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.
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
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 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
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
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
No comments:
Post a Comment