Troubled Times in Hythe

The 1650s were one of the most divisive and dangerous (but possibly exciting) times to be in local government in England and Michael Lushington of Hythe was in the thick of it. Born in River, near Dover, in 1624 he had already been widowed when he moved to Hythe. In 1652, he married again and in 1653 a daughter, Alice, was born. This was the year he was first chosen as a jurat (town councillor) for Hythe. Charles I had been dead for four years and the new government was still finding its feet. In 1655, Lushington was elected as Mayor and by then Oliver Cromwell was Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland.

Oliver Cromwell

Early in his mayoralty, the town was visited by Quakers. The name ‘Quaker’ was originally an insult. They called themselves  the Religious Society of Friends. They  emphasised direct experience of God and believed that priests and rituals were an obstacle between the believer and God, who can be found in the midst of everyday life. They called churches ‘steeplehouses’, and refused to take off their hats when entering.

What made them feared was their challenge to authority, particularly that one man might have authority over another. They refused to pay tithes, they interrupted sermons, they intervened in the activities of ministers. They refused to acknowledge their elders and social superiors by removing their hats, addressed everyone as ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ and acknowledged no distinctions of class. They attracted violent antipathy.

In 1655 some London Quakers undertook a missionary visit to Kent.  At Dover they were ordered to leave and at Folkestone they were thrown out of the parish church. Undeterred and guided by God they made their way to Hythe. One of them, George Rofe, visited St Leonard’s church there during the Sunday service. According to his later complaint to the Cinque Ports Brotherhood and Guestling, he went in just as the final blessing had been delivered by the minster, William Wallace and stood before the pulpit. He was then moved by the Spirit to speak a few words to Mr Wallace. The mayor, Lushington, took this amiss, and allegedly said ‘take away this fellow’. ‘ A great multitude’ then dragged Rofe from the church and threw him down the steps of the south porch, kicking and beating him as they went. His blood, he said, ran down into his shoes, but the Mayor refused to call a parish constable to help him.

Deciding that Hythe was not ready yet for conversion, the evangelists went on to Lydd, Ashford and Tenterden, where they were welcomed. Their mission ended in being put in the stocks and whipped as vagrants in Maidstone.

Later the same year, Cromwell issued a proclamation prohibiting ‘Delinquents,’ that is anyone who had actively supported the king in any way, from holding office or having a vote in any election. In February 1656, during one of Hythe corporation’s quarterly meetings, they were unexpectedly visited by Captain Laurence Knott of Sandgate Castle who, with several of his soldiers burst into the Common Hall, flourished this proclamation and proceeded to read it aloud.  He then insisted that despite having been cleared of any offence by the County Committee, most of the corporation were, in fact, Royalists who had signed the 1648 petition to parliament to make peace with the king.  They were therefore delinquents and should give up their places on the corporation. He refused to leave the building until they had done so.  Four jurats did, along with the Town Sergeant. There was a very hasty election of replacements.

A 1735 view of Sandgate Castle. Not much of it now remains

Four years later, matters had changed.  On12 May 1660 the Proclamation of Charles II was  read at the market place, the west and east bridges and at Mr Beane’s conduit in Hythe. The new King’s Cavalier parliament passed a Corporation Act, with the aim of purging their enemies from borough governments. The responsibility for purging Hythe lay with the new Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, the Duke of York. He passed on instructions that any Royalists who had formerly been excluded from office were to be readmitted, and any who had been ‘eminently active against the King, and especially such as expressed themselves in opposition to his late happy restoration’ were to be removed.

Charles II

The winter of 1660 to 1661 saw another shake-up of the corporation.  The Lord Warden’s enforcer was Francis Vincent. A royalist of impeccable credentials, he judged that at Hythe, seven men were of ‘dangerous principles’. In early January 1661 they were ordered to be dismissed from the assembly and banned from holding all offices of trust in the corporation.

Vincent had not finished with Hythe, however, and later that month wrote again about  Michael Lushington, who ‘seven or eight years ago had spoken much to the prejudice of His Majesty and his royal father.’ Apparently, Vincent had an informer in Hythe.  Lushington was now also dismissed.  He would not take this lying down. He wrote to Hythe’s M.P. Phineas Andrews who obtained a mandamus – a court order- telling the current mayor, William Knight, to reinstate Lushington. Knight was furious and quite illegally imprisoned the unfortunate messenger who brought the legal documents, but in the end had to comply.

Then on 26 August 1662, six Commissioners for the Well Governing and Regulating of Corporations, a sort of mini-Inquisition, visited Hythe. Parliament’s Corporation Act also  sought to exclude religious dissenters (such as Quakers) from the governing bodies of towns. It demanded the taking of the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and office holders had to receive the sacrament of communion according to the rites of the Church of England.  They were also required to abjure the 1643 Solemn League and Covenant, drawn up by parliament to enable a civil and religious unification of Scotland Ireland and England. Twenty-six members of Hythe’s corporation signed. Lushington refused.

This appears to have been the end of his involvement in Hythe local politics and he moved to Folkestone, where by 1665 he had also become a jurat. Although he was reluctant to accept that the aspirations of parliament had failed, it seems that he must ultimately have accepted the rule of a monarchy.

We know that he had two sons named John, both of whom died young. The daughter Alice born in 1653 simply disappears, but another daughter, Mary, born in 1661 survived to marry Peter Bassett in 1684.  Lushington’s wife died in 1674. Of the man himself, there is no further trace, neither burial record nor will.

Details of Lushington’s career taken from the Calendar of State Papers; records of Hythe Corporation and records of the Cinque Ports Brotherhood and Guestling held at Kent Library and History Centre.

 

The General – part one

The Solly-Flood Family in Hythe 1892 – 1904

General Frederick Solly-Flood and his wife Constance arrived in Hythe in 1892, having bought the Old Manor House, which dated from the seventeenth century and lay a stone’s throw from St Leonard’s church. The general had paid £4000 for their new home. His life, and that of his family, had been peripatetic for the forty-plus years in which he had served in the British army and they must all have been grateful to put down roots at last.

The Old Manor House, Hythe

Frederick was born in 1829, one of the seven children of another Frederick Solly-Flood of Ballynaslaney House, Co. Wexford. His father practised law until gambling debts forced him to sell his practice and accept, in 1866, the post of Attorney-General in Gibraltar. This Frederick was, according to his descendants, a villain. His eldest son, Edward, on his 21^st birthday, inherited a substantial fortune from his maternal grandfather. Frederick senior deceived him into signing the whole lot over to him and then lost the lot gambling on the Derby, or so the family story goes. Others suggest that it It may not be true, but whatever the case, Edward was left in desperate straits and lived with his wife and children in Slaney Lodge, which his father had built and rented to him.

Frederick senior’s tenure in Gibraltar is remembered chiefly for one thing: the Marie Celeste mystery.  The American ship was discovered adrift and deserted off the Azores on December 4, 1872. She was brought into Gibraltar by a three-man salvage team who sought their salvage money. Frederick oversaw the legal hearings and decided, based on no evidence whatsoever, that salvage team had murdered the crew of the ship. They were eventually awarded only a fraction of what they might have expected. One historian has described Frederick senior as a man ‘whose arrogance and pomposity were inversely proportional to his IQ’ and as ‘… the sort of man who, once he had made up his mind about something, couldn’t be shifted.’

The Marie Celeste, a so-called ghost ship

Frederick junior was apparently his father’s favourite son. He was born on 19 March 1929 and at twenty years old was commissioned into the 53^rd Regiment of Foot. He was sent to India, where he would spend the next 18 years. He served first on the North-west Frontier, then in the Indian Campaign, a response to the Indian Mutiny, then helped relieve Lucknow and Cawnpore. While aide-de-camp to Sir William Mansfield during the course of several campaigns he was severely wounded. His last position in India was as Military Secretary to Lord Sandhurst, Commander-in-Chief in India. He had, by then, reached the rank of brevet-colonel.

His next posting was to Gibraltar, where his father still lived. He was Assistant Adjutant In 1884. He was then appointed Commandant of the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, promoted Major General in 1885 and in 1886 sent back to India to Poona (Pune).

Sandhurst College Muster Roll, 1885, bearing Frederick’s name as Commandant

He had managed to find time to marry, in 1863 in Bombay (Mumbai), Constance Frere. Her family were resident in Bombay, where her father, a lawyer, was a Member of Council, but were originally from Breconshire.  They had four children together: Constance May (known as May), born in 1864; Frederick Frere (Fritz, Freddie or FF) in 1867; Arthur (Artie) in 1871 and Richard (Dick) in 1877. Another son, Claude, survived only a few weeks. Only May moved with her parents to Hythe. Artie and Fritz were already serving in the Army and Dick was at Eton.

After Poona, Frederick retired and he and Constance lived for a while in London before moving first to Folkestone, where they rented a house while looking for somewhere to buy. Frederick had family living in nearby Dover – his maiden sisters Adelaide (Tita) and Frances (Fanny) and another who was widowed, Mary Brewster.  There was also a large military establishment in the area, at Shorncliffe, and Frederick had many friends and acquaintances among the officers.  Among them was Dr John Coates, former Medical Officer at the School of Musketry in Hythe, but now ‘a sad invalid.’ A fellow-Irishman, his career had stretched from the Crimean War to Bermuda to India to Malta and Gibraltar – which is presumably where he met Frederick. He lingered in failing health until 1896 and is buried in Hythe’s St Leonard’s churchyard.

Almost as soon as they moved into the Old Manor House in February 1892, the callers started arriving. Among the first was Colonel Charles Slade, Commandant of the School of Musketry which had been established in the town in 1853. There were calls to be made, too. May was assiduous in cultivating mew contacts – networking, we might say today.  Within a couple of weeks of moving in, she had called on the Halls, the Dennes,  the Hackneys, the Osbornes, the Lovegroves, the Davises, the de Hoghtons, the Mackesons,  the Hutchinsons, and the Baldwins.

The School of Musketry in Hythe in the early 20th century

The Halls and the Dennes were near neighbours, the Halls at the vicarage and the Dennes at St Leonard’s Cottage. Thomas Guppy Hall had been Vicar of Hythe since 1873 having married his predecessor’s daughter, Charlotte Sangar. The Misses Denne were maiden ladies, aunt and niece. John Hackney was a medical man as were Drs Osborne, Lovegrove and Randall Davis. It seems that May might have been seeking out the best man to attend her mother, whose health was always delicate.

Of the others, the de Hoghtons were a military family and James de Hoghton heir to a baronetcy; the Mackesons owned the town’s brewery. and the Hutchinsons and Baldwins had no need for any profession or trade – they were people of independent means.

All these folk lived in Hillside Street, a few yards from the Old Manor House, but May and her father soon cast their net wider (Constance rarely paid calls). By summer they had visited or left cards with Mrs Deedes at Saltwood Castle, with the Brockmans at Beachborough and with the Porters of Moyle Tower.  Frederick attended a garden party at Beachborough and another at Dover Castle to welcome the new Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, Frederick Temple Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava. Frederick liked to mix with titled people and always mentioned the encounters in his diary.  By September, the family felt confident enough to throw two small garden parties of their own, with croquet matches part of the entertainment.

The triple-barrelled Lord Warden

Sometimes, however, visitors were not wholeheartedly welcome. In July ‘May stayed at home to receive the Fitzclarences who had invited themselves to tea by telegraph’. The Hon. George Fitzclarence was a son of the Earl of Munster and descended from William IV and his mistress Dorothea Jordan. His wife, Lady Maria, was also an earl’s daughter. Refusing them would have been unthinkable, however bad their manners. Then In October, Frederick returned home from a walk and was ‘appalled by this room full of visitors.’

Similarly, paying calls could be tiresome, In 1893 he records ‘C & I had to dine at the vicarage to meet General & Mrs Trent-Stoughton’.

Walking was something Frederick took seriously. He walked nearly every day, whatever the weather, at least once, often twice. These were not short strolls. His morning walks were often eight miles long and he sometimes walked to Lyminge and back, a distance of about ten miles, with steep climbs. On one occasion he noted ‘walked to Folkestone Town Hall 1h 5 minutes and back in 1h 9 minutes.’ This is a distance of just over 4 miles each way with another steep climb. He was then in his seventies.  He also had a daily exercise routine.

Sometimes he was accompanied by May and often by a dog or two, of which there were a succession. They were never kept on a leash with the resultant fights with other dogs, killing of chickens (for which Frederick had to pay compensation) and running away – but always returned by kind townspeople. He did not like all pets, however, and bought Fritz an air rifle so he could ‘practice shooting at obnoxious cats’.

Gardening was another passion and one in which May joined him, though Frederick also employed a jobbing gardener, Valentine Hobday. He planted a rose garden and visited the American Garden in Saltwood in May each year to admire the rhododendrons and azaleas

The American Garden in Saltwood, still blooming today

Although Constance was often confined to her bed, Frederick seems to have enjoyed robust good health, though he did suffer periodically from ‘my old enemy, weak action of the heart.’ He consulted a doctor who told him there was nothing wrong with his heart but that he was suffering from a ‘disarrangement of the nervous system’. This set him worrying that his mind was going (it was not).

The Old Manor House was very conveniently placed for attending church services. Frederick always went on Sunday morning and often again in the evening. He also sat on the Parochial Church Council. In summer he regularly complained that the church was packed with visitors at the 11 am service, despite there now being an additional 9.30 am service for the military. On one occasion, he was caught unawares by the annual Civic Sunday event, when the mayor and councillors ousted him from his usual pew.

The whole family found the holidaymakers irksome. As well as packing the pews in church, they ‘stop the residents getting on trams & buses’ and on one occasion Constance ‘tried to go to Folkestone by tram but was too disturbed by noisy trippers’.

Frederick was quite dismissive of the town council and Hythe town life in general. The mayor in 1892 was Mr Scott – ‘a builder apparently’. One December he remarked of a torchlit procession in the town: ‘the meaning of it, if it has one, I don’t know, except an evening diversion for the lower orders it being early closing day’. (There was, in fact, no ‘meaning’: torchlight processions were briefly in vogue in the 1890s).  He wrote of the annual illuminated tableaux on the Royal Military Canal that ’they are pleased to call it a Venetian Fete’. Mrs Herbert Deedes, of Saltwood Castle ‘poses as the great lady’, he wrote. His snobbery was based not on wealth – the Deedes family were very well off – but on class and pedigree. He himself was far from rich, but his wife had been presented at court, whereas Rose Deedes had not.

To be continued…

The above is taken from the diaries of Frederick Solly-Flood, kindly lent to me by Robert Melrose of Eastbridge House, supplemented by local research and by  Bob Solly, Solly-Flood Family Notes November 1999 edition of Soul Search, the Journal of The Sole Society

 

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

 

 

 

A Tale of Two Mayors

The first Mayor of Hythe was elected in 1575, when Elizabeth 1 granted the town a royal charter. The Bailiff would be replaced by a mayor and would be supported by a town corporation with the right to own land and hold a fair. The scarcity of early records means that we know little of the early post-holders. It is not until the 17th century that they start to surface. One pair were Thomas Browning and David Gorham, who were both mayor several times in the 1620s.

The mayor was elected from among the jurats (town councillors). Browning and Gorham were of very different backgrounds.  The Brownings were gentlemen; Thomas’s uncles had been mayors and his sister had married into the influential Tournay family of Saltwood. In 1620 Thomas started his own campaign to become mayor by wining and dining his colleagues, an unsubtle tactic which did not go unnoticed by his opponents. Nevertheless, it proved successful, and he became mayor in 1621, and again in 1625.

In the meantime, David Gorham, not a gentleman but a fisherman, had been made mayor in 1623. He was also the Cinque Ports Bailiff to Yarmouth in the year of Browning’s second term of office. This was the execution of an ancient Cinque Ports right, which gave the portsmen authority over the Yarmouth fishermen during their herring ‘fare’ or fishing season, once a year.  The Bailiff, elected by the Cinque Ports’ Brotherhood and Guestling,  had the right to try criminal and commercial cases in the town during the time of the fare. During this time, court sessions were held daily rather than weekly. 

Not unnaturally, the Yarmouth men generally resented the Cinque Ports Bailiffs, and their reluctant toleration sometimes erupted into quarrelsome, if not violent, outbursts. The position was not eagerly sought after.  Quite from the chilly reception, the length of the trip must have been a deterrent. The Bailiff was expected to stay in Yarmouth from towards the end of September until early November. That was a long journey and a long time away from earning one’s livelihood, and probably time that most of the jurats could ill-afford.

In 1610, the nominee removed himself from Rye so that he no longer lived in a Cinque Port and was therefore ineligible; in 1613 another man pleaded that he was ‘too weak’; and another resigned the freedom of a Cinque port. But David Gorham, a fisherman who understood the fishing business, did his duty. 

An early view of Yarmouth….

… and a little later

He was elected mayor again himself in 1626. However, that year Browning trumped him by being selected to be one of the Cinque Ports ‘barons’ to carry the canopy at the coronation of Charles 1 in March. This was another ancient Cinque Ports right and those attending expected to sit at the Chief Table for dinner afterwards in the Great Hall at the right hand of the King. The canopy and its silver staves and bells which were provided by the Lord High Steward or Treasurer were ‘retained by the Barons as their fee’.

So there was a financial reward, but it was a right that only a well-off man could exercise. For the previous coronation in 1603, the Brotherhood and Guestling had decreed that every canopy-bearer should wear

’one scarlett gowne downe to the ancle, citizens fashion, faced with crimson satin, gascaine hose [a sort of loose breeches], crimson silk stockings and crimson silk shoes and black velvet caps.

These they had to buy for themselves and provide their own food and horse hire for the trip. The gentleman Browning could afford this; the fisherman Gorham probably could not. 

The coronation of Charles I took place on 2 February 1626.  His Roman Catholic Queen refused to participate in a Protestant ceremony. The coronation was marred by an unseemly tussle recorded by Samuel Pepys:

‘ but only the King’s Footmen had got hold of the Canopy and would keep it from the barons of the Cinque ports; which they endeavoured to force from them again but could not do it till my Lord Duke of Albermarle caused it to be put into Sir R Pye’s hand till tomorrow to be decided’.

The portsmen got their silver the next day, but in the melee, they had lost their places at the banqueting table. The king had the footmen imprisoned and dismissed.

 The beginning of 1627 saw Browning’s downfall. He was dismissed as jurat ‘for divers misdemeanours and for telling the secrets especially about the election and choosing our burgesses to Parliament and telling lies about them many times in a gross and ill manner’. This was uncompromising language, and Browning had no intention of letting it pass.  He petitioned anyone and everyone he knew, starting with the Lieutenant of Dover Castle, Sir John Hippisley, who passed the matter up to the Duke of Buckingham, the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. The corporation were required to explain themselves. While awaiting a decision, Browning sought the opinion of the Cinque Ports’ Brotherhood and Guestling – who found in his favour. They judged that the case against him was ‘weak and feeble’ and ordered that the corporation and Browning ‘reconcile themselves’ and reinstate him.  However, in 1628, Buckingham  concluded that the real reason for Browning’s dismissal was ‘his contemptuous behaviour towards Mr Gorham’.(1) That has the ring of truth.

The Duke of Buckingham in about 1625

The names of Browning and Gorham do not appear again on the list of Hythe mayors.  Browning was fined in 1629 for, with others, ‘a riot in the town’, but then disappears from the public record. David Gorham was buried in St Leonard’s churchyard in 1629. 

George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham and favourite of James I , was assassinated in August 1628. 

1 Calendar of State Papers Domestic: Charles I, 1628-29 (1859), pp. 431-438.

Other references from Hythe corporation records held at Kent History and Library Centre and from the White and Black Books of the Cinque Ports

 

Joseph Horton and the Astrologers

Joseph Horton, miller, flour merchant and ship-owner of Hythe was a businessman, hard-working and honest. The success of his enterprises allowed him to build a fine family home, ‘Rockdean’ in Hythe’s Hardways End (now St Leonard’s Road). He and his wife Fanny had three sons and Joseph became a Hythe town councillor.  They were a respectable non-conformist family, but the conventional façade hid a rather more unorthodox aspect of Joseph’s life and belief system:  astrology.

‘Rockdean’, still standing today

According to his youngest son, Joseph’s several childhood experiences of ‘narrow escapes from Death by accidents’ and then being struck by lightning when he was 17 led to a fear of the unexpected. Then, when he was 21 in about 1815. a friend lent him some books by Dr Sibly.  

This was Ebenezer Sibly, surgeon and astrologer of London who had published the New and Complete Illustration of the Celestial Science of Astrology in four volumes in 1784. Astrology was undergoing something of a renaissance after years of neglect, but now, reflecting the spirit of the Age of Reason, it was presented as being a rational science. 

Dr Sibly

Joseph was convinced by Sibly’s arguments and when he became a father, some years later  he must have wanted to spare the family the constant fear of unexpected calamity. He therefore had the boys’ horoscopes drawn up. Sibly had died in 1800, so Joseph turned to the celebrity astrologer of the day, ‘Zadkiel’.

James Morrison aka Zadkiel

‘Zadkiel’ was actually Richard James Morrison, a former Royal Navy lieutenant. After leaving the navy through ill health, he devoted himself to the study of astrology, naming himself after an archangel. In 1831 he published The Herald of Astrology (price 2 shillings) which became an annual publication under the title  Zadkiel’s Almanac. In it, the astrologer made predictions for the coming year.   Starting out as ‘Zadkiel the Seer’, by 1836 Morrison was signing himself  ‘Zadkiel Tao-Sze’. He presented himself as the Grand Master of Tao-Sze, a secret society whose aims were, appropriately, secret. The ‘Athenaeum’, in its obituary of Morrison in 1874, suggested that his death had  reduced the society’s membership to two. 

Thanks to Zadkiel’s horoscopes of the Horton offspring. we know the exact details of the births of Joseph’s sons: 

Joseph Tilbe Horton at 0947 on 24 June 1830

Benjamin Bassett Horton at 0434 on 27 May 1836

William Brown Horton at 0724 on 4 April 1839 

The horoscopes are detailed astrological charts, incomprehensible to the uninitiated, but William’s also has a narrative: 

He will have a straight & well made body, his hair will be very dark brown and his complexion rather dark and gloomy looking. He will suffer from acidity of the stomach and should take no sugar or sweets at all. He will have few children who  are likely to be cut off by sickness or sudden accident in their infancy.

Fortunately, the Horton family  still have a photo of William, and though not very clear, we can make out a slightly-built (but very straight) man with dark hair and beard. William married Anna Oldfield and together they had no fewer than eight children. Four of them were indeed cut off in their infancy: two little girls of five and two who died in August 1871, and two boys died aged  five and three in March 1876, all probably of infectious illness. The infant mortality  rate in the early nineteenth century was falling, but parents could still expect that one in three of their children would not to see their fifth birthday, so the predicted deaths of William’s children only reflects the reality of the time.  The other children grew up, though two more did die as a result of accidents: George, who drowned in the sea aged eighteen and Milly, who died as the result of a fire aged fifty-nine. 

William Brown Horton

Joseph continued to worry and his anxieties were not helped by another ‘very narrow escape from a serious accident’ in 1844, which was witnessed by his son William. 

He now consulted another  astrologer but not about his chances of being cut down in his prime. He enquired as to the advisability of insuring his ships and land property and the man he trusted to  advise him went by the name of ‘Raphael’ or more exactly ‘Raphael III’ as he had succeeded two earlier incarnations. This man was actually a Mr Medhurst  who had published Raphael’s Pythoness of the East; or, Complete Key to Futurity. It was, he claimed ‘translated from the original manuscript of the celebrated mystical divining book, formerly in the possession of Her Imperial Majesty the Empress Josephine. This extraordinary work was consulted by Prince Puckler Muskau and others, during his sojourn in England, with the most astonishing success’.  

Joseph Horton in later life

Having considered Joseph’s birth date and time and the positions of the planets, Raphael advised him to insure all his property on land, as he feared that Joseph might be the target of an incendiary attack or of  ‘lawless persons’ in an ‘excited mob’. He did not see any evil indicated with regard to the ships and did not think that there was any need to incur the expense of insuring them . 

The advice seems counter-intuitive, and it is to be hoped that Joseph ignored it. In 1845, one of his ships, the ‘Three Brothers’, coal-laden, was driven high and dry on the beach at Sandgate during a storm, though it did outlive Joseph and was finally lost on the Goodwin Sands in 1882. There are no recorded incidents of mob violence or arson attacks in Hythe in the mid-nineteenth century. 

Joseph himself died in 1873. His sons grew to adulthood and prospered. We hear no more of astrology – though it may have been a well-kept family secret. 

Sources: Kent History and Library Centre, H/U18/35/1, Horton papers

               Hythe library, Horton file, undated document annotated ‘Written by Wm, Brown               Horton ‘ 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Jacklings

On 11 August 1909, Lucy Jackling, wife of Percival Jackling, gave birth to her first child, a son, David. Nearly four years later on 10 May 1913, he was joined by a brother, Roger. The boys grew up to be talented and capable men like their father and all had a strong sense of philanthropy.

In 1909, Percy (as he was always known) and Lucy Jackling were living at ‘Lloyd’s Bank House’ at 148 (now 15) High Street Hythe. They were, in fact, living ‘over the shop’ in the accommodation provided upstairs from the bank where Percy was the manager. When Roger was still a baby, war broke out and Percy served as a captain in the Machine Gun Corps. He also helped to establish the regiment’s Prisoner of War Relief Fund of which, as a banker, he naturally became the honorary treasurer. He was awarded the CBE in 1920 for his work in the organisation.

The original site of Lloyd’s Bank in Hythe High Street

After the war, he became treasurer of the Hythe Ex-servicemen’s Association. When that was wound up in 1921, Percy made himself useful as vice-president of the Hythe British Legion and led fundraising to provide a bungalow for a severely disabled ex-serviceman.

Meanwhile, his sons were being educated locally at Seabrook Lodge Preparatory School and in 1922, the family moved up the hill to 70 North Road, Hythe. Lloyd’s Bank was moving from its premises into larger, rather grander accommodation at 62 High Street, where it remained until its closure in 2018. Percy stayed with them and also managed a sub-branch at Dymchurch. By way of leisure, he was a member of both Hythe Cricket Club and the Bowls Club and was on the committee of the Hythe Institute.

Lloyd’s Bank Hythe 1922-2018

Roger attended Felsted School and perhaps David did, too. David was articled to a firm of Folkestone solicitors and having qualified, went to work for ‘a well-known city firm’. Roger meanwhile went to London University where he achieved a Diploma in Public Administration and took part in amateur dramatic productions. Later, he passed the Law Society’s book-keeping examination.

David married his childhood sweetheart, Eileen Edwards, known as Betty in 1933. It is unclear what Roger’s occupation was, but it involved transatlantic travel and by 1938 he was living in New York where he met and married a British-Candian RADA-trained actor and journalist, Joan Tustin.

Joan Tustin

War broke out again and the brothers served their country in different ways. David joined the Coldstream Guards, eventually reaching the rank of Colonel. He was Chief of the Plans and Operations Division at Allied Forces HQ from September 1943 to July 1945  and also worked on relief programmes for Yugoslavia, Albania and Greece. Later, he worked for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in Germany and he was awarded the OBE and the US Legion of Merit in 1947.

Roger, meanwhile, had joined the British diplomatic service in 1939 as acting vice-consul in the British consulate in New York.  His abilities and energy were soon recognised – he became known as ‘crackerjackling’ – and after a brief spell in Ecuador he was posted to the embassy at Washington DC, where he remained until 1947.

After the war, David, who had a strong dislike of socialism, became the Conservative Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for North Kensington, but stood down before the General Election ‘for health and other reasons’.  In fact, North Kensington was not his first choice, which was the Hythe constituency, but he was not selected there, being defeated by Brigadier Harry Ripley Mackeson, scion of the brewing family.

He and Betty diivorced, and in 1948, he married Margaret Beyfus.

Roger was also back in the UK, working for the cabinet secretariat of Prime Minister Clement Atlee. From there he went to The Hague and to Bonn, then the capital of West Germany, as economic adviser and later minister.

He then spent some time in London working for the cabinet secretariat of Clement Atlee and went from there to The Hague and back to Bonn.

Percy died in 1954 in Patrixbourne, near Canterbury, where he had retired.  During these last years, he devoted much time to the Friends of the Kent and Canterbury Hospital.  David, too, was involved in helping hospital patients, in his case those of the Princess Louise Hospital for Children in Kensington for whom he arranged a permanent holiday home in Littlehampton.

David worked as a business consultant during the 1950s and lived in Lymington, Hampshire. On 26 May 1960 he drove to Lymington Police Station, parked his car outside and shot himself in the head, dying instantly. He left five notes to family members and it appears that he had money worries. His brother told the inquest that these could easily have been resolved if only David had told him.

David Jackling in 1940

By then, Roger was once again based in the USA, as Assistant Under-Secretary in Washington.  In 1965, the year in which he was knighted, he was President of the Security Council. He returned to Bonn as Ambassador in 1968 and over the next four years held negotiations with the other allies, resulting in the Four Powers Agreement in 1971. He led the UK delegation to the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea from its inception in 1973 until he retired in 1976.

Sir Roger Jackling

Sir Roger retired to America, where he died in 1986.

 

A Titanic Memorial in Hythe

In dear memory of Edward Pomeroy Colley/ Born 15 April 1875, Entered into Eternal/Life 15 April 1912 through the sinking/of the Steamship “Titanic”/Whoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it

Hythe Civic Society Elizabeth Bowen (writer) lived here 1965-1973

Two memorials, two names: Edward Colley and Elizabeth Bowen, one inside St Leonard’s church, Hythe, the other just yards away on the wall of a house on Church Hill. What is the connection?

Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen was born on 7 June 1899 in Dublin, the daughter of barrister Henry Bowen and his wife Florence nee Colley. Both families were part of the extensive network of Irish gentry and her father owned Bowen Court in County Cork, where Elizabeth spent her summers.  Her father became mentally ill in 1907 and her mother took her to live in England. They lived for a while in Lyminge, near the church, but eventually settled in ‘Clyne House’, in North Road, Hythe.

Florence Isabella Bowen nee Colley

They were probably the first tenants after the house had been ravaged by fire in January 1911. The owner, Frederick Butler, was called away from a Town Council meeting when a candle in the nursery set the curtains on fire.  Mrs Butler rescued the children, but the roof and top storey were destroyed.

Cline House after the fire….

… and in its later years

Florence already had family living in England and one sister, Constance, had become a medical doctor there. However, Constance became ill, probably with TB and in 1911 was in a sanatorium in Henley. By 1912, about the time that Florence and Elizabeth moved to Hythe, Constance was in Folkestone, possibly for the sea air. If so, it was ineffective, and she died in the town on 15 February 1912. She was buried in Folkestone (Cheriton Road) cemetery.

Dr Constance Colley’s grave in Folkestone

On 6 April that year, the youngest brother of Constance and Florence, Edward Pomeroy Colley, visited ‘Clyne House’.  A university-educated civil servant in his mid-thirties, he had, during the Klondike Gold Rush, opened a successful mining brokerage firm in Vancouver. Now he had business interests on both sides of the Atlantic and frequently travelled between Dublin and a home in Vancouver.  He had been in Ireland for Christmas 1911, and was planning to return to Canada to work as a consultant to the industrialist and politician James Dunsmuir.

Edward Pomeroy Colley

After a short stay in Hythe, he travelled to London and from there to Southampton, where he boarded the Titanic. He died on his thirty-seventh birthday.

More tragedy was to follow. In September 1912, Florence Bowen died of cancer aged forty-eight at ‘Clyne House’.  She is buried in Saltwood churchyard.

Florence Bowen’s grave, the stone identical to that of her sister

Elizabeth went to live in Harpenden with her aunt Laura Colley, who was housekeeper to her brother, the Rev’d. Wingfield Colley, curate in charge of St John’s Church in the town.

Elizabeth’s career as a novelist is well documented elsewhere as are her mariage blanc and her lovers. Later in life, now widowed, she returned to Hythe. On the face of it, it was an odd decision. Her short time in the town as a child must have been associated with the loss of her mother, aunt and uncle and she chose to live in a house, ‘Carbery’, only a stone’s throw from ‘Clyne House’, just around the corner.  Her old home was then still standing, though it was later demolished and replaced by a block of flats.

Elizabeth Bowen

It was in Hythe that Elizabeth wrote her last novel, ‘Eva Trout’, published in 1969. The protagonist experiences, as Elizabeth did as a child, the shock of relocation from Ireland to the Kent seaside, although she settles in Broadstairs rather than Hythe. But the flat, windswept hinterland of Thanet is not dissimilar to the Romney Marsh and the estate agent who sells Eva Trout her house is Mr Denge. It is a name with a local flavour:  Denge Marsh lies between Lydd and Dungeness.

Elizabeth also arranged for the brass wall plaque in St Leonard’s in memory of her uncle. He has another in the church at Harpenden, where Elizabeth passed her teenage years.

In 1972, Elizabeth spent Christmas in Ireland with friends, but became unwell and was hospitalised on her return. She was diagnosed with lung cancer and died at University College Hospital on 22 February 1973, aged 73. She is buried with her husband in St Colman’s churchyard in Farahy, near the site of Bowen’s Court, which had been demolished in 1960. 

Elizabeth is buried with her husband, Alan Charles Cameron

Thanks to Iris Pearce for the information about Clyne House and to Rita Weisz for finding Florence Bowen’s grave

Four Daughters

The father of the family, Absalom Pelue, settled in Hythe after he left the army in 1877. He was a long way from his original home. He had been born in St Erth in Cornwall in about 1833 one of the seven children of a copper miner. This was the occupation he and his brothers turned to as well, until in 1856 he joined the Scots Fusiliers in Aberdare. The Rhondda is a long way from Cornwall and it is possible he had travelled there to take work as a coal miner, but thought better of it. From his army records, we know that Absalom was a big man for the time: five feet eleven inches tall with a forty-inch chest.

He spent most of his service in England, but was posted to Canada for just over two years in the 1860s, There he married Bridget Creed, who had been born in Montreal in 1844. When he brought her home, it was to the School of Musketry in Hythe, to which he transferred in 1865. It had only been set up a dozen years earlier, but now had an established staff.

Hythe in the 19th century

The couple’s four daughters were Catherine Margaret (or sometimes Margaret Catherine) born 1865, Frances Ann Jemima , 1867; Emily, 1869; and Isabella Mary (or Mary Isabella), 1871. Perhaps because of their father’s military career, two of the women married soldiers themselves and five of Absalom’s grandsons joined the armed forces.

After leaving the army, Absalom worked as a labourer and the family lived in St Leonard’s Road and later Park Road in Hythe. He died in 1896 and is buried in St Leonard’s churchyard. Bridget took work as a sick nurse with Mrs Constantine nee Finnis, a widow.

Catherine Margaret married Charles William Middleton, a house painter,  in Farnborough in January 1893. He was only twenty and the bride lopped four years off her age. They went back to Hythe and lived in Chapel St and had three sons and two daughters. Later they moved to Market Street, now Dymchurch Road.

Catherine & Charles lived in part of this building  in Market Street

On 6 September 1885, at St Leonard’s church Hythe, Frances, or ‘Fanny Annie; as she signed herself, married a twenty-six-year-old soldier. He was Theophilus William Turner from Bristol. Theophilus gave his residence as Aldershot where his regiment was now based. The previous year, it had been at Shorncliffe, but when the order came to decamp to  Aldershot, Theophilus had deserted. Perhaps it was for love of Fanny. ‘Fanny Annie’ sounds like the affectionate  name her family, or perhaps just Theophilus, used.

The wedding was a matter of some urgency as Fanny was pregnant – with twins as it turned out. Francis Theophilus and William James were baptised in St Leonard’s in  April 1886. By then, Theophilus had left the army, but was still on the reserve list. The next year, Frances Theresa was born, then Isabella Katherine Alice in 1889. Shortly afterwards, the family moved to Plaistow. Another daughter, Lilley was born,  Edith Marie followed in 1894 but died aged two.

Theophilus had now become a house painter, like his brother-in-law Charles Middleton and joined the Amalgamated Society of House Decorators and Painters. In fact, he became the treasurer of the Plaistow branch. One day in July 1896, he stole the branch’s funds of £10.5s.8d and got on a train to Bristol. He said later ‘It was all through the drink. I did not know where I  was until I got to Bath’.  He travelled on to Bristol and having spent the entire amount handed himself in at a  police station in August. Meanwhile, his frantic wife had reported him missing.

A police officer from Limehouse travelled down to arrest him. Theophilus said he was very sorry and had never been in trouble before (forgetting his desertion, presumably). In court, he offered no defence and it was reported that he was previously of a very good character. His Union said it was prosecuting with reluctance. Theophilus was sentenced to twenty-one days hard labour.

We don’t know if drink was an ongoing problem or if this was a momentary aberration, but by 1899 the family had separated.  Frances had returned to live in Hythe  with her children. Her father had died, but her mother and sister still lived in the town.

Frances lived in a tiny house in Theatre Street, where she took in washing. She now had another child, George Robert, born after her return to the town. The house was not big enough for all the children: Francis (Frank) lodged with his aunt Catherine and her family in nearby Chapel Street and worked as a groom at the School of Musketry;  His twin, William, lived with their grandmother, Bridget Pelue, in Park Road and worked as a gardener; their sister, Frances junior, went into service at the Wilberforce Temperance Hotel in Hythe High Street – she was only thirteen.

The Wilberforce Temperance Hotel

The twins, aged fifteen, joined the army as soon as they could, signing up to the 1st Battalion, the Scots Guards, in  November 1901.

In April 1904, Frances sent George, her youngest, off to school for the afternoon after his dinner break at home. At about 5.30pm, her neighbour called round to ask if he was back yet. A child had fallen into the Royal Military Canal,  she said.  George’s body was recovered from under Scanlon’s Bridge. He had been playing at fishing with a friend and slipped into the water. Desperate attempts were made by Dr Arthur Randall Davis to resuscitate him, without avail. The banks were not fenced and at the inquest, a recommendation was made that there should be some sort of barrier to prevent a recurrence. Frances was devastated by the death, sobbing throughout the inquest. The boy is buried with his grandfather, Absalom Pelue, in St Leonard’s churchyard, Hythe.

The canal in Hythe in the early twentieth century

Frances later moved to a larger house in Frampton Road and hired herself out as a nurse, an occupation her mother had followed.

In 1911, the twins Frank and William were serving as drummers in Egypt. The regiment returned home in 1913, but in 1914, formed part of the British Expeditionary Force. By then, Frank was a Lance-Corporal. He embarked from Southampton on 13 August 1914 and was reported missing during the first Battle of Ypres. He had in fact been taken prisoner. He died of wounds and ‘traumatic tetanus’ in Reserve Hospital, Halberstadt, Germany on 17 November 1914 and is buried at Niederzwehren Cemetery. His twin survived the war.

Frank Turner

Frank’s grandmother, Bridget Pelue, collected his medals in 1922 – the British War Medal, Victory Medal and 1914  Star. It was also she who arranged for a brass plaque in his memory to be erected in St Leonard’s church.

The memorial to Frank in St Leonard’s church

Bridget spent her last years in St Bartholomew’s Hospital in Hythe and died in 1926.

Bridget’s last home, St Bartholomew’s Hospital in Hythe

Her third daughter, Isabella Mary had married in September 1890, George Robert Hackford in St Leonard’s church. He was a sergeant in the Lincolnshire Regiment  based at Shorncliffe. A son, another George, was born later that year. A daughter,  Caroline followed a year later,  then a son Charles born in Aldershot,  a daughter  Isabella Mary in Malta, a son Frank (who died as a baby) in Cairo, and another son Robert in Lincoln. George senior, now a sergeant-major  took his discharge in 1906 and went to live in Derbyshire. His wife Isabella died two years later in 1908, perhaps while visiting Hythe, as her address was given as 4 Windmill Street in the town. George later re-married and ran a working men’s club in Chesterfield where his niece, Lilley Turner, worked for him. All three of his sons joined the armed forces, the eldest dying of pneumonia in India aged nineteen.

The youngest Pelue daughter married Filmer Thomas Shaw, a labourer, in St Leonard’s church on 27 July 1903. Their only child died young. They lived in Albert Road, Hythe. Filmer died in 923, Emily in 1942.

I thought when I started this how easy it would be to research the name ‘Pelue’ as it is so unusual. How foolish of me. The family’s name has turned up being spelt or transcribed as ‘Pellow’, ‘Pellew’, ‘Pillow’ ‘Peliewe’,  ‘Pelve’ and ‘Pelne’.  

 

 

 

 

The Strongman

In February 1949, Alfred Woollaston died in the County Hospital in Ashford. A sixty-nine year old widower, he had lived in North Road in Hythe since just after the war. He was now past his prime and the war years had not been kind to him, but at the turn of the century, launching his career in the music hall, he had been described as ‘a most beautifully proportioned athlete’ .

His stage name was ‘Monte Saldo – The Young Hercules’.

 

Alfred Woollaston aka Monte Saldo

He was born Alfred Montague Woollaston in Holloway, London, on 23 December 1879, the fourth child of George Frederick Woollaston, a boot maker, and his wife Adelaide. He  became interested in body building in his teens, but his first job, which he started in 1895 was more prosaic: he worked as a booking clerk for the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway at their office in Brighton‘s Grand Hotel.

The job only lasted a couple of years before he was taken on by Eugene Sandow, a German strongman who specialised in ‘muscle display performances’ and included both Alfred and his younger brother Frank in his touring show. They were now known as Monte and Frank Saldo.

A fellow performer was Italian bodybuilder Ronco; together he and Alfred devised their own strongman stage act, ‘Ronco & Monte’.  They toured Europe and had a six month contract at the Royal Aquarium in London. Then Alfred got together with Frank and another brother, Edwin, to form a new act, ‘The Montague Brothers’. They appeared at the London Hippodrome and in Europe.

One routine was a great crowd-puller. A Darracq car, complete with passengers, was driven onto the stage, up a ramp and onto a bridge. The ramp and supports were removed leaving Alfred, underneath a section of the bridge, supporting the entire weight of the vehicle and its contents. In 1906 they introduced an ‘artistic’ routine ‘The Sculptor’s Dream’ which involved Frank and Alfred acting as mirror images of a statue and Edwin taking the part of the dozing sculptor.

The brothers’ joint enterprise was short-lived: Frank became a successful lyricist and Edwin ran a café. Alfred opened the Apollo-Saldo Academy in London, together with William Bankier, a wrestling promoter known professionally ‘Apollo the Scottish Hercules’. He next, in 1909, got together with German strongman Max Sick (Maxick) to develop what they called the  Maxaldo system of exercise and muscle control. Maxick was interned at the start of World War One and the business arrangement came to an end. Alfred for a time carried on alone.

Maxick

Then  he joined forces with one Mark Lemon, changed the name of the system to Maxalding and took offices in Golders Green Their method, they claimed ‘makes Men more Virile, Magnetic, Courageous, and Successful. makes Women more Attractive, Beautiful and Magnetic’. The advertising must have worked as in 1923 they took premises in London’s Pall Mall. This was a step too far and was too expensive. In 1926 they were declared bankrupt.  Although undoubtedly a fine athlete, Alfred was perhaps a less than astute businessman. 

Alfred continued to advertise the system until his death and to describe himself as a teacher of physical culture. In 1937 he published a book, How to Excel at Games and Athletics. He left London, moving the family to Shepherdswell, near Dover. His son Frederick (later known as Court Saldo)  visited Folkestone during this time. However, the family was in London in 1941 when Alfred’s wife was killed during a bombing raid and Alfred himself was badly injured. His younger son was killed in action in 1944.

The older son, Frederick, seems to have taken on what was left of his father’s business and continued promoting Maxalding until the 1970s.

 

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Charles Latham, Farmer-Knight

Charles George Latham was born at the Coastguard station in Hythe on 26 January 1882, the sixth child of Thomas Latham, a coastguard and his wife Isabella. Both his parents were Irish; his father had joined  the Royal Navy a Boy Sailor, and transferred to the Coastguard in 1873. Thereafter, he served in Cork and Dymchurch before arriving in Hythe.  Although not yet forty, he took his pension in 1883, perhaps through ill health, as he died in July the next year.  Isabella, widowed with eight children seems to have moved to London, where she died herself in 1889. Charles was just seven.

The next year, the four youngest children were sent to Australia – Sarah, aged ten; Violet, nine, Charles and little Alfred aged only five.  The older children were either already there or arrived soon afterwards. They settled in Hay, sited approximately midway between Sydney and Adelaide.  Although there is much scandal around the transportation of orphans to Australia in the nineteenth century, the Latham children seem to have thrived and Charles certainly went to school in Hay. All the children eventually married and had families of their own.  Charles himself married Marie Louisa von Allwörden on 24 June 1903 , in Hay

The couple moved to Western Australia to take up 1,000 acres of land east of Perth. Farming here was difficult and not helped by a severe drought in 1914. Charles cleared salmon gum, gimlet and morrell by chopping and burning and battled the drought by carting water. He shot the kangaroos which ate his first crops and put up fences against rabbits; and he carted supplies fifty miles from the railhead. Eventually he had a successful wheat farm.

The vast tracts of wheat land around Narembeen, where Charles settled

His later military records tell us that Charles was a tall, well-built man,  standing six feet tall and weighting a hundred and eighty pounds.

When war broke out. Charles joined up as a volunteer in the First Australian Imperial Force in March 1916. He was assigned to the 16th battalion and in October sailed from Fremantle. He arrived in Plymouth on 2 December.  From there, he was sent to Tidworth Camp, on the edge of Salisbury Plain, where he qualified as an instructor at the Bombing School and was promoted to Corporal. Then he travelled to Folkestone, only five miles from his birthplace in Hythe. In March 1918, he was back in England, having been wounded by gunshot and admitted to the Fort Pitt Military Hospital in Chatham, before returning to France in September 1918.  During his long convalescence, was he able to revisit his boyhood haunts? Perhaps.

His older brother Thomas, serving with the same Force, was killed in action in 1917. His body was not recovered and he is commemorated on the Villiers-Bretonneux memorial.

Charles ended his war as a sergeant and returned to Western Australia, where he soon doubled his land holding. Even before the war, he had started to take an interest in politics, and in 1920 joined the newly-formed Country Party. The next year he became its Member of the Legislative Assembly of Western Australia. The party’s general position on social matters was centre-right, but it favoured socialist economic policies for agriculture,  including support for farmers through government grants and subsidies or through community appeals.

Charles George Latham

In 1930 Charles became the parliamentary leader of the Country Party and continued his crusade for farmers’ rights. Later that year, under his leadership, the party joined with the National Party and he served as deputy Premier of Western Australia from from 1930 to 1933. From 1933 to 1942 he was the Leader of the Opposition. At that point, he resigned to fill a vacancy in the Senate, but lost the 1943 election.

He was back in Parliament in 1946 and served as Minister for Agriculture in 1952-3, finally retiring at the age of of seventy-eight in 1960.

Charles in later life

Throughout his political career, Charles was pro-British. In a speech in 1942 he said:  I am an Englishman, and proud of it. No matter what Australia does, we can never repay the Old Country for what it has done for us. Not afraid of hard work himself, and proud of his achievements since he arrived in Australia  as an eight-year-old orphan, he had little sympathy for the unemployed. During the Depression of the 1930s he suggested to Premier James Mitchell that a fire hose be turned upon a large crowd demonstrating outside the Treasury Building. His advice was not taken.

He was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1948. This Order was founded by George III in 1818 and is awarded to British subjects who have rendered extraordinary and important services abroad or in the Commonwealth.

A widower since 1946, Charles died on 26 August 1968, survived by his two sons and their families.