Old school teams - Pre-war sport

In the 1930s my father went to Caterham School in Surrey where he was very keen on playing Rugby. He kept many team photos, several signed on the back. I am putting these here in case any of these men or their descendants recognise them. Most of them would have fought during World War Two.

On the back of the 1939 Rugby photo are these signatures:- Colin H Humly, G. Rawlinson, Roger C Howard, Peter F Boast, G P Martindale, John Emryl Price, David H Bond Thomas, J V Ware (my Dad), Raymond W A Bottoms, Basil J Turton, Paul Beeby, Kenneth G Evans, Donald G Molsly, W Price Edwards and K F Richards.

There are only 2 signatures on the 1939 hockey team:- Anthony G Hall and Denis G W Brind.

The 1939 cricket team bears no signatures.

The 1936 Rugby team includes;_ Tom Evans, Denis K Britton, David Whalley, J B Ainsworth, D. Jackson, Donald M Berry, L F Berry, Alan H Mathias, David D Lowcock, E J Howard, ? Paxton, G Andrews-Speed, D Jackson and Joshua Pay

There are no signatures on the back of the 1937 hockey team or the 1940 rugby team.

This unlabelled photo may be team Captains or Prefects. It includes Denis G W Brind from the 1939 hockey team plus Kenneth G Evans from the 1939 rugby and Denis K Britton from the 1936 rugby team. In addition David E Jenkins, John Webb,  R W McNeil and C Wells signed the back.

The Sad Tale of the Paupers Nobody Wanted : Proving the right of a British Citizen

 

In recent years, recent days even, we have heard people in this country denouncing refugees crossing from France because, “the British Taxpayer has to provide for them.”  In 1834 the government passed the New Poor Law to reduce the burden on the rate payers in England of providing for paupers with out relief by replacing it with indoor relief within the Union Workhouse.  The old rules of Settlement, where birth in a parish was necessary to receive help no longer applied so clearly but gradually the right of aid within a union of parishes was established.

However, in one sad case in Surrey and Hampshire no rights of support were legally allowed. It concerned a family where the wife, Catherine Stringer, had been born in Prussia (Germany), the daughter of a British soldier, and her husband, Michael Stringer, the son of a freed slave who had been born in Jamaica was considered a foreigner even though he received a soldier’s pension after more than 20 years’ service in the British army.

In November 1854, Catherine Stringer, who with her husband, Michael, had given birth to 14 children, presented herself at Guildford Union Workhouse, with her youngest 3 children because her husband had seduced their adopted orphan child, who at 18 was expecting his baby. Catherine was a British subject in every census record but had no right to poor relief.  Her husband was stationed in the barracks in Guildford, but when the Guildford Board of Guardians discovered she had a son-in-law in Portsmouth (where Catherine had once lived) who could take her in, they bought her train tickets so she could remove herself and her youngest children to Portsea.  Mr Ames, Master of the Workhouse took them to Guildford station and accompanied them in the carriage to Woking station where he put them on the Portsmouth train.

Subsequently the Poor Law Board in London ruled this removal from Guildford to Portsmouth was illegal.

Michael Springer is described on his pension documents as 5 ft 8 inches tall with dark brown hair, grey eyes and a swarthy complexion. He had a good military record and was a Sergeant as well as a Bugle Major. He retired aged 38 because of arthritis, probably caused by many years of service in Ireland after his upbringing in the warmer climate of Jamaica where he was born. In 1821 Michael married Catherine after meeting her in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where her father was also serving as a soldier.

Michael had served as a Bugle Major for 19 years with the 2^nd Battalion 60^th Infantry Regiment but prior to that he had enlisted in Jamaica at the age of 12. After being discharged in Ireland in 1834, where many of his children were born, he moved to the more favourable climate of Portsmouth. Unfortunately in 1851 he was convicted of the felony of larceny, which is why the 1851 census lists Catherine as Head of the house.

On finishing his sentence in 1852, Michael joined the Surrey Militia in Guildford until his discharge in 1854 when like his estranged wife he moved back to Portsmouth where some of their adult children lived. Soon his itchy feet took him back to Cork in Ireland but in 1861 Catherine is still in Portsmouth with some of her children.

I believe Michael remarried in Cork, probably bigamously but in 1875 Catherine died in poverty in the Union Workhouse on Portsea Island.

The problems the couple had in establishing rights as British citizens despite valid parentage, being born abroad as a result of her father's army service and in Michael's case owing him reward for his duty to Britain as a soldier, reflect the experiences of the Windrush generation and also of the difficulty experienced by some of my generation in obtaining a British passport because they were born in Singapore or Malaysia due to their father's military service. No wonder they had such tempestuous lives.

The church of St Peter and St Paul, West Clandon

This small Surrey church may be next to a busy road but it is best to reach it by walking along a pathway of pollarded trees from the grounds of Clandon Park just as Lord Onslow's family did over many years.

         

On a sunny day the church is bathed in bright colours as the sun shines through the stained glass.

  

   

 The beautifully carved pew of the Onslow family.

 One of the many hand sewn kneelers.

John Bone senior and Elizabeth his wife give to the poor widowers and widows belonging to the Parish of West Clandon 20 Sixpenny loaves on Christmas Day and 20 more the Sunday after Midsummer day and the Money to be Paid out of the House he now lives in that joins to Clandon Park and Lodge that was late at Rydes of Merrow. To be Paid by his Heirs and Assigns for ever. June 24, 1817.

The Dole Shelves

 This 12th century church had a major restoration at the beginning of the 20th century. 

Part of an old wooden panel which may have been on a rood screen show St peter and St Paul either side of St Thomas of Canterbury

Moving from house to house #ThrowbackThursday

Reading BeetleyPete's account of the houses in which he had lived over 60 years, inspired me to indulge in similar nostagia.

Unable to find an online photograph of the Highland farm where I spent my first few months and subsequent annual holidays with my grandparents, I have posted a photograph of my godmother's sketch.

But the following houses are from Google streetview.

This chalet bungalow in Marlpit Lane, Coulsdon, Surrey was designed by my grandfather who was an architect.  I spent my first year in the upstairs flat with my parents. After we moved out we visited my grandparents there frequently for the following 15 years. We travelled there from Mitcham via Croydon in 2 double decker red buses, stopping off to buy flowers in Croydon market for Grandma.

My parents' first house was in Whitford Gardens, Mitcham. It was a long cul-de-sac with a TB hospital at the end of the road. In the 1950s there were gaslights in the road and our bread was delivered by a horse-drawn vehicle. The rag and bone man and the knife sharpener called regularly and we had a great street party for the Coronation.

When I was 11 we moved to Weymouth in Dorset. We rented half of this old army hospital on Barrack Road, which had a very long corridor with 2 small wings. From the kitchen window you could see Weymouth harbour. If you go there today all you will find is a carpark.

Three years later we moved to Skeeby in North Yorkshire near Scotch Corner. I remember lots of snow and cold weather but in this photograph it looks idyllic.

I will miss out the next 2 years spent in Singapore since I have written elsewhere about that so next is the house in Surrey which we returned to. I was away at University so I never felt this was home.

On starting my teaching career I shared a Victorian flat in Surbiton near the station.

Seeking a change I moved to a house share with some colourful characters in East Molesey. Having just passed my driving test I started driving to work but on the first morning I used too much choke, flooding the engine and conked out on Hampton Court Bridge.

I wanted to return to Surbiton so I moved to a bed sit with my cat, Muffin.

After a year I married and moved once more, but that is a story for another day.

To read about BeeteyPete's London houses please go here

#Executed for following Captain Swing

Throughout most of the 19^th century public executions were carried out on the rooftop of Horsemonger Lane Gaol in Southwark, where the crowd could watch from below.  On January 10^th 1831 it was the turn of James Warner from Albury, Surrey to be hanged for arson.  It was believed that he was one of many farm labourers in southern England who had turned to crime to express their anger at low wages and unemployment.

During the Napoleonic Wars there was a great demand for corn and a shortage of labour but after the war ended in 1815, prices slumped and the returning soldiers flooded the job market.  To add to the pressure on rural workers, new mechanised threshing machines took the place of manual threshing with a flail.  Things came to a head after two bad harvests in 1829 and 1830.  Threatening letters were sent to landowners and clergymen by the fictional Captain Swing.  Many respected people, such as William Cobbett felt there was need for electoral reform and better provision for the poor.

But did James Warner act on behalf of his fellow agricultural labourers or was he expressing a personal grievance?  James Franks, the tenant of a corn mill in Albury had employed James Warner, but had sacked him in 1828 after accusing Warner of beating his horse.  At his trial for, “wilfully and maliciously setting fire to a flour mill at Albury,” Richard Tidy, another employee, reported that James Warner had told him Franks would, “get no good by it; he will get served out for.”

On the evening of November 13^th 1830, Mr Franks had been entertaining friends in his house next to Albury Mill.  At 4.30 next morning he was woken by the sound and sight of the mill going up in flames.  Going downstairs to see what was going on, he escaped the shattering of his bedroom window by shots from a gun loaded with horseshoe nails, pieces of flint and small pebbles.  The flames showed the figure of a man in a brown frock coat running away from the fire across the neighbouring land of Mr Smallpiece.  Henry Franks, brother of James, and several other witnesses, were able to describe the man, who was easily identified as James Warner.

It was also revealed at the trial that Warner had been drinking in Guildford on the previous evening and he had complained of greedy employers to witnesses, Richard Moore, a painter, Matthew Mansell, a blacksmith, George Wilkinson, a carpenter and James Challing, a sawyer.  His final statement was that if you held a grudge against someone you should act secretly and alone, and that they would learn something of great importance in the morning.  Warner drank at the Queen’s Head and the White Hart all evening before walking to Albury with barmen Thomas Myon and James Niblett, who contacted the police after the fire.  Searching his house, the authorities found a brown frock coat and a recently fired gun.  A full bench of magistrates at Guildford House of Correction committed Warner for trial at Kingston assizes.

On January 1^st 1831, the jury rapidly convicted of Warner of arson, although the charge of shooting at Franks was dropped.  But when the judge put on his black cap and sentenced him to death, many thought the penalty too harsh.  He was to be an example to others who protested with violence about their poverty.  In the words of the judge, “You meant to urge others to the commission of crimes, which have of late become so lamentably prevalent and which nothing under God’s providence but the strong arm of the law can check and repress.”

On 8th January 1831 the magistrates at Guildford and Clandon sent letters to the Prime Minister stating that there was evidence to implicate other local people in the crime.  It emerged that on 14th November 1830, the day before the fire, the Home Secretary had received a letter, stating that James Franks had become, “odious to the people when he was lately the overseer of the poor.”  A note was later found near the workhouse in Guildford which said, “Warner is murdered.  Franks, Drummond and Smallpiece shall die….. I could clear him at the place, you false-swearing villain. We fired the mill.  Starving and firing go together.”

Although James Warner was the only agricultural protester to be executed in Surrey, 18 others were sentenced to death in other parts of the country between 1830 and 1832.  505 men were transported to Australia and 644 were imprisoned.  In 1832 the Reform Act was passed in Parliament and in 1834 the Poor Law Amendment Act established a network of inspected Workhouses.  And yet the case of the Tolpuddle Martyrs was still to shock the country in 1834.

For interesting sources about the Swing disturbances go to this page on the National Archives   http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/politics/g5/

The wives of Transported Convicts

When a man was convicted of a major crime in the 19^th century he was often transported to Australia, leaving his family without means of support.  When this happened, his wife and children usually ended up in the local workhouse and there are records of a few couples, whose fate this was, in Guildford, Surrey.  

In 1844 George Woods aged 35, was transported to Van Diemen’s Land for 7 years after entering enclosed land unlawfully, carrying a gun.  George and his wife had three daughters and a son.  At the Surrey Sessions in Newington, evidence was given that he had threatened James Puttock with a gun while on his way to poach game.

Another local labourer, Thomas Jackman, was transported for 10 years in 1846 for sheep stealing.  At the time. Thomas was 25 and he and his wife Elizabeth had a baby son, Jeremiah.

In fact, although their sentences would hopefully expire while they were still alive, they were not provided with a return passage to England, so it was effectively a life sentence.  Their wives Ann Woods and Elizabeth Jackman entered Guildford Union Workhouse.

 By 1861, Elizabeth Jackman, describing herself as a widow, was living with her son and her father in nearby Worplesdon, working as a dressmaker.  Soon she married Thomas Baker, a grocer and baker and they rapidly had three children.  Elizabeth's son Jeremiah Jackman died in 1861 and she was widowed again by 1891.  Obviously a strong healthy woman, Elizabeth Baker can be found on the 1911 census, aged 89, living in Streatham, south London with her grand-daughter Daisy Baker.

Another Surrey resident who had shared this fate was Nathaniel Longhurst, who was born in Ewhurst, in 1785.  Nathaniel was a farm labourer who, by the time he met 16 year old Rebecca Wood from Shere, was already a widower.  Despite a 25 year age gap, they were married in St Nicholas’ Church, Guildford on 22^nd November 1829.  Within a year, Nathaniel had been arrested for offences against the Game Laws and was imprisoned for 6 months.  In 1831 Rebecca and Nathaniel had a daughter Sophia.  A son, William, was born in 1833 and another son, Robert, in 1834 but sadly at that point, Nathaniel Longhurst was arrested for poaching, a very serious crime.  He was convicted and sentenced to transportation for 14 years.  Rebecca had no choice but to enter Guildford Union Workhouse.

Prison Hulk 

After being kept on a prison hulk in the river Thames for a few months, Nathaniel was transported to Australia on the "Bardaster" along with 240 other convicts, arriving in Tasmania on September 7^th 1835.

By 1841 Rebecca had left the Workhouse and was living with her father James Wood, in Shere. In another part of the village Rebecca’s children Sophia, William and Robert were living with her mother Martha.  In 1851 Rebecca was sharing a house with both her parents, accompanied by her daughter Sophia and her sister Esther Wood and nephew Benjamin.  Her father, James Wood, was a grocer so he was probably able to feed this extended family.  Rebecca would have heard nothing from Nathaniel since he departed for Australia in 1835 and she would not have known whether he was alive or dead.

It is probably not surprising therefore, that on 27^th April 1856 in Mickleham, she married Thomas Gadd, a widower.  Rebecca Longhurst described herself as a widow, although we now know that was not the case.  Of necessity, Nathaniel had remained in Australia after serving his sentence and he never remarried.  Rebecca's husband, Thomas Gadd was a rake maker in Newdigate and by 1871 Benjamin Wood, Rebecca’s nephew was working for him.  Thomas Gadd was seven years older than Rebecca and by 1875 he had died.  Unknown to Rebecca Gadd (Longhurst), Nathaniel had died in Australia in 1867, aged 82 so she now really was a widow twice over.

At the age of 62, on February 5^th 1876 in Newdigate, Rebecca Gadd married for the third time, on this occasion to 64 year old widowed farmer, James Sanders.  Three years later, Rebecca died, while her third husband James Sanders outlived her by another 10 years.