Just a quick note – I’m giving a talk for the Wivenhoe History Group at the William Loveless Hall in Wivenhoe on Wednesday 8th July at 7.30pm.
All are welcome and it’s free.
I’ll be taking you through Wivenhoe’s burial registers, which show that the village was visited by plague, small pox and possibly cholera, from 1603 to 1849.
As you might have noticed, notes in parish registers fascinate me. One I came across the other day seemed to pack quite a story into just one sentence.
In the earliest register for Little Bromley in Essex, there’s a baptism on 8th April 1593 for a child called Elizabeth, daughter of Robert Myller “of Bryghtwell in Suffolk, mattmaker, borne in Staceys? grounds as his wyf travayld from Manytry towards Wevenho.”
Last year, I wrote about the headstones in St. George’s, Harborne, and mentioned the unusual monument to Freda Strawbridge, a young woman who died in a motorbike accident in 1936.
I’ve recently been contacted by a couple of people from the Strawbridge family – Pam, Freda’s niece, whose father was Freda’s brother. He himself was a motorbike fan too, and was injured in an accident a year before his sister’s fatal crash. Pam explained that her family really loved their motorbikes, and she sent me some wonderful photographs of the Strawbridges (see below the fold).
And not long after Pam contacted me, another Strawbridge – Karl – got in touch. Karl’s father was Freda’s cousin, and he keeps an eye on Freda’s resting place and her unusual memorial.
It’s nice to have an update – thank you, Strawbridges!
Rather like I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here crossed with Tony Robinsons’ The Worst Jobs in History, this four-episode living history series took six celebrities back to the 1840s. It wasn’t chaise longues and afternoon tea for them, no – they were to experience the harsh lives of the early Victorian working class.
Starting with a dust yard (at the Black Country Living Museum, which you sometimes see in the background in Peaky Blinders) and collecting ‘pure’ and night soil (poo, in other words), it was grim and grimy all the way. The second episode saw them at a coaching inn, where the women did domestic chores while the men worked as ostlers and as a pot-boy. The third episode took them to the potteries, where they experienced the unfair way in which the workers were paid, which led to the positively surreal sight of former Tory minister Ann Widdecombe form a union and go on strike. And after losing their jobs at the potteries, the fourth episode saw them suffer the inhumanely punitive conditions of the workhouse.
I’ve lived in Birmingham for several years, long enough to get confused sometimes when my brain forgets what the new Bull Ring shopping centre looks like when I round the corner at the end of New Street. “Where did this all come from?” it wonders for a split-second, before the buildings in front of me coalesce and I remember where I am. I still call House of Fraser by it’s old name: Rackhams. And I just can’t get used to the new Library of Birmingham (not surprising as it’s hardly open due to budget cuts).
So there I was, sitting down to watch BBC Two’s new Cold War thriller The Game. After much joshing ‘The Game is afoot! Well, nearly, iPlayer is still buffering!’ I found myself in 1970s London. Well, it’s supposed to be, but I immediately recognised Birmingham. Specifically, MI5’s headquarters, which is brutalist masterpiece Central Library. Loved and loathed, the haters are winning because the Library of Birmingham was built a year or two ago to replace it and poor old Central Library, John Madin’s concrete masterpiece, is, as I speak, being pulled down.
The 70th anniversary of VE Day seemed like a good time to blog about my grandad’s soldier photos from WW2 – mainly because, although there’s no photo of him on VE Day itself, the one above, where he’s wearing a large smile, and leans casually against a gate, relief on his face, was taken the day after.
My grandad, Bert Nunn, was meticulous with his photographs, never failing to write on the back of them to identify where he was and who he was with. Perhaps he did this with his photos from 1945 because he knew that the end of hostilities were nigh, and soon he and his comrades would head home once more and might never see each other again.
Marriage licence bonds and allegations have proved to be very useful in my research. Sometimes I might see that a marriage was performed by licence, and I ask the Essex Record Office if they have the marriage licence allegation (MLA) for it. Other times, if I’m struggling to find a marriage, I email them to ask if they could look up the names in their printed index, and it’s helped me to locate the marriage.
MLAs can give me loads of info – where each party resided, where they intended to marry, sometimes their ages, occupations, as well as parents and family members. To see the sort of information you can find in an MLA, have a look at the ones I’ve transcribed. But wouldn’t it be nice if they were more accessible?
There was a terrible accident at the ropery on Wivenhoe High Street on 19th February 1855, when a boiler exploded. It killed three lads – Henry Browne (aged 14), John Jerrett (19) and William Southgate (14).[1]These three boys appear in the burial register for Wivenhoe, 1813-1859. Henry was the son of William Browne, who owned the business. John and William were employed by Captain Jerrett of Liverpool (in fact, John was his son), and they were on the premises because they were assisting in the fitting of some rigging on Jerrett’s ship. It is thought the lads were standing by the boiler for warmth. The explosion caused a huge amount of damage. Poor John Jerrett was, as the newspaper report of the inquest said, “completely dismembered” and Henry and William were carried through the roof.[2]Essex Standard, 23rd February 1855. The jury recorded a verdict of accidental death, the steam pipe having frozen and the boiler being empty of water – a faulty “float” had shown it to contain water when it did not. They made recommendations about boilers having gauges fitted, “precautions which they earnestly recommended all owners of steam-engines to adopt, with a view to the safety of those in their employ.”[3]Essex Standard, 23rd February 1855
Although this accidents happened in the past, we still hear about tragedies in the workplace even today. The most horrifying, perhaps, was the 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza clothing factory in Bangladesh, which killed over 1,000 workers and injured about 2,500.
So, on Workers’ Memorial Day, spare a thought for those who died just doing their jobs. And think about your own workplace – do you think there are dangers there which could be addressed to improve your safety? Are there areas which you think pose a danger to your health and those around you? It is thought that across the world, each year over two million men and women die due to workplace accidents and illnesses.
Find out more about Workers’ Memorial Day from the Trades Union Congress.
Strange things start to happen if you can trace your family back far enough, and if you can find a thread which is, let’s be honest… posh.
In trying to work out the family of my 6 x gt-grandmother, Elizabeth Cardinall (1741-1803), I’ve been studying the Cardinall family. I think her father was William Cardinall of Arlesford, which makes her a descendant of Charles Cardinall (?-1624) and his father, William Cardinall (1509-1568). I’ve been putting together the various strands of this family, and it means that, through Elizabeth, I’m connected to Sir Thomas Bowes, Admiral Nelson, P. G. Wodehouse, the Walpoles… shall I go on? What’s amusing about this is that because Elizabeth Cardinall is the ancestor of vast numbers of quite ordinary people who can trace themselves back to villages on the River Colne, such as Fingringhoe, Rowhedge and Wivenhoe, it means that a huge number of people are, in fact, related to some rather grand people who, if you’re a wheelwright, builder or a librarian or an accountant or a plumber or a gamekeeper, may come as a rather enormous surprise. So let’s start with….
I’d never been to WDYTYA? Live before, and wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. Everyone speaks about it in excitable tones, and now that it’s held in Birmingham at the NEC, rather close to where I live, it would be rude if I didn’t go.
It was so interesting speaking to people involved in genealogy in different ways. I really learnt a lot, and by the end of the day was exhausted from wandering about from stall to stall, and absorbing lots of new information. I was, however, pepped up by an enormous scone (slathered in clotted cream and Essex’s finest Tiptree jam!) at the 1939 tearooms, which was most welcome.
