Henry Burstow - Life and Character

Life and Character

He was born in Horsham on 11 December 1826, the son of William and Ellen Burstow, makers of clay tobacco pipes. He attended school into his teens, sometimes also working part time for his mother or for a harness maker, until in 1840 he was apprenticed to a shoemaker. Soon afterwards, John Vaughan, his master's father and also the sexton and head bellringer at Horsham parish church, invited him to become one of the bellringers. This was to become a major part of his life, both as an occupation and for evenings spent with his fellow ringers, an occasion for singing, his other main interest. Learning of Horsham's achievements in ringing changes in the late eighteenth century, he became dissatisfied with the current standards of bellringing in Horsham and took to walking to neighbouring villages to ring changes with more skilled groups, particularly in Warnham and Newdigate. By the time he retired from bellringing he would have rung changes in 55 belfries and taught ringing in 15 of them. On 30 April 1855 he married Elizabeth Pratt (1833-1909); he celebrated his wedding day by ringing the church bells all day long with seven other shoemakers. Shoemaking paid poorly, especially as ready made shoes began to undercut the market, and in 1907 Burstow and his wife were facing the prospect of the workhouse. William Albery (1865-1950), a saddler, organized a fund to provide a pension and also collected the Reminiscences, editing them and arranging for their publication to benefit Burstow. He died on 30 January 1916, having lived all his life in Horsham.

Burstow's chief talent was a remakably strong memory, as he himself was well aware:

Very soon after I was born I began to develop a faculty with which I may say, without boasting, I was endowed in an extraordinary degree. I inherited a tenacious memory, to which from babyhood upwards I committed particulars of numerous events and incidents, tales and songs: once my observations … were … committed to memory, nothing has been able to dispossess me of them.

This memory served his interests in bellringing and singing well and provided the material for the Reminiscences. Albery describes him as "an honest and bold Freethinker" and he was remembered in Horsham as an admirer of Darwin and an atheist. Local tradition tells that when reproached by the Rev. H.B. Ottley for not attending the church services his bell-ringing had announced, he replied, "I fetch 'em in, and I leaves you to drive 'em away."