John Turner (miser)
By dint of excessively hard work, long hours, and self-denial, this smallholder's son rose from the position of a draper's assistant via well-to-do shop-owner, to become a rich property-owner and sought-after lender to the moneyed residents and visitors of Harrogate.
However, his extreme and pecunious personal habits drew the attention of local people, who saw him pay in full for buildings and land, but deny himself and his family the comforts of life, and hoard and recycle waste material to make pennies, alongside the great profits he made in his primary occupations.
After Turner's death his biography, comparing him to the miser Daniel Dancer, was printed and copied in the Press, and around the same time his life – and perhaps his legacy – was celebrated with an expensive stone memorial, in Grove Road Cemetery, Harrogate.
John Turner was born on 1 March 1800 in Ripon, North Riding of Yorkshire, into a family of smallholders "who by dint of thrift and hard work had acquired money".
[1][2][4] The Knaresborough Post describes his home life:[1] Fire was never used in [Turner's] house except for cooking, and when he could not pick up coal sufficient to supply that requirement he went out into the hedgerows for timber.
He bought the half-built house next door from a builder who ran out of money, and he or his son lived there without completing the build, with "a great mound of stones and rubbish remaining in front which on no account would he have disturbed".
[1][2] The 1851 and 1861 Censuses find Turner and his wife and son living in Beech Cottage, next to Starbeck railway station, and he is describing himself as a "house and land proprietor".
[7] In 1881, the Census finds Turner, aged 81, boarding (not visiting) in a lodging house at 5 Promenade Square, in the parish of St Mary's in Low Harrogate.
While working for Sayer, Turner "was one of the swells of the period, and took great pride in adorning himself with rings, gold guards,[nb 4] and jewellery, having in this respect higher aspirations than drapers' assistants usually entertain".
He economised on transport costs by walking everywhere, including those occasions when he had to travel between Bradford and Manchester to purchase stock,[1] the beeline distance being 29 miles (47 km).
Turner, knowing from experience the chronic impecuniosity of many of these men, waited until they had travelled the country unsuccessfully with their webs, and then, rather than return home empty-handed, they accepted prices from him which meant privation for many days to come.
This was a fortuitous step, because when he arrived, Harrogate consisted of two small villages, but as its fame and size grew and businesses moved in, it filled with rich residents and visitors, and he drew from these as his customer base.
The ever present companion of his daily journeys was a dark blue moreen bag,[nb 5] which a friendly lawyer may have discarded, and without which he was rarely seen abroad.
No trifle was too inconsiderable to find a home within it; even a stray feather from a fowl by the wayside would be carefully picked up and added to the stock previously gathered.
The penurious habits of this individual are well known, and perhaps to some extent he merited the title given him by a Bradford contemporary – miser; but though charity was a quality foreign to his nature, his sense of justice, on the other hand, was so acute, that we believe he was easier satisfied upon the question of per cent, than has been many a man more generally credited with charitable proclivities.
