offering an inclusive deal that included transport to Kingston on one of their ships and six days at the Constant Spring.
A correspondent for the Times captured the experience of staying at the Constant Spring Hotel in a story titled “An Impression of Jamaica,” which opened:
A large proportion of tourists get their first view of the West Indies from Kingston Harbour in the early morning, and there are not many things in the world to be seen more beautiful than the sunrise on the Blue Mountains. But most vividly is likely to live in the memory the delight of waking on the following morning at, for choice, the Constant Spring Hotel, when, having but a few days before left behind a land grey and locked in ice, one wakes to brilliant sunshine with the air full of the music of the “Jamaican Nightingale” or mockingbird; and one goes out on the balcony to look down on a sea of bougainvillea, where great butterflies flutter, with, beyond, a tangle of tropical shrubbery in which humming-birds hang poised at the white trumpets of the Beaumontia.
Whites were in a minority in Jamaica—only around 15,000 out of a population of 830,000—but they were the governing elite who owned and ran the valuable sugar plantations that provided the island with its most valuable export. They lived in the best houses, didn’t mix socially with the descendants of slaves, and, as in India and Africa, created a parallel society where British customs, values, and prejudices prevailed. The world that the Daily Gleaner of Kingston reported on at this time could have been in Tunbridge Wells or Brighton, as could the goods the paper advertised. It was for these people that the orchestra from England played.
Portrait of John Wesley Woodward.
Edgar Heap was one of the musicians returning to England that May. He was soon to be bandmaster on the Carpathia with Roger Bricoux and Theo Brailey under his direction, and immediately after that voyage, part of the Mauretania band with Wallace Hartley. Although it’s not on record that Heap was ever approached for a job on the Titanic , he’s the one person who unites all five Titanic musicians with previous experience of playing on ships, because in the Constant Spring orchestra were violinist John Law Hume and cellist John Wesley Woodward. It’s possible that he could have recommended the two players to Hartley when sailing back to Liverpool on the Mauretania .
Like Wallace Hartley, “Wes” Woodward, as he was known, had been raised in a Methodist family and his father, Joseph, had been as conscientious as Albion Hartley, working his way up from a maker of molds for holloware (pots, pitchers, bowls, teapots, trays, pans, scoops) at Hill Top Iron Works, West Bromwich, to become manager. Wes, the youngest son of Joseph and his wife, Martha, was born on September 11, 1879, at 24 Hawkes Lane in Hill Top, just over five miles northwest of Birmingham. When Hill Top Methodist Chapel was demolished in 1962, four large sealed jars were discovered in the foundations with newspapers from 1874 and the names of the chapel’s officers. Prominent among them was Joseph Woodward, who was also a trustee of the Methodist school.
West Bromwich lay in what was known as the “Black Country”—one of the most heavily industrialized areas of Britain during the late nineteenth century. The locally mined coal was used to fire the furnaces of the foundries that produced pistols, guns, locks, screws, nails, springs, and kitchen utensils. They also produced the soot and fog that gave the region its bleak nickname. Queen Victoria is said to have pulled down the shutters of her train carriage window when she passed through the region.
Woodward had six brothers and two sisters, but by the time he reached his midteens he had lost two of his brothers as well as his father. Martha was left to raise the large family on her own with the older boys having to leave school early and work in the foundry to bring in an income. An
A correspondent for the Times captured the experience of staying at the Constant Spring Hotel in a story titled “An Impression of Jamaica,” which opened:
A large proportion of tourists get their first view of the West Indies from Kingston Harbour in the early morning, and there are not many things in the world to be seen more beautiful than the sunrise on the Blue Mountains. But most vividly is likely to live in the memory the delight of waking on the following morning at, for choice, the Constant Spring Hotel, when, having but a few days before left behind a land grey and locked in ice, one wakes to brilliant sunshine with the air full of the music of the “Jamaican Nightingale” or mockingbird; and one goes out on the balcony to look down on a sea of bougainvillea, where great butterflies flutter, with, beyond, a tangle of tropical shrubbery in which humming-birds hang poised at the white trumpets of the Beaumontia.
Whites were in a minority in Jamaica—only around 15,000 out of a population of 830,000—but they were the governing elite who owned and ran the valuable sugar plantations that provided the island with its most valuable export. They lived in the best houses, didn’t mix socially with the descendants of slaves, and, as in India and Africa, created a parallel society where British customs, values, and prejudices prevailed. The world that the Daily Gleaner of Kingston reported on at this time could have been in Tunbridge Wells or Brighton, as could the goods the paper advertised. It was for these people that the orchestra from England played.
Portrait of John Wesley Woodward.
Edgar Heap was one of the musicians returning to England that May. He was soon to be bandmaster on the Carpathia with Roger Bricoux and Theo Brailey under his direction, and immediately after that voyage, part of the Mauretania band with Wallace Hartley. Although it’s not on record that Heap was ever approached for a job on the Titanic , he’s the one person who unites all five Titanic musicians with previous experience of playing on ships, because in the Constant Spring orchestra were violinist John Law Hume and cellist John Wesley Woodward. It’s possible that he could have recommended the two players to Hartley when sailing back to Liverpool on the Mauretania .
Like Wallace Hartley, “Wes” Woodward, as he was known, had been raised in a Methodist family and his father, Joseph, had been as conscientious as Albion Hartley, working his way up from a maker of molds for holloware (pots, pitchers, bowls, teapots, trays, pans, scoops) at Hill Top Iron Works, West Bromwich, to become manager. Wes, the youngest son of Joseph and his wife, Martha, was born on September 11, 1879, at 24 Hawkes Lane in Hill Top, just over five miles northwest of Birmingham. When Hill Top Methodist Chapel was demolished in 1962, four large sealed jars were discovered in the foundations with newspapers from 1874 and the names of the chapel’s officers. Prominent among them was Joseph Woodward, who was also a trustee of the Methodist school.
West Bromwich lay in what was known as the “Black Country”—one of the most heavily industrialized areas of Britain during the late nineteenth century. The locally mined coal was used to fire the furnaces of the foundries that produced pistols, guns, locks, screws, nails, springs, and kitchen utensils. They also produced the soot and fog that gave the region its bleak nickname. Queen Victoria is said to have pulled down the shutters of her train carriage window when she passed through the region.
Woodward had six brothers and two sisters, but by the time he reached his midteens he had lost two of his brothers as well as his father. Martha was left to raise the large family on her own with the older boys having to leave school early and work in the foundry to bring in an income. An
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