‘An astonishing talent from another age’: The life & tragic death of sculptor William Day Keyworth
TOWERING FIGURE: Keyworth’s statue of William Wilberforce in the grounds of Wilberforce House
Now & Then, a column by Angus Young
The enduring legacy of sculptor William Day Keyworth
On the morning of King Edward VII’s Coronation one of Hull’s most famous artists loaded a rifle, tied one end of a length of cotton to the trigger and looped the other around his foot before placing the muzzle under his chin.
With a jerk of his leg, sculptor William Day Keyworth Junior was dead.
His body was found slumped on the floor of his studio at the rear of his home in Spring Bank by his daughter Martha.
Earlier that day they had exchanged pleasantries as he passed through the kitchen en route to his studio.
Around two hours later Martha stepped into the back yard to fetch her bicycle but instead saw a set of keys still in the studio door. Looking inside, she saw her father lying in a pool of blood.
One newspaper report describing the scene didn’t spare its readers from any details: “Part of his skull had literally been blown off and a rifle was lying beside him.”
Keyworth’s violent death in August 1902 cut short an astonishingly productive career featuring works that remain landmarks in Hull today. It also raised questions over why he chose to end his own life.
Born in Hull in 1843, he was literally a chip off the old block, being the son of a sculptor and the grandson of a stonemason.
HULL’S FIRST MAYOR: Sir William de la Pole
His father, also called William, showed early artistic talent and moved from Hull to London to study and work with two of the country’s leading sculptors, Sir Francis Chantry and Henry Weekes.
He eventually returned to Hull to set up his own business as an architect and sculptor specialising mainly in church monuments and busts.
One of his more unusual commissions involved making plaster casts of two teenage Inuits who were brought to Hull by the captain of a whaling ship from their home in Baffin Island north of Canada.
The presence of the married Inuit couple in Hull caused a sensation and it’s entirely possible that Keyworth’s young son William, who was four years old at the time, not only met them but was present when their casts were taken.
Young William was destined to follow in his father’s footsteps by studying sculpture in London before returning to Hull to join the family business and become a renowned sculptor in his own right.
LEGACY: William Day Keyworth
Keyworth junior’s career took off while he was still in his mid-20s when he secured two major commissions.
The first, in 1866, was a large sculpture of Britannia holding a trident aloft sitting next to a stone lion destined for the roof of a new shipping exchange in Lowgate in Hull’s Old Town. Heavily weathered, it still looks down on the street today.
The second a year later was perhaps inspired by his Britannia as it involved sculpting four giant lions to sit on raised plinths outside Leeds Town Hall. Each lion was carved from two pieces of Portland stone and fitted together using zig-zag joints.
The Leeds lions were something of afterthought by the hall’s architect Cuthbert Brodrick, as the building itself had been officially opened by Queen Victoria nine years earlier.
GODDESS: Minerva in the gardens of the Streetlife Museum
Also from Hull, Brodrick was similarly regarded as a prodigious young talent and following his work in Leeds he was handed the job of designing Hull’s new Town Hall, which was opened in early 1866 in a grand ceremony.
Keyworth was commissioned to make a number of statues for Hull’s new municipal headquarters – one of William Wilberforce which now stands in the grounds of Wilberhouse House, one of Hull’s first Mayor and Baron of the Exchequer, William de la Pole, which now overlooks the Humber in Nelson Street, and one of poet Andrew Marvell which is now a centrepiece of Trinity Square in the Old Town.
The others included statues of Hull MP James Clay and Anthony Bannister, who was twice Lord Mayor of Hull and Sheriff of Hull.
Other surviving examples of Keyworth’s work can be found in the garden of the Streetlife Museum in High Street. Here a stone statue of the goddess Minerva and two other seated female figures (one missing a head) are the legacy of rescued sculptures from the remains of the Royal Institution in Albion Street, which was demolished after suffering extensive damage during the Second World War.
Ironically, the museum also housed many of his father’s works which were destroyed in the bombing.
Another surviving example is the sculpture on the central pediment of what was originally the Port of Hull Society’s Sailors’ Orphans Home and School which opened in Park Street in 1867.
Commissioned by Yorkshire wool tycoon Sir Titus Salt who also provided funds for the building itself, the sculpture on what is now a hotel depicts the female figure of Charity surrounded by child orphans holding the Salt coat of arms.
Famous for his mill and model village at Saltaire, Salt was not the only wealthy patron to favour Keyworth. He made several busts for marble members of the Wilson shipping family from Hull which were exhibited at the Royal Academy, while two marble busts of Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert are now part of Beverley Art Gallery’s collection.
‘THE PERSONIFICATION OF BRITAIN’: Britannia on the roof of the former Exchange building in Lowgate
A later private commission completed in 1895 depicting a young cricketer called The Batsman was acquired just over a century later by the Ferens Art Gallery and now forms part of its collection.
Three years later Keyworth completed another major work in the shape of a monument to Sir William Gray, who had been the first Mayor of West Hartlepool.
The statue of Gray shows him seated in the Chief Magistrate’s chair holding plans for a new municipal building. Unusually, Keyworth sculpted the statue in bronze rather than his more familiar stone while, in another departure for him, it was funded by public subscription rather than private patronage.
He found fame as a sculptor in an age when towns and cities competed against each other with increasingly grand civic and commercial buildings complete with ornate fixtures and fittings. Whether he also found fortune remains unclear.
Keyworth and his family lived in the last house in Spring Bank before the Botanic railway station. Just a few days after his death, his inquest was held across the road in the Polar Bear public house.
VACANT: Keyworth’s former home in Spring Bank
During the hearing, his wife Elizabeth was asked about her late husband’s health.
She told how he had injured his back a week earlier while working but it had not prevented him from travelling to London on business for two days before returning to Hull late on the evening before his death.
The coroner then asked Mrs Keyworth whether she knew if he had any financial or domestic problems, given the grim circumstances surrounding the shooting.
“Well, it might have been business trouble,” she replied. “Had he complained to you lately?” she was asked. “Only about the business.”
Without any note being left and no suggestion that Keyworth had previously threatened to take his own life, the jury returned a verdict of suicide after observing there was no evidence offered about his state of mind.
POET: The statue of Andrew Marvell in Trinity Square
Perhaps demand for his style of work had waned with fewer wealthy patrons willing to invest in expensive sculpture. Perhaps he had secretly built up debts he was unable to manage.
One business setback not mentioned at the inquest was a failed attempt to win a contract to move his white marble statue of Andrew Marvell to a new outdoor location in George Street just months before his death.
Was it this disappointment – both personal and financial – that tipped him over the edge?
After his death, his wife and two daughters left Spring Bank to live at the family’s second home in Marine Terrace, Hornsea. Elizabeth died in the seaside town in 1929.
Today, the property in Spring Bank is currently available to rent having last been used as a beauty parlour, while Keyworth’s statues remain elegant reminders of an astonishing talent from another age.
Become a Patron of The Hull Story. For just £2.50 a month you can help support this independent journalism project dedicated to Hull. Find out more here