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George “Mike” Rushby

A short autobiography of George Gilman Rushby’s son, published in the Blackwall Bugle, Australia.

Early in 2009, Ballina Shire Council Strategic and
Community Services Group Manager, Steve Barnier,
suggested that it would be a good idea for the Wardell
and District community to put out a bi-monthly
newsletter. I put my hand up to edit the publication and
since then, over 50 issues of “The Blackwall Bugle”
have been produced, encouraged by Ballina Shire
Council who host the newsletter on their website.
Because I usually write the stories that other people
generously share with me, I have been asked by several
community members to let them know who I am. Here is
my attempt to let you know!

My father, George Gilman Rushby was born in England
in 1900. An Electrician, he migrated to Africa as a young
man to hunt and to prospect for gold. He met Eleanor
Dunbar Leslie who was a high school teacher in Cape
Town. They later married in Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika.
I was the second child and first son and was born in a
mud hut in Tanganyika in 1933. I spent my first years on
a coffee plantation. When four years old, and with
parents and elder sister on a remote goldfield, I caught
typhoid fever. I was seriously ill and had no access to
proper medical facilities. My paternal grandmother
sailed out to Africa from England on a steam ship and
took me back to England for medical treatment. My
sister Ann came too. Then Adolf Hitler started WWII and
Ann and I were separated from our parents for 9 years.

Sister Ann and I were not to see him or our mother for
nine years because of the war. Dad served as a Captain in
the King’s African Rifles operating in the North African
desert, while our Mum managed the coffee plantation at
home in Tanganyika.

Ann and I lived with our Grandmother and went to
school in Nottingham England. In 1946 the family was
reunited. We lived in Mbeya in Southern Tanganyika
where my father was then the District Manager of the
National Parks and Wildlife Authority. There was no
high school in Tanganyika so I had to go to school in
Nairobi, Kenya. It took five days travelling each way by
train and bus including two days on a steamer crossing
Lake Victoria.

However, the school year was only two terms with long
holidays in between.

When I was seventeen, I left high school. There was
then no university in East Africa. There was no work
around as Tanganyika was about to become
independent of the British Empire and become
Tanzania. Consequently jobs were reserved for
Africans.

A war had broken out in Korea. I took a day off from
high school and visited the British Army headquarters
in Nairobi. I signed up for military service intending to
go to Korea. The army flew me to England. During
Army basic training I was nicknamed ‘Mike’ and have
been called Mike ever since. I never got to Korea!
After my basic training I volunteered for the Parachute
Regiment and the army sent me to Egypt where the
Suez Canal was under threat. I carried out parachute
operations in the Sinai Desert and in Cyprus and
Jordan. I was then selected for officer training and was
sent to England to the Eaton Hall Officer Cadet School
in Cheshire. Whilst in Cheshire, I met my future wife
Jeanette. I graduated as a Second Lieutenant in the
Royal Lincolnshire Regiment and was posted to West
Berlin, which was then one hundred miles behind the
Iron Curtain. My duties included patrolling the
demarcation line that separated the allies from the
Russian forces. The Berlin Wall was yet to be built. I
also did occasional duty as guard commander of the
guard at Spandau Prison where Adolf Hitler’s deputy
Rudolf Hess was the only prisoner.

From Berlin, my Regiment was sent to Malaya to
undertake deep jungle operations against communist
terrorists that were attempting to overthrow the
Malayan Government. I was then a Lieutenant in
command of a platoon of about 40 men which would go
into the jungle for three weeks to a month with only air
re-supply to keep us going. On completion of my jungle
service, I returned to England and married Jeanette. I
had to stand up throughout the church wedding
ceremony because I had damaged my right knee in a
competitive cross-country motorcycle race and wore a
splint and restrictive bandage for the occasion!
At this point I took a career change and transferred
from the infantry to the Royal Military Police. I was in
charge of the security of British, French and American
troops using the autobahn link from West Germany to
the isolated Berlin. Whilst in Germany and Austria I
took up snow skiing as a sport.

Jeanette and I seemed to attract unusual little
adventures along the way — each adventure trivial in
itself but adding up to give us a ‘different’ path through
life. Having climbed Mount Snowdon up the ‘easy way’
we were witness to a serious climbing accident where a
member of the staff of a Cunard Shipping Line
expedition fell and suffered serious injury. It was
Sunday a long time ago. The funicular railway was
closed. There was no telephone. So I ran all the way
down Mount Snowdon to raise the alarm.

On a road trip from Verden in Germany to Berlin with
our old Opel Kapitan motor car stacked to the roof with
all our worldly possessions, we broke down on the ice and snow covered autobahn. We still had a hundred kilometres to go.

A motorcycle patrolman flagged down a B-Double
tanker. He hooked us to the tanker with a very short tow
cable and off we went. The truck driver couldn’t see us
because we were too close and his truck threw up a
constant deluge of ice and snow so we couldn’t see
anyway. We survived the hundred kilometre ‘sleigh
ride!’

I then went back to the other side of the world where I
carried out military police duties in Singapore and
Malaya for three years. I took up scuba diving and
loved the ocean. Jeanette and I, with our two little
daughters, took a holiday to South Africa to see my
parents. We sailed on a ship of the Holland-Afrika Line.
It broke down for four days and drifted uncontrollably
in dangerous waters off the Skeleton Coast of Namibia
until the crew could get the ship’s motor running again.
Then, in Cape Town, we were walking the beach near
Hermanus with my youngest brother and my parents,
when we found the dead body of a man who had thrown
himself off a cliff. The police came and secured the site.
Back with the army, I was promoted to Major and
appointed Provost Marshal of the ACE Mobile Force
(Allied Command Europe) with dual headquarters in
Salisbury, England and Heidelberg, Germany. The cold
war was at its height and I was on operations in Greece,
Denmark and Norway including the Arctic. I had
Norwegian, Danish, Italian and American troops in my
unit and I was then also the Winter Warfare Instructor
for the British contingent to the Allied Command
Europe Mobile Force that operated north of the Arctic
Circle.

The reason for being in the Arctic Circle? From there
our special forces could look down into northern
Russia.

I was not seeing much of my two young daughters. A
desk job was looming my way and I decided to leave
the army and migrate to Australia. Why Australia?
Well, I didn’t want to go back to Africa, which
seemed politically unstable and the people I most
liked working with in the army, were the Australian
troops I had met in Malaya.

I migrated to Brisbane, Australia in 1970 and started
working for Woolworths. After management training,
I worked at Garden City and Brookside then became
the manager in turn of Woolworths stores at
Paddington, George Street and Redcliff. I was also the
first Director of FAUI Queensland (The Federation of
Underwater Diving Instructors) and spent my spare
time on the Great Barrier Reef. After 8 years with
Woollies, I opted for a sea change.

I moved with my family to Evans Head where I
converted a convenience store into a mini
supermarket. When IGA moved into town, I decided
to take up beef cattle farming and bought a cattle
property at Collins Creek Kyogle in 1990. I loved
everything about the farm — the Charolais cattle, my
horses, my kelpie dogs, the open air, fresh water
creek, the freedom, the lifestyle. I also became a
volunteer fire fighter with the Green Pigeon Brigade.
In 2004 I sold our farm and moved to Wardell.
My wife Jeanette and I have been married for 60 years
and are now retired. We have two lovely married
daughters and three fine grandchildren. We live in the
greatest part of the world where we have been warmly
welcomed by the Wardell community and by the
Wardell Brigade of the Rural Fire Service. We are
very happy here.

Mike Rushby

A short article sent to Jacksdale in England from Mike Rushby in Australia:

My Grandparents

George Samuel Marshall 1903-1995

Florence Noreen Warren (Nora) 1906-1988

I always called my grandfather Mop, apparently because I couldn’t say the name Grandpa, but whatever the reason, the name stuck. My younger brother also called him Mop, but our two cousins did not.

My earliest memories of my grandparents are the picnics.  Grandma and Mop loved going out in the car for a picnic. Favourite spots were the Clee Hills in Shropshire, North Wales, especially Llanbedr, Malvern, and Derbyshire, and closer to home, the caves and silver birch woods at Kinver Edge, Arley by the river Severn, or Bridgnorth, where Grandma’s sister Hildreds family lived.  Stourbridge was on the western edge of the Black Country in the Midlands, so one was quickly in the countryside heading west.  They went north to Derbyshire less, simply because the first part of the trip entailed driving through Wolverhampton and other built up and not particularly pleasant urban areas.  I’m sure they’d have gone there more often, as they were both born in Derbyshire, if not for that initial stage of the journey.

There was predominantly grey tartan car rug in the car for picnics, and a couple of folding chairs.  There were always a couple of cushions on the back seat, and I fell asleep in the back more times than I can remember, despite intending to look at the scenery.  On the way home Grandma would always sing,  “Show me the way to go home, I’m tired and I want to go to bed, I had a little drink about an hour ago, And it’s gone right to my head.”  I’ve looked online for that song, and have not found it anywhere!

Grandma didn’t just make sandwiches for picnics, there were extra containers of lettuce, tomatoes, pickles and so on.  I used to love to wash up the picnic plates in the little brook on the Clee Hills, near Cleeton St Mary.  The close cropped grass was ideal for picnics, and Mop and the sheep would Baaa at each other.

Mop would base the days outting on the weather forcast, but Grandma often used to say he always chose the opposite of what was suggested. She said if you want to go to Derbyshire, tell him you want to go to Wales.  I recall him often saying, on a gloomy day, Look, there’s a bit of clear sky over there.  Mop always did the driving as Grandma never learned to drive. Often she’d dust the dashboard with a tissue as we drove along.

My brother and I often spent the weekend at our grandparents house, so that our parents could go out on a Saturday night.  They gave us 5 shillings pocket money, which I used to spend on two Ladybird books at 2 shillings and sixpence each.  We had far too many sweets while watching telly in the evening ~ in the dark, as they always turned the lights off to watch television.  The lemonade and pop was Corona, and came in returnable glass bottles.  We had Woodpecker cider too, even though it had a bit of an alcohol content.

Mop smoked Kensitas and Grandma smoked Sovereign cigarettes, or No6, and the packets came with coupons.  They often let me choose something for myself out of the catalogue when there were enough coupons saved up.

When I had my first garden, in a rented house a short walk from theirs, they took me to garden nurseries and taught me all about gardening.  In their garden they had berberis across the front of the house under the window, and cotoneaster all along the side of the garage wall. The silver birth tree on the lawn had been purloined as a sapling from Kinver edge, when they first moved into the house.  (they lived in that house on Park Road for more than 60 years).  There were perennials and flowering shrubs along the sides of the back garden, and behind the silver birch, and behind that was the vegeatable garden.  Right at the back was an Anderson shelter turned into a shed, the rhubarb, and the washing line, and the canes for the runner beans in front of those.  There was a little rose covered arch on the path on the left, and privet hedges all around the perimeter.

My grandfather was a dental technician. He worked for various dentists on their premises over the years, but he always had a little workshop of his own at the back of his garage. His garage was full to the brim of anything that might potentially useful, but it was not chaotic. He knew exactly where to find anything, from the tiniest screw for spectacles to a useful bit of wire. He was “mechanicaly minded” and could always fix things like sewing machines and cars and so on.

Mop used to let me sit with him in his workshop, and make things out of the pink wax he used for gums to embed the false teeth into prior to making the plaster casts. The porcelain teeth came on cards, and were strung in place by means of little holes on the back end of the teeth. I still have a necklace I made by threading teeth onto a string. There was a foot pedal operated drill in there as well, possibly it was a dentists drill previously, that he used with miniature grinding or polishing attachments. Sometimes I made things out of the pink acrylic used for the final denture, which had a strong smell and used to harden quickly, so you had to work fast. Initially, the workshop was to do the work for Uncle Ralph, Grandmas’s sisters husband, who was a dentist. In later years after Ralph retired, I recall a nice man called Claude used to come in the evening to collect the dentures for another dental laboratory. Mop always called his place of work the laboratory.

Grandma loved books and was always reading, in her armchair next to the gas fire. I don’t recall seeing Mop reading a book, but he was amazingly well informed about countless topics.
At family gatherings, Mops favourite topic of conversation after dinner was the atrocities committed over the centuries by organized religion.

My grandfather played snooker in his younger years at the Conservative club. I recall my father assuming he voted Conservative, and Mop told him in no uncertain terms that he’s always voted Labour. When asked why he played snooker at the Conservative club and not the Labour club, he said with a grin that “it was a better class of people”, but that he’d never vote Conservative because it was of no benefit to the likes of us working people.

Grandma and her sister in law Marie had a little grocers shop on Brettel Lane in Amblecote for a few years but I have no personal recollection of that as it was during the years we lived in USA. I don’t recall her working other than that. She had a pastry making day once a week, and made Bakewell tart, apple pie, a meat pie, and her own style of pizza. She had an old black hand operated sewing machine, and made curtains and loose covers for the chairs and sofa, but I don’t think she made her own clothes, at least not in later years. I have her sewing machine here in Spain.
At regular intervals she’d move all the furniture around and change the front room into the living room and the back into the dining room and vice versa. In later years Mop always had the back bedroom (although when I lived with them aged 14, I had the back bedroom, and painted the entire room including the ceiling purple). He had a very lumpy mattress but he said it fit his bad hip perfectly.

Grandma used to alternate between the tiny bedroom and the big bedroom at the front. (this is in later years, obviously) The wardrobes and chests of drawers never changed, they were oak and substantial, but rather dated in appearance. They had a grandfather clock with a brass face and a grandmother clock. Over the fireplace in the living room was a Utrillo print. The bathroom and lavatory were separate rooms, and the old claw foot bath had wood panels around it to make it look more modern. There was a big hot water geyser above it. Grandma was fond of using stick on Fablon tile effects to try to improve and update the appearance of the bathroom and kitchen. Mop was a generous man, but would not replace household items that continued to function perfectly well. There were electric heaters in all the rooms, of varying designs, and gas fires in living room and dining room. The coal house on the outside wall was later turned into a downstairs shower room, when Mop moved his bedroom downstairs into the front dining room, after Grandma had died and he was getting on.

Mop was 91 when he told me he wouldn’t be growing any vegetables that year. He said the sad thing was that he knew he’d never grow vegetables again. He worked part time until he was in his early 80s.

My Grandparents Kitchen

My grandmother used to have golden syrup in her larder, hanging on the white plastic coated storage rack that was screwed to the inside of the larder door. Mostly the larder door was left propped open with an old flat iron, so you could see the Heinz ketchup and home made picallilli (she made a particularly good picallili), the Worcester sauce and the jar of pickled onions, as you sat at the kitchen table.

If you were sitting to the right of the kitchen table you could see an assortment of mismatched crockery, cups and bowls, shoe cleaning brushes, and at the back, tiny tins of baked beans and big ones of plum tomatoes,  and normal sized tins of vegetable and mushroom soup.  Underneath the little shelves that housed the tins was a blue plastic washing up bowl with a few onions, some in, some out of the yellow string bag they came home from the expensive little village supermarket in.

There was much more to the left in the awkward triangular shape under the stairs, but you couldn’t see under there from your seat at the kitchen table.  You could see the shelf above the larder door which held an ugly china teapot of graceless modern lines, gazed with metallic silver which was wearing off in places. Beside the teapot sat a serving bowl, squat and shapely with little handles, like a flattened Greek urn, in white and reddish brown with flecks of faded gilt. A plain white teapot completed the trio, a large cylindrical one with neat vertical ridges and grooves.

There were two fridges under the high shallow wooden wall cupboard.  A waist high bulbous old green one with a big handle that pulled out with a clunk, and a chest high sleek white one with a small freezer at the top with a door of its own.  On the top of the fridges were biscuit and cracker tins, big black keys, pencils and brittle yellow notepads, rubber bands and aspirin value packs and a bottle of Brufen.  There was a battered old maroon spectacle case and a whicker letter rack, letters crammed in and fanning over the top.  There was always a pile of glossy advertising pamphlets and flyers on top of the fridges, of the sort that were best put straight into the tiny pedal bin.

My grandmother never lined the pedal bin with a used plastic bag, nor with a specially designed plastic bin liner. The bin was so small that the flip top lid was often gaping, resting on a mound of cauliflower greens and soup tins.  Behind the pedal bin, but on the outer aspect of the kitchen wall, was the big black dustbin with the rubbery lid. More often than not, the lid was thrust upwards. If Thursday when the dustbin men came was several days away, you’d wish you hadn’t put those newspapers in, or those old shoes!  You stood in the softly drizzling rain in your slippers, the rubbery sheild of a lid in your left hand and the overflowing pedal bin in the other.  The contents of the pedal bin are not going to fit into the dustbin.  You sigh, put the pedal bin and the dustbin lid down, and roll up your sleeves ~ carefully, because you’ve poked your fingers into a porridge covered teabag.  You grab the sides of the protruding black sack and heave. All being well,  the contents should settle and you should have several inches more of plastic bag above the rim of the dustbin.  Unless of course it’s a poor quality plastic bag in which case your fingernail will go through and a horizontal slash will appear just below rubbish level.  Eventually you upend the pedal bin and scrape the cigarette ash covered potato peelings into the dustbin with your fingers. By now the fibres of your Shetland wool jumper are heavy with damp, just like the fuzzy split ends that curl round your pale frowning brow.  You may push back your hair with your forearm causing the moisture to bead and trickle down your face, as you turn the brass doorknob with your palm and wrist, tea leaves and cigarette ash clinging unpleasantly to your fingers.

The pedal bin needs rinsing in the kitchen sink, but the sink is full of mismatched saucepans, some new in shades of harvest gold, some battered and mishapen in stainless steel and aluminium, bits of mashed potato stuck to them like concrete pebbledash. There is a pale pink octagonally ovoid shallow serving dish and a little grey soup bowl with a handle like a miniature pottery saucepan decorated with kitcheny motifs.

The water for the coffee bubbles in a suacepan on the cream enamelled gas cooker. My grandmother never used a kettle, although I do remember a heavy flame orange one. The little pan for boiling water had a lip for easy pouring and a black plastic handle.

The steam has caused the condensation on the window over the sink to race in rivulets down to the fablon coated windowsill.  The yellow gingham curtains hang limply, the left one tucked behind the back of the cooker.

You put the pedal bin back it it’s place below the tea towel holder, and rinse your mucky fingers under the tap. The gas water heater on the wall above you roars into life just as you turn the tap off, and disappointed, subsides.

As you lean over to turn the cooker knob, the heat from the oven warms your arm. The gas oven was almost always on, the oven door open with clean tea towels and sometimes large white pants folded over it to air.

The oven wasn’t the only heat in my grandparents kitchen. There was an electric bar fire near the red formica table which used to burn your legs. The kitchen table was extended by means of a flap at each side. When I was small I wasn’t allowed to snap the hinge underneath shut as my grandmother had pinched the skin of her palm once.

The electric fire was plugged into the same socket as the radio. The radio took a minute or two to warm up when you switched it on, a bulky thing with sharp seventies edges and a reddish wood effect veneer and big knobs.  The light for my grandfathers workshop behind the garage (where he made dentures) was plugged into the same socket, which had a big heavy white three way adaptor in. The plug for the washing machine was hooked by means of a bit of string onto a nail or hook so that it didn’t fall down behing the washing machine when it wasn’t plugged in. Everything was unplugged when it wasn’t in use.  Sometimes there was a shrivelled Christmas cactus on top of the radio, but it couldn’t hide the adaptor and all those plugs.

Above the washing machine was a rhomboid wooden wall cupboard with sliding frsoted glass doors.  It was painted creamy gold, the colour of a nicotine stained pub ceiling, and held packets of Paxo stuffing and little jars of Bovril and Marmite, packets of Bisto and a jar of improbably red Maraschino cherries.

The nicotine coloured cupboard on the opposite wall had half a dozen large hooks screwed under the bottom shelf. A variety of mugs and cups hung there when they weren’t in the bowl waiting to be washed up. Those cupboard doors seemed flimsy for their size, and the thin beading on the edge of one door had come unstuck at the bottom and snapped back if you caught it with your sleeve.  The doors fastened with a little click in the centre, and the bottom of the door reverberated slightly as you yanked it open. There were always crumbs in the cupboard from the numerous packets of bisucits and crackers and there was always an Allbran packet with the top folded over to squeeze it onto the shelf. The sugar bowl was in there, sticky grains like sandpaper among the biscuit crumbs.

Half of one of the shelves was devoted to medicines: grave looking bottles of codeine linctus with no nonsense labels,  brown glass bottles with pills for rheumatism and angina.  Often you would find a large bottle, nearly full, of Brewers yeast or vitamin supplements with a dollar price tag, souvenirs of the familys last visit.  Above the medicines you’d find a faded packet of Napolitana pasta bows or a dusty packet of muesli. My grandparents never used them but she left them in the cupboard. Perhaps the dollar price tags and foreign foods reminded her of her children.

If there had been a recent visit you would see monstrous jars of Sanka and Maxwell House coffee in there too, but they always used the coffee.  They liked evaporated milk in their coffee, and used tins and tins of “evap” as they called it. They would pour it over tinned fruit, or rhubard crumble or stewed apples.

When there was just the two of them, or when I was there as well, they’d eat at the kitchen table. The table would be covered in a white embroidered cloth and the food served in mismatched serving dishes. The cutlery was large and bent, the knife handles in varying shades of bone. My grandfathers favourite fork had the tip of each prong bent in a different direction. He reckoned it was more efficient that way to spear his meat.  He often used to chew his meat and then spit it out onto the side of his plate. Not in company, of course.  I can understand why he did that, not having eaten meat myself for so long. You could chew a piece of meat for several hours and still have a stringy lump between your cheek and your teeth.

My grandfather would always have a bowl of Allbran with some Froment wheat germ for his breakfast, while reading the Daily Mail at the kitchen table.  He never worse slippers, always shoes indoors,  and always wore a tie.  He had lots of ties but always wore a plain maroon one.  His shirts were always cream and buttoned at throat and cuff, and eventually started wearing shirts without detachable collars. He wore greeny grey trousers and a cardigan of the same shade most of the time, the same colour as a damp English garden.

The same colour as the slimy green wooden clothes pegs that I threw away and replaced with mauve and fuschia pink plastic ones.  “They’re a bit bright for up the garden, aren’t they,” he said.  He was right. I should have ignored the green peg stains on the laundry.  An English garden should be shades of moss and grassy green, rich umber soil and brick red walls weighed down with an atmosphere of dense and heavy greyish white.

After Grandma died and Mop had retired (I always called him Mop, nobody knows why) at 10:00am precisely Mop would  have a cup of instant coffee with evap. At lunch, a bowl of tinned vegetable soup in his special soup bowl, and a couple of Krackawheat crackers and a lump of mature Cheddar. It was a job these days to find a tasty cheddar, he’d say.

When he was working, and he worked until well into his seventies, he took sandwiches. Every day he had the same sandwich filling: a combination of cheese, peanut butter and marmite.  It was an unusal choice for an otherwise conventional man.  He loved my grandmothers cooking, which wasn’t brilliant but was never awful. She was always generous with the cheese in cheese sauces and the meat in meat pies. She overcooked the cauliflower, but everyone did then. She made her gravy in the roasting pan, and made onion sauce, bread sauce, parsley sauce and chestnut stuffing.  She had her own version of cosmopolitan favourites, and called her quiche a quiche when everyone was still calling it egg and bacon pie. She used to like Auntie Daphne’s ratatouille, rather exotic back then, and pronounced it Ratta Twa.  She made pizza unlike any other, with shortcrust pastry smeared with tomato puree from a tube, sprinkled with oregano and great slabs of cheddar.

The roast was always overdone. “We like our meat well done” she’d say. She’d walk up the garden to get fresh mint for the mint sauce and would announce with pride “these runner beans are out of the garding”. They always grew vegetables at the top of the garden, behind the lawn and the silver birch tree.  There was always a pudding: a slice of almond tart (always with home made pastry), a crumble or stewed fruit. Topped with evap, of course.

Bakewell Not Eyam

The Elton Marshalls

Some years ago I read a book about Eyam, the Derbyshire village devastated by the plague in 1665, and about how the villagers quarantined themselves to prevent further spread. It was quite a story. Each year on ‘Plague Sunday’, at the end of August, residents of Eyam mark the bubonic plague epidemic that devastated their small rural community in the years 1665–6. They wear the traditional costume of the day and attend a memorial service to remember how half the village sacrificed themselves to avoid spreading the disease further.

My 4X great grandfather James Marshall married Ann Newton in 1792 in Elton. On a number of other people’s trees on an online ancestry site, Ann Newton was from Eyam.  Wouldn’t that have been interesting, to find ancestors from Eyam, perhaps going back to the days of the plague. Perhaps that is what the people who put Ann Newton’s birthplace as Eyam thought, without a proper look at the records.

But I didn’t think Ann Newton was from Eyam. I found she was from Over Haddon, near Bakewell ~ much closer to Elton than Eyam. On the marriage register, it says that James was from Elton parish, and she was from Darley parish. Her birth in 1770 says Bakewell, which was the registration district for the villages of Over Haddon and Darley. Her parents were George Newton and Dorothy Wipperley of Over Haddon,which is incidentally very near to Nether Haddon, and Haddon Hall. I visited Haddon Hall many years ago, as well as Chatsworth (and much preferred Haddon Hall).

I looked in the Eyam registers for Ann Newton, and found a couple of them around the time frame, but the men they married were not James Marshall.

Ann died in 1806 in Elton (a small village just outside Matlock) at the age of 36 within days of her newborn twins, Ann and James.  James and Ann had two sets of twins.  John and Mary were twins as well, but Mary died in 1799 at the age of three.

1796 baptism of twins John and Mary of James and Ann Marshall

Ann’s husband James died 42 years later at the age of eighty,  in Elton in 1848. It was noted in the parish register that he was for years parish clerk.

On the 1851 census John Marshall born in 1796, the son of James Marshall the parish clerk, was a lead miner occupying six acres in Elton, Derbyshire.

His son, also John, was registered on the census as a lead miner at just eight years old.

The mining of lead was the most important industry in the Peak district of Derbyshire from Roman times until the 19th century – with only agriculture being more important for the livelihood of local people. The height of lead mining in Derbyshire came in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the evidence is still visible today – most obviously in the form of lines of hillocks from the more than 25,000 mineshafts which once existed.

Peak District Mines Historical Society

Smelting, or extracting the lead from the ore by melting it, was carried out in a small open hearth. Lead was cast in layers as each batch of ore was smelted; the blocks of lead thus produced were referred to as “pigs”. Examples of early smelting-hearths found within the county were stone lined, with one side open facing the prevailing wind to create the draught needed. The hilltops of the Matlocks would have provided very suitable conditions.

The miner used a tool called a mattock or a pick, and hammers and iron wedges in harder veins, to loosen the ore. They threw the ore onto ridges on each side of the vein, going deeper where the ore proved richer.

Many mines were very shallow and, once opened, proved too poor to develop. Benjamin Bryan cited the example of “Ember Hill, on the shoulder of Masson, above Matlock Bath” where there are hollows in the surface showing where there had been fruitless searches for lead.

There were small buildings, called “coes”, near each mine shaft which were used for tool storage, to provide shelter and as places for changing into working clothes. It was here that the lead was smelted and stored until ready for sale.

Lead is, of course, very poisonous. As miners washed lead-bearing material, great care was taken with the washing vats, which had to be covered. If cattle accidentally drank the poisoned water they would die from something called “belland”.

Cornish and Welsh miners introduced the practice of buddling for ore into Derbyshire about 1747.  Buddling involved washing the heaps of rubbish in the slag heaps,  the process of separating the very small particles from the dirt and spar with which they are mixed, by means of a small stream of water. This method of extraction was a major pollutant, affecting farmers and their animals (poisoned by Belland from drinking the waste water), the brooks and streams and even the River Derwent.

Women also worked in the mines. An unattributed account from 1829, says: “The head is much enwrapped, and the features nearly hidden in a muffling of handkerchiefs, over which is put a man’s hat, in the manner of the paysannes of Wales”. He also describes their gowns, usually red, as being “tucked up round the waist in a sort of bag, and set off by a bright green petticoat”. They also wore a man’s grey or dark blue coat and shoes with 3″ thick soles that were tied round with cords. The 1829 writer called them “complete harridans!”

Lead Mining in Matlock & Matlock Bath, The Andrews Pages

John’s wife Margaret died at the age of 42 in 1847.  I don’t know the cause of death, but perhaps it was lead poisoning.  John’s son John, despite a very early start in the lead mine, became a carter and lived to the ripe old age of 88.

The Pig of Lead pub, 1904:

The earliest Marshall I’ve found so far is Charles, born in 1742. Charles married Rebecca Knowles, 1775-1823.  I don’t know what his occupation was but when he died in 1819 he left a not inconsiderable sum to his wife.

1819 Charles Marshall probate:

There are still Marshall’s living in Elton and Matlock, not our immediate known family, but probably distantly related.  I asked a Matlock group on facebook:

“…there are Marshall’s still in the village. There are certainly families who live here who have done generation after generation & have many memories & stories to tell. Visit The Duke on a Friday night…”

The Duke, Elton:

Kidsley Grange Farm and The Quakers Next Door

Kidsley Grange Farm in Smalley, Derbyshire, was the home of the Housleys in the 1800s.  William Housley 1781-1848 was born in nearby Selston.   His wife Ellen Carrington 1795-1872 was from a long line of Carringtons in Smalley.  They had ten children between 1815 and 1838.  Samuel, my 3x great grandfather, was the second son born in 1816.

The original farm has been made into a nursing home in recent years, which at the time of writing is up for sale at £500,000. Sadly none of the original farm appears visible with all the new additions.

The farm before it was turned into a nursing home:

Kidsley Grange Farm and Kidsley Park, a neighbouring farm, are mentioned in a little book about the history of Smalley.  The neighbours at Kidsley Park, the Davy’s,  were friends of the Housleys. They were Quakers.

In Kerry’s History of Smalley:

Kidsley Park Farm was owned by Daniel Smith,  a prominent Quaker and the last of the Quakers at Kidsley. His daughter, Elizabeth Davy, widow of William Davis, married WH Barber MB of Smalley. Elizabeth was the author of the poem “Farewell to Kidsley Park”.

Emma Housley sent one of Elizabeth Davy’s poems to her brother George in USA.

 “We have sent you a piece of poetry that Mrs. Davy composed about our ‘Old House.’ I am sure you will like it though you may not understand all the allusions she makes use of as well as we do.”

Farewell to Kidsley Park
Farewell, Farewell, Thy pathways now by strangers feet are trod,
And other hands and horses strange henceforth shall turn thy sod,
Yes, other eyes may watch the buds expanding in the spring.
And other children round the hearth the coming years may bring,
But mine will be the memory of cares and pleasures there,
Intenser ~ that no living thing in some of them can share,
Commencing with the loved, and lost, in days of long ago,
When one was present on whose head Atlantic’s breezes blow,
Long years ago he left that roof, and made a home afar ~
For that is really only “home” where life’s affections are!
How many thoughts come o’er me, for old Kidsley has “a name
And memory” ~ in the hearts of some not unknown to fame.
We dream not, in those happy times, that I should be the last,
Alone, to leave my native place ~ alone, to meet the blast,
I loved each nook and corner there, each leaf and blade of grass,
Each moonlight shadow on the pond I loved: but let it pass,
For mine is still the memory that only death can mar;
I fancy I shall see it reflecting every star.
The graves of buried quadrupeds, affectionate and true,
Will have the olden sunshine, and the same bright morning dew,
But the birds that sang at even when the autumn leaves were seer,
Will miss the crumbs they used to get, in winters long and drear.
Will the poor down-trodden miss me? God help them if they do!
Some manna in the wilderness, His goodness guide them to!
Farewell to those who love me! I shall bear them still in mind,
And hope to be remembered by those I left behind:
Do not forget the aged man ~ though another fills his place ~
Another, bearing not his name, nor coming of his race.
His creed might be peculiar; but there was much of good
Successors will not imitate, because not understood.
Two hundred years have come and past since George Fox ~ first of “Friends” ~
Established his religion there ~ which my departure ends.
Then be it so: God prosper these in basket and in store,
And make them happy in my place ~ my dwelling, never more!
For I may be a wanderer ~ no roof nor hearthstone mine:
May light that cometh from above my resting place define.
Gloom hovers o’er the prospect now, but He who was my friend,
In the midst of troubled waters, will see me to the end.

Elizabeth Davy, June 6th, 1863, Derby.

Another excerpt from Barbara Housley’s Narrative on the Letters from the family in Smalley to George in USA mentions the Davy’s:

Anne’s will was probated October 14, 1856. Mr. William Davy of Kidsley Park appeared for the family. Her estate was valued at under £20. Emma was to receive fancy needlework, a four post bedstead, feather bed and bedding, a mahogany chest of drawers, plates, linen and china. Emma was also to receive Anne’s writing desk! There was a condition that Ellen would have use of these items until her death.
The money that Anne was to receive from her grandfather, William Carrington, and her father, William Housley was to be distributed one third to Joseph, one third to Emma, and one third to be divided between her four neices: John’s daughter Elizabeth, 18, and Sam’s daughters Elizabeth, 10, Mary Anne, 9 and Catherine, age 7 to be paid by the trustees as they think “most useful and proper.” Emma Lyon and Elizabeth Davy were the witnesses.

Mrs. Davy wrote to George on March 21 1856 sending some gifts from his sisters and a portrait of their mother–“Emma is away yet and A is so much worse.” Mrs. Davy concluded: “With best wishes
 for thy health and prosperity in this world and the next I am thy sincere friend.” Whenever the girls sent greetings from Mrs. Davy they used her Quaker speech pattern of “thee and thy.”

 

Murder At The Bennistons

We don’t know exactly what happened immediately after the death of Catherine Housley’s mother in 1849, but by 1850 the two older daughters Elizabeth and Mary Anne were inmates in Belper Workhouse.  Catherine was just six weeks old, so presumably she was with a wet nurse, possibly even prior to her mothers death.  By 1851, according to the census, she was living in Heanor, a small town near to Smalley,  with John Benniston, a framework knitter, and his family. Framework knitters (abbreviated to FWK should you happen to see it on a census) rented a large loom and made stockings and everyone in the family helped. Often the occupation of other household members would be “seamer”: they would stitch the stocking seams together.  Catherine was still living with the Bennistons ten years later in 1861.

I read some chapters of a thesis on the south Derbyshire poor in the 1800s and found some illuminating information about indentured apprenticeship of children especially if one parent died. It was not at all uncommon,  and framework knitters in particular often had indentured apprentices.  It was a way to ensure the child was fed and learned a skill.  Children commonly worked from the age of ten or 12 anyway. They were usually placed walking distance of the family home and maintained contact. The indenture could be paid by the parish poor fund, which cost them slightly less than sending them to the poorhouse, and could be paid off by a parent if circumstances improved to release the child from the apprenticeship.
A child who was an indentured apprentice would continue a normal life after the term of apprenticeship, usually still in contact with family locally.

I found a newspaper article titled “Child Murder at Heanor” dated 1858.

A 23 year old lodger at the Bennistons, Hannah Cresswell, apparently murdered a new born baby that she gave birth to in the privy, which the midwife took away and had buried as a still birth. The baby was exhumed after an anonymous tip off from a neighbour, citing that it was the 4th such incident. Catherine Housley would have been nine years old at the time.

Subsequent newspaper articles indicate that the case was thrown out, despite the doctors evidence that the baby had been beaten to death.

In July 1858 the inquest was held in the King of Prussia,  on the Hannah Cresswell baby murder at the Bennistons.

The King of Prussia, Heanor, in 1860:

The Liverpool Fires

Catherine Housley had two older sisters, Elizabeth 1845-1883 and Mary Anne 1846-1935.  Both Elizabeth and Mary Anne grew up in the Belper workhouse after their mother died, and their father was jailed for failing to maintain his three children.  Mary Anne married Samuel Gilman and they had a grocers shop in Buxton.  Elizabeth married in Liverpool in 1873.

What was she doing in Liverpool? How did she meet William George Stafford?

According to the census, Elizabeth Housley was in Belper workhouse in 1851. In 1861, aged 16,  she was a servant in the household of Peter Lyon, a baker in Derby St Peters.  We noticed that the Lyon’s were friends of the family and were mentioned in the letters to George in Pennsylvania.

No record of Elizabeth can be found on the 1871 census, but in 1872 the birth and death was registered of Elizabeth and William’s child, Elizabeth Jane Stafford. The parents are registered as William and Elizabeth Stafford, although they were not yet married. William’s occupation is a “refiner”.

In April, 1873, a Fatal Fire is reported in the Liverpool Mercury. Fearful Termination of a Saturday Night Debauch. Seven Persons Burnt To Death.  Interesting to note in the article that “the middle room being let off to a coloured man named William Stafford and his wife”.

We had noted on the census that William Stafford place of birth was “Africa, British subject” but it had not occurred to us that he was “coloured”.  A register of birth has not yet been found for William and it is not known where in Africa he was born.

Elizabeth and William survived the fire on Gay Street, and were still living on Gay Street in October 1873 when they got married.

William’s occupation on the marriage register is sugar refiner, and his father is Peter Stafford, farmer. Elizabeth’s father is Samuel Housley, plumber. It does not say Samuel Housley deceased, so perhaps we can assume that Samuel is still alive in 1873.

Eliza Florence Stafford, their second daughter, was born in 1876.

William’s occupation on the 1881 census is “fireman”, in his case, a fire stoker at the sugar refinery, an unpleasant and dangerous job for which they were paid slightly more. William, Elizabeth and Eliza were living in Byrom Terrace.

Byrom Terrace, Liverpool, in 1933

Elizabeth died of heart problems in 1883, when Eliza was six years old, and in 1891 her father died, scalded to death in a tragic accident at the sugar refinery.

Eliza, aged 15, was living as an inmate at the Walton on the Hill Institution in 1891. It’s not clear when she was admitted to the workhouse, perhaps after her mother died in 1883.

In 1901 Eliza Florence Stafford is a 24 year old live in laundrymaid, according to the census, living in West Derby  (a part of Liverpool, and not actually in Derby).  On the 1911 census there is a Florence Stafford listed  as an unnmarried laundress, with a daughter called Florence.  In 1901 census she was a laundrymaid in West Derby, Liverpool, and the daughter Florence Stafford was born in 1904 West Derby.  It’s likely that this is Eliza Florence, but nothing further has been found so far.

The questions remaining are the location of William’s birth, the name of his mother and his family background, what happened to Eliza and her daughter after 1911, and how did Elizabeth meet William in the first place.

William Stafford was a seaman prior to working in the sugar refinery, and he appears on several ship’s crew lists.  Nothing so far has indicated where he might have been born, or where his father came from.

Some months after finding the newspaper article about the fire on Gay Street, I saw an unusual request for information on the Liverpool genealogy group. Someone asked if anyone knew of a fire in Liverpool in the 1870’s.  She had watched a programme about children recalling past lives, in this case a memory of a fire. The child recalled pushing her sister into a burning straw mattress by accident, as she attempted to save her from a falling beam.  I watched the episode in question hoping for more information to confirm if this was the same fire, but details were scant and it’s impossible to say for sure.

Ben Warren

Derby County and England football legend who died aged 37 penniless and ‘insane’

Ben Warren 1879 – 1917  was Samuel Warren’s (my great grandfather) cousin.

From the Derby Telegraph:

Just 17 months after earning his 22nd England cap, against Scotland at Everton on April 1, 1911, he was certified insane. What triggered his decline was no more than a knock on the knee while playing for Chelsea against Clapton Orient.

The knee would not heal and the longer he was out, the more he fretted about how he’d feed his wife and four children. In those days, if you didn’t play, there was no pay. 

…..he had developed “brain fever” and this mild-mannered man had “become very strange and, at times, violent”. The coverage reflected his celebrity status.

On December 15, 1911, as Rick Glanvill records in his Official Biography of Chelsea FC: “He was admitted to a private clinic in Nottingham, suffering from acute mania, delusions that he was being poisoned and hallucinations of hearing and vision.”

He received another blow in February, 1912, when his mother, Emily, died. She had congestion of the lungs and caught influenza, her condition not helped, it was believed, by worrying about Ben.

She had good reason: her famous son would soon be admitted to the unfortunately named Derby County Lunatic Asylum.

 

As Britain sleepwalked towards the First World War, Ben’s condition deteriorated. Glanvill writes: “His case notes from what would be a five-year stay, catalogue a devastating decline in which he is at various times described as incoherent, restless, destructive, ‘stuporose’ and ‘a danger to himself’.’”

photo: Football 27th April 1914. A souvenir programme for the testimonial game for Chelsea and England’s Ben Warren, (pictured) who had been declared insane and sent to a lunatic asylum. The game was a select XI for the North playing a select XI from The South proceeds going to Warren’s family.

In September, that decline reached a new and pitiable low. The following is an abridged account of what The Courier called “an amazing incident” that took place on September 4.

“Spotted by a group of men while walking down Derby Road in Nottingham, a man was acting strangely, smoking a cigarette and had nothing on but a collar and tie.

“He jumped about the pavement and roadway, as though playing an imaginary game of football. When approached, he told them he was going to Trent Bridge to play in a match and had to be there by 3.30.”

Eventually he was taken to a police station and recognised by a reporter as England’s erstwhile right-half. What made the story even harder to digest was that Ben had escaped from the asylum and walked the 20 miles to Nottingham apparently unnoticed.

He had played at “Trent Bridge” many times – at least on Nottingham Forest’s adjacent City Ground.

As a shocked nation came to terms with the desperate plight of one of its finest footballers, some papers suggested his career was not yet over. And his relatives claimed that he had been suffering from nothing more than a severe nervous breakdown.

He would never be the same again – as a player or a man. He wasn’t even a shadow of the weird “footballer” who had walked 20 miles to Nottingham.

Then, he had nothing on, now he just had nothing – least of all self-respect. He ripped sheets into shreds and attempted suicide, saying: “I’m no use to anyone – and ought to be out of the way.”

“A year before his suicide attempt in 1916 the ominous symptom of ‘dry cough’ had been noted. Two months after it, in October 1916, the unmistakable signs of tuberculosis were noted and his enfeebled body rapidly succumbed.

At 11.30pm on 15 January 1917, international footballer Ben Warren was found dead by a night attendant.

He was 37 and when they buried him the records described him as a “pauper’.”

However you look at it, it is the salutary tale of a footballer worrying about money. And it began with a knock on the knee.

On 14th November 2021, Gill Castle posted on the Newhall and Swadlincote group:

I would like to thank Colin Smith and everyone who supported him in getting my great grandfather’s grave restored (Ben Warren who played for Derby, Chelsea and England)

The month before, Colin Smith posted:

My Ben Warren Journey is nearly complete.
It started two years ago when I was sent a family wedding photograph asking if I recognised anyone. My Great Great Grandmother was on there. But soon found out it was the wedding of Ben’s brother Robert to my 1st cousin twice removed, Eveline in 1910.
I researched Ben and his football career and found his resting place in St Johns Newhall, all overgrown and in a poor state with the large cross all broken off. I stood there and decided he needed to new memorial & headstone. He was our local hero, playing Internationally for England 22 times. He needs to be remembered.
After seeking family permission and Council approval, I had a quote from Art Stone Memorials, Burton on Trent to undertake the work. Fundraising then started and the memorial ordered.
Covid came along and slowed the process of getting materials etc. But we have eventually reached the final installation today.
I am deeply humbled for everyone who donated in January this year to support me and finally a massive thank you to everyone, local people, football supporters of Newhall, Derby County & Chelsea and football clubs for their donations.
Ben will now be remembered more easily when anyone walks through St Johns and see this beautiful memorial just off the pathway.
Finally a huge thank you for Art Stone Memorials Team in everything they have done from the first day I approached them. The team have worked endlessly on this project to provide this for Ben and his family as a lasting memorial. Thank you again Alex, Pat, Matt & Owen for everything. Means a lot to me.
The final chapter is when we have a dedication service at the grave side in a few weeks time,
Ben was born in The Thorntree Inn Newhall South Derbyshire and lived locally all his life.
He played local football for Swadlincote, Newhall Town and Newhall Swifts until Derby County signed Ben in May 1898. He made 242 appearances and scored 19 goals at Derby County.
28th July 1908 Chelsea won the bidding beating Leicester Fosse & Manchester City bids.
Ben also made 22 appearance’s for England including the 1908 First Overseas tour playing Austria twice, Hungary and Bohemia all in a week.
28 October 1911 Ben Injured his knee and never played football again
Ben is often compared with Steven Gerard for his style of play and team ethic in the modern era.
Herbert Chapman ( Player & Manager ) comments “ Warren was a human steam engine who played through 90 minutes with intimidating strength and speed”.
Charles Buchan comments “I am certain that a better half back could not be found, Part of the Best England X1 of all time”
Chelsea allowed Ben to live in Sunnyside Newhall, he used to run 5 miles every day round Bretby Park and had his own gym at home. He was compared to the likes of a Homing Pigeon, as he always came back to Newhall after his football matches.
Ben married Minnie Staley 21st October 1902 at Emmanuel Church Swadlincote and had four children, Harry, Lillian, Maurice & Grenville. Harry went on to be Manager at Coventry & Southend following his father in his own career as football Manager.
After Ben’s football career ended in 1911 his health deteriorated until his passing at Derby Pastures Hospital aged 37yrs
Ben’s youngest son, Grenville passed away 22nd May 1929 and is interred together in St John’s Newhall with his Father
His wife, Minnie’s ashes are also with Ben & Grenville.
Thank you again everyone.
RIP Ben Warren, our local Newhall Hero. You are remembered.

 

 

Gladstone Road

My mother remembers her grandfather Samuel Warren’s house at 3 Gladstone Road, Stourbridge. She was born in 1933, so this would be late 1930s early 1940s.

“Opening a big wooden gate in a high brick wall off the sidewalk I went down a passage with a very high hedge to the main house which was entered on this side through a sort of glassed-in lean-to then into the dark and damp scullery and then into a large room with a fireplace which was dining room and living room for most of the time. The house was Georgian and had wooden interior shutters at the windows. My Grandad sat by the fire probably most of the day. The fireplace may have had an oven built over or to the side of the fire which was common in those days and was used for cooking.
That room led into a hall going three ways and the main front door was here. One hall went to the pantry which had stone slabs for keeping food cool, such a long way from the kitchen! Opposite the pantry was the door to the cellar. One hall led to two large rooms with big windows overlooking the garden. There was also a door at the end of this hallway which opened into the garden. The stairs went up opposite the front door with a box room at the top then along a landing to another hall going right and left with two bedrooms down each hall.
The toilet got to from the scullery and lean-to was outside down another passage all overgrown near the pigsty. No outside lights!
On Christmas day the families would all have the day here. I think the menfolk went over to the pub {Gate Hangs Well?} for a drink while the women cooked dinner. Chris would take all the children down the dark, damp cellar steps and tell us ghost stories scaring us all. A fire would be lit in one of the big main rooms {probably only used once a year} and we’d sit in there and dinner was served in the other big main room. When the house was originally built the servants would have used the other room and scullery.
I have a recollection of going upstairs and into a bedroom off the right hand hall and someone was in bed, I thought an old lady but I was uncomfortable in there and never went in again. Seemed that person was there a long time. I did go upstairs with Betty to her room which was the opposite way down the hall and loved it. She was dating lots of soldiers during the war years. One in particular I remember was an American Army Officer that she was fond of but he was killed when he left England to fight in Germany.
I wonder if the person in bed that nobody spoke about was an old housekeeper?
My mother used to say there was a white lady who floated around in the garden. I think Kay died at Gladstone Road!”

Samuel Warren, born in 1874 in Newhall, Derbyshire, was my grandmothers father.  This is the only photograph we’ve seen of him (seated on right with cap).  Kay, who died of TB in 1938, is holding the teddy bear. Samuel died in 1950, in Stourbridge, at the age of 76.

Left to right: back row: Leslie Warren. Hildred Williams / Griffiths (Nee Warren). Billy Warren. 2nd row: Gladys (Gary) Warren. Kay Warren (holding teddy bear). Samuel Warren (father). Hildred’s son Chris Williams (on knee). Lorna Warren. Joan Williams. Peggy Williams (Hildreds daughters). Jack Warren. Betty Warren.

Francis Purdy: The Beggarlea Bulldog and Primitive Methodist Preacher

Francis Purdy was my great great grandfather.  We did not know anything about the Primitive Methodists prior to this family research project, but my mother had another look through the family souvenirs and photographs and found a little book dated 1913, by William Purdy called: The History of The Primitive Methodists of Langley, Heanor, Derbyshire and District. Practical remarks on Sunday school work and a biography of the late Francis Purdy, an early local preacher. Printed by GC Brittain and sons.  William Purdy was Francis son, and George’s brother.

Francis Purdy:

The following can be found online from various sources but I am unable to find the original source to credit with this information:

“In spite of having pious parents, Francis was a great prize-fighter and owner of champion dogs. He was known as the Beggarlee Bulldog, and fought many pitched battles. It was in 1823 that he fought on Nottingham Forest for the championship of three counties. After the fight going eleven rounds, which continued one hour and twenty minutes, he was declared victorious.”

The Primitive Methodists under the Rev Richard Whitechurch began a regular mission in Beggarlee. The locals tried to dismiss the Methodist “Ranters” by the use of intimidating tactics. Francis was prepared to release his fighting dogs during their prayer meeting, but became so interested in their faith that he instead joined them. The Methodist Church wrote: ”A strong feeling came over him, while his mates incited him to slip his dogs from the leads. He refused, and decided to return home. After concealing himself in a dyke, to listen to the Missioners on the following Sunday, he stole into the house of a Mrs Church, where a service was being held. Shortly after this, a society was formed with Francis Purdy as leader, and he was also the superintendent of the first Sunday School. After a short spell as local preacher at Beauvale, Tag Hill, Awsworth, Kimberly, Brinsley, etc., Mr Francis Purdy was ordained a minister by the Rev. Thomas King, of Nottingham, on the 17th December, 1827.”

Kate Purdy and the DH Lawrence Connection

Catherine (Kate) Purdy 1874-1950  was my grandfather George Marshall’s aunt, and the mother of George Rushby who went to Africa.  The photo is one of our family photos, and we knew that the woman at the back third from the right was an aunt of my grandfather’s. We didn’t know that it was Kate until we saw other photos of her in Mike’s collection.

DH Lawrence was born in Eastwood at roughly the same time as my great grandmother Mary Ann Gilman Purdy. Apparently his books are based on actual people living in the area at the time, so I read as many of his books as I could find, to help paint the picture of the time and place.  I also found out via an Eastwood facebook group, that he was not well liked there, and still isn’t. They say he was a wife beater, a groper and was cruel to animals, and they did not want a statue of him in their town!

Kate Rushby third from right back row:

Kate Rushby’s story as told by her grandson Mike:

George’s daughter Catherine (Kate) Purdy grew up in Eastwood and was living at Walnut Tree Lane when, at the age of 21, and on the 24 Sep 1894, she married John Henry Payling Rushby who was a policeman in the Grimsby Police. John Henry left the Police and together they bought a public house “The Three Tuns Inn” at Beggarlee. The establishment was frequented by amongst others, the writer D.H.Lawrence who wrote much of his book “Sons and Lovers” in the Inn. In his book he calls the Inn “The Moon and Stars” and mentions Kate. though not by name.

John Henry Rushby had two children, Charlotte and George Gilman Rushby. But a year after the birth of George on 28 Feb 1900, John Henry died at the age of thirty on 13 Sep 1901. He liked to show off his strength to his friends by lifting above his head an oak barrel full of beer. This would have weighed almost 200 kilograms. “He bust his gut” Kate said. He died of peritonitis following a hernia.

Following the death of John Henry, Kate managed the Three Tuns Inn on her own. But a regular visitor to the Inn was Frank Freer who was a singer and used to entertain the patrons with his fine baritone voice and by playing the cornet. He and Kate got married, but he turned out to be a drunk who beat his wife and was cruel to her son. They separated and he died from alcoholism, though he may also have been struck on the head with a beer bottle by a person unknown. She then married Mr Gregory Simpson who fathered a daughter Catherine, and then died from gas injuries he suffered on the battlefield in the first world war.

Despite her lack of men able to stay the course, Catherine became a very successful business woman. She ran the Three Tuns Inn and later moved to Jacksdale where she owned ”ThePortland Arms Hotel”. She travelled extensively to Europe in times of peace, to Africa several times, and around England frequently. She settled in Selston Lane Jacksdale in a large house bracketed by the homes of her daughters Lottie and Cath. She was a strong and tenacious woman who became the surrogate mother of her grandchildren Ann and George when they were separated from their parents by the second world war.

Mike Rushby’s photo of Kate:

George Gilman Rushby: The Cousin Who Went To Africa

The portrait of the woman has “mother of Catherine Housley, Smalley” written on the back, and one of the family photographs has “Francis Purdy” written on the back. My first internet search was “Catherine Housley Smalley Francis Purdy”. Easily found was the family tree of George (Mike) Rushby, on one of the genealogy websites. It seemed that it must be our family, but the African lion hunter seemed unlikely until my mother recalled her father had said that he had a cousin who went to Africa. I also noticed that the lion hunter’s middle name was Gilman ~ the name that Catherine Housley’s daughter ~ my great grandmother, Mary Ann Gilman Purdy ~ adopted, from her aunt and uncle who brought her up.

I tried to contact George (Mike) Rushby via the ancestry website, but got no reply. I searched for his name on Facebook and found a photo of a wildfire in a place called Wardell, in Australia, and he was credited with taking the photograph. A comment on the photo, which was a few years old, got no response, so I found a Wardell Community group on Facebook, and joined it. A very small place, population some 700 or so, and I had an immediate response on the group to my question. They knew Mike, exchanged messages, and we were able to start emailing. I was in the chair at the dentist having an exceptionally long canine root canal at the time that I got the message with his email address, and at that moment the song Down in Africa started playing.

Mike said it was clever of me to track him down which amused me, coming from the son of an elephant and lion hunter.  He didn’t know why his father’s middle name was Gilman, and was not aware that Catherine Housley’s sister married a Gilman.

Mike Rushby kindly gave me permission to include his family history research in my book.  This is the story of my grandfather George Marshall’s cousin.  A detailed account of George Gilman Rushby’s years in Africa can be found in another chapter called From Tanganyika With Love; the letters Eleanor wrote to her family.

George Gilman Rushby:

The story of George Gilman Rushby 1900-1969, as told by his son Mike:

George Gilman Rushby:
Elephant hunter,poacher, prospector, farmer, forestry officer, game ranger, husband to Eleanor, and father of 6 children who now live around the world.

George Gilman Rushby was born in Nottingham on 28 Feb 1900 the son of Catherine Purdy and John Henry Payling Rushby. But John Henry died when his son was only one and a half years old, and George shunned his drunken bullying stepfather Frank Freer and was brought up by Gypsies who taught him how to fight and took him on regular poaching trips. His love of adventure and his ability to hunt were nurtured at an early stage of his life.
The family moved to Eastwood, where his mother Catherine owned and managed The Three Tuns Inn, but when his stepfather died in mysterious circumstances, his mother married a wealthy bookmaker named Gregory Simpson. He could afford to send George to Worksop College and to Rugby School. This was excellent schooling for George, but the boarding school environment, and the lack of a stable home life, contributed to his desire to go out in the world and do his own thing. When he finished school his first job was as a trainee electrician with Oaks & Co at Pye Bridge. He also worked part time as a motor cycle mechanic and as a professional boxer to raise the money for a voyage to South Africa.

In May 1920 George arrived in Durban destitute and, like many others, living on the beach and dependant upon the Salvation Army for a daily meal. However he soon got work as an electrical mechanic, and after a couple of months had earned enough money to make the next move North. He went to Lourenco Marques where he was appointed shift engineer for the town’s power station. However he was still restless and left the comfort of Lourenco Marques for Beira in August 1921.

Beira was the start point of the new railway being built from the coast to Nyasaland. George became a professional hunter providing essential meat for the gangs of construction workers building the railway. He was a self employed contractor with his own support crew of African men and began to build up a satisfactory business. However, following an incident where he had to shoot and kill a man who attacked him with a spear in middle of the night whilst he was sleeping, George left the lower Zambezi and took a paddle steamer to Nyasaland (Malawi). On his arrival in Karongo he was encouraged to shoot elephant which had reached plague proportions in the area – wrecking African homes and crops, and threatening the lives of those who opposed them.

His next move was to travel by canoe the five hundred kilometre length of Lake Nyasa to Tanganyika, where he hunted for a while in the Lake Rukwa area, before walking through Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) to the Congo. Hunting his way he overachieved his quota of ivory resulting in his being charged with trespass, the confiscation of his rifles, and a fine of one thousand francs. He hunted his way through the Congo to Leopoldville then on to the Portuguese enclave, near the mouth of the mighty river, where he worked as a barman in a rough and tough bar until he received a message that his old friend Lumb had found gold at Lupa near Chunya. George set sail on the next boat for Antwerp in Belgium, then crossed to England and spent a few weeks with his family in Jacksdale before returning by sea to Dar es Salaam. Arriving at the gold fields he pegged his claim and almost immediately went down with blackwater fever – an illness that used to kill three out of four within a week.

When he recovered from his fever, George exchanged his gold lease for a double barrelled .577 elephant rifle and took out a special elephant control licence with the Tanganyika Government. He then headed for the Congo again and poached elephant in Northern Rhodesia from a base in the Congo. He was known by the Africans as “iNyathi”, or the Buffalo, because he was the most dangerous in the long grass. After a profitable hunting expedition in his favourite hunting ground of the Kilombera River he returned to the Congo via Dar es Salaam and Mombassa. He was after the Kabalo district elephant, but hunting was restricted, so he set up his base in The Central African Republic at a place called Obo on the Congo tributary named the M’bomu River. From there he could make poaching raids into the Congo and the Upper Nile regions of the Sudan. He hunted there for two and a half years. He seldom came across other Europeans; hunters kept their own districts and guarded their own territories. But they respected one another and he made good and lasting friendships with members of that small select band of adventurers.

Leaving for Europe via the Congo, George enjoyed a short holiday in Jacksdale with his mother. On his return trip to East Africa he met his future bride in Cape Town. She was 24 year old Eleanor Dunbar Leslie; a high school teacher and daughter of a magistrate who spent her spare time mountaineering, racing ocean yachts, and riding horses. After a whirlwind romance, they were betrothed within 36 hours.

On 25 July 1930 George landed back in Dar es Salaam. He went directly to the Mbeya district to find a home. For one hundred pounds he purchased the Waizneker’s farm on the banks of the Mntshewe Stream. Eleanor, who had been delayed due to her contract as a teacher, followed in November. Her ship docked in Dar es Salaam on 7 Nov 1930, and they were married that day. At Mchewe Estate, their newly acquired farm, they lived in a tent whilst George with some help built their first home – a lovely mud-brick cottage with a thatched roof. George and Eleanor set about developing a coffee plantation out of a bush block. It was a very happy time for them. There was no electricity, no radio, and no telephone. Newspapers came from London every two months. There were a couple of neighbours within twenty miles, but visitors were seldom seen. The farm was a haven for wild life including snakes, monkeys and leopards. Eleanor had to go South all the way to Capetown for the birth of her first child Ann, but with the onset of civilisation, their first son George was born at a new German Mission hospital that had opened in Mbeya.

Occasionally George had to leave the farm in Eleanor’s care whilst he went off hunting to make his living. Having run the coffee plantation for five years with considerable establishment costs and as yet no return, George reluctantly started taking paying clients on hunting safaris as a “white hunter”. This was an occupation George didn’t enjoy. but it brought him an income in the days when social security didn’t exist. Taking wealthy clients on hunting trips to kill animals for trophies and for pleasure didn’t amuse George who hunted for a business and for a way of life. When one of George’s trackers was killed by a leopard that had been wounded by a careless client, George was particularly upset.
The coffee plantation was approaching the time of its first harvest when it was suddenly attacked by plagues of borer beetles and ring barking snails. At the same time severe hail storms shredded the crop. The pressure of the need for an income forced George back to the Lupa gold fields. He was unlucky in his gold discoveries, but luck came in a different form when he was offered a job with the Forestry Department. The offer had been made in recognition of his initiation and management of Tanganyika’s rainbow trout project. George spent most of his short time with the Forestry Department encouraging the indigenous people to conserve their native forests.

In November 1938 he transferred to the Game Department as Ranger for the Eastern Province of Tanganyika, and over several years was based at Nzasa near Dar es Salaam, at the old German town of Morogoro, and at lovely Lyamungu on the slopes of Kilimanjaro. Then the call came for him to be transferred to Mbeya in the Southern Province for there was a serious problem in the Njombe district, and George was selected by the Department as the only man who could possibly fix the problem.

Over a period of several years, people were being attacked and killed by marauding man-eating lions. In the Wagingombe area alone 230 people were listed as having been killed. In the Njombe district, which covered an area about 200 km by 300 km some 1500 people had been killed. Not only was the rural population being decimated, but the morale of the survivors was so low, that many of them believed that the lions were not real. Many thought that evil witch doctors were controlling the lions, or that lion-men were changing form to kill their enemies. Indeed some wichdoctors took advantage of the disarray to settle scores and to kill for reward.

By hunting down and killing the man-eaters, and by showing the flesh and blood to the doubting tribes people, George was able to instil some confidence into the villagers. However the Africans attributed the return of peace and safety, not to the efforts of George Rushby, but to the reinstallation of their deposed chief Matamula Mangera who had previously been stood down for corruption. It was Matamula , in their eyes, who had called off the lions.

Soon after this adventure, George was appointed Deputy Game Warden for Tanganyika, and was based in Arusha. He retired in 1956 to the Njombe district where he developed a coffee plantation, and was one of the first in Tanganyika to plant tea as a major crop. However he sensed a swing in the political fortunes of his beloved Tanganyika, and so sold the plantation and settled in a cottage high on a hill overlooking the Navel Base at Simonstown in the Cape. It was whilst he was there that TV Bulpin wrote his biography “The Hunter is Death” and George wrote his book “No More The Tusker”. He died in the Cape, and his youngest son Henry scattered his ashes at the Southern most tip of Africa where the currents of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet .

George Gilman Rushby:

Helper Belper: “Let’s start at the beginning.”

When I found a huge free genealogy tree website with lots of our family already on it, I couldn’t believe my luck. Quite soon after a perusal, I found I had a number of questions. Was it really possible that our Warren family tree had been traced back to 500AD? I asked on a genealogy forum: only if you can latch onto an aristocratic line somewhere, in which case that lineage will be already documented, as normally parish records only go back to the 1600s, if you are lucky. It is very hard to prove and the validity of it met with some not inconsiderable skepticism among the long term hard core genealogists. This is not to say that it isn’t possible, but is more likely a response to the obvious desire of many to be able to trace their lineage back to some kind of royalty, regardless of the documentation and proof.

Another question I had on this particular website was about the entries attached to Catherine Housley that made no sense. The immense public family tree there that anyone can add to had Catherine Housley’s mother as Catherine Marriot. But Catherine Marriot had another daughter called Catherine, two years before our Catherine was born, who didn’t die beforehand. It wasn’t unusual to name another child the same name if an earlier one had died in infancy, but this wasn’t the case.

I asked this question on a British Genealogy forum, and learned that other people’s family trees are never to be trusted. One should always start with oneself, and trace back with documentation every step of the way. Fortified with all kinds of helpful information, I still couldn’t find out who Catherine Housley’s mother was, so I posted her portrait on the forum and asked for help to find her. Among the many helpful replies, one of the members asked if she could send me a private message. She had never had the urge to help someone find a person before, but felt a compulsion to find Catherine Housley’s mother. Eight months later and counting at time of writing, and she is still my most amazing Helper. The first thing she said in the message was “Right. Let’s start at the beginning. What do you know for sure.” I said Mary Ann Gilman Purdy, my great grandmother, and we started from there.

Fran found all the documentation and proof, a perfect and necessary compliment to my own haphazard meanderings. She taught me how to find the proof, how to spot inconsistencies, and what to look for and where.  I still continue my own haphazard wanderings as well, which also bear fruit.

It was decided to order the birth certificate, a paper copy that could be stuck onto the back of the portrait, so my mother in Wales ordered it as she has the portrait. When it arrived, she read the names of Catherine’s parents to me over the phone. We were expecting it to be John Housley and Sarah Baggaley. But it wasn’t! It was his brother Samuel Housley and Elizabeth Brookes! I had been looking at the photograph of the portrait thinking it was Catherine Marriot, then looking at it thinking her name was Sarah Baggaley, and now the woman in the portrait was Elizabeth Brookes. And she was from Wolverhampton. My helper, unknown to me, had ordered a digital copy, which arrived the same day.

Months later, Fran, visiting friends in Derby,  made a special trip to Smalley, a tiny village not far from Derby, to look for Housley gravestones in the two churchyards.  There are numerous Housley burials registered in the Smalley parish records, but she could only find one Housley grave, that of Sarah Baggaley.  Unfortunately the documentation had already proved that Sarah was not the woman in the portrait, Catherine Housley’s mother, but Catherine’s aunt.

Sarah Housley nee Baggaley’s grave stone in Smalley: