It would be quite some achievement for anyone to claim to be an accomplished musician with two instruments, to help raise a militia and lead those soldiers into battle, to make money from running a transport business and from trading in legal (and not so legal) wares, and to build roads and bridges, some of which are still in use over 250 years later. How much more so if that person was blind? The Eccentric Mirror magazine posed the question to its readers nationwide in 1807: ‘Who would expect a man, totally blind from his infancy, superintending the building of bridges and construction of highroads?’
John Metcalf, born in the Yorkshire town of Knaresborough in 1717, is who. His parents were of middling working class but not poor, so were able to pay for John’s education at a small private school and for music lessons. He began school aged four but, two years later, tragedy struck when he contracted smallpox and was rendered blind as a result. John obviously possessed a determined character since within six months of recovering from the disease he was already able, without outside help, to walk from his home to the end of his street and back. After three more years, he later claimed in his autobiography, he could find his way to any part of Knaresborough; he craved the freedom of the outdoors, playing with other boys and going for five- or six-mile walks into the countryside.
It is possible that young Metcalf learned to read by feeling the tombstone inscriptions at the nearby churchyard, much as his older Yorkshire contemporary, the mathematician Nicholas Saunderson, also blinded from infancy, had done. The first embossed books were not developed until 1784; Braille in 1829. He began violin lessons at 13, and within a year was playing at county dances. At 15 he accepted an invitation to become the official musician at Harrogate spa. There he gained a reputation through the quality of his fiddle-playing (he also played the oboe) and his handsome six-foot-one stature; despite the milky appearance of his smallpox-scarred corneas.
Military man
Metcalf was to use this reputation, and one of the connections he made with the gentry, to help a local worthy, William Thornton, recruit for a militia in response to the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion led by the Young Pretender, Bonnie Prince Charlie. Thornton’s troop was ordered to join General Wade’s forces at Newcastle, where they joined up with a regular regiment and marched to Hexham. There they fell in with the King’s men who were pursuing the rebels on their retreat to Scotland; all in the depths of a snowy winter. On January 17, 1746 they saw action in the Battle of Falkirk, where Metcalf led the ‘Yorkshire Blues’ into battle, playing his oboe.
The Royalists suffered defeat at Falkirk but, under the Duke of Cumberland (the second son of George II) the tide would turn at Culloden. The Duke came to hear of Metcalf and, according to Metcalf’s account recorded in the third-person, ‘His Royal Highness took notice of Metcalf and spoke to him several times on the march, observing how well, by the sound of the drum, he was able to keep his pace.’
Road builder
After returning to Knaresborough and some involvement in various nefarious forays into contraband trade, Metcalf settled on starting a wagon-transport service between Knaresborough and York. But a previous slow, uncomfortable coach trip to London some years before that had persuaded him to make the return journey on foot (in five days), had revealed to him the appalling state of the roads. His time with General Wade, who had helped to control the Scottish Highlands after the 1715 Rebellion by constructing good roads through the countryside to enable efficient troop movements, showed him what could be done about it. When he got wind of a tender to build a section of road on one of the growing number of turnpikes springing up, he used his contacts to obtain the contract. He recruited labourers much as he did soldiers for Thornton’s militia and used his natural leadership skills and military experience to oversee all aspects of the work and make the project a success.
That first road built by Metcalf was the three-mile stretch between Minskip and Ferrensby, completed ahead of schedule and to a highly satisfactory standard. It is still part of the Knaresborough to Boroughbridge route, now designated the A6055.
‘Blind Jack’, as Metcalf had become known, was extremely good at mental arithmetic and estimating quantities. He had a ‘viameter’ constructed to enable him to make accurate measurements of distances. It consisted of an iron-rimmed, spoked, wooden wheel of almost three feet diameter; extending upwards from the wheel’s hub on either side were two struts containing a mechanism to turn a pointer on a calibrated brass dial situated below the handle at the top, from which Metcalf could ‘feel’ the distance measurement. This instrument was an early version of the same device, based on the same principle, as used by modern workmen. A representation of the viameter can be seen next to Metcalf’s seated statue (pictured); the original is housed in the Knaresborough Courthouse Museum.
After the success of his first road, Metcalf diversified into bridge-building, winning a contract for a new bridge over the small River Tut that runs through Boroughbridge. With characteristic efficiency the 18-feet-span structure was built quickly and well and is still in use essentially in its original form. But the road-building work, including a section of the A61 between Harrogate and Harewood, expanded to the point where he received his biggest payment, of £6,400, for four and a half miles of new roads. Still aged only 40, he realised that civil engineering was destined to be his full-time career; one which lasted another 36 years.
Later years
After the death of his wife, Dolly, mother of his four children and who acted as his accountant, and due to his advancing age, he gradually began to wind down the business. That is not to say he became inactive; he dabbled in the wool, hay and timber trades and found time, in 1795, to dictate his memoirs to publishers in York. They printed The Life of John Metcalf, an autobiography transliterated from his broad North Yorkshire accent into a third-person account.
Metcalf was generally of vigorous health by all accounts, but time overtook him and he died on April 26, 1810 at the age of 92. He left behind four children, 20 grandchildren and 98 great- and great-great-grandchildren. A visitor once recounted Metcalf’s attitude to blindness thus: ‘He thought Providence knew what was best for us. His disposition was enterprising, and had his sight been spared it might have been worse for him.’
The verse epitaph on Metcalf’s headstone, sponsored by a local philanthropist, began:
One likes to imagine a young blind person wandering through All Saints, Spofforth, churchyard, taking inspiration from those words after ‘reading’ the inscription by touch. ?
? The author thanks Frank Norville for suggesting this topic and supplying a copy of Blind Jack of Knaresborough by Arnold Kellet, The History Press, 2008.
? David Baker is an independent optometrist
