Convict mystery - the full story

My second Esme Quentin novel, The Indelible Stain, published on 26th September, was inspired by reading an article about researching convict ancestry.

The Indelible Stain

So it seemed appropriate in this post to write about the Percival black sheep and transported felon, to whom I dedicated the book - Moses Percival.

I am indebted to John Priestley, with whom my husband shares a great-great-grandfather, William Percival, as it was he who passed on Moses’ story. William's father James was Moses' elder brother.

Moses’ story starts ordinarily enough. He was born in 1802 in Great Tey, Essex, to parents Edward and Susannah Percival, one of 13 children. He started at the village school at the age of six, learning at least to  write his name, for in 1826 when he married Hannah Rayner he was able to sign the register.

Moses was recorded as being a ploughman and likely came from a family of agricultural workers. By 1831 he and Hannah had baptized three children and it was at this point that Moses disappeared from the parish records. When Hannah remarried in 1844, the assumption was that Moses had died, though there was no record of his burial.

It wasn't until some time later we discovered the truth, that in 1831, Moses was convicted of the theft of a sack of barley. The Chelmsford assizes records of 7^th March make particular note of his crime as being the theft of barley… and a sack. Perhaps, I mused, if he’d have brought his own sack along to steal the grain the punishment wouldn’t have been so harsh!

However it turns out that, according to the records in Kew, that the sack had been stolen on a separate occasion, after the barley! So, it being a 'second offence', may explain why Moses was sentenced to fourteen years exile to Van Diemans Land, present day Tasmania.

image courtesy of Ancestry.com

 

Moses spent the first three months of his sentence on board the hulk ship, Cumberland before being shipped across the world on 11^th June on the convict ship the Larkins, arriving in Hobart on 19^th October.



An example of a 'hulk' ship
image courtesy of en.wikipedia.org

His description is recorded (for identification purposes, should he abscond) as 5ft 5½ inches tall, brown complexion (possibly tanned from sailing through the tropics on the voyage), small head, brown hair and eyes, small whiskers, a large mouth, thick lips, a long chin and a mole on his cheek.



The book in which Moses' description is recorded
image courtesy of Archive Office of Tasmania

Unless convicted of a violent crime, most convicts were put to work rather than being incarcerated and Moses is recorded as working for Mr Andrew Tolnie or Tolmey. He was granted a free pardon on 31^st May 1838, having served only half of his sentence. No doubt his willingness to work hard, coupled with good behaviour were contributory factors in his early release.

Moses continued in the employ of Mr Tolmey after his pardon, as a horseman. His name appears in The Hobart Town Courier newspaper later that year, announcing his rounding up of stray cattle at the public pound in a place called Jerusalem and declaring they would be sold by him if not claimed by their owners.

Business was going well and soon Moses had made enough money to buy 50 acres of land and a quantity of stock.

But sadly, he had little time to enjoy his freedom, as a few months later in early 1839, he was injured when a tree fell on him and crushed his leg. The leg became gangrenous and he died.

Mr Tolmey, clearly an honest man and, it would seem, aware of Moses' family back in England, wrote to Moses' wife Hannah to tell her not only of the death of her husband, but to inform her that she'd inherited the value of the land Moses had bought, worth between £200 and £300. Quite a considerable sum at that time to someone of her modest means.

I wonder whether, had Moses lived, the family planned to join him for a new life in Van Diemans Land. I guess we'll never know.

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There’s a postscript to this story which links neatly with the photograph of the "Mystery Mrs Percival", photographed making Coggeshall lace in the 1950s, the subject of an earlier post. But more on that next time.

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A useful starting point for researching your own convict ancestors, including those transported to America as well as Australia, is The National Archives website  where you can read various helpful research guides on the subject. 

For information on crime and punishment or to read the details of past trials, go to Old Bailey Online which holds some fascinating stories.



Bottom Knockers and death in the Ironbridge Gorge

Blists Hill Victorian Village

Ironbridge Gorge in Shropshire is a world heritage site. Here you'll find a collection of award winning museums, including Blists Hill Victorian Village (left), which tell the story of the birth of the Industrial Revolution.

Having always been a huge fan of Ironbridge, I was delighted to discover I had ancestors who lived and worked in the area.

My three-times great-grandfather, Malcolm Sinclair BENBOW was born in 1807 in Broseley, Shropshire, a short distance away.

In the latter part of the eighteenth century it was Broseley which was known for producing fine porcelain, with blue and white decoration. But in the 1790s a new pottery was set up in Coalport. The original factory was dismantled in 1821 and re-used at Coalport, and became the Coalport China Works.

Yours truly sitting beside the river at Coalport
 

The 1851 census lists my ancestor Malcolm Benbow working as a warehouseman. Although not stated, it would have been at the Coalport China factory. His wife, Eliza (nee Jones) is listed as a warehousewoman and his eldest daughter, Henrietta, aged 19, is a china burnisher. The two younger children, Sarah Ann (my great-great grandmother), aged 12, and Daniel, aged 8, attended school. Many of their immediate neighbours' occupations were also in the pottery trade - from factory labourers to potters and china painters. There was also a china guilder and china turner.

As its name suggests, the china guilder applied gold to pottery ware A china turner's job was to turn the clay ware to the required outline before it was fired. A china burnisher would polish the outside of a pot, using a stone or metal piece, to improve the finish and reduce its porosity.

Amongst other occupations I saw listed was the wonderfully named 'Saggar Makers Bottom Knocker'! It was an occupation which apparently appeared on the 1950's TV game programme, What's My Line. A saggar is the clay container which holds the items to be fired. The maker of said saggar is called (unsurprisingly) the Saggar Maker. Although it was a skilled job to fashion the saggar itself, it seems that the bottom of these containers could be knocked into shape by the Saggar Maker's assistant, usually a young lad - thereby acquiring the name, Bottom Knocker.

The census of 1861 finds Malcolm still working at the china works, still a warehouseman, and Eliza again as a warehousewoman, but now Sarah Ann is employed as a china burnisher and her brother (now called John D, rather than Daniel) is a china turner. With no mention of Sarah Ann's elder sister Henrietta, I assumed that she must be living elsewhere as a married woman, perhaps with a family of her own.

But on further investigation I came across a record of her death in 1854, aged just 23. I sent for her death certificate and while waiting for its arrival, I read about the health issues associated with the potteries and wondered if her death was connected to her work.

John Thomas Arlidge was the first person study the health of the pottery workers and published his findings in 1864. The average age of death of male potters in Stoke was nine and a half years earlier than the general population. As for the cause of death, he found 60% died of diseases of the lung and consumption.

Henrietta's death certificate arrived and confirmed my suspicions. She'd died of consumption.

 

An enquiry conducted by the General Board of Health, 2 years after Henrietta's death, concluded that the worst cases of bronchitis "were found amongst young women employed in scouring china, who did not live many years after entering that employment."

My great-great grandmother, Sarah Ann, was lucky enough to leave the industry in the same year as Arlidge's report was published, when she married and moved to Wolverhampton. She went on to have six children and died in 1912, aged 72.

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The blog comestepbackintime has an interesting article on Coalport china and its history.

You can find out more at The Coalport China Museum, which is one of the Ironbridge Gorge
Museums mentioned above.

Further information on the history of Coalport Porcelain can be found here.

Dairy of a 14 year-old, 1948

Reading Virginia Nicholson's, Millions Like Us, (see my other blog, Engage Write Brain), about life in WW2 and the years immediately afterwards, prompted me to look out my mum's teenage diaries of 1948-1952.

A sample page of Mum's diary.

Although they don't have the detail of a journal, being only a small pocket diary, the brief entries still manage to give a flavour of life for a fourteen-year-old at that time.

My mum, Patricia Barton, aged 14

One February entry in 1948 reads: ...went with mom and dad to old folks concert where mom sang and dad played piano. My grandmother, Wyn, had been a professional singer before the war (there's more about her on my post, Strictly Music Hall) and 'Dad' is my mother's step-father, Bill Garland, a semi-professional piano player whom my gran married in 1946.

Other entries which caught my eye were:

• Went to pictures tonight to see 'West of the Pecos' and 'If you knew Susie'. It was smashing. The list of films she saw is impressive. She went to the cinema virtually every week, sometimes twice. I recognised one favourite amongst the many, Random Harvest, which we watched with her years later on many occasion. Based on James Hilton's novel of the same name, it tells the story of 'Smithy' (played by Ronald Coleman) who is suffering amnesia after being shell-shocked in WW1. He begins a new life by marrying Paula (Greer Garson) until one day while visiting the city he's knocked over in the street. His memory is restored but in doing so, he forgets everything about his new wife and baby waiting at home. A tear-jerker which my gran loved, writing to the BBC regularly when we were children, begging them to screen it on TV.

• Tonight mom had a quarrel with Grandpa. Mum, her sister and my gran had lived with my great-grandparents since the start of the war. There's nothing to say what the quarrel was about but a regular argument during wartime concerned Grandpa's habit of going into the yard to light his pipe during the black-out. The women were convinced the German bombers would see the light and that they'd be targeted. Eventually the worst happened and an incendiary was dropped on their house, but not, as far as I'm aware, while he was lighting up!

• 14th March 1949. CLOTHES COUPON END TONIGHT. Clearly written with feeling as it's recorded in capital letters!

• 1950. I visited London with the guides from school. We went for a week. The photo was taken in Trafalgar Square. On the back are listed the names of the guides, though sadly no surnames. Where are you - Miss Blanks, Miss Richards, Pauline, Brenda, Barbara, Mary, Vera, Joyce B, Joyce N, Irene and Edna?

Girl Guides, probably a Wednesfield group.

• January 1951. Granddad not well. Pay day £6-6-10 monthly. By now Mum was working as a student nursery nurse at Woodlands Nursery (she would later move to Elston Hall Nursery School for 9 months training). She began work with the toddlers which she declared in her diary, was boring. A few months later she was moved to the baby section which she loved.

• 1st February. Granddad not improved. Had doctor.
• Granddad worse. Aunty Hilda coming. My great aunt.

And a few days later -

• Stayed in. Granddad in deep sleep.
• Thursday 8th February. Grandpa at the age of 90 passed away on his birthday. A couple of weeks later she admits, it seems strange without grandpa. 'Grandpa' was Jack Griffiths. In his younger days he'd played for Wolves football club, which I wrote about on a post Family Footballers. 

A poignant note on which to end, particularly because of the date of this post. Mum died 25 years ago today, at the untimely age of 54. I still miss her.

Memories with a Box Brownie

Reading Cathy Murray's Writing a Family History blog last month about days out and holiday snaps, I was reminded of this picture of me trying to get to grips with my granddad's Box Brownie. He'd bought the camera in 1922, apparently, which says something for the durability of technology in those days as I was born over thirty years later!

Box Brownie Camera similar to
my grandfather's.

 What I didn't realise until I looked up the history of the camera, was that marketing for it by the manufacturers Eastman Kodak, was based on the principle that it was so simple to operate, even a child could use it. In the first year it was introduced, in 1900, it sold over 250,000 due to its affordable price.

Cathy Murray's post showed photographs of her family taken in Blackpool in 1945 and 1946. It prompted me to dig around to see what early holiday snaps I had in our photograph archives and I discovered several. The theme of days-out continues with this picture of a whole community waiting for the train to arrive for a day out to Rhyl.

Waiting on Tettenhall Station, circa 1932

My granddad, Ernest George Shelley, is in the centre carrying my father (love the hat, Dad!) next to him is my great-grandfather, 'Granddad Digg' (Thomas Diggory) and on the far right hand side is my Great Aunt Hannah (Diggory).

From the opposite side of the family, there's this photograph of my grandmother, Winifred Griffiths with my mum taken around 1937. I'm not sure where it is (any ideas, anyone?) but you can see what look like beach huts in the distance to the left, and another building in the centre which might be selling teas, ice-creams or even the place where you rent deck chairs. The houses along the periphery are very close to the beach.

The picture below is my mum again, but years later with her aunt, Hilda Griffiths. 

This time, though, I'm fairly sure the photograph was taken at Llandudno, a place we often went as children. My grandmother Winifred, used to sing to holiday makers at The Happy Valley on the Great Orme. You can read about her on my post Strictly Music Hall.

We all know the frustration of finding unidentifiable old photographs but are we any better than our ancestors? What about those hundreds of photographs stored on computers and memory cards, labelled with nothing more revealing than P26488674... etc.? Now there's a nice engrossing task for a wet day!

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STOP-PRESS-STOP-PRESS-STOP-PRESS............................

The second Esme Quentin novel, The Indelible Stain,  is coming soon!

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Out of the Woodwork and on to the Tree

I discovered an ancestor I didn't know I had a couple of weeks ago. Yes, I know all the ancestors we 'discover' are generally unknown before we find them! But this was a branch of the family I thought I already knew well.

My paternal grandfather, Ernest George Shelley, was born in 1897 and his birth was registered in Worfield, near Bridgenorth. The 1901 census specified his birthplace as the village of Claverley, nearby.

Claverley, Shropshire

George (as my grandfather was generally known) was one of the very first family members I investigated at the start of  my family history journey. His father was also George and had also been born in Claverley.

George Shelley

I visited the Shropshire Records Office in Shrewsbury and checked out the parish records. George had been baptised in the village church. His mother was recorded as Emma Shelley and his father was recorded as "unknown".  This was a surprise! I was delighted to have found my first 'out of wedlock' ancestor so early!

The 1871 census listed Emma as living with her parents Thomas and Bessey Shelley, at Sutton Mill, Claverley along with George then aged 1, who was recorded as being Thomas's grandson.

By 1881, however, although George, now aged 11, was still living with his grandfather (Bessey had died earlier that year) his relationship to the head of the household was now cited as son. There was no mention of Emma and I couldn't find her anywhere.

In fact it wasn't until a few years later when I began another search for her that I discovered that she'd married a widower, George Wenlock, in 1876 and went on to have other children. It seemed that Mr Wenlock had not been prepared to take on Emma's illegitimate son.

So far, so straight forward... until browsing on Ancestry.co.uk recently, I came across another family tree showing Emma, her parents Thomas and Bessey, her marriage to George Wenlock and the Wenlock children. However my great-grandfather George Shelley was missing.

Now this might not be so very surprising if the existence of George was an embarrassment and the decision had been taken to exclude him from Emma's family tree, were it not for the fact that there was a different illegitimate child listed, called Charles. And it wasn't a case of there being a muddle over names. Charles was another child, born to Emma in 1874, again at Sutton Mill, where George had been born a few years before.

Correspondence between me and my 'counterpart' ensued! Neither family had been aware of the existence of the other half-brother and we shared information about each, swapping photographs and documents.

Was it true that neither boy had been completely unaware of one other? George would have been barely three when Charles was born. He may have had been too young to recall the event, particularly as a family living in one of the labourers' cottages at Sutton Mill at the time adopted Charles, possibly soon after he was born. By 1881 the family had moved away from the area taking Charles with them. Charles may never have been told that George was his brother and visa versa. Did Charles even know the identity of his mother?

It was an interesting surprise for my dad and my counterpart's mum to gain a previously unknown 'half ' great-uncle!

The Sad Case of Thomas Diggory of the Gloucester Hussars

Almost eight million men (ref PCS) were left disabled after WW1 and my Great Uncle Tom was one of them.

I never met Tom, or Thomas James Diggory to give him his full name, as he died before I was born but I knew he'd served in the war and had been injured. His photograph took pride of place on the mantelpiece in my grandmother's dining room. Tom was her older brother.

Tom was born in 1894 in Sedgley in Staffordshire where the family lived in the lodge of Park Hall, now a hotel. Tom is in the centre of the photograph, standing behind his little sister, my grandmother, Edith Alice.

Before the war, Tom worked in service, as a footman, as seen here in his uniform (he's the one on the left).

Tom joined the 7th Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment opting to become a cavalryman in the Royal Gloucestershire Hussars, and serving in Gallapoli in 1915.

According to the account on the "Glosters" website, The Royal Gloucestershire Hussars arrived in Alexandria, Egypt in April 1915, a mounted force of 537 men. In August, after a period of training, they landed in Gallapoli where the rest of the 7th battalion had already sustained heavy losses. 

Ordered to leave their horses behind, they spent the next six weeks in battle around Chocolate Hill and the trenches around Cator House. By 17th October, with casualties and, more significantly, disease, having taken a severe toll, they were down to an effective strength of only 95. Tom had been badly injured in the leg, having stepped on an explosive.

Tom wearing his "hospital blues", the uniform that injured servicemen were required to wear during WW1, 

a practice first introduced during the Crimean War.

Tom remained in hospital for some considerable time, and I have yet to establish where, though it's been suggested it may have been in Birmingham. But Tom failed to thrive and continued to have problems with his injured leg.

 In 1932 he married Beatrice Wood (Betty). You can just make out his walking sticks in the photograph below, taken at their wedding. He was aged 38 by now and you can see from the photo that he doesn't look a well man.

A short time after this photograph was taken, Tom's injury became troublesome again, the wound refusing to heal, leaving a gaping hole in the flesh. 

But despite medical advice, and the support and encouragement of his family, Tom refused to agree to the offending leg being amputated.  "I came into this world with two legs," he's reported to have said, "and I shall leave it with two legs."

He remained bed-ridden, nursed by his wife Betty, until his death in 1954, aged 60.

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Post update February 2017

I received a comment on this post explaining that Thomas was not in the Hussars, as my grandmother, Thomas's sister always maintained, but in the Infantry. 

Unfortunately, as he/she commented anonymously and left no contact details, I wasn't able to go back to them to clarify matters (I'm confused that Thomas is sitting on a horse in the photo above but allegedly was in the Infantry – I'd love an explanation!).

But if anyone else can unpick the information below and get in touch, I'd be delighted to hear from you!

Sorry to say that Thomas was not one of ours, Gloucestershire Yeomanry, but Gloucesters (Infantry) 7th and 8th Battalions

He was at Gallipoli with the Infantry at the same time as his County cousins in the dismounted Yeomanry.

Name: Thomas James Diggory 
Military Year: 1914-1920 
Rank: Lance Corporal 
Medal Awarded: British War Medal and Victory Medal 
Regiment or Corps: Gloucestershire Regiment 
Regimental Number: 22240 
Previous Units: 7th Glouc. Regt. 22240 Pte., 8th Glouc. R. 22240 

Mystery motorbike

The photo of a woman on a motorcycle amongst the mystery 138 photographs has generated some speculation as to the make of bike.

My dad said he thought that someone on the side of the family from where we believe the photographs came, used to work for Sunbeam and he wondered if that was a clue. 

Sunbeam started out making bicycles but when they did begin to manufacture motorcycles, they gained a reputation for quality and did well in the famous TT races on the Isle of Man. 

Another proposal was that the bike was a James, dating from around 1921- 27, because of its chain drive and not the earlier belt drive. It was suggested that this actual bike might have been modified in some way.

To settle the matter I contacted the National Motorcycle Museum in Birmingham to ask for their thoughts. James Hewing very kindly responded to my email and identified the bike as an Royal Enfield 500c, from around 1927.

Interestingly, while watching the new BBC drama, The Crimson Field, about a field hospital in WW1, one of the characters arrived on a motorcycle which looked suspiciously like the one above with its distinct box-like petrol tank. Whoever chose the 'props' obviously did their homework. Apparently Enfield supplied the British War Department with a large number of motorcycles in 1914.

But having identified the bike, I'm still no further on in identifying the lady sitting astride it. Any suggestions? 

(For the background read the original post here.)