wilson. 

Andrew Wilson Clay has provided much of the information in this chapter.  He has been researching the life and work  of Eli Marsden Wilson for over 20 years and is currently writing a comprehensive study of the artist.  Andrew is also a great great grandson of Mark Senior (1862-1927), another famous Ossett artist.  Senior’s work can been seen at Wakefield City Art Gallery and Leeds City Art Gallery.  Coincidentally, Senior acted for many years as an artistic advisor to the Ossett born worsted manufacturer, Sam Wilson, a cousin of Eli Marsden Wilson’s father - see also the Ossett Wilsons to Leeds for more details about Sam Wilson.

Dr Robin M. Pelteret, Cape Town, South Africa also kindly provided some of the information in this chapter about Hilda Mary Pemberton. 

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