Author: mark

Facebook post #051 (6 Jan 2021)

On this day in 1966, my Grandad, John Squire, died suddenly. It was my Gran’s birthday. And it was Epiphany – a wise man was missing at my cradle 5 months later.

Here is his obituary from the Lancet.

The photo is from the Journal of Pathology. (See also posts 29, 42 and 52)

The Lancet also covered John’s illustrious medical career at some length but, on a more personal note, contributions to the obituary noted that he “had a magnificent brain, dynamic energy, and unflagging enthusiasm. He could absorb and retain knowledge with a celerity and ease that was the envy of all who knew him, and he had an unerring capacity to see things clearly, to focus on what was important in any problem and yet never to overlook anyone or any detail.” He recognised new and important developments early, and was excited by developments in computing and automation. “…few are as loved as John Squire was loved… he was a sensitive and indeed emotional man.” He would “tell of his delight in his family… or of going out on a snowy night to feed his daughters’ ponies.” Both commentators described him as nearly irreplaceable as any man might be.

The John Squire Library still exists at Northwick Park.

Facebook post #050 (Jan 2021)

Almighty God, by whose mercy I am permitted to behold the beginning of another year, bless me with thy help and favour. Mitigate, if it shall seem best unto thee, the diseases of my body, and calm the disorders of my mind. Dispel my terrors, and grant that the time which thou shalt yet allow me, may not pass unprofitably away. Let not pleasure seduce me, idleness lull me, or misery depress me.

Samuel Johnson

Happy New Year those who are following… I thought I’d be done by now but there are still a few gaps on Mum’s side, including that metal-bashing story I left hanging last month. But first… I was the first Wheaver born out of the Birmingham orbit since its industrialisation. Lichfield, Staffordshire, is a whole 8 miles due north of Sutton (centre of the universe) and 30 miles due east of Dawley, home of the Lamberts and Captain Webb.

It wasn’t known at the time that our Barnes ancestors (after whom some of us are still being named) were rooted in the Stafford area. They had been prosperous but this was a period of agricultural depression. Our Charles may have eloped into Peaky Blinder country: the 180-acre family farm was inherited by his younger brother. He kept his dignity (a farmer’s bailiff and a gentleman) but sold the farm (pic). Another brother was jailed for forging a receipt, took over the Goat pub in Liverpool, and went bankrupt. Another worked up to being a miller in his own right but ended up administering poor relief. A sister married a conductor on the Grand Junction Railway who became a tea dealer, and then died of pulmonary consumption at age 36. Charles’ sister, Mary, married a farmer whose farm size halved between 1871 and 1881 and disappeared by 1891.

Mary’s daughter was widowed young and became a barmaid at the Smithfield Hotel, Lichfield (built for the railway in 1848 – pic). She married the owner and took over the hotel when she was widowed again. The hotel was built over by Tesco in 2007.

Her son, Samuel Heath (pic), was a grocer’s traveller who became Sheriff of Lichfield and married the daughter of the Lichfield Brewing Company. The brewer gave the land which allowed the workhouse to expand into Victoria Cottage Hospital (pic), and later the maternity ward. I just missed being born in that ward, it having moved a stone’s throw away five years earlier. The new hospital (pic) was also knocked down in 2007.

Lichfield was also birthplace to the great lexicographer (and composer of New Year’s prayers), Sam Johnson (pic).

Three of my photos – see ‘pages’ for other credits.

Facebook post #049 (Dec 2020)

Where did the Kings of England always spend Christmas?

The National Portrait Gallery has a portrait of Henry Roberts, nephew of gt-gt-grandmother Brittain, the glassmaker’s wife from last week’s post. In 1891, he was a librarian at an early public library in Durham in 1891. By 1901, he’d moved 300 miles south to Southwark, and in 1907, 50 miles further to Brighton.

Possibly by coincidence, there were other Meaden family members in town. Certainly by coincidence, my gt-grandmother Wheaver had a first cousin who was a heavy blacksmith at the Railway Works (which pre-dated even Swindon’s)(pic). And another first cousin became the inaugural orchestra leader on Brighton West Pier (post 28) in 1916.

The Brighton move was a definite promotion for Henry though – by 1911, he was Director of the Public Library, Museums and Fine Art Galleries for Brighton Borough Council! The main collections had been housed in the old stables of the Royal Pavilion, specially extended ten years earlier.

When war intervened, Henry was closely involved in the decision to hand the Pavilion over to the authorities for use as a military hospital. 12,000 Indian soldiers were treated there. As he observed, it was “necessary to arrange that men from every one of the fighting classes… could be taken in, possibly large numbers of different castes at the same time; yet each must find within the hospital the possibility of living according to his own custom and religion.” This means that he opened what was probably Brighton’s first vegetarian restaurant…

The British Library has a copy of a book he edited, A Short History in English, Gurmukhi & Urdu of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, and a Description of it as a hospital for Indian soldiers, 1915. After the war, the Pavilion was used to rehabilitate disabled soldiers. In 1918, he was Honorary Secretary of the Inter-Allied Exhibition which explained this work; Henry was given an MBE.

After this work was complete, Henry became the first Director of the Royal Pavilion Estate. From 1920, he oversaw the restoration of the Pavilion and the neighbouring Corn Exchange. His work included improvements to the dome theatre, removing post-1864 decorations, and extending the public areas around the Pavilion. Randomly, he was made a chevalier of the Order of the Crown of Italy…

In 1939, he wrote the definitive book on the Pavilion, The History of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton. He describes how the building met its original purpose as a seaside retreat for George, Prince of Wales. Brighton was a place where George could discretely meet his Catholic girlfriend, Mrs FitzHerbert. This is mentioned in passing by our Henry, whose preferred explanation for the choice of Brighton was a prescription for sea air for a glandular affliction.

The building’s distinctly Unregency “Indo-Saracenic” appearance, detailed in the book, had not been completed by John Nash by the time George became King. However, he and his successor, William IV, continued to spend their winters there.

Queen Victoria, however, was not amused by the fanciful Pavilion and observed of Brighton that “the people here are very indiscreet and troublesome”. Since the coming of the railway, Brighton was much less of a retreat. She had Osborne House built as a replacement, and in 1845, it took vigorous lobbying to prevent the Pavilion being sold off privately. It passed to the Council who held it until 2020, when it passed to a charitable trust.

Footnote: the buildings deteriorated during WWII, but were rescued all over again by successor librarian/curator Clifford Musgrave, who was given the OBE for his efforts, and wrote another definitive history. Clifford was probably a distant relative on Mum’s side (though sadly not as close as some researchers thought!).

The pics are mine.

Facebook post #047 (Dec 2020)

So, we left 3rd gt-grandparents Charles and Maria Brittain in 1851, he a silver plater. But in the 1861, 1871 and 1881 censuses, they lived on the other side of the Jewellery Quarter, and – somehow – had become chaplain to the workhouse and the asylum!

The asylum had opened in 1850, and would close, as All Saints Hospital hospital, in 2000; all but the entrance block was demolished (pic). This is listed, and provides office space behind the wall of Winson Green Prison, where David Meaden was governor (post 45). Thirty years after it opened, another was built down the road at Rubery. It was here that our unfortunate Samuel Wheaver ended his days in shell shock (post 42).

Birmingham Union Workhouse (pic) was the other side of the canal, and could accommodate 700 adults and 300 children. An infirmary was built in 1887, to a design championed by Florence Nightingale. She had overseen the introduction of trained nurses into the workhouse system: their predecessors were caricatured by Dickens in ‘Mrs Gamp’ (pic). The fear of ending up in the workhouse would have been palpable; our unfortunate Benjamin Weaver (whose descendant married Charles’s) ended his days down the road in the Aston Union Workhouse in 1881 (post 24). The Birmingham site was redeveloped as the City Hospital in the late C20.

Charles and Maria had 14 children, and the church dominated their lives. They sent two of their daughters to the Clergy Daughters School – it had moved to Westmorland since the time two of the Brontë sisters died of TB at the school. One of these daughters later became a school mistress, the other a governess who married a vicar in Canada; another daughter married the vicar of Cleeve Prior, Worcestershire.

One of the sons used his clergy education to become a teacher of the classics. Two others became clergymen, one having started in engineering. Another son founded an Augustine Mission in Fulham, became Canon of Madras Cathedral in India, and ended up as vicar of Whittlebury-cum-Silverstone in Northamptonshire (pic – Ian Rob). Our Charles Edward became a commercial clerk – more of him next week.

If you prefer preachers of the ‘hellfire and damnation’ variety, we have them too. Daniel Lambert (whose grandson married Charles Edward’s granddaughter) had a sister Jane. While Daniel taught at a British school, for pupils of “every Religious Persuasion”, Jane taught at a rival National School, which stressed Anglican religious education.

She was also a lay preacher, and in 1876 in Shropshire, she married a Primitive Methodist minister. “As a preacher, [he] belonged to the evangelical school, preaching a full, free, and present salvation; his sermons were carefully prepared and forcefully delivered.” I found them in Buckingham in the 1901 census, and realised that I’d photo’d his chapel (pic), unaware of any connexion. Then I found a list of his former postings, and that I’d photo’d his chapel at Oswestry too.

Facebook post #046 (Dec 2020)

Family tree post 46. In the C19, Birmingham was the workshop of the world. After generations in Knowle, Warwickshire (see post 41), Edward Brittain moved into Birmingham, probably for work. He married Mary Plant in Edgbaston (where development was restricted) in 1813. Of his children, baptised at St Philip’s, later the Cathedral, Charles married Maria Hill in in 1836 in Sutton Coldfield.

These days a chunk of central Birmingham, to the north-west of the cathedral, is known as the ‘Jewellery Quarter’, acknowledged as modern centre of jewellery and a place of unique character in the world for its particular combination of structures associated with jewellery and metalworking. But it was not the jewellery business which brought the Brittain and Larard families together. While it is true that jewellery businesses clustered together to collaborate, the range of small metal products extended from badges to whistles to fittings for beds, doors and coffins. All that glittered in Brummagem was not solid gold or silver.

By 1841, when the couple were 20, he was a silver plate worker, very likely at the Soho Manufactory, an early factory, north west of the Jewellery Quarter, which pioneered mass production. It operated from 1766, was the first site with a Watt steam engine in 1782, and closed in 1848. His brother Edward and cousin George were also silver platers: by 1851, electro-platers. This was a new industry, the new Elkington process having been patented in Birmingham in 1840, and using electric generators from 1844 (surviving part of the Elkington building pictured).

1851 was the year of the Great Exhibition: alongside the iron products (see post 33), electroplated goods were prominent. The process was based on potassium cyanide as an electrolyte, the same highly toxic compound used by Larard gold prospectors – and, famously, as a suicide pill.

It’s worth noting in passing that the Lambert family (post 27) were still making iron. One of Jesse’s iron founder sons was to move from Shropshire to the Jarrow and then Stockton, another to Stoke-on-Trent (my photo is of a sculpture paying tribute to the industry there). One of his daughters was a servant in the great house in Coalbrookdale, overlooking the world’s largest foundry. There is more to come on the Squire side too.

Charles and Maria Brittain moved to Bath Street, now in the ‘Gun Quarter’ (just east of the Jewellery Quarter) , near the Gunmakers’ Arms. His cousin Edward made pistols for Tranter, a precursor to BSA, but Charles’ career took an altogether different path, of which more anon.

Facebook post #044 (Nov 2020)

So, I promised you disaster. (See also the Wharncliffe Woodmoor colliery explosion in post 16 and the response to sinking of the Titanic in post 40). Last week, in my family war memorial – as well as the Somme, Ypres, Gallipoli, Monte Cassino, the R.38, and the RNAZ Dakota calamity – my post included the devastating explosion of HMS Princess Irene (pic 3) at Sheerness in 1915, which killed 352, including a cousin. There had been worse.

On 4 September 1878, John Marsh of Clerkenwell was an early witness at an inquest. He formally identified his deceased mother-in-law Zillah Waddilove, my 4th great aunt. She had been on a St John’s Mission Bible outing which had gone badly wrong. It was a treat from Susannah Law, a wealthy and generous woman, who had promised the poor women in her Bible group a day out. It was to be on 5 September but on seeing what a beautiful day it was on 3 September, she declared “Today’s the Day!”

Zillah née Teager had already had a tough life. She had lost three children in 1848, probably in the cholera epidemic of that year. She lived in St Giles, a focus of infection; the area gets a mention by Charles Dickens:

How many who, amidst this compound of sickening smells, these heaps of filth, these tumbling houses with all their vile contents, animate and inanimate, slimily overflowing into the black road, would believe that they breathe this air?

The Old Curiosity Shop (1841)

Zillah’s husband died in 1854; a year later, she married John Waddilove in St Giles. By 1861, John was a pork butcher; the couple lived at 17 Aylesbury St, Clerkenwell, a stone’s throw from William Larard’s shoe business. There is no known connexion between the families but William’s brother’s grandson (Ernest Larard) and John’s sister’s granddaughter (Gerty Brittain) were my gt-grandparents. They married in Birmingham in 1900. By further coincidence, my Dad worked on one adjoining street in Clerkenwell in the 1970s, and I worked on another in the 1980s. (See post #025).

Back to Zillah, forward to 1878. The vessel of choice for the day out was the smart paddle steamer pleasure-craft, the SS Princess Alice, named after Queen Victoria’s daughter. She weighed 432 tons gross. Princess Alice’s destination was Sheerness – the same port where Princess Irene met her fate. Londoners could escape to the seaside there away from the Great Stink. Some passengers alighted at the resort of Gravesend, others at the Pleasure Gardens at Rosherville. The atmosphere was happy: people were chattering about the terrible rail collision at Sittingbourne three days earlier, and glad to be on the water instead of on the rails.

Princess Alice left Rosherville at about 6:30 pm on the final leg of her return to Swan Pier, by London Bridge. A little over an hour later, there was a terrible pre-echo of the Marchioness Disaster from my time in Clerkenwell. The Princess Alice was struck amidships by a much larger vessel, the 1376 tons collier SS Bywell Castle. The smaller boat had no chance, and sank quickly, trapping many below decks. The crew of the Bywell Castle and boatmen from local factories did what they could, saving about 130 people. By the time the Princess of Alice’s sister ship arrived ten minutes later, there was no one left to save.

Some of those rescued died from ingesting the water. The miraculous Crossness Pumping Station, which had helped deliver London from Cholera, had – as usual – that day pumped 75 million gallons of decomposing raw sewage into the Thames close to the collision point. The gas works and chemical factories discharged to that stretch of the Thames, and there had been a fire that day, resulting in oil and petroleum entering the River.

There was no manifest, so it is not known how many died, but it was between 600 and 700, making this the worst disaster on British inland waterways.

(For the 1989 Marchioness Disaster, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchioness_disaster).