John Hobden: Walking Between Worlds

Alice Edgar's maternal grandparents were John Hobden, who was born in 1821 in Lindfield, Sussex and died in Hove  in 1899, and Eliza Page, who was born in 1824 in Brighton and died in Lewes in 1886.

John lived at a time of great change - even in Sussex which was a long way from the coalfields that fuelled the growth of  the economic  'powerhouses' in Lancashire, Yorkshire, lowland Scotland and parts of the Midlands. He was  known in his family as a great walker and two treks he undertook during this period show how the new developments were affecting even the largely rural south of England.

Nineteenth century threshing machine: By Unknown (Dictionnaire d'arts industriels) - cropped image from 1881 Dictionnaire d'arts industriels, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=425243

The cumulative effect of these changes is sometimes called the modernisation of society. One aspect of this process was a gradual shift in attitudes to violence. When he was a young man people were hung for crimes that we would now regard as meriting little more than a short jail sentence, perhaps not even that. In one case, at least, they were hung for actions that are now perfectly legal and accepted, as we shall see. And public hanging was regarded as entertainment - although educated people were already starting to turn against the grisly spectacle, especially as children were sometimes taken 'as a warning' - contemporary accounts suggest that the behaviour of both the young and the old hardly suggested they were out to be reminded of the  majesty of the law and the stern necessities of justice. For many going to an execution was rather like a pleasant if rather disorderly day out. Public hangings continued in England until 1868.

The reason I'm recounting all this is that John's great-grandson tell us he walked from Lewes to Horsham - 45 miles there and back again- to see the  last man publicly hanged for sheep stealing in Sussex. Unfortunately this is not as clear as it seems. The last case of execution for sheep stealing in Sussex that I have been able to find took place in 1805, sixteen years before John's birth.[1] And it seems the last man to be publicly hanged anywhere in England for this crime was John Clarke, who paid for what he did - dying in 'a proper and penitent manner' after receiving the sacrament -on Friday 19 March, 1830 at faraway Lincoln.[2]

So John walked to see a man hanged, but for what crime?

 23.5 Miies

I have a theory. I think John saw what many of us would now call the judicial murder of a young man. If my theory is correct, John himself was possibly even younger than the victim and the nature of 'the crime' gave him an incentive to tell his family that it was 'sheep stealing' even though it wasn't.

First of all though, the tragic hanging took place in the County Goal- up until 19, August 1820 criminals were executed on Horsham Heath, but after this date they were relocated to the Goal. The first such execution took place on 24 August 1822 and the last on 6 April 1844. [3]

I believe that John witnessed one of these executions: the hanging of John Sparshott for sodomy - or, as another source puts it, 'an unnatural crime'.

The first name of the unfortunate victim is given as James as well as John[4] and his surname also takes the form 'Sparsholt'.But the date of the event is clear. This is from the Brighton Gazette, a local newspaper:[5]

The return {the Government had asked for a report of those executed at Horsham in the recent period} contained the names of Richard Shepherd for burglary, and James Sparshott for an unnatural crime, convicted at the last Summer Assizes, and executed at Horsham on the 22d August last.

That makes the execution August 22, 1835. A local historian claims it was the last public hanging at Horsham[7]  - which would make the story that John saw the last public hanging more credible, even if he declined to tell his family the true nature of the crime. Against my theory is the fact that Richard Shepherd was hanged for burglary on the same day and surely the family tradition that preserved the memory of John's walk would have also recorded the fact that he saw two men hanged. I have a hunch, though, that this was the execution John saw and the 15 year old was too embarrassed to report the nature of crime so substituted the more innocuous one of sheep stealing.

The next thing we hear of John is in the 1841 Census when he was an agricultural labourer living in one of the cottages at St. John Under the Castle, Lewes.  If I'm right in identifying his 'execution walk' he'd been in Lewes for at least six years.

12 Miles

However, this is just one snapshot of a working life that seems to have been a lot more varied:

As a young man he was said to have had employment at one time as a shepherd; at another occasion as a cowman and general dogsbody to farmers within the county, so with long personal experience, was very useful in handling livestock - horses, cattle, sheep, poultry - and in all-round landwork.[9]

At about the time of the 1841 Census, Eric Hobden tells us that John walked the same rough land from Lewes to Horsham to watch the arrival of the first steam train in Sussex. It came from London Bridge station. The creation of the London to Brighton railway was complex, but I think the most probable date for John's walk was July 12 1841.[10]

The railways were creating a new world. 

English and Scottish Railways 1850: By Charles F. Cheffins - Cheffins's Map of English & Scotch Railways, 1850 (preserved at University of Chicago Digital Preservation Collection), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31265009

Industry was stimulated to even faster growth and individuals felt their horizons expand as travel became quicker, easier and cheaper. The train journey from London to Brighton took less than half the time of the coach and was much safer and more comfortable.[11] Even standard national time came from the railways: the clocks at stations were the first co-ordinated timepieces.

John's was right to think it was worth making the effort to be there- it was a historic day!

John married Eliza Page at Newick on February 25, 1847.[12] This is what Eric Hobden tells us about his great-grandmother:

Eliza (was) a delicate, rather gentle lady who gathered her children round when they were young in thunderstorms to sing  'O God our help in ages past'.

The 1851 Census finds the couple still living in Newick. 

8.2 Miles

John is an agricultural labourer and Eliza isn't working - or, to put it another way, she's working very hard looking after her husband and her house and making ends meet. On Census Day they're being  visited by 6 year old Martha Page from Lewes - I'm not sure if she's Eliza's niece, cousin or sister.

Family tradition states that the couple lost their first four babies at birth or soon after. The first child to survive was named after her mother: Eliza (Jr.) was born in 1853 - she.  was to become Alice Edgar's mother. Richard followed in 1854 - and by the time of the next Census he and Eliza had three younger brothers.

In 1861 John and Eliza are living at Church Cottage, Chailey with Eliza (Jr.) who's at school, as are Richard and  William, aged 5. Alfred is 2 and baby Robert just 8 months. The first three children were born at Newick and the last two at Chailey, so the family must have made the short move some time between 1856 and 1859. John is still an agricultural labourer, but maybe he's got a new job.

 2.6 Miles

A word about Robert - his full name was Robert Owen Hobden and it seems most unlikely that he was not named after the great philanthropist, socialist, reformer and creator of model factories, Robert Owen, who had died two years earlier in 1858. 

John Cranch: Robert Owen in 1845: By John Cranch - painting of John Cranch 1845, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=719799

Owen's House at the model factory in New Lanark, close to Glasgow which he managed and part-owned: By Gordon Brown, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=484332

The previously irreligious Owen converted to Spiritualism in 1854, but I doubt that was the reason for the naming. I think one or both of the Hobdens was probably a socialist - and perhaps this was passed on through Eliza (Jr.) to her daughter, my grandmother Alice Edgar. Eric Hobden notes that she was always interested in anything that improved the lot of ordinary people and it sounds to me as if she was a left-winger long before she got involved with the Labour Party and the Co-operative Movement in Windsor in the 1920s.

The next Census marks a shift in John's working life.

In 1871 he was a gardener, living with Eliza at 75 South Street, Chailey. Richard, aged 16, William (14) and Alfred (12) were all agricultural labourers -  even Robert Owen, aged only 10, was working in the fields. Only Sarah Ann (7) is at school. Lydia Fanner, John's seventy-year-old  aunt, was also there on Census Day. All of the children are now said to have been born in Newick, but I'm almost sure the 1861 division between the two villages is correct.

There's no sign of John and Eliza in 1881 or of John in 1891. Eliza Hobden's death aged 62 was registered in the April-June quarter of 1886 in Lewes. John's death, aged 78, was registered in the first quarter of 1899 at Steyning. The Steyning registration district includes Hove.

I have no idea why they are not in those two Censuses - perhaps they are and I and the other family historians who've put Trees on Ancestry.com have simply failed to find them. But with these clues and Eric Hobden's letter we can try to reconstruct John and Eliza's movements in the last period of their lives.

This is what Eric tells us about John:

(H)e lived some time of the time with Aunt Sallie and Alfred King as well as with my Grandparents (Robert Owen Hobden and his wife Charlotte).

On March 27, 1886 Robert Owen Hobden and Charlotte had a son, Arthur, whose birth was registered in Lewes: this places them in Lewes, where Eliza's death was registered just before -so I think that John and Eliza were living with Robert and his wife at that time. In 1881 Robert was working at a footman at a large house called Newick Park. In the first quarter of 1884 he married Charlotte Rogers Duddridge, and my guess is that he took his parents into the home he set up with his new bride.

There is, by the way, an intriguing Edgar mystery about that marriage: Charlotte was from Somerset, but the church the couple married in was St. George's, Hanover Square. Reader's of his blog will know that this church is given on Find My Past as the one at which Alice Stephenson  married Herbert Edgar in 1911. They in fact married at St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, but Hanover Square was close to the home that Alice worked in as a parlour maid in 1911. There's a long gap between 1884 and 1911, but we don't know when Alice first went to work in that part of London and I think it's just possible that Charlotte kept in touch with her old employers and put in a word for Alice when some neighbours needed a servant. It's also worth noting that in 1891 her husband (Robert Owen) was a butler for an Australian in Reigate and Alice's employer was an Australian widow.

Eric tells us a little about his life with Robert Owen and Charlotte:

Seemingly he (John) did not have any formal education so was thought not able to write, and definitely could not read...(but) he liked newspapers being read aloud to him. This charming pastime was provided by Florence, a friend of...Charlotte's, but the kind old lady's own reading ability was little above kindergarten level and the outcome was sometimes riotously funny. When Florrie found difficult passages (she) simply spoke out the parts she understood, and for those which puzzled her (she) just said 'Big Word' as replacement! In other instances she invented a lot of nonsense as she went along. The old man, despite lacking 'academic' knowledge, was no simpleton, so when this good soul read aloud some piece outrageously 'haywire', he would call out, 'It doesn't really say that does it Flo; it sure sounds quite daft...'

John was born a long time before the state provided education for all and whether or not the children of agricultural labourers got any schooling at all was largely a matter of luck, and John missed out. Another thing that modernity means is decent standards of welfare and educational provision for all, and it seems to me that the naming of his son, which I discussed above, suggests that John Hobden longed for such a time to come about.

The Robert Owen Hobdens were in Hove by 1911 but my guess is that at the time of his death in 1899 John had moved in with his daughter and her husband. 'Sallie', as she's called in Eric's letter, was the family name for Sarah Ann Hobden, who was born in about 1864 and married Alfred King. In 1891 they were living in Argyle Road in Brighton. This was in the Preston sub-district of Steyning.

John Hobden was in most ways a man rooted in the old world, but one day in July 1841 he walked over 20 miles to watch a new one come into being. The world he died in was very different from the one he was born into - and if he'd lived a little longer he would have encountered a century in which the pace of change was to become faster still.

---

[1] http://sussexhistoryforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=2284.0

[2] http://parishes.lincolnshire.gov.uk/Files/Parish/91/websitehistoryCLARK1.pdf

[3] http://sussexhistoryforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=2284.0

[4] http://rictornorton.co.uk/eighteen/1836news.htm

[5] January 7, 1836 - cited in http://rictornorton.co.uk/eighteen/1836news.htm

[6] http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/1828.html

[7] http://sussexhistoryforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=2284.0

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Pratt_and_John_Smith

[9] Eric Hobden, Letter, 1986.

[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_and_Brighton_Railway

[11] http://vichist.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/with-opening-of-london-to-brighton-rail.html

[12] http://person.ancestry.co.uk/tree/7622423/person/-584703941/facts

The William Stephensons: Two Yorkshire Shoe-makers and their World

Alice Edgar's great-grandfather was William Stephenson, a shoemaker of Askham Bryan, now a suburb of York but then a village about 6 miles to the south-west. He was born  in 1781 and he married Mary, who was born in 1791. I don't know Mary's maiden name. William was born at Thorp Arch, about 7 miles from Askham Bryan and Mary at Long Marston, less than 5 miles away from the village they would make their home in. Their first child (surviving one at any rate) was also named William. He was born in 1821, followed his father into shoe making, and married a woman called Jane - this time I think I can take a reasonable guess as to her maiden name. Their boy Tom, born in 1857, was Alice's father.

Let's see if we can put some flesh on these bare bones of our family history.

This is from nineteenth century descriptions of Thorp Arch, which is the currently known origin point for 'our' branch of the Stephensons:

The river Wharf (e) runs with a rapid stream through this delightful place, and the cascade seen through the arches of the bridge, with the church and houses embosomed in woods, on the banks of the river, afford a rich and varied landscape that can scarcely be excelled.[1]

By Gordon Hatton, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4062315

The 'arches of the bridge' have nothing to do with the village name, which alludes to the De Arcubus (or De Arches) family, which came to Britain with William the Conqueror.[2]

As for Long Marston, the childhood home of first female ancestor in this line: one of the crucial engagements of the English Civil War, the Battle of Marston Moor, took place  just outside the village in July 1644:

 By John Barker - http://www.bridgemanartondemand.com/art/154979/Battle_of_Marston_Moor_1644, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5210134

At some point the couple moved to Askham Bryan (now known mainly for its Agricultural College) where they remained for the rest of their lives. 

7.8 Miles

4.9 Miles

Their son, also a William Stephenson and my great-great-grandfather was born there in 1821. To avoid any confusion I'll call the two Williams 'Sr.' and 'Jr'  from now on but please remember this was NOT how they were named. And while the distinction between 'Stephenson' and 'Stevenson' is said to have been important to my grandmother Alice it was of no significance to the Census takers who used both forms - and on two occasions recorded them as 'Stephsons' perhaps suggesting an idiosyncratic family pronunciation!

What of the trade of shoemaker that was followed by both William Stephenson's?

Shoe maker and apprentice, illustration of 1821

Shoemakers had been at work in Askham Bryan since the seventeenth century.[3] William Stephenson Sr's prospects as he set out on this path were bright: he was a skilled worker and it must have seemed there would always be a demand for his products. He would have served an apprenticeship - probably for seven years  and starting at the age of seven - although I don't know if, like William Jr., his father was also his 'master'. The earliest reference to his work is in a Directory for 1823 where William is listed as a shoemaker - and he has one fellow craftsman in Askham Bryan, John Beck.[4] It seems certain that the two didn't live by making and repairing shoes for their fellow villagers: they did that, no doubt, but it's likely they made most of their money by producing shoes that were sold in York. Shoe making, like most other industries in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, was organised in what is now sometimes called  'the domestic system': shoes were made at the worker's home, paid for on a 'piece work' basis by a merchant capitalist, and taken to be sold, often from warehouses, in the nearest suitable town[5] - in this case almost certainly York. Sometimes the capitalist owned the tools necessary for the job, sometimes the worker. As the nineteenth century wore on, shoe making - again like other manufactures - was transferred to factories where workers needed little skill to operate the steam-powered machinery owned by their boss, but could produce a satisfactory much more quickly and for much less cost than trained craftspeople like the Stephensons. In most cases, artisans (as they were generally called at the time) were clear losers, but here is a huge debate as to the effects of this 'industrial revolution' on the working class as a whole. I think it would be a reasonable summary to say that the majority - or at least a good number - of the class enjoyed  slightly higher wages but the conditions of both their work and their lives became worse in more ways than they improved. It's hard to believe that either William Stephenson would been tempted by higher wages to give up their pleasant rural surroundings for the streets of nearby York, where the grim conditions faced by many workers were highlighted by social investigator Seebohm Rowntree in an influential 1900 report.

But even those who like the Stephensons stayed out of the rapidly expanding northern cities were deeply effected by the great changes going on around them.

They did their work at home, but the first factory (or factory-like) institutions for shoe manufacture appeared in the late 1850s.  In 1861, when William Sr. died, the situation wasn't too serious because the only process that had been mechanized was closing the uppers, which had traditionally been 'women's work'. Nevertheless, the march of industrialisation was unstoppable: by 1865 a single factory in Northampton was producing 100,000 shoes a week using steam-powered machinery[6] and in the next 25 years every process in shoe manufacture was mechanised,[7] and skilled craftsmen like the Stephensons were driven out by mass production.

American Shoe Making Factory, 1872:  By B. F. Spinney & Co(Life time: NA) - Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30709646

It's time to say more about the place the family lived and worked in and its relationship to the industrial revolution. My guess is that Wikipedia's description of the village today gives us a pretty good idea of what our ancestors would have seen:

The village consists of two main streets, Main Street and Askham Fields Lane, which are surrounded by closes and cul-de-sacs. There is a small duck pond opposite the church which was believed to have been dug as part of a medieval drainage system. Several species of waterbirds, including mallard, moorhen and the Canada goose have been seen on and around the pond. The centre of the village is the oldest part of Askham Bryan but it also includes the 18th century Nag's Head pub, the Victorian Doctor's House and the old school...

The Main Street in 2010: Courtesy of D. S. Pugh, Creative Commons Licence ( http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1707798)

Askham Bryan was a small village. Even in the 1870s there were only 362 people living in 68 houses.[8] In 1831 the population was 377 - the largest figure until the 1950s,[9] so the community was not undergoing the growth experienced by northern places on or close to the coalfields - it was coal that was powering the industrial revolution. In the same year  (1831) there were 18 men in the category 'retail and handicrafts', which probably included William Sr., and 44 agricultural labourers. The third biggest category was 'farmers employing labour' - 10 men. There were only 7 non-agricultural workers. In  other words, this tiny community was overwhelmingly agricultural, but with a number of skilled workers like William Sr. who practised their craft at home.[10] The number of men in the category 'manufacturing' workers was zero,[11] which means there were no factories in or near the village - about fifty years into the industrial revolution these great changes have had no direct impact on Askham Bryan. As the century wore on this changed a little, but not by enough to destroy the quality of life. In 1881, when a more complex system of classifying workers was in operation and statistics for women were also collected, agricultural workers still easily outnumber all other categories of male workers, while over 80% of women with known occupations were in domestic service. There are now 4 workers in various minerals, but Askham Bryan is still a basically agricultural community where the men work on the land and women either don't work or go into domestic service.

This made Askham Bryan a relatively pleasant and unpolluted place to live. And the family's position in the village wasn't bad either.

A modern analysis of social structure in 1831 places the largest number of men in the 'labourers and servants' class (58), with 17 in the 'middling sorts' (this would have included our ancestors), 14 'employers and professions' and 3 'others'). So at this time the Stephenson family occupies a solid position in the village, a cut above the average.

What of the trade followed by the two William Stephensons?

At the time of the 1841 Census, shoemakers were the largest group of artisans (excluding the textile trades) in the country - 133,000 adult males.[12] They had a rather contradictory image: on the one hand, they were believed to be the group most prone to celebrating 'Saint Monday' - taking Monday off because they were too drunk or hung-over to work after the weekend's indulgences. On the other, they seem to have been thought of as more literate and thoughtful than comparable artisan groups. I think there was some truth in both stereotypes - and I shall present evidence that places one or both Stephensons in the second category! But if they did want to drink that wasn't  a problem: in 1865 the vicar noted as one of the impediments to the success of his religious work the presence of three pubs in a community of not much more than 300 people.[13]

The Eighteenth Century Nags Head: By Christopherson78 at English Wikipedia - Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41342471

This is a good time to point out that we mustn't idealise the life of our two ancestors. They would have worked long and hard and without our modern 'safety net' to look after them in times of economic downturn or personal sickness. Not being able to work meant not being able to earn, and, as we shall see, every worker had good reason to dread old age.

With this general picture of relevant developments in mind, we can look more closely at the particular lives of our two ancestors.

                        

As I mentioned in my first paragraph, William Sr. and Mary gave birth to their first child, my great-great-grandfather William Jr., in 1821. They had a daughter, Hannah, in about 1824 - she's 27 years old in the 1851 Census. Their second son Robert was born in about 1829 - he's 12 in the 1841 Census. William Penty was born in 1840 -  he's just 1 in 1841.

In that 1841 Census William Stephenson Sr. is a shoemaker living in Askham Bryan - there is no village numbering system, - as we've seen there were many houses - and he's on the first sheet of the records. Much of Askham Bryan is now conserved because of its historic interest, and the account of the nineteenth century village in the conservation area description suggests that their house was part of a 'cluster' of buildings around the Hall (see below). There would be a gap and then another cluster, and so on.

He is 60 and his wife Mary is 50. Robert and William Penty are living at home, but William Jr. isn't. Nor is Hannah, who's 17 - my guess is that she's in domestic service, which, as we've seen, was the fate of most women of the village later in the century when female employment starts to be recorded. To jump ahead a bit: wherever she was, Hannah had a daughter Jane Ann in 1845[14] - she's given as five years old and a 'scholar' in 1851. But Hannah was unmarried, so she had returned with Jane Ann to live with her parents. Jane Ann was born in Askham Bryan and her father is unknown.

What of Hannah's older brother, our direct ancestor? In 1841 William Jr. is following in his father's footsteps - he too is a shoemaker, having almost certainly acted as his father's apprentice. But at aged 20 he's moved away from home - although not very far. He is in a different house in Askham Bryan, lodging with William Vincent (aged 50), a tailor and his wife Hannah (60).

At some time, most probably in the early 1840s, William Jr. married a Jane, who was also born in Askham Bryan about three years after her husband - that means in about 1824.  There's a Jane Farley, a farmer's daughter, living close to William in 1841 - she's given as 15, but ages in the 1841 Census were meant to be rounded to the nearest five, so that means she could be 17. She disappears from the record after 1841 and no other Janes born in Askham Bryan at anywhere near the right time come up in my searches, so she looks a promising candidate for my maternal great-great-grandmother!

In any case, William and Jane soon began to produce the large family characteristic of the Victorian period, when contraceptive methods were primitive and many children died in infancy. In the 1851 Census the couple's eldest daughter, Mary, is 9, Ann is 6, George 4 and Charles 2. Their youngest child, Robert. was a baby - just 1 month old. Only Ann was described as a 'scholar' - perhaps poor Mary was already working. The family still live at Askham Bryan.

In the same year (1851) William Sr. is recorded as 70 and his wife Mary is 60. As we've seen, their unmarried daughter Hannah has returned home bringing with her their granddaughter Jane Ann. The family are in the closest house to 'The Hall', where dwells Ann Fawcett a 'gentlewoman' with four live-in servants. Nearby live  a tailor, some agricultural labourers, and a man whose both stockbroker and farmer of 71 acres - I'd like to know more about the social relations in this very mixed 'cluster' of houses! Ann Fawcett died unmarried in January 1856 and her estate went into the notoriously slow Court of Chancery to be squabbled over - it was still there in 1860[15] and no doubt this gave the village several years of enjoyable gossip.

Mary Stephenson - William Sr's wife not William Jr's daughter - died later in 1851 - some time after Census Day which was March 30. She's buried in St. Nicholas Church.[16] Her grand-daughter, Jane Ann, died in 1867 and is named on her grandmother's tombstone so is perhaps buried in Mary's grave.[17]

By Ken Crosby, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3052230

That 1851 Census also gathered information about religious worship, so we get another piece of information about our ancestor - although it's unfortunately not certain which one! In 1851 there were two churches in Askham Bryan, the Anglican St. Nicholas ('an Ancient Church recently repaired' where Mary was soon to be buried) which could cater for a congregation of about 150, and the Missionary Chapel, a Wesleyan Methodist church erected in 1836 which could seat 100. The church 'steward' who provided the information about the Chapel to the Census takers was none other than 'Wm. Stevenson'. Nearby Askham Richard also had a Wesleyan Chapel, which suggests that Methodism was strong in this area. The chapel in Askham Bryan was  a 'plain brick building'[18] and it was replaced in 1893 by a new chapel that has now been modified into the village hall.

Which one of our ancestors was the steward? My guess would be William Stephenson Sr. as I think it more likely to be the 70 year old than the thirty year old in a position of responsibility. In any case, this proves one (at least!) of them was both literate and respected in the community - and perhaps a man of sober and industrious habits, too, although not all Methodists lived up this ideal of course!

But if the family was Methodist - the chances are that both the Williams were of that faith, whichever one was the steward - is it strange that they were buried in St. Nicholas, the Anglican church?

In 1865 William Whaley, the Anglican vicar, reported that only 10 or 12 people in the village were absolute dissenters who had no truck with the established church - the rest either attended both services or had no objection in principle to so doing.[19] Tom Stephenson - William Jr's son - had a fine voice and he's reported as singing in either York Minster or Durham Cathedral and other Anglican churches, so he either defected to the Church of England or was one of those willing to combine Methodist and Anglican worship. My grandmother - Tom's daughter Alice - sent her children to Anglican Sunday School, so by that time all trace of 'Dissent' had vanished from our line of the family.

In fact, John Wesley, although he set out to reform the Church of England, never left it. The first Methodists - originally a term of contempt used by their enemies - challenged a church they saw as corrupt, spiritually moribund, and indifferent to the fate of the vast majority of the population - the workers and the poor. According to historian Jeremy Black, Methodism was of particular appeal to artisans (skilled workers like our ancestors). It was often a way for them to show the proud independence from the established order of men who possessed a valuable and hard-won skill.

What all this means is that it's likely our family were never particularly hostile to the Church of England, and like other Methodists were buried in Anglican graveyards when there was no one of their own available.

William Sr. was 70 when his wife died and he faced an uncertain future as ageing made physical work more and more problematic. There was no old age pension, of course, and in many areas the only way for the elderly to get any help at all  was to go into the dreaded workhouse. Although Askham Bryan did have a couple of 'grace and favour' homes[20] where the 'deserving poor' could live for a nominal rent, most people who couldn't support themselves ended up in a workhouse in nearby Tadcaster. But it looks like William Jr. saved his father from this fate by taking him into his own household, as the 1861 Census records that there's a 'late shoemaker' and 'widower', also a William Stephenson, aged 80, lodging with his family.

That 1861 Census shows the house must have been pretty crowded: also living with William Jr. and Jane are Anne (16, a labourer), George (14, a labourer), Charles (12), Robert (10),  and William (7- William Jr. Jr.!). Charles, Robert and William are at school.  But it's one of the two new additions to the family I'm most interested in: my great grandfather Tom Stephenson is 3, and he has a baby sister Eliza aged 1.

William Stephenson Sr. died in the summer of 1861 and is buried in St. Nicholas  churchyard in Askham Bryan.  He too is on the memorial with Mary and Jane Ann.

So far we have a picture of a family living a tough life although somewhat above the bottom of the social scale. But even though he's well on onto middle age, perhaps even old by the standards of the time, Willliam Jr. (I'll drop the Jr. from now on as his father is dead) makes a remarkable attempt to improve or rescue his social position and economic well-being.

The 1871 Census shows that he is now both a shoemaker and a farmer of about 15 acres. He's obviously saved or otherwise acquired the money to buy or rent a small farm. It's possible this was an attempt at economic betterment, but it's also possible that he saw the writing on the wall and realised that his craft skills were being made redundant by mass production (see above). And his family had continued to grow: William, Tom and Eliza have now been joined by Anna M. (9), Emily (6) and Arthur (4). Both Anna and Emily are 'scholars' and  it's time to say something about the local school.

It was a 'National School' - that is, it was run by the Church of England. There was no rival 'British School' in the village - this chain was run by Dissenters and the Stephensons might have preferred to send their children there. The school had an endowment for teaching poor children. This is from a description in 1890:

The school is attended by 45 children. It is a neat brick building, erected some years ago, and is supported by a voluntary rate and school fees. [21]

The school records in the National Archives start in 1864[22] but another source provides an indication that there was a school in the village in the 1820s[23] and there was certainly  a schoolmaster (one William Jackson - but he was also a farmer so perhaps his job wasn't full-time) in 1823[24] so either the earlier records have been lost or there was a school in the village before the National School. My guess is the former.

In 1865 there were 69 'scholars' aged above 5. The school was supported by a £6 a year endowment and private donations but also got some help from the Government. There was a Sunday School with 45 attendees that was entirely funded by private gifts. The village was lucky: nearby Askham Richard only had a 'dame' school and some children from that village came to get the better education offered by the Church.

It seems that a number of children of both Williams died in childhood or after a relatively short life by today's standards - William Penty, for example, is mentioned only in the 1841 Census.  On December 31, 1877 William Jr's daughter Mary died at Far Headingley, now part of Leeds - 'the beloved wife of  Richard Dalton'. She was 36.[25]

In 1880 there was a new development: William Stephenson was appointed an Overseer of the Poor at Askham Bryan.[26] I need to do more research on this position - and perhaps even to track down William's accounts book! Before 1834 - when a major change to the English Poor Law was introduced - the Overseers had a variety of tasks connected with the administration of poor relief, but this changed in complex ways in the new system.. In  any case, the appointment - whether voluntary or, as in some cases, against the will of the new Overseer - shows that he had a certain standing in the community and that he had achieved reasonable standards of both literacy and numeracy - skill with numbers was common amongst shoe makers as they had to keep careful note of the foot size of their bespoke customers.[27]

If William did have anything to do with the running of the local workhouse he would have some grim reminders of  the fate that could befall anyone. In the Tadcaster Workhouse in 1881 was Robert  Hodgson, a former shoemaker of South Milford, perhaps a victim of the industrialisation I described earlier.[28] There were seven residents of Askham Bryan there, including a family who had lived close to William and, one Samuel Stephenson, a 15 year old scholar - I don't know if he was a relation or not.

12.3 Miles

The workhouses had never been places of comfort and joy, but after 1834 they became a lot worse. The Poor Law Amendment Act of that year banned 'out door relief' - help given to the poor outside the doors of  a workhouse - and to guarantee that no-one entered a workhouse unless they really had to the Act also decreed that life inside one should be less desirable than the life of anyone outside. Of course, the life of the worst-off labourers was about as bad as it could be in terms of food, shelter and so on, so the only way to make existence less desirable was to persecute the inmates with petty rules (no talking at meals for example), give them pointless work (breaking up stones that would never be used in some cases) or - and this was the most hated thing of all - house the sexes in separate accommodation so that husband and wives and parents and opposite sex children were split up.

In practice it was impossible to implement this brutal act in full - the attempt to end all outdoor relief was soon abandoned, for example - but enough of it remained in place to make fear of ending up in the workhouse a shadow over every working class life. I only know of one family member who ended up there -  a tragic story I'll tell in a future post.

In  the 1881 Census - taken a year after his appointment as Overseer - William was described as  a farmer of 16 acres - so he had held on to his improved social and economic position in the decade between censuses. He and Jane were living in  Askham Bryan with three children - not including my great grandfather Tom - he'd married Eliza Hobden and had gone down to her home county, Sussex, in search of work. At home were Robert, his age given as 29 but probably a little older, and unmarried, who was an agricultural labourer, Arthur, 14, a 'scholar', and a granddaughter, Florence, aged 9 who was  also at school. Perhaps she was Robert's daughter, but the Censuses only state the relationship to the head of the household so we can't be sure.

On November 16, 1884 Eliza, described in the newspaper report as their eldest daughter - which means that Anne must have died as well as Mary -  married Joseph Anderson of York at New Street (Methodist) Chapel.[29] Eliza outlived her husband, and the 1911 Census finds her working as an office cleaner in York.

There was to be one more development in William's working life. Bulmer's directory for 1890 tells us:

Post Office at William Stephenson's, shoemaker. Letters via York arrive at 8-0 a.m., and are despatched at 6-30 p.m. [30]

I guess this means his farming enterprise had failed and he'd sought another way to supplement his income from shoe making at a time when, as we have seen, the process had become fully mechanised and craft production was on the way out.

The next year's Census (1891) gives us William Stephenson (69) and Jane (67) living in Village Street, Askham Bryan. He's described as a shoemaker and 'postman' - it would be interesting to know how much of the former he was actually doing. Arthur aged 34 is still living with them - he's a groom and domestic servant. Florence, their granddaughter, is aged 19.

William's final appearance in the records is in the 1901 Census, when, aged 77, he is a 'sub-postmaster' and a worker at home - so presumably still making shoes. Jane is 74 and they are living at the post office in Village Street. I can find no death record for William Stephenson, but one source states he died in the early part of the 1900s. This is plausible as I can find no entry for him or Jane in the 1911 Census either.

In 1901 Tom, living in Sussex with his 13 year old daughter Alice probably just out of school and about to enter domestic service, was pursuing his career as a gardener. Whatever the Stephensons did now, it wouldn't be making shoes.

---

[1] http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/ARY/Thorparch/

[2] http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/place/14363

[3] file:///C:/Users/brian/Downloads/ca14askhambryan.pdf

[4] http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/ARY/Askhambryan/Askhambryan23Dry.html

[5] http://staffscc.net/shoes1/?p=126

[6] http://www.tredders.com/history

[7] http://staffscc.net/shoes1/?p=126

[8] http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/place/11226

[9] http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/unit/10389707/cube/TOT_POP

[10] http http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/unit/10389707/cube/OCC_PAR1831_SIMP://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/unit/10389707/cube/OCC_PAR1831

[11]

[12]https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_IONAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA122&lpg=PA122&dq=apprenticeship+in+england+lane+shoemakers&source=bl&ots=vmcIqQgSfq&sig=MIl__bo6HwrHYLmF_k5fqBxyjYE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjRleDS_KnOAhWFAsAKHWcJCEIQ6AEILDAC#v=onepage&q=apprenticeship%20in%20england%20lane%20shoemakers&f=false

[13] https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=iBB34569X4sC&pg=PA21&lpg=PA21&dq=askham+bryan+methodists+whalley&source=bl&ots=6WBrF-piez&sig=QYZOSDwxnYm_d3tU_hL9-s2X5Q4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiW2MHyvMjOAhWJIMAKHfqEBE8Q6AEIMTAD#v=onepage&q=askham%20bryan%20methodists%20whalley&f=false

[14] http://www.gravestonephotos.com/public/gravedetails.php?grave=57827&scrwidth=1258

[15] Perry's Bankrupt Gazette , Saturday, January 21, 1860, Issue 1659, p.49/50.

From British Library Newspapers

[16] http://www.gravestonephotos.com/public/gravedetails.php?grave=57827&scrwidth=1258

[17] http://www.gravestonephotos.com/public/cemeterynamelist.php?cemetery=500&limit=201&scrwidth=1258)

[18] http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/ARY/Askhambryan/Askhambryan90.html

[19] https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=iBB34569X4sC&pg=PA21&lpg=PA21&dq=askham+bryan+methodism+1865&source=bl&ots=6WBrE1offF&sig=KWDad9iDAP-DBtDs6xTSR_S1raA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiN6KGLjsbOAhVkI8AKHaQBCg4Q6AEIPTAF#v=onepage&q=askham%20bryan%20methodism%201865&f=false

[20] http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/ARY/Askhambryan/Askhambryan90.html

[21] http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/ARY/Askhambryan/Askhambryan90.html

[22] http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/ARY/Askhambryan/Askhambryan90.html

[23] http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/ARY/Askhambryan/

[24] http://dp.genuki.uk/big/eng/YKS/ARY/Askhambryan/Askhambryan23Dry

[25] Deaths, York Herald, January 7, 1878, p. 4

[26]  APPOINTMENT OF OVERSEERS, York Herald, April 3, 1880, p. 6

[27] http://www.tredders.com/history

[28] http://www.workhouses.org.uk/Tadcaster/Tadcaster1881.shtml

[29] Births, Deaths, Marriages and Obituaries, York Herald, November 22, 1884, p. 4

[30] http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/ARY/Askhambryan/Askhambryan90Dry.html

Alice Edgar: (2): Between Two Wars

I showed in my previous post on Alice Edgar that during the First World War - probably in 1916 - she moved herself and her three sons - Arthur, Thomas, and Wilfred - from Woolwich to Windsor. They were soon joined by her mother Eliza Stephenson (neé Hobden), who died there in 1917. The move seems to have been inspired by her husband - away in France at the time - getting the chauffeur's job referred to below, although exactly when he was offered the post is not known.

Windsor Castle from across the Thames in 1895: By …trialsanderrors - Windsor, view of the castle from the river, Berkshire, England, ca. 1895, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11160102

The family lived in number 3 what was then one of a terrace grouping called Consort Villas which were part of Arthur Road. Before proper numbering systems were introduced, stretches of a road might be given their own name to help postal workers - hence the 'name within a name'. In 1923 the address on the electoral register changed to 120, Arthur Road.

Thomas Edgar in Arthur Road

After Herbert returned from the Army in June 1919 their family continued to grow. Joyce - their first daughter - had her birth registered in the second quarter of 1920. Gwyneth followed in the July-September quarter of 1921 and another daughter (name of living person withheld) early in 1923. Another son, Ivan, came in 1925.

Alice and her children
  

There is documentary evidence that in 1927 Herbert was working as a chauffeur[1] - he'd spent much of his final period in the army as a driver - and I believe that this is the work he did from his return to civilian life until his retirement. An excellent post on domestic servants gives us some idea of the nature and payment of the job:

(T)he Chauffeur ... would have had knowledge of car maintenance as well as acting as a medium for projecting family wealth. (Wage: 18th century – £12; 19th century – £40).[2]

It's hard to translate the salaries of the past into present day terms. After browsing a few relevant websites, I was about to suggest a rough contemporary equivalent of £20,000 a year, when I found an article about an advertisement for a royal chauffeur who was being offered £23,000 plus accommodation[3] - so I think my estimate for a more humble position is not too far from the truth!

Herbert began his career in civilian life as a driver for Sir Dhunjhibhoy Bomanji, an Indian millionaire. ((See http://www.thamesweb.co.uk/windsorpeople/wp01.html)). Later he went freelance. He had one of the earliest British driving licences, so it's probable that what seems to have been a private taxi service was reasonably profitable.

But with a growing family to feed his earnings - whether from Sir Dhunjhibhoy or private enterprise - obviously weren't enough and at some point Alice decided to take advantage of her experience as a domestic servant and the position of her new home to help make ends meet: she opened a theatrical boarding house. She was located about half a mile from the Thames Street site of Windsor's Theatre Royal:

This is what Wilfred 'Bay' Edgar - Alice's second son -  tells us about what this meant for him and his older brothers Arthur and Thomas:

We became acquainted with a different way of life...some {guests} became notable, Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier gained knighthoods. Lena Lloyd taught me to help her act as a quick change artist, and not more than 10 seconds {for} her to leave the stage and re-appear otherwise you lost audience contact. The Kobe brothers from Japan, who asked for permission to dust the room.

Olivier with his first wife Jill Esmond and another actress (name unknown) in 1932

By Tower Publications - The New Movie Magazine page 65, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37784453

But when was Alice running her boarding house?

A man called Jack Gladwin became sole lessee of the Theatre Royal in 1921 and began  a policy of staging touring companies of all kinds, so Alice's boarding house could have started at any time from then onwards. Lena Lloyd was an entertainer - I've found local newspaper references to her performances spanning 1921-1932. Ralph Richardson joined the Birmingham Repertory Company in 1925 and Olivier followed in 1926. Richardson was touring Shakespeare in 1921, but Olivier doesn't seem to have toured until 1926,[4] so my guess is that the Boarding House ran in the mid-1920s and that the Birmingham Repertory played, perhaps more than once, at the Theatre Royal.

Wilfred seems uncertain as to how profitable the enterprise was:

My mother claimed she did not make much money, but we all had a higher standard of life.

In any case, the enterprise must have finished before the end of the decade:

The coming of talking pictures in 1928 knocked the bottom out of business {for the Theatre Royal}. A year or two later Mr Gladwin converted the theatre into a cinema and subleased it to a local syndicate who used it as a dumping ground for third-rate pictures.[5]

Once again our family history shows how the quiet lives of ordinary people are affected by the great events of the modern world. Alice knew this all too well from the departure of her husband to the war; he had returned, but his brother Thomas John  and her cousin Richard Hobden had not - they were killed within four days of each other in the same battle.  But at this point, like all other mothers, she must have been hoping that her children would be spared the experience of mass violence.

As far as I know, the children all attended Clewer St. Stephen's, a primary school in Vansittart Road:

St. Stephen’s School was situated to the north of the Church. An Infant School was opened in 1872, a Boy’s school in 1873 and a Girl’s School in 1877.[6]

I know my father attended this school as I have a Certificate he was awarded in 1919 for good progress in the second year. But when, in 1925, he was confirmed it was not at St. Stephen's but at Holy Trinity Church half a mile away in Claremont Road where he'd attended Sunday School.[7]  This is probably because Holy Trinity was the garrison church for the town and his father had been a career soldier.

I think that either before or after the Theatre Royal became a cinema Alice switched from taking actors for the length of their run to the more secure business of housing long-term lodgers. I was told that she managed to cram a lodger - perhaps more than one - into the crowded terrace in Arthur Road when it was full of her children. In 1924 Arthur left Windsor for Brisbane to build a new life in Australia.

In the middle of the 1930s the family moved into a larger house, a Victorian semi in nearby Vansittart Road.

The new house was a little further from the Thames - important if the river flooded again. And it was much larger - terraces in Arthur Road are now sold as two-bedroomed, although, as I've suggested Alice probably took a much  more robust attitude to sleeping arrangements. Even on a conservative count the new property had four bedrooms. My memory tells me it was on four floors, with an attic bedroom at the top, but even if this is wrong, there were three floors, at least two of which were substantial. Current pricing suggests a house like this is worth about twice as much as an the Arthur Road terrace.

The Arthur Road terrace was classic nineteenth century working class housing - although these days their desirable location close to the town centre makes such homes worth a small fortune. But houses like the Vansittart Road semi had been built for the prosperous Victorian middle classes - people who before the war might well have had servants. Alice - a former parlour maid who lived on the premises- was moving upwards socially, but she was not one to think that if she and her family were prospering all was well with the world. Although the family tradition that she was involved in the building of the Windsor Labour Hall is incorrect - that was already standing at the bottom of the high street when she arrived in 1916 or 1917 - she was involved with the Labour Party and the Co-operative Movement. I'll have more to say about this side of her life in a future post.

The earliest evidence for the new home is ship's manifest which shows that Thomas leaving Southampton on The Carthage on April 8, 1938, claiming to be 29, when in fact he was not quite 26 - he left for Hong Kong from Vansittart Rd.[8] The last evidence for occupation of the Arthur Road house is another manifest: Alice Ollenbach - Herbert's sister - and her daughter Gladys left there on November 19, 1934 on their way back to their home in India.[9]

This means that the move must have been made between the end of 1934 and the spring of 1938. If my memory is correct, the money to buy the new property was lent to her by a local solicitor who trusted her to pay it back. I think that the way she did so was to take in more lodgers. When I was growing up close by - from the middle of the 1950s onwards - there were always 2 or 3 in residence, some who died there, others who came for a short time and went their ways.  Perhaps her children helped out too. When, in February 1940, Thomas won the equivalent of £650 on a sweepstake based on horse-racing he immediately sent home £100 to help with the expenses of his brother's wedding - the implication was more was to follow.

Alice had always been concerned to advance the position of ordinary families like her own, and at some point between the wars she became involved with Windsor Labour Party and with the Co-operative Movement. She quickly became the Chair of the local branch of the latter, and the respect she won led to her eventually being appointed magistrate to bring some working class experience to an otherwise middle class bench. ((Note: I had assumed that she was appointed by the post-war Labour Government but one of my aunts has told me she remembers police cars constantly arriving at the house during the war to get Alice to sign warrants, so the appointment must have been before August 1945))

The 1939 Register - a kind of interim Census taken on September 29, 1939 to guide the civilian war effort tells us that Alice, Herbert, Wilfred and Betsey M. Edgar (Barton) were living at Vansittart Road - plus four people whose names could not be revealed because the National Archive isn't sure that they are dead.

In any case, with Thomas in Hong Kong and his younger brothers and sisters facing immediate or eventual involvement in what was to be the greatest conflict in human history, Alice's life was thrown into turmoil for a second time. In that grim September in which Britain prepared to wage a war that would soon turn into a struggle for its national existence, she could hardly have guessed that, after a period of unimaginable anxiety, she would see all her children gathered safely at Vansittart Road once more. Or that they would meet under a Government which had been elected to make Britain the kind of country she'd always wanted it to be.

---

[1] Thomas Edgar, deed of apprenticeship.

[2] https://countryhousereader.wordpress.com/2013/12/19/the-servant-hierarchy/

[3] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2188331/Wanted-Chauffeur-drive-Queen-Applicants-ability-deploy-tact-diplomacy.html

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Richardson,_roles_and_awards#Stage_roles

[5] http://www.theatreroyalwindsor.co.uk/history.php

[6] https://www.achurchnearyou.com/documents/2012-03-31_291_1333213341.pdf

[7] Card and book viewable at https://brianedgar.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/thomas-edgar-a-baker-in-wartime-hong-kong/

[8]Ancestry.com. UK, Outward Passenger Lists, 1890-1960 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012.

Board of Trade: Commercial and Statistical Department and successors: Outwards Passenger Lists. BT27. Records of the Commercial, Companies, Labour, Railways and Statistics Departments. Records of the Board of Trade and of successor and related bodies. The National Archives, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, England.

[9] Ancestry.com. UK, Outward Passenger Lists, 1890-1960 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012.

Original data:

Board of Trade: Commercial and Statistical Department and successors: Outwards Passenger Lists. BT27. Records of the Commercial, Companies, Labour, Railways and Statistics Departments. Records of the Board of Trade and of successor and related bodies. The National Archives, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, England.