A Tale of Three by the Sea

Marking a little light relief the other night by - you'd never guess it - doing a little family research, I located my great-uncle's sister-in-law, working in 1881 as domestic servant to the vicar of St Mary's, Southtown.  I was just entering my discovery to my records when I noticed two entries above it, one Claud James Donald Smith.  Now I am in regular contact with my Smith cousins, and have recently been doing some work on their ancestors but these names didn't ring a bell ... and yet he had a record number, so must fit into my tree somewhere.

The entry for this three-year-old with three bold and distinctive names brings together three interests for me.  First of all, his address.  He lived at 5, Row 57, Yarmouth.  I say 'Yarmouth' deliberately, because it didn't become 'Great Yarmouth' until it stretched a finger across the river and obtained Southtown and Gorleston from Suffolk in 1891.  Having been taken there for family holidays since before I can remember, Yarmouth and its history ... and specially the dark mystery of its Rows ... have fascinated me all my life.

There were about 150 of these narrow passages running broadly east-west between four main thoroughfares parallel to the coast on the east and the River Yare on the west.  Stretching from Northgate School in the north to Friars Lane in the south, there were 145 numbered Rows, two without numbers that are wider than the rest and are, in effect, shopping streets: Broad Row and Market Row, and a couple of 'half-rows' that terminate not onto streets but into other rows.  Some of these had common names as well as their official numbers.

These details are taken from a 1905 map; since then, partly as a result of natural development or overcrowding and partly thanks to the Luftwaffe, many of the rows and landmarks have disappeared, but many identifiable pieces remain, too.  Row 57 would have been almost exactly opposite Haven Bridge, which is the main link between the town of Yarmouth and Southtown on the west side of the river.

The second interest of this census entry was Claud's mother.  The household comprised five people.  At its head was Curtis Aldred, a 58-year-old mast and block maker; also listed were his wife, Mary A, 52, his daughter, 28, grandson Frederick C Smith, 4, and our featured 3-year-old brought up the rear.  The daughter was Lorina Smith, a most unusual name and the first time I'd come across it in my family history researches over the last twenty years or so.  If you write it quickly, with that old-fashioned 'r' that had a loop at the top, and are a bit sloppy about positioning the dot of the 'i', you will see how it can easily be misread as the more common Louisa, as was often the case with this lady.  However, unless my memory is playing tricks - which, with advancing years, I have to admit is a possibility - I used to work in the late 1990s with a lady called ... Lorina Smith.

Lorina also provides the third element to my tale.  The census entry gave an 'occupation' for her: "Railway engine driver's wife".  Trains, steam trains in particular, and the railways they powered have been another lifelong interest for me.  I pictured Lorina going about her business in the town hearing the whistle of an engine above the clatter of wheels on cobbled streets and the other hubbub around and thinking proudly of her husband, somewhere behind the controls maybe even of that very engine, and the pride which she must have felt for him and his responsible job.

<spoiler alert>  I later found the entry for him in 1881.  Frederick Charles Smith was living at 1, Laburnum Terrace, King's Lynn, with his elder brother James and James's wife Eliza and their two sons.  James was a Railway clerk and Frederick ... a Railway fireman.  Well, at least he was on the footplate!  The railways were in their blood.  Their parents were both born in Cornwall, James at Bodmin and Ann about five miles away by today's roads at Cardinham.  My guess is that work had taken them out of their native surroundings; James junior was born in Woolwich, which was then in Kent.  Frederick's place of birth had me guessing for a while: Ouse Bridge.

Then in one record it was given as Hilgay, which is a village near Downham Market in the west of Norfolk.  A look at the map shows a cluster of houses within the parish of Hilgay, strung out alongside the Ouse.  One of these modern homes bears the key name Ouse Bridge Farm; more importantly, just 600 yards upstream is a railway bridge.  The line it bears was opened in 1847 after the construction of a substantial wooden viaduct over the river, since replaced by this modern structure.  Just by the bridge is a pair of cottages that look about the right age to have been where Frederick was born in the winter of 1848/9.  In 1871 the Smith family were at Pentney, where James was the Stationmaster and his 21-year-old son a Railway clerk.

Lorina Lamb Aldred (another strange name, which I haven't looked into) was born in Yarmouth about the beginning of 1853.  In 1871 the Aldred family, Curtis, Mary, Lorina and her elder sister Harriet, were living in another Row house in Yarmouth, one that was closer to Vauxhall station, the terminus of the Great Eastern Railway than their home ten years later.  Her son Frederick Curtis Cecil Smith appeared in the September quarter of 1876 and was registered in the name of Smith, although the marriage of Louisa Lamb Aldred and Frederick Charles Smith is recorded in Norwich in the December quarter of that year.

There are many possible reasons why, after the birth of the baby in Yarmouth, they should have married in Norwich.  The next fixed point in the story is 8th December 1877, when Claud was born in Gaywood, now a suburb of King's Lynn, then a separate village about a mile from the town.  We can only guess why three years later Frederick and Lorina were living at opposite ends of the county.  The most likely reason is that Frederick's work was based in Lynn, and they had decided to live there, but they had been unable to find a home, so he lodged with his brother and she took the children to live with her parents.  At least the journey would have been easy on the train so they might not have been apart all of the time.

Ten years later, in 1891, they were recorded living in South Street, King's Lynn, and had added a younger son Charles to the family.  He was at school, Claud an errand boy in the port, and Frederick was working in a foundry.  Lorina's dream had become reality: her husband, now 42, was a railway engine driver.  Sadly, within three years she was a widow; Frederick died in the winter of 1893/4 aged only 44.  In 1901 She was still living in South Street with her two younger sons: Charles had become a blacksmith's striker, while Claud had followed his father's example and was a railway engine stoker.

Claud married in 1902 and by 1911 he and his wife Amy had four children although, typical of the times, they had also lost two others.  His mother was no doubt pleased that they'd named their first child Ivy Lorina, though one of those who died was Frederick Charles.  Lorina died in the summer of 1922, and Claud settled in Cambridge, becoming a joint maker/assembly worker with LNER.  He died in the spring of 1957 and Amy ten years later.

And why did I have them in my records?  Amy's first cousin married my uncle.