Some years back, when I was looking for wild flowers at Folkestone Old Cemetery, while Carole took photos of damaged memorials, we saw the December 28th 1908 Messina earthquake with some children mentioned in an inscription. We’ve never found it again – guess tussock grass and ivy have hidden it. Lately, Carole chanced to be looking through local newspapers and found a Mrs. Horn included a death notice for her daughter Alice, who’d died in that tragedy.
Searching in newspapers from January 1909 I found poignant accounts of the earthquake, with lists of dead and missing in every edition. They featured stories about the British resident Chaplain, Rev Charles Huleatt, mentioning Miss Horn and Miss Kirby.
In 1891’s census, Mrs Barbara Horn, a widow, is a lodging house proprietress, employing a live-in parlourmaid and housemaid. This is 21 Clifton Crescent, Folkestone. Her daughter Alice, 23, is with her, as are two younger daughters; no occupations being listed.
Barbara Horn came from Lancaster, while her daughters were born in Dalton-in-Furness. Her husband, William, had been a surgeon in that town. She had come to Folkestone by 1881, to live at 226 Bouverie Road West with her sister, Catherine Row, and her family. By 1901 at Clifton Crescent, Mrs Horn has five lady boarders, some living on their own means, and five servants, plus her three daughters in residence. However, by 1908, her eldest daughter, Alice, then 35, had taken the post of governess to the Huleatt children, so had gone to Sicily with them.
Annie Kirby appeared on the 1901 Census in Folkestone at 9 Earls Avenue, in Mrs. Cornelia S. Huleatt’s household. She is listed as a ‘Nurse-Domestic’, so we can infer her ‘charge’ is 2 year old Edith, granddaughter of Mrs. Huleatt. Irene Huleatt, daughter, age 18, is there, as are a cook, parlourmaid & housemaid. However, by 1908 Annie was at Messina in the role of nurserymaid, looking after 9 year old Edith and three younger Huleatt siblings.
Annie’s parents, John & Harriet Kirby, lived in a terrace at Lord Street, Hoddesdon; he and a son listed as labourers, maybe in brickfields. 15 year old Annie had ‘scholar’ after her name in 1891, implying that her family could afford to keep her at school.
A quick search of Folkestone Old Cemetery records only showed one Huleatt. This was Edith Bury Huleatt. She and Charles married in 1892 at Marylebone. They were soon in Egypt, as he was Winter Chaplain to Church of England visitors at Luxor. Edith and he spent the summers among the Italian Lakes, where Charles ministered to another British ex-pats community as the Summer Chaplain of Varese. Reportedly they visited families in England every couple of years. Charles was a member of the All Souls’ Cricket and Lawn Tennis Club in Folkestone, often playing in matches while in Folkestone.
Edith Bury’s father, John Bury, had been a solicitor at St Ives, Huntingdon, with three servants living in his household. Edith had five siblings. John had married Isabella Rugeley, but by 1861, the year of his death, was a widower.
While they were living in Luxor, looking in the murky antique market, Charles came across tiny scraps of papyrus that intrigued him. These fragments, with just a few words on each, made him well known on their donation to Magdalene College, Oxford. The pieces were dated as pre- AD 200, possibly AD 68, making them part of the oldest Gospel of Matthew. (Charles used the pseudonym ‘Caulifield’ for his Egyptology writings.)
In 1899 they were back at their London apartment, where Edith died, aged 43, on 30th March. The birth of the couple’s daughter, named after her mother, was registered in Marylebone that April.
A photo taken by the ‘Friends of FOC’ soon after they’d formed, showed Edith’s memorial; a kerb with a largish cross fallen forward from its plinth. You could read part of an inscription and infer more:
“xxxx xxxx xxxx xxx xxxxxxx Bousfield Huleatt
xxxx xxxx also of Luxor, Egypt Fell asleep on March 30 – 1899 Aged 44
Fear not : I am alive for evermore And have the keys of Hell and of Death”
On the bottom of the plinth a family member has added:
“Also in memory of Charles Bousfield Huleatt M.A.
Who perished in the earthquake at Messina Dec 28 – 1908 – aged 45
Faithful unto death”
Charles was possibly born in Folkestone in 1863, but the birth was registered in Barnet. His father, Hugh was a ‘Chaplain to the Forces’, who’d served on the Heights at Sebastopol in the Crimea War. He’d then gone to China, where he was dangerously wounded at the disastrous assault on the Poiho Forts, gaining promotion and a special pension. On his return to England, Hugh had married Cornelia Sophia Bousfield, of 5 Adelphi Place, Camberwell. The couple were in the Woolwich garrison in 1871 with seven children, born in Plymouth, north London and Woolwich.
Hugh became vicar of St. John’s Bethnal Green, London; Charles attending St. Paul’s School in The City. By 1891, the family were in Surrey, but Hugh died in 1898. Charles studied at Magdalene College, Oxford, taking Holy Orders at Wycliffe Hall in 1888. He was a curate in Swansea until 1890, then gained foreign postings apart from a curacy in Sussex in 1891.
Charles made a second marriage with Caroline Harriet Wylie on August 30th 1900 at Kensington, so providing his tiny daughter Edith with a mother. Caroline had been born in Bombay (Mumbai), India on 21st July 1863. Her parents are Charlotte Greenlaw, born in Kidbrook, Kent, and Richard Northcock Wylie. In 1900 he is a stockbroker with a trading background.
Caroline had brothers Richard and Francis born in Bombay before the family returned to England about 1866. She is with her married mother and brothers at Shere, Surrey on the 1891 census. Her father is not with them. Richard was training as a doctor, while Francis is a tutor. There are two younger siblings; Dora who is a governess and Hugh. There is one general servant living in the household.
The newly married Huleatts soon returned to Resident Chaplain’s duties in Sicily, where they had an apartment in Messina. Charles prompted the forming of a Chess Club in the city, which occasionally played matches by telegram with England. He even advertised to start Messina Soccer Club, coaching them in weekly sessions.
In March 1902, their first child, Charles Percy was born there; he was usually called Percy by the family. Gwynneth Cornelia Charlotte’s birth followed in Nov 1903, then Rhoda Muriel in December 1904. Edith Irene Winifred, from Charles’ first marriage had joined them, so nursemaid Annie Kirby and governess Alice Horn must have had their time full.
Back in Folkestone, Charles’s mother, Mrs Cornelia Huleatt, had moved to 30 Grimstone Gardens, by 1908. At December’s end disturbing telegraphs from Italy and garbled morse radio messages from British ships told of an earthquake devastating Messina. At 5.20 am on the 28th the shock struck. Centred just offshore in the Straits, it lasted 37 seconds, its 7.5 force reducing stone buildings to rubble and causing a 4.5 metre tidal surge that snapped anchor chains of British warships and crashed over shores.
Distressed, Mrs Cornelia, was shown ‘cables’ reporting her son’s death and others saying he was alive. She donated a large sum to relief funds. Survivors in the small British community in Messina searched for friends and were soon aided by Royal Marines landed from RN warships. Some spoke of sounds having been heard at the wreckage that covered the Huleatt’s apartment, others said he and a child were found still breathing, but it was soon apparent that no-one could have survived in that building.
A conservative death toll for Messina is 55,000, while some 20,000 died in Calabria, across the Strait. Many people left the city to make new lives for themselves on mainland Italy or the United States.
The Folkestone Express of January 6th reported that the whole family and staff had died. They are interred in the British section at the Cimitero Monumentale di Messina. Their families put death notices into London newspapers; typical is that for Annie, described her as the ‘faithful nurse and friend of the Rev. C. B. Huleatt’.
[Rob & Carole Moody, Friends of Folkestone Old Cemetery]
