I do like to be 'Beside the Seaside' ...

I recalled this morning a Thursday afternoon - gosh! - fifty years ago, when I learned of the expression 'opportunity cost'.  It was during my brief spell at college, when our economics tutor announced that this was defined as 'the cost of the alternative foregone'.  He then went on to explain what on earth he was talking about and, by the end of the lesson at least, he had given us a good idea of this concept.  This is more than could be said of the chap who spent Wednesday evenings trying to explain the ins and outs of statistics.  He may have known it all, but when it came to enthusing and convincing a roomful of teenagers ... hopeless!

So, you may ask, why this sudden foray into my academic past?  You might be surprised to know that, despite the recent fall in the stock markets because of (speak of it quietly) Covid 19, it had nothing to do with the world of finance.  No ... check back to last week's blog.  Alice Octavia Jackson, there mentioned, was my fifth cousin once removed, with our link ancestor being one Robert Everson the third (1704-1784) of Thorndon, Suffolk.  This week I've been following up the many children of John Hatsell Garrard, of Laxfield, Suffolk, who was Alice Octavia's fifth cousin once removed, their link ancestor being one further generation back, Robert Everson the second (b. 1680), the father of Robert the third.

John Garrard (who was therefore my fifth cousin twice removed) lived from 1866 to 1943 and was the person who moved his branch of the family from Suffolk to the south coast, marrying Agnes Jones who was not a Welsh lady, but was born in Chichester.  She and John had ten children, born either in Brighton, where they married in 1889, or nearby Portslade, so my attention this week has been tightly focused in 'Dear old Sussex by the Sea' ... and, before you ask, no, I don't know the words of the song!

I suddenly realised this morning that my energies have not been so focused on the family history since last summer, and I began to wonder - worry, even - what it might have been that had distracted me during the past seven months or so and, perhaps more importantly, what it is that I ought to be doing instead of 'wasting my time' with things historical, however interesting.  I regret to inform you, dear reader, that I've not come up with a positive answer.  There have been a number of seemingly regular diversions, but nothing outstanding that appears to have been overlooked.

So I'm free to tell you some of what I've been discovering.  John and Agnes may have felt some foreboding when their seventh child and third daughter, named Agnes Florence after her mum, died in 1900, when only a few weeks old.  However they went on to have three more children, evening the genders at five apiece, before their next daughter Gladys Mildred also died.  I wrote last week about children who were born and died between censuses;  Gladys has to have been one of the most unlucky of these children who, in cricketing terms, 'didn't trouble the scorer'.  She was born only weeks after the 1901 census, and died just before the one in 1911, and only just short of her tenth birthday.

Their second-eldest sister bore the fascinating name of Mary Malvina.  If you were around in 1982, you'll recall that the Argentine name for the Falkland Islands is Islas Malvinas, and I can't help wondering whether there could be a link there somewhere to be traced another day.  She certainly fascinated one Reuben Charles Virgo, who was not so foreign as his name might suggest, since he was born in Portslade, the son of another Reuben, who was also born there.  They married in the summer of 1915, and their daughter was born in the first quarter of 1916.  I've not found any further trace of mother or daughter.  Reuben, however, reappeared in 1939, as Richard.  I wonder whether he had feared that his real name might sound too Jewish, given the political situation then.  Interestingly, he worked with sugar in the confectionery trade in 1911; his occupation in 1939 - where he was lodging in Nuneaton - was given as 'school dental surgeon'!

John and Agnes' second son, Harry Thomas, married Nora Wishart.  She wasn't Scottish, but her father was and, since marrying a Sussex girl, had travelled to Uxbridge and at least as far as Somerset, before settling, however briefly, in Redhill, where Nora was born.  They eventually moved back to Uxbridge, however, for it was there that she and Harry married, and there too their second child and first daughter, Audrey, was born.  A firstborn son, Hugh, and two more daughters Nora and Rosemary, were born on the Sussex coast, between 1922 and 1929.  Tragedy struck in 1932.  Whether or not the two were connected isn't clear, but Audrey died in the spring, and Rosemary in the later months of the year.  I've found no further trace of Hugh, but their sister Nora found happiness during wartime when, in 1944, she married Kazimierz Iwachow;  I presume he was Polish.  They settled in the Worthing area and had a son and a daughter soon after the war.