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  • #7400

    Amidst the meticulous cadence of Malové’s days as High Witch of the Quadrivium Coven, a ripple of anomaly danced through the fabric of reality, like a sprightly breeze amidst her sage incense testing. It started with subtlety—a peculiar haze veiling her potion books, an otherworldly scent mingling with her herb garden’s fragrances. But it was during her quiet contemplation among hellebore pistils that the ordinary took a whimsical turn.

    The air hummed with a resonant frequency, beckoning from realms beyond. And there, in the midst of this enigmatic symphony, stood Georges, a figure oscillating between existence and non-existence, accompanied by the ethereal Malvina, a reflection of Malové’s spirit from a parallel dimension.

    As Malové’s reality shimmered, the colors around her intensified, charged with the essence of a place where possibilities blurred into fantastical realities. Each breath was imbued with untapped potential, a draught of undiscovered paths.

    In the midst of this mystical convergence, Malvina’s melodic voice intertwined with the air, weaving a tapestry of otherworldly allure. Energies pulsed within Malové, heralding a meeting that transcended time—a celebration set within the ever-shifting caverns of existence.

    Engulfed by Malvina’s mystic melody, Malové felt the vibrations intensify, drawing her towards the allure of the unknown. With a glance at the maze of her mundane existence, she embraced the call, stepping through the veil into a world of a new sort of witchcraft, and other mystical creatures of the mind.

    Amidst the unexpected spectacle, Malové found herself engaged in a dialogue with Malvina:

    Malové: “Malvina, as a fellow witch of power, your reputation precedes you. Your tales of shifting caves and communion with dragons have piqued my interest. How do you maintain such fluidity within the arcane?”

    Malvina: “Oh dear Malové, magic is a vast music score of constant motions, much like my cave and dragons. Adaptation and transformation are the keys to navigating its intricate weave.”

    Malové: “I must admit, recent misadventures within my coven have left me seeking a fresh perspective. The fiasco with the smoke test was humbling.”

    Malvina: “A fiasco, yes, but also a lesson. Magic must be respected, yet never tamed. Embrace the unexpected, and let it fuel your endeavors. What of the incense you craft?”

    Malové: “It’s meant to elevate the spirit, to realign to higher purposes, and maybe inspire those enveloped in its essence. This is why we seek new blends, something transformative.”

    Malvina: “Incense is not just a tool, but a companion on the journey. Let the scents guide you to uncharted territories. Look to the elements for inspiration—the earth, sky, fire, and water all have stories to tell.”

    Malové: “Poetic words that is sure, and maybe wise… Perhaps a journey to your world and fabled caves could be arranged to further explore.”

    Malvina: “You would be most welcome. The cave shifts but offers shelter and inspiration to all who seek it. And who knows, the dragons may impart wisdom of their own.”

    Malové: “Well, to be honest, not so fond of dragons… Well, would you look at the time! The effects of that blend seems already to wear off, but thank you dearie, and we will see if some inspiration remains…”

    #7279
    TracyTracy
    Participant

      The Bigamist

      Ernest Tomlinson 1881-1915

       

      Ernest Tomlinson was my great grandfathers Charles Tomlinson‘s younger brother. Their parents were Charles Tomlinson the elder 1847-1907 and Emma Grattidge 1853-1911.

      In 1896, aged 14, Ernest attempted to drown himself in the pond at Penn after his father took his watch off him for arguing with his brothers. Ernest tells the police “It’s all through my brothers putting on me”.  The policeman told him he was a very silly and wicked boy and to see the curate at Penn and to try and be a better boy in future. He was discharged.

      Bridgnorth Journal and South Shropshire Advertiser. – Saturday 11 July 1896:

      1896 suicide attempt

       

      In 1903 Ernest married Ethel Maude Howe in Wolverhampton.  Four years later in 1907 Ethel was granted a separation on the grounds of cruelty.

      In Islington in London in 1913, Ernest bigamously married Mabel Elizabeth Smith.  Mabel left Ernest for treating her very badly. She went to Wolverhampton and found out about his first wife still being alive.

      London Evening Standard – Monday 25 May 1914:

      Bigamy 18 months

       

       

      In May 1914 Ernest was tried at the Old Bailey and the jury found him guilty of bigamy. In his defense, Ernest said that he had received a letter from his mother saying that she was ill, and a further letter saying that she had died. He said he wrongly assumed that they were referring to his wife, and that he was free to marry.  It was his mother who had died.  He was sentenced to 18 months hard labour at Wormwood Scrubs prison.

      Woolwich Gazette – Tuesday 28 April 1914:

      a wrong assumption

       

      1914 sentence old bailey

       

      Ethel Maude Tomlinson was granted a decree nisi in 1915.

      Birmingham Daily Gazette – Wednesday 02 June 1915:

      decree nisi 1915

       

      Ernest died in September 1915 in hospital in Wolverhampton.

      #6348
      TracyTracy
      Participant

        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:

        Limehouse Causeway

         

        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:

        Chrisp Street

         

        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:

        1918 Wong Sang

         

        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:

        1918 Wong Sang 2

         

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

        London and China Express – Thursday 09 February 1922:

        1922 Wong Sang

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

        Chee Kong Tong

         

        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:

        1928 Wong Sang

        1928 Wong Sang 2

        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.)

        1917 Alice Wong Sang

         

         

        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:

        Wong Sang

         

        Alice Stokes

        #6345
        TracyTracy
        Participant

          Crime and Punishment in Tetbury

           

          I noticed that there were quite a number of Brownings of Tetbury in the newspaper archives involved in criminal activities while doing a routine newspaper search to supplement the information in the usual ancestry records. I expanded the tree to include cousins, and offsping of cousins, in order to work out who was who and how, if at all, these individuals related to our Browning family.

          I was expecting to find some of our Brownings involved in the Swing Riots in Tetbury in 1830, but did not. Most of our Brownings (including cousins) were stone masons. Most of the rioters in 1830 were agricultural labourers.

          The Browning crimes are varied, and by todays standards, not for the most part terribly serious ~ you would be unlikely to receive a sentence of hard labour for being found in an outhouse with the intent to commit an unlawful act nowadays, or for being drunk.

          The central character in this chapter is Isaac Browning (my 4x great grandfather), who did not appear in any criminal registers, but the following individuals can be identified in the family structure through their relationship to him.

           

          RICHARD LOCK BROWNING born in 1853 was Isaac’s grandson, his son George’s son. Richard was a mason. In 1879 he and Henry Browning of the same age were sentenced to one month hard labour for stealing two pigeons in Tetbury. Henry Browning was Isaac’s nephews son.
          In 1883 Richard Browning, mason of Tetbury, was charged with obtaining food and lodging under false pretences, but was found not guilty and acquitted.
          In 1884 Richard Browning, mason of Tetbury, was sentenced to one month hard labour for game trespass.

          Richard had been fined a number of times in Tetbury:

          Richard Browning

          Richard Lock Browning was five feet eight inches tall, dark hair, grey eyes, an oval face and a dark complexion. He had two cuts on the back of his head (in February 1879) and a scar on his right eyebrow.

           

          HENRY BROWNING, who was stealing pigeons with Richard Lock Browning in 1879, (Isaac’s brother Williams grandson, son of George Browning and his wife Charity) was charged with being drunk in 1882 and ordered to pay a fine of one shilling and costs of fourteen shillings, or seven days hard labour.

          Henry was found guilty of gaming in the highway at Tetbury in 1872 and was sentenced to seven days hard labour. In 1882 Henry (who was also a mason) was charged with assault but discharged.
          Henry was five feet five inches tall, brown hair and brown eyes, a long visage and a fresh complexion.
          Henry emigrated with his daughter to Canada in 1913, and died in Vancouver in 1919.

           

          THOMAS BUCKINGHAM 1808-1846 (Isaacs daughter Janes husband) was charged with stealing a black gelding in Tetbury in 1838. No true bill. (A “no true bill” means the jury did not find probable cause to continue a case.)

          Thomas did however neglect to pay his taxes in 1832:

          Thomas Buckingham

           

          LEWIN BUCKINGHAM (grandson of Isaac, his daughter Jane’s son) was found guilty in 1846 stealing two fowls in Tetbury when he was sixteen years old.
          In 1846 he was sentence to one month hard labour (or pay ten shillings fine and ten shillings costs) for loitering with the intent to trespass in search of conies.
          A year later in 1847, he and three other young men were sentenced to four months hard labour for larceny.
          Lewin was five feet three inches tall, with brown hair and brown eyes, long visage, sallow complexion, and had a scar on his left arm.

           

          JOHN BUCKINGHAM born circa 1832, a Tetbury labourer (Isaac’s grandson, Lewin’s brother) was sentenced to six weeks hard labour for larceny in 1855 for stealing a duck in Cirencester. The notes on the register mention that he had been employed by Mr LOCK, Angel Inn. (John’s grandmother was Mary Lock so this is likely a relative).

          John Buckingham

           

          The previous year in 1854 John was sentenced to one month or a one pound fine for assaulting and beating W. Wood.
          John was five feet eight and three quarter inches tall, light brown hair and grey eyes, an oval visage and a fresh complexion. He had a scar on his left arm and inside his right knee.

           

          JOSEPH PERRET was born circa 1831 and he was a Tetbury labourer. (He was Isaac’s granddaughter Charlotte Buckingham’s husband)
          In 1855 he assaulted William Wood and was sentenced to one month or a two pound ten shilling fine. Was it the same W Wood that his wifes cousin John assaulted the year before?
          In 1869 Joseph was sentenced to one month hard labour for feloniously receiving a cupboard known to be stolen.

           

          JAMES BUCKINGAM born circa 1822 in Tetbury was a shoemaker. (Isaac’s nephew, his sister Hannah’s son)
          In 1854 the Tetbury shoemaker was sentenced to four months hard labour for stealing 30 lbs of lead off someones house.
          In 1856 the Tetbury shoemaker received two months hard labour or pay £2 fine and 12 s costs for being found in pursuit of game.
          In 1868 he was sentenced to two months hard labour for stealing a gander. A unspecified previous conviction is noted.
          1871 the Tetbury shoemaker was found in an outhouse for an unlawful purpose and received ten days hard labour. The register notes that his sister is Mrs Cook, the Green, Tetbury. (James sister Prudence married Thomas Cook)
          James sister Charlotte married a shoemaker and moved to UTAH.
          James was five feet eight inches tall, dark hair and blue eyes, a long visage and a florid complexion. He had a scar on his forehead and a mole on the right side of his neck and abdomen, and a scar on the right knee.

          #6344
          TracyTracy
          Participant

            The Tetbury Riots

             

            While researching the Tetbury riots  (I had found some Browning names in the newspaper archives in association with the uprisings) I came across an article called Elizabeth Parker, the Swing Riots, and the Tetbury parish clerk” by Jill Evans.

            I noted the name of the parish clerk, Daniel Cole, because I know someone else of that name. The incident in the article was 1830.

            I found the 1826 marriage in the Tetbury parish registers (where Daniel was the parish clerk) of my 4x great grandmothers sister Hesther Lock. One of the witnesses was her brother Charles, and the other was Daniel Cole, the parish clerk.

            Marriage of Lewin Chandler and Hesther Lock in 1826:

            Daniel Cole witness

             

            from the article:

            “The Swing Riots were disturbances which took place in 1830 and 1831, mostly in the southern counties of England. Agricultural labourers, who were already suffering due to low wages and a lack of work after several years of bad harvests, rose up when their employers introduced threshing machines into their workplaces. The riots got their name from the threatening letters which were sent to farmers and other employers, which were signed “Captain Swing.”

            The riots spread into Gloucestershire in November 1830, with the Tetbury area seeing the worst of the disturbances. Amongst the many people arrested afterwards was one woman, Elizabeth Parker. She has sometimes been cited as one of only two females who were transported for taking part in the Swing Riots. In fact, she was sentenced to be transported for this crime, but never sailed, as she was pardoned a few months after being convicted. However, less than a year after being released from Gloucester Gaol, she was back, awaiting trial for another offence. The circumstances in both of the cases she was tried for reveal an intriguing relationship with one Daniel Cole, parish clerk and assistant poor law officer in Tetbury….

            ….Elizabeth Parker was committed to Gloucester Gaol on 4 December 1830. In the Gaol Registers, she was described as being 23 and a “labourer”. She was in fact a prostitute, and she was unusual for the time in that she could read and write. She was charged on the oaths of Daniel Cole and others with having been among a mob which destroyed a threshing machine belonging to Jacob Hayward, at his farm in Beverstone, on 26 November.

            …..Elizabeth Parker was granted royal clemency in July 1831 and was released from prison. She returned to Tetbury and presumably continued in her usual occupation, but on 27 March 1832, she was committed to Gloucester Gaol again. This time, she was charged with stealing 2 five pound notes, 5 sovereigns and 5 half sovereigns, from the person of Daniel Cole.

            Elizabeth was tried at the Lent Assizes which began on 28 March, 1832. The details of her trial were reported in the Morning Post. Daniel Cole was in the “Boat Inn” (meaning the Boot Inn, I think) in Tetbury, when Elizabeth Parker came in. Cole “accompanied her down the yard”, where he stayed with her for about half an hour. The next morning, he realised that all his money was gone. One of his five pound notes was identified by him in a shop, where Parker had bought some items.

            Under cross-examination, Cole said he was the assistant overseer of the poor and collector of public taxes of the parish of Tetbury. He was married with one child. He went in to the inn at about 9 pm, and stayed about 2 hours, drinking in the parlour, with the landlord, Elizabeth Parker, and two others. He was not drunk, but he was “rather fresh.” He gave the prisoner no money. He saw Elizabeth Parker next morning at the Prince and Princess public house. He didn’t drink with her or give her any money. He did give her a shilling after she was committed. He never said that he would not have prosecuted her “if it was not for her own tongue”. (Presumably meaning he couldn’t trust her to keep her mouth shut.)”

            Contemporary illustration of the Swing riots:

            Swing Riots

             

            Captain Swing was the imaginary leader agricultural labourers who set fire to barns and haystacks in the southern and eastern counties of England from 1830. Although the riots were ruthlessly put down (19 hanged, 644 imprisoned and 481 transported), the rural agitation led the new Whig government to establish a Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and its report provided the basis for the 1834 New Poor Law enacted after the Great Reform Bills of 1833.

            An original portrait of Captain Swing hand coloured lithograph circa 1830:

            Captain Swing

            #6342
            TracyTracy
            Participant

              Brownings of Tetbury

              Tetbury 1839

               

              Isaac Browning (1784-1848) married Mary Lock (1787-1870) in Tetbury in 1806. Both of them were born in Tetbury, Gloucestershire. Isaac was a stone mason. Between 1807 and 1832 they baptised fourteen children in Tetbury, and on 8 Nov 1829 Isaac and Mary baptised five daughters all on the same day.

              I considered that they may have been quintuplets, with only the last born surviving, which would have answered my question about the name of the house La Quinta in Broadway, the home of Eliza Browning and Thomas Stokes son Fred. However, the other four daughters were found in various records and they were not all born the same year. (So I still don’t know why the house in Broadway had such an unusual name).

              Their son George was born and baptised in 1827, but Louisa born 1821, Susan born 1822, Hesther born 1823 and Mary born 1826, were not baptised until 1829 along with Charlotte born in 1828. (These birth dates are guesswork based on the age on later censuses.) Perhaps George was baptised promptly because he was sickly and not expected to survive. Isaac and Mary had a son George born in 1814 who died in 1823. Presumably the five girls were healthy and could wait to be done as a job lot on the same day later.

              Eliza Browning (1814-1886), my great great great grandmother, had a baby six years before she married Thomas Stokes. Her name was Ellen Harding Browning, which suggests that her fathers name was Harding. On the 1841 census seven year old Ellen was living with her grandfather Isaac Browning in Tetbury. Ellen Harding Browning married William Dee in Tetbury in 1857, and they moved to Western Australia.

              Ellen Harding Browning Dee: (photo found on ancestry website)

              Ellen Harding Browning

              OBITUARY. MRS. ELLEN DEE.
              A very old and respected resident of Dongarra, in the person of Mrs. Ellen Dee, passed peacefully away on Sept. 27, at the advanced age of 74 years.

              The deceased had been ailing for some time, but was about and actively employed until Wednesday, Sept. 20, whenn she was heard groaning by some neighbours, who immediately entered her place and found her lying beside the fireplace. Tho deceased had been to bed over night, and had evidently been in the act of lighting thc fire, when she had a seizure. For some hours she was conscious, but had lost the power of speech, and later on became unconscious, in which state she remained until her death.

              The deceased was born in Gloucestershire, England, in 1833, was married to William Dee in Tetbury Church 23 years later. Within a month she left England with her husband for Western Australian in the ship City oí Bristol. She resided in Fremantle for six months, then in Greenough for a short time, and afterwards (for 42 years) in Dongarra. She was, therefore, a colonist of about 51 years. She had a family of four girls and three boys, and five of her children survive her, also 35 grandchildren, and eight great grandchildren. She was very highly respected, and her sudden collapse came as a great shock to many.

               

              Eliza married Thomas Stokes (1816-1885) in September 1840 in Hempstead, Gloucestershire. On the 1841 census, Eliza and her mother Mary Browning (nee Lock) were staying with Thomas Lock and family in Cirencester. Strangely, Thomas Stokes has not been found thus far on the 1841 census, and Thomas and Eliza’s first child William James Stokes birth was registered in Witham, in Essex, on the 6th of September 1841.

              I don’t know why William James was born in Witham, or where Thomas was at the time of the census in 1841. One possibility is that as Thomas Stokes did a considerable amount of work with circus waggons, circus shooting galleries and so on as a journeyman carpenter initially and then later wheelwright, perhaps he was working with a traveling circus at the time.

              But back to the Brownings ~ more on William James Stokes to follow.

              One of Isaac and Mary’s fourteen children died in infancy:  Ann was baptised and died in 1811. Two of their children died at nine years old: the first George, and Mary who died in 1835.  Matilda was 21 years old when she died in 1844.

              Jane Browning (1808-)  married Thomas Buckingham in 1830 in Tetbury. In August 1838 Thomas was charged with feloniously stealing a black gelding.

              Susan Browning (1822-1879) married William Cleaver in November 1844 in Tetbury. Oddly thereafter they use the name Bowman on the census. On the 1851 census Mary Browning (Susan’s mother), widow, has grandson George Bowman born in 1844 living with her. The confusion with the Bowman and Cleaver names was clarified upon finding the criminal registers:

              30 January 1834. Offender: William Cleaver alias Bowman, Richard Bunting alias Barnfield and Jeremiah Cox, labourers of Tetbury. Crime: Stealing part of a dead fence from a rick barton in Tetbury, the property of Robert Tanner, farmer.

               

              And again in 1836:

              29 March 1836 Bowman, William alias Cleaver, of Tetbury, labourer age 18; 5’2.5” tall, brown hair, grey eyes, round visage with fresh complexion; several moles on left cheek, mole on right breast. Charged on the oath of Ann Washbourn & others that on the morning of the 31 March at Tetbury feloniously stolen a lead spout affixed to the dwelling of the said Ann Washbourn, her property. Found guilty 31 March 1836; Sentenced to 6 months.

              On the 1851 census Susan Bowman was a servant living in at a large drapery shop in Cheltenham. She was listed as 29 years old, married and born in Tetbury, so although it was unusual for a married woman not to be living with her husband, (or her son for that matter, who was living with his grandmother Mary Browning), perhaps her husband William Bowman alias Cleaver was in trouble again. By 1861 they are both living together in Tetbury: William was a plasterer, and they had three year old Isaac and Thomas, one year old. In 1871 William was still a plasterer in Tetbury, living with wife Susan, and sons Isaac and Thomas. Interestingly, a William Cleaver is living next door but one!

              Susan was 56 when she died in Tetbury in 1879.

               

              Three of the Browning daughters went to London.

              Louisa Browning (1821-1873) married Robert Claxton, coachman, in 1848 in Bryanston Square, Westminster, London. Ester Browning was a witness.

              Ester Browning (1823-1893)(or Hester) married Charles Hudson Sealey, cabinet maker, in Bethnal Green, London, in 1854. Charles was born in Tetbury. Charlotte Browning was a witness.

              Charlotte Browning (1828-1867?) was admitted to St Marylebone workhouse in London for “parturition”, or childbirth, in 1860. She was 33 years old.  A birth was registered for a Charlotte Browning, no mothers maiden name listed, in 1860 in Marylebone. A death was registered in Camden, buried in Marylebone, for a Charlotte Browning in 1867 but no age was recorded.  As the age and parents were usually recorded for a childs death, I assume this was Charlotte the mother.

              I found Charlotte on the 1851 census by chance while researching her mother Mary Lock’s siblings.  Hesther Lock married Lewin Chandler, and they were living in Stepney, London.  Charlotte is listed as a neice. Although Browning is mistranscribed as Broomey, the original page says Browning. Another mistranscription on this record is Hesthers birthplace which is transcribed as Yorkshire. The original image shows Gloucestershire.

               

              Isaac and Mary’s first son was John Browning (1807-1860). John married Hannah Coates in 1834. John’s brother Charles Browning (1819-1853) married Eliza Coates in 1842. Perhaps they were sisters. On the 1861 census Hannah Browning, John’s wife, was a visitor in the Harding household in a village called Coates near Tetbury. Thomas Harding born in 1801 was the head of the household. Perhaps he was the father of Ellen Harding Browning.

              George Browning (1828-1870) married Louisa Gainey in Tetbury, and died in Tetbury at the age of 42.  Their son Richard Lock Browning, a 32 year old mason, was sentenced to one month hard labour for game tresspass in Tetbury in 1884.

              Isaac Browning (1832-1857) was the youngest son of Isaac and Mary. He was just 25 years old when he died in Tetbury.

              #6265
              TracyTracy
              Participant

                From Tanganyika with Love

                continued  ~ part 6

                With thanks to Mike Rushby.

                Mchewe 6th June 1937

                Dearest Family,

                Home again! We had an uneventful journey. Kate was as good as gold all the
                way. We stopped for an hour at Bulawayo where we had to change trains but
                everything was simplified for me by a very pleasant man whose wife shared my
                compartment. Not only did he see me through customs but he installed us in our new
                train and his wife turned up to see us off with magazines for me and fruit and sweets for
                Kate. Very, very kind, don’t you think?

                Kate and I shared the compartment with a very pretty and gentle girl called
                Clarice Simpson. She was very worried and upset because she was going home to
                Broken Hill in response to a telegram informing her that her young husband was
                dangerously ill from Blackwater Fever. She was very helpful with Kate whose
                cheerfulness helped Clarice, I think, though I, quite unintentionally was the biggest help
                at the end of our journey. Remember the partial dentures I had had made just before
                leaving Cape Town? I know I shall never get used to the ghastly things, I’ve had them
                two weeks now and they still wobble. Well this day I took them out and wrapped them
                in a handkerchief, but when we were packing up to leave the train I could find the
                handkerchief but no teeth! We searched high and low until the train had slowed down to
                enter Broken Hill station. Then Clarice, lying flat on the floor, spied the teeth in the dark
                corner under the bottom bunk. With much stretching she managed to retrieve the
                dentures covered in grime and fluff. My look of horror, when I saw them, made young
                Clarice laugh. She was met at the station by a very grave elderly couple. I do wonder
                how things turned out for her.

                I stayed overnight with Kate at the Great Northern Hotel, and we set off for
                Mbeya by plane early in the morning. One of our fellow passengers was a young
                mother with a three week old baby. How ideas have changed since Ann was born. This
                time we had a smooth passage and I was the only passenger to get airsick. Although
                there were other women passengers it was a man once again, who came up and
                offered to help. Kate went off with him amiably and he entertained her until we touched
                down at Mbeya.

                George was there to meet us with a wonderful surprise, a little red two seater
                Ford car. She is a bit battered and looks a bit odd because the boot has been
                converted into a large wooden box for carrying raw salt, but she goes like the wind.
                Where did George raise the cash to buy a car? Whilst we were away he found a small
                cave full of bat guano near a large cave which is worked by a man called Bob Sargent.
                As Sargent did not want any competition he bought the contents of the cave from
                George giving him the small car as part payment.

                It was lovely to return to our little home and find everything fresh and tidy and the
                garden full of colour. But it was heartbreaking to go into the bedroom and see George’s
                precious forgotten boots still standing by his empty bed.

                With much love,
                Eleanor.

                Mchewe 25th June 1937

                Dearest Family,

                Last Friday George took Kate and me in the little red Ford to visit Mr Sargent’s
                camp on the Songwe River which cuts the Mbeya-Mbosi road. Mr Sargent bought
                Hicky-Wood’s guano deposit and also our small cave and is making a good living out of
                selling the bat guano to the coffee farmers in this province. George went to try to interest
                him in a guano deposit near Kilwa in the Southern Province. Mr Sargent agreed to pay
                25 pounds to cover the cost of the car trip and pegging costs. George will make the trip
                to peg the claim and take samples for analysis. If the quality is sufficiently high, George
                and Mr Sargent will go into partnership. George will work the claim and ship out the
                guano from Kilwa which is on the coast of the Southern Province of Tanganyika. So now
                we are busy building castles in the air once more.

                On Saturday we went to Mbeya where George had to attend a meeting of the
                Trout Association. In the afternoon he played in a cricket match so Kate and I spent the
                whole day with the wife of the new Superintendent of Police. They have a very nice
                new house with lawns and a sunken rose garden. Kate had a lovely romp with Kit, her
                three year old son.

                Mrs Wolten also has two daughters by a previous marriage. The elder girl said to
                me, “Oh Mrs Rushby your husband is exactly like the strong silent type of man I
                expected to see in Africa but he is the only one I have seen. I think he looks exactly like
                those men in the ‘Barney’s Tobacco’ advertisements.”

                I went home with a huge pile of magazines to keep me entertained whilst
                George is away on the Kilwa trip.

                Lots of love,
                Eleanor.

                Mchewe 9th July 1937

                Dearest Family,

                George returned on Monday from his Kilwa safari. He had an entertaining
                tale to tell.

                Before he approached Mr Sargent about going shares in the Kilwa guano
                deposit he first approached a man on the Lupa who had done very well out of a small
                gold reef. This man, however said he was not interested so you can imagine how
                indignant George was when he started on his long trip, to find himself being trailed by
                this very man and a co-driver in a powerful Ford V8 truck. George stopped his car and
                had some heated things to say – awful threats I imagine as to what would happen to
                anyone who staked his claim. Then he climbed back into our ancient little two seater and
                went off like a bullet driving all day and most of the night. As the others took turns in
                driving you can imagine what a feat it was for George to arrive in Kilwa ahead of them.
                When they drove into Kilwa he met them with a bright smile and a bit of bluff –
                quite justifiable under the circumstances I think. He said, you chaps can have a rest now,
                you’re too late.” He then whipped off and pegged the claim. he brought some samples
                of guano back but until it has been analysed he will not know whether the guano will be
                an economic proposition or not. George is not very hopeful. He says there is a good
                deal of sand mixed with the guano and that much of it was damp.

                The trip was pretty eventful for Kianda, our houseboy. The little two seater car
                had been used by its previous owner for carting bags of course salt from his salt pans.
                For this purpose the dicky seat behind the cab had been removed, and a kind of box
                built into the boot of the car. George’s camp kit and provisions were packed into this
                open box and Kianda perched on top to keep an eye on the belongings. George
                travelled so fast on the rough road that at some point during the night Kianda was
                bumped off in the middle of the Game Reserve. George did not notice that he was
                missing until the next morning. He concluded, quite rightly as it happened, that Kianda
                would be picked up by the rival truck so he continued his journey and Kianda rejoined
                him at Kilwa.

                Believe it or not, the same thing happened on the way back but fortunately this
                time George noticed his absence. He stopped the car and had just started back on his
                tracks when Kianda came running down the road still clutching the unlighted storm lamp
                which he was holding in his hand when he fell. The glass was not even cracked.
                We are finding it difficult just now to buy native chickens and eggs. There has
                been an epidemic amongst the poultry and one hesitates to eat the survivors. I have a
                brine tub in which I preserve our surplus meat but I need the chickens for soup.
                I hope George will be home for some months. He has arranged to take a Mr
                Blackburn, a wealthy fruit farmer from Elgin, Cape, on a hunting safari during September
                and October and that should bring in some much needed cash. Lillian Eustace has
                invited Kate and me to spend the whole of October with her in Tukuyu.
                I am so glad that you so much enjoy having Ann and George with you. We miss
                them dreadfully. Kate is a pretty little girl and such a little madam. You should hear the
                imperious way in which she calls the kitchenboy for her meals. “Boy Brekkis, Boy Lunch,
                and Boy Eggy!” are her three calls for the day. She knows no Ki-Swahili.

                Eleanor

                Mchewe 8th October 1937

                Dearest Family,

                I am rapidly becoming as superstitious as our African boys. They say the wild
                animals always know when George is away from home and come down to have their
                revenge on me because he has killed so many.

                I am being besieged at night by a most beastly leopard with a half grown cub. I
                have grown used to hearing leopards grunt as they hunt in the hills at night but never
                before have I had one roaming around literally under the windows. It has been so hot at
                night lately that I have been sleeping with my bedroom door open onto the verandah. I
                felt quite safe because the natives hereabouts are law-abiding and in any case I always
                have a boy armed with a club sleeping in the kitchen just ten yards away. As an added
                precaution I also have a loaded .45 calibre revolver on my bedside table, and Fanny
                our bullterrier, sleeps on the mat by my bed. I am also looking after Barney, a fine
                Airedale dog belonging to the Costers. He slept on a mat by the open bedroom door
                near a dimly burning storm lamp.

                As usual I went to sleep with an easy mind on Monday night, but was awakened
                in the early hours of Tuesday by the sound of a scuffle on the front verandah. The noise
                was followed by a scream of pain from Barney. I jumped out of bed and, grabbing the
                lamp with my left hand and the revolver in my right, I rushed outside just in time to see
                two animal figures roll over the edge of the verandah into the garden below. There they
                engaged in a terrific tug of war. Fortunately I was too concerned for Barney to be
                nervous. I quickly fired two shots from the revolver, which incidentally makes a noise like
                a cannon, and I must have startled the leopard for both animals, still locked together,
                disappeared over the edge of the terrace. I fired two more shots and in a few moments
                heard the leopard making a hurried exit through the dry leaves which lie thick under the
                wild fig tree just beyond the terrace. A few seconds later Barney appeared on the low
                terrace wall. I called his name but he made no move to come but stood with hanging
                head. In desperation I rushed out, felt blood on my hands when I touched him, so I
                picked him up bodily and carried him into the house. As I regained the verandah the boy
                appeared, club in hand, having been roused by the shots. He quickly grasped what had
                happened when he saw my blood saturated nightie. He fetched a bowl of water and a
                clean towel whilst I examined Barney’s wounds. These were severe, the worst being a
                gaping wound in his throat. I washed the gashes with a strong solution of pot permang
                and I am glad to say they are healing remarkably well though they are bound to leave
                scars. Fanny, very prudently, had taken no part in the fighting except for frenzied barking
                which she kept up all night. The shots had of course wakened Kate but she seemed
                more interested than alarmed and kept saying “Fanny bark bark, Mummy bang bang.
                Poor Barney lots of blood.”

                In the morning we inspected the tracks in the garden. There was a shallow furrow
                on the terrace where Barney and the leopard had dragged each other to and fro and
                claw marks on the trunk of the wild fig tree into which the leopard climbed after I fired the
                shots. The affair was of course a drama after the Africans’ hearts and several of our
                shamba boys called to see me next day to make sympathetic noises and discuss the
                affair.

                I went to bed early that night hoping that the leopard had been scared off for
                good but I must confess I shut all windows and doors. Alas for my hopes of a restful
                night. I had hardly turned down the lamp when the leopard started its terrifying grunting
                just under the bedroom windows. If only she would sniff around quietly I should not
                mind, but the noise is ghastly, something like the first sickening notes of a braying
                donkey, amplified here by the hills and the gorge which is only a stones throw from the
                bedroom. Barney was too sick to bark but Fanny barked loud enough for two and the more
                frantic she became the hungrier the leopard sounded. Kate of course woke up and this
                time she was frightened though I assured her that the noise was just a donkey having
                fun. Neither of us slept until dawn when the leopard returned to the hills. When we
                examined the tracks next morning we found that the leopard had been accompanied by
                a fair sized cub and that together they had prowled around the house, kitchen, and out
                houses, visiting especially the places to which the dogs had been during the day.
                As I feel I cannot bear many more of these nights, I am sending a note to the
                District Commissioner, Mbeya by the messenger who takes this letter to the post,
                asking him to send a game scout or an armed policeman to deal with the leopard.
                So don’t worry, for by the time this reaches you I feel sure this particular trouble
                will be over.

                Eleanor.

                Mchewe 17th October 1937

                Dearest Family,

                More about the leopard I fear! My messenger returned from Mbeya to say that
                the District Officer was on safari so he had given the message to the Assistant District
                Officer who also apparently left on safari later without bothering to reply to my note, so
                there was nothing for me to do but to send for the village Nimrod and his muzzle loader
                and offer him a reward if he could frighten away or kill the leopard.

                The hunter, Laza, suggested that he should sleep at the house so I went to bed
                early leaving Laza and his two pals to make themselves comfortable on the living room
                floor by the fire. Laza was armed with a formidable looking muzzle loader, crammed I
                imagine with nuts and bolts and old rusty nails. One of his pals had a spear and the other
                a panga. This fellow was also in charge of the Petromax pressure lamp whose light was
                hidden under a packing case. I left the campaign entirely to Laza’s direction.
                As usual the leopard came at midnight stealing down from the direction of the
                kitchen and announcing its presence and position with its usual ghastly grunts. Suddenly
                pandemonium broke loose on the back verandah. I heard the roar of the muzzle loader
                followed by a vigourous tattoo beaten on an empty paraffin tin and I rushed out hoping
                to find the dead leopard. however nothing of the kind had happened except that the
                noise must have scared the beast because she did not return again that night. Next
                morning Laza solemnly informed me that, though he had shot many leopards in his day,
                this was no ordinary leopard but a “sheitani” (devil) and that as his gun was no good
                against witchcraft he thought he might as well retire from the hunt. Scared I bet, and I
                don’t blame him either.

                You can imagine my relief when a car rolled up that afternoon bringing Messers
                Stewart and Griffiths, two farmers who live about 15 miles away, between here and
                Mbeya. They had a note from the Assistant District Officer asking them to help me and
                they had come to set up a trap gun in the garden. That night the leopard sniffed all
                around the gun and I had the added strain of waiting for the bang and wondering what I
                should do if the beast were only wounded. I conjured up horrible visions of the two little
                totos trotting up the garden path with the early morning milk and being horribly mauled,
                but I needn’t have worried because the leopard was far too wily to be caught that way.
                Two more ghastly nights passed and then I had another visitor, a Dr Jackson of
                the Tsetse Department on safari in the District. He listened sympathetically to my story
                and left his shotgun and some SSG cartridges with me and instructed me to wait until the
                leopard was pretty close and blow its b—– head off. It was good of him to leave his
                gun. George always says there are three things a man should never lend, ‘His wife, his
                gun and his dog.’ (I think in that order!)I felt quite cheered by Dr Jackson’s visit and sent
                once again for Laza last night and arranged a real show down. In the afternoon I draped
                heavy blankets over the living room windows to shut out the light of the pressure lamp
                and the four of us, Laza and his two stooges and I waited up for the leopard. When we
                guessed by her grunts that she was somewhere between the kitchen and the back door
                we all rushed out, first the boy with the panga and the lamp, next Laza with his muzzle
                loader, then me with the shotgun followed closely by the boy with the spear. What a
                farce! The lamp was our undoing. We were blinded by the light and did not even
                glimpse the leopard which made off with a derisive grunt. Laza said smugly that he knew
                it was hopeless to try and now I feel tired and discouraged too.

                This morning I sent a runner to Mbeya to order the hotel taxi for tomorrow and I
                shall go to friends in Mbeya for a day or two and then on to Tukuyu where I shall stay
                with the Eustaces until George returns from Safari.

                Eleanor.

                Mchewe 18th November 1937

                My darling Ann,

                Here we are back in our own home and how lovely it is to have Daddy back from
                safari. Thank you very much for your letter. I hope by now you have got mine telling you
                how very much I liked the beautiful tray cloth you made for my birthday. I bet there are
                not many little girls of five who can embroider as well as you do, darling. The boy,
                Matafari, washes and irons it so carefully and it looks lovely on the tea tray.

                Daddy and I had some fun last night. I was in bed and Daddy was undressing
                when we heard a funny scratching noise on the roof. I thought it was the leopard. Daddy
                quickly loaded his shotgun and ran outside. He had only his shirt on and he looked so
                funny. I grabbed the loaded revolver from the cupboard and ran after Dad in my nightie
                but after all the rush it was only your cat, Winnie, though I don’t know how she managed
                to make such a noise. We felt so silly, we laughed and laughed.

                Kate talks a lot now but in such a funny way you would laugh to her her. She
                hears the houseboys call me Memsahib so sometimes instead of calling me Mummy
                she calls me “Oompaab”. She calls the bedroom a ‘bippon’ and her little behind she
                calls her ‘sittendump’. She loves to watch Mandawi’s cattle go home along the path
                behind the kitchen. Joseph your donkey, always leads the cows. He has a lazy life now.
                I am glad you had such fun on Guy Fawkes Day. You will be sad to leave
                Plumstead but I am sure you will like going to England on the big ship with granny Kate.
                I expect you will start school when you get to England and I am sure you will find that
                fun.

                God bless my dear little girl. Lots of love from Daddy and Kate,
                and Mummy

                Mchewe 18th November 1937

                Hello George Darling,

                Thank you for your lovely drawing of Daddy shooting an elephant. Daddy says
                that the only thing is that you have drawn him a bit too handsome.

                I went onto the verandah a few minutes ago to pick a banana for Kate from the
                bunch hanging there and a big hornet flew out and stung my elbow! There are lots of
                them around now and those stinging flies too. Kate wears thick corduroy dungarees so
                that she will not get her fat little legs bitten. She is two years old now and is a real little
                pickle. She loves running out in the rain so I have ordered a pair of red Wellingtons and a
                tiny umbrella from a Nairobi shop for her Christmas present.

                Fanny’s puppies have their eyes open now and have very sharp little teeth.
                They love to nip each other. We are keeping the fiercest little one whom we call Paddy
                but are giving the others to friends. The coffee bushes are full of lovely white flowers
                and the bees and ants are very busy stealing their honey.

                Yesterday a troop of baboons came down the hill and Dad shot a big one to
                scare the others off. They are a nuisance because they steal the maize and potatoes
                from the native shambas and then there is not enough food for the totos.
                Dad and I are very proud of you for not making a fuss when you went to the
                dentist to have that tooth out.

                Bye bye, my fine little son.
                Three bags full of love from Kate, Dad and Mummy.

                Mchewe 12th February, 1938

                Dearest Family,

                here is some news that will please you. George has been offered and has
                accepted a job as Forester at Mbulu in the Northern Province of Tanganyika. George
                would have preferred a job as Game Ranger, but though the Game Warden, Philip
                Teare, is most anxious to have him in the Game Department, there is no vacancy at
                present. Anyway if one crops up later, George can always transfer from one
                Government Department to another. Poor George, he hates the idea of taking a job. He
                says that hitherto he has always been his own master and he detests the thought of
                being pushed around by anyone.

                Now however he has no choice. Our capitol is almost exhausted and the coffee
                market shows no signs of improving. With three children and another on the way, he
                feels he simply must have a fixed income. I shall be sad to leave this little farm. I love
                our little home and we have been so very happy here, but my heart rejoices at the
                thought of overseas leave every thirty months. Now we shall be able to fetch Ann and
                George from England and in three years time we will all be together in Tanganyika once
                more.

                There is no sale for farms so we will just shut the house and keep on a very small
                labour force just to keep the farm from going derelict. We are eating our hens but will
                take our two dogs, Fanny and Paddy with us.

                One thing I shall be glad to leave is that leopard. She still comes grunting around
                at night but not as badly as she did before. I do not mind at all when George is here but
                until George was accepted for this forestry job I was afraid he might go back to the
                Diggings and I should once more be left alone to be cursed by the leopard’s attentions.
                Knowing how much I dreaded this George was most anxious to shoot the leopard and
                for weeks he kept his shotgun and a powerful torch handy at night.

                One night last week we woke to hear it grunting near the kitchen. We got up very
                quietly and whilst George loaded the shotgun with SSG, I took the torch and got the
                heavy revolver from the cupboard. We crept out onto the dark verandah where George
                whispered to me to not switch on the torch until he had located the leopard. It was pitch
                black outside so all he could do was listen intently. And then of course I spoilt all his
                plans. I trod on the dog’s tin bowl and made a terrific clatter! George ordered me to
                switch on the light but it was too late and the leopard vanished into the long grass of the
                Kalonga, grunting derisively, or so it sounded.

                She never comes into the clearing now but grunts from the hillside just above it.

                Eleanor.

                Mbulu 18th March, 1938

                Dearest Family,

                Journeys end at last. here we are at Mbulu, installed in our new quarters which are
                as different as they possibly could be from our own cosy little home at Mchewe. We
                live now, my dears, in one wing of a sort of ‘Beau Geste’ fort but I’ll tell you more about
                it in my next letter. We only arrived yesterday and have not had time to look around.
                This letter will tell you just about our trip from Mbeya.

                We left the farm in our little red Ford two seater with all our portable goods and
                chattels plus two native servants and the two dogs. Before driving off, George took one
                look at the flattened springs and declared that he would be surprised if we reached
                Mbeya without a breakdown and that we would never make Mbulu with the car so
                overloaded.

                However luck was with us. We reached Mbeya without mishap and at one of the
                local garages saw a sturdy used Ford V8 boxbody car for sale. The garage agreed to
                take our small car as part payment and George drew on our little remaining capitol for the
                rest. We spent that night in the house of the Forest Officer and next morning set out in
                comfort for the Northern Province of Tanganyika.

                I had done the journey from Dodoma to Mbeya seven years before so was
                familiar with the scenery but the road was much improved and the old pole bridges had
                been replaced by modern steel ones. Kate was as good as gold all the way. We
                avoided hotels and camped by the road and she found this great fun.
                The road beyond Dodoma was new to me and very interesting country, flat and
                dry and dusty, as little rain falls there. The trees are mostly thorn trees but here and there
                one sees a giant baobab, weird trees with fantastically thick trunks and fat squat branches
                with meagre foliage. The inhabitants of this area I found interesting though. They are
                called Wagogo and are a primitive people who ape the Masai in dress and customs
                though they are much inferior to the Masai in physique. They are also great herders of
                cattle which, rather surprisingly, appear to thrive in that dry area.

                The scenery alters greatly as one nears Babati, which one approaches by a high
                escarpment from which one has a wonderful view of the Rift Valley. Babati township
                appears to be just a small group of Indian shops and shabby native houses, but I
                believe there are some good farms in the area. Though the little township is squalid,
                there is a beautiful lake and grand mountains to please the eye. We stopped only long
                enough to fill up with petrol and buy some foodstuffs. Beyond Babati there is a tsetse
                fly belt and George warned our two native servants to see that no tsetse flies settled on
                the dogs.

                We stopped for the night in a little rest house on the road about 80 miles from
                Arusha where we were to spend a few days with the Forest Officer before going on to
                Mbulu. I enjoyed this section of the road very much because it runs across wide plains
                which are bounded on the West by the blue mountains of the Rift Valley wall. Here for
                the first time I saw the Masai on their home ground guarding their vast herds of cattle. I
                also saw their strange primitive hovels called Manyattas, with their thorn walled cattle
                bomas and lots of plains game – giraffe, wildebeest, ostriches and antelope. Kate was
                wildly excited and entranced with the game especially the giraffe which stood gazing
                curiously and unafraid of us, often within a few yards of the road.

                Finally we came across the greatest thrill of all, my first view of Mt Meru the extinct
                volcano about 16,000 feet high which towers over Arusha township. The approach to
                Arusha is through flourishing coffee plantations very different alas from our farm at Mchewe. George says that at Arusha coffee growing is still a paying proposition
                because here the yield of berry per acre is much higher than in the Southern highlands
                and here in the North the farmers have not such heavy transport costs as the railway runs
                from Arusha to the port at Tanga.

                We stayed overnight at a rather second rate hotel but the food was good and we
                had hot baths and a good nights rest. Next day Tom Lewis the Forest Officer, fetched
                us and we spent a few days camping in a tent in the Lewis’ garden having meals at their
                home. Both Tom and Lillian Lewis were most friendly. Tom lewis explained to George
                what his work in the Mbulu District was to be, and they took us camping in a Forest
                Reserve where Lillian and her small son David and Kate and I had a lovely lazy time
                amidst beautiful surroundings. Before we left for Mbulu, Lillian took me shopping to buy
                material for curtains for our new home. She described the Forest House at Mbulu to me
                and it sounded delightful but alas, when we reached Mbulu we discovered that the
                Assistant District Officer had moved into the Forest House and we were directed to the
                Fort or Boma. The night before we left Arusha for Mbulu it rained very heavily and the
                road was very treacherous and slippery due to the surface being of ‘black cotton’ soil
                which has the appearance and consistency of chocolate blancmange, after rain. To get to
                Mbulu we had to drive back in the direction of Dodoma for some 70 miles and then turn
                to the right and drive across plains to the Great Rift Valley Wall. The views from this
                escarpment road which climbs this wall are magnificent. At one point one looks down
                upon Lake Manyara with its brilliant white beaches of soda.

                The drive was a most trying one for George. We had no chains for the wheels
                and several times we stuck in the mud and our two houseboys had to put grass and
                branches under the wheels to stop them from spinning. Quite early on in the afternoon
                George gave up all hope of reaching Mbulu that day and planned to spend the night in
                a little bush rest camp at Karatu. However at one point it looked as though we would not
                even reach this resthouse for late afternoon found us properly bogged down in a mess
                of mud at the bottom of a long and very steep hill. In spite of frantic efforts on the part of
                George and the two boys, all now very wet and muddy, the heavy car remained stuck.
                Suddenly five Masai men appeared through the bushes beside the road. They
                were all tall and angular and rather terrifying looking to me. Each wore only a blanket
                knotted over one shoulder and all were armed with spears. They lined up by the side of
                the road and just looked – not hostile but simply aloof and supercilious. George greeted
                them and said in Ki-Swahili, “Help to push and I will reward you.” But they said nothing,
                just drawing back imperceptibly to register disgust at the mere idea of manual labour.
                Their expressions said quite clearly “A Masai is a warrior and does not soil his hands.”
                George then did something which startled them I think, as much as me. He
                plucked their spears from their hands one by one and flung them into the back of the
                boxbody. “Now push!” he said, “And when we are safely out of the mud you shall have
                your spears back.” To my utter astonishment the Masai seemed to applaud George’s
                action. I think they admire courage in a man more than anything else. They pushed with a
                will and soon we were roaring up the long steep slope. “I can’t stop here” quoth George
                as up and up we went. The Masai were in mad pursuit with their blankets streaming
                behind. They took a very steep path which was a shortcut to the top. They are certainly
                amazing athletes and reached the top at the same time as the car. Their route of course
                was shorter but much more steep, yet they came up without any sign of fatigue to claim
                their spears and the money which George handed out with a friendly grin. The Masai
                took the whole episode in good heart and we parted on the most friendly terms.

                After a rather chilly night in the three walled shack, we started on the last lap of our
                journey yesterday morning in bright weather and made the trip to Mbulu without incident.

                Eleanor.

                Mbulu 24th March, 1938

                Dearest Family,

                Mbulu is an attractive station but living in this rather romantic looking fort has many
                disadvantages. Our quarters make up one side of the fort which is built up around a
                hollow square. The buildings are single storied but very tall in the German manner and
                there is a tower on one corner from which the Union Jack flies. The tower room is our
                sitting room, and one has very fine views from the windows of the rolling country side.
                However to reach this room one has to climb a steep flight of cement steps from the
                court yard. Another disadvantage of this tower room is that there is a swarm of bees in
                the roof and the stray ones drift down through holes in the ceiling and buzz angrily
                against the window panes or fly around in a most menacing manner.

                Ours are the only private quarters in the Fort. Two other sides of the Fort are
                used as offices, storerooms and court room and the fourth side is simply a thick wall with
                battlements and loopholes and a huge iron shod double door of enormous thickness
                which is always barred at sunset when the flag is hauled down. Two Police Askari always
                remain in the Fort on guard at night. The effect from outside the whitewashed fort is very
                romantic but inside it is hardly homely and how I miss my garden at Mchewe and the
                grass and trees.

                We have no privacy downstairs because our windows overlook the bare
                courtyard which is filled with Africans patiently waiting to be admitted to the courtroom as
                witnesses or spectators. The outside windows which overlook the valley are heavily
                barred. I can only think that the Germans who built this fort must have been very scared
                of the local natives.

                Our rooms are hardly cosy and are furnished with typical heavy German pieces.
                We have a vast bleak bedroom, a dining room and an enormous gloomy kitchen in
                which meals for the German garrison were cooked. At night this kitchen is alive with
                gigantic rats but fortunately they do not seem to care for the other rooms. To crown
                everything owls hoot and screech at night on the roof.

                On our first day here I wandered outside the fort walls with Kate and came upon a
                neatly fenced plot enclosing the graves of about fifteen South African soldiers killed by
                the Germans in the 1914-18 war. I understand that at least one of theses soldiers died in
                the courtyard here. The story goes, that during the period in the Great War when this fort
                was occupied by a troop of South African Horse, a German named Siedtendorf
                appeared at the great barred door at night and asked to speak to the officer in command
                of the Troop. The officer complied with this request and the small shutter in the door was
                opened so that he could speak with the German. The German, however, had not come
                to speak. When he saw the exposed face of the officer, he fired, killing him, and
                escaped into the dark night. I had this tale on good authority but cannot vouch for it. I do
                know though, that there are two bullet holes in the door beside the shutter. An unhappy
                story to think about when George is away, as he is now, and the moonlight throws queer
                shadows in the court yard and the owls hoot.

                However though I find our quarters depressing, I like Mbulu itself very much. It is
                rolling country, treeless except for the plantations of the Forestry Dept. The land is very
                fertile in the watered valleys but the grass on hills and plains is cropped to the roots by
                the far too numerous cattle and goats. There are very few Europeans on the station, only
                Mr Duncan, the District Officer, whose wife and children recently left for England, the
                Assistant District Officer and his wife, a bachelor Veterinary Officer, a Road Foreman and
                ourselves, and down in the village a German with an American wife and an elderly
                Irishman whom I have not met. The Government officials have a communal vegetable
                garden in the valley below the fort which keeps us well supplied with green stuff. 

                Most afternoons George, Kate and I go for walks after tea. On Fridays there is a
                little ceremony here outside the fort. In the late afternoon a little procession of small
                native schoolboys, headed by a drum and penny whistle band come marching up the
                road to a tune which sounds like ‘Two lovely black eyes”. They form up below our tower
                and as the flag is lowered for the day they play ‘God save the King’, and then march off
                again. It is quite a cheerful little ceremony.

                The local Africans are a skinny lot and, I should say, a poor tribe. They protect
                themselves against the cold by wrapping themselves in cotton blankets or a strip of
                unbleached sheeting. This they drape over their heads, almost covering their faces and
                the rest is wrapped closely round their bodies in the manner of a shroud. A most
                depressing fashion. They live in very primitive comfortless houses. They simply make a
                hollow in the hillside and build a front wall of wattle and daub. Into this rude shelter at night
                go cattle and goats, men, women, and children.

                Mbulu village has the usual mud brick and wattle dukas and wattle and daub
                houses. The chief trader is a Goan who keeps a surprisingly good variety of tinned
                foodstuffs and also sells hardware and soft goods.

                The Europeans here have been friendly but as you will have noted there are
                only two other women on station and no children at all to be companions for Kate.

                Eleanor.

                Mbulu 20th June 1938

                Dearest Family,

                Here we are on Safari with George at Babati where we are occupying a rest
                house on the slopes of Ufiome Mountain. The slopes are a Forest Reserve and
                George is supervising the clearing of firebreaks in preparation for the dry weather. He
                goes off after a very early breakfast and returns home in the late afternoon so Kate and I
                have long lazy days.

                Babati is a pleasant spot and the resthouse is quite comfortable. It is about a mile
                from the village which is just the usual collection of small mud brick and corrugated iron
                Indian Dukas. There are a few settlers in the area growing coffee, or going in for mixed
                farming but I don’t think they are doing very well. The farm adjoining the rest house is
                owned by Lord Lovelace but is run by a manager.

                George says he gets enough exercise clambering about all day on the mountain,
                so Kate and I do our walking in the mornings when George is busy, and we all relax in
                the evenings when George returns from his field work. Kate’s favourite walk is to the big
                block of mtama (sorghum) shambas lower down the hill. There are huge swarms of tiny
                grain eating birds around waiting the chance to plunder the mtama, so the crops are
                watched from sunrise to sunset.

                Crude observation platforms have been erected for this purpose in the centre of
                each field and the women and the young boys of the family concerned, take it in turn to
                occupy the platform and scare the birds. Each watcher has a sling and uses clods of
                earth for ammunition. The clod is placed in the centre of the sling which is then whirled
                around at arms length. Suddenly one end of the sling is released and the clod of earth
                flies out and shatters against the mtama stalks. The sling makes a loud whip like crack and
                the noise is quite startling and very effective in keeping the birds at a safe distance.

                Eleanor.

                Karatu 3rd July 1938

                Dearest Family,

                Still on safari you see! We left Babati ten days ago and passed through Mbulu
                on our way to this spot. We slept out of doors one night beside Lake Tiawa about eight
                miles from Mbulu. It was a peaceful spot and we enjoyed watching the reflection of the
                sunset on the lake and the waterhens and duck and pelicans settling down for the night.
                However it turned piercingly cold after sunset so we had an early supper and then all
                three of us lay down to sleep in the back of the boxbody (station wagon). It was a tight
                fit and a real case of ‘When Dad turns, we all turn.’

                Here at Karatu we are living in a grass hut with only three walls. It is rather sweet
                and looks like the setting for a Nativity Play. Kate and I share the only camp bed and
                George and the dogs sleep on the floor. The air here is very fresh and exhilarating and
                we all feel very fit. George is occupied all day supervising the cutting of firebreaks
                around existing plantations and the forest reserve of indigenous trees. Our camp is on
                the hillside and below us lie the fertile wheat lands of European farmers.

                They are mostly Afrikaners, the descendants of the Boer families who were
                invited by the Germans to settle here after the Boer War. Most of them are pro-British
                now and a few have called in here to chat to George about big game hunting. George
                gets on extremely well with them and recently attended a wedding where he had a
                lively time dancing at the reception. He likes the older people best as most are great
                individualists. One fine old man, surnamed von Rooyen, visited our camp. He is a Boer
                of the General Smuts type with spare figure and bearded face. George tells me he is a
                real patriarch with an enormous family – mainly sons. This old farmer fought against the
                British throughout the Boer War under General Smuts and again against the British in the
                German East Africa campaign when he was a scout and right hand man to Von Lettow. It
                is said that Von Lettow was able to stay in the field until the end of the Great War
                because he listened to the advise given to him by von Rooyen. However his dislike for
                the British does not extend to George as they have a mutual interest in big game
                hunting.

                Kate loves being on safari. She is now so accustomed to having me as her nurse
                and constant companion that I do not know how she will react to paid help. I shall have to
                get someone to look after her during my confinement in the little German Red Cross
                hospital at Oldeani.

                George has obtained permission from the District Commissioner, for Kate and
                me to occupy the Government Rest House at Oldeani from the end of July until the end
                of August when my baby is due. He will have to carry on with his field work but will join
                us at weekends whenever possible.

                Eleanor.

                Karatu 12th July 1938

                Dearest Family,

                Not long now before we leave this camp. We have greatly enjoyed our stay
                here in spite of the very chilly earl mornings and the nights when we sit around in heavy
                overcoats until our early bed time.

                Last Sunday I persuaded George to take Kate and me to the famous Ngoro-
                Ngoro Crater. He was not very keen to do so because the road is very bumpy for
                anyone in my interesting condition but I feel so fit that I was most anxious to take this
                opportunity of seeing the enormous crater. We may never be in this vicinity again and in
                any case safari will not be so simple with a small baby.

                What a wonderful trip it was! The road winds up a steep escarpment from which
                one gets a glorious birds eye view of the plains of the Great Rift Valley far, far below.
                The crater is immense. There is a road which skirts the rim in places and one has quite
                startling views of the floor of the crater about two thousand feet below.

                A camp for tourists has just been built in a clearing in the virgin forest. It is most
                picturesque as the camp buildings are very neatly constructed log cabins with very high
                pitched thatched roofs. We spent about an hour sitting on the grass near the edge of the
                crater enjoying the sunshine and the sharp air and really awe inspiring view. Far below us
                in the middle of the crater was a small lake and we could see large herds of game
                animals grazing there but they were too far away to be impressive, even seen through
                George’s field glasses. Most appeared to be wildebeest and zebra but I also picked
                out buffalo. Much more exciting was my first close view of a wild elephant. George
                pointed him out to me as we approached the rest camp on the inward journey. He
                stood quietly under a tree near the road and did not seem to be disturbed by the car
                though he rolled a wary eye in our direction. On our return journey we saw him again at
                almost uncomfortably close quarters. We rounded a sharp corner and there stood the
                elephant, facing us and slap in the middle of the road. He was busily engaged giving
                himself a dust bath but spared time to give us an irritable look. Fortunately we were on a
                slight slope so George quickly switched off the engine and backed the car quietly round
                the corner. He got out of the car and loaded his rifle, just in case! But after he had finished
                his toilet the elephant moved off the road and we took our chance and passed without
                incident.

                One notices the steepness of the Ngoro-Ngoro road more on the downward
                journey than on the way up. The road is cut into the side of the mountain so that one has
                a steep slope on one hand and a sheer drop on the other. George told me that a lorry
                coming down the mountain was once charged from behind by a rhino. On feeling and
                hearing the bash from behind the panic stricken driver drove off down the mountain as
                fast as he dared and never paused until he reached level ground at the bottom of the
                mountain. There was no sign of the rhino so the driver got out to examine his lorry and
                found the rhino horn embedded in the wooden tail end of the lorry. The horn had been
                wrenched right off!

                Happily no excitement of that kind happened to us. I have yet to see a rhino.

                Eleanor.

                Oldeani. 19th July 1938

                Dearest Family,

                Greetings from a lady in waiting! Kate and I have settled down comfortably in the
                new, solidly built Government Rest House which comprises one large living room and
                one large office with a connecting door. Outside there is a kitchen and a boys quarter.
                There are no resident Government officials here at Oldeani so the office is in use only
                when the District Officer from Mbulu makes his monthly visit. However a large Union
                Jack flies from a flagpole in the front of the building as a gentle reminder to the entirely
                German population of Oldeani that Tanganyika is now under British rule.

                There is quite a large community of German settlers here, most of whom are
                engaged in coffee farming. George has visited several of the farms in connection with his
                forestry work and says the coffee plantations look very promising indeed. There are also
                a few German traders in the village and there is a large boarding school for German
                children and also a very pleasant little hospital where I have arranged to have the baby.
                Right next door to the Rest House is a General Dealers Store run by a couple named
                Schnabbe. The shop is stocked with drapery, hardware, china and foodstuffs all
                imported from Germany and of very good quality. The Schnabbes also sell local farm
                produce, beautiful fresh vegetables, eggs and pure rich milk and farm butter. Our meat
                comes from a German butchery and it is a great treat to get clean, well cut meat. The
                sausages also are marvellous and in great variety.

                The butcher is an entertaining character. When he called round looking for custom I
                expected him to break out in a yodel any minute, as it was obvious from a glance that
                the Alps are his natural background. From under a green Tyrollean hat with feather,
                blooms a round beefy face with sparkling small eyes and such widely spaced teeth that
                one inevitably thinks of a garden rake. Enormous beefy thighs bulge from greasy
                lederhosen which are supported by the traditional embroidered braces. So far the
                butcher is the only cheery German, male or female, whom I have seen, and I have met
                most of the locals at the Schnabbe’s shop. Most of the men seem to have cultivated
                the grim Hitler look. They are all fanatical Nazis and one is usually greeted by a raised
                hand and Heil Hitler! All very theatrical. I always feel like crying in ringing tones ‘God
                Save the King’ or even ‘St George for England’. However the men are all very correct
                and courteous and the women friendly. The women all admire Kate and cry, “Ag, das
                kleine Englander.” She really is a picture with her rosy cheeks and huge grey eyes and
                golden curls. Kate is having a wonderful time playing with Manfried, the Scnabbe’s small
                son. Neither understands a word said by the other but that doesn’t seem to worry them.

                Before he left on safari, George took me to hospital for an examination by the
                nurse, Sister Marianne. She has not been long in the country and knows very little
                English but is determined to learn and carried on an animated, if rather quaint,
                conversation with frequent references to a pocket dictionary. She says I am not to worry
                because there is not doctor here. She is a very experienced midwife and anyway in an
                emergency could call on the old retired Veterinary Surgeon for assistance.
                I asked sister Marianne whether she knew of any German woman or girl who
                would look after Kate whilst I am in hospital and today a very top drawer German,
                bearing a strong likeness to ‘Little Willie’, called and offered the services of his niece who
                is here on a visit from Germany. I was rather taken aback and said, “Oh no Baron, your
                niece would not be the type I had in mind. I’m afraid I cannot pay much for a companion.”
                However the Baron was not to be discouraged. He told me that his niece is seventeen
                but looks twenty, that she is well educated and will make a cheerful companion. Her
                father wishes her to learn to speak English fluently and that is why the Baron wished her
                to come to me as a house daughter. As to pay, a couple of pounds a month for pocket
                money and her keep was all he had in mind. So with some misgivings I agreed to take
                the niece on as a companion as from 1st August.

                Eleanor.

                Oldeani. 10th August 1938

                Dearest Family,

                Never a dull moment since my young companion arrived. She is a striking looking
                girl with a tall boyish figure and very short and very fine dark hair which she wears
                severely slicked back. She wears tweeds, no make up but has shiny rosy cheeks and
                perfect teeth – she also,inevitably, has a man friend and I have an uncomfortable
                suspicion that it is because of him that she was planted upon me. Upon second
                thoughts though, maybe it was because of her excessive vitality, or even because of
                her healthy appetite! The Baroness, I hear is in poor health and I can imagine that such
                abundant health and spirit must have been quite overpowering. The name is Ingeborg,
                but she is called Mouche, which I believe means Mouse. Someone in her family must
                have a sense of humour.

                Her English only needed practice and she now chatters fluently so that I know her
                background and views on life. Mouche’s father is a personal friend of Goering. He was
                once a big noise in the German Airforce but is now connected with the car industry and
                travels frequently and intensively in Europe and America on business. Mouche showed
                me some snap shots of her family and I must say they look prosperous and charming.
                Mouche tells me that her father wants her to learn to speak English fluently so that
                she can get a job with some British diplomat in Cairo. I had immediate thought that I
                might be nursing a future Mata Hari in my bosom, but this was immediately extinguished
                when Mouche remarked that her father would like her to marry an Englishman. However
                it seems that the mere idea revolts her. “Englishmen are degenerates who swill whisky
                all day.” I pointed out that she had met George, who was a true blue Englishman, but
                was nevertheless a fine physical specimen and certainly didn’t drink all day. Mouche
                replied that George is not an Englishman but a hunter, as though that set him apart.
                Mouche is an ardent Hitler fan and an enthusiastic member of the Hitler Youth
                Movement. The house resounds with Hitler youth songs and when she is not singing,
                her gramophone is playing very stirring marching songs. I cannot understand a word,
                which is perhaps as well. Every day she does the most strenuous exercises watched
                with envy by me as my proportions are now those of a circus Big Top. Mouche eats a
                fantastic amount of meat and I feel it is a blessing that she is much admired by our
                Tyrollean butcher who now delivers our meat in person and adds as a token of his
                admiration some extra sausages for Mouche.

                I must confess I find her stimulating company as George is on safari most of the
                time and my evenings otherwise would be lonely. I am a little worried though about
                leaving Kate here with Mouche when I go to hospital. The dogs and Kate have not taken
                to her. I am trying to prepare Kate for the separation but she says, “She’s not my
                mummy. You are my dear mummy, and I want you, I want you.” George has got
                permission from the Provincial Forestry Officer to spend the last week of August here at
                the Rest House with me and I only hope that the baby will be born during that time.
                Kate adores her dad and will be perfectly happy to remain here with him.

                One final paragraph about Mouche. I thought all German girls were domesticated
                but not Mouche. I have Kesho-Kutwa here with me as cook and I have engaged a local
                boy to do the laundry. I however expected Mouche would take over making the
                puddings and pastry but she informed me that she can only bake a chocolate cake and
                absolutely nothing else. She said brightly however that she would do the mending. As
                there is none for her to do, she has rescued a large worn handkerchief of George’s and
                sits with her feet up listening to stirring gramophone records whilst she mends the
                handkerchief with exquisite darning.

                Eleanor.

                Oldeani. 20th August 1938

                Dearest Family,

                Just after I had posted my last letter I received what George calls a demi official
                letter from the District Officer informing me that I would have to move out of the Rest
                House for a few days as the Governor and his hangers on would be visiting Oldeani
                and would require the Rest House. Fortunately George happened to be here for a few
                hours and he arranged for Kate and Mouche and me to spend a few days at the
                German School as borders. So here I am at the school having a pleasant and restful
                time and much entertained by all the goings on.

                The school buildings were built with funds from Germany and the school is run on
                the lines of a contemporary German school. I think the school gets a grant from the
                Tanganyika Government towards running expenses, but I am not sure. The school hall is
                dominated by a more than life sized oil painting of Adolf Hitler which, at present, is
                flanked on one side by the German Flag and on the other by the Union Jack. I cannot
                help feeling that the latter was put up today for the Governor’s visit today.
                The teachers are very amiable. We all meet at mealtimes, and though few of the
                teachers speak English, the ones who do are anxious to chatter. The headmaster is a
                scholarly man but obviously anti-British. He says he cannot understand why so many
                South Africans are loyal to Britain – or rather to England. “They conquered your country
                didn’t they?” I said that that had never occurred to me and that anyway I was mainly of
                Scots descent and that loyalty to the crown was natural to me. “But the English
                conquered the Scots and yet you are loyal to England. That I cannot understand.” “Well I
                love England,” said I firmly, ”and so do all British South Africans.” Since then we have
                stuck to English literature. Shakespeare, Lord Byron and Galsworthy seem to be the
                favourites and all, thank goodness, make safe topics for conversation.
                Mouche is in her element but Kate and I do not enjoy the food which is typically
                German and consists largely of masses of fat pork and sauerkraut and unfamiliar soups. I
                feel sure that the soup at lunch today had blobs of lemon curd in it! I also find most
                disconcerting the way that everyone looks at me and says, “Bon appetite”, with much
                smiling and nodding so I have to fight down my nausea and make a show of enjoying
                the meals.

                The teacher whose room adjoins mine is a pleasant woman and I take my
                afternoon tea with her. She, like all the teachers, has a large framed photo of Hitler on her
                wall flanked by bracket vases of fresh flowers. One simply can’t get away from the man!
                Even in the dormitories each child has a picture of Hitler above the bed. Hitler accepting
                flowers from a small girl, or patting a small boy on the head. Even the children use the
                greeting ‘Heil Hitler’. These German children seem unnaturally prim when compared with
                my cheerful ex-pupils in South Africa but some of them are certainly very lovely to look
                at.

                Tomorrow Mouche, Kate and I return to our quarters in the Rest House and in a
                few days George will join us for a week.

                Eleanor.

                Oldeani Hospital. 9th September 1938

                Dearest Family,

                You will all be delighted to hear that we have a second son, whom we have
                named John. He is a darling, so quaint and good. He looks just like a little old man with a
                high bald forehead fringed around the edges with a light brown fluff. George and I call
                him Johnny Jo because he has a tiny round mouth and a rather big nose and reminds us
                of A.A.Milne’s ‘Jonathan Jo has a mouth like an O’ , but Kate calls him, ‘My brother John’.
                George was not here when he was born on September 5th, just two minutes
                before midnight. He left on safari on the morning of the 4th and, of course, that very night
                the labour pains started. Fortunately Kate was in bed asleep so Mouche walked with
                me up the hill to the hospital where I was cheerfully received by Sister Marianne who
                had everything ready for the confinement. I was lucky to have such an experienced
                midwife because this was a breech birth and sister had to manage single handed. As
                there was no doctor present I was not allowed even a sniff of anaesthetic. Sister slaved
                away by the light of a pressure lamp endeavouring to turn the baby having first shoved
                an inverted baby bath under my hips to raise them.

                What a performance! Sister Marianne was very much afraid that she might not be
                able to save the baby and great was our relief when at last she managed to haul him out
                by the feet. One slap and the baby began to cry without any further attention so Sister
                wrapped him up in a blanket and took Johnny to her room for the night. I got very little
                sleep but was so thankful to have the ordeal over that I did not mind even though I
                heard a hyaena cackling and calling under my window in a most evil way.
                When Sister brought Johnny to me in the early morning I stared in astonishment.
                Instead of dressing him in one of his soft Viyella nighties, she had dressed him in a short
                sleeved vest of knitted cotton with a cotton cloth swayed around his waist sarong
                fashion. When I protested, “But Sister why is the baby not dressed in his own clothes?”
                She answered firmly, “I find it is not allowed. A baby’s clotheses must be boiled and I
                cannot boil clotheses of wool therefore your baby must wear the clotheses of the Red
                Cross.”

                It was the same with the bedding. Poor Johnny lies all day in a deep wicker
                basket with a detachable calico lining. There is no pillow under his head but a vast kind of
                calico covered pillow is his only covering. There is nothing at all cosy and soft round my
                poor baby. I said crossly to the Sister, “As every thing must be so sterile, I wonder you
                don’t boil me too.” This she ignored.

                When my message reached George he dashed back to visit us. Sister took him
                first to see the baby and George was astonished to see the baby basket covered by a
                sheet. “She has the poor little kid covered up like a bloody parrot,” he told me. So I
                asked him to go at once to buy a square of mosquito netting to replace the sheet.
                Kate is quite a problem. She behaves like an Angel when she is here in my
                room but is rebellious when Sister shoos her out. She says she “Hates the Nanny”
                which is what she calls Mouche. Unfortunately it seems that she woke before midnight
                on the night Johnny Jo was born to find me gone and Mouche in my bed. According to
                Mouche, Kate wept all night and certainly when she visited me in the early morning
                Kate’s face was puffy with crying and she clung to me crying “Oh my dear mummy, why
                did you go away?” over and over again. Sister Marianne was touched and suggested
                that Mouche and Kate should come to the hospital as boarders as I am the only patient
                at present and there is plenty of room. Luckily Kate does not seem at all jealous of the
                baby and it is a great relief to have here here under my eye.

                Eleanor.

                #6246
                TracyTracy
                Participant

                  Florence Nightingale Gretton

                  1881-1927

                  Florence’s father was Richard Gretton, a baker in Swadlincote, Derbyshire. When Richard married Sarah Orgill in 1861, they lived with her mother, a widow, in Measham, Ashby de la Zouch in Leicestershire. On the 1861 census Sarah’s mother, Elizabeth, is a farmer of two acres.

                  (Swadlincote and Ashby de la Zouch are on the Derbyshire Leicestershire border and not far from each other. Swadlincote is near to Burton upon Trent which is sometimes in Staffordshire, sometimes in Derbyshire. Newhall, Church Gresley, and Swadlincote are all very close to each other or districts in the same town.)

                  Ten years later in 1871 Richard and Sarah have their own place in Swadlincote, he is a baker, and they have four children. A fourteen year old apprentice or servant is living with them.

                  In the Ashby-de-la-Zouch Gazette on 28 February 1880, it was reported that Richard Gretton, baker, of Swadlincote, was charged by Captain Bandys with carrying bread in a cart for sale, the said cart not being provided with scales and weights, according to the requirements of the Act, on the 17th January last.—Defendant pleaded guilty, but urged in extenuation of the offence that in the hurry he had forgotten to put the scales in the cart before his son started.—The Bench took this view of the case, regarding it as an oversight, and fined him one shilling only and costs.  This was not his only offence.

                  In 1883, he was fined twenty shillings, and ten shillings and sixpence costs.

                  Richard Gretton

                  By 1881 they have 4 more children, and Florence Nightingale is the youngest at four months. Richard is 48 by now, and Sarah is 44. Florence’s older brother William is a blacksmith.

                  Interestingly on the same census page, two doors down Thomas and Selina Warren live at the Stanhope Arms.  Richards son John Gretton lives at the pub, a 13 year old servant. Incidentally, I noticed on Thomas and Selena’s marriage register that Richard and Sarah Gretton were the witnesses at the wedding.

                  Ten years later in 1891, Florence Nightingale and her sister Clara are living with Selina Warren, widow, retired innkeeper, one door down from the Stanhope Arms. Florence is ten, Clara twelve and they are scholars.
                  Richard and Sarah are still living three doors up on the other side of the Stanhope Arms, with three of their sons. But the two girls lived up the road with the Warren widow!

                  The Stanhope Arms, Swadlincote: it’s possible that the shop with the awning was Richard Gretton’s bakers shop (although not at the time of this later photo).

                  Stanhope Arms

                   

                  Richard died in 1898, a year before Florence married Samuel Warren.

                  Sarah is a widowed 60 year old baker on the 1901 census. Her son 26 year old son Alf, also a baker,  lives at the same address, as does her 22 year old daughter Clara who is a district nurse.

                  Clara Gretton and family, photo found online:

                  Clara Gretton

                   

                  In 1901 Florence Nightingale (who we don’t have a photograph of!) is now married and is Florrie Warren on the census, and she, her husband Samuel, and their one year old daughter Hildred are visitors at the address of  Elizabeth (Staley)Warren, 60 year old widow and Samuel’s mother, and Samuel’s 36 year old brother William. Samuel and William are engineers.

                  Samuel and Florrie had ten children between 1900 and 1925 (and all but two of them used their middle name and not first name: my mother and I had no idea until I found all the records.  My grandmother Florence Noreen was known as Nora, which we knew of course, uncle Jack was actually Douglas John, and so on).

                  Hildred, Clara, Billy, and Nora were born in Swadlincote. Sometime between my grandmother’s birth in 1907 and Kay’s birth in 1911, the family moved to Oldswinford, in Stourbridge. Later they moved to Market Street.

                  1911 census, Oldswinford, Stourbridge:

                  Oldswinford 1911

                   

                  Oddly, nobody knew when Florrie Warren died. My mothers cousin Ian Warren researched the Warren family some years ago, while my grandmother was still alive. She contributed family stories and information, but couldn’t remember if her mother died in 1929 or 1927.  A recent search of records confirmed that it was the 12th November 1927.

                  She was 46 years old. We were curious to know how she died, so my mother ordered a paper copy of her death certificate. It said she died at 31 Market Street, Stourbridge at the age of 47. Clara May Warren, her daughter, was in attendance. Her husband Samuel Warren was a motor mechanic. The Post mortem was by Percival Evans, coroner for Worcestershire, who clarified the cause of death as vascular disease of the heart. There was no inquest. The death was registered on 15 Nov 1927.

                  I looked for a photo of 31 Market Street in Stourbridge, and was astonished to see that it was the house next door to one I lived in breifly in the 1980s.  We didn’t know that the Warren’s lived in Market Street until we started searching the records.

                  Market Street, Stourbridge. I lived in the one on the corner on the far right, my great grandmother died in the one next door.

                  Market Street

                   

                  I found some hitherto unknown emigrants in the family. Florence Nightingale Grettons eldest brother William 1861-1940 stayed in Swadlincote. John Orgill Gretton born in 1868 moved to Trenton New Jersey USA in 1888, married in 1892 and died in 1949 in USA. Michael Thomas born in 1870 married in New York in 1893 and died in Trenton in 1940. Alfred born 1875 stayed in Swadlincote. Charles Herbert born 1876 married locally and then moved to Australia in 1912, and died in Victoria in 1954. Clara Elizabeth was a district nurse, married locally and died at the age of 99.

                  #6222
                  TracyTracy
                  Participant

                    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:

                    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:

                    #6219
                    TracyTracy
                    Participant

                      The following stories started with a single question.

                      Who was Catherine Housley’s mother?

                      But one question leads to another, and another, and so this book will never be finished.  This is the first in a collection of stories of a family history research project, not a complete family history.  There will always be more questions and more searches, and each new find presents more questions.

                      A list of names and dates is only moderately interesting, and doesn’t mean much unless you get to know the characters along the way.   For example, a cousin on my fathers side has already done a great deal of thorough and accurate family research. I copied one branch of the family onto my tree, going back to the 1500’s, but lost interest in it after about an hour or so, because I didn’t feel I knew any of the individuals.

                      Parish registers, the census every ten years, birth, death and marriage certificates can tell you so much, but they can’t tell you why.  They don’t tell you why parents chose the names they did for their children, or why they moved, or why they married in another town.  They don’t tell you why a person lived in another household, or for how long. The census every ten years doesn’t tell you what people were doing in the intervening years, and in the case of the UK and the hundred year privacy rule, we can’t even use those for the past century.  The first census was in 1831 in England, prior to that all we have are parish registers. An astonishing amount of them have survived and have been transcribed and are one way or another available to see, both transcriptions and microfiche images.  Not all of them survived, however. Sometimes the writing has faded to white, sometimes pages are missing, and in some case the entire register is lost or damaged.

                      Sometimes if you are lucky, you may find mention of an ancestor in an obscure little local history book or a journal or diary.  Wills, court cases, and newspaper archives often provide interesting information. Town memories and history groups on social media are another excellent source of information, from old photographs of the area, old maps, local history, and of course, distantly related relatives still living in the area.  Local history societies can be useful, and some if not all are very helpful.

                      If you’re very lucky indeed, you might find a distant relative in another country whose grandparents saved and transcribed bundles of old letters found in the attic, from the family in England to the brother who emigrated, written in the 1800s.  More on this later, as it merits its own chapter as the most exciting find so far.

                      The social history of the time and place is important and provides many clues as to why people moved and why the family professions and occupations changed over generations.  The Enclosures Act and the Industrial Revolution in England created difficulties for rural farmers, factories replaced cottage industries, and the sons of land owning farmers became shop keepers and miners in the local towns.  For the most part (at least in my own research) people didn’t move around much unless there was a reason.  There are no reasons mentioned in the various registers, records and documents, but with a little reading of social history you can sometimes make a good guess.  Samuel Housley, for example, a plumber, probably moved from rural Derbyshire to urban Wolverhampton, when there was a big project to install indoor plumbing to areas of the city in the early 1800s.  Derbyshire nailmakers were offered a job and a house if they moved to Wolverhampton a generation earlier.

                      Occasionally a couple would marry in another parish, although usually they married in their own. Again, there was often a reason.  William Housley and Ellen Carrington married in Ashbourne, not in Smalley.  In this case, William’s first wife was Mary Carrington, Ellen’s sister.  It was not uncommon for a man to marry a deceased wife’s sister, but it wasn’t strictly speaking legal.  This caused some problems later when William died, as the children of the first wife contested the will, on the grounds of the second marriage being illegal.

                      Needless to say, there are always questions remaining, and often a fresh pair of eyes can help find a vital piece of information that has escaped you.  In one case, I’d been looking for the death of a widow, Mary Anne Gilman, and had failed to notice that she remarried at a late age. Her death was easy to find, once I searched for it with her second husbands name.

                      This brings me to the topic of maternal family lines. One tends to think of their lineage with the focus on paternal surnames, but very quickly the number of surnames increases, and all of the maternal lines are directly related as much as the paternal name.  This is of course obvious, if you start from the beginning with yourself and work back.  In other words, there is not much point in simply looking for your fathers name hundreds of years ago because there are hundreds of other names that are equally your own family ancestors. And in my case, although not intentionally, I’ve investigated far more maternal lines than paternal.

                      This book, which I hope will be the first of several, will concentrate on my mothers family: The story so far that started with the portrait of Catherine Housley’s mother.

                      Elizabeth Brookes

                       

                      This painting, now in my mothers house, used to hang over the piano in the home of her grandparents.   It says on the back “Catherine Housley’s mother, Smalley”.

                      The portrait of Catherine Housley’s mother can be seen above the piano. Back row Ronald Marshall, my grandfathers brother, William Marshall, my great grandfather, Mary Ann Gilman Purdy Marshall in the middle, my great grandmother, with her daughters Dorothy on the left and Phyllis on the right, at the Marshall’s house on Love Lane in Stourbridge.

                      Marshalls

                       

                       

                      The Search for Samuel Housley

                      As soon as the search for Catherine Housley’s mother was resolved, achieved by ordering a paper copy of her birth certificate, the search for Catherine Housley’s father commenced. We know he was born in Smalley in 1816, son of William Housley and Ellen Carrington, and that he married Elizabeth Brookes in Wolverhampton in 1844. He was a plumber and glazier. His three daughters born between 1845 and 1849 were born in Smalley. Elizabeth died in 1849 of consumption, but Samuel didn’t register her death. A 20 year old neighbour called Aaron Wadkinson did.

                      Elizabeth death

                       

                      Where was Samuel?

                      On the 1851 census, two of Samuel’s daughters were listed as inmates in the Belper Workhouse, and the third, 2 year old Catherine, was listed as living with John Benniston and his family in nearby Heanor.  Benniston was a framework knitter.

                      Where was Samuel?

                      A long search through the microfiche workhouse registers provided an answer. The reason for Elizabeth and Mary Anne’s admission in June 1850 was given as “father in prison”. In May 1850, Samuel Housley was sentenced to one month hard labour at Derby Gaol for failing to maintain his three children. What happened to those little girls in the year after their mothers death, before their father was sentenced, and they entered the workhouse? Where did Catherine go, a six week old baby? We have yet to find out.

                      Samuel Housley 1850

                       

                      And where was Samuel Housley in 1851? He hasn’t appeared on any census.

                      According to the Belper workhouse registers, Mary Anne was discharged on trial as a servant February 1860. She was readmitted a month later in March 1860, the reason given: unwell.

                      Belper Workhouse:

                      Belper Workhouse

                      Eventually, Mary Anne and Elizabeth were discharged, in April 1860, with an aunt and uncle. The workhouse register doesn’t name the aunt and uncle. One can only wonder why it took them so long.
                      On the 1861 census, Elizabeth, 16 years old, is a servant in St Peters, Derby, and Mary Anne, 15 years old, is a servant in St Werburghs, Derby.

                      But where was Samuel?

                      After some considerable searching, we found him, despite a mistranscription of his name, on the 1861 census, living as a lodger and plumber in Darlaston, Walsall.
                      Eventually we found him on a 1871 census living as a lodger at the George and Dragon in Henley in Arden. The age is not exactly right, but close enough, he is listed as an unmarried painter, also close enough, and his birth is listed as Kidsley, Derbyshire. He was born at Kidsley Grange Farm. We can assume that he was probably alive in 1872, the year his mother died, and the following year, 1873, during the Kerry vs Housley court case.

                      Samuel Housley 1871

                       

                      I found some living Housley descendants in USA. Samuel Housley’s brother George emigrated there in 1851. The Housley’s in USA found letters in the attic, from the family in Smalley ~ written between 1851 and 1870s. They sent me a “Narrative on the Letters” with many letter excerpts.

                      The Housley family were embroiled in a complicated will and court case in the early 1870s. In December 15, 1872, Joseph (Samuel’s brother) wrote to George:

                      “I think we have now found all out now that is concerned in the matter for there was only Sam that we did not know his whereabouts but I was informed a week ago that he is dead–died about three years ago in Birmingham Union. Poor Sam. He ought to have come to a better end than that….His daughter and her husband went to Birmingham and also to Sutton Coldfield that is where he married his wife from and found out his wife’s brother. It appears he has been there and at Birmingham ever since he went away but ever fond of drink.”

                      No record of Samuel Housley’s death can be found for the Birmingham Union in 1869 or thereabouts.

                      But if he was alive in 1871 in Henley In Arden…..
                      Did Samuel tell his wife’s brother to tell them he was dead? Or did the brothers say he was dead so they could have his share?

                      We still haven’t found a death for Samuel Housley.

                       

                       

                      #5808

                      Truth be told, April was missing the US. She missed all their little coterie of maids living in the shadows of the powerful. Missed the drama most of all.

                      She’d been secretly texting Norma and May, while June was lazily sipping mojitos with Jacqui.
                      Norma was fine, but May and the other alien staff had suddenly disappeared when the Secret Services had started to investigate more deeply into the staff’s backgrounds after all the kidnapping fiasco. At least, August had been covering for Norma, such kind soul he was. Besides, the President’s wife could no longer live without her butter chicken. But May and the others couldn’t face the music apparently. Funnily, they couldn’t find “real” American maids nowadays suited to replace them. Good luck with that!

                      April couldn’t tell June, obviously, since her friend harboured such hatred for the system that had them put in jail. As for herself, she couldn’t argue with the fact they’d deserved it. Nothing a good lawyer couldn’t fix though. That’s why she loved the idea of America. Guilty as charged, indeed. Those charges now vanished.

                      She’d thought first that it would fuel her inspiration nicely, but it was the opposite. The sudden extra time had distracted her entirely, and her inspiration seemed inaccessible.

                      She was starting to make up her mind. She would go back, to her family in Arkansas. That could only be temporary of course, as her mother, bless her soul, would start to have her meet all the gents in the neighbourhood in the hopes to finally get her only daughter married. Talk about drama. If that doesn’t kick-start her inspiration engine, nothing would.

                      Problem was, with the virus around spreading mass panic, there seemed to be no sure way to fly back. She would have to devise some circuitous plan.

                      #4306

                      The drizzle wasn’t meant to last. At least that’s what the smell in the air was telling Fox. With the night it was getting colder and the drizzle would soon turn into small ice crystals, and maybe worse.
                      “We should get going,” Fox said, enjoying the last pieces of rabbit stew. The dwarf had been busy looking around in the leafless bushes and behind the tree trunks. He had been silent the whole time and Fox was beginning to worry.
                      “What have you been doing anyway?” he asked. “Are you hunting? You can still have a piece of that stew before I swallow it.” He handed his bowl toward the dwarf, who grumpfed without looking at Fox.
                      “I don’t eat. I’m a stone dwarf. I think I get recharged by daylight.”
                      Gorash kept on looking around very intently.
                      “We should get going,” repeated Fox. The weather is going to be worse.
                      “Grmpf. I don’t care. I’m made to stay outside. I’m a stone statue.”
                      “Well even stone gets cracked with the help of ice when temperature drops below zero. How am I supposed to carry you if you fall into pieces,” said Fox. He thought his idea rather cunning, but he had no idea if Gorash would be affected by the bad weather or not, since he was not really like stone during the night.

                      “And what are you looking for? It’s winter, there’s not much of anything behind those naked bushes.”
                      “It’s Easter. You had your rabbit. I want my eggs,” said the dwarf.
                      “Oh.” Fox was speechless for a few moments. He too had been thinking of the colourful eggs of the dwarf’s friend they had left in the witch’s garden. He wondered what had happened to it? Gorash had been gloomier and gloomier since they had left the garden and Fox didn’t understand why. He had thought his friend happy to go on a quest and see the outside world. But something was missing, and now Fox realised what it was.

                      He didn’t really know what to say to comfort the dwarf, so he said nothing. Instead he thought about the strange seasonal pattern shifts. If it was Easter then it should be spring time, but the temperatures were still a havoc. And the trees had no leaves in that part of the forest. Fox remembered the clock tower of the city had had some problems functioning recently, maybe it was all connected. The problems with the bad smell around the city, the nonsensical seasonal changes and that gloomy quest… maybe it was all connected.

                      Fox gulped the last pieces of rabbit stew without enjoying it. He licked the inside of the bowl and put it in his backpack without further cleaning. He had suddenly realised that it was not much use to ask Gorash’s permission to leave as Fox was doing all the walk during the day anyway. So he could as well do it at night. He didn’t have as much difficulties to put out the fire as he had lighting it up. He cleaned the place as much as he could and then looked around him. The night was dark, the drizzle had turned into small snow flakes. Fox smelled the air. It would soon turn into bigger flakes. The dwarf could stay outside if he wanted, but Fox needed to move. Let him follow if he wants to.

                      #4096
                      prUneprUne
                      Participant

                        I don’t know exactly when it struck me first. The passage of time.
                        When you are young, it’s easy to miss it, some would say “you’re a child, you don’t know about such things”, and maybe they are right.

                        In a few months, it will already be 2 years that we reopened the Inn. The results have been mixed, we haven’t gotten any richer, but it definitely helps pay the bills.

                        It definitely helped to pay for Aunt Idle’s rehab, after her nervous breakdown last March. Well, rehab is a big word. We got professional help from some friend of Mater, Jiemba, who knows someone who knows someone.
                        Of course, we had to package it nicely for Didle to take the bait. She would have none of that rehab thing of course. But she was sold at the first syllable of Banisteriopsis caapi vine and Psychotria viridis leaf, well aya for short.

                        After that, seems she wanted to travel to Iceland. Got to figure how she gets all that fancy money. Mater says it’s her sugar daddy lovers. Not Mater’s, you silly. Dido’s.
                        Mater says that without any judgment, which is rare. She still calls her a tart and all sorts of nice things, but it’s like she’s proud that she made it in the world —or just that she slowed down on the gin bottle.

                        Speaking of Mater, she hasn’t been so well. After she tried to grab some can of chicken broth from the shelves, she broke her hip bone. Of course she couldn’t stand staying at the hospital and got herself discharged as soon as her doctor looked the other way, but I can see she’s not completely healed. Finnly is doing her best with the circumstances, adding nursing to her housekeeping skills. And Bert’s been around to support with the inn maintenance.

                        Well my twin sisters are another story altogether. They’ll be moving out, they said, live in the big city. They had no intention of going to college anyway. Seems they are looking for a full-time blogger job. I’m betting they’ll be back soon enough. Nothing beats Finnly’s mince pice and charbroiled spicy huhu skewers.

                        It’s been a while I’ve seen Dev’. Always working at the gas station. Mater always says his lack of ambition will save him from trouble.

                        So yes, time has passed. It’s funny how nobody else seems to notice.

                        #3977
                        TracyTracy
                        Participant

                          HELP ME!” Liz shouted over her shoulder, while simultaneously grabbing the back of the gardeners trousers with one hand, and attempting to floogle the phrase stickum lute putty on her pocket device with the other hand. What in tarnation did it mean? Probably some ancient tribal voodoo Finnley had picked up during her sojourn in the nether regions of the planet.

                          Roberto struggled to escape the vice like grip on his belt, but Liz’s grip was firm. Godfrey charged across the lawn like like a wild boar to assist with the detention of the errant gardener and gripped Roberto’s shoulder firmly. The sticky shreds of paper in Godfrey’s hand stuck to the gardeners denim shirt like glue. Roberto wrenched himself free, sending Godfrey flying into the herbaceous border, and leaving Liz holding an empty pair of jeans in her hand. Focusing on the information now showing on her pocket information device ~ an aboriginal dreamwalker teleport code ~ it was a moment before Liz realized that she was no longer detaining the gardener but merely holding his trousers. Of Roberto, there was no sign.

                          Godfrey, sitting in amongst the delphiniums, was looking as pale as Finnley after the cucumber mask. Although Liz had missed the sight of the gardener sans trews, Godfrey had not.

                          “An imposter!” he cried. “That was no Roberto, that was Roberta Slack! A WOMAN!”

                          #432

                          Inspired by the courageous example of Finn, Quintin was thinking of changing his name too.

                          There were too many Quintins out there, and he needed to find something more suitable. Michaela had mistaken him again for another Quintin, and of course, Quintin had heard Elias laugh in the background.
                          Yann’s battery of his new phone was charged at 33%, so that was probably a confirmation too.

                          Why not something like Yurick
                          Looking for a confirmation, Quintin found this.

                          YORICK: Altered form of JORCK. This name was used by Shakespeare for a court jester in his play ‘Hamlet’. :yahoo_skull:
                          JORCK: Danish form of GEORGE

                          So that was it… Having recently read some poems from George Gordon Byron, Quintin thought that it was in perfect sync.
                          Yurick was henceforth adopted.

                          Interestingly, Yurick noticed that it was the 303 rd comment posted. So it was obviously another confirmation. Perhaps that with his new name, now Yurick wouldn’t need 3 confirmations in a row…

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