Filling the Gaps

Last week I wrote essentially about mother and daughter, Mary and Sarah Batley.  This week's story begins with Mary's first son and Sarah's brother, George, who I said had been born in Norwich in 1851.  Having grown up in Norwich and its suburbs, it will be no surprise to learn that it was in St Mark's, Lakenham, on the southern side of the city, that he was married on 13th October 1873 to a Norwich girl, Jemima Green.  She bore him six children but, sadly two of them died shortly after birth.

As I traced the lives of this family through the censuses, gradually certain gaps were isolated, that would need a bit more attention.  Their second son, George William, born 28th July 1876, was an example.  He was missing in 1901, but reappeared in 1911 with a wife and family of three children.  They had been married for just 8 years; his wife Florence Annie had been born in Ireland: could this explain where George had been in 1901?

Another gap in 1901 was George's younger brother William John, born 12th October 1880 (this was the second use of those names: his brother had died just weeks old, and the names re-used ... as was often the case).  This gap was easier to fill, though.  As I had found many years ago in the case of my great-uncle, William had joined the army and was in barracks at Colchester.  This find opened up new lines of investigation as I pursued the answers regarding George.

Although George and Florence had been married in Norwich, their first son was born in ... Colchester, another significant clue.  At this point, discoveries were coming thick and fast and - even thought it was scarcely a week ago - I can't clearly recall their sequence.  I found Florence's baptism record, showing that this took place in Athlone in the county of Roscommon, although my recent Irish holiday told me that Athlone is in Westmeath.  Study of maps new and old, however, revealed that part of the town lies to the west of the Shannon and was therefore correctly described as Roscommon.  Characteristic of many such towns in both countries, the border has since been shifted to tidy things up.  I also found Florence's birth registration, which revealed the address as 'Batteries', which the map confirmed was in that western part of the town.  The name suggested a military connection there, too.

Last weekend found me downloading a score of military records from which I can now report that, having started adult life as a tinker's labourer, George enlisted on 13th October 1896 in the 4th (militia) Bn. of the Norfolk Regiment.  This was a life that he found to his liking, for within the year, now slightly grown in stature and correspondingly a few pounds heavier,  he transferred to the 2nd Battalion on a Short Service enlistment (7 years with the colours followed by 5 on reserve).  The battalion were in South Africa from 4th January 1900 until 10th February 1903, accounting for George's absence from the census.  By the time of his return to these shores, George was a corporal; he and Florence were married shortly after and their first son was born before the end of the year, presumably in married quarters.

George was promoted to Lance-Sergeant in April 1904 and, still so-described, was discharged to the reserve on 28th August 1909.  On the outbreak of war in 1914, he returned to the regiment.  This war was a different one, though.  I haven't discovered what action he saw, if any; a medical report of  March 1915 referred to a bout of influenza in January that had developed into chronic bronchitis, rendering him unfit for military service.  His discharge on medical grounds was confirmed on 22nd March and he died on 31st May.  He was buried with military honours in Norwich cemetery.

Perhaps inspired or encouraged by his brother, William enlisted in the militia on 18th April 1899.  The militia battalion was 'disembodied' in July 1901, a reduction in strength perhaps justified by the progress of the war, but William was re-engaged in April 1905 to complete his term of engagement, having been under regular training in the meantime.  Finally discharged from the regiment on 19th April 1909, on 9th August of that year he signed a Territorial Force attestation with the 1st East Anglian Brigade, Royal Field Artillery.  Like his brother, he seemed set for a military career.  However, he was discharged on 26th May 1911 under 'para 156(3) of Territorial Force Regulations'.  Research tells me that this clause refers to the soldier's own request, so what prompted it remains a mystery.  He was at home in Lakenham at the census two months earlier.

Many questions remain unanswered.  Why did George claim to be two years younger than he actually was (18 instead of 20) when he enlisted?  The medical report in March 1915 gives 'age last birthday' as 39 when in July 1914 he would have been 38.  The civil registration of his death shows age 37 ... still 2 years short.  Another open question is that of Florence's father.  The family appears in the 1901 census in Norwich, showing that he was born in the Norfolk village of Shotesham, and his wife in Ipswich.  I've found no trace of a military record for him, although Florence's birth registration shows his occupation as 'Corpl GR' and they were married in 1875 in Woolwich, another place with military connections.  Over the years I've become familiar with a number of regimental abbreviations but GR is unknown to me.

This whole exercise has revolved around finding people where they aren't expected.  That's a thought that certainly has relevance at this particular weekend and my thoughts go out to all who find themselves 'where they weren't expected' today.  As one friend put it after completing a substantial shopping expedition earlier this week, "I wasn't expecting to be cooking Christmas dinner this year!"

Wherever you are, I wish all my readers all the best for the rest of the festive season and a brighter New Year.

Moving to the City

 A few weeks ago, I wrote about tidying up my family history records, and how that task had been 'agreeably distracted' into tracking one particular family through the 19th and early 20th centuries.  Despite all manner of other interests and seasonal obligations, I'm pleased to say that this has continued and, during the course of this, a number of interesting stories have come to light.

The family I've been looking at is that of my maternal grandfather's maternal grandmother, Eliza Bullingham or Burlingham.  She was the fifth of a family of eight children born to George Burlingham and his wife Mary, formerly Mary Finch, between 1827 and 1844.  In my earlier blog, I wrote of Eliza's eldest sister Sarah, and the discovery that her daughter had married one of Eliza's sons.  This week, I've been following the life and fortunes of Mary, the next of Eliza's siblings.

Mary Burlingham was born in either Thorpe Abbotts or Brockdish (Norfolk villages lying along the Suffolk border in the valley - such as it is - of the river Waveney) and was baptised at Brockdish on 21st October 1832.  At some point in the next two years, the family moved to Wattisfield in West Suffolk, which is where George, her father, had been born and it was there that the rest of the Burlingham children were born.

Meanwhile at South Lopham, just over the border in Norfolk, Norwich-born Thomas Batley (a name sometimes found as Battley or Battely) had married Mary Finch in July, 1825.  William, their first child was born there in 1825 or 6 and then the family moved to nearby Bressingham, where William was baptised on 30th April 1826.  By 1841, they were living in Roydon.  Although about ten miles (depending where their respective houses were located) separate Roydon and Wattisfield, this didn't prevent William Batley and Mary Burlingham meeting and growing attached to each other.  Early in 1849, Mary found herself pregnant and they were married in the June quarter of that year.  Their daughter, named Sarah after her aunt, was born before the year was out.

Much is made of the mid-to-late 19th century being a difficult time for those dependent on agriculture for a living - the 1870s in particular - and the fact that many families moved to the newly industrialised north in search of work.  But it was already difficult for larger families to find work as they grew up in earlier decades.  With their family now complete, late in the 1840s, the Batleys moved to Norwich and at the 1851 census Thomas and Mary and their five youngest children were living at Castle Ditches in the parish of St Michael at Thorn.  William and his wife had left baby Sarah with her grandparents in Wattisfield, and were making a new life for themselves in Norwich, living in Rising Sun Lane in the same parish as William's parents.  Mary, now said to be 21, but in truth somewhat younger, was expecting her second child, George, who was born on 19th May that year.  Both Thomas and William are shown as labourers.

The 1861 census shows that progress had been made in their plans.  By then they were living in Golden Ball Street, William being listed as a shoemaker, while Mary (now revealing her true age, 28) is credited with the occupation of a shoe binder.  Their family then consisted of five children and Mary's 20-year-old sister Maria was also with them, described as a domestic servant.  Whether working for them or outside the family is not indicated.  Most census records list the children in order of age; most that do not show the boys first, followed by the girls.  The sequence of this entry is somewhat strange.  After William and Mary come Sarah, 11, daughter Eliza, 2, and Maria, followed by the boys: Thomas, 6, George, 8 and William, 3.

St Michael at Thorn was close to the centre of the city.  Castle Ditches was, as its name indicates, close to the foot of the great mound on which the Norman castle was built.  By the start of the nineteenth century, it had become a general dumping ground and refuse pit.  The area was levelled and advertised for development in 1826 and it's likely that both Thomas's and William's 1851 homes were part of that development.  Golden Ball Street ran through the middle of the area and obviously the houses there afforded greater accommodation.  As the decades passed, prosperity increased and they moved from parish to parish further out from the city centre.

William and Mary went on to have a family of ten, six sons and four daughters; William died in the summer of 1889 at the age of 62 and later that year daughter Sarah was married.  In the 1891 census Sarah, now the wife of William Meadows, described as a 'Laster and heeler', were living in Quebec Road, while her widowed mother was living with two of her younger sons in nearby Rosary Road, both in St Matthews parish.  William Meadows died in 1906 and Sarah's mother Mary in 1909. In 1911 Sarah was living in the same area, with a teenage lodger, and her brothers and their families close by.  She died in 1925.

Of the parish of St Michael at Thorn, which had played a great part in the family's settling and early life in Norwich, little can be seen today.  The church itself, which stood at the corner of Ber Street and Thorn Lane, was hit by incendiary bombs on 27th June, 1942, leaving only the tower and part of the walls standing.  The whole area was flattened as part of the post-war redevelopment in the 1950s and the church door is the only survivor, having been re-erected in the restored church of St Julian (now something of a tourist attraction) as the entrance to Mother Julian's cell there.

Flat-dwelling

"Curiosity killed the cat" was a proverb often quoted to support not telling children a truth that parents thought was best not shared with them.  I can't vouch for the feline consequences, but curiosity is certainly lethal so far as time is concerned.  I recently wasted an hour or so trying to find out some facts about flat-dwellers.  In particular my quest was simply 'what proportion of people living alone in this country, live in flats?'  Lots of reports touched on one or other characteristic, but nowhere could I find the precise answer to my question ... at least not before giving up the search with the words, 'life's too short!'.

What I did find was that, in 2019, approximately 29.5% of all UK households were single-occupancy, and 'the greater proportion' are men, which could mean as few as 14.8% of households.  But, although owner occupancy by single householders varies from 50% at some ages to 75% at others, nowhere does this seem to be split between flats and detached or semi-detached dwellings.

Whatever that proportion might be, the fact remains that I'm one of them and, in a succession of three dwellings, have been so for the last 21 years.  It's no surprise that, over that time, it's a situation with which I've become familiar and things that others might find peculiar - for example, having two front doors, and hence two front door keys - have become commonplace.

My flat-dwelling familiarity hasn't always been the case.  I'm not suggesting that my parents were snobs - they certainly had no right to be! - but in overheard conversations certain people in the neighbourhood might be referred to thus: 'Old <so-and-so> lives in the flats', the words being uttered in tones that implied that Mr. <so-and-so> was one of a lower class of people, part of a sub-culture that was not to be associated with.  And any suggestion of entering the block of flats to deliver to, or worse, communicate with such people was definitely not to be entertained.

Unquestionably, a block of flats, like any household, has its own smell, that is only noticed briefly on entry and soon becomes part of the normal ambience.  I've noticed this when making deliveries to other blocks on the estate and elsewhere.  Occasionally I've had a visit from a member of the local constabulary, announcing that they've had a report of drugs in the area and asking if I've smelled anything worthy of their attention in this regard.  I'm not sure whether I'm believed, but I usually explain that my sheltered life has meant that I wouldn't be able to identify whether or not an out-of-the-ordinary smell might be drug-related.

I may be fortunate to live in a quiet close, with neighbours who, like me, are busy getting on with their own lives and give me no cause for complaint.  That isn't to say that the place is silent.  In fact, it's quite comforting to have the sound of others nearby.  As I write this I can hear the steady beat of modern music from the flat above, but it's not at a volume to cause interference to my concentration.  Some sounds are of a regular nature, like the couple next door who can be heard nipping outside for a smoke last thing at night, and it's far from uncommon to sit in the toilet and hear a sudden gush in the downpipe just inches from my left ear!  But I know what it is, and that it signifies the existence of life around me, so it's not intrusive.

Occasionally I've developed friendships with my neighbours, but this tends to be the exception rather than the rule.  Usually, the most intense exchanges relate to the taking in of each other's parcels.  The previous owner of the flat next door lived there herself for many years but then moved away and rented it out.  At this point I became her 'eyes and ears' for any threat to her property.  In an earlier flat, I had regularly exchanged greetings with the young lady who lived opposite, but we'd never had a conversation until I was about to move out because my landlord needed to sell the flat.  "I wish I'd known earlier," she told me, "I have a well-paid job in the City and as a result I have savings I want to invest.  I could have bought your flat and you could have stayed there as my tenant."  Such an arrangement would indeed have suited both of us, and that flat was nearer the town centre than my present home, but it wasn't to be.

I think, on balance, that the benefits of not having more rooms to keep clean, having a secure place to park my car - even if I do have to share the closest space on a 'first-come' basis with others who live nearby - and tidy grounds that I don't have to maintain, outweigh the potential of a separate front door onto the street and the constant headache of structural responsibilities.

It Goes Back Centuries!

I've been thinking about words.  Let's face it, despite the variety of our modern lives - or, indeed maybe because of it - they are probably the most common things we have around us ... and that is surely true whether they are in our native tongue, one we've learned at school or since, or one in some foreign language we've never seen before.  Words are words, and we see them on every side.

From time to time I've seen 'tests' on social media that give credence to a calculated claim that the inside of words is far less important than the combination of their length, context and their initial and final letters.  Indeed, a tweet this morning provided me with two examples of this very fact.  It was actually a reply to one I'd spotted yesterday but which, being puzzled by it and unable to understand its point, I had passed over.  Yesterday's section of the story concerned a supermarket's in-store sign showing a glass of milk and the two words 'Lleath' and 'Milk', with the caption 'Another entrant to the milk war!'.  This morning's response cited another sign (no picture this time), saying 'I had a similar argument with <name of national supermarket chain> over Psygod!'

Now, in my travels, I've been into stores in both Scotland and Wales and have seen many signs like this that are written in both English and either Gaelic or Welsh, and the fact that I've now been learning Welsh on and off for three or four years, meant that the words for milk and fish are common to me.  Hence, my puzzlement why there should be consternation over a milk sign bearing both languages.  This morning, however - fish being less common in my lessons than milk - I suddenly realised that 'Psygod' should read 'Pysgod', and I looked back at 'last night's milk'.  Sure enough, it should have read 'Llaeth', and the meaning of the exchange became crystal clear.

Geography isn't the only thing that affects words and their use.  History must bear its share of the blame for word-confusion.  This morning, shortly after reading that second tweet, I was planning what turned out to be quite a busy day and caught myself muttering, 'Now let's set these things in order.'  I've read somewhere that a preposition is not the way to end a sentence; whether true or not, it's stuck in my memory ever since I read it and, if true, it would surely apply to the phrase as much as to the single word, so my mind set about re-phrasing what I'd said: 'Now let's set in order these things.'

You can tell that I was only half intent on what I was doing, for my thoughts drifted further down the revision path.  I realised that, if I were to be more economical and say 'Now let us order these things.', it would convey a totally different meaning, i.e. to requisition goods from an outside source, rather than to arrange things - in this case ideas - already in my possession.

That was all to do with the sequence of the same known words.  It's perhaps coincidence that all these thoughts came in the space of about two hours earlier today.  During my early morning prayers, my mind drifted to a line from a hymn, written only in the nineteenth century by John Bacchus Dykes, but using words common a couple of centuries earlier.  I'd sung it often when I was younger, without giving it a second thought, but today's child might be puzzled by the archaic tenses of "Which wert and art and evermore shalt be."

It's time to draw this 'socially distanced' ramble through the textbooks to a close, before I drift off to Norman-French, Anglo-Saxon and Greek.  But let me just explain those three unusual words in that hymn line.  The 'which' at the beginning is a personal reference to God, to whom the whole hymn is presumed to be addressed; until the seventeenth century - and possibly later - it was common to differentiate between singular and plural in the second person.  This is still the case in many languages (French, German and Welsh, to my knowledge) but English became lazy and now uses 'you', 'your', and 'yours' whether we're talking to one or a hundred people.  The words in this hymn are the archaic forms of 'were', 'are' and 'shall' that would have been used with 'thou', the single word for the second person, that has long since fallen out of use.

The moral of my early morning is therefore not just to be careful what you say, but also the order in which you say it ... and how you spell it as well!

They're Fantastic!

I often moan that, in this well-structured, retired life of mine, there is little of excitement to write about in these weekly jottings.  This cannot be said of the past few days, however.  I woke up on Tuesday morning feeling quite chipper.  I'd beaten the alarm by a couple of minutes, which was useful since I knew I had to clear away the washing that had been drying overnight, before I could begin my normal morning routines.

I was at work on time or a minute or two early, and quickly established what had been left for me by my friend who does the Monday shift.  The working day began well until, a little more than hour in, I walked over to guide a new colleague through a task he hadn't done before.  As I peered over his shoulder I was aware that I couldn't see his computer screen clearly.  My first thought was simply that this was due to the fact that I'd removed my specs when I put my mask on (I still haven't found a way of coping with the combination of beard, mask and specs without misting up).  But, almost immediately, I realised that, in addition to that anticipated problem, I was seeing two misaligned images of what I was looking at.

I went and sat down again and asked someone to get me a drink of water: past experiences of 'dazzled vision' had told me that a drink and closing of the eyes for a few minutes would clear the problem.  This time, though, the symptoms were much stronger and a mere drink was too little, too late.  Before long, although safely seated, I began to feel dizzy, the room was swimming before my eyes and I started retching.  Considerate co-workers quickly took control as, stage by embarrassing stage, my breakfast was transferred to a strategically placed and lined waste bin.  I heard instructions being issued: have you got gloves on? go and get an apron! no, don't call him, his partner is shielding!  My young colleague efficiently closed down the computers and, after being assured that there was nothing more he could do, left for home.  Someone called for an ambulance, and someone else gently wiped my beard ... time after time!

Before long, the paramedics arrived and took control.  A canula was inserted in my forearm.  There were all sorts of questions, to which I knew the answers, but couldn't provide them for the muscular effort of being sick.  Eventually things calmed down; I was transferred to the ambulance and dozed under the influence of a quick-acting anti-vomit drug and against the background of the rattling of the vehicle as it sped to the local hospital.  By the time we were parked outside A&E awaiting a cubicle within, I was feeling quite a bit better.

Once control had been handed over to hospital staff and the paramedics had left for their next call, I found myself in a cubicle with glazed doors that gave me a near perfect view of the nursing station.  I could see for myself the efficient operation of the department.  Nurses came and went, each one carefully and conscientiously announcing her name and what she was going to do to or for me.  Blood samples were taken, and an ECG trace obtained, and temperature and blood pressure noted regularly.  Finally, I was attended - with the same courtesies - by the doctor, American by voice but oriental in appearance.  She was swift and thorough in what she had gleaned from all the data collected.  She announced that I would be given fluids and, in answer to my request to use a toilet, directed me to 'the bathroom, right over there!'

By now, it was mid-afternoon.  I had a drip feeding into my arm and alternated my interest between the ongoing operations beyond the glass and the sudoku I was playing on my mobile phone.  Every now and then one or other nurse would catch my eye as she passed by to the cubicles on either side, and most exchanged a smile.  About the point when the half-litre of fluid I was being given had finished, the doctor returned.  After applying all the standard checks to make sure that I hadn't suffered a stroke, she explained that my unfortunate experience had been caused, in her opinion, by a combination of dehydration (I hadn't been drinking sufficiently on a daily basis for quite some while) and a slow heart rate which, in some ways is not a bad thing, but in other ways causes problems, such as in this instance, when it doesn't get enough of what fluid is there around the body so effectively as is required.

All that remained was to be taken to the 'discharge lounge' (sounds like an airport, I know, but it wasn't so luxurious!) to await transport home.  After an early night, the next day I felt virtually normal, and yesterday morning I was back at work as usual, and with the unexpected delight of having a new volunteer to train, hopefully to fill the remaining slot in our present schedule.  Medically, I've changed and enhanced my drinking habits, and am in contact with my GP to investigate further the overall problems of circulation and heartbeat.

Don't listen to anyone who dares to deride any aspect of our NHS - from personal experience, now, I can say ... "THEY'RE FANTASTIC!"

Older and Wiser

"Jehoram rested with his fathers ..." - 2 Kings 8:24

It's unusual for me to begin with a quotation, but this one, which crossed my reading 'path' this week, seemed fitting for some of the thoughts I was going to share.  Let me say at the outset, though, that my mortal coil is still vibrating strongly and I have no intention of shuffling off it for the time being.  However, the older I get, the concept of 'resting with my fathers' takes a more positive place in my experience.

For one thing, I find that passing into or through years that correspond to my parents' ages as I was growing into adulthood has helped me appreciate some of the pressures and concerns that they may have been going through - either individually or together - but which they may have either seen no point in, or had realised it would be impossible to, share with me at the time.  The prime example is coming to terms with children who are far more concerned with their own lives than having anything to do with their parents!

Naturally, I cannot imagine what either of my parents was like in their younger years vis-a-vis their own parents.  However, given that the general pattern of life has arguably changed more between the 1970s and the end of the twentieth century than probably any comparable period in our history, I suspect that my grandparents' experience of children growing up would have been vastly different to that of my parents or myself.

Another contributory factor to this ageing topic has been my dream life.  Many have been the mornings when I've surfaced into the real world with a lingering memory of a dream that included strange incomplete, yet identifiable, characters from a varied selection of my past experiences: different workplaces miles apart in distance or time; my present friends associating with me in the house where I grew up, and so on.  It's as if my relaxing mind has flicked through the library of my memory, plucking a page from here and a page from there, and stitching them together in random sequence into a temporary collage for my nocturnal delectation.

And the obvious extension to this line of thought is my fascination with family history and the habit I've found of putting together a story (even if not the real one!) that fits behind some of the family groups as I discover more about them and gather their true history census by census.  I see yet another decade's crop of new children, and wonder what a mother's life must have been like, and how long her body would cope with the strain.  The older ones grow up, perhaps moving to new surroundings near and far in search of work, making new acquaintances, starting families of their own.

Very rarely do I see someone's occupation labelled 'unemployed'.  Unlike today, it seems there was always something to turn to in order to make a living of some kind in the absence of a welfare state.  I do wonder sometimes just what some of the jobs actually involved ... given the one- or two-word descriptions on the census returns.  

One of my on-line friends, a professional genealogist, recently posted a section of a census page, illustrating the way that some industries had - perhaps still have - their own language: terms that meant something specific to them, totally different from what we might understand, albeit the words might be the same.  I this case it was the weaving trade, where a brother and sister were described as a 'scrutcher' and a 'cheeser'.  Fortunately the post was accompanied by a link to a glossary of weaving terms, so I was able to translate.  

I have a few weavers in my own database, mainly ancestors of my cousin's husband, whose tree I explored for a golden wedding presentation a few years ago, and I'm now minded to retrace some of those steps and see what peculiarities I can illuminate from this resource.

A Numerical Adventure

It's been one of those weeks ... Everyday life continues to flow according to a comfortable structure.  Work has changed from full days to half days because of the latest lockdown, but it's just as satisfying and involves getting up with the alarm on the same two days.  On the news front there's nothing spectacular happening either.  Covid is still killing hundreds every day - though I know that's certainly spectacular in a very sad way for those who've lost loved ones - and even Biden winning the presidential election isn't news any longer.

One piece of good news yesterday was the picture of a bespectacled northern gentleman walking out of 10 Downing Street.  I say 'gentleman' in its broadest possible sense, of course.  His cold and sinister appearance, along with the reputation that goes with it, betrays the warmth and welcome of all the northerners I know.

But, blog-wise, this tranquillity provides me with a lack of substance and, as is so often the case, I turn to the family history for inspiration.  I wrote the other week of my current major projects, each in its way a correction of earlier oversight, and the way that my attention to these had been distracted by the discovery of a whole branch of my family tree where records I had received from distant cousins had remained un-checked and undocumented for many - too many! - years.  This distraction has grown legs!

Digging up records, whether on line or at the record office, is far more attractive than entering administrative cross-references, and I decided that I would take each person in this branch and trace them, so far as I could, from birth to death through all the available censuses.  According to a book I got a few years ago, this is a process known as 'family reconstruction' and, ever since I discovered that the 1911 census carries the details of every married woman's children: how many she had borne and how many were still living at the time of the census, it's something that I've tended to do for the majority of my 'new discoveries'.

This particular family is the one that embraces my 'ancestor no. 27'.  This reference is derived from a system that will be known to those of my readers who have dabbled in family history themselves.  It's known as an Ahnentafel number.  The name is derived from German and means 'ancestor table'.  In this system, I am no. 1, my parents are nos. 2 and 3, my grandparents 4,5,6 and 7, and so on, with the father of each individual being given a number that is twice his or hers, and the mother that number plus one.  If you run this sequence up two more generations, you will find that no. 27 is the mother of my mother's paternal grandmother or, in other words, one of my eight great-great-grandmothers, by name Eliza Burlingham (or Bullingham ... some members of the family used one name, some the other).

The family I'm working through therefore comprises all of her brothers and sisters, their respective wives and husbands, ... their children ... and their spouses and grandchildren.  So far, since the middle of October, I've added to my database 31 individuals of whom I had no knowledge before, and who were born between 1830 and 1911.  The greatest surprise came after I'd entered the husband of Sarah, one of Eliza's elder sisters, and discovered that they had two daughters.  When I made to enter the name of the first to my database, I found that she was there already ... along with her own husband, eight children, three grand-children and a great-grandson with whom I've been exchanging Christmas greetings for many years!  That daughter had married her cousin, who happened to be Eliza's son.  Having discovered the son's marriage some while ago, I'd never explored his wife's family.

I'm fascinated by the way that, although in a comparatively small area of the country, there are links between different branches of my tree, albeit not often so closely linked as this.  This is the twenty-first time one person has claimed two places in my researches and I can't help wondering how many more I shall find!

Here We Go Again!

 Pedwar can diwrnod o ddysgu Cymraeg!*

If you thought my title was going to lead to a tirade about going into lockdown for the second time, you were wrong, although I admit my opening comment might have given you no clue.  In fact that sentence is a squeal of triumph, for it echoes the (much anticipated) announcement that I read on this screen an hour or so ago, that I've now been learning Welsh for 400 days.

In point of fact, it's quite a bit longer than that, as you will find out if you read on.  Although I wasn't aware of any Welsh connections - and many decades of family history research have yet to contradict that understanding - I first began to learn yr iaeth Cymraeg* over fifty years ago, when I was planning a holiday in north Wales with my then girlfriend.

As it happened, our relationship fell apart some weeks before the expedition was due to begin, and instead I found myself hitch-hiking on the south coast.  I think I ended up in Eastbourne ... where there would certainly have been no call for speaking Welsh!  However, the fascination for a language that thwarts the dictionary by changing the beginnings of its words lingered and, as I visited the land of y ddraig goch* from time to time, I would pick up books like "Welsh is Fun!" and "The Pocket Welsh Dictionary" which still sit idle on my shelves.

Five years ago, now, aware of the potential dangers of letting the brain stagnate in retirement, I picked up once more that same "Teach Yourself Welsh" book that I'd begun to use in my youth.  Although very structured much as the French that I learned at school and the German that I dabbled with shortly afterwards, since it was now locked some fifty years behind the curve of language development, it was teaching me a language that was almost archaic.

To accompany my studies, I had acquired a modern translation of Y Beibl* and a couple of small books written in Welsh and found that - even with the help of a decent dictionary (thank you, W H Smith, Bangor branch) - the words that I was now reading differed significantly from those in my teach yourself book.  

Last summer there was a parliamentary by-election in the Brecon & Radnorshire constituency and I decided it would be a nice idea to combine my political interests with a few days' break in a part of Wales that I hadn't before explored.  In the campaign office, I met Portia, a woman from Northamptonshire who, with her Welsh-born husband, had moved into the area a couple of years previously to take on his parents' former house.  Their children were now attending a Welsh-language school and so she was making an effort to keep up with them, using a language-learning app on her phone.

Fired with renewed enthusiasm, I got the details, got the app, and began the course for myself.  After a few weeks, with the frustration of fumbling my way around the phone's keyboard along the problems with accents getting the better of me, I gave up again.  But, this time, I was hooked!  I discovered that the same system was available on line, simply by logging into the website every day.  As well as teaching a system recognised by the Welsh education authorities, the program has a distinctly competitive edge, with league tables and a notional currency that pays a reward for each exercise completed.  I can 'pay' in this currency for an amulet that secures the continuity of my studies if I have the odd day off, so my achievement is spread over a number of six-day weeks, but is still something of which I feel justifiably proud.

And this time ... I don't feel like giving up, so there won't be any slipping back to start all over yet again!

* - Pedwar can diwrnod o ddysgu Cymraeg! - Four hundred days of learning Welsh;  yr iaeth Cymraeg - the Welsh language;  y ddraig goch - the red dragon;  Y Beibl - The Bible.

Busy Doing Nothing

In my two-days-a-week voluntary job helping in a warehouse, I occasionally encounter cages, tall metal-mesh containers on wheels to help in transporting goods around the building.  Usually these things have two fixed wheels and two that swivel and, as a result, rather like the proverbial recalcitrant supermarket trolley, a cage can sometimes seem to have a mind of its own when it comes to getting it to go where you want it.  In fairness, this - as in the retail comparison just made - is often the result of bad maintenance.  

[I once caused some amusement in the office when exasperated at the obstinacy of a plastic bin (the younger sibling of the cage).  After I'd used the contents of the bin, I went to the workshop area and borrowed a couple of spanners; returning to the empty container where I had left it, inverted on the office floor, I proceeded to remove one of the wheels from its bearing and unwind therefrom a pair of tights that had become entangled, before replacing it and returning a much healthier article to the parking area.]

Sometimes a loaded cage can be a heavy challenge for one person and a few weeks ago, my supervisor asked me to help her get one up a slope and through a narrow door.  With one of us pulling backward and the other pushing forward, and neither able to see what the other was doing, the task wasn't exactly easy for the two of us.  Once the slope had been negotiated and the cage was 'stuck' in the doorway, but at least on level ground, she left me to it, simply moving small obstacles out of my path as I steered it into place.

Afterwards, having thanked me for my help, she added, "I don't really know what would have made that job easier."  I fear my reply, though factual and constructive, was an impossibility and could certainly have been much better phrased.  "Having one mind between the two of us would have helped."  What I meant was that part of the difficulty was that, as each of us tried to work out which way to steer our own side, we were often working against each other instead of one taking the lead and instructing the other in a common plan.

As I recall this situation, my mind drifts back some thirty or forty years to a church 'event' that was carried out by a collection of eight men of varying abilities, assembled as a result of an appeal for volunteers, rather than a co-ordinated recruiting exercise.  The task was to remove the font from the place where it had stood for centuries to a new site some twenty yards or so distant, where it would be much more convenient in the late twentieth century.  

By some means now lost in the fogginess of memory, the eight of us had managed to lift this stone monster from the floor and were then guided by a ninth person (probably the parson) to convey it to precisely the right spot, and facing the correct way round, before allowing it to descend gently and safely to the floor.  I'm pleased to report that this was done with no injury to either carriers or carried and, so far as I know, it is still standing today where we left it all those years ago.

My point is, however, that it can sometimes make a job easier if one person is not actively engaged in its execution.  A more ancient example of this truth is a musical one that I'm pleased to say graces my somewhat esoteric collection of recorded music ... viz. the Sea Shanty.  Unversed as I am in nautical terms, I wouldn't know a sheet from a halyard, but I am aware that the hauling of a rope by a body of men is much more efficient if it follows a distinct and appropriate rhythm pounded out by the communal singing of a well known chorus, punctuated by pithy verses contributed by a non-pulling comrade, possibly armed with a squeeze-box.

A rambling - almost sea-faring! - tale like this has to have a moral to draw it to a conclusion and that is simply this.  When it comes to the defeat of our present arch-enemy, Covid-19, while the gallant efforts of the NHS and the test-and-trace people are on the 'doing end' of the fight, their efforts can be very much helped by the non-active participation of people like you and me, as we follow the mantra of keeping ourselves in our 2-metre spaces, washing our hands well and often, and wearing a mask when necessary.

Cobblers' Children!

The proverb that gives me my title this week is centuries old.  One source places the earliest reference to it in a book of 1546 and another even suggests that a similar meaning is to be found in Holy Writ at Luke 4:23, but I think this is stretching the point somewhat.  The version I heard in my formative years ran, "Cobblers' children are always the worst shod", and it came to mind earlier this week as I found time to dabble in my favourite lockdown hobby, the family history.

In recent weeks I've had two major 'background' projects on the go, and these get neglected when they unearth something worthy of the diversion ... rather like the snow plough patrol that discovers a hole in the road and turns workers enjoying seasonal overtime back into road maintenance operatives on an emergency shift.

The first of these projects is to label all the unlabelled birth and death records that I've collected over the years with a reference to the subject characters in my database.  The other is adorning the database itself with reference to the appearance of each character in the censuses that took place during his/her lifetime ... if not all, then at least those that indicate a change of locality or an interesting occupation.

It was this latter that I was engaged on the other day when I came across a couple who were the parents of a sizeable family but oddly enough, my record showed no trace of their marriage.  Now this might be a fairly common situation today, but it was far less so in early-Victorian England.  Added to this was the fact that the woman was a sister of one of my great-great-grandmothers, i.e. a close enough family member to warrant all possible facts to have been documented and recorded.  On closer examination, my horror was extended by the absence of the deaths of either her or her husband and few, if any, birth references for their children!

What had gone wrong with my system?  The answer was simple, but no less incriminating.  The arrival of these 'characters' in my records was many years ago, when my known tree was expanding far more rapidly than is presently the case.  I had been in correspondence with two of their descendants, who had each provided details of their own families, linking back to this couple.  I had incorporated these names and dates into my database before hurriedly moving on to another letter or e-mail.  I had then been so engrossed in the further expansion of my tree that I never gave a thought to verifying and properly documenting the information I'd been given.

So, thank you, third cousins Brenda and John (some eighteen years late) for all these details.  I have at last filled in the missing link in our joint families.  I can now tell you that your great-great-grandparents were married in the June quarter of 1849, and confirm the legitimacy of each of you being my fourth cousin.

Back to School

I don't know about you, but I've found that, with the lockdown and the continued curtailment of many activities since it was supposed to have ended (never mind the restrictions that are likely to return soon, or have indeed already been re-imposed in many places), I've been finding many aspects of life growing stale.

One I have noticed particularly, although there is no actual restriction on all the component aspects, is cooking.  Never the world's greatest cook, I used to make a four-portion stew from time to time, eating one portion fresh and popping the rest into the freezer.  Nothing now prevents me getting the ingredients, and I certainly have the time, but stews haven't made a return to my agenda ... as yet.

Another aspect of life that had hit the doldrums until very recently, was my spiritual life.  When, almost overnight, churches were stopped from gathering for worship, we considered ourselves fortunate in having some clever techno-people in our congregation who very quickly - and with no little personal sacrifice - had systems up and running to provide streamed worship for any and all who liked to log in.  This proved a boon to many who suddenly found themselves confined.

It wasn't the same, by far, as being amidst the crowd, enjoying real coffee and chatter afterwards and so on, but it was much better than nothing.  When the churches were opened again for limited congregations, there was great excitement.  Conditions were changed, of course.  Seating was restricted and spread out to conform to social distancing, a strict regime of entry and exit was introduced and we all had to wear masks.  I understand that many felt the opposite to me about this situation and were glad to be back, however restricted.  For my part, I went along on that first morning but felt even more isolated than I had felt sitting at home watching on my computer screen.

In order to overcome this total disconnect, I tried to join a Zoom group, but was unable to do so.  My solution to this difficulty may or may not have something to do with years of using Excel. I've found that, if you can't get the system to do what you want with the most obvious formula, you see what other formulae are available and go about solving the problem by a different route.  

Without thought of the famous spreadsheet - initially, at any rate - I decided to see what Bible Study facilities might be available on line.  Many I looked at were aimed at totally new believers, or those seeking 'in the dark', as it were.  Some were so overtly American as to be off-putting.  Eventually I picked three, bookmarked them for future reference and set about the other end of the problem, sorting out my own life pattern to accommodate them.

That's where Excel did come in.  For many years now, I have used this 'wonder-toy' to compile a holiday programme, so I could see in one place where I was going day by day, with necessary post codes or public transport times to help get there,  what there was to see, how long I could stay there in order to be at the next site on time, and so on.  It was the work of an hour or so to extract from that the sort of simple chart that would be drawn in a school book at the start of a new year - and, in early October, the timing wasn't that far out either, come to that!

Allowing for two days working - that's one thing that, for me, has come back relatively unscathed by Covid precautions - and relatively few other regular commitments, it was easy to identify six suitably spaced slots that would enable me to allocate those three bookmarked websites to my use.  After trial and exchange, a pattern emerged that is uneven as it happens, with one website appearing three times a week, one twice and the other only once.  There is variety in the type of content, too, which should make keeping to the plan just that bit easier.

I've committed myself to a few weeks' trial and if, by the end of November, all seems to be working well, I'll stick to it.  If not, I may change things around and re-write the timetable, or think about something totally different.  Watch this space!

Strike a Light!

When I was privileged to be invited to take a late holiday a few weeks ago, I began to make plans.  Realising that my accommodation was, as I put it, 'halfway to anywhere' - i.e. a number of sites of interest would be more easily accessible from there than from home - my choice was wide.  A couple of definite bookings were made, many others noted as possible and, last but not least, I made a booking for Sunday lunch.

If I say that I knew the place well, it would be an exaggeration.  I had passed it many times, since it was just round the corner from the house where I would be staying, but I'd never been inside and had no idea either of their normal routines or, most definitely, how they were coping with the coronavirus restrictions.

If it comes to that, I have no idea how my 'local' is coping, either.  I was in the habit of going there most Sundays for lunch - so much so that I had become known as 'roast pork and half of cider' - but since mid-March I've not darkened their doors, firstly resorting of necessity to my own devices, and latterly preferring the security of home.

In no sense am I a 'social drinker'.  That half-pint of cider was my only alcoholic intake.  My regular £10 or so won't be the make-or-break factor in the pub's economy.  But I know that there are many, many others who, quite responsibly, enjoy the company and facilities provided by that and the whole industry of other licensed premises across Albion's fair land.

And, unlike me, thousands of people don't make a habit of a 10 o'clock bedtime.  (I find that reading in bed is about the only sure way of getting through any of the hundreds of books that I've acquired down the years.  OK - some of the larger tomes may take a number of weeks, and one or two have been given up on after a few boring chapters - but the alternative, i.e. sitting in the armchair, simply sends me to sleep.)

So, although its impact on my life is totally zero, I can readily see that the latest (supposed anti)-Covid-infection measure of making pubs and restaurants close at 10.0pm is ABSOLUTELY BONKERS!  Whatever the proportion is - and, of course, it will vary from one place to another - a large chunk of any pub's normal income will be achieved after that magic hour.

The financial pressure on the business of running a pub, already hit by the need for additional precautions and social distancing to provide a safe environment for a reduced number of customers, is therefore exacerbated by disallowing what is for many the busiest sector of their week.

And further - as that seasoned campaigner Daisy Cooper, MP, points out here - those leaving the pubs at this unsatisfactory closing time are exchanging the safety of a well-prepared drinking environment for crowded public transport and/or supermarket purchases for domestic consumption which invites further and greater risk of infection!

I can say no more ... beyond reporting that my holiday Sunday lunch at the Hayloft was perfectly prepared, perfectly safe and perfectly enjoyed!

It's a Dying Trade!

I'm not talking about undertaking, as in the music-hall joke book; and this post - you'll be pleased to know - is not about Covid-19 either.  I watched something the other night about the canals that spread across this country towards the end of the eighteenth century.  Within little more than fifty years, they were beginning to decline as the steam age rose to precedence and a far greater network of iron 'roads' (yes, they were actually called roads) grew up to accommodate the railways that ousted the canals from their role as the major carrier of manufactured merchandise.

The railways had another great advantage over the canals ... they carried passengers, too.  People took advantage of the new faster means of getting from one part of the country to another.  And they weren't just for the well-to-do.  The Railway Regulation Act of 1844 demanded that the railway companies should provide one train per day in each direction on all of their lines at a cost of no more than one penny per mile, which brought such luxury within the means of the working classes.

It is said that, had it not been for the Second World War, the advance of the motor car in the early twentieth century would have had the same effect on the railways as they had had on the canals a century earlier.  As it was, many lines were dreadfully uneconomical long before Dr Beeching wielded his metaphorical axe in the mid-'sixties, wiping many thousands of miles of railway tracks not only off the map but, in many cases, off the face of the countryside with unseemly haste.

My theme today is the way that the advance of technology has caused major upheaval to the lives of a great swathe of our population from one age to another over the course of just a generation or so.  I've given just two examples above; I'm sure my reader can just as quickly add a couple more ... and a couple more!

Another such change that claimed my attention last week was in the realms of recreation.  The advent of the railways and the consequent ease of travel, preceded by only a few decades the first reductions in the working week.  Gradually, hour by painful hour, conditions improved; some employers were more generous than others but, in 1938, the Holidays with Pay Act gave those workers whose minimum rates of pay were fixed by trade boards, the right to one week's paid holiday per year.  This was like the firing of a starting pistol.

In many of the industrial areas of the north of England, it was realised that, with all the workforce wanting to take their holiday in the summer months, rather than reduce productivity significantly over a prolonged period, it would be better to close the factories completely for a whole week or more.  This not only benefited the employers, who could also arrange for major maintenance to be carried out when production was at a standstill, but it gave those employees who wished, the opportunity to take their holidays with their colleagues.  

The railways took advantage of this and arranged special trains to convey thousands of holidaymakers from the industrial centres to the coast, where many towns, Blackpool and Great Yarmouth in particular, had developed a new thriving industry catering for their needs.  This trend was not, of course, confined to the heavy industries.  All workers gradually became entitled to paid holiday in increasing amounts.  Soon it became the norm for some workers to have a summer and a winter holiday, and maybe two weeks could possibly be spent at the seaside instead of one!

There were people who, for a variety of reasons wouldn't wish, or perhaps weren't able to go to the seaside.  But they liked to keep up with the places their friends had visited and, from the last years of the nineteenth century, the picture postcard had become one of the easiest ways of achieving this.  It has been said that this was the distant forerunner of Facebook and Twitter, since a card could be posted one morning and be at the far end of the country by the next, or in a nearby town by the same afternoon!

You may remember a square-framed board, criss-crossed by a lattice of tapes, that would hang on the kitchen wall.  During the year, this would provide a suitable place to store correspondence: letters from friends near and far, or bills to be paid, and so on.  But, as the summer progressed, all the friends who had gone on their holidays would send their postcards and these would be carefully threaded on the board, making a colourful display to brighten the lives of those who were at home.

As the decades passed, in the same way as transport advances had led to the seaside holidays, so further advances, first of the motor car and later of passenger air flight, led to its demise.  A week at Clacton or Skegness gave way to a weekend in Paris or Stockholm, which in turn paled to insignificance against the attraction of a week in Cuba or a fortnight in Thailand.  For a while the cards got bigger and the scenes they portrayed less and less familiar, but it wasn't long before the humble postcard had given way to the holiday video, and the lattice board, having been quite empty for many years, was ousted when the kitchen was redecorated.

When a Miss is as Good as a Mile (or Two!)

Carrying on with the theme of last week's post, after visiting two preserved railways on Friday and Sunday, Monday evening found me planning how I would spend my last full day in the Notts./Derbyshire border country.  Looking at the current map in conjunction with the excellent Rail Map online, I could see a number of places where it ought to be possible to identify some evidence of a past railway line that is no longer there.  I made a note of a number of villages to visit in the area between Bolsover and Shirebrook and, satisfied with that, went to bed.

Next morning, with little further thought, I set out.  One village is quickly followed by another, however, and if you haven't noted a particular street name to look for, the opportunity is soon lost ... especially if you are concentrating on the potential oncoming vehicle around the next bend, worrying about holding up a van behind you, or anxious about maintaining power going up a very steep hill.  Rylah Hill, Palterton is not pleasant.  A notice at the top says 'vehicles over 7.5 tonnes: access only' and one at the foot advises, 'unsuitable for HGVs' ... and that's not just because it's narrow in places!

Ringa Lane, Elmton

To cut a long story short, the only railway relic I saw was at the end of a cul-de-sac called Station Road (usually a bit of a giveaway), in the form of an embankment that might have carried a railway track many years ago.  I had long since given up my search and was enjoying the sunny day finding an alternative way home when I stumbled on a place that boasts itself 'a small village steeped in history' where archaeologists have discovered 'evidence of every period of human history since prehistoric times'.  Elmton, though small, is certainly a pretty place and I took a number of photos.

After I'd got home I had to do a bit of research to find the name of the lane in one picture and was intrigued by a regular geometric shape on the map.  Research was sidetracked to find out more.  Only a mile-and-a-half from where I'd parked my car was a feature called 'Model Village', in the village of Creswell.  In the heyday of the railways, Creswell had had two stations.  One, on the Midland Railway, was named Elmton & Creswell, and still exists (under the single name 'Creswell') on the line between Mansfield and Worksop.  The other was less than half-a-mile away to the south-west on the Great Central Railway and was called Creswell & Welbeck.  This has now totally vanished, but the 'Model Village' associated with it, is very much still in evidence.

To one living in the 'First Garden City' as I do, it is of particular significance.  Wikipedia tells me that it was built as a pit village in 1895, in the arts and crafts style, by the Bolsover Colliery Co.  Its shape is described in a publication by the local council as 'a double octagon with an inner and an outer circle', i.e. an almost rectangular peripheral road, surrounding a large green area.  The 280 houses are built on either side of this road, half on the inside, facing the green, and half on the outside, facing the open countryside.  Thus the backs of the houses face the peripheral road, where (in the original design) a tramway facilitated the delivery of coal to the cellars of the houses, and the removal of night soil from enclosed ashpit lavatories in the back yards.

Between the houses and the colliery the company also built a village institute, which not only had a bar, billiard room, reading room and library, but also a lecture hall seating 400, where the colliery band practised (there was a bandstand on the central green!).  There was a branch of the Bolsover Co-operative Society's store and allotments and a cricket ground were also provided nearby.  There was also a church, lit by electricity generated by the company and, in 1903-4 they built a drill hall to provide recreational facilities for the Boys Brigade; this was used as a military hospital during World War I and has now been modernised as a social centre.

We often read of the exploitative and oppressive nature of the independent mine-owners and no doubt this was true in many cases, but here was at least one colliery company willing to provide an element of employee welfare.  This far after the event, of course, it's hard to be objective.

Full Steam Ahead!

I make no apologies for using as my title what I believe is a nautical expression, for it fits exactly my situation this weekend.  With a trip booked tomorrow on the Churnet Valley Railway, and yesterday spent steaming to and fro on the Severn Valley line, I am blogging this morning betwixt the delight of one dip into history and the anticipation of another.

We had just set out from Kidderminster yesterday morning.  I was intrigued to see the variety of industries large and small in the track-side industrial estates, and remembered a similar variety which I had visited either delivering or collecting in my working life.  Scarcely had these passed from view than I spotted a small first-floor office and I wondered what might go on there, as my mind whizzed back to my own office experiences: paperwork, routines, the need for accuracy and consistency, faces old and new.

Gardens gave way to neat modern houses as we sped through the countryside.  Suddenly, the light above the seat opposite lit up, signifying the approach of Bewdley Tunnel.  My mind clicked back a few more decades to an occasion when I had asked my mother why such a light had gone on in the train we were travelling on.  I became very anxious when she told me it was ready for the train to go through the tunnel.  We were making a journey to Ipswich and had almost arrived.  Clearly, it wasn't my first visit, for I knew that, just beyond the end of the platform there, could be seen the broad black mouth of Stoke Tunnel.  

To a boy of about three or four, it was bad enough having to walk past the big black engines, still steaming away, as we made for the station exit at Norwich, which was our more frequent destination.  The idea of being taken into that big void - even in a well-lit train - was nothing short of frightening!  To be reminded that we were about to stop and would be alighting in the station, before the train went through the tunnel, was very reassuring.

Nowadays, of course, the thought of seeing these great reminders of our engineering past is a delight to be planned and looked forward to.  I'm always impressed by the great army of enthusiasts who keep these preserved steam railways running, whether through practical involvement as drivers or signallers, maintaining the engines or the rolling stock, or ensuring the safely of the lines themselves, or by way of commercial 'front-of-house' activities such as helping in the shops, booking offices or catering.  Many are employed of course, but many more are volunteers, just bringing their own particular skills for a few hours a week to help preserve a charming and attractive way of life from yesteryear.

The Girl in the Red Car

It's almost a direct quote from a Welsh lesson: "Pwy ydy hi, y ferch yn y car?"  (Who is she, the girl in the car?)  Only this time, having seen it, I can say it was 'car coch' - a red car - and I'm not interested in who she was, just the memories of which she reminded me.  I find that some things are only brought to mind at certain times: this was definitely a Saturday lunchtime recollection.  

I had been working in Norwich one Saturday morning and was going home on the train. (Those were the days when it was cheaper to take the train than to pay for the petrol and drive.)  Like many a railway, the line passes the backs of suburban houses as it leaves the city and I could see people who, like me, had been at work during the morning and were just arriving home.  For some, I pictured lunch waiting for them, children agog to know what was happening in the afternoon (just as I would have been, ten years earlier), and wives anxious to have some DIY job sorted as soon as possible.  The younger ones would perhaps be calling mates about an upcoming football match or the evening dance.  The weekend was about to take off.

So what of the girl?  It must have been about 1.20 a few Saturdays ago as I was taking 'a walk around the block', when a young lady of late teen-age or early twenties walked out of her home to a red car by the kerbside; she opened the door, parked her carrier bag on the seat beside her and drove confidently off.  For all I know, she may have been going shopping, or off to work for an afternoon shift.  My fertile imagination said she was off to visit her boyfriend for the weekend.  Apart from the carrier bag, which could have contained absolutely anything or nothing at all, there was no evidence to support my conjecture.

Music came to mind as I dredged back in my memory to determine whether I had ever embarked on such a weekend as I now vested upon her.  It is, I believe, a very old Welsh love song, Ar Lan y Môr.  There are several verses, with which I won't bore you, but the English version begins, "At the seaside are red roses, At the seaside are white lilies, At the seaside is my love, Sleeping through the night and rising in the morning."  

Yes, I decided, there was one relationship - with my first proper girlfriend - in which this scenario was acted out quite regularly.  She did indeed live at the seaside, so to get together at the weekends, one of us had to travel to the other.  Sometimes there would be 'an event' to attend, more often than not we would just share whatever the other happened to be doing.  I remember one afternoon spent cleaning our cars together outside her home, and another when we spent some while sitting in her brother's home a few streets away, while his wife was upstairs giving birth to a brand-new nephew or niece.

On one Saturday, after working the morning at the factory where she was a supervisor, she drove to mine.  I don't know what we did for the afternoon, but we spent the evening in Norwich, after which I stayed at hers that night and then on Sunday afternoon she drove me out of town to the main road and I hitch-hiked home: something that just wouldn't be possible today.

I sometimes have that same 'Saturday lunchtime' experience when I'm going to a football match ... the supreme example of my 'second teenage'.  It's a perennial situation: the routine of the working week is finished (even if I'm no longer in paid employment), and the liberty of the weekend is about to begin.  It is a wonderful feeling of freedom.  Long may it last!

And a personal footnote - on Monday, I booked my seat at Biggleswade's first FA Cup tie of the new season, so tomorrow afternoon I shall be hoping that it will be the first of many this season!

Lock-down - the Epilogue

As I come to the end of my second (two-day) week back at (voluntary) work, it seems right to look back over the last five months.  Many, no doubt, will have found the isolation and restrictions tiresome and uncomfortable in one way or another.  For my part, once I'd sorted out a 'food-stream', it was quite nice to be able to spend seemingly limitless days working on family history.  That's not to say I didn't look over the horizon, but with concern, and with no feelings of desperation.  I quickly realised that the holiday I'd booked for June wouldn't be happening and, rather than take up the offer of a 12-month delay, I cancelled it completely and am free to do whatever takes my fancy next year.

On the genealogy front, one 'project' followed another.  In March, I was already working on a 'distant twig' in my father's tree and most of April was spent exploring the possibility of a link between my great-grandfather's family and that of my cousin's husband ... the same comparatively unusual surname in a small area providing an intriguing, but in the end negative, possibility.  Then, in May, I remembered that, some years ago, I had started writing a history of my mother's direct ancestors with a view to completing a biography.

This absorbed my attention for many weeks, as I formed my earlier work into chapters, set out pages and styles and re-wrote paragraph after paragraph, incorporating many stories and links I had discovered since my original efforts had been put together.  It was also at about this time that I enjoyed the diversion of preparing some graphs for a political group.  Did you realise that, over the last twenty years, 70.1% of votes cast have had no effect on the outcome of the elections? ... But that's a script for another stage.

By the time I'd got to the point of my grandparents' marriage and the establishment of what became my mother's early home, the general lock-down had come to an end.  It was a convenient point at which to park that project - but perhaps not for so many years this time - and to turn my attention to the resumption of 'normal' life.

Normal life for me, however, proved still to be some weeks away and, as a 'filler', I decided to dig into one of the spreadsheets in which I store the original findings of my research.  I knew that many entries in my record of Civil Registration Births and Deaths were lacking reference numbers, so I determined to begin correcting these omissions.  There were many reasons for these gaps; for one thing, the record itself pre-dated the decision to include the references.  At times I was working with such enthusiasm that I hadn't given myself time to complete all sequences before following up new discoveries ... and there are, too, many entries that were collected 'on the off-chance' that they might be connected one day.

This is a job that can be dropped at any point, so it was ideal to begin it with the view to probe gently any entry that seemed to ask a question as to its relevance.  So it was that, yesterday, I came across two possible entries for the death of the father-in-law of one of my dad's sisters.  Did he die in 1914 or 1941?  In establishing that the former was the case, I examined the first census entry following his birth in 1855 and hence have now begun the sequence of adding the man's parents and eight siblings to my database and, subsequently, to the family tree itself.

These days of triumphant success and achievement are not without a grain of sadness, however.  I was reminded this week that the coming weekend will mark the second anniversary of the death of my former manager's wife in a road traffic accident outside their home.  This tragic event occurred just as I was making arrangements to begin this present job so, unsurprisingly, that is where some of my thoughts will be at the moment.

A Rose (or Sarah, Elizabeth or Emma) by Any Other Name ...

'What's in a name?' asked Juliet.  In some cases quite a lot, it seems.  But this is no Shakespearean exercise.  I've spent a while this week tidying up my family history records.  The job is far from finished but, in the course of it, a particular phenomenon has distracted me into a little statistical research.

Out of the 5,369 names on my database, 171 relate to children who died before their third birthday.  Given the stories we hear of infant mortality in past centuries, this might seem on the low side, but I haven't gone searching for them and it's quite possible that many others have fallen 'between the cracks' as it were, having been born and died between two censuses, and so have escaped my attention entirely.

What specially aroused my curiosity was the number of times that the names of these unfortunates had been re-used for later children born to the same parents.  From this limited population, this appears to have been a particular phenomenon in the 19th century.  Out of the 171 who died, I counted 48 instances where their names had been re-used, 3 in the 18th century and 8 in the 20th, but by far the greater part of them in the 19th century.

Sometimes the exact same name was repeated, but often one or other forename was combined with another name the next time; and it was often a practice that ran in families.  Let me tell you about some of them, beginning with the children of George and Sarah Bowker.  They married in 1840 and named their first child Elizabeth.  She died in 1841 and when their sixth child was born in 1857, they named her Annie Elizabeth; she also died in her first year.  George and Sarah's son John married in 1878 and named his first daughter Sarah Elizabeth.  She, too, died in the year she was born.  John's brother Edward had married four years earlier.  When his seventh child was born in 1885, she was given the name Sarah ... and died the following year.  Two years later another daughter was named Annie Elizabeth; she survived until at least teenage and probably longer.

William and Rebecca Carman married in 1862, three years after William's brother James married Mary Ann. William's first child, Emma Rebecca, was born in 1864 and died the next year.  They named their fourth child Emma in 1871 and she lived until 1878; another daughter was born in 1882 and was duly named Emma.  James's first child, Eliza, was born in 1860 and died in 1862; their sixth child, born in 1875, was also called Eliza.  Eliza's brother Alan married Alice in 1890 and named his second son Allen in 1893.  Allen died when only a few weeks old;  nearly eleven years later Alice gave birth to their ninth child, who was called Alan.

Wiliam and Alice Steggles married in 1890.  Their first child was named after his father, William, but died within weeks.  A year later son no. 2 was also called William.  Eight years and five children later, Gladys was born in 1900, but also lived only a few weeks.  Her sister born the next year received her name ... and lived until 1984.

Finally, I must mention probably the first example of this that I came across.  It concerns the family of my 4xGreat-grandfather, Charles Hurrell, who married Elizabeth in 1780.  Their first daughter was born in 1784 and named Mary; she lived just eighteen months.  Their second daughter arrived in 1787, was named Mary and lived little more than a week.  When their next child was born in the spring of 1789, Charles and Elizabeth were not to be caught out.  Still loyal to the name Mary, this time they added 'Wakefield' - though I have no reason to believe any connection with the Yorkshire town.  Mary Wakefield Hurrell rewarded her parents' perseverance, married, bore a total of nine children and died in 1869.

For good or ill, it would appear, names - like anything else - can be second-hand.

When War comes to Winchester and Siege to Shrewsbury

I think my adult interest in history can be explained as the 'enabled expression of an appetite'.  In case you think that is pompously academic and unworthy of your reading further, let me hasten to explain just what I mean by it.

I recall in my teens hearing - I know not whence - the expression, 'History ended in 1914'.  I guess that, down the ages, it had to end somewhere, and there are significant dates that separate one book from another on my bookshelves. (If you are able to enlarge the picture sufficiently, you may be able to pick out 1485, 1648, 1789, 1832, 1848, 1918 ... and you might be able to recognise the significance of at least some of those.)

My 'history library'

Similarly, history has to have begun somewhere, too.  1066 is a good starter for England, 1603 for 'modern English' history.  When I was in primary school, I remember we had books that were slightly bigger than A4, with a red and black cover, and these were followed by a second volume in yellow and black.  Each double page covered a distinct period and, I suppose those two books fed us with a year's history.  At high school, it was assumed we had learned no history at all and we began with Greeks and Romans.  Very quickly (it now seems, looking back over half a century) we moved on to the Tudor and Stuart periods and then the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for 'O'-Level.

Hence, in adult life, I've found I have appetites to learn more about the earlier part of the twentieth century and also the two centuries or so on either side of the Norman Conquest.  Over the last twenty or thirty years I've had the opportunity to satisfy some of those yearnings or, at least, have acquired several shelves of books that remove the veracity of any complaint that that chance has been denied me.

Starting sometime before lock-down, I decided that I would read the whole canon of Ellis Peters' Cadfael books, alternating these with something else that takes my fancy.  Having finished earlier this week Laurie Lee's three-volume autobiography with 'A Moment of War', describing a few very cold months in Spain in 1938, I'm now back in the twelfth century as I start on the second half of the Cadfael series.

I find that I'm learning a lot of history from these.  Although not overtly a series of 'history books', the author has very skilfully woven her tales around the events of a period of which I remember only two pages from those primary school history lessons.  The Victorians, apparently, gave this period the name 'The Anarchy' to distinguish it from later civil wars.  

Imagine, if you will, a time in the middle of this present century.  William is happily established as our king, and suddenly out of nowhere, Princess Beatrice (daughter of the duke of York) has turned up with an army, has invaded the west country and half of Wales, and has set up her court in Bristol, claiming that she should be queen in William's place.  

It's unthinkable, of course.  But it was in the midst of that sort of quarrel that England and her people found themselves between 1137 and 1153 and I'm now learning what was going on then, but at the speed of horse-borne messengers rather than TV newscasts, alongside of the mysteries that Cadfael, the one-time crusader and now monk-cum-detective, is trying to solve. 

It's thrilling!  My only fear is worrying what happens when I get to the end of book 20!

Gone but not Forgotten - a Personal Tribute on VJ-Day plus 75

 "We were dragged out by the hair to go to work, beaten with bamboo poles and mocked at.  We toiled, half-naked in the cold, unfriendly rain of Upper Thailand.  We had no time to wash and if we did it meant Cholera.  By day we never saw our bed spaces (on long platforms of those bleak hundred metre huts). Our comrades died, we could not honour them even at the graveside because we were still working.  The spirit of the jungle hovered over this Valley of the Shadow of Death ... and we lay and starved, suffered, hoped and prayed."

The above is an extract from "A Japanese Holiday", broadcast to London from the Far East on 12th September, 1945 by Padre John Noel Duckworth (1912-1980), chaplain to 2nd Bn. Cambridgeshire Regiment. 

NMA - Terry Waite chats to veterans beside
the track - opening of FEPOW memorial
15th August 2005

The phrase that I have emboldened appears on a plaque beside a stretch of track preserved at the National Memorial Arboretum 'in memory of those who worked on the Burma/Siam railway and those who sacrificed their lives in its construction.'  

The suffering those men went through is unimaginable; only those who were there could truly know what it was like.

Duckworth's essay had already stated, "The lowest daily death rate came down to 17 only as late as September 1943, when the weather improved and things began to get a little better."  For me, that improvement came too late.  My uncle, Charles William James Sturgeon, died of malaria on 21st August and lays in Thanbyuzayat War Cemetery.  A painter and decorator by trade, he had enlisted some three-and-a-half years earlier in the Royal Norfolk Regiment and was one of the 80,000 or so British, Indian and Australian troops who became prisoners of war at the fall of Singapore on 15th February 1942.  This was the greatest ever surrender of British-led forces and was described by Churchill as "the worst disaster in British military history".

Charlie and his sisters on the beach at
Great Yarmouth - embarkation leave,
September or October 1941

Charles - always known as Charlie - became a prisoner of war just two days after his 24th birthday.  He was the third child and only son of my grandparents and, while all three siblings were very close, I sense that there was a special bond between him and my mother who were born little more than a year apart.

Whether by accident or design, it was on the fifth anniversary of his death that my parents were married.  As I grew up, a similarity was noticed between early pictures of me and those that my mother had preserved of her brother.  I have no doubt that this resemblance meant that looking at me regularly renewed and intensified her grief at his loss.  I cannot remember a time when I wasn't aware of Charlie and the fact that he had died in the war.  Even in death, he was just as much part of the family as my father's many siblings, all of whom were still alive.

Later in life, I knew as a colleague a man who had survived the war in the Far East.  I had first met him on Remembrance Day, and recognised that the medals he was wearing included the Pacific Star.  Like me, he was a lay minister in the church; while he never spoke of his wartime experiences, it was noticeable that, if he introduced a 'time of silent prayer', Arthur would spend most of it gently listing the topics that should be prayed for in what, when it came, was a very short period of actual silence.  Rightly or wrongly, I understood this to indicate his great reluctance to entertain silence and believed this to be a product of those dark days forty-odd years earlier.

On this anniversary it is good to spare a thought for all whose lives have been affected, directly or indirectly, by the war that ended seventy-five years ago today.

If You Can't Take the Heat ...

 ... get out of the kitchen, so it is said.  But this week that has offered no acceptable alternative.  Indeed, at times the kitchen was cooler than the lounge!

Last weekend I was excited about the charts I've been producing in recent weeks for a political organisation.  I'd sent off a sample of the latest project on Friday evening but, knowing that I should hear nothing until Monday, the weekend was largely a combination of data extraction and preparation accompanied by commentary on the Test Match.  

On Monday I was so keyed up that, despite the heat I went ahead and produced all the charts to complete the project, thinking that any adverse comments or critical suggestions that might come along could just as easily be applied to something already created as incorporated in the original production.  In point of fact, no comment or acknowledgement has been received, which neither surprised not disappointed me.  These are busy people, but at the same time August is a quiet month in many walks of life.

At that point, the heat took off and took over.  With the pressure (albeit self-generated) off, boredom and lethargy quickly set in and motivation to do anything departed just as swiftly.  Thus the pattern was set for the next few days.  Tuesday passed in a blur.  I had received an e-mail after I'd gone to bed on Monday (not all of my friends and family are retired!).  It raised a couple of questions that I knew deserved a prompt reply, despite the answer to one of them requiring a bit of thought.  Having devoted time and energy to this, I discovered that it was lunchtime and the only other achievement in my day was making a dental appointment.

I might add at this point that this will be my first such visit for 11 years!  When the recession hit in 2008, and my income dropped by at least half virtually overnight, I knew I had to prune my outgoings severely.  I recall summing up my decision quite harshly. "If I lose my teeth, I can live on soup; if I lose my sight, I stop earning completely and have nothing to live on.".  On the strength of that, I cancelled my Denplan subscription in order to balance continued expenditure on the spectacles that I needed to drive.  I believe it proved to be a wise move for, with only one incidence of toothache in that time, the expense has been minimal compared to a regular payment plan.  If this visit proves to be expensive, it will do no more than add to the fact that I'm living on my savings in any case.

Wednesday followed the pattern of Tuesday.  I had the vague notion of packing up my lunch and driving somewhere.  I couldn't decide where to go, though, and looking at one thing after another on line, being distracted this way and that ... hey presto! It was lunchtime again.  The realisation that I had effectively wasted a whole morning achieving absolutely nothing angered me.  I ate my lunch resolving that action had to be taken.  I have a car - with air conditioning - sitting outside costing a small fortune and going nowhere, while I was sitting inside, sweltering in the heat.  There was definitely an imbalance to life there!

The next two and a half hours were comparative bliss.  I just drove, making up my mind where as I went along.  Re-discovering roads that had been familiar in past times, I made my way first to Bedford and then out through Turvey towards Northampton.  I saw a sign for Wellingborough, and turned that way.  As I did so, a sort of circuit began to form in my mind.  If I were to turn right just before getting there, I should be able to get onto the A1 somewhere south of Brampton Hut (where the A14 crosses it).  

I recalled an assignment termed 'the Golden Key' that someone would be given most evenings for a period of some years when I was working.  Some drivers hated it; I quite enjoyed it both because it was familiar and, for the mileage involved, it was well-paid.  It also meant that I could get a meal out at one of a number of pubs on the way back.  It involved collecting goods from a distribution centre in Biggleswade, driving to Rushden armed with a (brass, not gold) key which would unlock a padlocked gate, allowing the goods to be unloaded in the consignee's yard, long after the staff had gone home.

I now covered that familiar route, albeit back to front, for I was now driving from Rushden to Biggleswade.  I decided that I would stop at Sainsbury's to get some fruit since I was passing, and as I emerged from the car to go into the store and met a 'wall of heat', it reminded me of the brief time I spent in California.  As I drove on home, the dashboard indicator of ambient temperature fluctuated between 34.5 and - a record for me - 36.0 degrees!  The remainder of the afternoon was just as oppressive, but the 85-mile shopping trip had dissipated the anger.  That said, I still needed a siesta before thinking about an evening meal.

Yesterday morning began darkly.  It was as dark at 8.30 am as at 8.30 pm the previous evening.  It wasn't long before the thunder began and the rain came.  The spell was broken and, although still warm, the air was much fresher and I could focus on doing something constructive with my time.  Who knows ... by next weekend there could be achievements!

A Medium Theme ... or, 'What's He On?'

I've written here before about dreams, how they can be linked to what's been going on in waking life, perhaps have something to offer about problems that have dominated my thinking or sometimes are so fanciful that they just have to be ignored completely.  I had one the other morning that was so real it had to be for some purpose; yet that purpose is beyond my imagining, so - for what it's worth - I offer it to you as a contrast to seemingly incessant stories from my family history researches.

I was watching a webinar ... perhaps part of a commercial art course?  Certainly it was something that I would not normally venture into, having no artistic ability at all.  The invisible lecturer provided a commentary to moving illustrations on my screen.  His main topic seemed to be page design, perhaps for an article in a magazine or professional journal.  He was talking about 'mediums', which I eventually understood to mean separate elements that could be brought together to produce the finished article.

He began by asking how many mediums to use, to provide interest without being too 'busy'.  He quickly drew out the conclusion that the ideal would be three.  The first medium would be something bold and expansive, a broad colour wash, or perhaps a picture ... something to form a background.  The second medium would essentially be a contrast to the first.  If the first medium was like sky - something solid and flat - introduce a row of hedges or trees; if it was a picture, add some people or a building, and so on.

The third medium was the text itself.  Here he went on to consider what fonts to use to match the subject, and the way certain fonts were appropriate e.g. for art deco themes, antiquities, etc., while it was important not to use others that were alien to what was being written about.  Above all was the need for balance between variety, suitability and being easy to read.

Having defined all these mediums and how they could be built on each other to make a worthy end-product, he suggested introducing variety.  Why not let your second medium take some of the text?  Maybe adapt the title of the piece or, leaving the title to stand prominently, pull out a few key words to act as a 'strap line' to explain what was being written about.  He suggested it was rather like a sub-editor would pick out a phrase from the next paragraph to act as a sub-heading, simply to break up an otherwise solid page of text and make the page visually attractive.

'Let the letters themselves play with each other,' he said.  And he brought out one example after another of how this could be done, making the uprights of p's, l's and d's form part of the picture, using an o as a ball, and so on.  He also spoke of lost opportunities, where an element of humour or sauciness could have been introduced, if appropriate, to add to the reader's enjoyment or, perhaps, to spark initial interest.

Hence his final example was a piece promoting a range of professional clothing for ladies.  The skirts of these garments were sufficiently generous to drape naturally, curtain-like, between knees accidentally spread apart when seated, to avoid inadvertent exposure of lingerie.  The picture he produced was of the House of Commons, where ladies seated behind the front bench were wearing the product.  He moved the words 'professional clothing', so that one of the o's was placed neatly between a lady's knees and then replaced the letter with an archery target indicating that, with this garment, nothing untoward was visible.

At this point I awoke, with the detail clear in my mind and wondered what I could do with it.  My skills are definitely with words rather than pictures!  The best I could do was to lay it before you, dear reader, to amuse, confuse or simply be disregarded with a sympathetic smile, to await the next post.  Meanwhile, if you are of the persuasion for handwritten letters - I believe they still exist - why not let your letters play with each other and surprise your friends!

57 Years a Widow!

In October or November of 1967 - about the time when I was getting to grips with my A-level studies and wondering about life after Grammar School - a few miles away from my home, in the neighbouring county, a lady was coming to the end of her long life after being a widow for more than half of it.  What she must have seen in almost 96 years on this earth!

Sarah Derham was born Sarah Elizabeth Calton on 23rd November 1871 at Hinderclay, the same village where my mother was born 45 years later. She was the third child of a labourer, Thomas Calton and his wife Charlotte, who had been married just over four years by then.  As more children arrived in the following years, their little cottage on the green became quite crowded.  By 1881 Alice, the oldest daughter, was found 'visiting' (while 12 and still a scholar) with Charlotte's friend Alice Smith (possibly her godmother) some miles away in Larling, Norfolk.  Sarah, only 9, was living with a retired grocer, 73-year-old Rose Cracknell in the village.  This early experience doubtless prepared her in her turn to live away from her parents.

Sarah's life in the next few years has remained undiscovered until, in Hampstead, she married William George Derham towards the end of 1896; their son was born the following summer.  The 1901 census shows her named Elizabeth, living with her son in Spye Park, near Devizes in Wiltshire.  There is no sign of William, but he clearly re-appeared from time to time, for ten years later, she appears with three sons, living in the same place, but now a 39-year-old widow, her husband having died the previous year.

In Suffolk, meanwhile, Sarah's sister Fanny, two-and-a-half years younger, had also left home.   By 1891 she had moved to the neighbouring village of Rickinghall, where she was servant to Augusta Larsen, born in Hanover, and living 'on her own means' with a nephew and niece, both born in London but with the obviously German name of Gumprecht.  From this interesting beginning to her working life, Fanny then moved to London, where she was married in 1897 to James Waymark, a railway clerk.  They first lived in Hampstead, where their first daughter was born the following year; but later settled in Ilford.  Here another daughter and a son were added to their family and all looked well until, towards the end of 1910, her husband died ... at about the same time as William Derham.

Fanny moved with her children to Willesden, where she took in needlework to support them.  After a while, however, she became ill and was unable to look after herself and the children.  She decided to move back to Suffolk where that little cottage on the green now housed (according to the 1911 census) her parents, four adult sons and their 20-year-old sister Florence.  1913 was a sad year for the Calton family.  In the spring Charlotte died, aged only 64, then in August, as the local paper reported, "The death took place ... after a long and painful illness of Mrs Fanny Waymark ... at the residence of her father Mr Thomas Calton of Hinderclay.  The deceased leaves three young children."  Fanny was 39.

Although not mentioned among the mourners, and presumably unable to get to the funeral, was another who had experience of being a widowed mother of three at 39.  It isn't known who immediately took care of Fanny's children, then aged 15, 13 and 11, but at some stage it seems likely that Sarah offered them a place in her Wiltshire home.  The 1939 Register lists Sarah, living at a different house, but still on Spye Park, with two 'housemaids', none other than Fanny's two daughters.  Rose, the younger daughter moved away and married in Bromley in 1942, and when her sister, Lily, married in Chippenham ten years later, Sarah - by then almost 81 - probably decided that it was time to go back to her Suffolk roots.

My interest in this family stems from the fact that Rose's second marriage was to one of my mother's uncles.