Branwell and Halifax

The Halifax Evening Courier devotes an article to the history of the Woolshops area of Halifax and there's a reference to Branwell's visits to the city:

The whole area was relatively poor yet The Square – originally Caygill's Square – had some of the earliest brick-built houses in Halifax, probably of the late 18th century, housing doctors, solicitors and and wealthy professional people.
One of the houses was connected to the early printing of a Halifax newspaper; another housed a famous sculpture and another was said to have entertained Branwell Bronte. (Bill Clay)

We don't know if the author is thinking in The Talbot or the Old Cock Inn (it's more likely to be the latter) but browsing through the journal's archives we have found this other recent article (last December) that somehow we failed to report:

IF there was any link between John "Almighty" Whiteley, of Sowerby, and the Brontes ("Spookier and spookier: Ghostly goings-on linked with John Almighty", by Allan Kenny, Nostalgia, November 29), it seems likely the Old Cock Inn, Halifax, could provide the connection.
As well as the portrait of John Whiteley, which formerly hung in the tap room at the Star in Sowerby and is now in the possession of Mr Kenny, there was another portrait of the former Sowerby constable that had long hung in the bar parlour at the Old Cock in 1912.
The Old Cock was at one time the favourite drinking place of Branwell Bronte when in Halifax. At that time the proprietor of the Old Cock was Thomas Watson Nicholson (1807-78), the man who sent the sheriff's officer over to Haworth in December 1846 with a summons demanding that Branwell's outstanding bill with him be settled.
This embarrassing visit is mentioned in one of Charlotte's letters and it appears the Bronte sisters settled this bill out of their own pockets.
Then on July 22, 1848, Branwell's father, the Rev Patrick Bronte, received a letter from Mr Nicholson of the Old Cock, threatening another summons if the young man's debts were not paid immediately.
Ralph Nicholson (Nicholson's father) had come from Keighley to Halifax as landlord at the Old Cock in or about 1814. Many of this Nicholson family (not to be confused with the family of Halifax printers with the same surname) are buried in the churchyard of Halifax Parish Church.
It would have been a few years later that "Almighty Whiteley" was perhaps roaming the streets of Halifax in a dire financial state while living at the workhouse in Gibbet Street, where he died in 1856.
Did he frequent the Old Cock? I suggest his portrait's presence there indicates a possible link, but how it got there and where it is now, I do not know. Does any reader have any idea? (David C. Glover)

Categories: Branwell Brontë, Brontëana