Childhood

Huber's house at the corner of Yrjönkatu and Hallituskatu in Pori, Finland, photographed in 1898. 
Photo: Edward Hall, Satakunta Museum

The Hall family moved several times during Richard Hall's childhood. The key sources for this post are parish records and an interview Richard Hall gave to the New Suometar newspaper in 1909 apparently in Finnish. In the interview, he also spoke about his childhood years. 

The most accurate information about the dates of the family's moves is available from parish registers, which record the dates of the moves. The parish registers are regional, so in this case I have requested the certificates from two parishes. The registers are heavily used by genealogists, and there is a charge for the certificates. EU privacy regulation GDPR does not apply to deceased persons.

Early childhood in Pori

Richard's older brother Edward was born on 31 August 1857, and the family moved to Pori on 19 December 1859. Richard was born five months later on 18 April 1860 at Yrjönkatu 2. Richard Hall's godparents were Mrs and Ms Londiser, the pharmacist Wahlberg, Mr and Mrs Gustav Sohlström and the merchant J. Selin. Information about the godparents appears in an article published in Satakunnan Kansa on 12 September 1937, in which the author says that he went to the Pori parish office to ask about them.

Richard and Edward were home-schooled by their parents: their mother Alexandrine was a trained Swiss ''governess'', a homeschool teacher. In addition, we already know that father William had attended a homeschool run by his own father (see the blog post Father and Grandfather).  According to an article by Mauri R. Hall in Satakunnan Kansa of 28 September 1975, the brothers "soon learned to speak Finnish well" and to speak it better than their parents "while scrambling along the cobbled streets of Pori".

It is not known for sure why the family moved to Pori. It may be that William R. Hall, who was familiar with the lumber trade, found work in the field. The sawmill industry was growing rapidly in Pori at the time and foreign trade was brisk. The above photograph of the building at Yrjönkatu 2 was taken by Edward Hall in 1898. It is possible that this stone building, which still exists today, is Richard Hall's birthplace. Another possibility is the adjacent wooden building in the photo, also at Yrjönkatu 2.

Two years in Helsinki

The family moved to Helsinki on 29 October 1864. We do not know the reason for the move. Richard was four years old at the time and Edward seven. At this point we jump to an interview in Uusi Suometar, where the artist tells us about his memories of Helsinki:


- And it was here in our wonderful capital that you spent your childhood?

- Pretty much at first, but worse, only until my sixth year! Just when our childhood games in Kaisaniemi and in what is now known as the Lönnrot Park, where a statue sculpted by Emil Wikström stands, began to feel like something with children of the same age, I had to leave this big city too…

 - Which you still remember from those days too?

- A little. I remember a small accident in Kaisaniemi, where I almost drowned once.

- As well as the "Wänta lite" [Wait a minute] games in what is now Lönnrot Park... and little things like that. There were families I knew, among others. Hult, Lupander and Meissner. But, as I said, already in 1867 my parents moved - during The Great Hunger Years - to London, where my father then worked as a businessman for eight years...

The Hall family's addresses are listed in church records for the years 1856–1869 as “2. Stadsdelen Gården No 4. vid Unionsgatan” (second district, the house no. 4, on Union street) and for 1965 as “Andstenska stenhuset vid Wladimir gatan” (The Andsten stone house on Wladimir street). The latter is now known as Kalevankatu, which runs alongside Lönnrot park.

The next move to London may have been influenced by the famine years mentioned by Hall. Finland had already had poor grain harvests in several years before the actual famine years, but the years 1866-1868 proved to be the worst. In the last year of the famine, a miserable 8% of the Finnish population died.

London

We know very little about the Hall family's years in London - only what the artist has told us in an interview with Uusi Suometar. There is no idication of the change in the records of the Swedish-Finnish parish in Helsinki, as both William and Alexandrine Hall are listed as members of the parish for the years 1865–1906. On the other hand, the family's address on Unioninkatu ends in 1869. According to Hall's own account, the move took place in 1867.


- And so you became English?

- For the time being. We had a private teacher in London, who of course would have taught my little head what she/he could... but I didn't really enjoy her/his lessons, because even as a child I was mostly interested in drawing…

- But you have never seen the Royal London Academy of Arts?

- No. For my father soon moved to Stockholm. 

- You became Swedish?

- At least for six years ahead... And these years, of course, determined my education.

So the family moved to Stockholm around 1875. Richard was 15 years old at the time. Despite his young age, Stockholm was already the fourth place and third country where he lived. He studied at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts from 1975 to 1981, which I discuss in the blog post Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts.