The Bare Bones of it!

Whatever you might think of our current Government - and I imagine my readers will vary in their opinions from 'utter rubbish' to 'doing a fine job' - the range of styles through which our government has swung down the years is very broad indeed.  For a short while in 1653, this country was ruled by a nominated assembly that became known collectively as Barebone's Parliament.

It was named after one of London's appointees, Praise-God Barebone (or Barbon), and first sat on 4th July of that year. It consisted of 140 men selected by Cromwell and his Army Council and couldn't be described as remotely representative, being mostly drawn from the rich and famous with a sprinkling of tradespeople and members of an extreme puritan sect called Fifth Monarchists.  Apart from half a dozen each from Ireland, Scotland and Wales, the rest were all from the English counties.  On 12th December - just 161 days later - it broke up in disarray, being unable to agree on anything.  

Having explained my title, I'll now move on to something more relevant to today.  If our present lock-down in one form or another lasts until the end of August, it will have existed for the same length of time as Barebone's Parliament and, in some ways, it has - at the outset, at least - brought us back to the bare bones of life.  We've come to realise just what is - and what is not - essential to our existence.  

This is different for each of us, of course, and its definition has morphed as the weeks have passed.  After securing a reliable source for food, medication and other necessities, one thing after another has been added to that early definition of 'essential to life'.  Disciplines, vital and well-heeded at the beginning, have slipped.  We've exchanged ideas with our friends and neighbours; isolation has been relieved by Zoom and other technologies.  Social media and the more widespread news channels have made us aware of what else is possible and - for good or ill - following the principle of 'if they can do that, then so can we' has become commonplace.

The challenge presented by the Covid-19 pandemic has often been described as a war; the strategies advised and imposed to overcome it as 'weapons to fight this unseen enemy' and so on.  While it's not the sort of war that can be fought by armies on a battlefield, there is, I suggest, a similarity to the privations of daily life on the home front.  I'm not old enough to remember the Second World War but I've just finished reading a novel set in 1942 that has, in some measure, made real for me many of the restrictions that had by then become part of everyday life.

Then as now ways were found, some legal and some not, to get around the constraints of the time.  Substitutes were developed and discovered for foodstuffs no longer available; a black market grew up to overcome the strict rationing that had to be imposed and make-do-and-mend became a way of life.  In one poignant scene, an old man, who had been involved in a dramatic rescue from a bombed hotel, arrived home in the small hours, raided the larder and enjoyed a slap-up meal before collapsing still dressed and exhausted onto his bed, falling into a deep and well-earned sleep.  His daughter-in-law, whose house it was, discovered the debris in the kitchen the next morning, found half the week's rations gone, and was understandably furious.

Our present situation is by no means so severe but at times, and perhaps especially so in such fine weather as we have enjoyed this week, there is a need - a desperation, almost - to break out of the restrictions, to let loose and make whoopee, whatever the cost.  But there is a cost, of course.  It might be as simple as going without for a while longer until the larder is refilled, or it could be an unwanted disease, or worse.  And the cost is not always paid by those who have broken free.  Our newsreels this week have shown the tonnes of rubbish that was left on Bournemouth beach and the declaration of a 'major incident' by the local authority so that more help can be engaged to prevent a recurrence.

Yes, this is partly the result of the need people have found to defy the restrictions placed upon them, to stretch to the limit and beyond the bounds on their activities.  But even these could have been carried out responsibly.  Where has our sense of responsibility gone?  When I grew up, there was a saying "What did your last servant die of?"  It wasn't an expression of concern for the well-being of the lower classes; it was an attempt to instil awareness that such people as servants were not part of our lifestyle and that, to an ever-increasing level as we grew older, we had to look after ourselves.  This didn't so much mean providing for our own needs - that would come later - but that if we made mess, strewed things about, then it was down to us to clear up, put away and make tidy, not just for our own comfort and benefit, but for that of others around us too.

Digging up a Soldier

The 1911 census is the first one for which the individual householders' schedules have been preserved ... as opposed to the information that enumerators extracted from them in previous censuses.  It's clear from his entry that Patrick Robert Howard Henry was a man to whom other information was more important than his own name.  He referred to himself as 'Robert' (the other names came from other records), but provided two forenames for his wife and sons.  He was born in Leitrim in about 1849 but he was keen for all to know that this wasn't just anywhere within that county, but in Leitrim town itself, for the name was written twice on the form, to indicate both 'town' and 'county'.   

He was also meticulous in declaring his 'occupation', stating that he was 'Pensioner Sergt. Major, 4th Suffolk Regt.'.  In previous censuses he had rounded his age up: 42 in 1891 and 52 in 1901, but was he sensitive about being eleven or twelve years older than his wife when he rounded it down this time to 61 years?  The '4th Suffolk Regt.' was actually the 4th Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment.  It was formed, when the army was re-organised in 1881, by the amalgamation and absorption into the Suffolk Regiment of the Cambridgeshire Militia, which was based in Ely, and the Cambridgeshire Rifle Corps.  These two units became the 4th ('Cambridge University') Volunteer Battalion of the newly-formed regiment.  Robert was an instructor of musketry and in 1891, he was awarded a 'long service and good conduct' medal.  It isn't clear just when he enlisted, but it was almost certainly before 1880, for in that year he married Mahala Marjorem in the garrison city of Colchester.

Sadly, Mahala died in Ely at, or shortly after, the birth of their son in the summer of 1883.  She was only 24 and the son was named Robert Marjorem Henry in her honour.  Towards the end of the next year, Robert married again.  His bride was Mary Esther Rignal, who had been born in the Fenland city in 1860.  Their first two children, Mabel and Albert, were born in Ely, where the battalion was based, in 1892 and 1894.  It may have been about then that Robert retired, for their third child, John, was born in 1896 at Hopton in north Suffolk.

Mabel was married in the spring of 1909 to Charles Boggis.  Charles was the youngest surviving son out of eleven children born to Benjamin and Harriet Boggis.  These two were both from Norfolk; Benjamin was from Fersfield and Harriet from Garboldisham, where they had been married in 1866.  They settled in Barningham, where all their children were born, but then moved to Market Weston in that same northern corner of Suffolk.

Charles was a blacksmith and the occupations of the rest of the Boggis family were all in that general mechanical and production sector: carpenter, mechanical engineer, engineering apprentice, and so on. It was no surprise, then, to discover that the son of Charles's brother Arthur was the William Arthur Boggis who founded the famous organ building firm of W A Boggis, based at Roydon next door to my own native town of Diss.

Robert died in 1929, but it was actually Mary who led me into this story, for she appeared as a widow - described almost casually as a 'visitor' - at the home of her granddaughter on the 1939 Register.  Unlike the censuses, the Register contains no indication of the relationships within a household, and I was curious to prove or disprove whether she was in fact the grandmother of Mrs Jerrold in the household at Felsham where she was registered.

And why, you may ask, was I led to be looking at this family in the first place?  Simply that in 1917, when they were both widowed, my great-great-aunt, Sarah Francis née Sturgeon married Charles Boggis's eldest brother John.

Roll out the ... Statue!

I have great affection for the city of Bristol.  Apart from spending a week there on a study-holiday in 2002, I was sent there on many occasions during my working life, including a memorable Saturday when I returned from an early delivery there, only to be assigned a second job to the city later in the day!

Undoubtedly there will be some to accuse me of 'band-wagon jumping' and, while they could be right, it's time that these locked-down posts diverted from endless stories of my genealogical researches.  Since the whole of one morning this week - and more time besides - have been taken up in reading about this matter, I feel I can claim that to write about it reflects, in part, the activities of my week.

Edward Colston (1636-1721) was MP for Bristol 1710-13 but before this (and probably during that time as well) he had a very profitable career as a merchant.  Consequently, he was able to support many local charities ... provided their aims coincided with his own beliefs and interests as a high churchman and a Tory.  As a result, the city benefited by the creation of a number of hospitals, schools and other facilities.

Unfortunately, much of his wealth arose from his involvement with the Royal African Company, of which he was a member 1680-92 and a director for part of that time.  This company held, until 1698, a monopoly for the provision of African slaves to the tobacco and sugar plantations of America.  It is said that, in order to sell approximately 84,000 slaves, a further 19,000 died on the way across the ocean, their bodies being dumped in the Atlantic.  When he died, Colston left much of his fortune in trusts to be administered by the Society of Merchant Venturers, which was formed as a trade guild in the 13th century for a variety of worthy purposes.

In Victorian times, one of the amusements of the social elite was the formation and running of societies.  Many of these had laudable aims, but it must be admitted that the creation of, and adherence to, rules and rituals was a large part of their attraction.  Four principle philanthropic societies were active in Bristol in the late 19th century and many of their members were also involved with the Society of Merchant Venturers.

The president of one of these societies, James Arrowsmith, proposed the erection of a statue of Colston as a tribute to his impact on the development of the city and an appeal went out to raise the £1,000 required.  Interest in the project was significantly less than expectation; the appeal raised less than a quarter of the target and a subsequent repeated request advanced the fund only a little.  Nevertheless, the statue was commissioned and it was unveiled with great pomp in 1895.  Arrowsmith and other members of the Merchant Venturers eventually provided the balance of funds to pay for it.

21st century attitudes to slavery have called into question memorials such as this statue and other structures and streets across our land that bear the names of those engaged in the slave trade.  Consideration has been given to possible changes to their name or purpose.  As regards the Colston statue, some years ago a newspaper poll returned 42% in favour of its removal; proposals instead were brought forward for the addition of a plaque explaining the balance of Colston's beneficence and the source of his wealth.  Apparently this had been agreed in principle but, owing to objections from the Society of Merchant Venturers, who own the monument, agreement of the exact wording had never been achieved.  One city councillor is reported as saying that the matter had never been brought before the full council for a vote, but I'm not sure whether this referred to the plaque or the removal of the statue entirely.

After the events of last weekend, few can be unaware of the present location of the statue at the bottom of the harbour.  I have to admire the decision of the police in regarding the keeping of the peace more important than the prevention of an act of criminal damage.  As a result of their maintaining a low profile, there were, I believe, no injuries and no arrests.  However, it is important that a precedent is not set, whereby any group with an apparently worthy aim can take the law into their own hands with immunity.  My preference would be that those responsible are arrested, properly charged according to law, and given only modest punishments, taking into account the safe manner in which the offences were carried out and the provocation caused by the inability of the city authorities to act on a decision once taken.

One commentator made a further point, with which I heartily agree.  It is clear that the adversarial nature of our political system - both at local and national level - makes agreement on anything of a controversial nature very difficult.  Had a proportional electoral system been in force here, as it is for local elections in Scotland, a more balanced council, reflective of the mood of the city might have resulted, and the whole matter could have been resolved long before events in the USA led to the present tensions here.

Acknowledgement: Many of the historic details in this post are taken from Wikipedia.

Follow the Money!

If there's one paradox that's more important - predominant you might say - when starting to research your family history to any appreciable depth, it's this: "True or false: 'our ancestors didn't move far from home'?"  I've come to realise in the last few weeks just how much - or how little - I've learned the importance of this over the years.  More than once, I've tripped over - no, 'blundered into' would express it better - a minor brickwall where, in times past, I've picked up a marriage or a death from the other side of the country, applied it to someone born in Suffolk and then not been able to trace any further links to him or her.  

At that point, I would have left it as 'just another puzzle' and moved on.  Now I can see the solution, to broaden the date range of the subject, perhaps apply a 'wild card' and look again, locally.  He/she is there, but the age doesn't quite match, or the spelling of the name is different.  Conversely, it is sometimes quite amazing how far people did move and it's important to take into consideration why they might have moved, and when it was that they might have done so.  I've sometimes proved (to my own satisfaction at least) that I've got the right spouse or census entry, but asked myself, 'how did he meet her?'  

In the 20th century, of course, the two World Wars accounted for many romantic discoveries between people who would otherwise never have met.  I've often wondered why my uncle, for example, came out of the army in 1919 and settled in Derbyshire with the widow of someone from the Gloucestershire Regiment (... and how she met him in the first place!)

In the case of many families, the agricultural depression of mid-19th century drove people great distances to find work.  Most lines of my family had sons or daughters who moved to the mining or mill towns of the midlands and north.  One of the families I've been looking at during these last few weeks had a son who moved to Derbyshire in the 1850s and became a coal miner and my great-great-uncle, whom I wrote about last week, went to Canada in the 1880s.  

In some ways, it's helpful that movement was less in earlier centuries.  Finding anyone in indexed records is more difficult once you get beyond (in other words, into a period before) recognised milestones in recording history: 1911, the inclusion of mother's maiden name in birth registration indexes; 1866, the inclusion of ages in death registration indexes; 1851, the first census to include place of birth; 1837, the start of civil registration in England & Wales.  Beyond these we are reliant on parish registrations of baptisms, burials and marriages, and here again there are milestones, beyond which fewer local indexes are likely to exist: 1813 when Roses Act introduced formal recording of baptisms and burials, and 1754 when the Hardwick Marriage Act did the same for marriages and introduced the recording of banns of marriage.

Where there are no indexes, it is important to know where people lived and to be able to get to the appropriate record office to search records for one place at a time.  If someone isn't where we're looking, it's hard to know where next to look.  One of my former bosses - I've forgotten which one - told me the key to unravelling a mystery was to 'follow the money' and that's certainly true here.  In many ways the pattern of life remained unchanged for centuries.  A young man would find work near the home that had raised him.  If he thought he could better himself, he would change jobs and, if that meant going farther than an acceptable daily commute, then he would move nearer the job.  

Only the distance has changed down the years, according to the transport available.  In the eighteenth century few young men could afford their own horse, so the alternative would be to work within the village or only a few miles away.  With the advent of the bicycle, work could be a little further away without needing a move of home and cars made a similar difference during the twentieth century.

The same consideration applied to the move of a home.  In earlier times, possessions would be few and could be loaded onto a borrowed wagon, drawn by a borrowed horse; in industrial towns and cities, families would move from one street to the next or even in the same one, not for a different job but to accommodate an increasing family, and much could be moved by hand cart or simply carried by hand from one home to the next.  The coming of the railway age made movement up and down the country far more possible.

My own parents both died in the home they had moved into as newly-weds in 1948.  They benefited from it being a new house, and were able to have larger items delivered directly there.  I was never told, but I imagine the smaller items they had collected during their engagement would have been loaded onto a farm trailer and drawn from my mother's home two streets away.  I suspect the necessary upheaval and transport were the main reasons that she was always reluctant to move to a smaller place once she was on her own.

And in my own case, the only significant move I've made was to Hertfordshire, prompted by work, and carried out by professionals.  Other minor changes of address have been accomplished piecemeal by my own efforts with the help of friends.  Like my mother, and for similar reasons, I have no desire to make any more ... although we've all heard of the commentator's curse!

The Mystery of Uncle David

I think the lock-down has anaesthetised my inspiration module, or simply stopped up my ability to think.  The obvious topic for this week's post has not revealed itself to me.  I did think of writing about the way that a blank diary page at the beginning of the month now looks as if a spider has crawled over it via the inkpot, but that would take only a couple of sentences.  I could boast of winning last week's quiz, but I actually came bottom ... and I'm not feeling exactly buoyant about the one I'm taking part in tonight.

So, in extremis, I return to the ever-giving realm of my family history, and I'll regale my readers with the story of uncle David - well, he was actually great-great-uncle David, being the brother of my grandfather's father.  David was born ten days before Christmas 1868, the fifth of eight children, in the Suffolk village of Stanton.  His father died when he was only 10 and in 1881 the census showed that the three eldest children had already left home and the four youngest were at school.  David's elder brother William's tiny wage as a farm labourer was the only income keeping their widowed mother and five children from the poor house.

The next few years could only have been a struggle.  David left school and probably joined his brother in the fields; the younger children, two girls and a boy, as they grew up, would have become more and more involved in running the home and perhaps their mother would have taken in washing or sewing - the usual occupations for single mothers in those days.  In May 1887, she married a widower in the neighbouring village, which would have involved considerable change for them all.  Maybe relieved that the family's circumstances were somewhat eased, in the spring of the next year, David made his way to Liverpool and sailed for Canada.

He arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in April aboard SS Polynesian.  For a 19-year-old, it must have been quite daunting, but also a great challenge, to start out on a new life thousands of miles from everything he'd known up to then, in a country that was, in effect, doing the very same thing: Canada itself was barely 20 years old.  The next twelve years were spent travelling bit by bit across the continent, gradually gaining confidence, experience, possessions and sufficient savings to provide security.  The next record I have of him is on 18th April 1901, when he was listed as a miner at the settlement of Rossland Riding in the British Columbia census.

This is where the mystery begins.  In the next twelve years, David re-entered Canada twice more and, in the meantime, left definite traces of his life in England.  The only evidence - if it exists at all - of his return journeys to England lies apparently in un-indexed passenger lists accessible only at the Public Record Office.  All searchable attention, it seems, has been given to emigration and none to returns to these islands, however temporary.

The first trace of David's return is at Langham, Essex, where he married Annie Flatman on 1st October 1906.  Both of Annie's parents had died during the previous year and this might have been one reason for David's return to England, although we don't know when that was.  Nor do we know why, when the families of both of them lived in north Suffolk, they married in a village just outside Colchester.  The timing of their wedding was critical for, only four days later, they left Liverpool on RMS Empress of Britain, bound for Quebec.  On their arrival on 12th October, they were marked as 'Returning Canadians', bound for New Westminster, BC, and it was there the following year that their daughter Ivy Annie Sturgeon was born.

 

The next 'missing' record is the return of the trio, David, Annie and Ivy, to Suffolk some time before August 1908, for it was on 20th August that their next child, Nevelin David, was born in Redgrave, possibly at the home of Annie's brother and his family.  Either that Michaelmas or the next would probably have been the timing of their move to Hinderclay, to Mudds Farm, where their third child, Clifford George, was born on 5th March 1910.  Their stay at Mudds Farm was long enough to get settled and complete such formalities as the 1911 census, and electoral registration;  David first appears on the electoral roll of 1913.

However, another precipitant departure prevented David from exercising his franchise.  His eldest nephew was married on 12th October 1912 and on the 18th they sailed once more from Liverpool, this time on RMS Empress of Ireland, and this time for good.  When they stepped ashore in Quebec a week later as 'Returning Canadians', their destination was shown as Prince Rupert, BC, via the Canadian Pacific Railroad.  How different from David's first arrival 24 years earlier!  

As a matter of interest, RMS Empress of Ireland had just left Quebec for Liverpool on 28th May 1914 when, early the next morning she was struck by a Norwegian coal carrier in heavy fog and sank.  The death toll in this, the deadliest maritime disaster in Canadian history,  included 840 passengers, more than the Titanic!

The Z-Word ... and a Bit More!

I suppose it's a regular question in many a household - whether we're in lock-down or not - "Is there anything worth watching on the telly tonight?"  In my case, in a household without a TV, it's one that's never asked, not least because there's no one to reply anyway.  But with endless days spent in the same two or three rooms, disturbed only by the occasional walk around the block, I confess that my attention is often drawn to another, smaller, rectangular screen for relaxation.

I have a couple of shelves of DVDs, a few of which have not actually been watched yet, so there is capacity to provide entertainment of my own choosing, but another phenomenon that has crossed my visual threshold in the last few weeks is something called Zoom.  I first encountered it last summer during my brief flirtation with a small committee whose members were located as far apart as London, Edinburgh and Plymouth.  Now, however it's come into its own in a really big way.

This week for me - if you'll pardon the pun - has positively 'zoomed' by.  Since we started having live-streamed worship on a Sunday morning, the service has been followed by a virtual coffee gathering through the medium of Zoom.  This week started, though, with more of a 'boom' than a 'zoom' when the virtual coffee session seemed to explode.  I had other things I could get on with and decided to abort rather than sit looking at a frozen screen waiting to see what would happen.  I heard later that Zoom itself had collapsed.

By Tuesday evening it had all been fixed and I was able to take part with several dozen others in a Q&A session with a new MP, in the campaign for whose election in December I'd played a very small part.  Wednesday in my diary was 'Zoom Day'.  In the afternoon I attended an 'introduction to Zoom' webinar, hosted from Germany by a lady whose English was faultless; then in the evening I was once more looking at the diced screen.  This time I was one of about a dozen who took part in a quiz organised to raise funds for the hospice for which I volunteer in normal times.  Sadly my enjoyment was not matched by my success .. I came last!

Yesterday was Ascension Day in our church calendar and I spent half an hour in the morning following an international talk and prayer session led by three Archbishops (Canterbury, York and Westminster); it actually came to my screen via YouTube, but had clearly been made using Zoom.  And then, to crown my Zoom week, this evening for, I think, the third time, the men of the church are joining for a chat session, again using the 'Z-technology'.

Now, just in case you are getting the idea that I do nothing but look at the computer screen (it's almost true, but not completely so), let me finish by telling you about two books I've been reading.  The first is The House on South Road by Joyce Storey, the biography of a woman who lived for most of her live in Bristol and was almost exactly contemporaneous with my mother.  And the second, which I actually sat in the armchair and finished last evening, without falling asleep (the usual outcome when I try to read there), is If I Only Had Wings by Paul Daneman.  This is fiction, so I can't vouch for how true to life it is, but it tells of a young man who yearned to fly but was failed for aircrew because of his eyesight, and describes his time on a bomber base in Yorkshire towards the end of WW2. 

While total opposites, these two have each presented me with just a kernel of atmosphere that I might be able to utilise in my efforts on my mother's biography in the coming weeks.

Words Fail Me!

This week has been something of an anti-climax.  The project I've been working on - which failed in its objective, but which produced a number of interesting stories that I've shared with you - has finished, the loose ends tidied up and I've had to look around for something new to grapple with.  If you are interested in my final reflections on family history and what can lead from it, this has been the inspiration for my 'other' blog this week.

The immediate aftermath of no longer having something that has been the focus of attention for a while - to the extent that I described it the other week as 'an obsession' - was that I felt lost, unable to focus properly on what I did turn my hand to.  It was as if there were something over my shoulder, calling me away, something that I ought to be doing but had neglected.  I can only imagine (forgive me, please, if this is you) that bereavement must be similar but far more pronounced and long-term.

Those who know me of old will not be surprised to learn that my interest has been re-kindled in something that was parked long ago, rather than turning to anything actually 'new'.  Many years ago, I had the idea of writing up my family history in narrative form and producing a book that I could pass on to my children, or circulate among interested friends.  I began ... and, realising what a mammoth task it was, and totally incompatible with a working life, abandoned it.

This week I've picked it up and, in the form that I'd left it probably ten years ago, abandoned it again.  However, I can now see that what I had produced has possibilities in two different directions.  For the moment, I've selected the one that I think will be easier, a biography of my mother (which will, almost of necessity, include her side of my family history).

Apart from anything else, the exercise of reviewing in detail what I wrote then has brought to light a number of short-comings.  The disciplines with which I recorded my research were somewhat lax compared to what I do almost as a matter of course these days.  There were also a number of errors that had to be corrected, including one that I corrected yesterday, still felt dissatisfied about ... turned out the original correspondence that had led to the entry ... and then uncorrected my correction, upon realising that it hadn't been an error in the first place!

The further I get into this - and I realise that, to date, I've only just scratched the surface - the more I find myself 'digging'.  I'm venturing into boxes that haven't been opened in months ... years, often.  And with the digging comes discovery; and discovering some artefacts that lead to memories of my own past.  One such memory the other day was of a stroll that I took with my cousin at least 65 years ago, along a quiet country lane, each of us holding one of our great-uncle's hands.

The occasion was a visit we made to the 'old family home'.  I say 'we made', but of course it was a case of our 'being taken along' when our mothers paid a rare visit to the house where their own mother had grown up.  The other day, I pinpointed within a few months when it was that the family moved there.  It had to have been in 1881 - and, since it was a farm, I would guess at Michaelmas that year - because the aforesaid great-uncle was born there that November, but the family had been recorded in the neighbouring village at the census the previous April.

I referred to having a memory of that stroll; what do I actually remember of it?  If I try to describe it, words fail me ... literally!  It has to have made a deep impression to have lingered so long in my memory and yet, if I try to describe what we saw, what was going on around us, how far we went ... nothing.  It has an importance that deserves a whole paragraph at least in my life story, and yet a single line can sum up the entire experience.  To try to encapsulate that in a form that can be passed on to others is beyond the power of words.

What is needed is to turn time back, take a cine-camera with us and re-walk the walk ... a total impossibility, of course.