Search Results for 'aunt'

When Xavier woke up, the sun was already shining, its rays darting in pulsating waves throughout the land, blinding him. The room was already heating up, making the air difficult to breathe.

He’d heard the maid rummaging in the neighbouring rooms for some time now, which had roused him from sleep. He couldn’t recall seeing any “DO NOT DISTURB” sign on the doorknob, so staying in bed was only delaying the inevitable barging in of the lady who was now vacuuming vigorously in the corridor.

Feeling a bit dull from the restless sleep, he quickly rose from the bed and put on his clothes.

Once out of his room, he smiled at the cleaning lady (who seemed to be the same as the cooking lady), who harumphed back as a sort of greeting. Arriving in the kitchen, he wondered whether it was probably too late for breakfast —until he noticed the figure of the owner, who was quietly watching him through half-closed eyes in her rocking chair.

“Idle should have left some bread, butter and jam to eat if you’re hungry. It’s too late for bacon and sausages. You can help yourself with tea or coffee, there’s a fresh pot on the kitchen counter.”

“Thanks M’am.” He answered, startled by the unexpected appearance.

“No need. Finly didn’t wake you up, did she? She doesn’t like when people mess up her schedule.”

“Not at all, it was fine.” he lied politely, helping himself to some tea. He wasn’t sure buttered bread was enough reward to suffer a long, awkward conversation, given that the lady (Mater, she insisted he’s called him) wasn’t giving him any sign of wanting to leave.

“It shouldn’t be long until your friends come back from the airport. Your other friend, the big lad, he went for a walk around. Idle seems to have sold him a visit to our Gems & Rocks boutique down Main avenue.” She tittered. “Sounds grand when we say it —that’s just the only main road, but it helps with tourists bookings. And Betsy will probably tire him down quickly. She tends to get too excited when she gets clients down there; most of her business she does online now.”

Xavier was done with his tea, and looking for an exit strategy, but she finally seemed to pick up on the signals.

“… As I probably do; look at me wearing you down. Anyway, we have some preparing to do for the Carts & whatnot festival.”

When she was gone, Xavier’s attention was attracted by a small persistent ticking noise followed by some cracking.

It was on the front porch.

A young girl in her thirteens, hoodie on despite the heat, and prune coloured pants, was sitting on the bench reading.

She told him without raising her head from her book. “It’s Aunt Idle’s new pet bird. It’s quite a character.”

“What?”

“The noise, it’s from the bird. It’s been cracking nuts for the past twenty minutes. Hence the noise. And yes, it’s annoying as hell.”

She rose from the bench. “Your bear friend will be back quick I’m certain; it’s just a small boutique with some nice crystals, but mostly cheap orgonite new-agey stuff. Betsy only swears by that, protection for electromagnetic waves and stuff she says, but look around… we are probably got more at risk to be hit by Martian waves or solar coronal mass ejections that by the ones from the telecom tower nearby.”

Xavier didn’t know what to say, so he nodded and smiled. He felt a bit out of his element. When he looked around, the girl had already disappeared.

Now alone, he sat on the empty bench, stretched and yawned while trying to relax. It was so different from the anonymity in the city: less people here, but everything and everyone very tightly knit together, although they all seemed to irk and chafe at the thought.

The flapping of wings startled him.

“Hellooo.” The red parrot had landed on the backrest of the bench and dropped shells from a freshly cracked nut which rolled onto the ground.

Xavier didn’t think to respond; like with AL, sometimes he’d found using polite filler words was only projecting human traits to something unable to respond back, and would just muddle the prompt quality.

“So ruuuude.” The parrot nicked his earlobe gently.

“Ouch! Sorry! No need to become aggressive!”

“You arrrre one to talk. Rouge is on Yooour forehead.”

Xavier looked surprised at the bird in disbelief. Did the bird talk about the mirror test? “What sort of smart creature are you now?”

“Call meee Rose. Pretty Giiirl acceptable.”

Xavier smiled. The bird seemed quite fascinating all of a sudden.
It was strange, but the bird seemed left completely free to roam about; it gave him an idea.

“Rose, Pretty Girl, do you know some nice places around you’d like to show me?”

“Of couuurse. Foôllow Pretty Girl.”

It is a challenge of utmost magnitude to keep track of time here in this land where the Dream Time is so nigh as to make its presence oft palpable in the very air. The subtle shifts in timelines and probabilities do naught to aid in this endeavor. No coincidence “Dream Time” is the label on Aunt Idle’s not-so-secret stash — she could not keep its location secret lest she forget it during the waking hours.

We jumped without warning into 2023. At 15, I am a grown-up now, so says Mater, and I could not wait to hear such words from her. She is always here, such a comfort, unchanging, unyielding, the only immutable force in the universe.
So now, life can start to unfold in front of me in the manner of my choosing, rather than being dictated by the sorry state of affairs of my family. I have set my sights upon a boarding school that may provide such an escape, but it will require the procurement of the tuition money — which will take a few more years to acquire. Patience, I have, at least for now.

The Inn is ever in need of assistance it seems. I don’t know how it came to be, but some Italian chap, Georgio, who came last year during the pandemic and got stranded with us, made such a fuss about Mater’s famous bush tucker that the Inn became fashionable overnight. Obviously Mater, bless her soul, doesn’t cook, a mercy for which we are all thankful. Said tucker was truly the handiwork of Tiku and Finly, but Georgio thought that “Mater’s tucker” has a nicer ring. Whatever suits these loonies’ fancy, it did bring us a nice stream of income in return.

After a few tries:

1. As the group has split up at the fork of the road, we discover a total of 4 new characters from the Land of the Quirks. Tell us how each group is encountering some or all of these characters, who they are, their gibberish-sounding names, and what is their quirks, and what they wear, or their activities. Make our main characters and maybe some of the new ones meet back at a common spot with a special event after that.
2. please rewrite the above, retaining the eccentricity but more grounded, less childish, and with a little darker tone and mystery.
3. please try again, make Spoink and Flibbertigibbet human and give them less endearing or friendly behaviours; name two more characters met on the road.

As the group split up at the fork of the road, each one encountered new characters from the Land of the Quirks.

Zara and Yasmin, who took the left path, met a man named “Sproink” who was a small, wiry man with a spring for a tail. He was always bouncing around and speaking in a language that sounded like a mix of gibberish and music. Sproink was a collector of shiny objects and had a bag full of them, he was also a scavenger, always looking for things to add to his collection. He was wearing a small top hat and a monocle. He was also known to be a bit of a thief and a con artist.

Xavier and Youssef, who took the right path, met a woman named “Flibbertigibbet” a tall, slender woman that had multiple arms. Flibbertigibbet was very talkative and friendly, always trying to strike up a conversation. She spoke in a language that sounded like a mix of gibberish and baby talk. She was a chef and was always carrying a pot and a spoon, but she also had a dark side, she was known to be a bit of a manipulator and a spy, always observing and gathering information for a mysterious organization. She was wearing a big chef hat and apron.

As the group met back at the fork, they were surprised to find that Sproink and Flibbertigibbet had also met there. The four new characters joined the group, and together they continued their journey to find the “Key of Quirks”. Along the way, they met two more characters;

They met a man named “Gibber” who was a tall, gaunt man with elongated limbs and fingers. He was always speaking in a language that sounded like a mix of gibberish and numbers. He was a mathematician and a scientist, always working on complex equations and theories. He was known to be a bit of a loner, and didn’t interact much with others. He was wearing a lab coat and goggles.

They also met a woman named “Glimmer” she was a short, plump woman with a shimmering skin that seemed to change color depending on the light. She was always speaking in a language that sounded like a mix of gibberish and poetry. She was an artist and a performer, always creating and performing in different shows. She was known to be a bit of a flirt and a bit of a drama queen. She was wearing a colorful and eccentric clothing, such as a flowy dress and a large hat adorned with feathers.

As the group journeyed on, they encountered more characters, each one with their own unique quirks and personalities. They met a variety of people, some friendly and some not so friendly, but all of them adding to the mysterious and unknown nature of the Land of the Quirks.

As the group reached the end of their journey and found the “Key of Quirks”, they realized that the key was not just a physical object but a symbol of acceptance and embracing individuality. They learned that the true key to leaving the Land of the Quirks was understanding and accepting the quirks of oneself and others.

The group had a bittersweet goodbye with their new friends, Sproink, Flibbertigibbet, Gibber and Glimmer, and the other characters they had met. They knew that they would always carry a piece of the Land of the Quirks with them and would always remember the mysterious and eccentric adventure they had.

Wong Sang

 

Wong Sang was born in China in 1884. In October 1916 he married Alice Stokes in Oxford.

Alice was the granddaughter of William Stokes of Churchill, Oxfordshire and William was the brother of Thomas Stokes the wheelwright (who was my 3X great grandfather). In other words Alice was my second cousin, three times removed, on my fathers paternal side.

Wong Sang was an interpreter, according to the baptism registers of his children and the Dreadnought Seamen’s Hospital admission registers in 1930.  The hospital register also notes that he was employed by the Blue Funnel Line, and that his address was 11, Limehouse Causeway, E 14. (London)

“The Blue Funnel Line offered regular First-Class Passenger and Cargo Services From the UK to South Africa, Malaya, China, Japan, Australia, Java, and America.  Blue Funnel Line was Owned and Operated by Alfred Holt & Co., Liverpool.
The Blue Funnel Line, so-called because its ships have a blue funnel with a black top, is more appropriately known as the Ocean Steamship Company.”

 

Wong Sang and Alice’s daughter, Frances Eileen Sang, was born on the 14th July, 1916 and baptised in 1920 at St Stephen in Poplar, Tower Hamlets, London.  The birth date is noted in the 1920 baptism register and would predate their marriage by a few months, although on the death register in 1921 her age at death is four years old and her year of birth is recorded as 1917.

Charles Ronald Sang was baptised on the same day in May 1920, but his birth is recorded as April of that year.  The family were living on Morant Street, Poplar.

James William Sang’s birth is recorded on the 1939 census and on the death register in 2000 as being the 8th March 1913.  This definitely would predate the 1916 marriage in Oxford.

William Norman Sang was born on the 17th October 1922 in Poplar.

Alice and the three sons were living at 11, Limehouse Causeway on the 1939 census, the same address that Wong Sang was living at when he was admitted to Dreadnought Seamen’s Hospital on the 15th January 1930. Wong Sang died in the hospital on the 8th March of that year at the age of 46.

Alice married John Patterson in 1933 in Stepney. John was living with Alice and her three sons on Limehouse Causeway on the 1939 census and his occupation was chef.

Via Old London Photographs:

“Limehouse Causeway is a street in east London that was the home to the original Chinatown of London. A combination of bomb damage during the Second World War and later redevelopment means that almost nothing is left of the original buildings of the street.”

Limehouse Causeway in 1925:

 

From The Story of Limehouse’s Lost Chinatown, poplarlondon website:

“Limehouse was London’s first Chinatown, home to a tightly-knit community who were demonised in popular culture and eventually erased from the cityscape.

As recounted in the BBC’s ‘Our Greatest Generation’ series, Connie was born to a Chinese father and an English mother in early 1920s Limehouse, where she used to play in the street with other British and British-Chinese children before running inside for teatime at one of their houses. 

Limehouse was London’s first Chinatown between the 1880s and the 1960s, before the current Chinatown off Shaftesbury Avenue was established in the 1970s by an influx of immigrants from Hong Kong. 

Connie’s memories of London’s first Chinatown as an “urban village” paint a very different picture to the seedy area portrayed in early twentieth century novels. 

The pyramid in St Anne’s church marked the entrance to the opium den of Dr Fu Manchu, a criminal mastermind who threatened Western society by plotting world domination in a series of novels by Sax Rohmer. 

Thomas Burke’s Limehouse Nights cemented stereotypes about prostitution, gambling and violence within the Chinese community, and whipped up anxiety about sexual relationships between Chinese men and white women. 

Though neither novelist was familiar with the Chinese community, their depictions made Limehouse one of the most notorious areas of London. 

Travel agent Thomas Cook even organised tours of the area for daring visitors, despite the rector of Limehouse warning that “those who look for the Limehouse of Mr Thomas Burke simply will not find it.”

All that remains is a handful of Chinese street names, such as Ming Street, Pekin Street, and Canton Street — but what was Limehouse’s chinatown really like, and why did it get swept away?

Chinese migration to Limehouse 

Chinese sailors discharged from East India Company ships settled in the docklands from as early as the 1780s.

By the late nineteenth century, men from Shanghai had settled around Pennyfields Lane, while a Cantonese community lived on Limehouse Causeway. 

Chinese sailors were often paid less and discriminated against by dock hirers, and so began to diversify their incomes by setting up hand laundry services and restaurants. 

Old photographs show shopfronts emblazoned with Chinese characters with horse-drawn carts idling outside or Chinese men in suits and hats standing proudly in the doorways. 

In oral histories collected by Yat Ming Loo, Connie’s husband Leslie doesn’t recall seeing any Chinese women as a child, since male Chinese sailors settled in London alone and married working-class English women. 

In the 1920s, newspapers fear-mongered about interracial marriages, crime and gambling, and described chinatown as an East End “colony.” 

Ironically, Chinese opium-smoking was also demonised in the press, despite Britain waging war against China in the mid-nineteenth century for suppressing the opium trade to alleviate addiction amongst its people. 

The number of Chinese people who settled in Limehouse was also greatly exaggerated, and in reality only totalled around 300. 

The real Chinatown 

Although the press sought to characterise Limehouse as a monolithic Chinese community in the East End, Connie remembers seeing people of all nationalities in the shops and community spaces in Limehouse.

She doesn’t remember feeling discriminated against by other locals, though Connie does recall having her face measured and IQ tested by a member of the British Eugenics Society who was conducting research in the area. 

Some of Connie’s happiest childhood memories were from her time at Chung-Hua Club, where she learned about Chinese culture and language.

Why did Chinatown disappear? 

The caricature of Limehouse’s Chinatown as a den of vice hastened its erasure. 

Police raids and deportations fuelled by the alarmist media coverage threatened the Chinese population of Limehouse, and slum clearance schemes to redevelop low-income areas dispersed Chinese residents in the 1930s. 

The Defence of the Realm Act imposed at the beginning of the First World War criminalised opium use, gave the authorities increased powers to deport Chinese people and restricted their ability to work on British ships.

Dwindling maritime trade during World War II further stripped Chinese sailors of opportunities for employment, and any remnants of Chinatown were destroyed during the Blitz or erased by postwar development schemes.”

 

Wong Sang 1884-1930

The year 1918 was a troublesome one for Wong Sang, an interpreter and shipping agent for Blue Funnel Line.  The Sang family were living at 156, Chrisp Street.

Chrisp Street, Poplar, in 1913 via Old London Photographs:

 

In February Wong Sang was discharged from a false accusation after defending his home from potential robbers.

East End News and London Shipping Chronicle – Friday 15 February 1918:

 

In August of that year he was involved in an incident that left him unconscious.

Faringdon Advertiser and Vale of the White Horse Gazette – Saturday 31 August 1918:

 

Wong Sang is mentioned in an 1922 article about “Oriental London”.

London and China Express – Thursday 09 February 1922:

A photograph of the Chee Kong Tong Chinese Freemason Society mentioned in the above article, via Old London Photographs:

 

Wong Sang was recommended by the London Metropolitan Police in 1928 to assist in a case in Wellingborough, Northampton.

Difficulty of Getting an Interpreter: Northampton Mercury – Friday 16 March 1928:

The difficulty was that “this man speaks the Cantonese language only…the Northeners and the Southerners in China have differing languages and the interpreter seemed to speak one that was in between these two.”

 

In 1917, Alice Wong Sang was a witness at her sister Harriet Stokes marriage to James William Watts in Southwark, London.  Their father James Stokes occupation on the marriage register is foreman surveyor, but on the census he was a council roadman or labourer. (I initially rejected this as the correct marriage for Harriet because of the discrepancy with the occupations. Alice Wong Sang as a witness confirmed that it was indeed the correct one.)

 

 

James William Sang 1913-2000 was a clock fitter and watch assembler (on the 1939 census). He married Ivy Laura Fenton in 1963 in Sidcup, Kent. James died in Southwark in 2000.

Charles Ronald Sang 1920-1974  was a draughtsman (1939 census). He married Eileen Burgess in 1947 in Marylebone.  Charles and Eileen had two sons:  Keith born in 1951 and Roger born in 1952.  He died in 1974 in Hertfordshire.

William Norman Sang 1922-2000 was a clerk and telephone operator (1939 census).  William enlisted in the Royal Artillery in 1942. He married Lily Mullins in 1949 in Bethnal Green, and they had three daughters: Marion born in 1950, Christine in 1953, and Frances in 1959.  He died in Redbridge in 2000.

 

I then found another two births registered in Poplar by Alice Sang, both daughters.  Doris Winifred Sang was born in 1925, and Patricia Margaret Sang was born in 1933 ~ three years after Wong Sang’s death.  Neither of the these daughters were on the 1939 census with Alice, John Patterson and the three sons.  Margaret had presumably been evacuated because of the war to a family in Taunton, Somerset. Doris would have been fourteen and I have been unable to find her in 1939 (possibly because she died in 2017 and has not had the redaction removed  yet on the 1939 census as only deceased people are viewable).

Doris Winifred Sang 1925-2017 was a nursing sister. She didn’t marry, and spent a year in USA between 1954 and 1955. She stayed in London, and died at the age of ninety two in 2017.

Patricia Margaret Sang 1933-1998 was also a nurse. She married Patrick L Nicely in Stepney in 1957.  Patricia and Patrick had five children in London: Sharon born 1959, Donald in 1960, Malcolm was born and died in 1966, Alison was born in 1969 and David in 1971.

 

I was unable to find a birth registered for Alice’s first son, James William Sang (as he appeared on the 1939 census).  I found Alice Stokes on the 1911 census as a 17 year old live in servant at a tobacconist on Pekin Street, Limehouse, living with Mr Sui Fong from Hong Kong and his wife Sarah Sui Fong from Berlin.  I looked for a birth registered for James William Fong instead of Sang, and found it ~ mothers maiden name Stokes, and his date of birth matched the 1939 census: 8th March, 1913.

On the 1921 census, Wong Sang is not listed as living with them but it is mentioned that Mr Wong Sang was the person returning the census.  Also living with Alice and her sons James and Charles in 1921 are two visitors:  (Florence) May Stokes, 17 years old, born in Woodstock, and Charles Stokes, aged 14, also born in Woodstock. May and Charles were Alice’s sister and brother.

 

I found Sharon Nicely on social media and she kindly shared photos of Wong Sang and Alice Stokes:

 

The Grattidge Family

 

The first Grattidge to appear in our tree was Emma Grattidge (1853-1911) who married Charles Tomlinson (1847-1907) in 1872.

Charles Tomlinson (1873-1929) was their son and he married my great grandmother Nellie Fisher. Their daughter Margaret (later Peggy Edwards) was my grandmother on my fathers side.

Emma Grattidge was born in Wolverhampton, the daughter and youngest child of William Grattidge (1820-1887) born in Foston, Derbyshire, and Mary Stubbs, born in Burton on Trent, daughter of Solomon Stubbs, a land carrier. William and Mary married at St Modwens church, Burton on Trent, in 1839. It’s unclear why they moved to Wolverhampton. On the 1841 census William was employed as an agent, and their first son William was nine months old. Thereafter, William was a licensed victuallar or innkeeper.

William Grattidge was born in Foston, Derbyshire in 1820. His parents were Thomas Grattidge, farmer (1779-1843) and Ann Gerrard (1789-1822) from Ellastone. Thomas and Ann married in 1813 in Ellastone. They had five children before Ann died at the age of 25:

Bessy was born in 1815, Thomas in 1818, William in 1820, and Daniel Augustus and Frederick were twins born in 1822. They were all born in Foston. (records say Foston, Foston and Scropton, or Scropton)

On the 1841 census Thomas had nine people additional to family living at the farm in Foston, presumably agricultural labourers and help.

After Ann died, Thomas had three children with Kezia Gibbs (30 years his junior) before marrying her in 1836, then had a further four with her before dying in 1843. Then Kezia married Thomas’s nephew Frederick Augustus Grattidge (born in 1816 in Stafford) in London in 1847 and had two more!

 

The siblings of William Grattidge (my 3x great grandfather):

 

Frederick Grattidge (1822-1872) was a schoolmaster and never married. He died at the age of 49 in Tamworth at his twin brother Daniels address.

Daniel Augustus Grattidge (1822-1903) was a grocer at Gungate in Tamworth.

Thomas Grattidge (1818-1871) married in Derby, and then emigrated to Illinois, USA.

Bessy Grattidge  (1815-1840) married John Buxton, farmer, in Ellastone in January 1838. They had three children before Bessy died in December 1840 at the age of 25: Henry in 1838, John in 1839, and Bessy Buxton in 1840. Bessy was baptised in January 1841. Presumably the birth of Bessy caused the death of Bessy the mother.

Bessy Buxton’s gravestone:

“Sacred to the memory of Bessy Buxton, the affectionate wife of John Buxton of Stanton She departed this life December 20th 1840, aged 25 years. “Husband, Farewell my life is Past, I loved you while life did last. Think on my children for my sake, And ever of them with I take.”

20 Dec 1840, Ellastone, Staffordshire

 

In the 1843 will of Thomas Grattidge, farmer of Foston, he leaves fifth shares of his estate, including freehold real estate at Findern,  to his wife Kezia, and sons William, Daniel, Frederick and Thomas. He mentions that the children of his late daughter Bessy, wife of John Buxton, will be taken care of by their father.  He leaves the farm to Keziah in confidence that she will maintain, support and educate his children with her.

An excerpt from the will:

I give and bequeath unto my dear wife Keziah Grattidge all my household goods and furniture, wearing apparel and plate and plated articles, linen, books, china, glass, and other household effects whatsoever, and also all my implements of husbandry, horses, cattle, hay, corn, crops and live and dead stock whatsoever, and also all the ready money that may be about my person or in my dwelling house at the time of my decease, …I also give my said wife the tenant right and possession of the farm in my occupation….

A page from the 1843 will of Thomas Grattidge:

 

William Grattidges half siblings (the offspring of Thomas Grattidge and Kezia Gibbs):

 

Albert Grattidge (1842-1914) was a railway engine driver in Derby. In 1884 he was driving the train when an unfortunate accident occured outside Ambergate. Three children were blackberrying and crossed the rails in front of the train, and one little girl died.

Albert Grattidge:

 

George Grattidge (1826-1876) was baptised Gibbs as this was before Thomas married Kezia. He was a police inspector in Derby.

George Grattidge:

 

Edwin Grattidge (1837-1852) died at just 15 years old.

Ann Grattidge (1835-) married Charles Fletcher, stone mason, and lived in Derby.

Louisa Victoria Grattidge (1840-1869) was sadly another Grattidge woman who died young. Louisa married Emmanuel Brunt Cheesborough in 1860 in Derby. In 1861 Louisa and Emmanuel were living with her mother Kezia in Derby, with their two children Frederick and Ann Louisa. Emmanuel’s occupation was sawyer. (Kezia Gibbs second husband Frederick Augustus Grattidge was a timber merchant in Derby)

At the time of her death in 1869, Emmanuel was the landlord of the White Hart public house at Bridgegate in Derby.

The Derby Mercury of 17th November 1869:

“On Wednesday morning Mr Coroner Vallack held an inquest in the Grand
Jury-room, Town-hall, on the body of Louisa Victoria Cheeseborough, aged
33, the wife of the landlord of the White Hart, Bridge-gate, who committed
suicide by poisoning at an early hour on Sunday morning. The following
evidence was taken:

Mr Frederick Borough, surgeon, practising in Derby, deposed that he was
called in to see the deceased about four o’clock on Sunday morning last. He
accordingly examined the deceased and found the body quite warm, but dead.
He afterwards made enquiries of the husband, who said that he was afraid
that his wife had taken poison, also giving him at the same time the
remains of some blue material in a cup. The aunt of the deceased’s husband
told him that she had seen Mrs Cheeseborough put down a cup in the
club-room, as though she had just taken it from her mouth. The witness took
the liquid home with him, and informed them that an inquest would
necessarily have to be held on Monday. He had made a post mortem
examination of the body, and found that in the stomach there was a great
deal of congestion. There were remains of food in the stomach and, having
put the contents into a bottle, he took the stomach away. He also examined
the heart and found it very pale and flabby. All the other organs were
comparatively healthy; the liver was friable.

Hannah Stone, aunt of the deceased’s husband, said she acted as a servant
in the house. On Saturday evening, while they were going to bed and whilst
witness was undressing, the deceased came into the room, went up to the
bedside, awoke her daughter, and whispered to her. but what she said the
witness did not know. The child jumped out of bed, but the deceased closed
the door and went away. The child followed her mother, and she also
followed them to the deceased’s bed-room, but the door being closed, they
then went to the club-room door and opening it they saw the deceased
standing with a candle in one hand. The daughter stayed with her in the
room whilst the witness went downstairs to fetch a candle for herself, and
as she was returning up again she saw the deceased put a teacup on the
table. The little girl began to scream, saying “Oh aunt, my mother is
going, but don’t let her go”. The deceased then walked into her bed-room,
and they went and stood at the door whilst the deceased undressed herself.
The daughter and the witness then returned to their bed-room. Presently
they went to see if the deceased was in bed, but she was sitting on the
floor her arms on the bedside. Her husband was sitting in a chair fast
asleep. The witness pulled her on the bed as well as she could.
Ann Louisa Cheesborough, a little girl, said that the deceased was her
mother. On Saturday evening last, about twenty minutes before eleven
o’clock, she went to bed, leaving her mother and aunt downstairs. Her aunt
came to bed as usual. By and bye, her mother came into her room – before
the aunt had retired to rest – and awoke her. She told the witness, in a
low voice, ‘that she should have all that she had got, adding that she
should also leave her her watch, as she was going to die’. She did not tell
her aunt what her mother had said, but followed her directly into the
club-room, where she saw her drink something from a cup, which she
afterwards placed on the table. Her mother then went into her own room and
shut the door. She screamed and called her father, who was downstairs. He
came up and went into her room. The witness then went to bed and fell
asleep. She did not hear any noise or quarrelling in the house after going
to bed.

Police-constable Webster was on duty in Bridge-gate on Saturday evening
last, about twenty minutes to one o’clock. He knew the White Hart
public-house in Bridge-gate, and as he was approaching that place, he heard
a woman scream as though at the back side of the house. The witness went to
the door and heard the deceased keep saying ‘Will you be quiet and go to
bed’. The reply was most disgusting, and the language which the
police-constable said was uttered by the husband of the deceased, was
immoral in the extreme. He heard the poor woman keep pressing her husband
to go to bed quietly, and eventually he saw him through the keyhole of the
door pass and go upstairs. his wife having gone up a minute or so before.
Inspector Fearn deposed that on Sunday morning last, after he had heard of
the deceased’s death from supposed poisoning, he went to Cheeseborough’s
public house, and found in the club-room two nearly empty packets of
Battie’s Lincoln Vermin Killer – each labelled poison.

Several of the Jury here intimated that they had seen some marks on the
deceased’s neck, as of blows, and expressing a desire that the surgeon
should return, and re-examine the body. This was accordingly done, after
which the following evidence was taken:

Mr Borough said that he had examined the body of the deceased and observed
a mark on the left side of the neck, which he considered had come on since
death. He thought it was the commencement of decomposition.
This was the evidence, after which the jury returned a verdict “that the
deceased took poison whilst of unsound mind” and requested the Coroner to
censure the deceased’s husband.

The Coroner told Cheeseborough that he was a disgusting brute and that the
jury only regretted that the law could not reach his brutal conduct.
However he had had a narrow escape. It was their belief that his poor
wife, who was driven to her own destruction by his brutal treatment, would
have been a living woman that day except for his cowardly conduct towards
her.

The inquiry, which had lasted a considerable time, then closed.”

 

In this article it says:

“it was the “fourth or fifth remarkable and tragical event – some of which were of the worst description – that has taken place within the last twelve years at the White Hart and in the very room in which the unfortunate Louisa Cheesborough drew her last breath.”

Sheffield Independent – Friday 12 November 1869:

STONE MANOR

 

Hildred Orgill Warren born in 1900, my grandmothers sister, married Reginald Williams in Stone, Worcestershire in March 1924. Their daughter Joan was born there in October of that year.

Hildred was a chaffeur on the 1921 census, living at home in Stourbridge with her father (my great grandfather) Samuel Warren, mechanic. I recall my grandmother saying that Hildred was one of the first lady chauffeurs. On their wedding certificate, Reginald is also a chauffeur.

1921 census, Stourbridge:

 

Hildred and Reg worked at Stone Manor.  There is a family story of Hildred being involved in a car accident involving a fatality and that she had to go to court.

Stone Manor is in a tiny village called Stone, near Kidderminster, Worcestershire. It used to be a private house, but has been a hotel and nightclub for some years. We knew in the family that Hildred and Reg worked at Stone Manor and that Joan was born there. Around 2007 Joan held a family party there.

Stone Manor, Stone, Worcestershire:

 

 

I asked on a Kidderminster Family Research group about Stone Manor in the 1920s:

“the original Stone Manor burnt down and the current building dates from the early 1920’s and was built for James Culcheth Hill, completed in 1926”
But was there a fire at Stone Manor?
“I’m not sure there was a fire at the Stone Manor… there seems to have been a fire at another big house a short distance away and it looks like stories have crossed over… as the dates are the same…”

 

JC Hill was one of the witnesses at Hildred and Reginalds wedding in Stone in 1924. K Warren, Hildreds sister Kay, was the other:

 

I searched the census and electoral rolls for James Culcheth Hill and found him at the Stone Manor on the 1929-1931 electoral rolls for Stone, and Hildred and Reginald living at The Manor House Lodge, Stone:

 

On the 1911 census James Culcheth Hill was a 12 year old student at Eastmans Royal Naval Academy, Northwood Park, Crawley, Winchester. He was born in Kidderminster in 1899. On the same census page, also a student at the school, is Reginald Culcheth Holcroft, born in 1900 in Stourbridge.  The unusual middle name would seem to indicate that they might be related.

A member of the Kidderminster Family Research group kindly provided this article:

 

 

SHOT THROUGH THE TEMPLE

Well known Worcestershire man’s tragic death.

Dudley Chronicle 27 March 1930.

Well known in Worcestershire, especially the Kidderminster district, Mr Philip Rowland Hill MA LLD who was mayor of Kidderminster in 1907 was found dead with a bullet wound through his temple on board his yacht, anchored off Cannes, on Friday, recently. A harbour watchman discovered the dead man huddled in a chair on board the yacht. A small revolver was lying on the blood soaked carpet beside him.

Friends of Mr Hill, whose London address is given as Grosvenor House, Park Lane, say that he appeared despondent since last month when he was involved in a motor car accident on the Antibes ~ Nice road. He was then detained by the police after his car collided with a small motor lorry driven by two Italians, who were killed in the crash. Later he was released on bail of 180,000 francs (£1440) pending an investigation of a charge of being responsible for the fatal accident. …….

Mr Rowland Hill (Philips father) was heir to Sir Charles Holcroft, the wealthy Staffordshire man, and managed his estates for him, inheriting the property on the death of Sir Charles. On the death of Mr Rowland HIll, which took place at the Firs, Kidderminster, his property was inherited by Mr James (Culcheth) Hill who had built a mansion at Stone, near Kidderminster. Mr Philip Rowland Hill assisted his brother in managing the estate. …….

At the time of the collison both brothers were in the car.

This article doesn’t mention who was driving the car ~ could the family story of a car accident be this one?  Hildred and Reg were working at Stone Manor, both were (or at least previously had been) chauffeurs, and Philip Hill was helping James Culcheth Hill manage the Stone Manor estate at the time.

 

This photograph was taken circa 1931 in Llanaeron, Wales.  Hildred is in the middle on the back row:

Sally Gray sent the photo with this message:

“Joan gave me a short note: Photo was taken when they lived in Wales, at Llanaeron, before Janet was born, & Aunty Lorna (my mother) lived with them, to take Joan to school in Aberaeron, as they only spoke Welsh at the local school.”

Hildred and Reginalds daughter Janet was born in 1932 in Stratford.  It would appear that Hildred and Reg moved to Wales just after the car accident, and shortly afterwards moved to Stratford.

In 1921 James Culcheth Hill was living at Red Hill House in Stourbridge. Although I have not been able to trace Reginald Williams yet, perhaps this Stourbridge connection with his employer explains how Hildred met Reginald.

Sir Reginald Culcheth Holcroft, the other pupil at the school in Winchester with James Culcheth Hill, was indeed related, as Sir Holcroft left his estate to James Culcheth Hill’s father.  Sir Reginald was born in 1899 in Upper Swinford, Stourbridge.  Hildred also lived in that part of Stourbridge in the early 1900s.

1921 Red Hill House:

 

The 2007 family reunion organized by Joan Williams at Stone Manor: Joan in black and white at the front.

 

Unrelated to the Warrens, my fathers friends (and customers at The Fox when my grandmother Peggy Edwards owned it) Geoff and Beryl Lamb later bought Stone Manor.

Leicestershire Blacksmiths

The Orgill’s of Measham led me further into Leicestershire as I traveled back in time.

I also realized I had uncovered a direct line of women and their mothers going back ten generations:

myself, Tracy Edwards 1957-
my mother Gillian Marshall 1933-
my grandmother Florence Warren 1906-1988
her mother and my great grandmother Florence Gretton 1881-1927
her mother Sarah Orgill 1840-1910
her mother Elizabeth Orgill 1803-1876
her mother Sarah Boss 1783-1847
her mother Elizabeth Page 1749-
her mother Mary Potter 1719-1780
and her mother and my 7x great grandmother Mary 1680-

You could say it leads us to the very heart of England, as these Leicestershire villages are as far from the coast as it’s possible to be. There are countless other maternal lines to follow, of course, but only one of mothers of mothers, and ours takes us to Leicestershire.

The blacksmiths

Sarah Boss was the daughter of Michael Boss 1755-1807, a blacksmith in Measham, and Elizabeth Page of nearby Hartshorn, just over the county border in Derbyshire.

An earlier Michael Boss, a blacksmith of Measham, died in 1772, and in his will he left the possession of the blacksmiths shop and all the working tools and a third of the household furniture to Michael, who he named as his nephew. He left his house in Appleby Magna to his wife Grace, and five pounds to his mother Jane Boss. As none of Michael and Grace’s children are mentioned in the will, perhaps it can be assumed that they were childless.

The will of Michael Boss, 1772, Measham:

 

Michael Boss the uncle was born in Appleby Magna in 1724. His parents were Michael Boss of Nelson in the Thistles and Jane Peircivall of Appleby Magna, who were married in nearby Mancetter in 1720.

Information worth noting on the Appleby Magna website:

In 1752 the calendar in England was changed from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian Calendar, as a result 11 days were famously “lost”. But for the recording of Church Registers another very significant change also took place, the start of the year was moved from March 25th to our more familiar January 1st.
Before 1752 the 1st day of each new year was March 25th, Lady Day (a significant date in the Christian calendar). The year number which we all now use for calculating ages didn’t change until March 25th. So, for example, the day after March 24th 1750 was March 25th 1751, and January 1743 followed December 1743.
This March to March recording can be seen very clearly in the Appleby Registers before 1752. Between 1752 and 1768 there appears slightly confused recording, so dates should be carefully checked. After 1768 the recording is more fully by the modern calendar year.

Michael Boss the uncle married Grace Cuthbert.  I haven’t yet found the birth or parents of Grace, but a blacksmith by the name of Edward Cuthbert is mentioned on an Appleby Magna history website:

An Eighteenth Century Blacksmith’s Shop in Little Appleby
by Alan Roberts

Cuthberts inventory

The inventory of Edward Cuthbert provides interesting information about the household possessions and living arrangements of an eighteenth century blacksmith. Edward Cuthbert (als. Cutboard) settled in Appleby after the Restoration to join the handful of blacksmiths already established in the parish, including the Wathews who were prominent horse traders. The blacksmiths may have all worked together in the same shop at one time. Edward and his wife Sarah recorded the baptisms of several of their children in the parish register. Somewhat sadly three of the boys named after their father all died either in infancy or as young children. Edward’s inventory which was drawn up in 1732, by which time he was probably a widower and his children had left home, suggests that they once occupied a comfortable two-storey house in Little Appleby with an attached workshop, well equipped with all the tools for repairing farm carts, ploughs and other implements, for shoeing horses and for general ironmongery. 

Edward Cuthbert born circa 1660, married Joane Tuvenet in 1684 in Swepston cum Snarestone , and died in Appleby in 1732. Tuvenet is a French name and suggests a Huguenot connection, but this isn’t our family, and indeed this Edward Cuthbert is not likely to be Grace’s father anyway.

Michael Boss and Elizabeth Page appear to have married twice: once in 1776, and once in 1779. Both of the documents exist and appear correct. Both marriages were by licence. They both mention Michael is a blacksmith.

Their first daughter, Elizabeth, was baptized in February 1777, just nine months after the first wedding. It’s not known when she was born, however, and it’s possible that the marriage was a hasty one. But why marry again three years later?

But Michael Boss and Elizabeth Page did not marry twice.

Elizabeth Page from Smisby was born in 1752 and married Michael Boss on the 5th of May 1776 in Measham. On the marriage licence allegations and bonds, Michael is a bachelor.

Baby Elizabeth was baptised in Measham on the 9th February 1777. Mother Elizabeth died on the 18th February 1777, also in Measham.

In 1779 Michael Boss married another Elizabeth Page! She was born in 1749 in Hartshorn, and Michael is a widower on the marriage licence allegations and bonds.

Hartshorn and Smisby are neighbouring villages, hence the confusion.  But a closer look at the documents available revealed the clues.  Both Elizabeth Pages were literate, and indeed their signatures on the marriage registers are different:

Marriage of Michael Boss and Elizabeth Page of Smisby in 1776:

 

Marriage of Michael Boss and Elizabeth Page of Harsthorn in 1779:

 

Not only did Michael Boss marry two women both called Elizabeth Page but he had an unusual start in life as well. His uncle Michael Boss left him the blacksmith business and a third of his furniture. This was all in the will. But which of Uncle Michaels brothers was nephew Michaels father?

The only Michael Boss born at the right time was in 1750 in Edingale, Staffordshire, about eight miles from Appleby Magna. His parents were Thomas Boss and Ann Parker, married in Edingale in 1747.  Thomas died in August 1750, and his son Michael was baptised in the December, posthumus son of Thomas and his widow Ann. Both entries are on the same page of the register.

 

Ann Boss, the young widow, married again. But perhaps Michael and his brother went to live with their childless uncle and aunt, Michael Boss and Grace Cuthbert.

The great grandfather of Michael Boss (the Measham blacksmith born in 1850) was also Michael Boss, probably born in the 1660s. He died in Newton Regis in Warwickshire in 1724, four years after his son (also Michael Boss born 1693) married Jane Peircivall.  The entry on the parish register states that Michael Boss was buried ye 13th Affadavit made.

I had not seen affadavit made on a parish register before, and this relates to the The Burying in Woollen Acts 1666–80.  According to Wikipedia:

 “Acts of the Parliament of England which required the dead, except plague victims and the destitute, to be buried in pure English woollen shrouds to the exclusion of any foreign textiles.  It was a requirement that an affidavit be sworn in front of a Justice of the Peace (usually by a relative of the deceased), confirming burial in wool, with the punishment of a £5 fee for noncompliance. Burial entries in parish registers were marked with the word “affidavit” or its equivalent to confirm that affidavit had been sworn; it would be marked “naked” for those too poor to afford the woollen shroud.  The legislation was in force until 1814, but was generally ignored after 1770.”

Michael Boss buried 1724 “Affadavit made”:

 

 

 

Elizabeth Page‘s father was William Page 1717-1783, a wheelwright in Hartshorn.  (The father of the first wife Elizabeth was also William Page, but he was a husbandman in Smisby born in 1714. William Page, the father of the second wife, was born in Nailstone, Leicestershire, in 1717. His place of residence on his marriage to Mary Potter was spelled Nelson.)

Her mother was Mary Potter 1719- of nearby Coleorton.  Mary’s father, Richard Potter 1677-1731, was a blacksmith in Coleorton.

A page of the will of Richard Potter 1731:

 

Richard Potter states: “I will and order that my son Thomas Potter shall after my decease have one shilling paid to him and no more.”  As he left £50 to each of his daughters, one can’t help but wonder what Thomas did to displease his father.

Richard stipulated that his son Thomas should have one shilling paid to him and not more, for several good considerations, and left “the house and ground lying in the parish of Whittwick in a place called the Long Lane to my wife Mary Potter to dispose of as she shall think proper.”

His son Richard inherited the blacksmith business:  “I will and order that my son Richard Potter shall live and be with his mother and serve her duly and truly in the business of a blacksmith, and obey and serve her in all lawful commands six years after my decease, and then I give to him and his heirs…. my house and grounds Coulson House in the Liberty of Thringstone”

Richard wanted his son John to be a blacksmith too: “I will and order that my wife bring up my son John Potter at home with her and teach or cause him to be taught the trade of a blacksmith and that he shall serve her duly and truly seven years after my decease after the manner of an apprentice and at the death of his mother I give him that house and shop and building and the ground belonging to it which I now dwell in to him and his heirs forever.”

To his daughters Margrett and Mary Potter, upon their reaching the age of one and twenty, or the day after their marriage, he leaves £50 each. All the rest of his goods are left to his loving wife Mary.

 

An inventory of the belongings of Richard Potter, 1731:

 

Richard Potters father was also named Richard Potter 1649-1719, and he too was a blacksmith.

Richard Potter of Coleorton in the county of Leicester, blacksmith, stated in his will:  “I give to my son and daughter Thomas and Sarah Potter the possession of my house and grounds.”

He leaves ten pounds each to his daughters Jane and Alice, to his son Francis he gives five pounds, and five shillings to his son Richard. Sons Joseph and William also receive five shillings each. To his daughter Mary, wife of Edward Burton, and her daughter Elizabeth, he gives five shillings each. The rest of his good, chattels and wordly substance he leaves equally between his son and daugter Thomas and Sarah. As there is no mention of his wife, it’s assumed that she predeceased him.

The will of Richard Potter, 1719:

 

Richard Potter’s (1649-1719) parents were William Potter and Alse Huldin, both born in the early 1600s.  They were married in 1646 at Breedon on the Hill, Leicestershire.  The name Huldin appears to originate in Finland.

William Potter was a blacksmith. In the 1659 parish registers of Breedon on the Hill, William Potter of Breedon blacksmith buryed the 14th July.

Harriet Compton

Harriet Comptom is not directly related to us, but her portrait is in our family collection.

Alfred Julius Eugene Compton painted this portrait of his daughter, Harriet Compton, when she was six.  Harriet Compton was Charles Tooby’s mothers mother, and Charles married my mothers aunt Dorothy Marshall. They lived on High Park Ave in Wollaston, and his parents lived on Park Road, Wollaston, opposite my grandparents, George and Nora Marshall. Harriet married Thomas Thornburgh, they had a daughter Florence who married Sydney Tooby. Florence and Sydney were Charles Tooby’s parents.

Charles and Dorothy Tooby didn’t have any children. Charles died before his wife, and this is how the picture ended up in my mothers possession.

I attempted to find a direct descendant of Harriet Compton, but have not been successful so far, although I did find a relative on a Stourbridge facebook group.  Bryan Thornburgh replied: “Francis George was my grandfather.He had two sons George & my father Thomas and two daughters Cissie & Edith.  I can remember visiting my fathers Uncle Charles and Aunt Dorothy in Wollaston.”

Francis George Thornburgh was Florence Tooby’s brother.

The watercolour portrait was framed by Hughes of Enville St, Stourbridge.

Alfred Julius Eugene Compton was born in 1826 Paris, France, and died on 6 February 1917 in Chelsea, London.
Harriet Compton his daughter was born in 1853 in Islington, London, and died in December 1926 in Stourbridge.

Without going too far down an unrelated rabbit hole, a member of the facebook group Family Treasures Reinstated  shared this:

“Will reported in numerous papers in Dec 1886.
Harriet’s father Alfred appears to be beneficiary but Harriet’s brother, Percy is specifically excluded . 
“The will (dated March 6, 1876) of the Hon. Mrs. Fanny Stanhope, late of No. 24, Carlyle-square, Chelsea, who died on August 9 last, was proved on the 1st ult. by Alfred Julius Eugene Compton, the value of the personal estate amounting to over £8000.
The testatrix, after giving & few legacies, leaves one moiety of the residue of her personal estate, upon trust, for John Auguste Alexandre Compton, for life, and then, subject to an annuity to his wife, for the children (except Percy) of Alfred Julius Eugene Compton, and the other moiety, upon trust, for the said Alfred Julius Eugene Compton, for life, and at his death for his children, except Percy.”
-Illustrated London News.

Harriet Compton:  

Purdy Cousins

 

My great grandmother Mary Ann Gilman Purdy was one of five children.  Her sister Ellen Purdy was a well traveled nurse, and her sister Kate Rushby was a publican whose son who went to Africa. But what of her eldest sister Elizabeth and her brother Richard?

 

Elizabeth Purdy 1869-1905 married Benjamin George Little in 1892 in Basford, Nottinghamshire.  Their first child, Frieda Olive Little, was born in Eastwood in December 1896, and their second daughter Catherine Jane Little was born in Warrington, Cheshire, in 1898. A third daughter, Edna Francis Little was born in 1900, but died three months later.

When I noticed that this unidentified photograph in our family collection was taken by a photographer in Warrington,  and as no other family has been found in Warrington, I concluded that these two little girls are Frieda and Catherine:

 

Benjamin Little, born in 1869, was the manager of a boot shop, according to the 1901 census, and a boot maker on the 1911 census. I found a photograph of Benjamin and Elizabeth Little on an ancestry website:

 

Frieda Olive Little 1896-1977 married Robert Warburton in 1924.

Frieda and Robert had two sons and a daughter, although one son died in infancy.  They lived in Leominster, in Herefordshire, but Frieda died in 1977 at Enfield Farm in Warrington, four years after the death of her husband Robert.

Catherine Jane Little 1899-1975 married Llewelyn Robert Prince 1884-1950.  They do not appear to have had any children.  Llewelyn was manager of the National Provinical Bank at Eltham in London, but died at Brook Cottage in Kingsland, Herefordshire.  His wifes aunt Ellen Purdy the nurse had also lived at Brook Cottage.  Ellen died in 1947, but her husband Frank Garbett was at the funeral:

 

Richard Purdy 1877-1940

Richard was born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire. When his mother Catherine died in 1884 Richard was six years old.  My great grandmother Mary Ann and her sister Ellen went to live with the Gilman’s in Buxton, but Richard and the two older sisters, Elizabeth and Kate, stayed with their father George Purdy, who remarried soon afterwards.

Richard married Ada Elizabeth Clarke in 1899.  In 1901 Richard was an earthenware packer at a pottery, and on the 1939 census he was a colliery dataller.  A dataller was a day wage man, paid on a daily basis for work done as required.

Richard and Ada had four children: Richard Baden Purdy 1900-1945, Winifred Maude 1903-1974, John Frederick 1907-1945, and Violet Gertrude 1910-1974.

Richard Baden Purdy married Ethel May Potter in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, in 1926.  He was listed on the 1939 census as a colliery deputy.  In 1945 Richard Baden Purdy died as a result of injuries in a mine explosion.

 

John Frederick Purdy married Iris Merryweather in 1938. On the 1939 census John and Iris live in Arnold, Nottinghamshire, and John’s occupation is a colliery hewer.  Their daughter Barbara Elizabeth was born later that year.  John died in 1945, the same year as his brother Richard Baden Purdy. It is not known without purchasing the death certificate what the cause of death was.

A memorial was posted in the Nottingham Evening Post on 29 June 1948:

PURDY, loving memories, Richard Baden, accidentally killed June 29th 1945; John Frederick, died 1 April 1945; Richard Purdy, father, died December 1940. Too dearly loved to be forgotten. Mother, families.

Violet Gertrude Purdy married Sidney Garland in 1932 in Southwell, Nottinghamshire.  She died in Edwinstowe, Nottinghamshire, in 1974.

Winifred Maude Purdy married Bernard Fowler in Southwell in 1928.  She also died in 1974, in Mansfield.

The two brothers died the same year, in 1945, and the two sisters died the same year, in 1974.

The Housley Letters

The Carringtons

Carrington Farm, Smalley:

 

Ellen Carrington was born in 1795. Her father William Carrington 1755-1833 was from Smalley. Her mother Mary Malkin 1765-1838 was from Ellastone, in Staffordshire.  Ellastone is on the Derbyshire border and very close to Ashboure, where Ellen married William Housley.

 

From Barbara Housley’s Narrative on the Letters:

Ellen’s family was evidently rather prominant in Smalley. Two Carringtons (John and William) served on the Parish Council in 1794. Parish records are full of Carrington marriages and christenings.

The letters refer to a variety of “uncles” who were probably Ellen’s brothers, but could be her uncles. These include:

RICHARD

Probably the youngest Uncle, and certainly the most significant, is Richard. He was a trustee for some of the property which needed to be settled following Ellen’s death. Anne wrote in 1854 that Uncle Richard “has got a new house built” and his daughters are “fine dashing young ladies–the belles of Smalley.” Then she added, “Aunt looks as old as my mother.”

Richard was born somewhere between 1808 and 1812. Since Richard was a contemporary of the older Housley children, “Aunt,” who was three years younger, should not look so old!

Richard Carrington and Harriet Faulkner were married in Repton in 1833. A daughter Elizabeth was baptised March 24, 1834. In July 1872, Joseph wrote: “Elizabeth is married too and a large family and is living in Uncle Thomas’s house for he is dead.” Elizabeth married Ayres (Eyres) Clayton of Lascoe. His occupation was listed as joiner and shopkeeper. They were married before 1864 since Elizabeth Clayton witnessed her sister’s marriage. Their children in April 1871 were Selina (1863), Agnes Maria (1866) and Elizabeth Ann (1868). A fourth daughter, Alice Augusta, was born in 1872 or 1873, probably by July 1872 to fit Joseph’s description “large family”! A son Charles Richard was born in 1880.

An Elizabeth Ann Clayton married John Arthur Woodhouse on May 12, 1913. He was a carpenter. His father was a miner. Elizabeth Ann’s father, Ayres, was also a carpenter. John Arthur’s age was given as 25. Elizabeth Ann’s age was given as 33 or 38. However, if she was born in 1868, her age would be 45. Possibly this is another case of a child being named for a deceased sibling. If she were 38 and born in 1875, she would fill the gap between Alice Augusta and Charles Richard.

Selina Clayton, who would have been 18, is not listed in the household in 1881. She died on June 11, 1914 at age 51. Agnes Maria Clayton died at the age of 25 and was buried March 31, 1891. Charles Richard died at the age of 5 and was buried on February 4, 1886. A Charles James Clayton, 18 months, was buried June 8, 1889 in Heanor.

Richard Carrington’s second daughter, Selina, born in 1837, married Walker Martin (b.1835) on February 11, 1864 and they were living at Kidsley Park Farm in 1872, according to a letter from Joseph, and, according to the census, were still there in 1881. This 100 acre farm was formerly the home of Daniel Smith and his daughter Elizabeth Davy Barber. Selina and Walker had at least five children: Elizabeth Ann (1865), Harriet Georgianna (1866/7), Alice Marian (September 6, 1868), Philip Richard (1870), and Walker (1873). In December 1972, Joseph mentioned the death of Philip Walker, a farmer of Prospect Farm, Shipley. This was probably Walker Martin’s grandfather, since Walker was born in Shipley. The stock was to be sold the following Monday, but his daughter (Walker’s mother?) died the next day. Walker’s father was named Thomas. An Annie Georgianna Martin age 13 of Shipley died in April of 1859.

Selina Martin died on October 29, 1906 but her estate was not settled until November 14, 1910. Her gross estate was worth L223.56. Her son Walker and her daughter Harriet Georgiana were her trustees and executers. Walker was to get Selina’s half of Richard’s farm. Harriet Georgiana and Alice Marian were to be allowed to live with him. Philip Richard received L25. Elizabeth Ann was already married to someone named Smith.

Richard and Harriet may also have had a son George. In 1851 a Harriet Carrington and her three year old son George were living with her step-father John Benniston in Heanor. John may have been recently widowed and needed her help. Or, the Carrington home may have been inadequate since Anne reported a new one was built by 1854. Selina’s second daughter’s name testifies to the presence of a “George” in the family! Could the death of this son account for the haggard appearance Anne described when she wrote: “Aunt looks as old as my mother?”
Harriet was buried May 19, 1866. She was 55 when she died.

In 1881, Georgianna then 14, was living with her grandfather and his niece, Zilpah Cooper, age 38–who lived with Richard on his 63 acre farm as early as 1871. A Zilpah, daughter of William and Elizabeth, was christened October 1843. Her brother, William Walter, was christened in 1846 and married Anna Maria Saint in 1873. There are four Selina Coopers–one had a son William Thomas Bartrun Cooper christened in 1864; another had a son William Cooper christened in 1873.

Our Zilpah was born in Bretley 1843. She died at age 49 and was buried on September 24, 1892. In her will, which was witnessed by Selina Martin, Zilpah’s sister, Frances Elizabeth Cleave, wife of Horatio Cleave of Leicester is mentioned. James Eley and Francis Darwin Huish (Richard’s soliciter) were executers.

Richard died June 10, 1892, and was buried on June 13. He was 85. As might be expected, Richard’s will was complicated. Harriet Georgiana Martin and Zilpah Cooper were to share his farm. If neither wanted to live there it was to go to Georgiana’s cousin Selina Clayton. However, Zilpah died soon after Richard. Originally, he left his piano, parlor and best bedroom furniture to his daughter Elizabeth Clayton. Then he revoked everything but the piano. He arranged for the payment of £150 which he owed. Later he added a codicil explaining that the debt was paid but he had borrowed £200 from someone else to do it!

Richard left a good deal of property including: The house and garden in Smalley occupied by Eyres Clayton with four messuages and gardens adjoining and large garden below and three messuages at the south end of the row with the frame work knitters shop and garden adjoining; a dwelling house used as a public house with a close of land; a small cottage and garden and four cottages and shop and gardens.

 

THOMAS

In August 1854, Anne wrote “Uncle Thomas is about as usual.” A Thomas Carrington married a Priscilla Walker in 1810.

Their children were baptised in August 1830 at the same time as the Housley children who at that time ranged in age from 3 to 17. The oldest of Thomas and Priscilla’s children, Henry, was probably at least 17 as he was married by 1836. Their youngest son, William Thomas, born 1830, may have been Mary Ellen Weston’s beau. However, the only Richard whose christening is recorded (1820), was the son of Thomas and Lucy. In 1872 Joseph reported that Richard’s daughter Elizabeth was married and living in Uncle Thomas’s house. In 1851, Alfred Smith lived in house 25, Foulks lived in 26, Thomas and Priscilla lived in 27, Bennetts lived in 28, Allard lived in 29 and Day lived in 30. Thomas and Priscilla do not appear in 1861. In 1871 Elizabeth Ann and Ayres Clayton lived in House 54. None of the families listed as neighbors in 1851 remained. However, Joseph Carrington, who lived in house 19 in 1851, lived in house 51 in 1871.

 

JOHN

In August 1854, Anne wrote: “Uncle John is with Will and Frank has been home in a comfortable place in Cotmanhay.” Although John and William are two of the most popular Carrington names, only two John’s have sons named William. John and Rachel Buxton Carrington had a son William christened in 1788. At the time of the letters this John would have been over 100 years old. Their son John and his wife Ann had a son William who was born in 1805. However, this William age 46 was living with his widowed mother in 1851. A Robert Carrington and his wife Ann had a son John born 1n 1805. He would be the right age to be a brother to Francis Carrington discussed below. This John was living with his widowed mother in 1851 and was unmarried. There are no known Williams in this family grouping. A William Carrington of undiscovered parentage was born in 1821. It is also possible that the Will in question was Anne’s brother Will Housley.

–Two Francis Carringtons appear in the 1841 census both of them aged 35. One is living with Richard and Harriet Carrington. The other is living next door to Samuel and Ellen Carrington Kerry (the trustee for “father’s will”!). The next name in this sequence is John Carrington age 15 who does not seem to live with anyone! but may be part of the Kerry household.

FRANK (see above)

While Anne did not preface her mention of the name Frank with an “Uncle,” Joseph referred to Uncle Frank and James Carrington in the same sentence. A James Carrington was born in 1814 and had a wife Sarah. He worked as a framework knitter. James may have been a son of William and Anne Carrington. He lived near Richard according to the 1861 census. Other children of William and Anne are Hannah (1811), William (1815), John (1816), and Ann (1818). An Ann Carrington married a Frank Buxton in 1819. This might be “Uncle Frank.”

An Ellen Carrington was born to John and Rachel Carrington in 1785. On October 25, 1809, a Samuel Kerry married an Ellen Carrington. However this Samuel Kerry is not the trustee involved in settling Ellen’s estate. John Carrington died July 1815.

William and Mary Carrington:

From Tanganyika with Love

continued part 9

With thanks to Mike Rushby.

Lyamungu 3rd January 1945

Dearest Family.

We had a novel Christmas this year. We decided to avoid the expense of
entertaining and being entertained at Lyamungu, and went off to spend Christmas
camping in a forest on the Western slopes of Kilimanjaro. George decided to combine
business with pleasure and in this way we were able to use Government transport.
We set out the day before Christmas day and drove along the road which skirts
the slopes of Kilimanjaro and first visited a beautiful farm where Philip Teare, the ex
Game Warden, and his wife Mary are staying. We had afternoon tea with them and then
drove on in to the natural forest above the estate and pitched our tent beside a small
clear mountain stream. We decorated the tent with paper streamers and a few small
balloons and John found a small tree of the traditional shape which we decorated where
it stood with tinsel and small ornaments.

We put our beer, cool drinks for the children and bottles of fresh milk from Simba
Estate, in the stream and on Christmas morning they were as cold as if they had been in
the refrigerator all night. There were not many presents for the children, there never are,
but they do not seem to mind and are well satisfied with a couple of balloons apiece,
sweets, tin whistles and a book each.

George entertain the children before breakfast. He can make a magical thing out
of the most ordinary balloon. The children watched entranced as he drew on his pipe
and then blew the smoke into the balloon. He then pinched the neck of the balloon
between thumb and forefinger and released the smoke in little puffs. Occasionally the
balloon ejected a perfect smoke ring and the forest rang with shouts of “Do it again
Daddy.” Another trick was to blow up the balloon to maximum size and then twist the
neck tightly before releasing. Before subsiding the balloon darted about in a crazy
fashion causing great hilarity. Such fun, at the cost of a few pence.

After breakfast George went off to fish for trout. John and Jim decided that they
also wished to fish so we made rods out of sticks and string and bent pins and they
fished happily, but of course quite unsuccessfully, for hours. Both of course fell into the
stream and got soaked, but I was prepared for this, and the little stream was so shallow
that they could not come to any harm. Henry played happily in the sand and I had a
most peaceful morning.

Hamisi roasted a chicken in a pot over the camp fire and the jelly set beautifully in the
stream. So we had grilled trout and chicken for our Christmas dinner. I had of course
taken an iced cake for the occasion and, all in all, it was a very successful Christmas day.
On Boxing day we drove down to the plains where George was to investigate a
report of game poaching near the Ngassari Furrow. This is a very long ditch which has
been dug by the Government for watering the Masai stock in the area. It is also used by
game and we saw herds of zebra and wildebeest, and some Grant’s Gazelle and
giraffe, all comparatively tame. At one point a small herd of zebra raced beside the lorry
apparently enjoying the fun of a gallop. They were all sleek and fat and looked wild and
beautiful in action.

We camped a considerable distance from the water but this precaution did not
save us from the mosquitoes which launched a vicious attack on us after sunset, so that
we took to our beds unusually early. They were on the job again when we got up at
sunrise so I was very glad when we were once more on our way home.

“I like Christmas safari. Much nicer that silly old party,” said John. I agree but I think
it is time that our children learned to play happily with others. There are no other young
children at Lyamungu though there are two older boys and a girl who go to boarding
school in Nairobi.

On New Years Day two Army Officers from the military camp at Moshi, came for
tea and to talk game hunting with George. I think they rather enjoy visiting a home and
seeing children and pets around.

Eleanor.

Lyamungu 14 May 1945

Dearest Family.

So the war in Europe is over at last. It is such marvellous news that I can hardly
believe it. To think that as soon as George can get leave we will go to England and
bring Ann and George home with us to Tanganyika. When we know when this leave can
be arranged we will want Kate to join us here as of course she must go with us to
England to meet George’s family. She has become so much a part of your lives that I
know it will be a wrench for you to give her up but I know that you will all be happy to
think that soon our family will be reunited.

The V.E. celebrations passed off quietly here. We all went to Moshi to see the
Victory Parade of the King’s African Rifles and in the evening we went to a celebration
dinner at the Game Warden’s house. Besides ourselves the Moores had invited the
Commanding Officer from Moshi and a junior officer. We had a very good dinner and
many toasts including one to Mrs Moore’s brother, Oliver Milton who is fighting in Burma
and has recently been awarded the Military Cross.

There was also a celebration party for the children in the grounds of the Moshi
Club. Such a spread! I think John and Jim sampled everything. We mothers were
having our tea separately and a friend laughingly told me to turn around and have a look.
I did, and saw the long tea tables now deserted by all the children but my two sons who
were still eating steadily, and finding the party more exciting than the game of Musical
Bumps into which all the other children had entered with enthusiasm.

There was also an extremely good puppet show put on by the Italian prisoners
of war from the camp at Moshi. They had made all the puppets which included well
loved characters like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and the Babes in the Wood as
well as more sophisticated ones like an irritable pianist and a would be prima donna. The
most popular puppets with the children were a native askari and his family – a very
happy little scene. I have never before seen a puppet show and was as entranced as
the children. It is amazing what clever manipulation and lighting can do. I believe that the
Italians mean to take their puppets to Nairobi and am glad to think that there, they will
have larger audiences to appreciate their art.

George has just come in, and I paused in my writing to ask him for the hundredth
time when he thinks we will get leave. He says I must be patient because it may be a
year before our turn comes. Shipping will be disorganised for months to come and we
cannot expect priority simply because we have been separated so long from our
children. The same situation applies to scores of other Government Officials.
I have decided to write the story of my childhood in South Africa and about our
life together in Tanganyika up to the time Ann and George left the country. I know you
will have told Kate these stories, but Ann and George were so very little when they left
home that I fear that they cannot remember much.

My Mother-in-law will have told them about their father but she can tell them little
about me. I shall send them one chapter of my story each month in the hope that they
may be interested and not feel that I am a stranger when at last we meet again.

Eleanor.

Lyamungu 19th September 1945

Dearest Family.

In a months time we will be saying good-bye to Lyamungu. George is to be
transferred to Mbeya and I am delighted, not only as I look upon Mbeya as home, but
because there is now a primary school there which John can attend. I feel he will make
much better progress in his lessons when he realises that all children of his age attend
school. At present he is putting up a strong resistance to learning to read and spell, but
he writes very neatly, does his sums accurately and shows a real talent for drawing. If
only he had the will to learn I feel he would do very well.

Jim now just four, is too young for lessons but too intelligent to be interested in
the ayah’s attempts at entertainment. Yes I’ve had to engage a native girl to look after
Henry from 9 am to 12.30 when I supervise John’s Correspondence Course. She is
clean and amiable, but like most African women she has no initiative at all when it comes
to entertaining children. Most African men and youths are good at this.

I don’t regret our stay at Lyamungu. It is a beautiful spot and the change to the
cooler climate after the heat of Morogoro has been good for all the children. John is still
tall for his age but not so thin as he was and much less pale. He is a handsome little lad
with his large brown eyes in striking contrast to his fair hair. He is wary of strangers but
very observant and quite uncanny in the way he sums up people. He seldom gets up
to mischief but I have a feeling he eggs Jim on. Not that Jim needs egging.

Jim has an absolute flair for mischief but it is all done in such an artless manner that
it is not easy to punish him. He is a very sturdy child with a cap of almost black silky hair,
eyes brown, like mine, and a large mouth which is quick to smile and show most beautiful
white and even teeth. He is most popular with all the native servants and the Game
Scouts. The servants call Jim, ‘Bwana Tembo’ (Mr Elephant) because of his sturdy
build.

Henry, now nearly two years old, is quite different from the other two in
appearance. He is fair complexioned and fair haired like Ann and Kate, with large, black
lashed, light grey eyes. He is a good child, not so merry as Jim was at his age, nor as
shy as John was. He seldom cries, does not care to be cuddled and is independent and
strong willed. The servants call Henry, ‘Bwana Ndizi’ (Mr Banana) because he has an
inexhaustible appetite for this fruit. Fortunately they are very inexpensive here. We buy
an entire bunch which hangs from a beam on the back verandah, and pluck off the
bananas as they ripen. This way there is no waste and the fruit never gets bruised as it
does in greengrocers shops in South Africa. Our three boys make a delightful and
interesting trio and I do wish you could see them for yourselves.

We are delighted with the really beautiful photograph of Kate. She is an
extraordinarily pretty child and looks so happy and healthy and a great credit to you.
Now that we will be living in Mbeya with a school on the doorstep I hope that we will
soon be able to arrange for her return home.

Eleanor.

c/o Game Dept. Mbeya. 30th October 1945

Dearest Family.

How nice to be able to write c/o Game Dept. Mbeya at the head of my letters.
We arrived here safely after a rather tiresome journey and are installed in a tiny house on
the edge of the township.

We left Lyamungu early on the morning of the 22nd. Most of our goods had
been packed on the big Ford lorry the previous evening, but there were the usual
delays and farewells. Of our servants, only the cook, Hamisi, accompanied us to
Mbeya. Japhet, Tovelo and the ayah had to be paid off and largesse handed out.
Tovelo’s granny had come, bringing a gift of bananas, and she also brought her little
granddaughter to present a bunch of flowers. The child’s little scolded behind is now
completely healed. Gifts had to be found for them too.

At last we were all aboard and what a squash it was! Our few pieces of furniture
and packing cases and trunks, the cook, his wife, the driver and the turney boy, who
were to take the truck back to Lyamungu, and all their bits and pieces, bunches of
bananas and Fanny the dog were all crammed into the body of the lorry. George, the
children and I were jammed together in the cab. Before we left George looked
dubiously at the tyres which were very worn and said gloomily that he thought it most
unlikely that we would make our destination, Dodoma.

Too true! Shortly after midday, near Kwakachinja, we blew a back tyre and there
was a tedious delay in the heat whilst the wheel was changed. We were now without a
spare tyre and George said that he would not risk taking the Ford further than Babati,
which is less than half way to Dodoma. He drove very slowly and cautiously to Babati
where he arranged with Sher Mohammed, an Indian trader, for a lorry to take us to
Dodoma the next morning.

It had been our intention to spend the night at the furnished Government
Resthouse at Babati but when we got there we found that it was already occupied by
several District Officers who had assembled for a conference. So, feeling rather
disgruntled, we all piled back into the lorry and drove on to a place called Bereku where
we spent an uncomfortable night in a tumbledown hut.

Before dawn next morning Sher Mohammed’s lorry drove up, and there was a
scramble to dress by the light of a storm lamp. The lorry was a very dilapidated one and
there was already a native woman passenger in the cab. I felt so tired after an almost
sleepless night that I decided to sit between the driver and this woman with the sleeping
Henry on my knee. It was as well I did, because I soon found myself dosing off and
drooping over towards the woman. Had she not been there I might easily have fallen
out as the battered cab had no door. However I was alert enough when daylight came
and changed places with the woman to our mutual relief. She was now able to converse
with the African driver and I was able to enjoy the scenery and the fresh air!
George, John and Jim were less comfortable. They sat in the lorry behind the
cab hemmed in by packing cases. As the lorry was an open one the sun beat down
unmercifully upon them until George, ever resourceful, moved a table to the front of the
truck. The two boys crouched under this and so got shelter from the sun but they still had
to endure the dust. Fanny complicated things by getting car sick and with one thing and
another we were all jolly glad to get to Dodoma.

We spent the night at the Dodoma Hotel and after hot baths, a good meal and a
good nights rest we cheerfully boarded a bus of the Tanganyika Bus Service next
morning to continue our journey to Mbeya. The rest of the journey was uneventful. We slept two nights on the road, the first at Iringa Hotel and the second at Chimala. We
reached Mbeya on the 27th.

I was rather taken aback when I first saw the little house which has been allocated
to us. I had become accustomed to the spacious houses we had in Morogoro and
Lyamungu. However though the house is tiny it is secluded and has a long garden
sloping down to the road in front and another long strip sloping up behind. The front
garden is shaded by several large cypress and eucalyptus trees but the garden behind
the house has no shade and consists mainly of humpy beds planted with hundreds of
carnations sadly in need of debudding. I believe that the previous Game Ranger’s wife
cultivated the carnations and, by selling them, raised money for War Funds.
Like our own first home, this little house is built of sun dried brick. Its original
owners were Germans. It is now rented to the Government by the Custodian of Enemy
Property, and George has his office in another ex German house.

This afternoon we drove to the school to arrange about enrolling John there. The
school is about four miles out of town. It was built by the German settlers in the late
1930’s and they were justifiably proud of it. It consists of a great assembly hall and
classrooms in one block and there are several attractive single storied dormitories. This
school was taken over by the Government when the Germans were interned on the
outbreak of war and many improvements have been made to the original buildings. The
school certainly looks very attractive now with its grassed playing fields and its lawns and
bright flower beds.

The Union Jack flies from a tall flagpole in front of the Hall and all traces of the
schools German origin have been firmly erased. We met the Headmaster, Mr
Wallington, and his wife and some members of the staff. The school is co-educational
and caters for children from the age of seven to standard six. The leaving age is elastic
owing to the fact that many Tanganyika children started school very late because of lack
of educational facilities in this country.

The married members of the staff have their own cottages in the grounds. The
Matrons have quarters attached to the dormitories for which they are responsible. I felt
most enthusiastic about the school until I discovered that the Headmaster is adamant
upon one subject. He utterly refuses to take any day pupils at the school. So now our
poor reserved Johnny will have to adjust himself to boarding school life.
We have arranged that he will start school on November 5th and I shall be very
busy trying to assemble his school uniform at short notice. The clothing list is sensible.
Boys wear khaki shirts and shorts on weekdays with knitted scarlet jerseys when the
weather is cold. On Sundays they wear grey flannel shorts and blazers with the silver
and scarlet school tie.

Mbeya looks dusty, brown and dry after the lush evergreen vegetation of
Lyamungu, but I prefer this drier climate and there are still mountains to please the eye.
In fact the lower slopes of Lolesa Mountain rise at the upper end of our garden.

Eleanor.

c/o Game Dept. Mbeya. 21st November 1945

Dearest Family.

We’re quite settled in now and I have got the little house fixed up to my
satisfaction. I have engaged a rather uncouth looking houseboy but he is strong and
capable and now that I am not tied down in the mornings by John’s lessons I am able to
go out occasionally in the mornings and take Jim and Henry to play with other children.
They do not show any great enthusiasm but are not shy by nature as John is.
I have had a good deal of heartache over putting John to boarding school. It
would have been different had he been used to the company of children outside his
own family, or if he had even known one child there. However he seems to be adjusting
himself to the life, though slowly. At least he looks well and tidy and I am quite sure that
he is well looked after.

I must confess that when the time came for John to go to school I simply did not
have the courage to take him and he went alone with George, looking so smart in his
new uniform – but his little face so bleak. The next day, Sunday, was visiting day but the
Headmaster suggested that we should give John time to settle down and not visit him
until Wednesday.

When we drove up to the school I spied John on the far side of the field walking
all alone. Instead of running up with glad greetings, as I had expected, he came almost
reluctently and had little to say. I asked him to show me his dormitory and classroom and
he did so politely as though I were a stranger. At last he volunteered some information.
“Mummy,” he said in an awed voice, Do you know on the night I came here they burnt a
man! They had a big fire and they burnt him.” After a blank moment the penny dropped.
Of course John had started school and November the fifth but it had never entered my
head to tell him about that infamous character, Guy Fawkes!

I asked John’s Matron how he had settled down. “Well”, she said thoughtfully,
“John is very good and has not cried as many of the juniors do when they first come
here, but he seems to keep to himself all the time.” I went home very discouraged but
on the Sunday John came running up with another lad of about his own age.” This is my
friend Marks,” he announced proudly. I could have hugged Marks.

Mbeya is very different from the small settlement we knew in the early 1930’s.
Gone are all the colourful characters from the Lupa diggings for the alluvial claims are all
worked out now, gone also are our old friends the Menzies from the Pub and also most
of the Government Officials we used to know. Mbeya has lost its character of a frontier
township and has become almost suburban.

The social life revolves around two places, the Club and the school. The Club
which started out as a little two roomed building, has been expanded and the golf
course improved. There are also tennis courts and a good library considering the size of
the community. There are frequent parties and dances, though most of the club revenue
comes from Bar profits. The parties are relatively sober affairs compared with the parties
of the 1930’s.

The school provides entertainment of another kind. Both Mr and Mrs Wallington
are good amateur actors and I am told that they run an Amateur Dramatic Society. Every
Wednesday afternoon there is a hockey match at the school. Mbeya town versus a
mixed team of staff and scholars. The match attracts almost the whole European
population of Mbeya. Some go to play hockey, others to watch, and others to snatch
the opportunity to visit their children. I shall have to try to arrange a lift to school when
George is away on safari.

I have now met most of the local women and gladly renewed an old friendship
with Sheilagh Waring whom I knew two years ago at Morogoro. Sheilagh and I have
much in common, the same disregard for the trappings of civilisation, the same sense of
the ludicrous, and children. She has eight to our six and she has also been cut off by the
war from two of her children. Sheilagh looks too young and pretty to be the mother of so
large a family and is, in fact, several years younger than I am. her husband, Donald, is a
large quiet man who, as far as I can judge takes life seriously.

Our next door neighbours are the Bank Manager and his wife, a very pleasant
couple though we seldom meet. I have however had correspondence with the Bank
Manager. Early on Saturday afternoon their houseboy brought a note. It informed me
that my son was disturbing his rest by precipitating a heart attack. Was I aware that my
son was about 30 feet up in a tree and balanced on a twig? I ran out and,sure enough,
there was Jim, right at the top of the tallest eucalyptus tree. It would be the one with the
mound of stones at the bottom! You should have heard me fluting in my most
wheedling voice. “Sweets, Jimmy, come down slowly dear, I’ve some nice sweets for
you.”

I’ll bet that little story makes you smile. I remember how often you have told me
how, as a child, I used to make your hearts turn over because I had no fear of heights
and how I used to say, “But that is silly, I won’t fall.” I know now only too well, how you
must have felt.

Eleanor.

c/o Game Dept. Mbeya. 14th January 1946

Dearest Family.

I hope that by now you have my telegram to say that Kate got home safely
yesterday. It was wonderful to have her back and what a beautiful child she is! Kate
seems to have enjoyed the train journey with Miss Craig, in spite of the tears she tells
me she shed when she said good-bye to you. She also seems to have felt quite at
home with the Hopleys at Salisbury. She flew from Salisbury in a small Dove aircraft
and they had a smooth passage though Kate was a little airsick.

I was so excited about her home coming! This house is so tiny that I had to turn
out the little store room to make a bedroom for her. With a fresh coat of whitewash and
pretty sprigged curtains and matching bedspread, borrowed from Sheilagh Waring, the
tiny room looks most attractive. I had also iced a cake, made ice-cream and jelly and
bought crackers for the table so that Kate’s home coming tea could be a proper little
celebration.

I was pleased with my preparations and then, a few hours before the plane was
due, my crowned front tooth dropped out, peg and all! When my houseboy wants to
describe something very tatty, he calls it “Second-hand Kabisa.” Kabisa meaning
absolutely. That is an apt description of how I looked and felt. I decided to try some
emergency dentistry. I think you know our nearest dentist is at Dar es Salaam five
hundred miles away.

First I carefully dried the tooth and with a match stick covered the peg and base
with Durofix. I then took the infants rubber bulb enema, sucked up some heat from a
candle flame and pumped it into the cavity before filling that with Durofix. Then hopefully
I stuck the tooth in its former position and held it in place for several minutes. No good. I
sent the houseboy to a shop for Scotine and tried the whole process again. No good
either.

When George came home for lunch I appealed to him for advice. He jokingly
suggested that a maize seed jammed into the space would probably work, but when
he saw that I really was upset he produced some chewing gum and suggested that I
should try that . I did and that worked long enough for my first smile anyway.
George and the three boys went to meet Kate but I remained at home to
welcome her there. I was afraid that after all this time away Kate might be reluctant to
rejoin the family but she threw her arms around me and said “Oh Mummy,” We both
shed a few tears and then we both felt fine.

How gay Kate is, and what an infectious laugh she has! The boys follow her
around in admiration. John in fact asked me, “Is Kate a Princess?” When I said
“Goodness no, Johnny, she’s your sister,” he explained himself by saying, “Well, she
has such golden hair.” Kate was less complementary. When I tucked her in bed last night
she said, “Mummy, I didn’t expect my little brothers to be so yellow!” All three boys
have been taking a course of Atebrin, an anti-malarial drug which tinges skin and eyeballs
yellow.

So now our tiny house is bursting at its seams and how good it feels to have one
more child under our roof. We are booked to sail for England in May and when we return
we will have Ann and George home too. Then I shall feel really content.

Eleanor.

c/o Game Dept. Mbeya. 2nd March 1946

Dearest Family.

My life just now is uneventful but very busy. I am sewing hard and knitting fast to
try to get together some warm clothes for our leave in England. This is not a simple
matter because woollen materials are in short supply and very expensive, and now that
we have boarding school fees to pay for both Kate and John we have to budget very
carefully indeed.

Kate seems happy at school. She makes friends easily and seems to enjoy
communal life. John also seems reconciled to school now that Kate is there. He no
longer feels that he is the only exile in the family. He seems to rub along with the other
boys of his age and has a couple of close friends. Although Mbeya School is coeducational
the smaller boys and girls keep strictly apart. It is considered extremely
cissy to play with girls.

The local children are allowed to go home on Sundays after church and may bring
friends home with them for the day. Both John and Kate do this and Sunday is a very
busy day for me. The children come home in their Sunday best but bring play clothes to
change into. There is always a scramble to get them to bath and change again in time to
deliver them to the school by 6 o’clock.

When George is home we go out to the school for the morning service. This is
taken by the Headmaster Mr Wallington, and is very enjoyable. There is an excellent
school choir to lead the singing. The service is the Church of England one, but is
attended by children of all denominations, except the Roman Catholics. I don’t think that
more than half the children are British. A large proportion are Greeks, some as old as
sixteen, and about the same number are Afrikaners. There are Poles and non-Nazi
Germans, Swiss and a few American children.

All instruction is through the medium of English and it is amazing how soon all the
foreign children learn to chatter in English. George has been told that we will return to
Mbeya after our leave and for that I am very thankful as it means that we will still be living
near at hand when Jim and Henry start school. Because many of these children have to
travel many hundreds of miles to come to school, – Mbeya is a two day journey from the
railhead, – the school year is divided into two instead of the usual three terms. This
means that many of these children do not see their parents for months at a time. I think
this is a very sad state of affairs especially for the seven and eight year olds but the
Matrons assure me , that many children who live on isolated farms and stations are quite
reluctant to go home because they miss the companionship and the games and
entertainment that the school offers.

My only complaint about the life here is that I see far too little of George. He is
kept extremely busy on this range and is hardly at home except for a few days at the
months end when he has to be at his office to check up on the pay vouchers and the
issue of ammunition to the Scouts. George’s Range takes in the whole of the Southern
Province and the Southern half of the Western Province and extends to the border with
Northern Rhodesia and right across to Lake Tanganyika. This vast area is patrolled by
only 40 Game Scouts because the Department is at present badly under staffed, due
partly to the still acute shortage of rifles, but even more so to the extraordinary reluctance
which the Government shows to allocate adequate funds for the efficient running of the
Department.

The Game Scouts must see that the Game Laws are enforced, protect native
crops from raiding elephant, hippo and other game animals. Report disease amongst game and deal with stock raiding lions. By constantly going on safari and checking on
their work, George makes sure the range is run to his satisfaction. Most of the Game
Scouts are fine fellows but, considering they receive only meagre pay for dangerous
and exacting work, it is not surprising that occasionally a Scout is tempted into accepting
a bribe not to report a serious infringement of the Game Laws and there is, of course,
always the temptation to sell ivory illicitly to unscrupulous Indian and Arab traders.
Apart from supervising the running of the Range, George has two major jobs.
One is to supervise the running of the Game Free Area along the Rhodesia –
Tanganyika border, and the other to hunt down the man-eating lions which for years have
terrorised the Njombe District killing hundreds of Africans. Yes I know ‘hundreds’ sounds
fantastic, but this is perfectly true and one day, when the job is done and the official
report published I shall send it to you to prove it!

I hate to think of the Game Free Area and so does George. All the game from
buffalo to tiny duiker has been shot out in a wide belt extending nearly two hundred
miles along the Northern Rhodesia -Tanganyika border. There are three Europeans in
widely spaced camps who supervise this slaughter by African Game Guards. This
horrible measure is considered necessary by the Veterinary Departments of
Tanganyika, Rhodesia and South Africa, to prevent the cattle disease of Rinderpest
from spreading South.

When George is home however, we do relax and have fun. On the Saturday
before the school term started we took Kate and the boys up to the top fishing camp in
the Mporoto Mountains for her first attempt at trout fishing. There are three of these
camps built by the Mbeya Trout Association on the rivers which were first stocked with
the trout hatched on our farm at Mchewe. Of the three, the top camp is our favourite. The
scenery there is most glorious and reminds me strongly of the rivers of the Western
Cape which I so loved in my childhood.

The river, the Kawira, flows from the Rungwe Mountain through a narrow valley
with hills rising steeply on either side. The water runs swiftly over smooth stones and
sometimes only a foot or two below the level of the banks. It is sparkling and shallow,
but in places the water is deep and dark and the banks high. I had a busy day keeping
an eye on the boys, especially Jim, who twice climbed out on branches which overhung
deep water. “Mummy, I was only looking for trout!”

How those kids enjoyed the freedom of the camp after the comparative
restrictions of town. So did Fanny, she raced about on the hills like a mad dog chasing
imaginary rabbits and having the time of her life. To escape the noise and commotion
George had gone far upstream to fish and returned in the late afternoon with three good
sized trout and four smaller ones. Kate proudly showed George the two she had caught
with the assistance or our cook Hamisi. I fear they were caught in a rather unorthodox
manner but this I kept a secret from George who is a stickler for the orthodox in trout
fishing.

Eleanor.

Jacksdale England 24th June 1946

Dearest Family.

Here we are all together at last in England. You cannot imagine how wonderful it
feels to have the whole Rushby family reunited. I find myself counting heads. Ann,
George, Kate, John, Jim, and Henry. All present and well. We had a very pleasant trip
on the old British India Ship Mantola. She was crowded with East Africans going home
for the first time since the war, many like us, eagerly looking forward to a reunion with their
children whom they had not seen for years. There was a great air of anticipation and
good humour but a little anxiety too.

“I do hope our children will be glad to see us,” said one, and went on to tell me
about a Doctor from Dar es Salaam who, after years of separation from his son had
recently gone to visit him at his school. The Doctor had alighted at the railway station
where he had arranged to meet his son. A tall youth approached him and said, very
politely, “Excuse me sir. Are you my Father?” Others told me of children who had
become so attached to their relatives in England that they gave their parents a very cool
reception. I began to feel apprehensive about Ann and George but fortunately had no
time to mope.

Oh, that washing and ironing for six! I shall remember for ever that steamy little
laundry in the heat of the Red Sea and queuing up for the ironing and the feeling of guilt
at the size of my bundle. We met many old friends amongst the passengers, and made
some new ones, so the voyage was a pleasant one, We did however have our
anxious moments.

John was the first to disappear and we had an anxious search for him. He was
quite surprised that we had been concerned. “I was just talking to my friend Chinky
Chinaman in his workshop.” Could John have called him that? Then, when I returned to
the cabin from dinner one night I found Henry swigging Owbridge’s Lung Tonic. He had
drunk half the bottle neat and the label said ‘five drops in water’. Luckily it did not harm
him.

Jim of course was forever risking his neck. George had forbidden him to climb on
the railings but he was forever doing things which no one had thought of forbidding him
to do, like hanging from the overhead pipes on the deck or standing on the sill of a
window and looking down at the well deck far below. An Officer found him doing this and
gave me the scolding.

Another day he climbed up on a derrick used for hoisting cargo. George,
oblivious to this was sitting on the hatch cover with other passengers reading a book. I
was in the wash house aft on the same deck when Kate rushed in and said, “Mummy
come and see Jim.” Before I had time to more than gape, the butcher noticed Jim and
rushed out knife in hand. “Get down from there”, he bellowed. Jim got, and with such
speed that he caught the leg or his shorts on a projecting piece of metal. The cotton
ripped across the seam from leg to leg and Jim stood there for a humiliating moment in a
sort of revealing little kilt enduring the smiles of the passengers who had looked up from
their books at the butcher’s shout.

That incident cured Jim of his urge to climb on the ship but he managed to give
us one more fright. He was lost off Dover. People from whom we enquired said, “Yes
we saw your little boy. He was by the railings watching that big aircraft carrier.” Now Jim,
though mischievous , is very obedient. It was not until George and I had conducted an
exhaustive search above and below decks that I really became anxious. Could he have
fallen overboard? Jim was returned to us by an unamused Officer. He had been found
in one of the lifeboats on the deck forbidden to children.

Our ship passed Dover after dark and it was an unforgettable sight. Dover Castle
and the cliffs were floodlit for the Victory Celebrations. One of the men passengers sat
down at the piano and played ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’, and people sang and a few
wept. The Mantola docked at Tilbury early next morning in a steady drizzle.
There was a dockers strike on and it took literally hours for all the luggage to be
put ashore. The ships stewards simply locked the public rooms and went off leaving the
passengers shivering on the docks. Eventually damp and bedraggled, we arrived at St
Pancras Station and were given a warm welcome by George’s sister Cath and her
husband Reg Pears, who had come all the way from Nottingham to meet us.
As we had to spend an hour in London before our train left for Nottingham,
George suggested that Cath and I should take the children somewhere for a meal. So
off we set in the cold drizzle, the boys and I without coats and laden with sundry
packages, including a hand woven native basket full of shoes. We must have looked like
a bunch of refugees as we stood in the hall of The Kings Cross Station Hotel because a
supercilious waiter in tails looked us up and down and said, “I’m afraid not Madam”, in
answer to my enquiry whether the hotel could provide lunch for six.
Anyway who cares! We had lunch instead at an ABC tea room — horrible
sausage and a mound or rather sloppy mashed potatoes, but very good ice-cream.
After the train journey in a very grimy third class coach, through an incredibly green and
beautiful countryside, we eventually reached Nottingham and took a bus to Jacksdale,
where George’s mother and sisters live in large detached houses side by side.
Ann and George were at the bus stop waiting for us, and thank God, submitted
to my kiss as though we had been parted for weeks instead of eight years. Even now
that we are together again my heart aches to think of all those missed years. They have
not changed much and I would have picked them out of a crowd, but Ann, once thin and
pale, is now very rosy and blooming. She still has her pretty soft plaits and her eyes are
still a clear calm blue. Young George is very striking looking with sparkling brown eyes, a
ready, slightly lopsided smile, and charming manners.

Mother, and George’s elder sister, Lottie Giles, welcomed us at the door with the
cheering news that our tea was ready. Ann showed us the way to mother’s lovely lilac
tiled bathroom for a wash before tea. Before I had even turned the tap, Jim had hung
form the glass towel rail and it lay in three pieces on the floor. There have since been
similar tragedies. I can see that life in civilisation is not without snags.

I am most grateful that Ann and George have accepted us so naturally and
affectionately. Ann said candidly, “Mummy, it’s a good thing that you had Aunt Cath with
you when you arrived because, honestly, I wouldn’t have known you.”

Eleanor.

Jacksdale England 28th August 1946

Dearest Family.

I am sorry that I have not written for some time but honestly, I don’t know whether
I’m coming or going. Mother handed the top floor of her house to us and the
arrangement was that I should tidy our rooms and do our laundry and Mother would
prepare the meals except for breakfast. It looked easy at first. All the rooms have wall to
wall carpeting and there was a large vacuum cleaner in the box room. I was told a
window cleaner would do the windows.

Well the first time I used the Hoover I nearly died of fright. I pressed the switch
and immediately there was a roar and the bag filled with air to bursting point, or so I
thought. I screamed for Ann and she came at the run. I pointed to the bag and shouted
above the din, “What must I do? It’s going to burst!” Ann looked at me in astonishment
and said, “But Mummy that’s the way it works.” I couldn’t have her thinking me a
complete fool so I switched the current off and explained to Ann how it was that I had
never seen this type of equipment in action. How, in Tanganyika , I had never had a
house with electricity and that, anyway, electric equipment would be superfluous
because floors are of cement which the houseboy polishes by hand, one only has a
few rugs or grass mats on the floor. “But what about Granny’s house in South Africa?’”
she asked, so I explained about your Josephine who threatened to leave if you
bought a Hoover because that would mean that you did not think she kept the house
clean. The sad fact remains that, at fourteen, Ann knows far more about housework than I
do, or rather did! I’m learning fast.

The older children all go to school at different times in the morning. Ann leaves first
by bus to go to her Grammar School at Sutton-in-Ashfield. Shortly afterwards George
catches a bus for Nottingham where he attends the High School. So they have
breakfast in relays, usually scrambled egg made from a revolting dried egg mixture.
Then there are beds to make and washing and ironing to do, so I have little time for
sightseeing, though on a few afternoons George has looked after the younger children
and I have gone on bus tours in Derbyshire. Life is difficult here with all the restrictions on
foodstuffs. We all have ration books so get our fair share but meat, fats and eggs are
scarce and expensive. The weather is very wet. At first I used to hang out the washing
and then rush to bring it in when a shower came. Now I just let it hang.

We have left our imprint upon my Mother-in-law’s house for ever. Henry upset a
bottle of Milk of Magnesia in the middle of the pale fawn bedroom carpet. John, trying to
be helpful and doing some dusting, broke one of the delicate Dresden china candlesticks
which adorn our bedroom mantelpiece.Jim and Henry have wrecked the once
professionally landscaped garden and all the boys together bored a large hole through
Mother’s prized cherry tree. So now Mother has given up and gone off to Bournemouth
for a much needed holiday. Once a week I have the capable help of a cleaning woman,
called for some reason, ‘Mrs Two’, but I have now got all the cooking to do for eight. Mrs
Two is a godsend. She wears, of all things, a print mob cap with a hole in it. Says it
belonged to her Grandmother. Her price is far beyond Rubies to me, not so much
because she does, in a couple of hours, what it takes me all day to do, but because she
sells me boxes of fifty cigarettes. Some non-smoking relative, who works in Players
tobacco factory, passes on his ration to her. Until Mrs Two came to my rescue I had
been starved of cigarettes. Each time I asked for them at the shop the grocer would say,
“Are you registered with us?” Only very rarely would some kindly soul sell me a little
packet of five Woodbines.

England is very beautiful but the sooner we go home to Tanganyika, the better.
On this, George and I and the children agree.

Eleanor.

Jacksdale England 20th September 1946

Dearest Family.

Our return passages have now been booked on the Winchester Castle and we
sail from Southampton on October the sixth. I look forward to returning to Tanganyika but
hope to visit England again in a few years time when our children are older and when
rationing is a thing of the past.

I have grown fond of my Sisters-in-law and admire my Mother-in-law very much.
She has a great sense of humour and has entertained me with stories of her very
eventful life, and told me lots of little stories of the children which did not figure in her
letters. One which amused me was about young George. During one of the air raids
early in the war when the sirens were screaming and bombers roaring overhead Mother
made the two children get into the cloak cupboard under the stairs. Young George
seemed quite unconcerned about the planes and the bombs but soon an anxious voice
asked in the dark, “Gran, what will I do if a spider falls on me?” I am afraid that Mother is
going to miss Ann and George very much.

I had a holiday last weekend when Lottie and I went up to London on a spree. It
was a most enjoyable weekend, though very rushed. We placed ourselves in the
hands of Thos. Cook and Sons and saw most of the sights of London and were run off
our feet in the process. As you all know London I shall not describe what I saw but just
to say that, best of all, I enjoyed walking along the Thames embankment in the evening
and the changing of the Guard at Whitehall. On Sunday morning Lottie and I went to
Kew Gardens and in the afternoon walked in Kensington Gardens.

We went to only one show, ‘The Skin of our Teeth’ starring Vivienne Leigh.
Neither of us enjoyed the performance at all and regretted having spent so much on
circle seats. The show was far too highbrow for my taste, a sort of satire on the survival
of the human race. Miss Leigh was unrecognisable in a blond wig and her voice strident.
However the night was not a dead loss as far as entertainment was concerned as we
were later caught up in a tragicomedy at our hotel.

We had booked communicating rooms at the enormous Imperial Hotel in Russell
Square. These rooms were comfortably furnished but very high up, and we had a rather
terrifying and dreary view from the windows of the enclosed courtyard far below. We
had some snacks and a chat in Lottie’s room and then I moved to mine and went to bed.
I had noted earlier that there was a special lock on the outer door of my room so that
when the door was closed from the inside it automatically locked itself.
I was just dropping off to sleep when I heard a hammering which seemed to
come from my wardrobe. I got up, rather fearfully, and opened the wardrobe door and
noted for the first time that the wardrobe was set in an opening in the wall and that the
back of the wardrobe also served as the back of the wardrobe in the room next door. I
quickly shut it again and went to confer with Lottie.

Suddenly a male voice was raised next door in supplication, “Mary Mother of
God, Help me! They’ve locked me in!” and the hammering resumed again, sometimes
on the door, and then again on the back of the wardrobe of the room next door. Lottie
had by this time joined me and together we listened to the prayers and to the
hammering. Then the voice began to threaten, “If you don’t let me out I’ll jump out of the
window.” Great consternation on our side of the wall. I went out into the passage and
called through the door, “You’re not locked in. Come to your door and I’ll tell you how to
open it.” Silence for a moment and then again the prayers followed by a threat. All the
other doors in the corridor remained shut.

Luckily just then a young man and a woman came walking down the corridor and I
explained the situation. The young man hurried off for the night porter who went into the
next door room. In a matter of minutes there was peace next door. When the night
porter came out into the corridor again I asked for an explanation. He said quite casually,
“It’s all right Madam. He’s an Irish Gentleman in Show Business. He gets like this on a
Saturday night when he has had a drop too much. He won’t give any more trouble
now.” And he didn’t. Next morning at breakfast Lottie and I tried to spot the gentleman in
the Show Business, but saw no one who looked like the owner of that charming Irish
voice.

George had to go to London on business last Monday and took the older
children with him for a few hours of sight seeing. They returned quite unimpressed.
Everything was too old and dirty and there were far too many people about, but they
had enjoyed riding on the escalators at the tube stations, and all agreed that the highlight
of the trip was, “Dad took us to lunch at the Chicken Inn.”

Now that it is almost time to leave England I am finding the housework less of a
drudgery, Also, as it is school holiday time, Jim and Henry are able to go on walks with
the older children and so use up some of their surplus energy. Cath and I took the
children (except young George who went rabbit shooting with his uncle Reg, and
Henry, who stayed at home with his dad) to the Wakes at Selston, the neighbouring
village. There were the roundabouts and similar contraptions but the side shows had
more appeal for the children. Ann and Kate found a stall where assorted prizes were
spread out on a sloping table. Anyone who could land a penny squarely on one of
these objects was given a similar one as a prize.

I was touched to see that both girls ignored all the targets except a box of fifty
cigarettes which they were determined to win for me. After numerous attempts, Kate
landed her penny successfully and you would have loved to have seen her radiant little
face.

Eleanor.

Dar es Salaam 22nd October 1946

Dearest Family.

Back in Tanganyika at last, but not together. We have to stay in Dar es Salaam
until tomorrow when the train leaves for Dodoma. We arrived yesterday morning to find
all the hotels filled with people waiting to board ships for England. Fortunately some
friends came to the rescue and Ann, Kate and John have gone to stay with them. Jim,
Henry and I are sleeping in a screened corner of the lounge of the New Africa Hotel, and
George and young George have beds in the Palm Court of the same hotel.

We travelled out from England in the Winchester Castle under troopship
conditions. We joined her at Southampton after a rather slow train journey from
Nottingham. We arrived after dark and from the station we could see a large ship in the
docks with a floodlit red funnel. “Our ship,” yelled the children in delight, but it was not the
Winchester Castle but the Queen Elizabeth, newly reconditioned.

We had hoped to board our ship that evening but George made enquiries and
found that we would not be allowed on board until noon next day. Without much hope,
we went off to try to get accommodation for eight at a small hotel recommended by the
taxi driver. Luckily for us there was a very motherly woman at the reception desk. She
looked in amusement at the six children and said to me, “Goodness are all these yours,
ducks? Then she called over her shoulder, “Wilf, come and see this lady with lots of
children. We must try to help.” They settled the problem most satisfactorily by turning
two rooms into a dormitory.

In the morning we had time to inspect bomb damage in the dock area of
Southampton. Most of the rubble had been cleared away but there are still numbers of
damaged buildings awaiting demolition. A depressing sight. We saw the Queen Mary
at anchor, still in her drab war time paint, but magnificent nevertheless.
The Winchester Castle was crammed with passengers and many travelled in
acute discomfort. We were luckier than most because the two girls, the three small boys
and I had a stateroom to ourselves and though it was stripped of peacetime comforts,
we had a private bathroom and toilet. The two Georges had bunks in a huge men-only
dormitory somewhere in the bowls of the ship where they had to share communal troop
ship facilities. The food was plentiful but unexciting and one had to queue for afternoon
tea. During the day the decks were crowded and there was squatting room only. The
many children on board got bored.

Port Said provided a break and we were all entertained by the ‘Gully Gully’ man
and his conjuring tricks, and though we had no money to spend at Simon Artz, we did at
least have a chance to stretch our legs. Next day scores of passengers took ill with
sever stomach upsets, whether from food poisoning, or as was rumoured, from bad
water taken on at the Egyptian port, I don’t know. Only the two Georges in our family
were affected and their attacks were comparatively mild.

As we neared the Kenya port of Mombassa, the passengers for Dar es Salaam
were told that they would have to disembark at Mombassa and continue their journey in
a small coaster, the Al Said. The Winchester Castle is too big for the narrow channel
which leads to Dar es Salaam harbour.

From the wharf the Al Said looked beautiful. She was once the private yacht of
the Sultan of Zanzibar and has lovely lines. Our admiration lasted only until we were
shown our cabins. With one voice our children exclaimed, “Gosh they stink!” They did, of
a mixture of rancid oil and sweat and stale urine. The beds were not yet made and the
thin mattresses had ominous stains on them. John, ever fastidious, lifted his mattress and two enormous cockroaches scuttled for cover.

We had a good homely lunch served by two smiling African stewards and
afterwards we sat on deck and that was fine too, though behind ones enjoyment there
was the thought of those stuffy and dirty cabins. That first night nearly everyone,
including George and our older children, slept on deck. Women occupied deck chairs
and men and children slept on the bare decks. Horrifying though the idea was, I decided
that, as Jim had a bad cough, he, Henry and I would sleep in our cabin.

When I announced my intention of sleeping in the cabin one of the passengers
gave me some insecticide spray which I used lavishly, but without avail. The children
slept but I sat up all night with the light on, determined to keep at least their pillows clear
of the cockroaches which scurried about boldly regardless of the light. All the next day
and night we avoided the cabins. The Al Said stopped for some hours at Zanzibar to
offload her deck cargo of live cattle and packing cases from the hold. George and the
elder children went ashore for a walk but I felt too lazy and there was plenty to watch
from deck.

That night I too occupied a deck chair and slept quite comfortably, and next
morning we entered the palm fringed harbour of Dar es Salaam and were home.

Eleanor.

Mbeya 1st November 1946

Dearest Family.

Home at last! We are all most happily installed in a real family house about three
miles out of Mbeya and near the school. This house belongs to an elderly German and
has been taken over by the Custodian of Enemy Property and leased to the
Government.

The owner, whose name is Shenkel, was not interned but is allowed to occupy a
smaller house on the Estate. I found him in the garden this morning lecturing the children
on what they may do and may not do. I tried to make it quite clear to him that he was not
our landlord, though he clearly thinks otherwise. After he had gone I had to take two
aspirin and lie down to recover my composure! I had been warned that he has this effect
on people.

Mr Shenkel is a short and ugly man, his clothes are stained with food and he
wears steel rimmed glasses tied round his head with a piece of dirty elastic because
one earpiece is missing. He speaks with a thick German accent but his English is fluent
and I believe he is a cultured and clever man. But he is maddening. The children were
more amused than impressed by his exhortations and have happily Christened our
home, ‘Old Shenks’.

The house has very large grounds as the place is really a derelict farm. It suits us
down to the ground. We had no sooner unpacked than George went off on safari after
those maneating lions in the Njombe District. he accounted for one, and a further two
jointly with a Game Scout, before we left for England. But none was shot during the five
months we were away as George’s relief is quite inexperienced in such work. George
thinks that there are still about a dozen maneaters at large. His theory is that a female
maneater moved into the area in 1938 when maneating first started, and brought up her
cubs to be maneaters, and those cubs in turn did the same. The three maneating lions
that have been shot were all in very good condition and not old and maimed as
maneaters usually are.

George anticipates that it will be months before all these lions are accounted for
because they are constantly on the move and cover a very large area. The lions have to
be hunted on foot because they range over broken country covered by bush and fairly
dense thicket.

I did a bit of shooting myself yesterday and impressed our African servants and
the children and myself. What a fluke! Our houseboy came to say that there was a snake
in the garden, the biggest he had ever seen. He said it was too big to kill with a stick and
would I shoot it. I had no gun but a heavy .450 Webley revolver and I took this and
hurried out with the children at my heels.

The snake turned out to be an unusually large puff adder which had just shed its
skin. It looked beautiful in a repulsive way. So flanked by servants and children I took
aim and shot, not hitting the head as I had planned, but breaking the snake’s back with
the heavy bullet. The two native boys then rushed up with sticks and flattened the head.
“Ma you’re a crack shot,” cried the kids in delighted surprise. I hope to rest on my laurels
for a long, long while.

Although there are only a few weeks of school term left the four older children will
start school on Monday. Not only am I pleased with our new home here but also with
the staff I have engaged. Our new houseboy, Reuben, (but renamed Robin by our
children) is not only cheerful and willing but intelligent too, and Jumbe, the wood and
garden boy, is a born clown and a source of great entertainment to the children.

I feel sure that we are all going to be very happy here at ‘Old Shenks!.

Eleanor.