Liz Bregazzi, County Archivist, writes: We are grateful to the Friends of the National Libraries for facilitating the purchase of this beautiful journal, having originally failed to acquire it at auction, when it sold for £1,900 at auction (Reeman Dansie, 20 November 2019). The Friends of Durham County Record Office generously gave match-funding.
Edward Backhouse (1808-1879), prominent member of the well-known Quaker family, was born in Darlington but moved to Sunderland in 1816. His is one of a number of significant Darlington Quaker families whose personal and business activities are well-represented in our collections. He was a partner in the family banking business, Backhouse & Co (a founding company of Barclays Bank), but mainly engaged in philanthropic activities, supporting Sunderland Infirmary and founding the Sunderland Echo in 1873. Edward wrote ‘Early Church History’ and other religious works and built up significant zoological, botanical and ethnographic collections, now in Sunderland Museum.
This journal forms part of a series of diaries Edward kept, during family cruises on the Schooner Yacht Nereid around Scotland and Scandinavia, and European travels. Others in the series had previously been gifted to the record office by Quaker relatives and another, of a voyage to Norway, is held by the National Library of Norway.
A well-published artist and author, Edward’s diaries are illustrated with photographs, watercolours and humorous sketches, giving readers a deeper insight into his nineteenth-century trips and inspiring lectures given back home.
This journal describes two voyages from Sunderland to Scotland, in July and August 1870. Beginning 28 June 1870, it comprises a handwritten account, interspersed with lively watercolours, drawings and small professionally produced albumen photographs. He describes and illustrates the Nereid being towed out of Sunderland's 'Extension Dock' and sailing up the Northumbrian coast through the Farne Islands, visiting Edinburgh, Perth, Inverness, Fort Augustus, Invergassy Castle, Fort William, Glencoe, Achantreachtan, Skye, Eigg, Raasay including Duart Castle, Arrochar, and Loch Lomond. As well as describing these locations, Edward voices opinions on Presbyterianism (‘distasteful to me. How legal and Jewish, and far from the liberty of the Gospel of Christ’), and the poor living and housing conditions in the Western Isles (giving a vignette of a ‘Highland Cottage near Portree… The only window was the pane of glass at the end’). While sketching the cottage ‘there was a cry of Whale! A Whale!’, duly sketched thereafter.
This superb addition to our Quaker collections was offered at auction together with 1871 plans for the Grade II listed Dryderdale, Shull in the township of Bedburn, for Edward’s brother, Alfred Backhouse. Though its listing attributes the building to prominent Quaker architect, Alfred Waterhouse, these plans were prepared by George Gordon Hoskins JP, FRIBA (1837-1911), previously Clerk of Works to Waterhouse while building Jonathan Backhouse and Company’s new bank premises in Darlington in 1864.
