JAMES FREW (born c1900) AND CHELSEA F.C.

I have precious little to brag about in my family tree when it comes to sporting achievement. But, clutching at straws, I can claim a great great uncle by marriage who got pretty much to the top of his game.

James Frew (born c1900)

James Frew’s father was a miner in the Ayrshire coalfields, and naturally he too started down the pits as a young man. In 1919 he married local girl Jean Piper of Sorn. Like most lads he played football in his spare time, and demonstrated such a talent for it that he played regularly for Nithsdale Wanderers down the road in Sanquhar (pronounced Sanker, if you’re not from round here!).

Nithsdale was a club on the rise. In 1920 they moved to Crawick Holm, a new ground with a stone grandstand just outside the town, and in 1923 they were invited to join the new Scottish League third division. In 1925 they won the championship (and promotion to the second division) with an 8-0 victory over Montrose in the last match of the season.

If Jimmy Frew played a part in the momentum which led to these successes, he was not around to enjoy the results themselves. In 1922 he was spotted by a talent scout from no less a club than London’s Chelsea FC. It is hard to believe that they were keeping an eye on teams like Nithsdale, but nevertheless Jimmy made his debut at Stamford Bridge, the Chelsea ground, on St Valentine’s Day 1923 in a 3-1 win over Everton.

Chelsea FC, 1925-26 season

(Jimmy Frew, new father, back row, second from left)

Although his professional football career is quite well documented I can’t find any record of what position he played. I am guessing it was defensive because in 43 games with Chelsea and 58 with his next club, Southend United, he never scored a goal. If such things are genetic, it’s worth noting that his son Billy (born during his last season at Chelsea in 1926) was himself a good amateur goalkeeper.

Jimmy played his last match for Chelsea on 24^th April 1926 and moved to Southend in Essex for two seasons from 1927 to 1929. He finished his pro days back up north as captain of Carlisle United, playing his part in the club’s triumphant double trouncing of Barrow, the local derby rivals, in the 1929-30 season (2-0 away, 7-1 at home). Not bad for a miner’s son from Kilmarnock.

Where it all began -

Nithsdale Wanderers and the Crawick Holm stand, c1921

(Jimmy Frew back row, second from right)

RICHARD WILLIAM RALPH SADLEIR (1819-1876) AND THE RAILWAY SIDING

I’m constantly delighted by how much information is now available online for historical research. There are those who claim that the internet is the lazy option and that it’s killing the art of “genuine” research somehow. I don’t agree on many levels. It certainly eases the process of going through the growing body of online archive material; so perhaps it is lazy in the sense that the invention of the plough killed the back-breaking art of digging fields by hand and made farmers lazy!

It’s not lazy, it’s just easier!

Almost all the contents of this blog over the past two years I’ve tracked down online, or from archive material in my own possession. I live in Edinburgh. I don’t have the luxury of time or money to be able to travel the country or the world to consult local documents. So I’m enormously grateful for the online material posted by others, and I hope I’m returning the favour just a little by setting some of it in context here.

By and large, as I say, I’m amazed at how much it’s possible to find out about the long-dead. I have a folder three bulging inches thick holding details of the life of my great great grandfather the Rev William Augustus Salter (1812-1879). But just occasionally I draw a blank. What I know about WA Salter’s almost exact contemporary Richard William Ralph Sadleir, another great great grandfather of mine, would not fill a single sheet.

I wrote up what little I knew about him here back in December 2009, and precious little more has come to light since. But tiny snippets all add to my picture of him. Following what few clues I had, I tried to track down John Kean, the partner in his failed business venture, a chemical works in St Helens near Liverpool.

Globe Alkali Works, St Helens, c1900 –

the New Street Works were probably a much smaller affair

I now know that the works, New Street Chemical Works, were registered under the Alkali Act of 1863, legislation passed just before they set up in business and an early example of environmental regulation. That gives a hint about the nature of the chemicals they were producing or working with. Apart from that there is almost no record, online at least, of the New Street Works, except for a document held in the St Helens Archives. It’s an agreement about the use of a railway siding in the town, dated to November 1864, which suggests they were either receiving raw materials or dispatching finished goods by rail.

I’ve also unearthed a third partner, William Holden. The chemical business lasted less than three years, 1864-66, before failing. In 1868 both Holden and Sadleir were declared bankrupt. Kean however was not! What’s more, he disappeared from the records for a while – no sign of him in the 1871 UK census, for example – before resurfacing in 1881 hundreds of miles away to the north in Glasgow. There, in the rapidly expanding industrial district of Possil Park, Kean’s occupation was listed once again as Manufacturing Chemist. The Argyle Oil Mills and Chemical Works stood (until 1914) jus a few hundred yards form his given address. All but his two oldest children were born in the Glasgow area within eight years of the census.

St Rollox Chemical Works, Glasgow c1880 –

the nearby Argyle Works in Possil were smaller

I have to remind myself that it’s not John Kean I’m interested in! But his disappearance and his movements do shed a little light on my great great grandfather’s life and the events that shaped it. Was Kean a shrewder businessman that Sadleir? Did he dupe Sadleir and Holden into carrying the can for the failure of the business? A few years earlier Sadleir had sold off thousands of acres of the Sadleir family estates in Tipperary – was he a cash-rich turkey ripe for plucking?

It’s too tempting and too dangerous to speculate wildly on the basis of a few more tiny facts. But I know a little more than I did 21 months ago! New information comes online all the time and I keep checking. But I think that sooner or later I am going to have to go to St Helens and see what I can find for myself on the ground.

RUSSELL HENRY MANNERS (1800-1870) AND THE MAP OF THE MOON

Russell Manners was a brother-in-law of my cartoonist cousin Charles de Noé. Although a great many of my ancestors made their mark, good or bad, here on Earth, Russell is as far as I know the only one to have an extra-terrestrial legacy.

Russell Henry Manners (1800-1870),

a Manners on the Moon

(picture from www.sciencephoto.com)

His career was in the Royal Navy, but his interest was in astronomy. His enthusiasm led to his election to the Royal Astronomical Society in 1836 where, although not a practicing astronomer, he proved himself an administrative asset to the Society. He served for ten years as its honorary secretary and in 1868 was elected its president. When the time came to hand out names for features on the Moon, he had earned his place in the queue.

It turns out that there are rules for this sort of thing, administered by the International Astronomical Union. Planets are named after Gods and Goddesses, and their moons after the offspring of those gods. For example Mars  is named after the Roman god of war; its two moons are called Deimos and Phobos, the sons of Ares, the Greek god of war (something which would probably have my father, a classical scholar, turning in his grave; that mixing of Greek and Roman traditions would offend his purist soul!). Deimos means Panic and Phobos means Fear, two inescapable products of War. Comets are named after their discoverers, and it is possible for more than one person to discover a comet simultaneously – hence Comet Hale-Bopp, discovered and reported separately on 23^rd July 1995 by both Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp.

The features on our own moon are reserved for those who have explored the moon, either in person or through telescopes as astronomers. So for example three small craters near the Apollo 11 landing site are named Aldrin, Collins and Armstrong in honour of the pioneering crew of the first manned mission to the moon. And, only 100 miles to the north-west across the Mare Tranquillitatis from Apollo 11's historic Tranquility Base, you will find the rather larger Manners Crater.

The Sea of Tranquility:

Manners Crater (M) and the Apollo 11 landing site (A)

As I write these words, I’ve been staring at images of it all afternoon; and I must say it’s becoming rather beautiful to me! Manners is a perfectly circular crater about 15km in diameter and 1.7km deep, with a distinct mountain in the centre of it. It’s a banded crater, which means that it has streaky sides – illustrating I think the movement of material outwards at the time of impact.

Any further technical description would be well beyond my comfort zone or qualifications grade. I’m just pleased as punch to think every time I look at the Moon that one of my ancestors has made his mark there.

Manners Crater (the large crater on the right)

photographed from Apollo 10 in 1969

THOMAS GURNEY (1705-1770) AND THE BUNDLE OF BOOKS

It’s my 100^th post here! I try to be eclectic in my choices of subjects – family name, period, occupation, home – and not to be too judgemental. I’m fond of them all, and quite sure they all did the best they could according to their own situation and the morals and conditions of their times. It’s one thing to regret the mistakes of former days; but I think it’s pretty meaningless to judge them by modern standards, or indeed to apologise for acts committed and views held by our ancestors centuries ago. I suppose I see my mission simply as keeping these memories of my ancestors alive.

I try to celebrate their achievements, not their weaknesses. No doubt it is because I’m a writer that I am particularly drawn to literary or educational contributions to society. But there does seem to be a strong strand in many branches and in every generation of my family tree: the urge to communicate, be it by book, poster, classroom or pulpit.

Thomas Gurney (1705-1770)

A great communicator, quill always to hand

A good example of this is my 5x great grandfather Thomas Gurney. He was the son of a Bedfordshire miller, driven by his Baptist faith and a belief in the worth of knowledge. By the age of nineteen he had not only founded a school but developed a shorthand system which would remain in use for two hundred years in the highest offices in the land. Communication was the key to redeeming, useful self-improvement for Thomas.

Here is the story of his early years, as told in a biography by his grandson William Brodie Gurney in 1845, some 120 years after the events.

[Thomas Gurney’s] indisposition to his father’s business, however, still continuing, he left his home, with his father’s consent, at the age, I apprehend, of nineteen, if not earlier, and opened a school in a neighbouring village, employing his time much in reading. It must have been when he was very young that he attended a sale and purchased a parcel of books, one of which was on Astrology, in which he was at the time much interested. The lot was described as “sundries;” and I think he purchased it for 1s 6d or 2s [7.5 or 10p].

One of these books was “Mason’s Shorthand,” a system which had been practiced, but had fallen into disuse in consequence of its complexity. This immediately engaged his enquiring mind, and he determined to simplify it, for the purpose of enabling himself to take down sermons; and I have a book of sermons taken by him at Ridgemount in Bedfordshire, in 1722-23. This purchase must have been before he left his father’s house; therefore he could only been only seventeen or eighteen years of age when he began taking these sermons.

One of the books, I have stated, was on Astrology. This subject had excited his attention, and, while it afforded him amusement, it gave him, among his neighbours, the character of a man of wonderful knowledge, and occasioned his being consulted more than once on matters of interest. One anecdote, while it displays his judgment in making the best of a thing, shows also the disposition to magnify that which fell from the wise man.

A lost cow is nothing new

(Farmville game on Facebook notwithstanding)

A woman having lost her cow went to my grandfather to learn whether she should ever recover it, and what means she should employ. After hearing her detail, taking down his great book he shut himself up or a few minutes; and then, returning with some figure he had drawn, judging from her account that the cow had not been stolen but only strayed, he told her very gravely that she should see it again shortly. In the evening the cow returned; and then the woman raised his reputation to the highest pitch by informing her neighbours that Mr Gurney had told her in the morning where the cow was gone  and had enabled her to trace he animal in all its wanderings, and to ascertain beforehand the very time of its return.

Quite how a great book of astronomy could be imagined to give insight into the random movements of a cow, is open to question. But it’s a wise man indeed who knows what works in making an impression! The use of shorthand to record and disseminate Baptist sermons was significant at a time when religious intolerance was still rife and non-conformity was a radical, subversive alternative to the establishment Church of England. When Thomas’s great great grandson William Henry Gurney Salter joined the family shorthand business (by now the official medium of record of the Houses of Parliament), he practised his skills by recording the sermons of his father, the Baptist minister William Augustus Salter. So Gurney shorthand came full circle for another two generations of communicators.

CHARLES AMÉDÉE HENRI DE NOÉ (1818-1879) AND THE ECCENTRICITIES OF THE MOMENT

I don’t know how I am related to Charles de Noé, only that I must be! His mother Frances Caroline Halliday is, somehow, at the heart of the closely knit circle of Hallidays, Tollemaches and Delaps from which my 6x great grandmother Rebecca Delap emerged. Frances’s connections by name, through wills and property are too numerous to be coincidences, but as far as I know, no one has been quite able to pin her to any specific part of the Halliday tree. There have been suggestions that she was the illegitimate daughter of Francis Delap Halliday and Frances Tollemache; but that would make her eventual marriage to the Count Louis Pantaléon Judes Amédée de Noé, a member of the French aristocracy, a socially unlikely union.

That said, scandal was never far from that generation of Tollemaches. Frances Tollemache’s sister Jane eloped with Francis Delap Halliday’s brother John (see my earlier blog about Jane); and Frances Caroline Halliday’s marriage to the Count was witnessed by another Tollemache sister, Louisa. It seems entirely possible that they might all have closed ranks over an illegitimacy in order to see Frances Caroline married off, and married off well at that.

Charles Amédée Henri de Noé (1818-1879)

Charles Amédée Henri de Noé was the fifth son of the marriage, and could therefore have little expectation of inheritance. He was expected to go out and work for a living, and was lined up for a career in engineering after education at an institut de technologie. Instead, he went to painting classes led by Paul Delaroche and Nicolas Charlet and began a hugely successful career as a satirical cartoonist.

In the same way that Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi adapted his initials to sign his work Hergé (the sound of R.G. in French), Charles Amédée took the pen name Ch-Am – Cham. Since his surname is the French for [son] of Noah, Cham was also a  jokey reference to Ham son of Noah. Probably not a belly-laugh even in the 1840s, but perhaps enough to trigger a smile which might become a laugh as you read his cartoons.

"Noah and his family prepare for the rainy season."

Cham wasn’t above inserting his own image into his drawings.

From the rear: Charles, his brothers Franck and William,

and as Noah himself, Charles’s father Louis de Noé

Cham’s strength was as a social rather than a political commentator. In a career lasting 40 years he is credited with over 40,000 drawings, an invaluable resource in the twenty-first century for studying the French nineteenth-century middle class and what one reviewer, R.L. Mayer, describes as “all eccentricities of the moment.”

If your French is better than my schoolboy understanding, you will enjoy http://amedeedenoe.unblog.fr/ a blog dedicated to Cham’s memory.

Cham, son of Noah

ROBERT JOHNSTON BARTON (1839-1879) AND THE BATTLE OF HLOBANE

It doesn’t take long to build up a detailed picture of the prominent Tipperary families of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I have direct lines through the Coopers, Sadleirs, Chadwicks and Massys, who are united frequently by weddings, sometimes in successive generations. The ruling class, the Protestant Ascendancy as they are known, were a tiny self-contained minority in Ireland for hundreds of years. They kept within their own social and political circle of course and so it’s no wonder that the same families repeatedly intermarried. Other names, although not my direct relations, are also interwoven through those lines; and I can’t help but become curious about another family which seems to be an integral part of the same circle as my own.

Captain Robert Johnston Barton (1839-1879)

of the 2^nd Coldstream Guards

commanded the Frontier Light Horse at Hlobane

So it is that I now have a large Barton family tree on file. None of my direct ancestors were Bartons; but for example my 5x great grandfather Hugh Massy’s cousin Grace Massy married William Barton, and Hugh’s wife my 5x great grandmother Rebecca Delap’s aunt Margaret married Thomas Barton. I’m fascinated by such connections – but even I have to admit that it’s a tenuous justification for writing today about Margaret and Thomas Barton’s great grandson Robert Johnston Barton.

Robert’s modest entry in the Barton tree – “killed in action in Zululand 28^th March 1879” – does not begin to tell his story. 1879 was the year of the Zulu War, a year which began disastrously for the British with the events depicted in the films Zulu and Zulu Dawn. 28^th March was the date of the last of three morale-sapping massacres inflicted on the British by the Zulu army.

The slopes of Hlobane

tough on foot, tougher still on horseback

(photo by Neil Aspinshaw)

He was part of a foiled attack against a 3000-strong Zulu stronghold on a plateau called Hlobane Mountain. The British approach, under cover of darkness on the night of the 27^th March, was hampered by the difficult terrain – steep, boulder-strewn slopes – and by a violent storm whose lightning flashes illuminated the British advance to the Zulu guards. At dawn it became clear that the Zulus were fully prepared for the attack with barricades and a network of caves and tunnels from which they were able to attack the British troops with ease.

Despite heavy casualties, the British fought their way onto the plateau. Barton was dispatched with 30 men to bury those who had died on the ascent. As he rode off, his commanding officer was horrified to see in the valley to the south a massive column of Zulu warriors, estimated at 22,000, moving quickly towards Hlobane. Retreat to the north was impossible because of even steeper slopes and the British were faced with having to fight their way back down through the very Zulus whose defences they had breached on the way up – Zulus now much emboldened by the approaching army of reinforcements – and towards the huge force now approaching them.

Massacre on Hlobane Mountain

(known to Zulus since 1879 as “Stabbing Mountain”)

Barton and another officer, Weatherley, joined forces, and with their combined cavalry of some 220 men, tried in vain to find another way off the mountain before forming a line and charging the defenders. Under a hailstorm of assegai spears, only 20, including Barton, survived. They fled down into the valley, straight into the arms of the advance party of the Zulu column. 15 more of them died then. Barton was injured, his horse too; but he paused to scoop up a wounded fellow officer before attempting to outrun the fast-moving Zulu army. After some miles the horse collapsed and they continued on foot; but escape in their condition was impossible.

A year later, with the war won and peace with the Zulus established, a British escort party was led to Barton’s body, still lying where he fell, by the very Zulu who had killed him; and Colonel Wood, who had planned the Hlobane raid, buried him at last.

A great deal has been written about the Zulu War. There are several accounts of the Battle of Hlobane, including vivid descriptions by JohnYoung, and by William Watson Race & Jon Guttman. Whatever you think of warfare, or imperialism, or even the Irish Protestant Ascendancy, there are tales of selfless, hopeless heroism at Hlobane which cannot fail to move you.

ANNE GURNEY SALTER (1839-1925) AND THE TOIL OF MAIDEN AUNTS

Sometimes it seems to me to have been an absolute rule: the eldest daughter was saddled with the role of housekeeper or nursemaid to her elderly parents. There are many examples of this apparently inescapable destiny in my family tree. I sometimes wonder just how explicit the obligation was, not to get married but to remain on the shelf caring for your surviving widowed mother or father. Was it the ordered custom of the day? Or was it a self-imposed fate, simply the inescapable sense of duty and responsibility that any eldest child feels, combined with the passive and nurturing role fostered in women in the 18^th and 19^th centuries?

Anne Gurney Salter (1839-1925)
daughter and artist

My great great aunt Annie was the eldest daughter of my great great grandfather the Rev William Augustus Salter, and she spent her whole life in the service of her parents. I have no doubt that she had been helping her father out at his parishes in Brentwood and Amersham. In 1863, at the age of 23, she stepped up with her sisters Emma and Maria to help him run the school attached to his new chapel in Clarendon Street, Leamington Spa. They taught reading, arithmetic and singing to infants and young girls.

There was one paid teacher (Miss Baker, who worked for less because she was still studying for her certification) and one 13-year old pupil-teacher (paid a nominal sum to supervise the younger children). But the unrewarded labour of the Salter sisters will have made a huge difference to the school’s finances in the days before state provision of education. Parents paid a modest fee (between 2d and 9d) for their children to attend, so the temptation was always to increase the school’s population. But overcrowding at the Clarendon Street school was counter-productive as it often resulted in the withdrawal of the small state subsidy which the establishment received.

Clarendon Street Chapel, Leamington Spa

built for Rev William Augustus Salter in 1863

(a proposed reconstruction of 2009)

By the end of 1863 the school was regularly attracting around 150 children, although it was only permitted to teach 91, based on a calculation of 8 square feet per child. The pupil-teacher Miss Wyatt became ill with the responsibility of looking after them and had to drop out, increasing the workload of the Salters. They learned their teaching skills on the job, and better teaching was also good for the school’s finances. Pupils were regularly tested by external examiners, and poor results could lead to the withholding of part of the grant.

The demands on Anne and Maria increased in 1867 when Emma too became seriously ill. She died that November. Their younger sister Sarah could not help out, having got married earlier that year; and their youngest sister Emily was only 11. In 1869 the school lost almost all its grant because of overcrowding, and another year it received nothing at all because of understaffing.

The graves of William and Emma Salter, and their daughter Emma

in Warwick Cemetery (photographed Nov 2010)

The Rev Salter, perhaps worn out himself by the strains of keeping school and chapel alive, died in 1879. It was probably a blessing that he didn’t live to see the establishment of the Leamington School Board in 1881, which took over the struggling Clarendon Street school and quickly closed it down. Soon afterwards Anne, Maria and Emily moved to London with their mother (also called Emma). But when she died in 1893 (when Anne was 53) and was buried near Leamington beside her husband and daughter Emma, the surviving sisters took rooms again in the town. They never married, and as far as I can tell they lived out their days in the familiar surroundings of those intense years in education.

Their father had at least left them well enough provided for in his will, and I like to think of them passing their days in useful charitable work amongst the former pupils and parishioners of Clarendon Street. Emily was the last of them – she died before I was born, but lived long enough to pass on some family lore and treasure to my father and my uncle, from whom in turn I inherited it. One of my most prized possessions is a set of beautifully hand-painted coffee cups and saucers, decorated by the three maiden aunts with pictures of wild flowers. It’s just the sort of genteel, acceptable activity which one could imagine three conventional spinster sisters pursuing, to while away the long bright hours of the evening of life.

Coffee cups and saucers

 hand painted with pictures of wild flowers

by Anne, Maria and Emily Salter, spinsters of the parish

EYRE MASSEY (1719-1804), THE FALL OF NIAGARA AND THE BIRTH OF CANADA

In 1800 the Acts of Union abolished the Irish parliament in favour of direct rule from London. 26 new peerages, the so-called Union peerages, were created in Ireland to ease the passage of the bill, and one of the very last peers to be so elevated – on 27^th December 1800 – was my 6x great uncle Eyre Massey, 1^st Lord Clarina of Elm Park in Co. Limerick. (There was already another Lord in the family, so after 1800 Eyre added the e to distinguish his lordship from that of his brother Hugh, 1^st Lord Massy of Stagdale.)

It’s claimed that Eyre sought the honour not for himself but for his wife, in an attempt to console her for the early death of their eldest son George. And the title that he sought was not Clarina but Niagara. Not in Limerick but in North America. Why, you may ask?

PRO LIBERTATE PATRIAE

The arms of the Barons Clarina

incorporates two Grenadiers of the 27^th Foot,

Eyre Massey’s regiment of 60 years

As the youngest of six Massy brothers he had lived his life with no prospect of inheritance, and had therefore had to work for a living. This he did by a distinguished military career, serving for over 60 years with his regiment the 27^th Foot, the Enniskillings. He fought campaigns in the West Indies, Spain and Scotland with them and in 1757, on secondment to the 46^th Regiment, he sailed to North America as Major Massy, their second in command.

Britain was embroiled at the time in the Seven Years War (1756-1763) – a world war fought by the forces and allies of Britain and Germany on the one hand and France and Austria on the other. It was conducted on several fronts, in Europe, Scandinavia, Western Africa, India, Central and North America. The diplomatic causes of the war were complex, but the expanding British and French Empires of the time frequently collided in the jostle for control of new overseas territories. This was particularly true in what France was calling New France, the lands of the Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes, which both powers saw as the gateway to further acquisitions in the West.

New France in 1750

(from www.worldatlas.com)

Hostilities had been rumbling on in the region since 1754, largely with French success. But after early British setbacks, the tide turned. Britain was in general more willing than France to send troop reinforcements overseas instead of relying on locally recruited militias. Eyre’s arrival was part of this policy, which resulted two years later in the besieging of a French base on the south shore of Lake Ontario at the mouth of the river Niagara.

There is considerable dispute about who really won the Battle of Fort Niagara for the British. General John Prideaux, the British commander at the beginning of the siege of the fort, was killed early in the siege by shrapnel from one of his own guns. Sir William Johnson, a war hero and former major general who had commanded provincial auxiliaries rather than British Army regulars, assumed command and insisted on retaining it even after a more junior but regular army officer arrived. The fate of the fort was decided by a skirmish on 24^th July called the Battle of La Belle-Famille, which Johnson is supposed to have planned or even led. But there is some question as to whether he was even present and to what extent he overstated his role and abilities in official reports.

left: Major General William Johnson

(in 1756, after a portrait by T. Adams)

and right: Major Eyre Massey

(in 1803, then a general, by Robert Hunter)

Eyre Massey claimed in his (let's face it) self-promoting memoirs that he, not Johnson, was the commander and tactician of the victory, which prevented a much larger French relief force from reaching the fort and resulted in its surrender two days later. It was a decisive engagement, and it allowed Britain to attack the French heartlands of Quebec from the west as well as the east. No doubt Eyre’s desire to become Lord Niagara on his elevation 41 years later was an attempt to cement his claim; and no doubt his elevation instead as Lord Clarina reflects the lack of documentary proof of that claim.

New France fell in September 1760, and Quebec (renamed Canada) began its long relationship with the British Empire and Commonwealth. As I write, 251 years later, the future British king and his new bride are in the middle of a Canadian tour, their first as a royal couple, which began with their celebration of Canada Day.

GEORGE HENRY VERRALL (1848-1911) AND THE FEN FULL OF FLIES

The Verralls of Lewes in Sussex, cousins of mine by marriage, were prominent local auctioneers for five generations, selling everything from wine to houses to the highest bidder – and sometimes that bidder was themselves. By the fifth generation most of the auction house branch of the family had transferred their skills to the more specialised world of horse-racing, or as it’s called in England the Sport of Kings (of queens too, although Elizabeth II has just failed, at time of writing, to become the first monarch since 1909 to own an Epsom Derby winner with her horse Carlton House).

George Henry Verrall was the youngest of five brothers, the sons of John Verrall the fourth-generation auctioneer. Apart from George, John senior took the unusual step of naming all his sons John. Presumably they were known by their middle names! Second son John Marcus picked up the auctioneers’ hammer but the eldest, John Frederick, pursued a career as manager of Lewes Races, Clerk of Croydon Racecourse and a successful racing journalist.

The Grandstand, Lewes Racecourse, 1900

Third son John Claudius compiled an indispensable annual publication, A List of Horses in Training in England. John the fourth, John Hubert, was what the National Archives of Great Britain describe in their records as the black sheep of the family, a pigeon fancier. And then there was George.

George succeeded John Frederick (who died young in 1877) as Clerk of the Course at Lewes, where he was also a partner in Pratt & Co, a firm of turf accountants. George was also Clerk at the Gatwick and Lingfield courses, and he moved in 1878 to Newmarket, then as now the epicentre of British racing. Here he made his mark not only as a racing official but as a county councillor and (briefly) as Conservative MP for Newmarket.

Tabanus sulcifrons, the horse fly

His lasting legacy however arose from his lifelong enthusiasm for entomology. He joined the Entomological Society in 1866 at the age of 18, and in 1899-1900 served as its president. Entomology (not to be confused with etymology, the study of words) is the science of insects, and George’s particular passion was diptera – flies.

George seems to have spent most of his leisure hours in the observation of them, and his interest was almost certainly a factor in his move to Newmarket. In the triangle formed by the towns of Newmarket, Ely and Cambridge lies the irreplaceable natural habitat which is Wicken Fen. Wicken Fen, a wetland world, is an entomologist’s paradise, home to over 4000 species of insect alone. Charles Darwin collected specimens there in the 1820s, and George Verrall was one of many who recognised the area’s importance.

Sedge Cutting in Wicken Fen

(Robert Walker Macbeth RA)

1878

By the end of the nineteenth century, the Cambridgeshire fenland was under threat. The traditional industries of sedge and peat cutting, which had served to preserve the habitat, were becoming obsolete. The process of draining the fens to put them to more productive use had already begun elsewhere. And then, in a remarkable wave of collective environmental conscience, Wicken Fen was gradually saved, by the separate acts of generosity and concern of many men.

On 1^st May 1899, the National Trust bought two acres of Wicken Fen, a first act of rescue which created Britain’s first ever nature reserve. George Verrall was at the forefront of a band of entomologists who knew the value to the nation’s natural wealth of the place, and who began to buy up further parcels of fenland and donate them to the National Trust. Thanks to Verrall and his colleagues the National Trust’s holdings were expanded by more than 55 additions. Wicken Fen, now a UK National Nature Reserve, UK Site of Special Scientific Interest, European Special Area of Conservation and on the Ramsar List of Wetlands of International Importance, extends in 2011 to over 1600 acres. Part of it is still called Verrall’s Fen.

Stratiomyidae and succeeding families

of the Diptera Brachycera of Great Britain (British flies, Vol 5)

Frontispiece (1909)

Besides saving Wicken Fen for the nation, George Henry Verrall made significant contributions to the sciences of entomology and botany. In his exploration of the fens he rediscovered many species of flora previously declared extinct. He published two books on different families of dipterae in collaboration with his nephew James Edward Collin. Between them the pair described over 550 species for the first time, and their collection of specimens (donated to Oxford University in 1967) is the most important in Britain, greater than that of the Natural History Museum in London. If you care about flies, the Verrall-Collin is your Bible of British Flies.

CHARLES CASTLE (1813-1886) AND THE WELL-PRESERVED STOMACH

The death of Catherine Castle, young daughter of my 4x great uncle Michael, triggered an aggrieved, gossipy letter from her cousin Charles, to his sister Julia. Writing on the day of the funeral and will-reading, 28^th December 1834, he speculated that there had been much skullduggery, with undue influence exerted on Catherine over her choice of legatees.

Charles Castle (1813-1886)

amateur crime reporter

It’s good juicy stuff for a family historian, and I almost overlooked a short paragraph in the letter in which Charles broke off from outrage to report on local news from the family’s home city, Bristol. “There has been a horrid murder discovered in Bristol committed by the poisoning of an old woman in Trinity Street; but however you will see a better account in the newspapers than I can give you.”

It was a sensational case, a crime committed in 1833 which only came to light in 1834 and which would not be resolved until 1835. The ghoulish details were published in at least eleven broadsides at the time including

THE EXECUTION OF MRS BURDOCK, Aged 34 Years, Convicted at the Bristol Assizes, of the Wilful Murder of Mrs Clara Ann Smith, an elderly Lady, Lodging at her house No 17, Trinity Street, Bristol, and who was Executed upon the New Drop, Bristol Gaol, this day (Wednesday,) April 15th 1835. With 2 woodcuts, one showing the hanging, the other a portrait of Mrs Burdock. Published by John Bonnor, Printer, Nicholas Steps, Bristol.

60-year old Mrs Smith was a wealthy widow who disliked banks and stocks, and kept her wealth in the room in which she lodged – up to £3000 in jewellery and cash, including more than 600 sovereigns (worth a pound apiece). Mrs Wade her landlady (who remarried after Mrs Smith’s death, to become Mrs Burdock) took to making Mrs Smith a bedtime bowl of gruel, in which unfortunately one of the ingredients was arsenic. In due course, on 28^th October 1833, after much abdominal pain and vomiting of blood, poor old Clara Ann Smith died and her fortune disappeared.

What made the crime less than perfect was the presence on the night Clara died of Mary Ann Allan, a sixteen-year old servant engaged by Mrs Wade (who you’d think would want as few witnesses as possible) to warm Mrs Smith’s bed by sleeping in it with her. Not only did Mrs Wade hire Mary Ann, but she paid her six shillings and told her not to mention the death to anyone. 

It was only a year later in Autumn 1834 that Mary Ann and Charlotte Thomas, another girl hired by Mrs Wade, began to compare notes and find their suspicions raised. Rumours began to circulate, and it was noticed that Mrs Wade, by now Mrs Burdock, was living rather larger since Mrs Smith’s death than before it.

Clara Ann Smith’s body was exhumed on 22^nd December 1834 and an inquest carried out on 1^st January 1835 in the Ship Inn. Her stomach was significantly better preserved than the rest of her, and the cause proved on examination to be the remarkably high level of sulphate of arsenic inside it. (Tests were carried out by Dr William Herapath, a pioneer of such forensic use of medicine in crime-busting; he was also, in 1847, the first man to use ether as an anaesthetic in an operation in Bristol, only a few weeks after its first use in London.)

Bristol was abuzz with the story, and the thrill of suspicion and criminal conspiracy might explain why the Castles were so ready to believe that their cousin's will had been tampered with. Julia Castle wasn’t the only person to be written to about the murder; James Surrage, a medical student from Bristol studying in Paris got a letter on 1^st January 1835 from his surgeon father back home with all the fascinating forensic details!

The ruins of Bristol New Gaol, built in 1820.

A trapdoor was built into the top of one of the towers

above which a gibbet was erected for public hangings.

Mrs Burdock was convicted on 2^nd January 1835 of the willful murder of Mrs Smith and her public hanging on 15^th April that year was attended by a crowd 50,000 strong. Her tombstone was displayed for a while later in the century in the Bristol Antiquities Room of the city’s museum, as an illustration of her notoriety. Unfortunately her crime resulted in at least one copycat murder. Almost exactly a year after Mrs Burdock’s hanging, on 20^th April 1836, twenty-three year old Sophia Edney met the same fate, having read about the landlady’s crime in the newspaper and been inspired to poison John Edney, her husband.