During the 1870s and 1880s the most influential member of the Bowers was Ann Bower, the unmarried cousin of William Bower, who used her considerable wealth generated by rental income from land and houses particularly along Gravel Lane and the Knutsford road to support numerous projects associated with St. Bartholomew's.
Ann’s wealth was the result of a series of inheritances, first from her father William Bower, who in 1827 split his estate of the Grove (roughly both sides of Grove Street from Hawthorne Lane to Water Lane, and to Old Street (now Green Lane) to the East and to Grove Way in the West.
His only son, George, became a successful lawyer in London, while the two daughters Ann and Isabella remained in Wilmslow (both the 1861 and 1871 Census shows them living in Grove Street).
After George’s death in 1865, both sisters inherited his wealth and with it his executors as wealth managers. While at first, they appear to have continued in Wilmslow, by 1877 they had moved to their brother’s estate in Kent, where on the 27th May Isabella died, aged 69, leaving her property of slightly less than 7000GBP to her sister as well.
In the years following Isabella’s death, Ann continued to administer her wealth with the help of her brother’s friends, whose help is expressly acknowledged in her 1884 will. Her support for charitable causes must have been very important to her as she actually mentions a special fund set up to maintain her charitable giving. Thanks to various local sources (and not least her own epitaph in St.Bartholomew’s) we know that she supported a large number of causes in and around Wilmslow, but occasionally her activities stretched much further afield.
According to her epitaph, she also donated a lifeboat named in memory of her brother and sister the “George and Isabella”. Now East Cheshire, and even more so Wilmslow is not generally known for its coastal sites and thus the support for a lifeboat is slightly unusual. Her support becomes even more noteworthy when it is realised that the “George and Isabella” was a lifeboat that was stationed in Ackergill bay, just north of Wick at the very northern tip of Caithness, as far as possible in Britain from Ann’s other sphere of interest in London and Cheshire.
So what could possibly have led Ann to support this cause? First of all, this may have been a matter of timing. The lifeboat was very much a memorial, and her sister Isabella died on 27th May 1877 (Wilmslow Advertiser 4 June 1877). We know the names of many of the other lifeboats donated at the time and they were frequently named after people close to the donors so this may have seen to have socially acceptable precedent as a form of memorial to an unmarried sister.
At this time, furthermore, Britain was facing a number of inquiries into the performance of lifeboats in the hands of various organisation throughout the British Isles and the newspapers carried every month stories about the efforts to save lives by the lifeboat crews around the coast. The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) had been founded in 1824, but had been given a Royal Charter only in 1860 and was at this point a cause celebre, rapidly replacing other providers of these services such as the Fisheries Board with a reputation of efficiency and devotion to the cause.
In the spring of 1877 a board of enquiries into the wreck of the Emilie with heavy loss of Life in Wick had called for the establishment for a new lifeboat at Ackergill bay and much advertised fundraising in support of the boat, boathouse and maintenance of the crew was well underway, although short of the GBP1000, with initial donations at first coming to GBP158. We do not know when or how Ann heard of this appeal, but it must have been before she returned to Wilmslow, as in 1878 she is described as still living in Kent. The newspaper articles at the time describe her as paying for the entire boat, GBP 278 in total. To put this in proportion, Trollope describes GBP 800 a year sufficient for a Gentleman and his family to live on, while a railway porter was earning about GBP40 a year and a senior manager would make about GBP300.
By the middle of March 1878, the “George and Isabella” was ready to launch in Wick. National newspapers as far south as the South London Gazette (23 May 1878) carried notices about the opening ceremony, which was attended by the head of the (then) Royal Lifeboat Institute as well as all local dignitaries and about 4000 visitors. (In 1881 the towns of Wick and Pulteney had just 6820 inhabitants (F.H.Groome 1882-5, Wick)). The lifeboat is described as self-righting and thus the latest and best design available at the time. Ann Bower, while named as the donor of the lifeboat appears not to have been in Wick for the occasion (Aberdeen Press and Journal, 15 March 1878). This may not be too much of a surprise, however: officially she was still in mourning for her sister and would not be expected to take part in public meetings. But even more so, Ann Bower was by now 75 years old and the Railway line from Inverness, opened in 1874 would take about 7,5 hours to get to Wick, making this probably too arduous a journey for the lady, who would have had to travel from Kent, where she still seems to have resided at the time.
The George and Isabella lifeboat remained in use in Ackergill bay until 1888, when it was replaced with a more modern design. Ann Bower died four years earlier and her epitaph in St. Bartholomew's in Wilmslow is the last reminder of this lifeboat.
Research by Howard Barlow and Birgitta Hoffmann
Bibliography:
Andrew D. Anderson, Ackergill Lifeboat (1877 ‑ 1932). Caithness Field Club Bulletin 2002. (Now available at http://www.caithness.org/caithnessfieldclub/bulletins/2002/ackergill_lifeboat.htm (accessed 8/10/2017)
Francis H. Groome (1882-1885), Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland: A Survey of Scottish Topography, Statistical, Biographical and Historical, Thomas C. Jack, Grange Publishing Works, Edinburgh. (Accessed via http://www.scottish-people.info/parishes/parhistory116.html (accessed 8/10/2017).
The Highland Council (2014) Population change in Caithness and Sutherland 2001 to 2011. Planning and Development Service. Policy and Information Briefing Note 57. Inverness: The Highland Council.
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