J. Taylor Clarke
J. Taylor Clarke pen name "Jatece" Clarion Cycling Club National Secretary from 1900-1910
Had a printing business in Stalybridge and produced the attractively illustrated Clarion Easter Meet programme.
He was involved in the Manchester Clarion's purchase of Bucklow Hill (1897-1902) Clarion Club House, providing lantern slide shows and classes in photography) to raise money to maintain the Clarion club house
The Death of J.Taylor Clarke 1910
One of the Clarion's famous Clarion Vans was named in his honour after his death, Clarion Van number three being renamed.
Statements in the Clarion:
Harry Lowerison:
One is just gone. Dear brave, good old Taylor-Clarke. We cannot flatter ourselves we shall meet him any more. Gone irrevocably. And there is no more to be said---except that we of the Fellowship must try to draw the bonds tighter yet.
Sheffield Boots and Spurs Clarion Assembly:
So we have lost our chief and it has left us sad, sad and sorry. We can ill spare such men as Taylor-Clarke. His was a cheery soul in the Clarion Movement. We must try and perpetuate his memory by carrying on the work he had so much at heart.
Come comrades, do not be cast down, but all put a little more earnestness in the good old cause, and Jatece will not have lived in vain.
London (West) Clarion:
We deeply regret to learn of the death of Comrade J. Taylor-Clarke. Those of us who were present at the inaugural meeting of the West London Fellowship remember his kindly advice and his promise to interest himself in all our movements , which promise he truly kept even up to the time of his death. Our sincere sympathies are with those he has left behind.
Winifred Blatchford:
I write a week before you will read these words. I write on Friday December the 2nd, and I have just seen the ‘Clarion’ which tells of the death of an old friend. Just so we received the news; our first knowledge of his death came to us on opening the paper he so befriended, four days after he had closed his eyes forever.
In the heart of the country here, our only news for days has been the election… as though it mattered, and in the midst of the noise and scramble of it all, a good man and a brave warrior has left us, and we did not know of his going.
Since my first Meet when I was a child, and socialism stood to me for happy, kindly men and women who flocked together at Easter time, I have known Mr Taylor-Clarke. He was socialism, too, to us children. He was one of the kindly, happy people who made holiday for us.
I cannot grasp the fact that we shall never see him again. The good old friend with the hearty laugh, and the firm strong hand; nor can I understand that he has passed from us so quietly, without a farewell; without our ever knowing he was ill.Only a week or so ago I had a letter from him, and a photograph, from which his eyes twinkled at me merrily, and his mouth smiled bravely.
Ah, well, he has lived a life to be proud of; he has been a true and grand comrade to all who met him; and to many who never heard his big, cheery voice. And we are all, I trust, stronger and better for his friendship.but the Junior Fellowship will miss him sorely for many many Easters; and not one of us who have had him for a friend, but will grieve to know that for him……
The end has come of pleasant places, The end of tender words and faces,
The end of all, The poppied sleep.
Robert Blatchford:
Speaking of the Fellowship, I was deeply shocked on opening my ‘Clarion’ to read of the death of our good old friend Taylor-Clarke. Never a word of his illness reached me. The first I heard, he was dead. He was the father of the Fellowship, and one of our very best. I cannot yet realise he is gone from us; that we shall not see his kind face and hear his cheery voice no more.
Who can imagine a Clarion Meet without Taylor-Clarke? How will the Fellowship spare him? He was so loyal so gentle and wise. And he has gone from us without the grasp of a hand gone before his work was done when he could so ill be spared; gone as Fay went when we seemed so sure of his company and his guidance. So passes our old true friend, giving us no time to say good-speed . So the solemn shadows fall, over one over all. I have more friends on the dark side of the veil than on this, it likes me not.
It is hard to spare them. It takes so many years to make a friendship , and it is broken forever between the rising and the setting of a sun. Taylor-Clarke was a man of that rare quality that one could not think of him as other than a friend. If he had a fault it never showed itself, and who could imagine any man an enemy of his? And now he is dead, and in all the goodly Fellowship where shall we find a man to fill the unique place he filled so well? Dead; and we have one good old friend less. Let us make the most of those yet left to us. Indeed the ranks grow thin; and this stout soldier has left a huge gap in our line.
From ROBERT BLATCHFORD …..Speaking of the Fellowship, I was deeply shocked on opening my ‘Clarion’ to read of the death of our good old friend Taylor-Clarke. Never a word of his illness reached me. The first I heard, he was dead. He was the father of the Fellowship, and one of our very best. I cannot yet realise he is gone from us; that we shall not see his kind face and hear his cheery voice no more.
Who can imagine a Clarion Meet without Taylor-Clarke? How will the Fellowship spare him? He was so loyal so gentle and wise. And he has gone from us without the grasp of a hand gone before his work was done when he could so ill be spared; gone as Fay went when we seemed so sure of his company and his guidance. So passes our old true friend, giving us no time to say good-speed . So the solemn shadows fall, over one over all. I have more friends on the dark side of the veil than on this, it likes me not. It is hard to spare them.
It takes so many years to make a friendship, and it is broken forever between the rising and the setting of a sun. Taylor-Clarke was a man of that rare quality that one could not think of him as other than a friend. If he had a fault it never showed itself, and who could imagine any man an enemy of his? And now he is dead, and in all the goodly Fellowship where shall we find a man to fill the unique place he filled so well? Dead; and we have one good old friend less. Let us make the most of those yet left to us. Indeed the ranks grow thin; and this stout soldier has left a huge gap in our line.
Based on work of Sheffield Clarion Boots & Spurs
NOTE
1901 Census
has a John D Clarke born Crawshaw Booth, (?)
Lettepress printer, Stalybridge aged 47
