Victorian Whitby: ‘Supernaturally Quiet?’

Article by Tom Moult. Edited by Sarah Murphy-Young. Additional research by Liz Goodwin.

On October 7th, 1869, a letter appeared in The Times with some interesting reflections on the town of Whitby: ‘it is said that whenever nature creates a poison she thoughtfully places somewhere near, if we could only find it, the antidote, and it is, perhaps, for this reason that Whitby is so close to Scarborough.’ The author then proceeds to describe in great detail the aesthetic beauty of Whitby, which ‘lovers of the picturesque’ will find more appealing than the mass-entertainment halls of nearby Scarborough.

Whitby is a quintessential Victorian town. Popular after the railways established mass travel and the concept of the seaside holiday, existing class divides had been strengthened, and Whitby was certainly seen as rather more ‘respectable’ than Scarborough, especially at the height of the seaside resort boom. The town had largely become a middle-class suburb-by-the-sea and even today, the elegant townhouses and open verandas by the sea are evidence of Victorians taking their evening strolls along the seafront. While it was evidently quieter than Scarborough, ‘supernaturally quiet’ in the words of the Times letter, everyday life in Victorian Whitby was far from dull – its streets full of fishermen heading to the harbour, ships and vessels coming and going, visitors enjoying the increasingly popular habit of sea-bathing and the sounds of jet workers in their workshops. It was undoubtedly a bustling and thriving town and it catered for its tourism industry well.

The jet industry in the nineteenth-century was one of the key industries of Whitby and is a famous aspect of the town’s heritage. Hundreds of traditionally skilled craftsmen were employed to work ‘Whitby jet’ into fashionable items of jewellery, particularly mourning jewellery, which became popular after the death of Prince Albert in 1861. It was common for as many as 200 miners to be supplying these craftsman who scoured the cliffs around Whitby and nearby Robin Hood’s Bay where the black mineraloid could be found. Exquisite and incredibly detailed items were carved from the material including chessboards, inkwells and desk stands. One particular stand, now displayed at the Whitby Museum, was carved by Mr. William Stonehouse and took first prize at the Paris Exhibition in 1861, where it was greatly admired by Napoleon III.

Visitors travelling to Whitby would often take home these craft items as souvenirs and consequently, the Whitby jet industry became incredibly successful. Nevertheless, the town remained one of the few seaside resorts that were able to successfully balance a thriving tourist industry with that of other industrial spheres. Jet carving is a highly labour-intensive craft and, in an age of no electricity, the examples that survive are quite remarkable. Such works are excellent evidence of the ingenious and exceedingly skilled abilities of workers in the Victorian age.

Whitby does, of course, have traditions with the supernatural. In 1897 Bram Stoker’s cult novel Dracula used Whitby as the location for the vampire’s arrival into Britain aboard the Russian ship Demeter which famously delivered the count onto the beach, in the form of a giant dog. Stoker supposedly sat in his room at the Royal Hotel which overlooks the harbour; the ruined, gothic abbey towering above and the idea of Dracula on his mind. Within the perfect setting of Whitby, it is easy to understand how the aristocratic vampire and the gothic abbey became synonymously linked. After the success of the book, many travelled from all over the country to see the town and places mentioned in the tale – of course, the Victorians loved a ghost story.

Dracula had arrived amidst a violent storm and visitors to Whitby’s harbour are often struck by the solid harbour walls that jut into the sea, keeping the port safe from the ravaging North Sea and the danger that it poses. The lighthouses towering above the harbour were built in 1831 and 1854; a reflection of Whitby’s increasingly busy fishing industry and the perils of the sea. It should be of no surprise that the history of the lifeboat also has its connections to Whitby. In 1861, the lifeboat station suffered disaster as a storm killed twelve of its thirteen crewmen whilst they set out to rescue a stricken ship, and in 1881 the Whitby lifeboat crew hauled their boat overland for six miles amidst snowdrifts and freezing gales to nearby Robin Hood’s Bay in order to launch the boat from there – conditions in Whitby being too dangerous. The heroism of the Whitby Lifeboat crews – as well as lifeboats across the country – must be commended when imagining the ferocity of the sea they faced, in an age long before high-speed powered vessels.

Whitby remains an iconic, picturesque fishing port and lovers of the Victorian horror and gothic genre are drawn to the town for its connections to Dracula, in addition to its unique curiosities such as ‘Arguments Yard’ and ‘The Screaming Tunnel.’ The town is an elegant example of a Victorian seaside port and its history is literally staring you in the face when you walk across the swing bridge to explore the narrow cobbled streets at the foot of the abbey. Then as now, the Victorians made Whitby a popular travel destination for visitors and any visitor today can easily deduce why it appealed to them.

*****

In Stoker’s novel, after the shipwreck of the Demeter, Dracula runs up the famous 199 steps to the graveyard in St Mary’s church in the shape of a black dog. An examination of the ship’s log shows that the crew members had been gradually disappearing since she left Varna in Russia. But it is the ship’s cargo which gives readers a clue about how Dracula managed to travel so far without being noticed — it is full of coffins.

A few years before Stoker came to Whitby, a ship called the Demetrius was damaged on the rocks near the harbour. Its cargo of coffins tumbled into the sea. The locals revelled in telling yarns about the dead bodies that appeared on the town’s beaches in various stages of decay for weeks after. A bench on the cliff top path is inscribed with the words ‘The view from this spot inspired Bram Stoker (1847-1912)’.

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