Hall Caine - A Forgotten Celebrity By Margaret Brecknell
At the time of his death 90 years ago in August 1931, such was the celebrity of author, Hall Caine, that his family received messages of condolence from King George V and the then Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald.
T
homas Henry Hall Caine was born in Runcorn on 14th May 1853. His father John, who originally hailed from the Isle of Man, had moved to Liverpool to find work in the shipbuilding industry, but at the time of his son’s birth was working temporarily at Runcorn
58
Docks. The family soon returned to Liverpool and “Hall”, as he came to be known (the author is said to have disliked his given first name “Thomas”), grew up in Toxteth. On leaving school Caine was apprenticed to a Liverpool architect who was a distant relative of the famous Victorian Prime Minister, William Gladstone. From a young age Caine had been sent to visit his father’s family in the small village of Ballaugh on the west coast of the Isle of Man and it was to the island he fled when, three years into his apprenticeship, he began to suffer from what he later described as “the
LANCASHIRE & NORTH WEST MAGAZINE
first serious manifestation of the nervous attacks which have pursued me through my life”. On this occasion he headed to Kirk Maughold in the north of the island to stay with an uncle, James Teare, who ran the local school there. Tragically Teare fell ill with tuberculosis and died soon afterwards. Caine took on his role as schoolmaster for a year before being reportedly persuaded to return to Liverpool on receiving a letter from his former employer which read, “Why on earth are you wasting your life over there? Come back to your proper work at once.” www.lancmag.com
