William Jopling was an experienced miner with decades of experience when he was appointed to be Water Haigh’s first undermanager not long before the colliery started producing coal in 1911. He’d already been in the same role for over ten years at the Henry Briggs company’s Silkstone colliery at Whitwood between Castleford and Normanton. It’s likely therefore that he was invited by the directors to move to Woodlesford as a safe pair of hands to supervise their new venture along with the overall manager, or agent, Isaac Hodges.
Mr. Jopling, as he was known by the miners, was a Geordie. He was born in 1852 in County Durham a few miles west of Chester-le-Street at Handen Hold, sometimes called Hand in Hole, the eldest child of Joseph Jopling, a miner carrying on a family tradition stretching back to the 1600s. When William was about three or four years old he went with his parents, along with two younger brothers, to live in Prussia where presumably Joseph had a mining job. There a sister to the boys was born in 1859 before they all returned to England in about 1860.
Over the next twenty years or so Joseph moved his family around Durham as he worked at various pits including at Crook and Billy Row and then Pelton. It’s not known if William had any formal schooling but he probably started working with his father when he was about 12 or 13 years old. By the time of the 1871 census he was 18 and labelled as a fully fledged coal miner along with his brothers Robert, 17, and John, 15. Two sisters and a younger brother were at school whilst a baby girl was still in nappies.
In 1876 William married miner’s daughter Elizabeth Newton from Cassop. Over the next six years they had two boys and a girl, William, Joseph and Minnie, all born whilst William was employed at Hedley Hill colliery near Waterhouses. Then in the mid-1880s they upped sticks and moved south to the West Riding. The reason for the move is unknown. It may have been that William had enough experience to enable him to become a deputy and he had applied to the Briggs company as a promotion. On the other hand there’s a possibility that he was a blackleg, or blacksheep as it was termed then, taking the work of militant miners who had been “let go” for agitating for higher wages.
For instance in early 1884 76 miners were sacked from Briggs’ Don Pedro pit at Loscoe and evicted from their colliery owned houses and allotments. The pit’s manager, the company’s future managing director, Walter Geoffrey Jackson, claimed it was better to lay men off and leave coal in the ground whilst prices were low. This caused an outcry amongst the miners at all the company’s pits including those at Methley. Mass meetings were held at which speeches were given by union leaders Benjamin Pickard and William Parrott, but in the end the union backed off from a full scale strike or “lock out” as it was termed.
Whatever the reason for the Joplings move south they were well established at Whitwood and living at 17 Common Row when their fourth child, Mary Hannah, was born in January 1888. Indeed her birth certificate records that William was a “colliery deputy steward.” Interestingly Elizabeth gave birth at 19 Goodhope Row nearby, probably in the home of a friend or another miner’s wife experienced in midwifery.
Several reports from the Wakefield Free Press indicate that religion was an important part of Jopling family life. By December 1889 William had become an established leader in the old Primitive Methodist chapel at the end of Foxbridge Row on Pontefract Road in Hopetown. There he presided over a “grand miscellaneous entertainment” on Christmas Day. Members of the choir sang and acted in sketches and a ham tea was laid on.
As a deputy William would have been responsible for a particular district of the pit supervising miners, or hewers as they were known, and young men and boys hauling coal to the pit bottom. He had to patrol his area to test for poisonous and explosive “firedamp” gas and check that regulations were being adhered to. He would have supervised shotfirers who used explosives to bring down the coal and sometimes he may have fired shots himself after ramming explosives into a hole bored into the coal face.
The Jopling family was still at 17 Common Row when the 1891 census was taken. Emphasising their religious credentials living with them as a boarder paying rent was 36 year old widower Levi Frudd. Born at Emley in 1854 he had been a miner but now gave his occupation as an evangelical Primitive Methodist “hired” lay preacher, making a living from giving sermons, such as “The Redeemed Multitude.” Sadly in 1902 he was admitted to a mental asylum, possibly the one at Stanley Royd, where he died in 1904.
Living near to the Joplings in the 1890s were several other deputies and colliery officials including Tom Jones from Monmouthshire, another incomer to the Briggs Whitwood area workforce. He appears to have been a rung up the ladder in seniority with his occupation being given as steward. A little later he was made undermanager at the Don Pedro pit at Loscoe, probably at roughly the same time as William Jopling was given the same job at Whitwood Silkstone. Both would have had to study and take an examination to gain a second class certificate. Managers had to have a first class certificate under the Coal Mines Regulation Act of 1887.
Notwithstanding his seniority in the Briggs hierarchy William Jopling continued to rub shoulders with ordinary miners and their families at chapel on Sundays and other special occasions. His musical abilities were noted In March 1897 when he accompanied, on pianio or organ, the choir at a “sacred musical service.” Including selections from Handel’s Messiah it was held to mark the anniversary of the Primitive Methodist chapel. A few months later, in August, his status within the community was emphasised when he laid the third corner stone on behalf of the trustees at the site of a new chapel on Castleford Road.
Helping with the fund raising was William’s younger brother, by now the Reverend John Jopling. After working as a miner in Durham he’d become a Primitive Methodist preacher in about 1878 and was well known throughout England as he moved from area to area. From 1896 he spent three years as the superintendent of the Castleford “circuit” preaching sermons at local chapels “in a clear and ringing style.“ As his obituary put it: “Sermon making was his glory and joy. He liked the work and it was the master passion of his life.”
In December 1901 William Jopling was still at Common Row when he gave evidence in a case brought by Henry Briggs, Son & Company Limited against four of their own underground pony drivers. Before three magistrates, chaired by 70 year old Ebenezer Walker Kemp, a Castleford doctor, the lads were charged for contravening the company’s special rule 90 by riding on the ponies down the mine. Walter Tonsley (or Townsley), James Thackeray, Albert Hemingway, and James Parker Brown all admitted the offence and were fined 9 shillings each or seven days in prison.
It appears that neither of William’s sons were encouraged to follow him into pit work. Probably with financial help from his father the eldest, also called William, established himself in a drapery business on Carlton Street in Castleford. Assisted by his younger brother Joseph, in 1901 he was selling “fancy” goods including aprons, gloves and umbrellas along with ladies’ skirts and corsets. However the drapery doesn’t appear to have done well so William became a tobaccanist. There wasn’t much luck with that either and he sold the business in 1904. This may have been because he had to find a better paying job before the impending arrival of his first child following his marriage in 1902 to Alice Maud Kassell, the daughter of a stone mason. Sadly the baby died within a few months as did another in 1906. By 1911 William and Alice were still living in Castleford and he was employed as a colliery clerk.
As if to demonstrate William Jopling’s reluctance to allow his boys to become miners in June 1905, along with other Briggs officials, he attended an inquest into the death of an 18 year old lad who’d been tragically killed in the Silkstone pit at Whitwood. Sylvester Osmond Lee was a byeworker, one of the men who didn’t dig coal but laboured underground carrying out the many tasks needed to keep the pit functioning like building roadways and advancing faces.
Lee had been working with William Morgan, 19, lowering an empty wagon down a mile long incline called a drift. It ran between one of the seams and the pit bottom and had two lines of narrow gauge rails. One was for loaded coal wagons, called trams or tubs, to be lowered down to the pit bottom before being taken to the surface in a cage up the shaft. The other set of rails was for empty tubs to be pulled up to the coal face. Each line was equipped with a steel rope to which the tubs were attached by clamps known as clams. An iron bar was used to adjust a screw in the clam to vary the speed of the descent and a device called a locker acted as a rudimentary brake on the wheels.
In this instance Lee and Morgan were lowering a special large wagon with open ends designed to carry pipes and timber. Initially in his evidence Morgan said he was behind the tram and Lee had volunteered to walk down the incline in front of it to warn other miners of their approach. Unfortunately he’d lost control of the clam and Lee had been run over in the dark by the tram which severed his head from his body. However under intense questioning from the coroner, Pelham Page Maitland, and John Robert Robinson Wilson, His Majesty’s Inspector of Mines for Yorkshire, Morgan admitted it was normal to sit on the sides of the trams as they went downhill, a practice that was against colliery regulations. In a gruesome remark Wilson pointed out that parts of Lee’s skull and brains had been found on a girder in the roof of the drift and also in the tram. This proved, he said, that both of them must have been sitting on the sides of the tram as it went downhill before Morgan lost control.
Both Moses Hobson, the colliery’s manager, and the agent, Isaac Hodges gave evidence stating that enamelled notices were in place at the top and bottom of the drift warning men against the danger and illegality of riding on the tubs. Paper copies of the rules were also given out to the employees.
In the end the coroner dismissed Morgan’s evidence but the jury were unwilling to attribute blame and returned a verdict of “accidentally killed through riding on a tram contrary to the rules.”
Sylvester Lee had been born on Good Hope Row only a year before William Jopling’s youngest daughter so the death probably upset him a great deal. Sylvester’s father, Edwin, had also been a collier in the Briggs pits before becoming a road repairer for the Normanton council. He too was at the inquest and stated that his son had only been at the Silkstone pit for three weeks after previouly working with a coal cutting machine at Don Pedro. He said he’d last seen his son alive at 1.15 p.m. before he was brought home dead at 9.30 p.m.
For the Joplings there was a happier event three years later when the eldest daughter Minnie was married at the new chapel on Castleford Road. Meriting several paragraphs in the Wakefield and West Riding Herald the wedding “evoked unusual interest” as the groom, James Palmer, was a Primitive Methodist minister. Minnie was “daintily attired in white silk and carried a bouquet of white lilies.” Her sister, Mary Hannah, known as Polly, was one of the bridesmaids and the ceremony was conducetd by her uncle John, who had moved to Grimsby. Love must certainly have been in the air in the tight nit chapel community as Polly went on to marry the best man!
Meanwhile as Minnie was walking down the aisle five miles away at Woodlesford pit sinkers were about to start the three year long task of digging the shafts for Briggs’ new Water Haigh colliery. As detailed on other pages a disaster in May 1910, in which six men were killed, slowed down the work but just under a year later the first coal was raised from the Silkstone seam 260 yards below the surface on Thursday 20 April 1911. By then, in the autumn of 1910, William Jopling had taken up his new job as the pit’s undermanager and he and his wife had moved to Woodlesford. “His presence and influence will be much missed in Hopetown,” said a report in one of the local papers.
Initially the Joplings lived in one of six stone built houses in a terrace on Aberford Road known as Eshald Villas overlooking the grounds of Eshald House. Their immediate neighbours were other Briggs officials who had also moved from Whitwood. They included enginewright George Handley Silkstone who had been awarded the Edward Medal for his bravery during the 1910 disaster. A couple of years later he emigrated with his family to South Africa where he patented new methods for connecting pipes. Next door was Welshman Tom Jones. He’d become the undermanager for Swithen’s and Spencer pits to the south of Oulton, otherwise known as the Newmarket Haigh Moor colliery which Briggs had acquired in December 1906. The seam there was about 70 yards underground and covered an area stretching from the Water Haigh area across the Oulton Hall estate to the farmland around Carlton.
After moving to Woodlesford William and Elizabeth Jopling kept up their church activities by joining the congregation at the Primitive Methodist chapel in Rothwell. There social events were held under the banner of “Pleasant Sunday Afternoons,” a movement started in the 1870s in an attempt to attract worshipers, especially men, who had lapsed since attending Sunday school. Emphasising his status within the community in May 1911 William presided over the chapel’s annual concert and distributed prizes.
Glimpses into the routine at Water Haigh come from Briggs company memos and notebooks preserved in the West Yorkshire archives. The messages were written by Walter Hargreaves, a director and general manager with special responsibility for the new colliery. Born in Rothwell in 1863 he was the son of William Hargreaves who had risen from being a pit boy to general manager of the J. & J. Charlesworth collieries. Walter had followed him into the industry taking a step up the ladder after qualifying as a mining engineer at the Yorkshire College, the forerunner of the University of Leeds. He was one of the first motor car owners in the district and would often visit Water Haigh for face to face meetings when he was en route from his home at Carlton House on Rothwell Haigh to the Briggs head office at Speedwell Yard in Whitwood. To avoid any misunderstanings though he put his thoughts and instructions on paper on an almost daily basis.
From the tenor of the memos it’s obvious that Hargreaves was a stickler for detail and took an interest in all aspects of the work at Water Haigh. Typed up by a secretary they were dashed off rather in the mode of modern emails with carbon copies filed in “letter books.” They were probably delivered from Speedwell Yard within an hour or so by a young lad employed as a messenger. He would travel between the Briggs collieries carrying a leather briefcase on a bicycle, a system still in place in the 1940s. What’s clear from the detail in the memos is that William Jopling had a wide range of managerial responsibilities above and below gound including the recruitment of new men.
For instance early in 1912 Hargreaves wrote: “You will be having two young men, named Nowell, to see you in the course of a few days. I have promised them work at coal at Water Haigh pit. They are at present working at Ackton Hall colliery, but I know the family well, and they will be two quiet, decent, young chaps. I also spoke to you about a Rothwell young man called Sidney Durham who wants a start at byework. I have written telling him to come and see you.” The Nowell brothers were most likely sons of banksman Tom Noel Nowell who’d been born in Woodlesford and was a son of surgeon and general practioner, James Nowell. It’s not known if they were taken on by William Jopling but Sidney Durham certainly was and by 1921 was a deputy, married with two young children and living at 10, Bernard Street in sight of the pit.
A month or so later there was a tricky man management problem for William Jopling to deal with. It came during the middle of a six week long national miners’ strike, the first of its kind. For years they’d been campaigning for a minimum wage and the men eventually went back to work after the Liberal government intervened and passed an act agreeing to most of their demands.
On the 2nd of March one newspaper reported there’d been “minor disturbances” at Methely and Woodlesford. At Water Haigh it appears that a number of miners were still working although no coal was being raised. Apparently four of them were involved in arguments with pickets in the local branch of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association. Conscious of wanting to preserve industrial relations after the strike, about three weeks into it, on Monday 25th March, Hargreaves wrote to William: “The names of the men who were complained about by the union for using offensive language are Fred Mitchell, W. Jowsey, Walter Townend and George Franks. I shall be glad if you will see these four men and point out to them that the union are writing to us about their language, and that if they do no let matters rest we may have to stop them working, which would be unfortunate for both them and us.” The strike ended on the 10th of April and the following day, according to the Skyrack Courier, the colliery was quickly back in production. “Before many hours had elapsed a cargo of the coal was loaded on a vessel and taken to a Leeds depot,” it reported.
From census records the identities of the foul mouthed working miners can be sketched out. Fred Mitchell was born in Dorset but had grown up in Wigan where he became a coal miner like his father. He was married with children and lived at Beecroft Yard in Woodlesford. During the First World War he served with the King’s Own Royal Lancaster Regiment and is believed to have moved elsewhere after separating from his wife who went back to live in Wigan. The others had more permanent links to Woodlesford. William Jowsey had been a bricklayer during the construction of the pit and stayed on to build new roadways as it expanded. By 1921 he had four children and was living at 6 Clement Street. George Walter Franks was born at Holme on Spalding Moor and originally worked at Bentley’s brewery as a drayman. After the 1911 census he became a miner and during the First World War rose to the rank of sergeant in the Royal Engineers. Afterwards he was employed at T. & R. W. Bower’s Allerton Main colliery near Swillington. His eldest son also became a miner and was at Water Haigh in 1921. They lived on Temperance Terrace off Midland Street in Oulton. The fourth man is most likely hewer Walter Townend who lived with his family at 12 Quarry Hill on West View opposite the Oulton Institute. Born in Rothwell in 1877 he too signed up to serve in the army and became a gunner in “A” Battery of the 72nd Brigade, the Royal Field Artillery. He died in August 1916 from wounds he received during fighting near Mametz in France. He’s buried near Rouen.
Following the Coal Mines Act of 1911 there was an increased focus on underground safety prompting Walter Hargreaves to write to WIlliam Jopling on 10 May 1912: “In case I should forget to mention to you the question of your deputies passing the examination for gas testing in accordance with the new mines regulation act, I should be glad if you would speak to me about it when I see you. Will you also tell Barrett to speak to me about the gates for the cages, and may I also remind you of the distance of manholes under the new act, and perhaps you will tell me what you have done in this matter?” William Barrett was the assistant enginewright. Born at Rawdon he too had transferred from Whitwood and with his second wife and three young children lived in one of the Armitage built brick terraces at 8 Cross Leonard Street. A son from his first marriage, Simeon Carter Barrett, moved to work at the pit as a fitter. He joined the King’s Royal Rifles in November 1914 but a few months later was discharged as medically unfit and returned to Water Haigh where he stayed until he retired.
The Briggs company annual report was formally presented to shareholders at a meeting in Leeds on Thursday 15 August 1912. Despite the strike the output of coal had exceeded that of the previous year by about 40,000 tons and dividends were due to be paid. William Jopling and his men must have been satisfied to hear that Water Haigh had contributed significantly to the increase and was producing about 800 tons per day although construction work at the colliery wasn’t quite finished. A couple of weeks later he was sent a note appointing him as temporary manager in the absence of the first class certified manager. This was now Walter Hargreaves’ eldest son, Dennis Walter, who would remain as agent/manager into the 1940s. By this point Derbyshire born Isaac Hodges had left to return to South Africa where he’d been a manager in coal and gold mines in the 1890s before his 15 year stint with Briggs. There he became a colliery manager in the Transvaal where he died in 1925.
Another Hargreaves message from September 1913 further illustrates the efforts Briggs’ management made to maintain good relations with union officials and their membership which that year stood at 409. The memo asked William to: “Kindly arrange to give a list of the names of men and boys which you set on at your colliery for the next four weeks to the checkweighman at the end of each week.” The checkweighman was a legally recognised position formally defined in an act of 1887. As the coal hewers were paid according to weight, and an agreed “price list,” they had the right to elect and pay a man to occupy the position. He would check the figures calculated by the colliery’s own weighman and complain if he suspected the men were being underpaid. He was usually active in union and local politics. A notebook kept by the weigh clerk, Ernest Rogers, indicates the first man to occupy the position at Water Haigh was John William Scase. Married with four children he and his wife later opened a fish and chip shop on Aberford Road opposite the Co-op.
Just before 2 p.m. on the afternoon of Saturday 30th May 1914 there was an explosion of coal gas, or firedamp, at the Wharncliffe Silkstone colliery near Tankersley about five miles south of Barnsley. Twelve miners lost their lives and the death toll would have been much higher if many men hadn’t already left the workings ahead of the Whitsuntide holidays. An inquest and official inquiry found the explosion had been caused when a ventilation fan had been stopped for testing leading to a sudden build up of gas which was ignited by a defective electrically driven coal cutting machine. The whole of the colliery’s management was found to be negligent under the 1911 act but no criminal case was brought.
The Wharncliffe disaster must have alarmed Walter Hargreaves as the colliery was very similar to the Briggs pits, Water Haigh expecially so as it also had four shafts, the same make of fan, and was sunk to similar seams. So much so, that when the government inquiry report was published the following December he sent a copy to all eighteen of the Briggs company’s managers and undermanagers, William Jopling included: “I have found this report very instructive, and should like all our principal officials to have the opportunity of perusing it,” he wrote. “Particularly as it has been impressed on my mind the desirability of any important orders – such as appear to have passed between the responsible officials at that colliery – being put in writing, if only between one official and another. By this means we prevent both misunderstandings and people saying afterwards they did not agree with orders that had been passed to them. Another feature of the report is the extraordinary short interval which elapsed between the stopping of the fan and the stopping of the air current when the experimental test was made four days after the explosion. It shows that working places in our pits which we should never suspect of containing gas may by a suspension of the ventilation for five to ten minutes have the most highly explosive mixture of gas present.”
The health of the wider community on the surface was another preoccupation of William Jopling and his bosses as they recognised their workforce and families needed better care, especially from infectious diseases. To that end a public meeting was held at the Oulton Institute in July 1914 to discuss the formation of an association to employ a fully qualified and certified district nurse partly funded with a grant from the West Riding County Council. As a county councillor Walter Hargreaves was due to attend and had indicated the Briggs company would give financial support but negotiations on the minimum wage meant he had to send his apologies so the meeting was chaired by his son Dennis. A speaker from Normanton Common said they’d had a skilled nurse for twelve years following an epidemic of typhoid fever. Following several fatalities the Briggs management had sent a trained nurse to deal with the cases and after she had got to work there were no more deaths. William seconded a resolution to form a new association but there was a degree of opposition to the plans as unqualified “nurses” were already providing maternity and other services in a scheme funded by the Lowther family at Swillington. A few days after the meeting the First World War started and it wasn’t until years afterwards that a certified district nurse was appointed.
As well as public meetings and social events the Institute was also a venue for billiards. It appears that William was a member of the senior team which played in a league with clubs from Kippax, Rothwell, Carlton and his old stomping ground at Hopetown. However there’s only one match report with his name. It took place in January 1914 when he lost 61 to 100 against H. Ely at the Rothwell Workingman’s Club. The opponent is most likely Herbert Ely, a young miner who later moved to Methley to work at the Briggs owned Savile pit.
A few months earlier the Joplings had moved into Eshald House which had been bought outright by the Briggs company and divided into three apartments. Dennis Walter Hargreaves occupied the one next to the main entrance looking out onto the mansion’s grounds and in the distance, through the trees, the colliery. The Joplings were in the middle flat named Beechholme whilst Tom Jones and his family occupied the one nearest the main road.
The First World War brought mixed blessings for the Joplings. Their eldest son was 36 when it started and doesn’t appear to have volunteered to join the military. Instead he stopped being a colliery clerk and became a miner. After many men had joined up there was a manpower shortage in the industry prompting the government to declare mining a reserved occupation and he probably thought that was the safest alternative. It’s not known where he was initially employed but by the census in June 1921 he had moved from Lower Oxford Street in Castleford and risen to be a deputy at Water Haigh. He lived with his wife on Aberford Road in one of sixteen deputies houses opposite Eshald House that had been built by Briggs just before the war. The couple later moved to Oulton Lane where he was listed as a byeworker in 1939. He died in 1946.
Things were different though for the younger brother, Joseph. He’d been apprenticed to William Holland, a carpenter and furniture dealer in Castleford who lived next to the Jopling brothers in 1901. Not long after the census that year he left to seek his fortune in Australia. A few years later he ended up in the small town of Sandstone in Western Australia which grew up around a gold mine that started in 1903. There he became a freemason but when the First World War began he volunteered to return to fight for King and country. Records show he signed up for the Autralian Imperial Force in July 1915 at a camp at Blackboy Hill just outside Perth. He gave his father as next of kin, had no criminal convictions, and declared that he’d previously served in England as a volunteer with the Yorkshire Yeomanry. His new unit was the 10th Reinforcements of the 12th Battalion. After training, in October 1915 he sailed to join them at their base at Tel El Kebir in Egypt. From there the unit embarked on the Corsican to Marseilles where they disembarked on the 5th of April 1916 to be taken by train north to the Western Front. During the following months Joseph rose quickly up the ranks and on Christmas Day 1916 was promoted to sergeant.
Meanwhile back in England there was a brief respite from the troubles of the war and the mounting casualties when Polly Jopling married George Wilfrid Taylor, the best man at her sister’s wedding. The son of a grocer from Sandal he too had become a Primitive Methodist minister. The happy event took place at the chapel in Rothwell on the 28th of June 1916 after which the couple went to live at Mansfield where their first child, a daughter, was born just after Christmas 1917.
During the war William Jopling’s health started to decline. In 1914, at the age of 62, he had “slight seizure” and was off work for a number of weeks. The evidence for this comes from Frank Williams, a nephew of Tom Jones, who’d followed his uncle from Monmouthshire to work initially at the Don Pedro pit. He transferred to Water Haigh as a deputy in 1911 and later became William’s assistant, often working nights. If William was on holiday or off sick he would take his place. Frank was 25 years younger than his boss and recalled he addressed the deputies by their surnames in a military way. “The old undermanager was a Durham man, a man of peculiar temperament, and to me the way he treated us under-officials was a bit harsh,” he said.
In one incident Jopling accused Williams of “telling tales” to Walter Hargreaves. Frank complained to Walter on one of his visits to the pit. He said he’d have ”a word with Mr. Jopling.” He was later told that Hargreaves and Jopling had walked away from the pit offices towards Fleet Lane where they leaned on railings and talked for about a quarter of an hour. “What they talked about no one but themselves knew. Mr. Jopling did not speak to me for nearly a month after that, but it was never referred to again,” Frank wrote in a family memoir.
In France Joseph Jopling managed to avoid serious injury on the frontline then in September 1917 he was sent to England to join a training battalion based in Wiltshire. There he took a course at “bomb school” and qualified as an instructor. A few weeks later he was at the Tidworth school of musketry where he passed first class “with a fair working knowledge of the Lewis machine gun.” During this time he would have been able to take leave and visit his family in Woodlesford, probably at Christmas 1917. It would be the last time they would see him alive. In January 1918 he sailed for Le Havre and on the 23rd of April was killed in action by machine gun fire near the village of Meteren during what became known as the German Spring Offensive when they broke through the frontline and took chunks of allied territory. Joseph’s body was initially buried in an isolated grave in a field but after the war it was exhumed and was reburied in the Meteren military cemetery.
Back in Woodlesford news of Joseph’s death was made public on the 18th of May 1918 when a one line report was printed in the Rothwell Courier and Times. It must have been a bittersweet day when an official package arrived at Eshald House a few weeks later containing his personal effects. A postcard acknowledging their receipt was signed by William on the 5th of July and sent back to the Australian kit store in Hammersmith.
The combined effect of his son’s death and poor health was too much for William to bear and just five weeks after posting the card he died on the 12th of August 1918. Two days later, after a funeral service at the Wesleyan chapel on Calverley Road conducted by Rothwell’s Primitive Methodist minister William Sunlay Spencer, he was buried in Oulton St. John’s churchyard. No flowers were requested. He was 66 years old.
Unable to stay in the “tied” apartment at Eshald House Elizabeth Jopling returned to her native Durham and went to live with her daughter Minnie and her family at Jarrow near Newcastle. She later moved back to Yorkshire to help her youngest daughter Polly whose husband died in 1933. She passed away at Horbury in 1940 and was brought to Oulton to be interred with her son and husband.
Such was William Jopling’s standing amongst the miners at Water Haigh that they clubbed together to pay for an impressive memorial gravestone which still stands prominently today. Initially inscribed with William and Joseph’s names, and later Elizabeth’s, it bears the simple but moving inscription: “This memorial was erected by the workmen of the colliery as a token of respect.”