Jane Redmile

FEW PEOPLE approach the state of grace we have come to know as saintliness and perhaps only one person in the history of Bourne is so remembered. She was Jane Redmile, daughter of a yeoman farmer from Dyke, whose unyielding faith, selfless service and sense of charity singled her out as a special person in her lifetime and her memory shines undimmed today as an example of the perfect life.

In the closing years of the 19th century, her name conjured up the quaint figure in homely garb, often seen on errands of mercy or attending the church she loved so well and which she had served for 65 years, a stooping form because she lived to be old and bent and grey but it had been a life spent in all things good and true. “She could neither strive nor cry”, wrote her biographer Benjamin Wyles, “but the unobtrusive, gentle influence of her life was potent for good.”

Jane was born at Dyke on 10th May 1800 in the stone cottage that still stands overlooking the village green. Her father, William Redmile (born 1772), had moved there from Ryhall, near Stamford, after marrying a local girl, Ann Campin (born at Bourne in 1776). They had six children, Jane being the eldest to Campain, John, Mary Ann, Elizabeth and Harriet.

In November 1817, tragedy struck the family when her father was badly hurt in an accident while blasting for a new well on the farm. He survived his injuries after being nursed by Ann for fourteen weeks but lost his sight and so the breadwinner had been struck down, denying the family their income and threatening their future. Jane, then only 17, took over the responsibilities for home and family, looking after her five brothers and sisters, while her mother opened a shop to raise sufficient money for their needs.

Every avenue to earn a penny was explored, selling sugar at one penny a portion while living themselves on dry bread and Jane even took in additional home employment known as down work, plucking geese for the fine feathers to make quilts, exacting work by candlelight so repetitive that she often fell asleep but dreamed of the task in hand and woke to find that her work of past hours had been plucked to pieces. Eventually, she was forced to abandon this labour for fear of fire if the candle wax burned too low.

Jane’s youth was passed in continual labour yet she found time to attend the Baptist Church at Bourne, walking the two miles there and back twice on Sundays for school and service. Meanwhile, the other children were growing up and beginning to leave home and so Jane opened a grocery shop in Eastgate, Bourne, where she soon became known among the neighbours for her charity and goodwill. Most lived in unsanitary conditions and drunkenness was rife but Jane spread the gospel of cleanliness and temperance and then decided that education would also be a benefit.

She added a small circulating library to the business and tried her hand at composition and, still fired by her religious fervour, set herself the task of learning Greek and Hebrew in order that she could read the bible in the languages in which it was originally written. Soon, her reputation spread and both clergy and laymen with widely divergent views sought her company for discussion and debate, always conducted with patience and tolerance and her personal humility could only leave others with a deep feeling of love and respect.

During this period, she saved sufficient money to open a Baptist chapel at Morton, despite opposition from the parson and the squire, and later another at Dyke.

Late in life she found herself comfortably situated, living on the rental of farmland and the proceeds from the shop in Eastgate. After the death of her parents, her mother having died on 18th January 1846 and her father on 5th September 1858, Jane lived for a while with her nephew William Garner at his home in Dyke and then retired from business and left the village for Bourne, living alone at a small house in Church Street for several years, busy with her reading and bible study, her patchwork and sewing, visited by many friends and still doing good works, quietly and unobtrusively, paying pressing debts for others, sending parcels of necessities to needy people and always ready with a word of sympathy or compassion for those bereaved or distressed by the ills of the world.

But her health began to decline and in 1880 she was persuaded to go and live with her sister Elizabeth who had married a Bourne merchant, William Wyles, at their home in Elm Terrace. She was now an old woman who needed care and attention although no invalid and her faculties were in full vigour, still attending religious services and prayer meetings and maintaining an active interest in the Sunday School where she continued teaching as long as her strength allowed. On her way home, Aunt Jane, has she had now become known, would be followed by a number of young people wanting to speak with her and although far removed by reason of age, she felt sufficiently young in heart to be one of them.

On Saturday 16th June 1883, the day before she died, there was a characteristic incident at the Baptist Church where she had offered a bible as the prize to the scholar completing the best set of texts on the subject of baptism. Jane was so satisfied with the work submitted that she decided each should have a bible and the books were distributed as she lay dying.

The minister at the Bourne Baptist Church, the Rev William Orton, later wrote these lines which stand as her epitaph: “The gentleness and refinement of her character were shown in courtesy to all, in esteem for the poorest, in her recognition of the use of the lowest, both in human life and material things. Nothing was high enough for pride, or low enough for contempt. Outwardly, her life taught that true dignity is irrespective of rank or fortune, that with care and thrift, the lowest may rise, that adverse circumstances may be controlled, that it is in the power of all to inform themselves for the benefit of others. Seeing her virtues, knowing that the same sources of strength are open to all, those who honour her piety may follow her and, through faith and patience, inherit the promises.”

The funeral was on Thursday 21st June and afterwards Jane was buried in the town cemetery. The Redmiles have since become part of the history of Dyke village although there is no one with that name living there today. There is a cottage known as Redmile Farm in the high street but this has no direct connection with Jane although she is remembered by a new housing development called Redmile Close, named in her memory by Bourne Town Council in 2000 on the insistence of Councillor Don Fisher.

NOTE: This article was published by The Local newspaper on Friday 14th April 2006.