Author: mark

Facebook post #042 (Nov 2020)[poem added Remembrance Sunday 2022]

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England’s foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

Robert Laurence Binyon, The Times 21 Sep 1914

In memory of my lost cousins, our virtual war memorial, extracted from the blog (in order of appearance; with some omissions, I’m sure. From a solitary WWI death in Swindon to some of the biggest disasters of War. I’ve included some of those who survived in commemoration of the lifelong impacts, which echo until this day.

• Arthur Barnes Wheaver (1881-1963). Royal Garrison Artillery. Apparently racked with guilt for being behind the lines, and never the same after the war. Of course, the big guns were targeted, so he wasn’t behind the lines at all.
• Samuel Horatio Wheaver (1887-1947). Merchant’s clerk from Erdington. Labour Corps (manned by men who had been medically rated below the “A1” condition needed for front line service). Discharged as unfit for war service, an “insane soldier”, elsewhere as suffering from ‘melancholia’. Died in 1947 at Rubery Hill Mental Hospital, formerly the 1st Birmingham War Hospital. The family had it as an old soldiers’ home.
• Jeremiah Bird (1889-1915). Brickmaker from Aston; emigrated. Australian Imperial Force. Killed in action on a diversionary attack at Gallipoli, Turkey. This catastrophic defeat is commemorated annually on ANZAC Day.
• Tom Wheaver (1895-1917). Engineer, then assurance agent, from Redcar. Rifleman with Royal Scots Regiment. Died of dysentery and pneumonia soon after his arrival in France.
• Charles Webb (1895-1918). Milkman from Sutton Coldfield. Rifleman with Royal Warwickshire Regiment; Royal Field Artillery? Killed two weeks before the end of the war, after his battalion had returned to England. Buried in Germany.
• Harry Roper (1891-1917). Laundry van man from Sutton Coldfield. Royal Warwickshire Regiment. Killed in action at Battle of Broodseinde, the most successful Allied attack of the Third Battle of Ypres, Belgium.
• John Edmund Shepherd (1897-1915). Apprentice compositor from Moss Side. Manchester Regiment. Killed in action at Gallipoli. Two thirds of the East Lancashire Division had been wiped out through battle casualties and sickness.
• Stedman Francis Kent (1888-1916). Builder’s clerk from Handsworth. Royal Warwickshire Regiment, the Birmingham Pals. Killed in action during the Attacks on High Wood, on the Somme. 784 comrades died on the Western Front.
• John Samuel Brinson (1890-1925). Waggoner, then Police Constable from Walsall. Gunner with the Royal Garrison Artillery. Gassed and wounded during service, suffered ill-health upon return to the police, including taking the last 14 weeks of his life off sick.
• Arthur Howard Asker (1892-1917). Bank clerk from Lichfield (see blog for my accidental photo of his home). 2nd Lieutenant, Essex Regiment. Evacuated from Gallipoli, wounded during the recapture of the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt (the Battle of Rafa); died soon after medical evacuation.
• James Lambert emigrated to New Zealand, probably for mining work, leaving his wife in England. He was part of the Auckland Regiment of the NZEF, and killed at Gallipoli on 8 Jun 1915. He is remembered at Lone Pine Cemetery.
• Matthew Webb (1881-1918). 2nd Lieutenant South African Infantry. Wounded during the horrific losses at Longueval (Delville Wood) in 1916. Killed when the unit was annihilated during a massive German offensive. Captain Matthew Webb brought his son up to be brave: doubtless he would have been proud.
• William Patrick Dunne (1890-1917), second husband of Esther May Wilson (1892-1980). Wellington Regiment, New Zealand Expeditionary Force. Killed at the Battle of Passchendaele.
• Colin Edgar Wilson (1893-1916). Canterbury Regiment, New Zealand Expeditionary Force. Killed at the Battle of Flers–Courcelette, the third and final general British offensive – and debut of the New Zealand Division – on the Somme. 3000 yards were gained, a considerable success.
• Sidney Maynard Smith (1875-1970). Surgeon from London. Served in the Boer War as a surgeon, and in WWI, as a Colonel with the Army Medical Services. Awarded the Croix de Guerre; thrice mentioned in dispatches. Appointed consulting surgeon to the British Fifth Army in 1916, and later consulting surgeon to the British Second Army. Appointed Knight of Grace of the Order of St John, and Companion of The Order of the Bath (Military Division). Survived to become a senior surgeon and Grand Deacon of the Grand Lodge of England.
• Ivo Cecil Little (1895-1921) of the family from Kent enrolled in the Royal Navy in 1908. Flight Commander, Royal Naval Air Service. Transferred from Sopwith planes? to airships. Survived the war, carrying out numerous test flights in the R. 32 and the R. 80. Among those to complete the first ever airship trans-Atlantic crossing, carried out a parachute descent on arrival in New Jersey. Killed on the next big cross-Atlantic project when the R. 38 exploded. A trawler 16 miles away staggered under the concussion of the explosion and trains on railway lines in Lincolnshire shook on their tracks, while ceilings in houses in Hull and Grimsby collapsed.
• Joseph Frank Burrows (1883-1918). Otago Regiment, NZEF. Killed a month and a day before Armistice, on the “Advance to Victory” through the Hindenburg Line, and the ‘Masnières–Beaurevoir line’. “The men of the Regiment returned to Dunedin to a heroes welcome, greater social standing and numerous types of financial assistance.”
• John Harold Mousley (1885-1959). Electrical engineer from London and Manchester. Lieutenant-Colonel, Royal Engineers. Director of Military and Public Works in Baghdad. Awarded the Distinguished Service Order and Territorial Decoration. Survived the war to marry Dorothy Pease of ‘one of the great Quaker industrialist families of the nineteenth century, who played a leading role in philanthropic and humanitarian interests’.
• Henry Frost (1882-1916) of South London. East Surrey Regiment. East Surrey Regimental Cap Badge (credit). At Loos in March 1916 – the unit’s war diary gives a vivid but dispassionate account of the quiet days, the occasional attacks, the monitoring of enemy trench building, and bombardments with field guns, howitzers, trench mortars, mines and ‘torpedoes’ (used to clear barbed wire). Henry died of his wounds some months before the Battle of Loos proper.
• William Fredericks (1887-1917), husband of Charlotte Knight (1887-1939). Wharf labourer from Shoreditch. East Surrey Regiment. Wounded in France in 1914; Sergeant with Northamptonshire Regiment. Died of wounds suffered at the Battle for Boom Ravine, which proved that the German Army’s position on the Somme front was untenable.
• John Pippard (1878-1937), husband of Sophia Lucy Knight (1875-1942). Domestic servant from Norwood. Joined the Royal Navy on his 18th birthday; served on many ships (see blog), including the revolutionary battleship HMS Dreadnought. Mentioned in despatches for his role in the evacuation from Gallipoli. Survived the war.
• Walter Knight (1894-1914). Fishmonger’s assistant, later carman, from Croydon. Queen’s (Royal West Surrey) Regiment. Killed in a close-fought battle around Gheluvelt near Ypres, where the British Expeditionary Force was locked into a battle for survival. It marked the transition point between the mobile, open warfare to trench deadlock. There is a battle memorial gate in Worcester; Walter is remembered on the Menin Gate, memorial to the missing, Ypres.
• William Dudley Bezer (1884-1916). Insurance clerk from London. Lance Corporal, London Regiment (Queen Victoria’s Rifles). Fought at the First and Second Battles of Ypres; killed in the diversionary attack at Gommecourt, where German artillery pinned down the British, depriving them of hard-won trenches and making reinforcement impossible. Charles Dickens’ son Cedric was a Major in the Londons, and killed a couple of months later.
• Percy Roberts (1884-1916). Bank clerk from Clapham. Lance Corporal with the 10th “Stockbrokers” Battalion Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment) – the first pals’ battalion. Killed, with 249 regimental colleagues, at the Attack on Poiziers at the start of the Battle of the Somme.
• Walter Douglas Baker (1891-1917). Woodworking machinist from Hornsey; emigrated. Sergeant, Manitoba Regiment. Killed under heavy artillery barrage at the Third Battle of the Scarpe. Commemorated at the Vimy Memorial
• Alfred and Elsie Square (my retired gt-grandparents) were on the SS Queen Mary in 1938. Another passenger was Air Commander A. T. “Bomber Harris”, travelling to New York to place the largest foreign order ever placed with an American Aircraft Company – for 200 Lockheed Hudsons.
• John Bertram Harris (1893-1918). Joiner’s apprentice, Birmingham. Warwickshire Regiment then 3rd Special Company, Royal Engineers. Died of pneumonia in Étaples after an accident on the Somme when handling poison gas.
• Edgar Allan Bell (1896-1918). Trainee architect from Sheffield and Gloucester. Yorkshire Hussars and South Staffordshire Regiment. Present at the first battle where the Germans used flamethrowers. Died of wounds suffered when on duty near Angres: died at Millbank after medical evacuation and buried at the Military Cemetery, Brookwood. “You will be pleased to hear that he behaved splendidly, and did not so much as make a sound that he had been wounded until I turned and saw him. He was one of my best Section Commanders, and was most reliable and hard working while in the trenches”, wrote his commanding officer. His father gave a book to his university in his memory and chose “Ave! Morituri Salutamus (Hail, Caesar! Those about to die salute you)” for his epitaph.
• Wilfred Barlow (1888-1916), stepson of Henry Squire. Steelworker from Penistone. York and Lancaster Regiment. Killed in action 16 May 1916, before any official battle action.
• Edgar Hyde (1891-1915). Miner from Barnsley. York and Lancaster Regiment. Killed in action the day before The Battle of Aubers Ridge, part of the British contribution to the Second Battle of Artois, a Franco-British offensive intended to exploit the German diversion of troops to the Eastern Front.
• Ernest Hyde (1896-1915) from Barnsley. King’s Own Scottish Borderers. Killed in action at Gallipoli, three months after his brother Edgar.
• Herbert Outwin (1880-1917), husband of Eva Holmes (1885-1903). Paper maker at the works in Barnsley, which formed the background to the film ‘Kes’. Durham Light Infantry. Killed on the second day of the ‘Cambrai Operations’, which pioneered new artillery techniques and massed tanks.
• Jabez Thorpe (1887-1948?). Mine corporal from Darnall, Barnsley. King’s Royal Rifle Corps and Sergeant with Prince of Wales´s North Staffordshire Regiment. Awarded the Military Medal for exceptional bravery. Survived the war.
• Thomas Frederick Bell (1892-1915). Miner from Barnsley. York & Lancaster Regiment, the Barnsley Pals; then 171st Mining Company, Royal Engineers. Men who were working underground as civilians in the UK were underground at Givenchy only four days later. Engaged on underground work including the digging of subways, cable trenches, saps, chambers, as well as offensive or defensive mining. Killed in action at Ypres on the day the German army first used phosgene gas.
• Joseph Bell (1899-1917). Miner from Barnsley. Sherwood Foresters. Sent back and forth from France to Egypt. Died from wounds sustained on the Western Front.
• Cyril Vaines (1909-1941), husband of Elizabeth Bell (1909-1969) – from Barnsley. Royal Artillery; Kings Own Royal Regiment (Lancaster) in the BEF. Unit evacuated from Dunkirk on the SS Prague but Cyril’s name circulated to POW camps, as missing in action. There is a burial record at Merville, Pas-de-Calais.
• Francis Nelstop Green (1892-1972). Clerk from Sheffield. Served on HMS Sir Thomas Picton at the evacuation from Gallipoli. Invalided out of the Navy with sight problems but survived the war.
• Stewart Green (1882-1917). Chartered accountant from Sheffield. Company Quartermaster Sergeant , York and Lancaster Regiment. Saw repeated action at Ypres. Killed at the Battle of Poelcapelle on Passchendaele Ridge. Deep, slimy mud caused chaos and exhaustion, but the attack pressed on, with disastrous results.
• William Ernest Green (1898-1917) from Dore, Barnsley. Killed during the Second Battle of Passchendaele.
• Maurice Rowland (1898-1917) from York. King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. Served on the Somme and at Ypres. Killed during German counter-attacks at Passchendaele.
• Winter Henry Blampied (1878-1919), from Jersey. Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry. Died of heatstroke while awaiting demobilisation.
• My gt-grandparents George and Olive Lewty’s long walk to freedom from occupied Burma in WWII is covered in post #029.
• John Thomas Ballance (1894-1917), from Rugeley. First class stoker, Royal Navy. Served on HMS Begonia, recommissioned as Q-ship Q.10 after it was torpedoed. Killed in action when the ship collided with a German submarine, also lost, off Casablanca.
• George Gollick (1885-1914). Coal miner from Stanley, Yorkshire. King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, BEF. Killed in action in France.
• Sam Gollick (c 1887-1918). Coal miner from Stanley, Yorkshire. Sergeant, King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. Awarded the Military Medal. Transferred to the London Regiment (King’s Royal Rifles). Killed in action, like his brother George.
• Michael Stanley Barnard (1922-1943). Director’s son from Saffron Walden. Flight Sergeant, 192 Squadron. Killed on Special Duty Operations (special signals flight over Bay of Biscay) in Wellington MkX HE230 DT. Killed when plane ditched 50m W of Brest, France, due to engine failure. Commemorated at Runnymede.
• Robert Cyril Barnard (1893-1917). Farmer’s son from Saffron Walden. Lieutenant, Army Service Corps. Died of wounds in Poperinghe, Belgium, during the Battle of Passchendaele.
• Anthony Robin Byford (1929) from Indonesia, England, South Africa. Survived the war. In 1939, was on the ‘Patroclus’ from Shanghai to Liverpool. b. Indonesia, m. England, div. N. Rhodesia, d. South Africa. Four days after she docked, she was requisitioned as HMS Patroclus. She was torpedoed and sunk in November 1940.
• James Cordell (1896-1917), from Eastleigh. Joined Royal Naval Air Service at Felixstowe, an important flying boat port and development centre, looking after kite balloons. “Killed by bombs dropped by an enemy aeroplane” – only the third time this had happened –an air raid by Gotha bombers. These raids led to the foundation of the RAF and the rebranding of the royal family (post #004).
• Ernest Felix Imoda (1888-1915) from Staffordshire. Corporal, Royal Fusiliers. Killed at Ypres, a week before the Germans started the Second Battle of Ypres by launching 171 tons of chlorine gas against French forces.
• Stanley Ashley Lambert (1898). Sailed to Rangoon, Burma in October 1926 on the Warwickshire. Captured by the Japanese and held as a Prisoner of War. Survived the war.
• George William Thackray (1895-1915) from London. Served on HMS Princess Irene, a passenger liner converted to a minelayer. On 27 May 1915, she exploded and disintegrated – there was a column of flame 100 m high; wreckage was flung 30 km. People were killed on the shore and on other ships; 352 people were killed in all; severed heads were found on the Isle of Grain. A Court of Inquiry heard that priming of the mines was being carried out hurriedly and by untrained personnel; worryingly George was a probationary armourer. His body was not recovered; he is commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial.
• Alfred John Pratt (1921-1944). New Zealand infantry. Killed in action at the Battle of Monte Cassino. 343 New Zealanders died across four attacks, after waiting three weeks in freezing rain for suitable weather for an aerial assault: when it came, Cassino was reduced to a pile of rubble. The ancient Abbey of Monte Cassino, where St. Benedict first established the Rule that ordered monasticism in the west, had already been destroyed.
• Ralph Gordon Savage (1908-1945). Leading Aircraftman, 40 squadron, RNZAF. Killed with 19 comrades when a passenger in a Dakota C-47, which crashed over New Caledonia on 24 Sep 1945, en route from Vanuatu. This air accident remains the heaviest single loss in RNZAF history.
• William Walter James Brooker (1894-1917) of Croydon, husband of Emily Pretoria Florence Frost (1900-1985). Deceased. King’s Royal Rifle Corps. Died of his wounds, probably sustained at the Battle of Langemarck, on 16 Aug 1917 in Flanders. Memorial at Tyne Cot.
• William Samuel Fisher (1886-1912) from Norwood. Died on active service (before WWI). Buried at Aldershot Military Cemetery.
• William Edward Frost (1899-1918) from Norwood. Machine Gun Corps. Killed in action in France, in the Final Advance on Picardy, two days before the Armistice. Buried at Maubeuge-Centre Cemetery, Nord-Pas-de-Calais.
• Albert Edward Knight (1899-1918). Shipping clerk from Norwood. 14th (County of London) Battalion. “Accidentally killed… on the Midlands SW Junction Railway in the parish of Chiseldon and struck off strength accordingly.” The inquest showed that he had been hit by a passenger train near Chiseldon Army Camp, Swindon.
• Frederick Arthur Baden Peckham (1900-1941) from Bognor Regis. Master of the SS Umona, whose last voyage was carrying maize, pulses and jam from Durban to London. Killed with 81 crew and 20 others – only five were saved, when ship was torpedoed by U-124 off Freetown, Sierra Leone. Commemorated on Tower Hill (post #002).
• Victory Ernest Dear (1919-1943) from Bethnal Green, husband of Winifred Patricia Palfreman (1922-1976). Lance Corporal, 56th Regiment Reconnaissance Corps, which fought with ‘great distinction’ in Tunisia and Italy. He was killed in the run-up to the Battle of Sidi Bou Zid in Tunisia, possibly in an anti-tank role. Commemorated at Medjez-El-Bab.
• Christopher Harold Turner (1903-1943) of Lambeth, husband of Lily Heath (1906-1986). 6th Armoured Division, Royal Army Ordnance Corps, which fought in the key tank battles of North Africa, starting with Operation Torch. Killed in action in Algeria.
• Herbert Leslie Hallam (1909-1944). Bank cashier from Sutton Coldfield. Flying Officer (Navigator), 514 Squadron RAF. Awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross after showing great coolness, resolution and devotion to duty, plotting his path home after most of his navigational instruments had been destroyed. Killed when his Lancaster came down at Moers during a bombing raid on Hamburg-Rhenania.
• Ian Roy Maclennan (1919-2013) of Regina, Saskatchewan flew with the RCAF as a fighter pilot and flying ace, and awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal. He was involved in the defence of Malta during the seige. He crash-landed a Spitfire in enemy territory and was captured and imprisoned in Stalag Luft III, of Great Escape fame. He escaped in 1945. He survived the war to became a successful architect.
• (Charles) Bruce Maclennan (1924-1945) was Ian’s brother. Wireless operator on RCAF Lancaster bombers. Killed when his plane was shot down while targeting the U-Boat manufacturing yards of Voss near Hamburg, Germany. His plane was in a wave unprotected by a fighter escort, and was attacked by a swarm of 30 Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighters, with heavy calibre guns, which destroyed the nose and cockpit of Bruce’s plane.
• Richard Earle (1895-1916) of Durban. South African Infantry. “Most of the recruits already had military training or experience. They were, in general, middle class, well-educated and well-bred men.” The Regiment was deployed to France. Richard died of his wounds, probably suffered at Delville Wood.
• John Rupert Squire (1915-1966), my grandad. Medical tutor at University College, London. RAMC: medical research section at GHQ Home Forces; General Staff Officer, ranked a Major in the scientific adviser’s branch at the War Office; posted to South-East Asia Command as medical specialist to no. 10 operational research section; commanded Allied Land Forces biological research section in South-East Asia; mentioned in despatches [for gallant and distinguished services in Burma as a temporary Lt-Colonel. After a very late demobilisation – which separated him away from his young family – he was a successful consultant pathologist.
• Roland Henry Traviss Squire (1921-1945), from Market Harborough). Flying Officer, 117 Squadron, which switched from Lockheed Hudsons to Dakotas when moved in Libya, then India in 1943. In 1944 it transported supplies for the Chindits who operated behind the Japanese lines. Roland was killed, when his plane crashed 20 miles south of Binh Li [Bayin Nyi], Thailand.
• Edward Blampied (20 Apr 1913), from Jersey. Driver, 18 Division Signals. Japanese Prisoner of War. Survived the war.
• Barbara Evelyn Dover (1917-1942) and Pamela Dover (-1942) from Burma. Died in a Japanese POW camp.
• William Frederick Charles Martin (1903-1944) and his wife Beatrice Olga Martin née Perkins (1905-1944) from Burma. Died in a Japanese POW camp, Myitkyina, Burma.
• Frederick Alec Peters (1885-1941). Licensed victualler from Gillingham, Kent. Killed when the Plough Inn was bombed.

Facebook post #041 (Nov 2020)

A strange, sad story of coincidence for Remembrance week. As usual, I’m thinking of my schoolmaster gt-grandad Arthur Wheaver, who seems never to have been quite the same after returning from the guns of the Somme in WWI. And I’m thinking of my grandad John Squire, who served out East in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and wasn’t demobbed until well after the WWII had ended – and well after Mum was born. They emerged physically unscathed – but scarcely imaginable are their experiences.

This may be partly why, even when briskly exploring, I pause on passing a war memorial. Others I don’t walk past show up in the photos later, like the one at Knowle Church, Warwickshire. This is the church where my parents married, with John Squire present; Arthur Wheaver having apologised for not being able to make it on grounds of insufficient lifespan. Dad’s family was still close to Sutton Coldfield (post 24) but Mum was an incomer – the third generation of Yorkshire farming stock born in Surrey.

What we didn’t know until my recent round of research was that John Squire’s grandfather, John Traviss Squire, was not the only sibling to leave Yorkshire. By 1891, his sister Sarah was married to Alfred Harris, farming in Packwood nr Solihull, Warwickshire. In 1901, their son, John Bertram Harris (Mum’s grandad’s first cousin) was 17, a joiner’s apprentice staying with his John’s Sr’s widowed mother in Barnsley.

JBH tried to enlist for service in WWI three times but was refused. He eventually enlisted in the 16th Warwickshire Regiment, then volunteered to transfer to a ‘Special Company’ of the Royal Engineers.

It turns out that this was a euphemism for an illegal poison gas unit, formed in response to the German use of gas at the Somme. His fate too was obscured but it emerged that he had an accident while handling gas shells or cylinders. He was taken to the hospital in the port of Étaples, described by Wilfred Owen as:

“A vast, dreadful encampment. It seemed neither France nor England, but a kind of paddock where the beasts are kept a few days before the shambles … Chiefly I thought of the very strange look on all the faces in that camp; an incomprehensible look, which a man will never see in England; nor can it be seen in any battle, but only in Étaples. It was not despair, or terror, it was more terrible than terror, for it was a blindfold look, and without expression, like a dead rabbit’s.”

John Bertram Harris didn’t make it. Perhaps you guessed that our farmer’s lad – who would do anything for the war effort – is commemorated on the war memorial outside Knowle church; also in the Soldiers’ Chapel inside.

Facebook post #040 (Nov 2020)

There are dozens more stories in the Larard quarter of my old-fashioned blog. Servants in illustrious households, working people whose paths crossed with the famous or who travelled the world, wealthy relatives who bought mansions of their own (pictured is Ladywood, Orpington – home of Henry Larard’s cousin, George Burrows). I even found a picture postcard on eBay sent by cousin Ruby Seymour to her daughter from Brighton in 1914.

One cousin on the Mousley side, Florence Bezer, married a gas fittings dealer in 1891, and they stayed in a lodging house in Holborn. It didn’t end well – Albert Flurscheim was German, and died in Utrecht in 1917. His family are interesting though. One of his first cousins was a prominent economist who turned around an important ironworks in Germany, built a railroad in Mexico, and died of depression when the Titanic sank. The other was Hermann Adolph Flurscheim, who emigrated to New York in the 1870s. He made his fortune, and is known to have helped victims of the Titanic disaster. His Fifth Avenue department store (pictured) apparently changed the face of retailing. Outlet stores and evening opening were amongst his innovations.

Facebook post #039 (Oct 2020)

Edith Ostlere (post 38) had a brother known as Abdhullah Mansur! The 1911 census has him living with a sister in Sidmouth under his birth name of George Bury, but an “explorer” by profession! Later, I found that he published an important book that year – “The Land of Uz” (next on my reading list). Then I found that he was suffering from TB at the time, and that he married his nurse from Westminster Hospital a couple of years later… in El Hudayah, Yemen. These days, it’s an important port both for humanitarian aid and for coffee – including for Starbucks.

It turns out that after obtaining a commission into the Warwickshire regiment, George had joined a rebel tribe in Morocco! But like his cousin Henry Mousley in Canada (post 37), his interests were scientific: his ornithological specimens and descriptions are at the British Library. Apparently his looks, build and command of colloquial Arabic were such that he could be accepted as a local. It also helped him to an official position with the boundary commission in British Aden. When he fell from favour, he persuaded the Ottoman Turks to let him continue his exploits in their half of Yemen! Commentators suggest that his successive books give unique insights into the lands and life either side of the border just before WWI – even if his forecasts are not altogether accurate.

George’s father Henry Cox Bury had died in 1884. His will, held by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, shows him a ‘coffee planter of Stratford, late of Ceylon’. A couple of years earlier he was quoted in the Tropical Agriculturalist “on a visit to his fine properties” (in Haputale). “There is far too much outcry over the falling-off in Ceylon coffee production… a turn in the tide must be approaching. It cannot, surely, be in the designs of Providence that the fungus [“Devastating Emily” coffee rust] should be permanent in Ceylon, any more than that the iniquity of slavery should continue to exist in Brazil. The latter is doomed, and so, we hope and believe, is the former.” Sadly, his forecast for Ceylon was no better than his son’s for Yemen later. Coffee was wiped out and Haputale has grown tea ever since.

Facebook #037 (Oct 2020)

A couple of weeks ago (post 35), I mentioned that my Gt Gt Grandfather, Henry Larard, married Fanny Mousley in Croydon in 1870. His mother was Harriett Little of the family who built and owned 24 Thames sailing barges, and whose nephew Ivo was a Flight Lieutenant on the ill-fated R38 airship (posts 15 and 17). Her mother was Rebecca Knight of the South London family described in post 33.

Fanny’s father was Thomas Moseley, a surgeon from Ellesmere, Shropshire (of a family rooted around Tamworth). He trained in London, and eventually moved to Croydon. I recently learned from the son of a Moseley, that it’s pronounced ‘Mouzley’, with the first three letters like ‘mouse’.

One of her brothers, William was a railway contractor, and I managed to piece together some of his history from multiple sources, which lined up with census records showing where he was living. He built the Ely and St Ives Railway, an extension to the Wolverhampton Tramways, the first phase of Derby Tramways, the extension of the (preserved) Bridport branch line down to the harbour, the (partly preserved) Skipton to Ilkley Railway, the Bourne to Saxby railway (including Toft Tunnel), the Weston-super-Mare branch and loop, and the Norfolk and Suffolk Joint Railway! Another brother went to the USA and his descendants tell me that the family were railway pioneers over there too.

William’s son, Henry, worked for the Ottawa-Toronto Railroad. In fragile health during WWI, he became a full time naturalist. At his death in 1949, Henry Mousley had published 131 scientific articles in Canada, the United States, and England, including 32 on species of orchids he had discovered. ‘His contribution to knowledge of the flora of Quebec is especially remarkable when it comes to orchids in southern Quebec, where he studied their morphology, ecology, and distribution’. He left photos and specimens to national museums and universities in Canada.

Pictured:

• Derby Tramway c 1895 (Valentine postcard)
• Lobb Ghyll Viaduct on the Skipton-Ilkley Railway (TJBlackwell on Wikipedia)
• Amerorchis Rotundifolia, discovered by Henry Mousley
• The Cambria Inn, Ellesmere, opposite where Thomas and Rebecca may have lived (my photo, by chance)

Facebook post #036 (Oct 2020)

Why Swindon? For twenty years now! This one is mainly for my children and other close relatives on Dad’s Dad’s side.

So Facebook has started to hide some of my posts, even from me. I’ve found them all and backed them up, but if I reference an old one, and you can’t see it, please let me know and I will tag you.

I mentioned last month that I will be surveying my findings geographically, and I thought a quick summary of Why Swindon? at this point might also tie things together for family members

In Dad’s Dad’s line: John and Margaret James were in Oxfordshire, not too far from Swindon. But, for reasons unknown, their son William – an agricultural labourer – moved (after Hastings!) to Sutton Coldfield (near Birmingham), where he married local girl Rebecca Weaver, who already had a son, John, by father unknown (see post 24). He brought John up but he kept his surname.

John married Caroline Barnes of a well-off Staffordshire farming family, her parents probably moving in the same circles in Worcestershire and Staffordshire. But Caroline’s father didn’t inherit and became a Post Office clerk and had moved into Peaky Blinder country. They still had some pretensions though, it seems – there is a rumour that John and Caroline met at Middleton Hall where he worked as a gardener, and she read novels in French!

The Lamberts (post 27) and Cartwrights (from whom Captain Webb was descended)(post 31) were Shropshire families, as were the Wilsons. Richard Barnard (from the Essex family introduced in post 28), ran the pub in Shropshire pictured in post 23, after he had married Elizabeth Wilson. But they married in London, and their daughter was born in Guernsey! However, she was brought up close to Daniel Lambert in what is now Telford. This couple also married in London and travelled around – showing up in Barrow-in-Furness, before he took up teaching in Dorking, and then relocated to a school in Sutton Coldfield.

My Great-Grandad Arthur Wheaver (son of John and Caroline) was also a teacher, and married Daniel’s daughter Alice. My Grandad married a Larard (post 35), and they moved just far enough outside Sutton for my parents to meet – my other Grandad having taking up a post at Birmingham University. Dad worked locally but moved to South London (post 33) and then to the Bucks/Northants border, for work. I got a job, house and wife not far away, and commuted to London for a while. This gave me the experience to eventually relocate to Swindon for a job at Nationwide.

(The blog has a summary tree of all members of each part of the family in Chapter 4, and Chapter 5 includes a directory for each part of the family of where hundreds and people were living – and what they were doing – in 1939.)

Facebook post #034 (Sep 2020)

New! In around 380, a chap called Cunedda from Clackmannanshire was redeployed by the Romans from Hadrian’s Wall to put down a rebellion in what is now North Wales. When the Romans went home, he stayed – and stayed in charge, founding the royal house of Gwynedd. Wikipedia documents the next 23 generations of his descendants, to Cadwgan ap (son of) Bleddyn of Powys, born 1075. (Cunedda is one of those people who doesn’t need a surname, which is just as well, as they didn’t exist). By this time Powys was in the hands of the Marcher Lords, and the chieftains had lost most of their power.

Just a little earlier, the Saxon king, Edward the Confessor had given the scattered settlement of Weaver in Cheshire (see post 24) to a Norman nobleman (he liked Normans). The nobleman took the name of the locality and become a De Wever. This is recorded in the Domesday Book; Papal Bulls from a couple of hundred years later show that the land was still in the family. A large timber-framed manor house known as Weever Hall became the seat, with other family at Weaverham (as post 24). Some of the younger sons moved out to Shropshire and Herefordshire, forming a distinct branch of the family.

Around the end of the C13, Cadwgan’s 4th great-grandson, Ieuan ap Madoc married a daughter of the Herefordshire Weaver family, and named his son Humphrey Weaver. This marked a shift away from a Welsh identity at just the time the nation was subdued.

Two hundred years later, Thomas and William Stanley led their army to the decisive intervention in the Battle of Bosworth which brought the Tudor dynasty to power, and probably a change of religion for the Weaver family. The Tudor monarchs were, incidentally, also descended from Cunedda. The Stanleys’ big brother John married the heiress of Thomas de Weever, and became master of Weever Hall. Meanwhile, The Herefordshire Weavers were still in the debatable lands.

In 1716, Samuel Weaver was born in Bewdley: tentatively, I think that he was my 7th great-grandfather. This week, Ancestry has updated my likely ethnicity, and for the first time, Wales and the marches are shown as separate and significant. The ‘h’ in my surname came in later (John Wheaver, the gardener – see post 24).

In 1620, Clement Weaver had been born in Glastonbury. He was an anglican, not a puritan, but he joined the Great Migration to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He married a Quaker, fell out with the puritans, and moved to Rhode Island. Here he became a member of the House of Deputies, and founded a dynasty of his own. His farm stayed in the family for two hundred years. Other than those who anglicised Weber, every American Weaver is a descendant, and there was always a tradition of Welsh descent in every branch. Indeed, like those of many other names, it is probably one global clan.

In the early C20, the family decided to explore their history and deputed people to England to investigate. In 1928, they compiled a meticulously researched genealogical book. A newly unearthed digital copy provided the backbone for this post.

In 1986, Sigourney Weaver, of this parish, saved the world.

Facebook post #033 (Sep 2020)

I’ve finished my survey of in-laws and of third cousins! To round off, I’m working on a geographic summary… Why on earth are Croydon and Barnsley so magnetic?

This week, Robert Harris announced his new WW2 novel, V2, featuring the world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile. This was the biggest thing ever to hit South London! (see my photo from last year). The area had been sporadically bombed by plane but the rockets brought terror. When I was young, a relative told me of the rough sound doodlebug V1’s made – and the fear when the fuel ran out and the engine stopped. But the V2 was supersonic and no one heard it coming. One hit Woolworth’s in New Cross and killed 168 people.

There were dozens of the Knight branch of my family living all over Norwood (Croydon and Lambeth) at the time – right underneath the onslaught. I worked out that 344 flying bombs fell on houses in their neighbourhoods (CR, SE17+ and SW2/16 postcodes), and 712 people were killed. 1600 houses were destroyed in the Borough of Lambeth, and 35,000 were repaired during the war. Properties were requisitioned and people billeted in Lambeth Rest Centres, and other people’s homes. Among the streets badly impacted were Tivoli Road. Gipsy Hill and St Clouds Road – all of them home to the family. So too was Knights Hill Square, where the charcoal burners’ cottages that had survived interwar housing development, were destroyed. St Luke’s Church, scene of dozens of family baptisms and marriages, was damaged; nearby Georgian homes destroyed. Norwood Cottage Hospital was damaged; so was the Cemetery.

Knight’s Hill was named after the family but my closest relatives came in from Dorking. Chawton House was the seat, and the owner gave £50 towards the fleet to defeat the Spanish Armada. Our Solomon was a house builder though, rather than a house inheritor. On the whole the family was decidedly working class, the southern equivalent of the Barnsley Green’s in my ‘Kes’ post (#016). There were tram conductors, window cleaners, factory hands, clerks, carmen (think ‘white van man’). There were road repairers: one drove a steam roller for the council and I found a pic of the team. I think I detect a little pride in occupations like ‘public librarian’. One of the family worked as a porter at a railway station serving Crystal Palace.

I mentioned before (post #010) the importance of the Crystal Palace (see our page). There were six million admissions to the Great Exhibition (see our page), including train loads of working class Londoners (part of the Charles Dickens ‘heterogeneous masses’ (see post #021)). I managed to obtain a copy of the catalogue of thousands of the 100,000 items exhibited, including the Coalbrookdale swan fountain (see post #027). After Paxton moved the Palace to Sydenham, enlarged it, and set it in its own extensive pleasure grounds, the Crystal Palace dominated the area. The self-esteem of the area rocketed, and it provided considerable local employment. Not only was there motor racing but, vitally, the oldest and finest football club in the world was established at Crystal Palace.

Less than three years before the war broke out, the Crystal Palace burned to the ground. It is still mourned. However, the prehistoric monsters survived (see my photo), the National Sports Centre was built, and my parents took me to the concert bowl for firework music in the early 1970s.

A whole lot more on the blog.