After a great deal of work, the new interface for FreeREG is now online: FreeREG2. It sits over a database that contains 20,000,000 parish register transcriptions (and counting) from across the UK. I transcribe for FreeREG (the transcriptions I do are the same ones I put online here) and also use it for my own research, so I’ve been having fun acquainting myself with the new system.
My great-great-grandfather, James Thomas Ashworth (1849-1890) was a cigarmaker, who lived in Bermondsey. There’s no surviving photos of him, as far as I know, but what he has left behind him (other than umpteen descendants) is this lovely handmade miniature chest of drawers, which he crafted from cigar boxes as a gift for his wife, Elizabeth.
Whilst researching the Cardinall family, I got slightly sidetracked with Thomas Bowes’ family. In 1603, Charles Cardinall, widowed, married Bridget Bowes, and they had one son, James, who, it seems increasingly possible, is one of my ancestors. Born in Dedham in about 1561, the daughter of Ralph Starling, Bridget had been married to Thomas Bowes of East Bergholt (just over the border from Dedham in Suffolk). The 1634 Visitation of Essex shows that Thomas and Bridget had two children: Thomas, who became Sir Thomas, the magistrate who prosecuted “witches” found by the infamous Matthew Hopkins, and Elizabeth. [1]Note that Thomas mentions two more daughters in his 1598 will – Judith and Anne. Elizabeth, according to this Visitation, married Martin Salter of Flowton in Suffolk.
Footnotes
| ↑1 | Note that Thomas mentions two more daughters in his 1598 will – Judith and Anne |
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An interesting note from 1745 in West Bergholt‘s parish register shows us that the vicar got muddled up with some of his parishioners’ surnames. Understanding the accent of your ancestor’s region can be really helpful if you want to trace them back further. In this video I talk about certain features of the accent(s) found in the north of Essex and the south of Suffolk, delivered in my authentic north-east Essex twang.
I’m currently transcribing the earliest register for Ramsey St. Michael in Essex. Although the very early register is lost, entries survive from 1645 onwards. I was intrigued to see if Ramsey was as affected by the plague of 1665 as had neighbouring Great Oakley. There certainly appear to have been an increase in burials that year, particularly in August, September and October – this is the same period as plague deaths were noted in Great Oakley’s register.[1]At this point, there’s about twelve burials a year in the Ramsey register. In just those three months of August, September and October, there were ten burials, and those three months are also … Continue reading But there’s no notes in the Ramsey register, so we can’t say for sure what those people died of.
But moving into 1666, something unusual appears. From 5th August to 26th August, the Ramsey parish register records the burials of nine sailors. By why?
Footnotes
| ↑1 | At this point, there’s about twelve burials a year in the Ramsey register. In just those three months of August, September and October, there were ten burials, and those three months are also the same period for plague deaths appearing in Great Oakley. |
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On the junction of Greenfield Road and Vivian Road in Harborne, Birmingham, some refurb work has recently taken place on what was once a furniture upholsterer’s called Connolly’s. I loved looking in the window of that shop – whether it was an old chair reupholstered in surprising new fabric, or a classic art deco sofa and armchair set, there was always something in the window that grasped my attention. But this morning, what caught my eye was this brick: is it really 132 years old?
Published on 30th June 2016.
UK: Pre-order now directly from the publisher (Pen & Sword), or Waterstones and Amazon.
USA: Pre-order from Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
I stumbled across the “poison panic” by accident, when I was transcribing one of the burial registers for Wix, and have been grimly fascinated by it ever since. I’m very pleased (and somewhat surprised) to say that I have been commissioned to write a book on this very topic.
For a few years, Essex was notorious in the minds of the Victorians as a place where women stalked the winding country lanes looking for their next victim to poison. It’s a terrible image – and also one that doesn’t seem to have much basis in truth, but it came at a time of great anxiety. The 1840s were also known as the “hungry 40s”, when crop failures pushed up food prices and there was popular unrest across Europe; the decade culminated in a cholera epidemic in which tens of thousands of people in the British Isles died.
At the time, arsenic was easily available, and used for all manner of purposes – to kill rats and mice in the home, as a fungicide for crops and in sheep-dip. It had medicinal purposes, and used in industry – famously, arsenic was used in green dye, used for clothing and furnishings. Sarah Chesham, Mary May and Hannah Southgate were three ordinary women who were caught up in the “poison panic” – all three stood trial, accused of “white powdering”. Were they guilty of murder or were they victims of circumstance?
Using newspaper reports, parish registers and censuses, this book considers the cases in detail, but also puts them within their historical context. It looks at figures such as toxicologist Alfred Swaine Taylor and eccentric amateur sleuth Reverend George Wilkins, and follows the survivors of the “poison panic” into the second half of the nineteenth century – could they ever escape the taint of arsenic?
Poison Panic will be published by Pen & Sword in 2016.
One of the pleasures of transcribing parish registers are the intriguing marginalia that turn up in them sometimes. I’m yet to find a pre-1813 parchment register that hasn’t had at least something of interest turning up in it – be it a weather report, a murder, or a runaway single mother. West Bergholt’s has some fantastic notes which slip in and give us a tantalising view of the otherwise vanished past.
It was my birthday and I wanted a treat, and seeing as two quite interesting exhibitions were on in London, it seemed as good an excuse as any to wend my way temporarily down south. I decided to see Terror & Wonder: The Gothic Imagination at the British Library (open until 20th January 2015), and Sherlock Holmes: The Man Who Never Lived And Will Never Die at the Museum of London (open until 12th April 2015). I’d never been to either place, so that was a bonus….
This might look like a fairly ordinary photograph brooch, but it has a secret….
Audio transcript (PDF – 40KB)
