The General – part two

It was probably for financial reasons that Frederick and Constance moved from the Old Manor House, which they sold, to Eastbridge House, which they rented furnished. As well as the house, they sold, in 1899, antique furniture, oil paintings, Indian miniatures set in gold, ‘a magnificent grand pianoforte’, Aubusson carpets and Turkish rugs, Sevres and Dresden china. The new house was, however, more convenient as it was on the flat, rather than half-way up a steepish hill, and Constance was now using a Bath chair

Eastbridge House, Hythe 

Many of Frederick’s diary entries refer to the activities of his children. May, the eldest, was her parents’ mainstay. It was she who supervised the move to Eastbridge House while Frederick and Constance decamped to Tunbridge Wells for a couple of weeks. The eldest son, Artie, visited frequently when he had leave. He served first with the South Lancashire Regiment, before studying for the Staff College exam. He passed and was selected for special service in South Africa, serving in the South African Light Horse regiment under Col. Julian Byng. He would have met Winston Churchill, who was in the same regiment at the same time.

Artie in later life

The second Boer War was now underway, but Fritz, Frederick’s second son, was not, it seemed to be part of it. Just after the move to Hythe, Fritz had written to his father to day that he had decided to leave the Royal Fusiliers, with whom he was serving in India, and to enter the Bengal Staff Corps. Frederick wrote (at, for him, considerable length):

Notwithstanding the regret that his career must now be quite an Indian one, I think his determination is a wise one, for it is evident from the extra help which has had to be given him that he cannot live in the RF. I’m afraid my poor boy has not backbone enough to do as a few do who have but little means

He was referring to the fact that the family (thanks to his own father) had little money. There had not been enough to purchase his own army commission, which was obtained for him through the good offices of Lord Fitzroy Somerset, later Lord Raglan. He himself had survived and avoided the temptations of the Mess, but saw that his son could not. Two years later, when Fritz was at home on leave, Frederick had a shock:

Was dreadfully annoyed and grieved to see announced in the Gazette that Freddie had resigned his commission and this without a word to us. It is too bad.

The situation worsened dramatically. A week later:

Out for the day. On return found that Freddie had gone off to Folkestone to dine and sleep, contrary to his mother’s expressed wishes.

He was found to be staying in Sandgate.

May went to the Kent Hotel Sandgate and induced her brother to come home again. It has come as a sudden and grievous blow to me to know that he drinks, in addition to all his shortcomings and makes it more hopeless to do anything for him.

May took her brother to evening service at St Leonard’s, but spiritual consolation did not work and five days later Fritz was unceremoniously removed from Hythe and indeed the UK on board the P&O ship Himalaya for Sydney. Probably he was as glad to see the back of his family as they were relieved to see him go. In January 1896 he wrote to them that he had arrived at ‘Mr Wyllie’s fruit farming establishment at Renmark, S. Australia’.

Dick, meanwhile, had left Eton in 1895 and had studied for the army entrance exams under a Folkestone tutor, a Mr Noke. He passed, but not well enough, and then applied for a Queen’s Cadetship, a sort of scholarship, but was told that only one per family was allowed – and Fritz had previously received the honour. This must have been especially galling in view of Fritz’s catastrophic army career. After much trial and error, Dick was gazetted to the Rifle Brigade as 2nd Lieutenant in March 1899 and by December was on his way to South Africa.

Dick as a mature officer

Then early in 1900, Fritz wrote to say that he, too, was on his way to fight the Boers, as a sergeant in the Australian army. Unsurprisingly, Frederick spent a lot of time reading about, and recording the fighting. He must have been relieved when Dick was invalided home through persistent fever.

That summer, Frederick had his first trip in a motor car. He did not like it.  ‘It is a noisy vibrating thing & the pace is too fast for roads on which there is much traffic. He [the driver] manages and steers it very well, but there is bound to be an accident someday’.  He was also asked if he would accept the Colonelcy of the Prince of Wales Volunteers the South Lancashire Regt., having commanded one of the Battalions for 5 years. He wrote, ‘I shall be proud to be connected with the regiment and have so said’. It was a honorary position and as far as is known, he never visited the regiment, but was clearly pleased with the mark of respect.

In November, he received a letter from Ireland which ‘tells me of the death of my niece Florence Solly-Flood who has been living at Slaney Lodge as caretaker – we have not been on good terms, but I cannot help feeling sorrow.’ The fact that they were not on good terms was his own fault. His long-suffering brother Edward and sister-in-law Marianne had both died in the mid-1890s and Florence, their daughter, was left alone in Slaney Lodge. Frederick wanted to evict her and take possession, but needed the agreement of all three of his sisters. One of them would not give it, so the plan fell through.

Then, just before Christmas, a letter from Artie:

He has had to send Fritz back to Australia as he was a failure in the South African Light Horse as he could not keep steady when he came to any town – though when marching through the Veldt he was a good soldier. It is very lamentable. Artie has behaved like a dear good brother to him and given him a chance which he has failed in. A. has wisely sent his money by draft to Wyllie in Australia only giving him enough for the voyage which he has arranged & got friends of his own to look after him at Cape Town and Durban.

In the New Year, Dick was passed fit to return to South Africa. He had spent his convalescence riding, cycling, shooting, hunting, hare coursing and attending balls and the theatre in London, which clearly benefitted his health. Now, on the eve of his departure, he came off his bike after riding too fast down the London Road into Hythe. His injuries prevented his embarkation. Better news was that Artie was mentioned in despatches at relief of Ladysmith and later awarded the DSO.

The year passed quietly, the high points being a visit to Folkestone to hear Winston Churchill, then a young MP, speak about the South African campaign of Sir Ian Hamilton, formerly Commandant of the School of Musketry. Then the subject of the talk himself visited Hythe to have its Freedom conferred on him. How strange Frederick would find it strange that today it is Churchill who is remembered and Hamilton all but forgotten.

1902 broght more news of Fritz,

On Monday last we heard from Freddie that he had left Australia & was on his way back to South Africa. He is a Trooper in the 2nd South Australian Commonwealth Contingent. May God preserve him and put into his heart to lead a new and better life.

2nd South Australian (Mounted Rifles) Contingent, non-commissioned officers. Corporal Frederick Frere Solly-Flood is at far left, standing

In June peace was declared and to celebrate, Frederick flew a Union Jack from the house. There were more celebrations in August for the delayed coronation of Edward VII and Frederick ‘decorated the house with flags and at night illuminated the windows in the upper storey and also had a nice crown in lamps’.  Artie came home, but Dick was sent straight from South Africa to India.

Artie accompanied May on a trip to Wales in September. Their uncle, William Edward Frere, a barrister and Commissioner for Lunacy, had died unmarried at the end of 1900. He had frequently been unwell in his later years and usually called upon May to nurse him – during his last illness she had to travel to Scotland. He had rewarded her by leaving her property in Crickhowell, near Abergavenny and it was this house that May and Artie were visiting.

The house, ‘Porthmawr’, was occupied by a tenant, but she died the following year. May’s visits now became frequent – as Artie was now back in India, she was chaperoned by her maid.  In March 1904 the family started preparations to move there. This involved not just furniture removal, but the transportation of Laura, the parlourmaid; Kate, the lady’s maid; the cook; two dogs; two parrots; and a tortoise. As ever, it was May who made the arrangements for the move, three days before Frederick’s 75^th birthday

Frederick and Constance found the new house ‘charming’, but Frederick had only five years left to enjoy his new home.  Artie also called the place home, but Dick had not made the move and had acquired a house in Sellindge.  Fritz seems not to have returned to Australia, but was living in Dover.

Frederick’s sister Tita died in 1905. She left most of her estate to Artie, but Dick and Fritz received £5,000 each. Frederick tried, unsuccessfully, to get the bequest to Fritz overturned in the courts, Perhaps he thought he was acting in his son’s best interests, but it was not a move which would have endeared him to his prodigal son. In the event, Fritz died himself, ‘suddenly’ the next year, possessed only of the £5, 000 inheritance.

Artie and Dick both married and both, like their father, achieved the rank of General in the army. Both called Crickhowell home in their later years. May lived on as a single woman at Porthmawr until her death in 1934.

The above is taken from the diaries of Frederick Solly-Flood, kindly lent to me by Robert Melrose of Eastbridge House, and supplemented by local research

Civic Life and the Gatelys

Beneath a yew tree in St Leonard’s churchyard, lies a rather battered table tomb, long buried under landslip.  Rediscovered in October 2013, part of the inscription, protected from the elements for generations, could still be seen:  ‘liam Ga…who was Bay… and Mayor for the Yeare 1650 … Ancie … he… Yeare is….. departed  this mortall life on the LORDS day  the 23 of February 165…being of the age of 52 yeares’. This is the tomb of William Gately, and his story, and that of his father John, follow. Their lives left only a few traces, but what is known casts a little more light on the history of our town of Hythe.

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John Gately was a blacksmith. His origins remain obscure, and he first appears in the Hythe records in 1599 with his marriage to Phillice Possingham. The couple’s son William was born later the same year or in early 1600.  A family man with a trade only lacked premises, and by the following year, John had built himself a workshop on the highway backing onto the Green (now the Dymchurch Road). He presented this as a fait accompli to Hythe Corporation, who agreed to lease him the land at a cost of 2s 8d a year.  The arrangement was mutually beneficial:  the town needed a blacksmith and John needed the business.

Phillice died when little William was only six, and the next year John married Elizabeth Steedman, who lived just five more years. His third wife was Mary, the mother of his son John, born in 1614, but she too died in 1615. Finally, in 1620, he married Alice Wagers.  She was the mother of his youngest son, David, born in November 1621.  Phillice, Elizabeth and Mary are all buried in St Leonard’s churchyard, but the memorials to their short lives, if any, have not survived.

John served as churchwarden for St Leonard’s in 1612, but evidently decided that he did not want to take any further part in civic or church duties.  He never became a freeman or jurat as was the norm of a man of his status.  The office of jurat was, in fact, not universally sought after. In the first place it was expensive. The man in question had to pay to become a freeman – the Corporation usually charged 20 shillings. Then he had to pay again to become a jurat. Once in post, he was expected to devote time to meetings, tax gathering, overseeing works and acting as a J.P., all to the detriment of earning his livelihood, and was often required to undertake work such as mending the sea wall or to lend money to the often-impecunious Corporation. Some who were rich enough paid not to be freemen:  William Deedes paid £10 in 1633 but was later persuaded to accept the honour.

John Gately found another way. In May 1614 the Corporation appointed him guardian of Alice Hempsted, a six-year-old orphan who had inherited lands and money. He would have the profits of renting out the land and the interest on the money until she was of age and would be exempt from payment of local taxes to the Corporation and the Church, and from serving as an officer of the town. Of course, he paid for this an undisclosed sum, but it would seem that for him it was a fair bargain.

 One civic duty he could not avoid was membership of the Trained Band, a local militia. This was obligatory for every able-bodied adult male. John kept his muskets and bandolier, together with a rapier, in his outhouse with his pigs; the Corporation provided powder and match.   The Corporation also provided hospitality at general musters, which were rowdy affairs. In 1626, noting the disorder at such meetings, they directed the Chamberlain to take note of the wine and beer brought into the rooms, and to allow no ‘superfluyitie’.

By 1618, he had left the premises on the Green, but was leasing another house nearby from St Bartholomew’s Hospital of Saltwood. The house included a hall, with two chambers over, an entry room, garret, kitchen, buttery, stables and outside storage.

 In 1625, on a trip to Rye, John was taken ill. A Hythe surgeon, William Stace, attended him, but to no avail, unsurprisingly, given the state of medical knowledge at the time.  Although John’s will has not survived, the probate inventory of his goods has. He was comfortably off, and the furnishings and effects in his house were worth over £68.  He was literate, owning ‘a bible, two smalle bibles (probably the New Testament or the Psalms), a service book and three other smalle books’.   As a comparison, at the same time, John Cocke, a labourer in Saltwood, had in his two rooms goods to the value of £6. 6s  6d.

John’s comparative wealth is not surprising. Blacksmiths served farmers’ needs and could also produce  pots, kettles, chimney backs and weights for use in the home, and as well as his personal possessions, he had wealth in his ‘shop’.  A smith’s tools, his anvil, bellows and vice,  were worth several pounds, but the value of his stocks of coal, iron and finished products such as horseshoes might be much greater.

A 17th century smithy

After John’s death his widow, Alice, went to live in New Romney, where some years later she died in mysterious circumstances, either from falling down a couple of steps or being struck by a stone. Meanwhile, in Hythe, her stepson William took on his father’s house and trade. 

Now in charge of his own business, and with his stepmother living elsewhere, William was in need of a wife to run his house. He married Ann Dryland on 2 October 1627 in Wye. Their first child, John, was baptised in Hythe on 31 August 1628, but is not mentioned in his father’s will, so presumably died young. Their second and third sons, both called William, and the fourth, Samuel born in 1642 also had short lives. Their only daughter, Elizabeth, to whom William left most of his estate, was baptised in Hythe on 11 July 1630.

Unlike his father, William embraced civic life with some enthusiasm. In February 1633, the Corporation charged him with collecting contributions towards cutting out the haven, one of several attempts the town made to save its harbour. He evidently performed this task satisfactorily, and in August was made freeman and jurat. He still had to pay £1.3.0d for the privilege.  Tax collecting seems to have been his forte, as he was appointed on several occasions to this task, including the collection of the generally unpopular Ship Money imposed on the country by Charles I.

He also served as churchwarden at St Leonard’s in 1639 and 1641. This, like the office of jurat, was not necessarily eagerly sought after. It involved attending the bishop’s visitation to present the parish registers, keeping records of those who did not attend church, as required by law, and collecting non-attendance fines, maintaining charitable bequests, keeping church accounts and keeping the church in good repair. The vicar of Hythe, William Kingsley, was unlikely to have been often in the town to offer advice. He was also Rector of Hythe, Rector of Ickham and Archdeacon of Canterbury Cathedral.  Parliament removed him from all his livings in 1644 for pluralism.

Since 1640, William had often attended the Brotherhood and Guestling, the annual meeting of the Cinque Ports, with the Mayor, and in 1649 he was appointed one of their Bailiffs to Yarmouth. This was an ancient post which had in the past produced confrontation, and even violence between the people of Yarmouth and the Bailiffs. The role of the latter was to be present in the town during the herring ‘fare’ or fishing season held between Michaelmas, 29th September and Martinmas, the 10th November to attend court sessions daily and pass judgement.  There were also visits to church and a certain amount of feasting.  It was another post which some avoided if at all possible. William Gately was selected because a Mr Bachellor from another of the Cinque Ports had refused to go – and was fined the huge sum of £50 by the Brotherhood for his transgression. 

William’s experience as Bailiff seems to have been an unfortunate one. On his return, the Corporation gave him £25 in recognition of the dangers and ‘travail’ he had endured during his journey. This was quite unprecedented. The trip may have had a salutary effect: the next month, while in good health, he made his will, unlike many at the time who waited until death was imminent.

In 1650 he was chosen to be Mayor. It was a difficult time –  the Corporation was nearly bankrupt and started the year with a deficit. They were unable to pay for the timber bought to repair the haven and were being threatened with legal action, while further expenses were incurred placing guns on the Mount and re-glazing the Town Hall.  William may have been relieved when his term of office ended, as all Mayoralities did, at Candlemas, 2 February.  Eighteen days later, on Sunday 20 February 1651 ‘at four of the clock in the afternoon’, he died. No prayers were said at his funeral.  Burial services had been abolished by the new puritan authorities in the Church of England.  the church. The burial was not even recorded in the parish registers. There is a gap beteeen March 1645 and October 1653. 

William’s rather elegant signature

William had been quite acquisitive during his lifetime and left his family well provided for. Although his house and workshop and two acres of land were leased from the Hospital, he had bought land in Bilsington in 1640 and in Saltwood in 1648. He also  owned silver plate and a ‘feather bedd, well furnish’d’ (a feather bed was a mattress, but rather superior to a flock one; the furnishings were the bedstead, posts, drapes and linen).   His acquisitiveness, however, had led to court cases, including with his own mother’s family, where he was shown to have appropriated goods to which he was not entitled, and in 1649, when Bailiff to Yarmouth, and despite the generous gratuity he received, he overlooked paying his clerk his allowance. The man had to beg the Brotherhood for it after William’s death. For all that, William was generous in his bequests, remembering his apprentices past and present, his brothers John and David, an aged aunt and the new minister of Hythe, William Wallace.

This last bequest is interesting. Wallace, who hailed from Aberdeen, was a Calvinist Presbyterian of particularly radical views.  His clerical duties were confined to baptisms and communion: marriage for him was not a sacrament and he said no prayers at burials. That William Gately thought highly enough of him to leave him money tends to suggest that the blacksmith shared his radicalism in religious matters. He was, now that the Church of England was effectively dis-established, able to express his views without fear and worship as he wished. And since he supported a radical minister, did he also support the parliamentary forces that had enabled him to preach freely? Probably.

It seems he was not long survived by his daughter or wife. The land in Saltwood was to pass to his niece Susan Gately, if they both died. It was sold by Susan in 1660, so Ann’s and Elizabeth’s deaths must be assumed. It later became part of Weller’s Gift, a local charity for the poor of Hythe. Susan, the daughter of William’s brother John and only known surviving grandchild of John Gately senior, married in 1675, and had children, so perhaps, somewhere, there are still descendants of John Gately. 

The information for this post was taken from the records at the National Archives,  Kent History and Library Centre in Maidstone and at the Canterbury Cathedral Archives;  the Calendar of the White and Black Books of the Cinque Ports and the Parish Records of St Leonard’s Church.

William Gately’s signature is reproduced by permission of  Canterbury Cathedral Archives

 

 

 

The Lady and the Bus Conductor

 

In memory/of/George William Wallace/D’Arcy Evans/who died on Sept 8th 1906/aged 46 years

A simple gravestone, no indication of family, or expressions of regret or piety, but it conceals a story which stretches from Ireland to England to South Africa and Canada.

George William Wallace D’Arcy Evans was born on 4 October 1860 at Knockaderry House, County Limerick. He was the second son of John D’Arcy Evans and Marion Evans nee Wallace, perhaps best described as minor Anglo-Irish landed gentry.

Knockaderry House

As befits a second son who had no great expectations, he joined the army as a young man, but it seems there was not even enough money to buy him a commission, as he joined as a trooper and served for three years in the ranks of the South Wales Borderers. He was finally commissioned as a lieutenant in the Royal Irish Rifles in 1886. and served as Superintendent of Gymnasia in Colchester. He was promoted to Captain in 1894.

He had married Harriette George Marion Gledstanes Richards on 18 July 1889 at Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin. She came from a similar background to George and was the daughter of Captain George Gledstanes Richards of Macmine Castle, County Wexford. She was born on 11 August 1869.

Macmine Castle – not really a castle, but a country house

Three sons were born to the couple over the next three years, though the third died before his second birthday. Then, in 1895, George exchanged into the 20th Hussars and sailed with his young family to India, where his only daughter was born. However, their stay on the sub-continent was brief. After just a year, George exchanged again, this time into the Bedfordshire Regiment. Life in India did not suit everyone. They were living in Mhow (now Dr. Ambedkar Nagar) in Bengal, where summer temperatures can reach 43 degrees centigrade and winter fall to minus 4.

Back in the UK, George seems to have found his niche in the army in writing textbooks. These included Field Training Made Easy in Accordance with the Revised Syllabus Contained in the New Infantry Drill and The Non-Commissioned Officer’s Guide to Promotion in the Infantry. The Army & Navy Gazette praised them for their clarity and usefulness. Harriette also wrote a book, In Mermaidland, and Other Stories, which the Gazette dismissed as ‘a very slight production for children.’ The Liverpool Mercury, however said that they were four beautiful stories and that the humour pervading the book made it very enjoyable.

But in December 1897, Harriette admitted to her husband that she had been unfaithful to him. They separated, but in 1900, on learning that she had given birth to a child in 1898, George took her back. The child seems to have been accepted by George as his own, and given Evans family names: Hardress Waller Eyre D’Arcy Evans. George told Harriette that she had ‘a clear, fresh start’ and that he would protect her against anybody. The family lived for a while together at 34 St Leonard’s Avenue, Bedford.

However, the next year, Harriette started a new liaison with a man she met on a bus, Charles Abbott. He was, in fact, the conductor of the station omnibus, which ran from the George Hotel in Bedford. Charles was already married, a fact which, Harriette said later, he did not share with her immediately. He was also, at nineteen, very much younger than her, although he may not have told her that immediately either. He had lied about his age at his marriage to Edith Bainbridge only the year before, saying that he was twenty-one, whereas his Canadian death record shows his date of birth as 22 May 1882. Since by the time he died there was no need for subterfuge, this is likely to be correct.

The George Hotel, Bedford, on the left of the picture

The couple corresponded. He called her ‘my dearest darling’, she wrote him ‘hysterical’ letters. Harriette was confronted by Edith in the street, but refused to give up her lover. She wrote to Charles suggesting that they elope to Canada, where they could live on her small private income of £200 a year.
He agreed. On 1 June 1901, while George was out riding, Harriette escaped from the house and met Charles at Bedford station. They took a train to Liverpool where they stayed at a hotel under the names Mr and Mrs Brown, and under those names they sailed for Canada.

George had run out of patience, and divorced Harriette the next year, though he was by then in South Africa, fighting the Boers. He was adjutant of the 36th Battalion Imperial Yeomanry during the Boer War. Charles was divorced by Edith in 1905. She had heard nothing at all from him since his elopement.
George relinquished his South African post in 1903 and rejoined the Bedfordshire Regiment. It is unclear why he was in Hythe when he died, although he may have had business with the School of Musketry in the town.

Meanwhile, Charles and Harriette married in Canada in 1908 and spent the rest of their lives together in south Saskatchewan as Mr and Mrs Abbott-Brown, a good compromise. They had five children together, although their only son, born in 1912, predeceased them, dying in a house fire in 1955. Harriette’s only daughter by her first marriage, Silvia, was able to spend time with her mother in Canada.

Charles and Harriette died in British Columbia within months of each other, he on 20 February 1960, she on 30 September that year.

The grave marker for Harriette and Charles.

Reformatory Boys 3- George Cloke

George was born in Saltwood in 1858, the second child of William and Julia Ann (or Juliana) Cloke. His father was an agricultural labourer and later a quarry labourer.  George never attended school and by the time he was thirteen, he was at work as a ‘farm boy’, which mostly involved bird-scaring, and he also got some work helping the ‘navvies’ who were building the railway line from Sandling to Hythe.  His mother died in 1871.

William Cloke then moved his family to Albion Cottage in Stade Street in Hythe where he set up home with a Mrs Tanton, or, in the words of the authorities at the Royal Philanthropic School, where they ‘lived in fornication’.  William’s decision is understandable: he had only one daughter, Jane, aged nine when her mother died and too young to keep house for her father and two older brothers.

The arrangement did not work out well. George’s older brother, John, left to go into service in Kentish Town. Little Jane, at eleven, was sent to work in service in Sandgate.  George was simply turned out of the house.  He resorted to stealing and was found guilty, with William Impett, of stealing eighteen eggs from a shed in a field. On 23 Jan 1874 he was sentenced to one month’s imprisonment in Canterbury followed by five years at the Royal Philanthropic Reform School in Redhill. In the magistrate’s opinion, he was ‘utterly neglected’.

Official protection of vulnerable children was a long way in the future, and there was nothing else the magistrates could have done to safeguard George. Unfortunately, admission to a Reformatory was dependant on having served a prison sentence first.

He was described when he arrived at the School as being 4 feet 10 inches tall with dark hair and a ’round, chubby, rustic face’.  His father, who earned about  £1 a week in the quarry was ordered to pay one shilling and sixpence a week towards his keep, though the Town Council also contributed.

Boys working on the School farm

George did not get off to a good start at Redhill. Barely seven months after his admission he was punished by being isolated in the school’s cells for three days for breaking into a cottage on the site. Thereafter however, he mostly kept out of trouble, apart from a few minor infringements of the rules.

The only people to visit him during his stay were his brother and sister.  In  1878, George was given permission to spend Christmas with John, at his invitation. By then, George had been allowed out on licence to work in service.

He was discharged from the School in February 1879 and went to live in Chalk Farm, near his brother.  In September that year, he went back to the School on a visit and said he was doing well. He survived a period of unemployment the next year, but then got a job making new flowerbeds in Regent’s Park.

All subsequent reports back to the School suggest that he that he had settled down and was in good work, including labouring at Cannon Street on the Metropolitan Line extension. He married in 1881 and he and Matilda (or Mary as she was known), his wife, went on to have three sons and two daughters (though three other children died young). They lived in Napier Road, East Ham, near to the Central Park.

From about 1897, for nine years, he was employed by the Beckton Gas Light and Coke Company, but in January 1906 he was told his services were no longer required and was given one hour’s notice. He had the confidence to take the company to court, claiming that as he was paid weekly, he should have been given a week’s notice. His erstwhile employers contended that he was employed by the hour, but paid weekly for convenience and the magistrates upheld their claim. Fair employment law was also a long way in the future.

He soon found other employment and moved house to Telham Road, a five-roomed house which he shared with his son, another George, and his family. We know this from the 1911 census which George completed in a firm, clear script. Thirty-seven years earlier he had been homeless, illiterate and ‘utterly neglected’. If the Royal Philanthropic School gave him nothing else, it gave him literacy.

Information about George’s time at the Royal Philanthropic School is taken from their admission registers at Surrey Archive in Woking: 2271/10/16 page 205

 

‘Toby MP’ in Hythe

Henry Lucy by ‘Spy’

Henry Lucy was one of the most famous English political journalists of the Victorian era. He was both a serious commentator of parliamentary affairs and an accomplished humourist and parliamentary sketch-writer, acknowledged as the first great lobby correspondent. And he lived in Hythe – or at least weekended there.

Henry was born in Crosby, near Liverpool on 5 December 1842, the son of Robert Lucy, a rose-engine turner in the watch trade, and his wife, Margaret Ellen nee Kemp. He was baptized William Henry at St. Michael’s Church and the family moved to Everton, Liverpool soon afterwards. His mother taught him to read by the age of four and then he attended the private Crescent School until he was twelve. His first job was as junior clerk to Robert Smith, a hide merchant. In his spare time, he wrote poetry for the Liverpool Mercury and went to night school to learn Pitman’s shorthand.

It paid off and in 1864 he was appointed chief reporter on the Shrewsbury Chronicle, but also supplied ‘penny-a-liners’ of Shropshire news for London newspapers.

Then, in 1869, he took his life savings of £200 and went to live in Paris to learn French.

On his return, he became a reporter for the Pall Mall Gazette, who immediately took advantage of his knowledge of French and sent him on a mission to Belgium.  In 1873 he was despatched to report on the enquiry into the wreck of the Northfleet, an emigrant ship which in January, while riding at anchor off Dungeness, had been run down by a large steamer which then proceeded on her way. The enquiry was split between Dover and Lydd and providentially the drive between the two towns took him through Hythe, which charmed him with its ‘old-fashioned roofs and house fronts dating back beyond Stuart times’.

In October that year, he married Emily Anne White, the daughter of his old schoolmaster, and they started to visit the town for holidays.

Emily Lucy as a young woman   Photo: C. Melchers

At this stage, his career began to take off. He was Parliamentary reporter for the Daily News from 1873, took a trip to Canada in 1878 to report on a Royal visit and became Parliamentary sketch writer for Punch from 1881. Used the nom-de-plume ‘Toby, M.P.’ he wrote the weekly column ‘The Essence of Parliament’ for the next thirty-five years. In 1880, he also began writing for The Observer the ‘Cross Bench’ column, which continued for twenty-nine years

In August 1883 he and Emily bought from St John’s Hospital in Hythe a plot of land between North Road and Hillside Street in the town. (1). They paid £150 for it. (2) He wrote to his solicitor that he was thinking of asking Frederick Porter to design his house and asked for his address – it was Moyle Tower on the seafront in Hythe. (3)

The deeds to the house were destroyed during the second World War, so we don’t know if Frederick Porter obliged, but while Henry and Emily took a round-the world journey, the house took shape: ‘rock-built, red-tiled Whitethorn, where roses grow beyond compare, and through late spring nights the nightingale sings’. (4)

The Lucys’ ‘weekend cottage’, Whitethorn…                               Photo: C. Melchers

         

…and with its roses beyond compare    Photo: C. Melchers

The gardens were larger than at present and abutted the gardens of the Commandant of the School of Musketry. He and Henry were able to chat companionably over the garden wall.

Henry and Emily moved their furniture into the house in September 1884 though they maintained their London home at 42 Ashley Gardens

Henry loved Hythe and wrote fondly of it, though he was less impressed by the increasing number of ‘excursionists’. He appreciated the slow pace of life there. He wrote of the bathing establishment:

‘…regularly at the end of September the pump gets out of order, and the new year is far advanced before the solitary plumber of the place gets it put right. He begins to walk dreamily round the place at Easter. At Whitsuntide he brings down an iron vessel containing unmelted solder, and early in July the pump is mended. The mending of the pump is one of the epochs of Hythe, a sure harbinger of the approaching season.’ (5)

In 1886, Henry became editor of the Daily News, a short-lived post. He was busy compiling permanent records of his Punch parliamentary sketches, A Diary of Two Parliaments (2 vols., 1885–6); A Diary of the Salisbury Parliament, 1886–1892; A Diary of the Home Rule Parliament, 1892–1895; A Diary of the Unionist Parliament, 1895–1900 ; and The Balfourian Parliament, 1900–1905. These amount to a history of the Commons in its heyday, and have been extensively mined by historians.

Henry was also a long-time friend of Ernest Shackleton and raised funds for his expedition to the South Pole by using his influence to obtain a financial grant from Parliament. As a gesture of thanks, Shackleton named a mountain in Antarctica for him, Mount Henry Lucy.

Ernest Shackleton

Henry’s acquaintance was extensive and he moved in exalted circles. He was present at a dinner party in 1908 when Clementine Hozier met, for the second time, a young Winston Churchill, and this time fell in love. Henry was knighted in 1909 and he and Emily (now Lady Lucy) received over two hundred telegrams of congratulation from the great and the good. They included politicians, ambassadors, editors, actors, and bishops. One who wrote a letter was Herbert Beerbohm Tree, a hugely successful actor-manager

Sir Henry and Lady Lucy later in life                                                                                       Photos: C. Melchers

The title was perhaps only what he felt to be his due, as he believed that his father should have inherited the Lucy baronetcy together with the family estate at Charlcote, Warwickshire. He said that his father had lost touch with the titled family and on the death of one of them with no sons it went to a cousin who was more distant than his father. He said, though, that he was not bitter.

Henry died of bronchitis at Whitethorn, on 20 February 1924, aged eighty-one and was buried quietly in Saltwood as the snow fell on his grave. Whitethorn was in the parish of Saltwood and Emily had worshipped at the parish church there, rather than the closer St Leonard’s in Hythe. Henry, meanwhile, walked one of their succession of dogs on Sunday mornings.

His obituaries were mostly flattering, even reverent. The Times wrote: ‘Never in the House, but always of it, Lucy seemed to occupy for a long time a position of his own, as a species of familiar spirit or licensed jester, without which no Parliament was complete.’

But he was rich and famous and therefore bound to have his detractors. Ambrose Bierce, an American journalist wrote spitefully, ‘I knew Lucy very well – a little toadie, who afterwards toadied himself into a title.’

Henry left a huge sum of money, over a quarter of a million pounds, and was probably the wealthiest Victorian journalist who was not also a newspaper proprietor. In his will he endowed a ‘Sir William Henry Lucy Bed’ at Shrewsbury’s Royal Salop Infirmary ‘in memory of his pleasant connection with Shrewsbury’ as a journalist but also left legacies of £1000 each to forty seven other hospitals and benevolent institutions and  £3000 to Hythe charities. In December 1924, Lady Lucy got permission from Hythe Town Council to plant an avenue  of cypress trees from the Cricket Ground to South Road in Hythe and to erect a commemorative tablet. The avenue was to be known as ‘Lucy’s Walk’.  She also endowed a Lad’s Club in Saltwood, which still stands and is in regular use today, not far from the churchyard where Henry is buried. .

Emily continued to use Whitethorn and in 1935, she donated £1,000 to found the Sir Henry Lucy Scholarship at Merchant Taylors’ School, Crosby. She and Henry had no children of their own. She died in Hythe in 1937.

Emily in old age in her garden at Whitethorn   Photo: C. Melchers

In 1948 the orchard adjoining Whitethorn was sold for building and with it the main entrance gate in North Road, bearing the house name. The new building thus became ‘Whitethorn’ and the old house ‘Lucy’s’, and the steep lane next to it, ‘Lucy’s Hill’, though in all probability, that is what the locals had always called them.

A caricature of Henry Lucy, by Kate Carew

With thanks to Chris Melchers for additional information

1. Kent Archives: EK2008/2 111(1-12)
2. Kent Archives: EK 2008/2/Book 13
3. Kent Archives: EK2008/2/112.
4. Henry W. Lucy Sixty Years in the Wilderness,  London, Smith Elder, 1911, p84
5. Henry W. Lucy Faces and Places, London: Henry & Co, 1892, p. 7

Reformatory Boys 1 – the Dearman Brothers

On 5 June 1875, two boys were admitted to the Royal Philanthropic School at Redhill: Edwin Dearman, who had turned twelve the day before, and his brother James, a month off his fourteenth birthday. They had just served twenty-one days in Canterbury prison, convicted by the Hythe magistrates of begging and vagrancy and were to spend a further four years at Redhill. Both already had previous convictions, for firing straw, wilful damage, vagrancy and petty theft.The notes taken on their admission make sad reading.

Edwin, at 4 feet 6 inches tall, was judged to be ‘undersized’ and had ‘an old face.’ James was 4 feet 8 inches tall. He had been employed at stone breaking on the roads at seven shillings and sixpence per week per week and greasing railway wagons at six shillings a week. Both were illiterate.

Their father was William Dearman, a sailor’s labourer, reported by the magistrates to be of a very bad character. He had himself been in prison twice. Their mother, Mary, was also apparently of a bad character. The family lived in Dental Street in Hythe.  The boys had an older brother, William who was serving in the 36th rifles, a sister Eliza who sold watercress at Folkestone and lived in Sandgate and there were also  younger sisters, Elizabeth, Susan and Clara.

The Hythe magistrates reported that the boys had been convicted on 15 May 1875 of ‘unlawfully wandering abroad and lodging in an unoccupied house without visible means of sustenance’. They noted:

This boy and his brother bear very bad characters and are sent out by their parents nearly every day to beg, their father being a confirmed drunkard. Unless they bring home some food they receive a severe beating which causes them frequently to stay out all night.

The magistrates had limited options for helping Edwin and James: the reform school was the best one, but its admission rules required that they serve a prison sentence first. When they arrived they were separated into different ‘houses’ (the school tried to model itself on the English public school system). Visitors were allowed, but the only recorded visit they received during their time at the School was from their mother in 1876.

Edwin was regularly caned  during his stay for fighting, stealing, lying and disobedience. After his discharge, he sold herrings in Hythe, but then got work at sea on the coal brigs plying between the north-east ports and Kent. In September 1882 he served seven days for assaulting a police officer. He got married in 1887 to Mary Jane Stockbridge, but the marriage did not last and by 1890 he was living with Elizabeth Austen, a widow, in Middle Wall, Whitstable, where many of the brigs berthed.

Whitstable Harbour in the 1890s, when Edwin Dearman lived there

They had a least two children together, but the relationship was often violent and both liked a drink.  By 1909, Elizabeth had left him, taking the children to Dover. Edwin went to Woolwich, where the same year he was homeless and arrested for being drunk and disorderly.

He must have rallied as in 1916, he enlisted in the Royal Navy, though he was over fifty. He was soon discharged, not for drunkenness or bad behaviour, but simply for being too old.

Edwin died in Stepney in 1937.

While at the reform school, James was better behaved at first, apart from some minor infringements of the rules, but in 1878 he stole from a cottage on the grounds and was birched and confined in the cells for four days. He continued throughout the rest of his stay to be difficult – he used tobacco, bullied younger boys and cut up his own boots. In May 1879, it was reported that he had, when he first came to the school been keen to emigrate to Australia or Canada, but his family brought pressure to bear on him, saying they wanted him at home. They could, they said, get employment for him at sea. He was released on licence to work in May that year.

The ‘work at sea’ did not materialise. The next year, Hythe Police reported to the school that he was occasionally hawking herrings, but then he got full-time employment with a local fish-dealer, Stephen Cloke.  They suspected he was sometimes up to no good, but could prove nothing.

Then on 30 June 1884, James married Minnie Cousine at St Leonard’s church. Her full name was Miriam Ann and she was the daughter of  a Frenchman, Louis, and an Englishwoman, Mary and has been born in Heathfield, Sussex.  The love of a good woman evidently turned James’s life around. For a start, the children started arriving – there would be fifteen eventually, though one died young. The family moved from a tiny cottage in Chapel Street, a narrow lane behind the High Street, to a slightly larger house in Frampton Road. Then, while continuing to work as a labourer and later fish seller  James joined the lifeboat crew in 1890, eventually becoming coxswain. When he retired in 1917, he held five medals for saving life and had been granted a Royal National Lifeboat Institution pension. He was, rather mysteriously, known to the lifeboat crew as ‘Charcoal’.

The Hythe Lifeboat crew in 1891. I think James is fourth from right…

…an enlargement shows a similarity to the verified picture of James below

When war was declared in 1914, James enlisted in the army, despite being over fifty, giving his age as thirty-eight years and four months. The truth was made known to his commanding officer by the sergeant-major, who knew him, and he was sent home.

The war and the succeeding years brought much sadness to the family.

In 1910, James and Minnie’s sixth chid, Sam, had joined the army and served with the East Kent Regiment, the Buffs. He was mobilised at the outbreak of war in 1914 and sent to France with the British Expeditionary Force on 27 December. Six weeks later, on 10 February 1915, he died of wounds.

Samuel Dearman 30 July 1893– 10 February 1915 

That same year, John, the second son, died of natural causes aged twenty-eight and Stephen, the third son, who worked as a brewer’s drayman, joined up. He was wounded, invalided home, sent back to the front, was gassed and finally was taken prisoner in March 1918. He was home in time for Christmas that year. The sixth child, Edwin (or Edward) served in the Royal Field Artillery, but survived.

In June 1917, James and Minnie’s eighth child, seventeen-year-old Ben, was walking with his brother and two friends along the canal bank when they met two other boys, one of whom, the  fourteen-year-old, ‘Teddy’ , was carrying a rifle (for which he had a licence), as he planned to shoot rats. None of the boys actually saw what happened and at the inquest there was some disagreement as to whether Teddy knew the gun was loaded, as he was carrying cartridges in a tin box. They heard a shot and saw Benjamin fall, with his hand to his stomach. A local man and a soldier came to help and a doctor was called. Benjamin was taken home and then transferred to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Folkestone, where he died following an operation. The coroner’s verdict was ‘Accidental Death’.

The fifth child, Bill, a milkman, presumably unfit for overseas service, joined the Labour Corps during WW1, but was suffering from TB, which was aggravated by the work he carried out. He was a patient in the Royal Herbert Hospital, Woolwich for a while, but died at home on 28 July 1919.

The Commonwealth War Grave of William Dearman ( 30 November 1894 – 28 July 1919) in Horn Street Cemetery, Hythe

In 1922, both the eldest child, James Lewis (or sometimes Lewis James) and the eleventh, Polly died. James was thirty-nine and Polly nineteen. In 1927, their youngest sister, Kathleen (or Catherine) died ‘after a long illness’. Was the TB which carried off Bill to blame for all these adult deaths?

James died in 1936. His was a hard life, bravely lived. Minnie survived him by twelve years. She received help in her widowhood from the trustees of St Bartholomew’s Hospital. (1)

James and Minnie Dearman                                    Photos: Dave Lear

1. Kent Archives EK2008/2 Book 19

Details of the brothers’ convictions, background and stay at the reform school are in Surrey County Archives 2271/10/16 pp 308-9

With thanks to Kathryne Maher for additional information and to Dave Lear for the photos of James & Minnie

The Worthington Family, Coachmakers – revisited

 This article was originally posted in 2016. since then I have been contacted by Roger Worthington, a descendant of Frederick Worthington, who has provided some lovely family photos & some more background.

This is the grave in St Leonard’s churchyard of William Worthington and his wife, Blanche of Hythe. The inscription reads:

William Worthington /entered into rest March 12^th 1893/ in his 72^nd year.

Only good night beloved, not farewell/a little while and all his saints shall dwell /in hallowed union indivisible/ good –night good -night

Because I live you shall live also John XIV 19

Also of Blanche Worthington /widow of the above/died Jan. 31^st 1912/aged 92

Jesus Christ who died/that we should live together/with Him. Thes. 5. 10.

William Worthington was the founder of the business which became the Worthington coachworks on East Street in Hythe, on the site now occupied by Worthington Lodge.  He was born in 1821  in the town in relatively humble circumstances and lived in Elm Terrace in Hillside Road as a boy.  

He became a wheelwright by trade, but was obviously an ambitious young man. He married the girl next door, Blanche Lucas in 1843 and four years later, when he was twenty-six, he set up the Worthington Carriage Works.  

His business flourished and so did his family. He and Blanche had nine children. By 1871 they had moved to The Avenue in Hythe living in this house overlooking the Royal Military Canal and very near the works.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Avenue house as it is now……

…and on a snowy day when the Worthingtons lived there (photo Teresa Praud) 

By the time he was sixty, when he was employing a workforce of nine, he had bought ‘The Gables’ in North Road, an even bigger house, high up above the town and the church.  It was clearly a step up in the world in more ways than one. 

William & Blanche Worthington in later life (photo: Roger Worthington)

After Banche’s death in 1912, ‘The Gables’ was sold, together with building land and another six houses in Hythe acquired as investments.

One of his more unusual jobs was building the carriages for the Sandgate Hill lift in 1891. It was one of four cliff lifts in the Folkestone area taking visitors up and down from the beach to the grassy Leas and the town above. This one was a  hybrid between a water balance lift and a conventional tramway.

William and Blanche had  three sons, Robert, William and Frederick and after their father’s death, of cancer in 1893,  their business became Messrs Worthington Bros, Coach Builders. By 1909 they had become Worthington Brothers Ltd.

This is their advertisement.

(the date of 1847 written on the card is incorrect!)

The Worthington Brothers’ works in East Street (photo: Roger Worthington)

William, the middle son, was the first to die.

The inscription on his grave reads:

In/loving/memory/of/William/Worthington/born Nov. 22^nd 1854/died Nov. 7^th 1906

Not slothful in business/fervent in sprit/serving the Lord. ROM.XII.II.

And of Mary Ann/wife of the above/born April 3^rd 1857. Died March 7^th 1925.

Also Arthur./ dearly loved son of the above/who was killed in the battle of Arras

Remainder illegible

William had married Mary Anne and had four children and they lived in his father’s former home overlooking the canal.  William had to overcome a disability in order to succeed in life, as he had been born with only one ear, and poor hearing in the one he did have.  He relied to a great extent on lip reading. He was, like his brother Robert, a stalwart of the Methodist Church in Hythe and was a Sunday School teacher, steward and trustee. He took his duties seriously. Apparently if he missed someone at church on Sunday, he would find out where they lived and look them up. As he worked all day, the only opportunity he had for doing this was in the evenings.  In the countryside round the town, the nights were very dark in winter.  

One evening in November 1906, when he was 52, he left the house at about half past seven in the evening. It was drizzling and later rained hard, but he did not take a coat with him. He didn’t tell anyone where he was going.  This was in the days when there was a railway line running from Sandling station, which is still in use,  down to Hythe station which has long since closed.

Shortly after nine thirty, the driver of the train from Sandling to Hythe felt a bump and felt his ballast shift, as if he had hit something. It was too dark to see anything, but when he got to Hythe, he and the Station Master went back up the line in a spare carriage. At the Saltwood crossing, where a footpath crossed the railway line, they found William on the line, dead from terrible head injuries.

There was an inquest two days later at Saltwood, which returned a verdict of accidental death, as the jury supposed that William could not have heard the train coming. This despite the fact that the evidence of the train driver and the Station Master was that William had clearly been lying down, between the tracks and parallel with them, when the train hit him.  It seems likely that the verdict was a kind decision on the part of the jury designed to help William’s family and widow, and not just from the stigma of suicide.  He had two insurance policies on his life, but they only covered accidental death. In the event, he seems not to have left his family very well off. After his death Mary Anne ran a boarding house in Cobden Road. Perhaps he did have money worries.

Things did not get better for Mary Anne. Her son Arthur worked in the family business, as a manager.  When war broke out in 1914, he combined this with working as an evening driver to transport medical staff and volunteers to the Bevan Hospital at Sandgate.  He was also organist at the Methodist Church where he played every Sunday.  I can’t find out when he joined up, but he was killed in the Arras offensive on 3 May 1917, although his body was never found. His mother had to wait fifteen months after his disappearance for the War Department to declare him dead.  

 

Arthur’s name on the Arras Memorial

Robert was the next Worthington brother to pass away.

 

In loving memory of/Emma/the dearly loved wife of/Robert Worthington/born March18th 1856/died May 10^th1906

Also the above/Robert Worthington/born October 15^th 1845/died December 19^th1908

“In  Your presence is fullness of joy” PS XIV 11

Robert Worthington (photo Roger Worthington)

Like his father, Robert became the father of nine children, including three sons, and his public life flourished, too.  He was another stalwart of the Wesleyan church, Secretary of the Hythe institute and had been a member of the fire brigade. He lived in a house called ‘Kildrummie’ on Tanners Hill, Hythe.  A substantial house, with six bedrooms, a dining room, drawing room and morning room, and large garden it was just the place for a successful business man. It was also within sight of the works.

One Saturday evening in December 1908, when he was 64, he was off to Folkestone, and walking along the Seabrook Road flagged down a motor bus. Once on board he was taken ill and the coach diverted to the nearest doctor’s surgery, Unfortunately, by the time they got there Robert was dead, so the doctor made all the other passengers get off the bus so that it could take the body back to Hythe.

After Robert’s death, the business was run by the surviving brother, Frederick, assisted by his nephew, William’s son Arthur.  Frederick was very much the baby of the family, 19 years younger than his brother Robert. The firm  already had a good reputation for producing carts, carriages and even a coach for one of the royal house of Siam.  They exported all over the British Empire, including to India.

A Worthington Bros. carriage, restored, in 1951 (Photo: Roger Worthington)

A Worthington child’s carriage, designed to be pulled by a dog (photo: Roger Worthington)

They moved with the times, and invented a hybrid mode of transport called the Worthington Duocar, or cycle-car, which had an 8-hpV-twin engine complete with a fan-cooled automatic carburettor. At the same time they were developing a car, the Worthington Runaraound. Only one was ever built. This is its specification:

It was originally powered by an 8hp horizontally-opposed twin engine, but this was replaced by an 8.9hp V-twin J.A.P. The transversely mounted engine drove by two chains to a countershaft, final drive being by belt.

It was intended to sell the car for £90,  but the company overstretched itself and got involved in the other latest transport craze, the aeroplane and in the end failed to produce either car or plane. The firm went bankrupt in 1914,  but Frederick, who lived at Twiss Villas in Twiss Road, later worked as a ‘coach painter’.  He had married Florence Emily, the daughter of Albert Day, a businessman and sometime mayor of Hythe. They had three children, Olive, Lena and Stanley.

 

Frederick Worthington with his wife & young family (photo: Roger Worthington) 

Frederick died in 1948 aged 84, but was survived for some years by Olive and Lena, who lived in Albert Road (named for their grandfather Albert Day) in Hythe.

The stone in Saltwood churchyard commemorating Frederick Worthington, his wife and children

(photos: Roger Worthington)

Many of old William Worthington’s other descendants emigrated to Australia, Canada and the USA.

 

The Hole Family Part 2

The first part of this blog was published in 2016, before I discovered the sad story of Elizabeth Back, nee Hole. I am indebted to David Haynes of Queensland for this extra information.  

Elizabeth Hole, the eldest child of James and Elizabeth Hole of Hythe was born on 24 September 1814. She became a servant and married Daniel Back (or sometimes Beck) in Marylebone, London in 1837. He was also a domestic servant. Less than two years later, they emigrated to Australia, leaving from Plymouth on 13th May 1839 aboard the Lady Raffles with 234 other souls and their baby son, another Daniel. They arrived in September. They were enticed into applying for emigration to the new colony of New South Wales by advertisements posted in London and other cities. This whole adventure must have seemed quite attractive at the time: their passage was paid for and employment was virtually assured once they arrived in Sydney. This was the so-called Bounty system, separate from the Government sponsored scheme.

                                                                         An example of Bounty emigration advertising

 

This opportunity seemed almost too good to be true and it was. Once there, Elizabeth and Daniel and all their co-emigrants were abandoned, left to fend for themselves. The jobs and housing did not materialise and there was no room in the Government-run accommodation.  Elizabeth gave birth again in 1840, to a daughter, Susan but there is no further trace of either of her children. It seems probable that they died.

Elizabeth left Australia, and Daniel, in about 1842. We don’t know whether it was the country or the man she wanted to escape, but she must have been desperate enough to find her own fare. Daniel remained in the new colony and soon developed a new partnership with another woman with whom he had six children before marrying her in 1858. He must have assumed that Elizabeth was dead.

She was not. She had entered the service of Mrs Elizabeth Frederica Crofts, the wife of Peter Guerin Crofts, the retired rector of St. John-sub-Castro in Lewes. She was his second wife and twenty years his junior and Elizabeth was her ladies maid. Their house, in Lewes,  was vast (it is now the HQ of Sussex Police) and required a live-in staff of eight, including a butler, coachman and footman.

Malling House

The fact that it was in Lewes is significant: Daniel Back had been born near there, his family still lived nearby, so it seems that when she returned from Australia, Elizabeth went to her in-laws rather than her own family in Hythe. It is entirely possible that she was expecting Daniel to join her there.

Peter Crofts died in 1859, but Elizabeth stayed with her mistress until the latter’s death in 1878.  She then returned to Hythe where she lived in Stade Street and described herself as an annuitant and widow.  It is likely that Mrs Crofts remembered her faithful servant in her will and provided a pension so that she would not end her life in poverty. Her old age, though, according to her gravestone, was not a happy time.

She is buried with her sister Mary Hole, born in 1818, who alone of the siblings did not marry. She went to Ashford to live with her brother Thomas, and later with one of his daughters. Eventually she, too, returned to Hythe and lived in St Bartholomew’s almshouse in the town.

The former St Bartholomew’s Almshouse in Hythe, now a private dwelling

 

In/loving memory/of/Elizabeth Back/who died 3rd March 1890/aged 75 years
Afflictions sore long time she bore/physicians were in vain/til death did cease and God did please/to ease her of her pain
Also of Mary Hole/sister of the above/who died11th December 1900/in her 82nd year
Well done good and faithful servant/enter thou into the joy of thy Lord

The Tragic Life of Louisa Kidder Staples

William Henry Kidder was born on 24 July 1827 to George and Mary Kidder. His father was a baker and the family lived in Saltwood.  William grew up to become a nineteenth century ‘man and van’, except that he had a horse and cart. He variously described himself as a carrier, potato dealer, greengrocer or hawker of vegetables. He formed a relationship with a young woman, Eliza Staples, who lived with him in Theatre Street in Hythe and who had two children with him, Louisa in 1857 and Ellen in 1862. Eliza died before Ellen’s first birthday and the child was sent to live with her Staples grandparents in Sellindge.  Louisa stayed with her father.

William started another relationship with Frances Turner, a young woman working as a servant in Sandgate. On 1 February 1865, when twenty- two-year old Frances was eight months pregnant, William married her in St Leonard’s church in Hythe. One, or both of them, was aiming for respectability. There was even a marriage announcement in the Maidstone Journal and Kentish Advertiser, and in the Canterbury Journal.

It was a stormy relationship from the start and Frances, or Fanny as she was known, appears to have been a woman whose temper was on a very short fuse. In September 1865, she was convicted of assaulting an elderly neighbour and fined. In November that year, Fanny complained to the police that William had kicked her while wearing his outdoor boots and then pushed her out of the house into the pouring rain. He said he would murder her if she went to court. He was starving her, she said, she had not eaten for two days, and he had ordered her not to suckle her infant daughter, Emma,  because ‘she should not live’. A warrant was issued for William’s arrest. Presumably Fanny withdrew the complaint, as it was taken no further.

According to witnesses who came forward later, Fanny loathed her step-daughter Louisa and treated her appallingly. She regularly beat the child with a broomstick so that she was covered in bruises. She hit her about the head and face hard enough to make her nose bleed and the girl was often seen with blood on her pinafore or with black eyes. She was dressed in rags with broken boots, fed only on scraps of bread and butter and made to sleep in a potato sack in a corner of the cellar. Fanny spoke of her as ‘that bitch.’ Neighbours complained to the police about Fanny’s behaviour, and for a while Louisa was removed from the family to her Staples grandparents, but William neglected to pay for her upkeep and she was returned home. Richard and Rebecca Staples still had six children of their own at home and their granddaughter Ellen, all supported on a railway labourer’s wage.

In June 1867, Fanny was accidentally thrown out of  her husband’s cart, and injured and returned to her family home in New Romney to convalesce. She took with her Louisa and her own child, Emma. On 25 August 1867, William went to fetch them back, but on arrival at the Turners’ house found that found that Fanny had gone out with Louisa, but returned without her. She was sitting weeping in the front room, her gown sodden.

William together with Fanny’s father, John Turner, took lanterns and went to search for Louisa. They soon found her, drowned in a shallow ditch. On their return to the house, Fanny said the child had fallen into the ditch, but William did not believe her and called the police. By the time they arrived, Fanny had changed her dress for a dry one, but the officers found her wet garments stuffed under her bed. They arrested her on suspicion of murder.

The news was all over Hythe by the next day.  Christiana Potter, the headmistress of the Girl’s School,  wrote in her log book on 26 August: received news that one of the scholars was dead – murdered by her mother.  There was no presumption of innocence from the start.

Fanny’s first hearing was at the magistrates’ court soon afterwards. She repeated the story that Louisa had fallen, and added that she had tried to save her, but the magistrates did not believe her either and remanded her in custody to stand trial for murder at the assizes in Maidstone. Meanwhile, Louisa was laid to rest in the churchyard at Sellindge.

Fanny appeared at the assizes in March 1868. William had refused to pay for a defence counsel for her, and the court had to appoint someone. In was in vain. The jury did not believe Fanny’s story that Louisa had been frightened by two horses and run away, or that she had tried to save her. The girl had drowned in less than a foot of water, and could easily have been extricated. It did not help that Fanny’s husband, both parents and a sister testified against her. After only twelve minutes the jury brought in a guilty verdict, and Fanny was sentenced to death.

Back in Maidstone prison, awaiting execution, she became sullen and ill-tempered, apparently complaining that she had been ill-used by the court. She showed no sign of remorse and instructed the Governor of the prison to write to William and tell him to stay away.

However, the tide of popular opinion, which had been against Fanny, began to turn. The Kentish Gazette of 24 March reported that she had been ‘very badly brought up and sadly neglected.’ It noted her illiteracy and complete ignorance of Christian teaching, and her good behaviour in service until she met William Kidder. He, the paper said, had behaved shamefully towards her and had treated his daughter almost as badly as Fanny had. Even worse, he had now taken one of Fanny’s sisters, a girl aged only seventeen, into his house to live with him. In Hythe, the mayor, James Watts, got up a petition for clemency to send to the Home Secretary. The citizens of New Romney did the same.

Fanny relented and dictated another letter to William asking him to visit. She had already received a visit from her parents. She did not admit her guilt to them or show any sign of contrition. The Home Secretary considered the petitions from Hythe and New Romney, but declined to intervene in the case and the execution was set for 2 April 1868.

On 1 April, Fanny’s mother and two of her sisters, one only a few months old visited. So too did William. It was a short interview. Fanny reproached him for having taken up with her sister and he left. His departure upset her, and she shrieked and wailed terribly. The prison chaplain told William to go home and remember that he was the cause of his wife’s suffering and to mend his ways. He went to the pub near the gaol instead and then back to Hythe.

His reception in the town was not a welcoming one. During the evening, a mob estimated to be three to four hundred strong paraded through the streets with an effigy of William which they burnt in front of his house while pelting the building with stones.

Executions were still public in April 1868. It was not until May of that year that legislation was passed to move the events inside the prison. On 2 April, at noon, Fanny was hanged in front of a crowd of two to three thousand people outside the main gate of Maidstone Prison, the last woman in England to be publicly executed. She had been composed during the morning, and dictated to the chaplain a letter to her parents saying she was sorry for her crime. Her last words on the scaffold were ‘Lord Jesus, forgive me’. Once dead, her body was left hanging for an hour, and then taken away for immediate burial within the prison grounds.

William Calcraft, Fanny’s executioner

William stayed in Hythe, with Emma, although it seems the relationship with Fanny’s sister did not endure. No subsequent census return shows him living with a woman, and he did not remarry, dying in 1908. He must have acquired a degree of respectability as in 1904 he was offered a place in St John’s alms house in Hythe – one of their criteria for acceptance was that the person be ‘of good character’. (1) Emma lived with him until she herself got married on 31 August 1891 in St Leonard’s church. Her husband, Benjamin Thomas Jones, was a groom working for the army in Hythe. They did not have children and lived quietly, a far as can be known, in Market Street in Hythe (now Dymchurch Road).

1. Kent Archives EK2008/2/Book 15

War and Peaceful Hythe

Henry James Schooles was born in Brussels, then part of the Netherlands, on 10 October 1815, one of the three children of Peter Schooles, a surgeon in the 81st Foot (Loyal Lincoln Volunteers) and his wife Eliza, nee Pipon. The regiment’s second battalion, of which Peter was a part, had been stationed there since Napoleon’s escape from Elba earlier that year. The regiment did not take part in the Battle of Waterloo, but it is likely that Peter was drafted in to deal with the aftermath of hundreds of injured soldiers.

Brussels in 1815, full of British soldiers

The family were moved the next year to Ireland, where another son, Philip Alexander and a daughter Louisa, were born and where Peter endowed a medical facility in Bray, Co. Wicklow. He died in 1818.

Eliza remarried the following year but was soon widowed again and lost her younger son, too. She took Henry, his sister and her daughter by her second marriage to live in Jersey, her birthplace and died herself on the island aged only 46.

Henry’s early education is a mystery, but he graduated from the University of Glasgow with an M.D. in 1837, and enlisted in the British Army on 29 June 1839, joining his father’s old regiment as an Assistant Surgeon. Army Surgeons were required not only on the field of battle, but were employed at British garrisons across the Empire to attend soldiers, their wives and families when they contracted everyday – or more exotic – diseases. Although the medical officer was commissioned and wore the uniform of his regiment, he held no military rank and was entirely under the command of the Colonel of his regiment. He had no trained staff, just a few men detailed to him from the regiment, who usually had no medical knowledge or training.

Henry served at first in Gibraltar, but the regiment was then sent to the West Indies where on 23 February 1843, he married Catherine Louisa Mordaunt Semper in St Kitts. She was the daughter of Hugh Riley Semper, a plantation owner and his wife Caroline nee Fahie. She was one of at least three sisters.

Four years later, Henry became a fully-fledged surgeon and transferred to the 1st/69th Regiment of Foot. On 12 December 1847, he and Catherine arrived in Malta. It was a challenging time to be there. There had been many cases of what was called Common Continued Fever among the men and there was great debate among the army surgeons as to whether this was, or was not, a form of cholera. Henry, who attended an autopsy of one of the dead soon after his arrival, was convinced that it was. The average strength of the garrison was 2,534 men and in 1847-8 there were 29 deaths and on average only 1,550 men were fit and available for garrison duty.

The situation worsened in Autumn 1848 and the regiment was evacuated from its quarters while the rooms were fumigated and whitewashed following deaths there.

Malta in the mid-nineteenth century

The epidemic had run its course by the next year, when Catherine gave birth to her first child, a boy called Henry Rawlins Pipon Schooles. The garrison was not a healthy place for a child: of 220 sick children admitted to the garrison hospital that year, 34 died.

But little Henry survived and the regiment left Malta in 1850 for Barbados and in December 1853, Henry transferred to the King’s Royal Rifles, an infantry regiment that fought at most of the British Empire’s significant engagements during the nineteenth century. Henry served with the second battalion, and was sent to South Africa, where another son, Frederick, and a daughter, Kate were born and then on to India.

Henry and Catherine arrived in Delhi in time for the Indian Mutiny – or First War of Independence as it is known in India, and by the end of the insurrection, Henry had been promoted Surgeon Major.

One representation of the 1857 mutiny

Then it was off to China where the regiment fought in the Second Opium Wars and assisted in the capture of the Taku (or Dagu) forts and the occupation of Peking (now Beijing).  The surgical work Henry would have done during these engagements would today be regarded as primitive. Without anaesthesia, surgeons could only amputate damaged limbs (which killed one in four patients), cut out embedded shrapnel, open skulls to remove blood clots, let blood (still popular as a ‘cure’) and splint fractures. Serious head, chest and abdominal injuries were untreatable.  If an injured man developed an infection in his wounds, it meant almost certain death.

China was followed by the more peaceful Canada, where Henry exchanged to the Staff and was appointed to the Rifle Battalion Depot in even more peaceful Winchester. In September 1864, he retired on half-pay with the honorary rank of Deputy Inspector General of Hospitals, and took the post of Medical Officer at the School of Musketry in Hythe – perhaps the ultimate in peacefulness.

The School of Musketry in Hythe, 1853-1968

He and Catherine lived with Kate in Stade Street in the town. In 1868, Henry created something of a stir by refusing to pay a pavement rate of eleven shillings and sixpence to the Town Council, because, he said, his road was not drained and had never since he had lived there, been watered either (to keep down the dust). He was summoned to appear before the local magistrates who were not sympathetic and ordered him to pay up, with costs.

Presumably he did, and he also moved the family to the more salubrious Marine Parade, where he died suddenly on 12 May 1878.

Catherine remained in Hythe for some years after his death, but later moved to Kensington to live with a widowed sister. It was there that she died in 1907.

Henry James Schooles M.D/ surgeon general/born 10th October1815/died 12th May 1878
In loving memory of/Katherine Louisa Mordaunt

Peace perfect peace

The inscription on their grave is perhaps telling of how the years of warfare took their toll.

Their children prospered. Henry junior became a barrister, married and went to his mother’s home, the West Indies. There he became Attorney General first of the Leeward Islands and later of British Honduras, before returning to Europe He was knighted in 1905 and served as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Gibraltar until his death in 1913..

Frederick was educated at a small private school in Chepstow and later joined the army.  In 1884, when a captain, he created a minor scandal by eloping with his Colonel’s wife. They were married after she had been divorced. After her death in 1902, Frederick married again and moved with his new wife to Hythe, which he remembered from his parent’s time there. They lived in Brockhill Road until at least 1939.

Kate married a few months after her father’s death to Walter Rupert Kenyon-Slaney in St Leonard’s church in Hythe. He was a lieutenant in the Rifle Brigade.  The younger brother of a well-known MP, he had a distinguished military career  before retiring to Berkshire. As a widow, Kate  also moved to Hythe before her death in 1944. Her only son, Neville, died unmarried in 1963.