When The World Was Their Oyster

Some time ago, Friends of Cleethorpes Heritage were contacted by a Cleethorpes Chronicle reader Mrs Betty Redford asking if we would be interested in the story of her Great Grandfather, Thomas Leesing who travelled to America in the 19th century to purchase oysters for the Cleethorpes Oyster beds.A bit of research turned up a fascinating tale about the oyster trade right here in Cleethorpes.

Sold in every street in fifteenth century London oysters were described by a visitor to the city as “plentiful, very popular and on the whole inexpensive” As Sam Weller, one of Dickens characters in Pickwick Papers said “Poverty and oysters always seem to go together”.

Oyster stew and Oyster Soup were popular Victorian dishes and were often served on Christmas Eve when, like during Lent, many abstained from eating meat.

Mrs Beetons “Book of Household Management” published in 1861 provides recipes for oysters fried, pickled, scalloped, patties, ketchup, sauce and stewed as well as Oyster Soup which could be produced at an “Average cost of 2s 8d per quart” Records indicate that by the 1880's some 120 million oysters were being consumed annually in Britain.

In Cleethorpes, recorded in the Whites Directory of 1826, out of a total of 42 tradesmen listed in the town and alongside 10 farmers, are 12 men employed as Fisherman & Oyster Dealers.

The fishermen would fish for immature oysters and then cultivate them in beds off the coast. The oyster beds covered over 300 acres of the foreshore and were approximately a mile from the seafront opposite Brighton St Slipway, meaning large amounts of the oysters could be seen at low tide. By 1858, 24 smacks were employed in the area, each crewed by an average of four men. The industry was a huge employer and resource for growing Cleethorpes. The traders would send large quantities of the mature oysters to markets in Hull, Sheffield, York and Leeds, this being made possible by the coming of the railway, initially to Grimsby and then to Cleethorpes in 1863.

Joseph Grant erected what appears to be the first oyster booth on the sands at Cleethorpes in 1839. His accounts show that the larger oysters sold at £1 per thousand whilst smaller ones were 8 or 9 shillings. The Lord of the Manor, Earl Yarborough was partial to a few oysters, on 24th November 1852, purchasing 2000 small and 800 of the large. In fact Joseph was making a good enough profit from his oyster sales to go into business with Edward Moody purchasing and renting out bathing machines which were increasingly in demand by visitors coming to Cleethorpes to bathe for their health.

Mrs Mary Grant of Bruce Cottages, New Brighton, Cleethorpes was listed in the 1872 Whites Directory as running Oyster Rooms in the resort at that time, although whether she had been inspired by Mrs Beeton's recipes was not recorded.

By 1872 the native oysters were becoming scarce, and this is where the story starts about Thomas Leesing's role in the oyster trade. Born the son of Joseph & Elizabeth Leesing, Thomas had been christened at Old Clee Church on 5th April 1835. Joseph was shown as a fisherman and oyster dealer in trade directories & census records as early as 1841, and by 1851 Thomas had followed in his fathers footsteps and also become a fisherman. Thomas married Mary Drewry in 1857, living first at Chapel Lane in 1861, and Market St by 1871, they had three children, Thomas, Emma and Anne, the grandmother of Mrs Redford.

Oddly there is no trace of Thomas in the census recordings of 1881, 1891, or 1901 although his wife Mary and their children remained in Cleethorpes at Market St, and later at Bentley St. Some research of passenger lists shows that by this time Thomas was making regular trips across the Atlantic from Liverpool to New York. His destination was Northport Bay, Long Island, New York, a major centre of oyster production at that time. It seems that he would travel out each year around Feb – March returning in May with oysters to lay down on the Cleethorpes oyster beds. He was working for Samuel Osborne who was an Oyster and Fish Merchant based in Sea View St and Albion Cottages.

The Cleethorpes oysters were becoming famous, On 21st December 1872 The Leeds Mercury reported that

Above a million American oysters, or 850 barrels were dropped on Monday in the Cleethorpes oyster beds at the mouth of the Humber.

Then on 13th July 1887 the Liverpool Mercury added their voice to the story:

A great cargo of American oysters arrived in 1873 and there being no place at Conway to put them, a Liverpool dealer took them all to Cleethorpes on the coast of Lincolnshire and laid the American bivalves down where the English oysters used to grow. There the American shellfish flourished, grew fat, acquired something of an English flavour and were at last taken up and sent to market in prime condition.

That beginning on the east coast has led to a vast development of trade in oysters and the little watering place has now taken on a new lease of life and will soon be a very important town.

The curious part of this trade is that the oysters do not breed at Cleethorpes but only fatten. This year some 1400 tons of American oysters came to this little town and were laid down on the beds.

The American oysters seemed to flourish in their new home in Cleethorpes and a thriving trade was providing a living for local families, including Thomas Leesing.

In 1897, Cleethorpes Council petitioned the Crown for borough status, arguing the significance of the town and its oyster beds. It also claimed that one merchant alone was sending over 400,000 oysters a week to market and laid down over six million oysters a year. Although such claims to importance obviously didn't impress the “Crown” as borough status was not to be granted for almost another sixty years.

The oyster beds started to attract tourists who were fascinated by the marvel, but then in 1902 the industry was badly hit when outbreaks of typhoid in Sheffield and Doncaster were reputedly linked to oysters supplied from Cleethorpes . There were further outbreaks throughout Lincolnshire and Yorkshire in 1903, and health officials linked the disease to the consumption of oysters.

The claims were investigated and examinations of the oyster beds found more than half of them were polluted. Cleethorpes Council declared the oyster beds as dangerous and announced that the oysters from the town were unfit for eating.

This forced Lord Yarborough to close the tenancies of the beds in April 1904, thus ending the resort's association with the oyster industry. Hundreds of people found themselves out of work and struggling to keep their families.

His Lordship claimed the pollution was caused by the council's new sewage outfall and announced he was willing to take action for compensation for all the rent he had lost. He wrote several angry letters over the years, while the council took advice on the matter. 

The Local Board of Health had in fact built a major new drainage outfall a the south end of the resort in 1895, the chairman of the board claiming that when complete Cleethorpes would be a “as sanitary and pretty a place as any of the east coast resorts”

Even to this day the matter has been left open for consideration but whatever the cause it spelled the end of oyster farming for Cleethorpes, and the town was not alone as similar problems at that time had destroyed the oyster trade in many coastal towns around the country.

Poignantly, Mrs Redford has in her possession letters that her Great Grandfather Thomas Leesing had written to her father Arthur from Northport in America. Written on letter-headed paper of “S Osborne, English & American Oyster Merchant” the Telegraphic Address shown as “Oyster Cleethorpes” he tells of the severe weather that he is enduring in America with the ice on the harbour being two or three feet deep, and the snow a foot thick, saying that the weather excels all the winters he had been there before”. This weather was obviously preventing his purchase of oysters as he goes on to say “I hope it will break up soon or else it will put your grandfather in a queer predicament” The date on the letter was March 1904 and his words were sadly prophetic as by the time Thomas Leesing returned from that trip to America the Cleethorpes oyster beds had been closed.