As I write this, the team is getting prepared to return to the NGH Archive again.
We will embrace the photos, books and artefacts like old friends who we have missed so much, don aprons to gently brush the dust off the books and exhibited pieces, bring out ‘Henry’ to vacuum the floors and then bring out the polish and Brasso to finish off the spring-clean.
I will also smile when I see this photo as I come down the stairs as it is very much a favourite of mine.
This photo always causes a great reaction from visitors mainly because this gentleman in a hospital bed is actually having his pipe lit by Mr Hill, the hospital Superintendent at the time ….
Horrors!
These days patients are forbidden to smoke anywhere on the hospital site because of the NHS No Smoking campaign and the fear of causing fires, and that is why patients (often seen dressed in their nightclothes and clutching their drip stands) and staff must stand outside the hospital grounds if they wish to have a cigarette.
Researching this intriguing gentleman, Mr Albert Joseph Darnell, I discovered he was a well-known character about the town.
He came from a large family and lived in the family home in Newland all his life, never marrying.
Not only was he one of the leading solicitors in town (with an office at 4, St Giles Street) and served as the Northampton Borough Coroner for 40 years conducting well over 4,000 inquests, he was probably best known as the ‘Father of the Cobblers’.
He was a keen sportsman and was not known to play a game of soccer in his life as rugby was the game of his youth, and a very good player he was too, but it was football and cricket that gradually took over most of his spare time.
In 1897 he travelled to Leicester with his local rugby team and after the game he stayed on to watch an exhibition game of football between Leicester and Notts County.
He was so impressed that he wanted to start a senior soccer team in the town…and the rest is history.
This penned portrait of ‘Pat’ Darnell was found in the Chronicle and Echo, dated 08/03/1929.
Don’t you know ‘Pat’!
‘There can be very few people in the town for whom the name Pat would not create a picture of a tall, upright figure, top-hatted and frock-coated, ruddy of complexion and twinkling of eye, hurrying along behind a well-filled pipe and nodding to more acquaintances along one street than many of us could claim in the whole of Northampton.
Everyone knows Mr Albert Joseph Darnell and everyone that knows him likes him.
Cricketer, footballer and lover of all games and the men that play them.
There are sporting organisations which owe him a debt they could never repay for his advice, encouragement and inspiration.
He was born to be a sportsman and a friend of the sport.’ Next to football, cricket was undoubtedly his game.
Pat Darnell played at school and later started the Grammar School Rovers Team of Old Boys.
With them he continued to progress and in the end his batting and wicket-keeping skills won him a place in the County side.
When he retired from being a member of the NCCC committee in 1921, he was seen taking his ease in a deckchair at the County ground, his topper tilted forward to protect him in the sun but still wearing his frockcoat.
No one can remember him in anything else except on a field of play and even then it must have been a wrench to leave it behind.
However, it is said that when he retired from work in 1952, aged 87, he did swap his top hat for a flat cap.
Mr Darnell died on Grafton Ward at Northampton General Hospital on 25th March 1955, six weeks after celebrating his 90th birthday with a small tea party and cake bearing nine candles, one for each decade of his long life.
It was stated he declined offers of food that last day, a pipe of tobacco being his only fancy.
He smoked that last pipe of tobacco in the morning as he sat propped up in bed, fell asleep around 3:00pm and died peacefully shortly before 6:00pm.
It was also stated that in his later years he had made several remarkable recoveries from falls and pneumonia, insisting he was well enough to get up from his sick bed and return home, which he did without escort….and with the reputation of being the most stubborn patient on record.
Photos and extract courtesy of the Northampton Chronicle and Echo More from the NGH Archives, by Julia Corps