Thomas Witlam Atkinson

Bankrupt, Bigamist, possible Plagiarist, possible Spy, sometime Architect and Explorer

Thomas Witlam Atkinson was born at Cawthorpe near Barnsley on 6 March 1799, the son of William Atkinson, head mason to the Spencer Stanhope family of Cannon Hall, near Barnsley, and his wife, Martha, housemaid to the same family. Details of his early life conflict. Some biographies claim that he was orphaned at the age of eight and with scant education at the village school he was forced to seek employment. After a period on a farm he worked successively as a bricklayer’s labourer, quarryman and stonemason.  Others suggest a less impoverished childhood, working under his father from the age of eight, first as a mason’s labourer and later as a stone cutter. By the age of twenty he had become a skilled stone carver and in 1819 he was employed in the rebuilding of St Mary’s Church Barnsley, where he is said to have carved some fine work, and the parish church at Ashton-under-Lyne.

 T W Atkinson first came to the notice if the Stanhope family when he designed a headstone for his mother in Cawthorne churchyard (she died in 1817). Anna Maria Pickering (née Spencer Stanhope) recorded in in her Memoirs (1903): ‘At the time of my grandfather’s death, he made a design for a tomb for him which showed so much talent that my Uncle Charles sent for him and told him that he had his fortune at his fingers’ ends, but not as a mason.’ In a letter of 7 May 1825, Anna Maria’s mother, Lady Elizabeth Stanhope (née Coke), noted that her husband had introduced the 26-year-old Atkinson to the famous sculptor Richard Westmacott the younger, an associate of her father. The Stanhope family were to maintain an interest in their protégé until Thomas’s death. While at Ashton-under-Lyne he acted as clerk of the works for George Basevi at St Thomas, Stockport, and for H. E. Kendall at Sr. George's, Ramsgate. He remained for a time in Ashton teaching drawing.  At the same time he was also making a close study of Gothic detail, particularly in the churches of Lincolnshire, studies that were to lead to the publication of “Gothic Ornaments” in 1829.

 Under the patronage of the Stanhope family, he moved to London in 1827, establishing himself as an architect with offices at 8 Upper Stamford Street, Blackfriars. Several commissions in Manchester induced him to move there about April 1834, where he established a partnership with Alfred Bower Clayton, as architects However, this partnership was short-lived and it was dissolved by mutual consent, on 15th October 1836. [London Gazette]. 

 In 1838 Atkinson found himself in “certain financial difficulties” (otherwise bankruptcy), allegedly brought about by “a too liberal expenditure on works of art.”  The notice of the meeting of creditors noted that he was superintending the erection of divers houses and other buildings at the time of his bankruptcy. Returning to London his financial difficulties continued and in early 1841 he found himself in a debtors’ prison. Not until 1849 were the bankruptcy proceedings finally concluded.

 In 1841-42 he visited India but in May 1842 Hamburg was devastated by a great fire and Atkinson saw the opportunity for employment there.  He competed unsuccessfully for the rebuilding of the church of St. Nicholas, in 1844, the commission being awarded to Gilbert Scott. (Boarse states that in 1845 he was involved with the reconstruction of St Nicholas’s Church in Hamburg without specifying his role. In 1846 he abandoned architecture for the pursuits of an explorer and topographical artist, in which he achieved some celebrity. In that year he appears to have visited Greece and Egypt but on the advice of Alexander von Humboldt he turned his attention to Central Russia. He was invited to St Petersburg in 1846, where he met and later (bigamously) married his second wife, Lucy an English governess in 1848*. The following year Atkinson was granted the rare privilege of a blank passport by Emperor Nicholas allowing free access through his Asiatic domains and Atkinson then spent seven eventful years travelling through Siberia, China and central Asia with his wife (and subsequent child), sketching the landscape, avoiding attacks by armed thieves, escaping floods and surviving the bitter winters. His journey of over 39,500 miles lasted until the end of 1853. However, he did not immediately return to England.

 In 1858 and 1860 he published volumes containing journals and topographical drawings of these adventurous journeys, his story making him a celebrity in his day. He was elected FRGS 1858 and Fellow of the Geological Society 1859. Atkinson exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1830 and 1842. According to his own account, he produced no less than 550 sketches and watercolours some five and six feet square, but only 36 of his works are known to have survived. One of his paintings has recently been sold for about £5,000 but the locations of most of his works are unknown.

In declining health, he went to Lower Walmer, Kent, known for its healthy seaside climate, in order to recover. He died there on 13 August 1861. His burial transcripts, held in the Walmer Parish registers record that he is buried in the Yew Tree section of the old Walmer Parish Church, but any headstone to his grave has now disappeared.

 

Married (1) Rebekah or Rebecca Mercer - He married for the first time in Halifax on 1 April 1819 and had three children.  The couple seemingly separated about 1841. No news of him allegedly reached Rebekah Atkinson, then living at 5 Beaufort Street, Chelsea, until 1861 when she was informed by a friend of her husband's death. 

“Married” (2) Lucy Sherrard Finley - On 18 February 1848 he went through a form of marriage Lucy Sherrard Finley of Sunderland. She came from a large, impoverished family and went at the end of the 1830s to Russia, where she lived for eight years in St Petersburg as governess to the daughter of a General Muravyov. The register of marriages at the British chapel in Moscow records his status as a widower, although that this was not so, only became apparent after his death in 1861. On applying to the Treasury for moneys owed to her husband, Lucy Atkinson was informed that she was not legally Atkinson's wife as the woman he had married before he went to Russia was still living in Britain.

Child:  Alatau Tamchiboulac (a son born 4 November 1848).

 

NOTES

J E Gregan was assistant to Atkinson before setting up his own practice in 1840 

F. T. Bellhouse and Edward Hall were in his Manchester office as pupils.

James W Fraser (qv)  an amateur artist and Contributing Visitor of the RIBA added figures to Atkinson’s perspective drawings

His “widow” Lucy Atkinson was the authoress of Recollections of the Tartar Steppes and their Inhabitants published in 1863. She was granted a Civil List pension of £100 on 13 June 1863.

 

REFERENCES

Obituary: The Times, 2 September 1861 Page 10 Col. 2

C. Stewart:Stones of Manchester

Boarse: Modern English Biography

Colvin: A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840

Axon:  Annals of Manchester

Dictionary of National Biography