A Barnsley Historian's View

We have been back from our holiday in Wale for a week now and I have been out of the house twice. I was poorly and stressed various things before we went and although some of them have resolved themselves there always seems to be something else going on. I do apologise to the OH and our two mums whom we took away on holiday. I just wasn't up to it, I'm sorry.

View from Beach Cottage, Benllech

The view from the window of our holiday cottage was lovely. When it was clear we could see all the way to Llandudno - that's the sticky out bit on the left in the far distance in the photo above. The sun shone more than it rained although it was quite windy all week.

We managed a trip to Caenarfon on the local buses so that the OH could drink beer, we did two pubs, the Wetherspoons, the Tafarn Y Porth (Gate Inn) and a CAMRA recommended pub, the Black Boy Inn, which was very picturesque, although it had a limited beer choice on the day we were there.

Unfortunately after this trip I was so tired I had to retreat to my bed in the cottage for a day and a half. I just slept ... The OH did lots of walking and posted pictures from his walks on Facebook most days including pics of muddy boots and closed pubs (closed because it was early in the morning not closed, closed.)

We also had an afternoon out in Bangor on the last day, the mums both like charity shops, and there were plenty of them in both towns. Sadly Wales seemed a bit run down. Just behind our little house was a boarded up hotel, the staff in the local shops and pubs told the OH that it had been empty for about 10 years and was going to be auctioned off soon. On the main road in the village was another empty pub/hotel, which looks fine and in business on Google maps so it can't have been closed for long.

Purple Moose toy

The OH and his mum discovered a nice little bar, The Beachcomber Bar and Grill. Despite the name the front part is a proper bar and you don't have to eat there to enjoy a few nice real ales. I managed to make it there on the last evening as I appeared to have got my zing back after two days of rest, but unfortunately the Purple Moose beer (one of my favourites from beer festivals in Cardiff) had run out so I was just tormented by the fluffy toy moose on the shelf behind the bar and the Purple Moose beer mats while I drank some keg mild instead. There were a couple of real ales on, don't misunderstand me, and a real cider for the OH's mum, but I like my beer dark and on the malty side and the ones available weren't to my taste.

The journey both too and from Wales was horrendous. Traffic jams on the motorways and all the way though Tintwhistle (which we had expected) held us up for an hour and a half on the way there and an hour on the way home.

I always try to break our journeys with a stop at a Wetherspoons pub as they provide cheap, good quality food, and toilet facilities. We did the Thomas Telford in Ellesmere Port on the way out, chosen for ease of on street parking more than anything else but it did turn out to be a nice large open pub with some raised areas more dedicated to dining than drinking which we found very comfortable. The service was good and the toilets were clean and on the ground floor level, what more could we want?

On the way back, as we'd had to vacate the cottage by 10am we visited Chester, which was nice, but expensive. The OH was browsing with the mums in a charity shop until he spotted the prices - £10 for a t-shirt! Shocking.Chester has two Wetherspoons pubs, but both were a long walk from the shopping centre car park I had chosen as being the easiest to find. It turned out they within a few yards of each other on adjacent streets. Not good planning Wetherspoons! We went in the the one that was NOT the Lloyds No.1 (as that brand often have loud music and are targeted at younger people) but I regretted our choice quite quickly. I suppose it was Friday lunchtime so it was going to be busy but it was full, noisy, and the service was slow. The mums had to queue for the disabled toilet as the ordinary ones were up three flights of stairs. As we spent over 3 hours in Chester the car park cost us £10. We could have stayed for 24hrs for that but we'd seen enough expensive jewellery shops and fancy clothes shops. Yes, very nice for some people, but not somewhere, despite the history, that I'd choose to go for a weekend break.

When we got home I managed to make tea, unpack the bags and put the washing on before I collapsed. And a week later I'm still collapsed. I do keep trying to get up out of bed, but only manage a few hours, making the OH's tea usually. I didn't even go to Barnsley Archives this week, that's the third week in a row I've missed now, they'll be thinking I've forgotten them. The OH has taken me out twice shopping, if I have him or a trolley to lean on then I can manage an hour or so of slow doddering.

Warehouse 13 box set

At least the brain fog seems to have cleared today, I am managing to type legibly for the first time in days. I have watched three series of Warehouse 13 on DVD (thanks to my daughter for lending me these) in the past week as that's been about all I have been able to manage.

Cross fingers that I'll be better tomorrow or the next day as I'd like to do a newsletter for the Barnsley War Memorials Project this week. I haven't missed a month yet since I started them last May although one or two have been a bit late. I do enjoy putting them together and don't see it as a chore. They are one of the few ways we really keep in contact with other interested people out there, I just wish we could afford to print some out for putting in libraries and other public places as it is I send them out as .pdf files and you can download all the back issues from the link above.

Thanks for reading and I hope normal service will be resumed shortly!

I returned to my work on the handwritten notes on the 1918 Absent Voters' List for Barnsley yesterday and quite quickly got hung up on a few of men. There were two reasons for this; firstly I have not been well recently and my concentration wanders making serious research a bit tricky, and secondly the information in the AVL was incorrect or misleading in each case.

Part of the 1918 Absent Voters' List for Barnsley (thanks to Barnsley Archives)

This is the section of the AVL that I was working on. Blenheim Road is a long road that runs from Park Road near St Edward's Church all the way down to Pitt Street West, running parallel to Racecommon Road for most of the time. The houses at the Park Road end are larger than average, but lower down (which are the lower numbers) they are mostly terraced houses with walled yards at the front. Blenheim Avenue is a small street at the bottom end of Blenheim Road on which the houses are smaller with front doors directly onto the street. Both streets lie in St Edward's parish.

I have been examining the men who were indicated in the AVL handwritten notes as Discharged, Missing or Prisoners of War - occasionally a man is listed as Dead or Killed, but there were none like that in this section. My theory is that a man who was discharged might have been wounded and may have subsequently died of his wounds before the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) cut off date of 31 August 1921 in which case he should be included in our Roll of Honour of Barnsley's WW1 Fallen. A man who was noted as missing at the point the handwritten notes were added in the run up to the December 1918 election could very well have remained missing and thus was also a casualty. The Barnsley War Memorials Project's criteria for including a man on the Roll of Honour is that he should be either born in Barnsley, be living in Barnsley at the time of his enlistment or be remembered on a memorial in the Barnsley MBC area.

The header of my Barnsley Prisoners of War Community on LFWW

Finally the prisoners of war are interesting in themselves, I have a separate Community on LFWW for them, but again, some of them may not have made it home, or may subsequently have died as a result of harsh treatment whilst a prisoner so may be candidates for the Barnsley Roll of Honour. Currently this Community has 54 men attached, but I know there are more than 200 listed in the Barnsley Chronicle in 1918, so I have many more to add.

The first man I looked at was Bernard Hirst of 9 Blenheim Avenue, he was noted as Discharged. I found him with no difficulty in LFWW using the information given in the AVL and a search on FreeBMD showed that a man of this name and of an age to have served in WW1 (born 1892) died in Barnsley in 1970. I double checked the CWGC, but he was not listed. So not one for our Roll of Honour.

The next man was John William Raven of 31, Blenheim Avenue who was marked as Missing. A nice unusual name, so I thought he would be equally easy to find. No! Nothing on either his name or the service number, 34065, given in the AVL. The abbreviation LNL was not one I'd come across before so I didn't know what to enter for regiment in the search on LFWW. If I can't find a man easily on Lives I turn to CWGC next.

One of thr 8 hits for Raven, J, First World War, on the CWGC

As Raven is fairly uncommon name I just used the criteria Surname: Raven and First World War in my search. I got 80 hits. I tried Raven and Initials: J and out of the eight results saw one which could, with one eye closed and an open mind, just about be a match. The service number had the right digits but in the wrong order, 34605 instead of 34065, and LNL could be Loyal North Lancashire. I clicked on the man's name to open the full entry and sighed in relief. In his additional information, a field which is blank far too often in my experience, it stated, "Husband of Annie E. Raven, of 31, Blenheim Avenue, Bamsley." Well, this is the right man after all! However he was marked as Missing in the AVL and this entry says he died in March 1918. Oh, dear, there is probably a story there. As he is remembered on the Arras Memorial he has no known grave. I wonder when his family were told he was presumed dead?

Panel 5 St Mary's Barnsley War Memorial

With the correct service number I was soon able to find John Fleming Raven on LFWW and add him to my Barnsley War Memorials Project (BWMP) and Absent Voters' List Communities. I hadn't heard his name before, and despite his home being in St Edward's parish he does not appear on St Edward's War Memorial, so I did a search on the BWMP site to see if we had recorded his name elsewhere. He is remembered on panel 5 of the large gothic pink memorial in St Mary's church in the centre of Barnsley. I have added him to that Community on LFWW as well.

I don't know why he is listed in the AVL as John William Raven instead of John Fleming Raven, the service number mistake is probably just a typo, but you would have thought his family would have given his name correctly to the Electorial Register people?

The next man whose handwritten note suggested I should do more investigation was Harold Thornton of 4, Blenheim Road. He was noted as being a Prisoner of War. As I had a web page for the BWMP open I did a search for his name first. The only hit I found was on the Memorial Panels in St Helen's Church in Hemsworth, which I thought unlikely given that he or his family were living in the centre of Barnsley in 1917/18 when the names for the AVL were collected. Of course if he returned safely from his time as a prisoner he would not be on any memorial ... so I re-started my research process in the correct order by looking for him on LFWW and the CWGC.

Harold Thornton's Life Story on LFWW

I got a hit straight away for Thornton and service number 54301 on LFWW. The man's forename was Harold and he was in the Manchester Regiment, this must be my man. As I clicked the button to 'Remember' him I noticed that there was a date of death already entered against him, 27 April 1918, which means that LFWW had already linked him to an entry on the CWGC as part of their automatic process. This also means that by the time the handwritten notes were added to the AVL in Barnsley Harold was not a prisoner of war, he was already dead. Moving onto the CWGC via the link on LFWW I saw that the additional information stated that he was "Son of George Edgar and Ellen Thornton, husband of Ethel Thornton. Born at Dewsbury, Yorks." Of course even if he was born in Dewsbury he and his family could quite easily have moved to Barnsley between his birth in 1888 (calculated from his age, 30, at death) and the collection of the AVL data in 1917/18.

So next I looked for a Harold Thornton, born 1888 in Dewsbury, living in Barnsley in 1911. The only hit for that name, age and birth place was in Hemsworth! What a coincidence, given that I'd found a called Harold Thornton on the Hemsworth war memorial. The young man I had found was 23 years old, a boarder with an older couple called Twiley, and a Boot Manager, whatever that was. Could this be the right man?

Marriage in Darton All Saints on 20 October 1915 (from Ancestry)

As a wife was mentioned on the CWGC I tried looking for a marriage for Harold Thornton to a lady named Ethel on FreeBMD and found a hit in Barnsley in 1915. This was more like it! A search on Ancestry's West Yorkshire Parish records collection soon found his marriage to Ethel Illsley in Darton (see above). It is the right man as he names his father as George Edgar Thornton, which agrees with the CWGC additional information and his occupation as Boot Manager tallies with the 1911 census entry I had found. Both bride and groom give their home addresses as places in Hemsworth. Ah, ha. Things are joining up at last! An Ethel Illsley was born in Barnsley in 1892 and her parents had married at St George's in Barnsley in 1891. Illsley (which can be mis-spelt so many ways!) is a rare name in Barnsley. Ethel's father, John Illsley, was from Staffordshire originally. So maybe Ethel had returned to live with or near a member of her family in Barnsley while Harold was serving in the army, and the address given in Hemsworth when she married him was where she had been working/living in as a Tailoress? The witnesses at the marriage, Robert and Annie Elizabeth Illsley are brother and sister to Ethel, according to the family's entry in the 1911 census.

You might have spotted that Harold says he's a widower at his marriage to Ethel. So between the census of 1911 where he is a single man and his marriage in 1915 he has married and lost another wife. A few searches on FreeBMD and Ancestry later I worked out that he'd married Elizabeth A Knox in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1911, the banns being read in St Helen's, Hemsworth beforehand. They had one child, Olive E, born in Q2 1914 in the Hemsworth Registration District and Elizabeth A Thornton aged 27 died in Hemsworth in the same quarter.

Burial of Elizabeth Ann Thornton, aged 27, at Hemsworth (Wakefield Council)

The burial records for Hemsworth are available to browse (they are not indexed by name) on Wakefield Council's website. Elizabeth Thornton's address at her death on 2 May 1914 was 71 Kirkby Road, Hemsworth, which very nearly matches the address given by Harold at his marriage to Ethel the following year.

So Harold was left with a small daughter to care for after the death of his wife, that would give him a reason to marry again fairly quickly. Harold and Ethel themselves had a son, John J E V Thornton, born in Hemsworth in 1916 by which time I expect Harold had joined the army as conscription, even for married men, came in in 1916. Unfortunately a John E V Thornton dies in Barnsley aged 0 in 1917. John Edgar Vincent Thornton aged 6 months is buried in Barnsley Cemetery in a plot shared with two Illsley children. This is more evidence for Ethel's move to Barnsley during Harold's service. This search on Thornton deaths also highlighted an Olive Thornton who died in Barnsley in 1929 aged 14. This is probably Harold's daughter by Elizabeth, such a shame that neither of Harold's children lived to adulthood.

FreeBMD entry for the marriage of Ethel Thornton in Barnsley

And his widow? In the 1930 Electoral Roll the occupants of 4 Blenheim Road are a John William and Ethel Elliott, so I looked for the marriage of Thornton to Elliott in FreeBMD, which you can see that I found in Q3 of 1919. They have a child named Iris in 1920 whom I found on FreeBMD by searching for births to Elliott, mother's maiden name Illsley, confirming that this is the remarriage of Harold's widow.

So Ethel knew that Harold wasn't coming home by the middle of 1919 and that she was free to marry again. His CWGC record shows his burial details at Valenciennes Communal Cemetery in France after his death in April 1918, so why didn't the family or the Electorial Register people know that he was dead at the time the handwritten notes were added to the AVL?

List of burials in the German Extension at Valenciennes (from the CWGC)

The CWGC added some fascinating additional documents to their index last year. You can now see lists of burial information and records of the concentration of burials after the war. The above snip shows that Pte H Thornton of the Manchesters was buried in the German Extension of the cemetery at Valenciennes. His body was exhumed and reburied in 1922 after being positively identified by a plate on his coffin. Presumably he died after being taken prisoner in the great German push of early 1918 but only the fact that he had been taken prisoner had reached his family by the autumn of 1918. I wonder why he is remembered on the Hemsworth Memorial and not on one in Barnsley, but I suppose any of his family or friends might have asked for him to be included at St Helen's as he lived there for a while and his first wife is buried there.

Having sorted out that Harold Thornton does NOT qualify for inclusion on the Barnsley Roll of Honour after all that - he was born in Dewsbury, probably lived in Hemsworth when he enlisted at Pontefract and is remembered on a memorial outside the Barnsley MBC boundary - I moved onto the next man on my list.

Harold Horbury, of 6 Blenheim Road, was marked up as, "Prisoner of War, E Camp" in the AVL handwritten notes. His details were Service number 236222 of the 13th Yorks regiment, and I could not find him on LFWW. Oh, dear, here we go again!

Barnsley Chronicle 24 August 1918
(thanks to Barnsley Archives)

Happily I found him in my transcription of the list of POWs from the Barnsley Chronicle in August 1918.

Horbury H 23622 13th Yorkshire Regt Harahoe 28, K4, Matr, 37522, Camp de Friedrichsfeld, Pres Wesel 6 Blenheim Road, Barnsley

Incidently Harold Thornton is not on this list, maybe because his home address was actually Hemsworth or maybe because he did not appear on the list the Chronicle was working to, as he was already dead.

The AVL appears to have got Harold Horbury's service number wrong, they have been a bit overenthusiastic with the 2s! However searching for Horbury and 23622 on LFWW still didn't bring back anyone, so I tried just the number and found a Harold Horburn who looked like the right man. Maybe a transcription error from his Medal Card had changed him from Horbury to Horburn?

Harold Horbury's Attestation (from Ancestry)

The images of the Medal Cards are available on Ancestry. LFWW work from the transcriptions provided by The National Archives (TNA) which are sometimes inaccurate and I often have to attach a link to the medal card image to LFWW as External Evidence to show the correct details. But not in this case, despite his Service Records, which are luckily part of the 40% of which survived the blitz in WW2, quite plainly stating that his name is Horbury, his medal card and medal rolls all say Horburn. Harold enlisted in September 1915 aged 19 years and 25 days. He is not married and his next of kin is Charlotte Horbury, of 6 Blenheim Road, his mother. He was reported missing in July 1917 and after his mother forwarded a post card from him to the War Office in September 1917 he was subsequently listed as a prisoner of war. He was repatriated back to England in November 1918. He has no CWGC entry and I cannot see a death for him in the Barnsley area. This man is NOT a candidate for the Barnsley Roll of Honour.

So, as you see, what started off as a fairly straightforward tick list activity got quite complicated when the data in the AVL did not tally with that on other sources I have been using. I did identify one man, John Fleming Raven, who was listed as Missing on the AVL as a man who is already on one of Barnsley's war memorials, but the others I looked at either did not die during or from the effects of the war, or in the case of Harold Thornton, were from outside our area so cannot be included in our Roll of Honour.

Hours of fun!

I looked back at my calendar a few days ago and realised that I have been more unwell than usual since the end of March. The last time I can say I was well was when we visited my daughter and her partner in Leicester for a weekend and I managed a pub crawl and a bit of shopping and everything seemed OK. But by the end of the following week I was seriously doubting that I could make a friend's wedding.

Part of the map on the Leicester Real Ale Trail leaflet (Leicester CAMRA)

What happened? Well, I suppose the pub crawl might have been a bit much ... we travelled into Leicester city centre in the car, my daughter drove (she is soooo grown up now! A car and a job!) as she was happy to defer her drinking until later in the day. In the first pub we found a Leicester CAMRA Ale Trail map on which the OH and I planned the rest of the afternoon's crawl. In all the OH and GB, my daughter's fiancé visited about eight pubs, my daughter and I opted out of the middle section of the crawl to pop into WH Smith and Argos and a few other places. We were in town for about five or six hours, but that did include lunch and and a later snack in Wetherspoons. I don't think I walked very far as the pubs I missed out were the furthest flung ones, I usually had the OH or my daughter to lean on and I didn't drink more than a couple of pints as I had soft drinks in several pubs - all part of the modern compromise for me.

I don't remember being tired the following day, but I did fall asleep in the car as the OH was driving back to Barnsley, which is normal for me.

The during following week I had some upsetting news which probably affected me more than other people involved as I seem to take everything to heart much more these days. I think the isolation of working from home doesn't help, as apart from having a moan via Facebook and on this blog it is difficult to share my problems.

Dancing - Black and White!

Then on the Saturday was my old friend BH's wedding. I spent the morning in bed resting up as I really didn't want to miss this special event, another part of my planning to cope with expected exertions. The photo above, from Facebook, shows the effect a couple of glasses of white wine had on me. I am not the one in white! Needless to say I was absolutely exhausted the following day. I had a wonderful time, saw some old friends and wish BH and his bride all the best for the future. x

Usually it only takes a couple of days to recover from a bout of exercise like this, but looking at the calendar again I can see that the following weekend we visited my mum and I can remember being too tired to do anything. We usually manage a bit of gardening or heavy cleaning for my mum, but that weekend I think the best I managed was some online faffing to do with my mum's bills and banking.

Logo from 2015 CAMRA members' weekend

The next great adventure was the CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) Members' Weekend and AGM in Nottingham. As a friend of ours was standing for the National Executive we had even more reasons to attend than usual. The OH and I used to attend the whole weekend, booking a hotel from the Friday afternoon through to Sunday, but in recent years we have either not attended or have just gone for one day. When the Members' Weekend was held in Sheffield in 2011 the OH and I were on the organising committee along with members of the Sheffield and Rotherham branches, so you can see we are very dedicated CAMRA members, not just to the drinking of real ale but to the aims of the campaign too. I have been a CAMRA member for over 20 years and the OH even longer. However as part of my compromise with my disabilities I had to step down from my role at the Great British Beer Festival (GBBF) two years ago and I haven't managed to help out at a Barnsley Beer Festival for longer than an hour or so for the past few years.

That day out in Nottingham was very long, the AGM part of the weekend starts at 9.30am on the Saturday so we had to get an early train from Barnsley. We didn't stay late in Nottingham afterwards, leaving not long after the business finished, but even so it took hours to get home as a change of train in Sheffield was required that we hadn't needed to do on the way out. Of course I stayed in bed the next day, but I can't have been too poorly as I still managed to make the Cudworth History Group and the Archives the following week.

Hock Cellar Visitors' Centre at Fullers Brewery (from Travels With Beer)

Then there was the GBBF Bar Managers' Meeting in the Hock Cellar at Fuller's Brewery in Chiswick, London. It turned out to be the weekend of the London Marathon so getting a cheap hotel room in the area was impossible. The OH and I ended up staying in Borehamwood for two nights, where the Travelodge plus parking and two all zones day tickets for London trains and buses on the Saturday still cost less than the cheapest room we could find in the city centre. I had volunteered to take the minutes at this meeting, which used to be one of the jobs I did regularly as part of my GBBF commitment, as the regular minute taker was on holiday and as the OH had to be there anyway it meant I could travel with him. Having the hotel meant that we could take our time over the journey and we didn't have to travel to and from London on one day, something I used to be able to do. Fortunately as the minute taker I am allowed to claim travelling expenses which did cover one night's stay, the other night the OH and I added on ourselves to make the journey even easier for me. Another compromise.

The meeting was great, lots of old friends whom I hadn't seen for a long time. I didn't have ANY beer as I was taking the minutes and I missed the buffet as I had to visit the ladies and by the time I got back the gannets had had the lot! Fortunately the OH and I had planned for this and had the makings of some emergency sandwiches at hand. I was quite upset at the time as the meeting had gone on for four hours and I was really, really tired. I knew I would be unable to promise to do that job ever again. Afterwards we walked along the river bank back to Hammersmith via a couple of pubs. I wasn't even the slowest walker that afternoon as one of the other chaps in attendance was just recovering from a badly broken leg so he was keeping a nice steady pace, just right for me leaning on the OH or my friends. Another friend even carried my laptop bag for me. I will say this for my CAMRA friends, they do their best to look after me! I wish I could do more, but I can't. Sorry.

A generic image of a South Yorkshire
Concessionary Travel Pass

That trip must have been almost the final straw as I can see from my calendar that I didn't manage to make the Archives the following week, April 30th, and I haven't been since. However that was the same week the whole thing about my bus pass blew up, as I blogged on here previously. I know that upset me dreadfully and it carried on for weeks.

I did eventually get a letter of support from my hospital consultant (my GP surgery had refused point blank to write one) and a proper printed letter from the Council saying that I am fully entitled to a pass, but as yet I haven't had the energy to get back to the bus station to hand these in to try to get a full pass in exchange for the short term one I was grudgingly granted by the man on the desk there.

Then we went to Wales ... see my previous post about being tired affecting our holiday.

The side of the Trinity Church showing the stone course between the windows

We have been back from Wales for just over two weeks. I haven't managed to visit the Archives or the Cudworth History Group, although I was able give a talk I was booked for at the Holy Trinity United Reformed Church on Farrar Street in Barnsley last Wednesday thanks to the chair of the group cleverly arranging a lift for me from door to door by a lady who lives near to me. Well done and thank you so much for that, I would have hated to have let you down. That had the exciting side benefit of me spotting a new war memorial on the stone course on the side of the church hall as my lift pulled away after the meeting.

My problems for the past two weeks have been mainly tiredness, with abdominal pain caused by my Crohn's disease on several memorable days along with the usual frequent trips to the smallest room. This means that I have been eating mainly 'white' food, bread, crackers, pasta, soup, chicken breast and low fat cream cheese. I have also been suffering increasing joint pain, depending on what I have done the day before. So a day spent planting out some tomatoes and weeding a patch of garden, sitting down and shuffling along as I worked along the bed, resulted in painful shoulders and knees. A couple of hours of walking around Barnsley leaning on the OH after a visit to our solicitors resulted in aching and swollen ankles and knees. The same thing happened during our trip to Wales after our day out in Caernarfon. I can only imagine this is a side effect of the poor nutrition and general inactivity due to the tiredness.

Sholley shopping trolley

Unfortunately even a trip to the Co-op about 150 yards from our house is now very difficult. When the helpful lady from AgeUK came last week to assist me in filling out my PIP (Personal Independence Payment) claim form we worked out that on a bad day I can only get around the house leaning on things. On a medium day I can get to the newsagent or library where the Cudworth History Meeting is held if I lean or sit on walls along the way, and on a good day I can get to the Co-op, again with leaning and resting several times. For any longer walking activity, such as a walk around town or trip to ASDA, I need the OH to lean on or a supermarket shopping trolley. The result of any kind of prolonged walking activity is one or more days in bed afterwards recovering.

This realisation has led to me ordering a domestic shopping trolley, see photo on the left. I did manage to find one on ebay that was nearly new, saving quite a lot of money. I will be able to lean on this when I go to the Co-op in future. Friends on Facebook responded to my rather negative post, in which I suggested that I now knew I was beyond saving as I had had to resort to a trolley, by sensibly noting that I was being ecologically friendly by saving petrol by walking to the shop (not that I dare drive alone these days, too easily distracted I'm afraid), and that it was false vanity to worry about pushing a trolley. They are so sensible ... I do really like the support I get from everyone on Facebook. Thank you. x

Other typical adjustments that I have made include leaving the dishes to soak in warm sudsy water for half an hour before washing up so I only have to stand at the sink for 10 minutes. Preparing vegetables for tea in short bursts, chopping an onion and pepper at lunch time, then peeling the carrots later. This means I have everything ready for just putting in the pan at the right moment, in the best tv chef style! Or on a medium day doing a baked thing, it was baked squash last week and I've done baked potatoes a few times recently. When all else fails we have a chest freezer with ready meals, usually picked up when they are half price or reduced or from the local Fulton's discount freezer store. I really enjoy cooking, but it's that false vanity thing again, sometimes I have to accept that I will be offering the OH a frozen Quorn cottage pie instead of a pan full of veg or a nice homemade lasagne.

Today's worry is that my wrists hurt so much I am having trouble typing. This suggests a problem with the height of my overbed laptop table and the position of my laptop in relation to me ... I raised the height of my table when we got a new mattress a couple of weeks ago, but now I think I have 'settled' in and the table is too high. I will do some adjustments and see if things improve.

Gone are the days when a post like this took just an hour to put together, I think I have been at this one for about four hours and am only just reaching the end, another compromise, doing work like this in chunks so I don't get too tired and lots of proof reading to avoid silly careless mistakes. Ah, well, thanks for reading. Comments and suggestions about other ways to cope with this tiredness welcome.

I seem to come back from Barnsley Archives every week with the inspiration for a new story. This week it was a bit of a side step from my usual War Memorials but still concerned with First World War Soldiers.

In Jon Cooksey's book, Barnsley Pals, he comments that by Easter of 1915 the second Battalion of volunteers raised by the town were outgrowing their accommodation in the Public Hall in Barnsley.

"Fortunately for the members of the Raising Committee, tearing their hair out wondering where to house a further 100 volunteers plus a reserve Company numbering some 250, the Trustees of the Regent Street Congregational Church came forward with the generous offer of its schoolroom for use by one of the Companies."(Cooksey, J. (1996) Barnsley Pals, Barnsley, Pen & Sword, p.72)

Yesterday in the Archives I was thrilled to find documentary evidence of this event while searching through the Regent Street Congregational Church documents filed as item A/163/2/N in the catalogue. This is four boxes of items, from marriage registers and annual accounts to Sunday School programmes and minute books.

Letter dated 22 March 1915 (with thanks to Barnsley Archives)

Telling the above story there is firstly a letter from W P Donald, Barnsley's Town Clerk dated 22nd March 1915 to Mr Thomas Ledgar Esq. of Wellfield Road, Senior Trustee of the Regent Street Congregational Church. (That mark on the bottom right appears to be a spillage of red ink and covers the next few paragraphs of the letter.) Headed 'Second Barnsley Battalion' the letter begins,

"The Committee charged with the raising and equipment of the above Battalion have instructed me to approach you, as Senior Trustee, with reference to the Battalion being allowed to use the Regent Street Congregational Church Schoolroom for the accommodation of the men.

At the present time, the Public Hall and Arcade Hall are overcrowded, and the men who have joined have not the requisite accommodation necessary to insure their health being preserved."

This sounds more as if the Town Clerk is putting forward the idea to the church than the church offering, however I suppose it could just be putting in writing something that had already been informally discussed.

Later in the letter Mr Donald assures the Trustees of the 'absolute urgency' of the situation and explains that an allowance of 1d to 3d per man per night 'with a depreciation allowance in certain cases' would be paid to them by the War Office.

Letter dated 13 May 1915 (with thanks to Barnsley Archives)

The Trustees obviously accepted the arrangements and the next letter in the file is dated 13th May 1915 and is from Lieutenant Colonel Raley, commanding officer of the 14th York and Lancaster Regiment and well known Barnsley solicitor. He is writing to thank the Trustees for their 'great kindness in letting us the rooms' and offers to make arrangements to see 'what damages (if any)' have been caused during the soldiers' occupation of the Schoolrooms.

This letter was actually the first item I spotted in the file as the Barnsley Battalion Coat of Arms, enlarged here on the left, was in bright red and raised up on the writing paper. As you can see the letter above was folded and would have been read right hand side first and then turned over to read what we see on the left. The easiest way to type a small sized letter maybe? There was nothing on the other side.

It was quite thrilling for me to hold something that had been handled and signed over 100 years ago, last month in fact, by W E Raley whom I have read so much about.

The survey mentioned in the letter must have taken place, as the next relevant item was an account from the Church to Lieutenant Colonel Raley concerning the depreciation.

Letter dated 17 May 1915 (with thanks to Barnsley Archives)

Obvious from this letter and the accompanying account from a contractor for £20 17s 6d for cleaning and whitewashing the schoolrooms and toilets is the fact that putting up 250 men in an enclosed space for 44 days is going to end up in some damage and 'soiling' of the accommodation. Lieut Colonel Raley obviously had more confidence in his men than was necessarily justified. A price of £5 has been agreed to cover the damages which include 20 broken benches, damaged tables and trestles, and 'two large squares broken' (any ideas?). What were the men doing to cause so much damage? High spirits and fooling around probably, as might be expected when 250 young men are cooped up together!

Unfortunately I also found a reply from Lieut Colonel Raley to the effect that the Trustees had misunderstood his previous letter and that depreciation was included in the payment of 3d per man per night. Which I found a bit petty ... in today's money, according to The National Archives Currency Converter, £5 is around £215. Not much to replace or mend those damaged items really.

Note dated 17 September 1915 (with thanks to Barnsley Archives)

Finally, in September 1915, there is a note that the payment had been received for the occupation of the School by D Company of the 2nd Battalion of the Barnsley Pals. It records that the 250 men were on the premises from 30 March to 13 May 1915, that is 44 nights at 3d per man per night, amounting to a reasonable £137 10s. Again using the TNA's currency converter I see that that is equivalent to nearly £6,000 in today's money so I suppose the declined £5 for the damages was quite a small amount considering the overall sum the Church received.

Barnsley Chronicle 15 May 1915
(thanks to Barnsley Archives)

On Friday 14th May 1915 both Battalions of the Barnsley Pals boarded trains at Barnsley station to be taken onwards to Rugeley in Staffordshire for further training.

Jon Cooksey (1996, p.83) notes that, "Barnsley was to see them together just once more before they left England for overseas service."

Children were allowed the day off school and families lined the streets to say goodbye to their sons and brothers, husbands and fathers. The entirety of the front page of the Barnsley Chronicle the following day was taken up with reports of the day, overflowing onto page 3 of the paper.

If you want to read more about the moving scenes in Barnsley that day you can browse the Barnsley Chronicle at Barnsley Archives absolutely free of charge. It is available digitally and on microfilm and copies of articles can be bought for a reasonable 55p an A4 page. I find reading the old newspapers completely addictive and just as likely to produce wonderful stories as searching through boxes of old documents.

I hope you have enjoyed this glimpse into the history of the Barnsley Pals as much as I did when I discovered it in the Archives yesterday.

Thank you for reading.

I've had this post in 'draft' with just a title for nearly a month now. I think I saw a good story and thought I'd write it up then something happened (I was probably taken ill and had a couple of those 'couldn't bear to even turn on the laptop' days!).

So what was it about the Davies brothers that interested me? John Edward Davies is one of the men who was named on St John's Church war memorial plaque, now sadly lost after the church was demolished in the 1960s. I have been researching the 140 names listed in a newspaper cutting from the Barnsley Chronicle reporting the dedication of the plaque in 1921 - you can see a copy of the cutting on the webpage linked above.

Barnsley Chronicle 28 April 1917
(thanks to Barnsley Archives)

According to his Commonwealth War Graves Commission entry John Edward Davies was in the 2nd Barnsley Pals, the 14th battalion York and Lancaster Regiment, and had died on 9 April 1917 and is buried in Chocques Military Cemetery in France. No family information is given on the entry so I had to search a bit more to find out who he actually was. The extra documents you now get at the bottom of the page gave me a name and address, although no inscription had been requested for John's CWGC gravestone.

Mrs P Allenby, 64 Copper Street, Barnsley

So who was she? His widow remarried? His married sister? His mother under another married name?

His obituary in the Barnsley Chronicle (available to search digitally at Barnsley Archives) confirmed 64 Copper Street as his home address, but stated that he was a widower with one child. So not his wife then ... I additionally learnt that he had joined up in January 1915, which fits nicely with the known timeline for recruitment to the 2nd Barnsley Pals. He had previously worked at Barrow Colliery and had been 27 years old when he was killed in action - making him born around 1890. A death notice in the same issue of the Barnsley Chronicle was from "his daughter and mother-in-law" so maybe Mrs P Allenby was his deceased wife's mother, who was caring for his little girl for him? However I could not find a marriage in Barnsley for Davies and Allenby on FreeBMD even with imaginative use of wild cards in the two surnames. A second death notice was from "his loving brother and sister, James and Gertrude". I noted this just in case it was a vital clue!

During searches of the census on Ancestry I discovered that Allenby was actually Allemby - there is no-one in Barnsley by the former name during the period covered. Eventually, in the 1911 census, I found a Mrs Phoebe Allemby living at 31 Brittania Street which is very near Copper Street. Neither of these streets still exist - they were in the vicinity of Joseph Locke House off Sheffield Road in Barnsley - although there are a Copper and Britannia Close nearby. No sign of a daughter, married or otherwise, although Phoebe does declare that she has been married for twenty-one years, having six out of seven children still living and yet there were only three sons at home, the youngest being Joseph Wilkinson Allemby aged just 3 years old. All the family listed were born in Barnsley. I also found an Ann Allemby, aged 19, born in Barnsley, in service at a farm in Flockton, near Wakefield.

The Old Royal Oak, Peel Square (from the Tasker Trust website)

Nipping back 10 years to the 1901 census I found Phoebe, together with husband Arthur and four children, including Ann aged 8, living in the Old Royal Oak, Peel Square! I do like a pub connection! Arthur Allemby is listed as the Innkeeper, working on his own account. He was born in Clayton West, but the rest of the family were from Barnsley. He must have been away from home on census night 1911.

The idea of Ann living away from home as a servant suggested I widen my search for an Allemby Davies marriage. It turned up in Sheffield in the September quarter of 1911. Ann Allemby married John E Davies. Good - that's sorted then. As John was a widower by the time of his death I looked for Ann's burial in Barnsley cemetery. Sure enough, Ann Davies aged 22 (oh, dear) was buried in March 1915 from 58 Britannia Street. So this was after John joined up, but while the Pals were still in training in Barnsley, how sad for him. In the same grave plot was Lily Wilkinson Davies aged 3, of 66 Copper Street, who died in December 1915 aged 3 years. Could this be his daughter? But his daughter was alive when the death notice was posted - so Ann and John must have had at least two daughters. Just to confirm matters Phobe Locke Allemby aged 77 is buried in the same plot in 1944 from 5 Dobie Street. The family seem to move around a fair amount, maybe from one rented property to another depending on needs and income.

Oddly there was no sign of husband Arthur Allemby in Barnsley Cemetery and a general search on FreeBMD did not turn up any likely candidates. A chap dying in Hyde in Cheshire in 1942 was the closest match. I wonder what happened to him?

So the Mrs P Allenby mentioned in John's CWGC record was his mother in law. Why was she his next of kin - and who were James and Gertrude? Not Allembys, neither name appears in Phoebe and Arthur's family. So Davies then ... I had not yet identified any census returns showing John Edward Davies - I had a couple of possibilities but nothing certain. Maybe James and Gertrude were going to be a clue after all.

1901 census snip showing the Davis family at 32 Shaw Street, Barnsley (from Ancestry)

After finding a James Davies (b.1883 in Barnsley) married to a Gertrude living in Wombwell in 1911 with their three children I tracked them back and discovered that William and Ellen Davies of Shaw Street, Barnsley (see above) had sons James and John who were the correct ages to fit the other known facts.

1911 census snip showing the Davis family at 46 Grafton Street (from Ancestry)

I went forward to the same family in 1911 - lo and behold - John is now listed as John Ed confirming that I've found the right family. Thank you James and Gertrude! The Davis family are now living at 46 Grafton Street (I had to look that one up on Google maps!) which is off Racecommon Road and not very far from Shaw Street. Nice little terraced houses with new doors and windows not long before the Google camera went around from the looks of it. William and Ellen had not been very lucky with their children - on this census return they declare they have had ten children and that six of them have already died. They have two adult male boarders living in, probably for some extra income - but that must have made the house very crowded, it only had five rooms.

As John Edward's brothers, James, Harry and Thomas were in the right age range for conscription in the First World War I tried looking them up on the Absent Voters' List for 1918 (full alphabetically sorted transcription now available in Barnsley Archives) but there was no sign of them. Of course if James had remained in Wombwell he would not have been on this list as it only covers the central wards and the neighbouring townships.

Next I tried Barnsley Cemetery to see if I could find poor William and Ellen's lost six children. Ellen dies in April 1914 aged 58 at 46 Grafton Street and William joins her in the same plot in December the following year. Ah, ha! That is why John Edward's parents are not his next of kin - they had both predeceased him. There are no other Davies burials from Grafton Street and none from Shaw Street, but there are two from 7 Longcar Street, which was William and Ellen's address in 1891. One is a child, Esther, aged 16 months, who could be one of their lost children. The other is a 26 year old, Ernest Davies - maybe William's brother?

Thomas Davies CWGC stone in Barnsley Cemetery
(photo by Pete Schofield)

However I did spot the burial of a Thomas Davies the right age to be John Edward's brother in a CWGC grave. Place of death ... drowned in the canal!

We have a good collection of photos from Barnsley Cemetery now, thanks to the Barnsley War Memorial's Project's Information Officer Pete Schofield, so I was quickly able to find the image on the left. This confirmed what I'd seen in the burial transcription - Thomas died in December 1914, very, very early on in the war - and obviously at home as he was buried in our local cemetery.

A search of the Barnsley Chronicle gave me the answer. On 19 December 1914 it was reported that Thomas Davies, a colliery trammer, who had enlisted in the 5th battalion of the York and Lancaster regiment disappeared the day after his enlistment. His body was found four weeks later in a badly decomposed state floating near Craik's bleach works (this is at Old Mill).

He was identified by a knife and fork found on him which his wife, Mrs Annie Davies, said he had taken with him when he went to report to the Drill Hall after his enlistment. She also noted that he had been in ill health for some time and another witness, Robert Atherton, brother-in-law of the deceased, said that he had noticed Thomas getting very depressed recently. The coroner's verdict was that he had, "Drowned himself whilst of unsound mind through illness and being unable to do the duties as a soldier which he had undertaken."

1911 marriage entry for Thomas Davies and Annie Hobson at St George's Church, Barnsley (from Ancestry)

The connection between this man and John Edward Davies was proved when I found Thomas' marriage certificate on Ancestry. Note that address of bride and groom is 46 Grafton Street - William and Ellen's address in 1911. The bride is called Annie - the name given in the newspaper cutting and her maiden name is Hobson. The witnesses are John Edward Davies and his wife Ann Davies. In 1905 Robert Atherton - mentioned in the newspaper report as Thomas' brother-in-law - had married Annie's sister Elizabeth Hobson at St John's Church in Barnsley.

So there we have it - two brothers, both remembered on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website, but who lost their lives in such completely different ways in the First World War. Thomas enlisted first in November 1914, but due to ill health and other pressures upon him felt he just couldn't cope with being in the army and ended his life in Barnsley canal - I think it was good of the military authorities to recognise that his death was in service and possibly exacerbated by worries about training and combat and permit him to have a CWGC commemoration. However he is not remembered on any war memorial in the Barnsley area that we are aware of. The following January his younger brother John enlists and was wounded in June 1916, not long after arriving in France with the Barnsley Pals. He misses the first day of the battle of the Somme but returns to France in January 1917 only to be be killed in action in April. John Edward Davies was remembered on the St John's church memorial - now sadly lost.

One last thing - a search for Arthur Allemby on the web did not solve the problem of where he vanished to after fathering Joseph Wilkinson Allemby, Phoebe's youngest son, in mid 1906, but it did return a possible solution to the missing daughter of John Edward Davies. Phoebe Locke Allemby (nee Wilkinson) left a will and it is catalogued on The National Archives website as being held by Barnsley Archives (A/1882/B/1/193). Among the beneficiaries are Harry Allemby, presumably Ann's brother, and a Laura Davis - surely the missing daughter despite the slightly different spelling? So next time I'm in the Archives I'll be calling that up from the store!

Thanks for reading - I hope you enjoyed that puzzle as much as I did!

You might remember that over a year ago I got quite enthusiastic about Lives of the First World War - the Imperial War Museum's online tribute to all the men and women who were affected by the war.

To start with the site was difficult to use, but eventually things began to improve, especially with the introduction of the Timeline view. Since then Lives Mail has appeared - a facility to exchange messages with other people who are using the site - a bit like messaging on Facebook. This means that you can easily and securely make contact with other people who are remembering stories that you are interested in. There is also a little notification bell symbol at the top of the screen which shows a red spot when someone else adds to a story that you have 'remembered' or added some evidence to yourself in the past. I love seeing those red spots!

The new features on Lives (that's me on the right!)

Clicking that little arrow by the profile picture of the user will bring up a menu that lets you access your notifications, your mail, your profile, your subscription and most importantly your Dashboard, where all the men you are remembering are displayed. The Help option takes you through several improved screens of helpful hints - although I still think my User Manuals on this blog were pretty good! Try this page if you haven't looked at Lives before. Then eventually you reach the Forum pages where you can ask for help, suggest improvements and request Lives to be added.

In the last few weeks there have been some great strides in improvements to the site, all thanks to a group of IWM Volunteers. I am very proud to be able to say that this hallowed group includes yours truly!

Previously only men and women who appeared in the various categories of 'seed' data were available on the site for the users to add their own photographs and family stories to. The forum dedicated to requesting stories to be added had hundreds of posts going right back to the start of the project - and I am happy to say that the volunteers have now cleared most of the backlog and are keeping up with the requests that are added on a daily basis.

Follow this link to ask for your relative's Life Story page to be added to the site:
http://support.livesofthefirstworldwar.org/forums/246125-suggested-life-stories

There were also a large number of duplicate names on the site - mainly due to the award of medals for bravery and so on. As each of these generates a separate medal card some men have two or three or more cards and thus multiple "Life Stories" on the Lives website.
These are now being merged by the IWM Volunteers too!

Can't stop - got loads of work to do! Hundreds of the men listed in the 1918 Absent Voters' List for Barnsley didn't serve abroad - so they don't have Life Stories yet ... and there are quite a few Commonwealth War Graves Commission burials around the Barnsley area for men who died while training or through sickness or by some accident or other who are also not yet remembered on Lives.

Charles Senior - accidentally drowned and Edward Hesford - died in hospital

Today I added stories for two young men, Charles William Senior and Edward Hesford who are buried in Barnsley Cemetery - you can read about them on Lives or on our Barnsley's History - The Great War Facebook page.

At approximately 7am on Friday morning I turned over in bed and my knee popped out of joint. This post is by way of recording that fact and is also a musing upon why this should have started happening to me again so frequently.

A diagram of the knee joint (from webmd.boots.com)

Since I was a small child my knees and ankles have been very unstable. I can clearly remember sitting cross legged, as children do so easily, and my knees popping in and out. The image in the background is the living room of first house I ever knew, in West Rainton, County Durham, so this memory dates back to me being less than seven years old, as we moved to Staffordshire after that.

I seemed to have had continually have 'sprained' ankles and knees, I became very good at applying beautiful herringbone patterned support bandages to my ankles. Probably due to my asthma in the summer - we now know I was allergic to grass and tree pollen - and my bronchitis in the winter I didn't 'play out' much, but I can remember sitting with both ankles strapped up jealously listening to everyone else on our street playing some loud game.

1960's Marmite advert (from Twitter)

My childhood was dogged with asthma attacks and discovering more and more about my allergies. On being told I was allergic to eggs my mum had the idea of writing to various manufacturers to ask what was in their products, we still have a file of the letters they wrote in reply. Marmite, for example, refused to tell us what their 'secret ingredient' was - these were the days long before compulsory ingredient lists on foods. I am able to eat Marmite quite happily these days, so whatever it was that used to make my skin itchy and shorten my breathing back in the early 1960s must have been removed from their ingredient list at some point.

I can't clearly remember a serious knee incident until I was at secondary school. I was playing netball ... I was quite hopeless at this game being so much shorter than the other girls in my year. I turned and stretched for the ball and my knee just crunched. My memories are a bit vague for the next few hours, but the thing that sticks in my mind is that by the time my mum had got me, lying on the back seat of her little Mini and in huge amounts of pain, to the local hospital in Stafford about nine miles away, my knee had apparently put itself back in place and the doctors could find nothing wrong. I think this incident has coloured the way I handle all subsequent incidents of my knee problems.

A very scary looking dust mite (from Wikipedia)

I continued to have joint problems throughout my time at secondary school - try limping from class to class on two sprained ankles! But to be honest they were overshadowed by my asthma. At some point the doctors had discovered I was allergic to house dust and dust mites, which meant that all my bedding had to be replaced. No more feather pillows, no wool blankets and no candlewick bedspread. This was in the very early days of duvets, but I think that is what my parents had to buy for me as it was the only non-fluffy bedding available. I also had to get rid of anything in my bedroom that would become dusty, or that would prevent easy dusting (with a damp duster to keep down the dust). I still have a shoebox full of Whimsies, little collectible Wade ornaments of pets and zoo animals, that I had to pack away because they would just have made dusting my bookshelves far too fiddly a job. They are all in their original boxes - maybe they'll be worth something one day!

After we moved north and I left home to live in first Doncaster and then Sheffield my asthma continued to be a problem until one memorable winter, probably 1983, when I was admitted to the Northern General hospital after an asthma attack that had frightened my new flat mates to the extent that they called an ambulance. The follow up appointments led to me being prescribed a drug that I still take which controls my asthma wonderfully. Thank goodness!

I can remember problems with my ankles and knees throughout that period, but nothing that couldn't be sorted by a support bandage and a few days with my foot up. It was years later that a doctor, surprised by an odd movement in my left ankle, sent me to see a consultant at the Hallamshire. I was subjected to a stress x-ray of the ankle - not recommended! Basically the doctor, wearing a natty lead jacket, pulls on your foot while the radiographer takes the picture. Very painful!

Walls Viennetta Ice Cream!

Unfortunately despite recommending an operation to stabilise my very weak ankle when they opened me up they discovered that very little could be done. Apparently the bottom of my fibula (the thinner of the two bones in your lower leg and the one which forms the outer side of the hinge joint of your ankle) looks like a Viennetta (ah ha! now you understand the picture!), with layers of bone chips interspersed with flexible tissue. So nothing for them to screw a metal plate to then ...

The consultant theorised that all my joints are very weak and over flexible. He even demonstrated on my other ankle while I was still under the anaesthetic (a spinal block, as I'd asked if I could stay awake and given my asthma they were very glad to do that) by bending it almost to 90 degrees. *Shudder* One possible cause of this is the high doses of steroids I was given as a child to help with my asthma.

So you win some and you lose some.

I can only imagine that my joint problems are becoming more frequent now because my general health is deteriorating and my muscle tone, never wonderful, is now much, much less due to days and days of not being able to get out of the house. Maybe the yoga I started a few weeks ago will help.

My friends will be happy to hear that at around 1am this morning - I was lying quite still in bed - there was an audible crunch and my knee now appears to be realigned correctly, unfortunately the strain of the last two days means that the pain is still there and I now have it supported in the hopes of preventing it from popping out of joint again while the muscles heal. I will be hobbling around for a few days yet, being very careful when sitting and turning. But, hey, that's no different to usual is it?

If you got this far, thanks for reading. And thanks to the OH for being very patient with me this weekend and apologies to my mum for not being able to visit. We will catch up!

On our way back from our short break in Sunderland last month the OH and I stopped off in Middlesborough for a few hours so that I could call in at Teeside Archives.

Since early 2013 I have been trying to trace the whereabouts of the ships' registration documents for Hartlepool which mention my 4x great uncle Robert Elstob Hutton. Despite them appearing online in several places attributed to Hartlepool museum, on both a site called Ookl and more recently on the Hartlepool History Then and Now site, when I contacted the museum they could not find the relevant documents. However a random search on Google a few months ago turned up a reference to them in Teeside Archives - they must have been transferred to this regional Archives but no-one at Hartlepool can remember! I immediately contacted Teeside and enquired about the documents - I received several helpful emails and made a booking to visit on the last day of our holiday.

I had been told by email that the books containing the ship's registration documents (NG/SR/H/1) were very large and could not be photocopied so the OH and I went prepared to pay for a day licence to photograph the pages I was interested in. I knew of at least seven ships in which Robert Elstob Hutton owned shares and each registration appeared to cover two or more pages. On our arrival, we were told that some of the books had been digitised and that we could browse indexed CDs, printing out the pages we required. Of the four books I wanted to consult, three had been digitised but we did get the chance to handle and photograph one of these 160 year old volumes as we followed the histories of Robert's ships. Many of our printouts had to be at A3 size in order to read the small handwritten details on the registration forms, and our total bill came to £12.50 for the visit. But well worth it for the fascinating stories these documents tell.

This is the story of just one ship, the brig Euxine (pronounced yook-sin).

The header of the Euxine's registration (thanks to Teeside Archives)

Names of the owners of the Euxine from her registration (thanks to Teeside Archives)

"No 11 Port of Hartlepool dated 2 April 1855
Name Euxine 268 tons Burthen Robert Hutton Master
When and where built or condemned as Prize, referring to Builder's Certificate, Judge's Certificate or last Registry:
Built at South Stockton in the County of York in the Year One Thousand eight hundred and Fifty Five as appears in the Certificate of William Turnbull the Builders, dated 24 March 1855."

The header of the registration gives us the date of construction for the Euxine and the place where it was built. As there are only a few days between the certificate of the builder, William Turnbull, of Stockton on Tees,on 24 March 1855 and the registration at Hartlepool on 2 April 1855, we might assume the ship was built for the declared owners.
Robert Elstob Hutton of Hartlepool owns 32 of the 64 shares in the Euxine and Thomas Belk, a Solicitor, also of Hartlepool, the remaining half of the ship. Interesting to note that ships shares come in 64 parts - apparently this is still the case in English law.

In the 1851 census Thomas Belk is listed as Town Clerk and Solicitor. In one of those small world moments you get in family history I notice he was born in Pontefract in 1809 and married in Ackworth in 1837 - which is about 7 miles from where I am currently sat!

A similar ship to the Euxine (from an art auction website)

The Euxine is a small ship, 100 feet long and 23 feet wide with a hold depth of no more than 15 feet. Her stern is square and her figure head is a female bust. She has two masts and is noted as snow rigged. Despite this description she appears in the newspapers and Lloyd's lists as a brig, which suggests a slightly different arrangement of sails (according to Wikipedia) although it seems the two terms were becoming interchangeable by this period.

The master of the ship at its registration is Robert Hutton, this is not my 4x great uncle, but rather his eldest son, born in 1829 in Sunderland.

Extract from Robert Hutton's Mate's Claim (from Ancestry)

He had first gone to sea as an Apprentice in 1842 when he would have been 13 years old. He had claimed his Mate's Certificate in 1855 when he was 21 after serving on several ships in which his father had shares, the Hotspur, the Ireby and the Acacia. He appears to have travelled all over the world, from Australia to the Arctic Circle.

The Euxine's entry Lloyd's Register of Ships 1855 (note: two ships by the same name)

Lloyd's Register of Ships is shows us that there were two ships called Euxine in 1855, our ship, the brig Euxine, built in Stockton in 1855, owned by Hutton & co and voyaging under R. Hutton from Stockton to the Mediterranean and the other a larger ship, a barque, master W. Bell, voyaging from Dundee to Brazil.

It is possible to follow the voyages of a ship in the 19th century newspapers now they have been made available online with easily searchable text on websites like the British Newspaper Archive and Find My Past, which both require a subscription. However you can also search a limited selection of 19th newspapers for free via a membership in some libraries - I am a member of Newcastle Library and can search the newspapers via the Internet from home.

With two ships the same name in the same periodthe search becomes a little more diffcult, but as ship's masters are often mentioned as well a search for Euxine and Hutton limits the hits to four in the newspapers on Find My Past.

North & South Shields Gazette and Northumberland and Durham Advertiser 30 August 1855 (from Find My Past)

On 27th August 1855 the Euxine arrived in Falmouth from Alexandria, Egypt. Her cargo was probably grain, this seems to be usual from that port. A similar voyage is reported in the Liverpool Mercury in March 1856. In June 1856 the Euxine sailed from Troon for Smyna,Turkey on the Aegean Sea. The final hit tell us that in March 1857 she sails for Antwerp, Belgium.

My previous family history research had uncovered another clue to the voyages of the Euxine. Robert Hutton is mentioned on his father's gravestone in Hartlepool Spion Kop Cemetery.

Inscription from Robert Elstob Hutton's grave (from Billion Graves)

(You will have to create a free account to see the images on Billion Graves now - this is a change since I wrote a blog post about finding this image on the site in 2013.)

As you can see from the inscription above Robert Hutton dies in Havana on 24 July 1857 aged 27 years. As the last newspaper mention I could easily find has the Euxine sailing to Antwerp in March I did wonder if Robert was still on board her when he died in Havana four months later - as it is on the far side of the Atlantic Ocean!

There are over 400 hits for the Euxine on Find My Past in 1857, but many refer to the Euxine Sea, an older name for the Black Sea, and many others to a steam ship of the same name, however eventually I did find the entry that solved the mystery.

Newcastle Journal 05 September 1857 (from Find My Past)

The name Hutton had been indexed as Button, and the text is twisted as it wraps around the edge of the page which is why this entry had not come up on any of my previous searches. Without knowing the name of the ship Robert was sailing on it is doubtful I would ever have found this little snippet of family information.

"At Havanna (sic), lately, of yellow fever, in his 27th year, Capt. Robert Hutton, of the brig, Euxine, of Hartlepool, eldest son of Mr. Robert Elstob Hutton, ship-owner, Hartlepool." (Newcastle Journal 5 September 1857)

Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser 25 September 1857 (from Find My Past)

The ship appears to have been sailed home by a man called Fairburn, as it is reported arriving off the Isles of Scilly from Havana on 18 September 1857 with a master of that name. Maybe he had been the mate and had taken over after Robert died?

Entries for Euxine in Lloyd's Register of Ships 1858

By 1858 there are four ships called Euxine registered in the Lloyd's List. However by picking out the name of the new master, Robertson, from the list we can track our Euxine in the newspapers as we did before. Note that in this entry the Euxine is still owned by Hutton & Co. The owner has changed to T Belk by 1860.

We know that Robert Elstob Hutton dies in April 1858, his shares in the Euxine must pass into the possession of Thomas Belk, who now owns the whole of the ship. Robert dies intestate so I assume the proceeds from the sale of his various ships shares and other property were divided between his wife and children.

The following spring and for several years afterwards the Euxine sails captained by Alexander Robertson. The newspapers document her voyages from April 1858 with several trips to Alexandria, a mention of Table Bay which is Cape Town, South Africa and of Archangel, in the Arctic Circle. Then in 1861 disaster strikes.

Newcastle Journal 16 November 1861
(from Find My Past)

It seems that the Euxine, master Alexander Robertson, was returning to Liverpool from Alexandria with a cargo of beans when a storm blew up and she got into difficulties off Lytham (between Blackpool and Southport) on Monday 11 November. She was offered a tow by a steam tug, the Brother Jonathan, and Captain Robertson was sufficiently confident that this would get him out of trouble that he put a message in a bottle to the effect that the Euxine had been towed ashore and abandoned (Shields Daily Gazette 05 December 1861).

Unfortunately the tow cable broke and Captain Robertson apparently declined a second hawser, saying he would let go his anchor and ride out the storm (Reading Mercury 16 November 1861). By the following morning the ship had been lost.

On 13 November a body is picked up by a fishing boat off Fleetwood. It is identified as Alexander Robertson aged about 60 years. The papers in his pockets, according to this piece in the Newcastle Journal of 16 November, document his last fatal voyage.

There was a receipt for £220 which was paid into a bank in Newcastle upon Tyne to the credit of Alexander Robertson on 31 May 1861 and a bill of exchange for £75 drawn in Alexandria on 7 August by Alexander Robertson in favour of Thomas Belk. Details of the documents were telegraphed to the bankers at Newcastle "in the hopes that through them the friends of the deceased may be found."

Final entry in the Euxine's ships'registration book (thanks to Teeside Archives)

The last entry for the Euxine we found in Teeside Archives was in the original volume dated 1855 to 1862 which we were allowed to photograph. "Ship lost with all her papers the 11th Nov 1861 off Lytham." The entry in the register was closed on 14 December 1861.

It took me most of a weekend to put together just these few details of the history of the Euxine, and I did not examine all the entries for her voyages with Alexander Robertson in detail. However it was satisfying to see how her story fitted into my own family history, especially to see evidence of Robert Hutton junior's death from yellow fever - which I would never have found without knowing the name of the ship he had been sailing on.

Thank you for reading ... I still have another six ships owned by R E Hutton to research, so I'll be getting back to you soon!

This article was first published in the Summer 2015 issue of Barnsley CAMRA's magazine The BAR.

Not so long ago there were parts of Barnsley with a pub on every corner, but now most of them have been swept away by redevelopment, or in the case of the Marquis of Granby, for a car park.

Map snips from YOCOCO and the 1889 town plan of Barnsley

According to a map available on YOCOCO, Barnsley Council’s own online digital archive, this pub and the Earl of Strafford across the road, both survived the clearance of most of the surrounding houses for a short while. Compare this with the map on the right, which shows the same area in 1889. There are not just houses lining the streets, but also in courts between the streets. This densely packed part of Barnsley was known as Wilson’s Piece, after the owner of a local linen mill who owned the land and who had many of the houses built at the end of the 18th century.

The Marquis of Granby in the 1960s (from the Tasker Trust)

This photo from the Tasker Trust website shows the Marquis of Granby standing amid a sea of rubble, alone near the top of Thomas Street.

Looking up Thomas Street (from Google maps)

Even the junction of this road with Heelis Street no longer exists, the road now turns into what’s left of Burleigh Street in a smooth curve just below where the pub stood.

My interest in the pub was caught when I found the records for two soldiers who lost their lives in the First World War who were both connected to the pub. Joseph Swift, aged 30, of the Rifle Brigade was reported missing in May 1918. At the end of the war he was still presumed missing and this fact is noted against his name in the list of Absent Voters for Barnsley’s first post war election due to be held in December 1918. Earlier in the year the vote had been given for the first to every man over 21 and some women over 30 and the names of over 6,000 men and 4 women who were expected to still be absent from home, mostly on war service, are listed in this source at Barnsley Archives and on the Barnsley War Memorials Project website. Joseph’s father, another Joseph Swift, was the publican at the Marquis of Granby from 1881 to 1917 but he also worked as a blacksmith, suggesting that the pub was mostly run by his wife, Mary Ann (née Nixon). Joseph and Mary Ann had seven sons in all. In a move we might find strange today after their sixth, a boy named Ernest, died at 6 months they named their seventh child who was born the following year after his dead brother. All of their children, including Joseph in November 1883, were baptised at nearby St John’s Church and the latter four were probably born in the pub itself.

The younger Joseph married Agnes Marshall in the same church in 1905 and had, by the time his name is recorded in the Electoral Register, moved a short distance away to Silver Street. Joseph and Agnes had one child who survived, a daughter named Mary Ann after her grandmother.

The Swift’s eldest son, George, who was nine years older than Joseph the soldier, took over the pub from his father in 1917 and kept it until 1936. He also worked as an Engineer’s Pattern Maker at an Iron Foundry. In October 1918 the new landlady of the Marquis of Granby, Mrs Swift, advertises in the Barnsley Chronicle (available to browse digitally and on microfilm at Barnsley Archives) for a General Servant. This suggests that she needed a bit of help with running the pub while her husband continued to work in his own trade.

Barnsley Chronicle 7 December 1918 (thanks to Barnsley Archives)

Unfortunately the family’s troubles in the war were not over. New landlord George Swift and his wife Eva also suffered a loss. The report in the Barnsley Chronicle on 7 December 1918 tells us that, “Signaller George Swift, 13th Y & L, whose home was with his parents, Mr and Mrs Swift, of the Marquis of Granby Inn, Barnsley, has died of broncho-pneumonia at the age of 20 years in Aubengue Hospital, France, where he has been visited by his parents. The deceased, before enlisting in July of last year, worked at Messrs Qualter and Smith’s foundry, Summer Lane.” In the same edition of the newspaper is a poignant message addressed to Signaller G. Swift from a Kittie Brown, “The evening star shines o’er the grave, Of one we loved, but could not save.” Could this have been young George’s sweetheart?

At least George’s parents were able to visit him. The fact that Joseph was still noted as missing in the Absent Voters’ List suggests that there was still some doubt as to whether he was alive or dead. This may be why his name was not included in the 140 recorded on the memorial which was dedicated in St John’s Church in September 1921. Oddly, though, neither was young George. You would have thought a family with such a close and long connection to the area, and a proven link to the church by baptisms and marriages, would have asked for their men to be included. I suppose we will never know why they were not.

Soldier Joseph Swift’s widow Agnes remarries towards the end of 1921, so presumably official notification had reached the family by then. Her married name, Connor, is mentioned along with Joseph’s parents on his Commonwealth War Graves Commission entry which tells us that he is remembered on the Soissons Memorial in France confirming that he has no known grave.

After George Swift left the Marquis of Granby in 1936 he was followed by eight more landlords according to the Tasker Trust website, which gives the name of every landlord from 1830, when presumably the pub first opened, right up to its closure in 1969. However none equalled the Swift family who, in a tenure spanning two generations, ran the pub for 55 years.

Thanks to Barnsley Archives

Update November 2015:

After the publication of this article Barnsley Archives co-coincidently received a donation of some papers from the Swift family. These included a photo of George Swift junior's original wooden grave marker in Terlincthun British Cemetery, Wimille, France.

Photos like this were sent to families on request by the Imperial War Graves Commission, the forerunner of today's Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

Women's stories have not exactly been turning up thick and fast during the First World War period in Barnsley, so when a name I have had 'on file' for a while is finally resolved it's a time of quiet jubilation for me.

I was aware Gladys Alderson's name in connection with the YMCA during WW1 because she is one of just four women listed on the 1918 Absent Voters' List for Barnsley. Her occupation was listed as "YMCA Canteen" and her address was 31 Huddersfield Road; at the same address was a Major Lionel Alderson, of the Army Service Corps. I could have pursued the usual family history routes and found out if this pair were married, who their families were and so on, but without more information about Gladys' YMCA work it didn't seem worth going in that direction at the time.

Last weekend I started reading Kate Adie's recent book Fighting on the Home Front which describes the role of women in WW1. In chapter eight she covers the work of the YMCA's Women's Auxiliary Committee who provided 'voluntary lady workers' to staff YMCA huts in France which supplied a wholesome alternative to the various cafés and estaminets. The huts provided a place to sit, paper on which to write letters home and hot drinks and biscuits. The workers had to pay their own way, although a small grant was available for uniforms, which was grey with a straw hat in the summer and a velour one in the winter, so they were mainly from the middle and upper classes.

With thanks to the IWM

One lady named in Kate's book, a Betty Stevenson, was killed by a German bomb and was given a military funeral and a French Croix de Guerre for her devotion to duty. This photo of Betty is taken from her Life Story on the Imperial War Museum's website Lives of the First World War which has been well populated with detail by IWM staff and other interested parties.

Being an experienced user of the site I was able to see that one of sources used to create Betty's (or Bertha to give her official name) story was her medal card. I have only recently learned that volunteers who worked for organisations like the YMCA and the Salvation Army qualified for British campaign medals. Women's medal cards are available via The National Archives online but not via Ancestry unfortunately.

Gladys Alderson's Life Story had been 'seeded' onto Lives of the First World War along with the other YMCA recipients of campaign medals and once I had found her I clicked the 'Remember' button so that a link was saved to my dashboard for future reference.

I was able to find Gladys Alderson's record at TNA but was unwilling to pay £3.30 to view it. A colleague on the Lives Facebook page suggested I look at the partially hidden preview of the card as sometimes it is possible to make out useful information.

Gladys H A Alderson's partial Medal Card (from TNA)

The year 1917 is visible at the centre bottom of the card on the line which usually gives the date a person first entered a theatre of war. That is indeed useful, but I am still not tempted to buy the full image of the card - I'll leave that to any interested relatives.

Having discovered a little more about what Gladys would have been doing as a YMCA Canteen Worker and now knowing that she did serve abroad I was more inspired to investigate more of Glady's story.

Gladys Helen Audrey Thomson was born in Wath upon Dearne in 1887 to Joseph Frederick Thomson, a mining engineer from Houghton le Spring in Durham. Her mother Mary Ann Jane Mossom was from London and her parents had married there in 1870. In all there were twelve children born to the couple but three had died before this information was recorded in the 1911 census. In 1901 Gladys is not enumerated with her family but instead appears under the name Audrey Thomson listed in London in a school lodging house along with several mistresses and lots of other young ladies. I am used to seeing young men away from home at boarding school in the census returns, but it is comparatively rare to see examples of middle class women's education.

Dunholm, now a Social Club, on Carr Road, Wath (Google maps)

Still using the name Audrey she has returned to Wath by the 1911 census and is listed with her now widowed father and five of her surviving nine siblings at Dunholm, a house with fourteen(!) rooms. She marries from here in 1913 and a report appears in the Yorkshire Post on 5 February 1913 (accessed via Newspapers on Find My Past).

A Wath-on-Dearne Wedding
The wedding took place at Wath-on-Dearne Parish Church yesterday, of Mr. Lionel William Alderson, son of Mr. C. Alderson, of Wellfield House, Barnsley, and Miss Gladys Audrey Thomson, youngest daughter of the late Mr J.F. Thomson, of Dunholm, Wath-on-Dearne. The Revs. H.E. Alderson, C.E. Whiting, and W. Keble Martin (Vicar of Wath) were the officiating clergymen, and the service was fully choral. The bride, who as attired in a gown of ivory satin charmeuse, draped with Mechlin lace, and full court train, was given away by her eldest brother, Mr A.T. Thomson. The bridesmaids were Miss K.F. Thomson, Miss B.W. Thomson, and Miss Alderson, who wore dresses of Parma violet ninon over satin charmeuse, with satin coatees. After the ceremony a reception was held at Dunholme [sic], and later Mr. and Mrs. Alderson left for Switzerland.

The Aldersons settled at 31 Huddersfield Road in Barnsley but sadly they do not seem to have had any children. Lionel, who had been born in Wakefield in 1885, was the second son of Charles Sibbald Alderson, a bank manager. His occupation is given as manager of a bleach works in the 1911 census when he is living at Wellfield House, in Barnsley.

Lionel's older brother Bernard Henry Alderson, who was unmarried, accidentally lost his life in the First World War and was remembered on the memorials at St George's and St Mary's churches in Barnsley. His youngest sister was left a widow when her husband died in service in 1916. The Absent Voters' List gives Lionel's rank as Major in the Army Service Corps in the war - medal roll records also suggest he was a Captain in the York and Lancaster Regiment, initially arriving in France in April 1915. Gladys' brother Reginald served in the war as a Private in the Liverpool Regiment - he survived.

With this great family involvement in the war and no children to keep her at home it is not surprising that Gladys felt the need to 'do her bit' and volunteer.

Later Gladys and Lionel move to Surrey where she dies in 1985. I have found their names together on a couple of ships' passenger lists in the 1950s - it looks as if they enjoyed a cruise or holidays in Tenerife!

I will keep looking for more information about Gladys in the local newspapers - maybe her service or that of other YMCA volunteers from Barnsley is mentioned at some point.

Thanks for reading.

When it was announced in our local newspaper early last year that a new ITV historical drama based on the building of the Settle to Carlisle railway was to be filmed in the Barnsley area it sounded very positive. I imagined jobs for local people and a tv series depicting a part of our social history that hasn't made it to the screen very often.

Three of the main characters in the new series (photo from itv.com)

I don't watch a huge amount of television and hardly anything on ITV to be honest. Downton Abbey was the one exception. I have, however, studied an enormous amount of history over the years. I used to live in Sheffield and stories of the navvies that build the Totley Tunnel are hugely popular there. I've read factual history about navvies and novels about navvies. I thought I knew what we were going to get in this new series ... but we didn't.

Dean Andrews (should have been in longer)

The prostitutes look far too 'frilly'. The wives and lodging house keepers are too 'decent'. Nowhere near enough beer is being consumed. The navvies are not rough enough. No construction appears to have taken place since the foreman played by poor Dean Andrews was blown to pieces in the first episode. The cabins are just too neat - honestly I think someone has been down to B&Q for some fence panels and just knocked them together at the corners, that or the local garden den and shed manufacturer was onto a good thing last summer.

Ok, the plot about the widow having to look for work and setting herself up as a 'fancy' lodging house keeper just about works. But where on earth was she carrying that tea set in their hand luggage? The widow of the aforementioned foreman who attempted to sell herself to pay the rent was stretching it a bit - surely the lads would have had a whip around for her. And having no extra rooms in her cabin to take in lodgers was a feeble excuse, she had a roof and walls, that's better than the outdoors. I liked the touch about the Tommy shop tonight - presumably once he's gained the trust of the navvies and their women the new overman will start charging top rates himself now he's cornered the market.

However the final straw this evening was the blatent disregard for 'proper' history.

Blackwood and his bride to be (photo itvstudios.com)

The speculator, Blackwood, and his 'just business because we have history' bride got married in his ancestral home in front of a mystery figure. The only new character that appeared in the house subsequently was a lawyer. No sign of a clergyman, a registrar or even a marriage licence. This is meant to be the 1870s. Marriages could only take place in registered religious premises or the local register office - as far as I am aware. I have swiftly flicked through my copy of Probert (2012) Marriage Law for Genealogists and only Jews and Quakers were exempt from the usual rules. In those days if Methodists married in their own place of worship a registrar had to be present.

This is apart from the complete lack of urgency or backbone shown by the hero when dispatched to get a doctor for the girl suffering from what I assume was diphtheria.

We are now three episodes in and I am seriously thinking of not bothering with the rest - it's only the chance of some Barnsley scenery that is keeping me going. The OH does think he recognised a rocky hillside in one shot this evening.

Nice background, shame about the sheds (www.examiner.co.uk)

What a shame. It could have been good. There are people out there who have made a lifelong study of this period of history - would it have been so bad to have asked one to come along and take a look at the script, the clothes and the woodwork?

Nearly three years ago I wrote the story of the OH's great, great uncle, Thomas Croft who was interned in Holland during the First World War. It was pieced together from his service records and family history with a few small snippits I discovered in the local newspapers. Then a few days ago I came across a very long piece in the Barnsley Chronicle which I had not seen before describing his escape in his own words. It was published on 24 July 1915 and I have transcribed it in full below.

Barnsley Chronicle 24 July 1915 (Barnsley Archives)

With grateful thanks to Barnsley Archives for the use of the war years Chronicle as part of the Barnsley War Memorials Project's indexing mini-project to provide a full reference to all mentions of WW1 servicemen and women in the newspapers during WW1. The Barnsley Chronicle from 1858 to almost the present day has been digitised and is available on two dedicated computers in the Archives, free to browse. The text has been OCR'd (Optical Character Recognition by computer) and can be searched for specific words on a month by month basis. Copies of articles can be printed off for a small charge.

Digitisation of a newspaper is not infallible, when there is smudging, creases or damage to a page the OCR will not pick up the words clearly. The Barnsley War Memorials Project aim to collate a Roll of Honour of every Fallen serviceman and woman from Barnsley and the only way to be sure of picking out every mention in the Barnsley Chronicle is to read each issue of the newpaper from beginning to end. It occurred to us that whilst we were doing this we could create a resource which would be useful for all visitors to the Archives.

A index of cuttings from the Chronicle, August 1914 to March 1917, has been available for many years in Barnsley Archives. The current project aims to complete the run up to the end of the war and into 1919, to improve the coverage of the existing index to include Death Notices and In Memoriam notices, and to make the index available online when it is complete. Volunteers with the Indexing mini-project are supplied via email with a .pdf copy of a single issue of the newspaper and an Excel spreadsheet on which to enter the details of every mention of a soldier, sailor, airman, nurse, conscientious objector, munitions worker or civilian casualty (and so on) of the war. So far the project has completed a detailed index from April 1917 to September 1918 and it has been made available on the open shelves in Barnsley Archives alongside the cuttings index for all visitors to use to help them find their WW1 ancestors. If you would like to help with this work please contact bwmp2015@gmail.com

Meanwhile, back to Thomas Croft's exciting story ...

BARNSLEY MAN'S ESCAPE FROM INTERNMENT IN HOLLAND
A DARING EXPLOIT
EXCITING EXPERIENCES

A Barnsley man, Thomas Croft, A.B., of the 1st Royal Naval Brigade, has succeeded in escaping from internment at Groningen, Holland, and he arrived at his home in Waltham Street on Monday night, safe and sound, to the delight of his family and friends, who displayed flags and bunting in the street to welcome the daring A.B.'s unexpected return. The story which Able Seaman Croft relates abounds with exciting incidents, and shows that he must possess more than the average man's share of daring and resource.

He was formerly a soldier in the 2nd Batt. York and Lancaster Regiment, but after the outbreak of war was transferred to the 1st Royal Naval Brigade, and took part in the now famous defence of Antwerp. As history records, a number of the Royal Naval Brigade were driven over the Dutch frontier and were interned. Croft was one of them. He was interned at Groningen early in October, and was there until last Friday, when he made his daring escap in company with Joe Lumb, of Doncaster, who was a naval reserve man. Croft had once before tried to escape, but on that occasion he did not succeed.

Last Friday Croft and his companion managed to elude their custodians and the Dutch sentries, and were successful in getting civilian clothing. Their objective was to get to Rotterdam, a somewhat formidable task considering that neither of the men could speak the Dutch language and that their supply of money was very limited. They walked hard the first night, but the ground was strange, and of course they were handicapped in not being able to make the necessary enquiries. Imagine their dismay and disappointment therefore, upon finding at daybreak that they had been walking in a circle and had arrived back at Groningen. Their difficulties had by this time greatly increased, for their escape had been discovered, and people were on the lookout for them. However, even in the face of this set back Croft and his companion did not despair, and they boldly walked to Groningen railway station, passing policemen en route without raising any suspicion. Their prospect at the station did not at first seem very bright, but the two men got into an empty train which was drawn up. There they waited and rested awhile, though they experienced anxious moments when two parties of carriage cleaners came upon the scene and wished them the Dutch equivalent for "good morning." The two Englishmen, however decided they would pretend to be deaf mutes in order to avoid awkward and tell-tale conversations. The cheery carriage cleaners had thus to be content with grunts for a reply, but the situation was temporarily saved.

It was then early morning, but at last a train for the Hague ran into the station. Croft then took a risky, but as events proved a successful, step. He boldly went into the booking office (which fortunately was only in charge of a young girl) and took two tickets for the Hague, the Dutch pronunciation of which he had previously mastered. He and his companion boarded the train, which was a corridor one, but fate decreed that they should not be left alone. A Dutchman, his wife, and some children got into their compartment and the well-meaning lady after a short time addressed the Englishmen in the casual conversational style common amongst travellers. But Croft and Lumb being "deaf and dumb" the good lady's efforts failed, and no suspicions were aroused. At Utrecht, which is a big railway junction, the two men had an anxious time, for the train was searched for them. Fortune favoured them however, for their Dutch friends in the carriage left the train, and Croft and his companion, being alone, were able to hide under the carriage seat and escape being discovered.

They safely reached the Hague, whence they journeyed by steam train to Delph, Croft being under the impression that they could travel by tram from there to Rotterdam. In this he was mistaken, but undaunted, the two men set off to walk to Rotterdam, a distance of twenty-five miles. During the whole of this time the only food that the two escaped sailors had had was a small bun each, given them by the Dutch woman in the train. They possessed a little money, but did not dare make any purchases lest their identity should be discovered. Upon arriving at Rotterdam the two friends made their way to the docks, and after a cautious look round, saw a notice board indicating the way to the Hull boats. This looked more like home, and Croft and his companion at last spotted an English trading shop, "Kirkall Abbey," which was taking in cargo. They at once boarded her, but were met by the mate who called out "Are you Belgians, Germans, Dutchmen or Frenchmen?" Croft replied, "We are Englishmen, escaping from Groningen." They laid their case befor the mate and appealed for a journey to England. The mate, however, referred the to the captain, who said he dared not risk taking them on board as the ship would be searched by the Dutch authorities before she left Rotterdam.

Still not despairing the Englishmen hunted up ______, who in a short space of time secured them places on a Great Eastern boat. The captain gave them a cordial reception and fed them right royally. At Harwich, the boat's destination, the escaped sailors were discovered by the Customs officers, and the story of their flight had to be again told. Their identity proved, one of the officers made them each a gift of five shillings to pay their fare to the Crystal Palace, where they arrived between 11 o'clock and 12 o'clock on Sunday night. On Monday Croft was allowed to come to his wife and family at Barnsley on a seven days' leave.

He says there are a number of Barnsley men interned at Groningen, and copies of the "Barnsley Chronicle," which arrive there weekly are eagerly perused. The men get fairly well looked after, but time hangs rather heavily on their hands. "It would be better if only they had some work to do," he adds.
......................................................................

That was the end of the article, but not the end of the story, for, if you have read my earlier piece you will know that Thomas was returned to Holland on 8th October 1915. Interned men were not actually supposed to escape! He was later allowed some official leaves of absence and managed to visit Barnsley each time. He finally returned to England in November 1918 and was demobilised in February 1919.

Imagine if you found a story like this about one of your WW1 ancestors! With the digitisation of the Barnsley Chronicle and the easily accessible indices to names for the war years it is not difficult to search from 1914 to 1918 in a very short amount of time. Why not give it a go next time you are passing the Town Hall and have a hour to spare?

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) announced their new initiative, the Living Memory project, earlier this week, which hopes to get community groups to visit the UK burial sites of WW1 & WW2 servicemen and women. There are apparently 300,000 burial sites in over 12,000 locations in the UK. These vary from large cemeteries with many rows of gravestones, usually associated with a war time hospital or military base, to little local churchyards and cemeteries.

Being an active volunteer for the Barnsley War Memorials Project I know that there are 130 of these burials in Barnsley's main cemetery, and dozens more scattered across the borough. But this weekend I am in North Nottinghamshire visiting my mum and I wondered if there were any in her local churchyard.

CWGC logo

It is amazingly difficult to explain to someone who has no background knowledge how the Commonwealth War Graves Commission came about and what it stands for today. I was surprised (after all I've been wittering on about WW1 soldiers for five or six years now) that my mum didn't know who the CWGC were. I did a quick explanation about Fabian Ware, the gravestones all being the same pattern and threw in Rudyard Kipling and Lutyens for good measure. The CWGC has a fast facts page if you find yourself in the same situation!

After we'd sorted that out I explained that I was going to look to see if there were any CWGC burials in the her village. She really did expect me to put my coat and boots on at that point and set off up the High Street - she didn't know I could just search the CWGC site online. My mum has an ipad and she can Google (especially for Simon's Cat videos!) and she watches iPlayer and she can look up the weather forecast. My mistake was to assume that because she could do these things that she understood all the things I do as a family historian. Of course she doesn't .... and if I don't bother to explain, why should I expect her to?

Lives of the First World war logo

There is one WW2 burial in the cemetery in the village in which my mum lives, but according to the documentation on the CWGC website it seems to be in a family plot and doesn't have the standard white stone. I was really after one of those to show her as an example of the equality principle and so she'd recognise them if she saw some in the future. So, still using the CWGC 'Find a Cemetery' search, I had a look around the surrounding villages and found an interesting man in Gringley on the Hill about three miles away. Then I looked him up on the Lives of the First World War website (which I use rather a lot at the moment and have written some useful blog posts about using it to Remember your WW1 relatives); this was very easy to do as the CWGC site give his service number and regiment; no-one was remembering this soldier and only his medal card was attached as evidence.

Alfred Girken Marriott was 29 years old when he died on 23 February 1917; he was a Shoeing Smith in the Royal Field Artillery and his medal card (available to view free on Ancestry during the centenary period) indicates that he served from the beginning of the war as he was entitled to the 1914 Star was well as to the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. I did a bit more research and then persuaded the OH that we really needed to pop along the road for a walk around the cemetery to have a look for his gravestone. After all it was a really lovely day ...

Gringley on the Hill village cemetery

Gringley on the Hill cemetery is on the edge of the village, on the main road, right next to the old windmill. There is no car park or lane, but there is a wide bit of causeway (path) with dropped kerbs at either end that you can pull onto. I would recommend a spotter for pulling out though as it is rather near a bend and the speed limit on the road is 50mph.

War Memorial at Gringley on the Hill

The village war memorial is in the cemetery, commemorating men from WW1 and WW2.

I counted 24 WW1 casualties which seems a lot from a small village (note to self: nip up the road and count the ones on the memorial in mum's village after lunch for comparison) including A Marriott.

I spotted at least three war memorial gravestones, those are ones where the man is not actually buried in the plot but his family have had a memorial inscription added to the family stone. These usually include the words 'Killed in Action', 'Died in France', 'Died of Wounds' or 'Interred in *name of some cemetery overseas*'.

There was a very new looking WW2 CWGC gravestone just a few yards from the war memorial. It commemorated a young, 18 year old, airman who died in July 1947. The cut off date for qualification for a WW2 CWGC stone is 31 December 1947 so he just qualified.

Albert G Marriott's CWGC gravestone

We found Albert Marriott's CWGC gravestone on the other side of the cemetery, right next to the hedge. There was an old Christmas style wreath resting up against the stone and two little wooden crosses, the sort the British Legion place on war graves every year. So someone is remembering him. We did move the wreath to take a photo but the OH put it back carefully afterwards.

Unfortunately a little bit of the family citation at the bottom of Albert's stone has chipped off. It reads, "Let Those Who Come After / See That His Name / Is Not Forgotten" and according to the documentation on the CWGC website would have cost his wife 14/- (at 3 pence ha'penny a letter or space). Though I understand that families were frequently not billed for this.

We did our bit today remembering Albert. Even my mum was impressed that after a little bit of online research we had found a man locally who did his bit in WW1, visited his grave and taken some photos. You can read what I discovered about Albert on his Lives of the First World War Life Story. I'll continue to add information today, including the photos we have taken.

Why don't you have a go? Information on the Living Memory project can be obtained from the CWGC here. The man you visit might not be a relative, but I tell you, visiting one of these burial plots will not leave you unmoved. Leave a poppy cross or a couple of flowers when you go ... or just take a photo of the gravestone and share it on CWGC's Living Memory Facebook page or via Twitter using the hashtag #LivingMemory.

Thank you for reading. Lest We Forget.

I bought these medals yesterday from Elsecar Antiques at the Heritage Centre at Elsecar, I was supposed to be visiting the Craft Fair, but I got side tracked!

1914/15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal

My paternal grandfather left an old tin box with his souvenirs of WW2, a collection of German military badges, various British cap badges and his own medals. My maternal grandfather served in the Home Guard, I have a photo of him in uniformand I know he was awarded the Defence Medal, which I don't have. Apart from that I don't own any family wartime memorabilia.

I do talks, history talks, talks to groups and schools, talks for a fee (or a donation), you can download one of my leaflets here. In the past few years I have come to understand that it is easier to talk about history to some groups if you actually have something they can handle, or look at, which prompts conversation and questions.

York & Lancaster cap badge

I bought a York and Lancaster cap badge in Newark Antiques Centre when on an outing with my mum a couple of years ago. It has since come to feature on many soldiers' stories on Lives of the First World War, where I am Remembering hundreds of local servicemen, when I can't find a photograph of a man. The Barnsley Pals (13th and 14th Battalions of the York and Lancaster Regiment) were just a few of the York and Lancaster battalions in WW1 in which Barnsley men enlisted. Similarly the contents of my grandfather's tin box have come in handy for the same purposeto illustrate men from many other regiments.

We often see fuzzy images of these badges on soldiers' caps and people have asked me to identify which regiment a man was in. It's not my specialty, but I am interested. Some soldiers served in more than one regiment during WW1 so identifying a badge can date a photo and locate a man in a particular place.

Visitors have brought their own relatives' cap badges and medals to my talks - they are rightly very proud of them and have often paid for them to be professionally mounted so they can be displayed. This is very helpful for me and alllows the rest of my audience to see actual medals, often prompting memories and further questions. Now I have my own set I will carry them around with my prized cap badges to more of my talks.

I have discovered that there is a limited understanding amongst much of my audience about what the medals actually mean, who was entitled to them and the differences between them. This Wikipedia page and this page on the Long, Long Trail website are particularly good reference material and I have used them as resources for the comments below.

John William Blatherwick
Driver 92386 Royal Engineers
British War Medal

Not every man who served in the First World War was entitled to a medal. If a man did not serve overseas in WW1 (it was different in WW2) he would not have any medals.

The most commonly issued medal was the British War Medal. Any man from the British Empire who left his native land was entitled to one of these even if he did not enter a Theatre of War - that is somewhere with active combat.

My medal belonged to John W Blatherwick, who was born in 1889 in Newark. He had enlisted in the Royal Engineers at Nottingham in October 1915 leaving a wife and four children at home. Prior to the war he had been a carter for the Corporation, so unsurprisingly he became a Driver. I imagine his job was fairly safe, but Salonika, where he was posted from 1917 to 1919 was a Theatre of War all the same.John unfortunatelymanaged to pick up malaria along the way which contributed to a 20% disability, according to his discharge documents, and entitled him to a very small pension when he got home.

John and his wife Lydia had ten children in all, but four died in infancy. I wonder if his malaria contributed to his, maybe by limiting his employment options during the 1920s when three babies in a row died shortly after birth. You can find out more about John Blatherwick or add to his story yourself on Lives of the First World War. I will get a notification if anyone, family member or another historian, posts on any post I have created, here or on Lives, and it would be nice to find out what happened to John and why his medal was sold.

The Long, Long Trail tells us that many soldiers pawned or sold their British War Medals as, due to the silver content, they were the most valuable. Is this why John's BWM was in a cabinet in Elsecar Antiques? John would also have been entitled to the Victory Medal, but there was no sign of that in the cabinet.

Herbert Purkis
Acting Corporal 91249 Royal Engineers
Victory Medal

The second medal I bought was a Victory Medal which had belonged to Herbert Purkis.

The Victory Medal was awarded to all men who entered a Theatre of War. 5,725,000 Victory medals were issued compared to 6,610,000 British War Medals.

When worn together these two medals were tagged "Mutt and Jeff" by servicemen, after contemporary cartoon characters.

I have not been able to identify Herbert Purkis yet. He was an Acting Corporal in the Royal Engineers and purely by his name I have whittled down the options to three or four men in either Hampshire, Cambridgeshire or London. He did not die in the war and no other military records survive for him aside from his medal card and medal roll.

I have added this image of his medals to his Lives of the First World War page and I hope that someone will add to it in time and help Remember Herbert. Again, it would be nice to know what happened to him and why his medal was sold.

The final medal I bought is a 1914/15 Star. This is the second of two similar medals awarded to men who entered a theatre of war in the early part of WW1. Any man who entered a theatre of war before midnight on 22 November 1914 was entitled to the 1914 Star, and if he actually served under fire he could add a clasp reading "5 Aug. to 22 Nov. 1914" or a small silver rose to his medal ribbon when not wearing his medal. Men who served from 23 November to 31 December 1915 were entitled to the 1914/15 Star. They actually had to set foot on land in a Theatre of War, hence why the Barnsley Pals, who set sail from England in December 1915, but who did not get to Egypt until January 1916 and France until March 1916, are not entitled to either Star.

When a Star was worn with the British War Medal and Victory Medal the trio were often known as "Pip, Squeak and Wilfred" after more cartoon characters of the time.

John Joseph Knowles
44713 Driver Royal Field Artillery
1914/15 Star

My medal belonged to John J Knowles who arrived in France, according to his Medal Card on Ancestry (free to search and view images throughout the WW1 centenary period), on 26 August 1915, with the Royal Field Artillery. He was, of course, also entitled to the British War Medal and Victory Medal, but there was no sign of them in the cabinet in Elsecar.

A search of the 1911 census suggests that the number of John Joseph or John J, or even JJ Knowles men of around the right age to serve in WW1 runs into double figures, and I have no other information about him.

Again I have added this image to his page on Lives of the First World War and I hope that and this blog post will, somehow, sometime, result in family members finding out what happened to his medal.

I know lots of people have medals or collect medals - if everyone added their pictures to a central repository like Lives of the First World War we might be able to find our more about our First World War soldiers, get in contact with relatives and Remember their service to us together.

Thank you for reading.

Added Monday 4 July 2016
I have been asked to emphasise that the following is my own interpretation of the events of the past two years and in no way reflects the feelings of all the volunteers and supporters of the Barnsley War Memorials Project. I needed to get it off my chest and if you have read much of my blog you will know I find it cathartic to write about things that are troubling me. So that is what I did yesterday and the following is what I wrote.

........................................................

This post was going to be about my experience and that of my OH this weekend, I might still write that later. Sadly although the events of Friday were satisfactory and many, many people in Barnsley, who know no better, are very happy with our new 'public art', I found myself pouring out my frustration over the lack of interest from Barnsley Council over the past year. So, sorry, but this post has turned into a documentation of the efforts of myself and the Barnsley War Memorials Project to get 1 July 2016 to be a fitting Commemoration to the 800+ men from Barnsley who lost their lives 100 years ago in the Battle of the Somme.

As the Commemoration of the First Day of the Battle of the Somme (Friday 1 July 2016) drew closer and closer I got more and more nervous about what I had set myself to do.

My article in the May 2015 issue of our newsletter

Well over a year ago I started asking Barnsley Council what they were planning to do to commemorate this momentous event and was very disappointed in their lack of response. I wrote about suggested commemorations in the Barnsley War Memorials Project newsletter (May 2015), I spoke to my Councillors when I saw them in Cudworth, I spoke to other Councillors at various events, I spoke to Dan Jarvis, MP for Barnsley Central (he was sympathetic, but unable to interfere in Council business, and he noted that he would have to be in France himself that day as Labour lead for the Armed Forces). I asked the Barnsley Chronicle if they knew of anything planned. Eventually, in October 2015, a Councillor got in touch and offered to speak to our group at a meeting.

At our meeting on 13 October the Councillor Joe Hayward, who is the lead on the Council for anything to do with the Armed Forces, spoke about a planned event to involve children's artwork with readings and music to take place around the War Memorial on 1 July 2016 [as you will have gathered this is exactly what we did get last Friday]. Joe also gave us details of the improvements planned to the Barnsley Pals memorial at Serre (which had been heatedly discussed in the Barnsley Chronicle between August and September 2014). The feeling of our meeting was made very clear - we wanted a full scale municipal commemorative event as the losses in life around the Battle of the Somme (and one of our members spoke eloquently about the tunnellers who lost their lives in the run up to the battle) were so significant that they deserved the very best we could do. We were also not terribly happy that money was going to be spent improving a memorial in France to just a few Barnsley men rather than here in Barnsley raising awareness of ALL the nearly 4,000 Barnsley men killed. After the Councillor left Paul Stebbing the Archives Manager also spoke, giving more details of the children's artwork idea and mentioning the Somme Exhibition to be held from August to November.

Extract from our website October 2015

The following day I published a post on the Barnsley War Memorials Project site asking that the Council consider having a 'Proper Commemoration for Barnsley's Battle of the Somme Men'.

Barnsley Chronicle 30 October 2015

I submitted a Freedom of Information Request to Barnsley Council asking who from the Council was going to Serre in July 2016 and how much was it going to cost. A week later, before I got my official response an article appeared in the Barnsley Chronicle which mentioned the BWMP criticism of the lack of a suitable plan to commemorate our Somme men.

The Council had made a press release stating that "a municipal event will be organised to commemorate the Somme anniversary and it is currently at early planning stages." They also confirmed that the Mayor and two other would be going to the Somme paid for by the Council and that around ten other Councillors would make the trip at their own expense.

As I re-read the article now I can see that the lack of understanding about the difference between Barnsley men and the Barnsley Pals which has dogged the Council's press releases about WW1 is continued here. The Barnsley Pals Centenary Square was dedicated in August 2013. The Barnsley Pals were the 13th and 14th Battalions of the York and Lancaster Regiment, raised between September 1914 and late 1915. They did not reach a theatre of war until March 1916, by which time hundreds of Barnsley men in the regular army, navy and territorial force had already lost their lives or been wounded. When the square outside the Town Hall was renamed it should have reflected ALL the men from Barnsley who fought and fell, not just the 13th & 14th Y&L.

Interpretive Panel in Barnsley Pals Centenary Square

This misunderstanding was continued in 2014 when the glass panels now on display by the steps in the square were commissioned from artist Rachel Welford. The original brief of the art was to commemorate the Y&L, although later a plaque (see above) was added which stated that the panels commemorate all who fell in WW1.

[One nice story that has come out of this weekend: a work colleague of the OH was stood with him at the Commemoration on Friday. He afterwards said that he had always thought the name Barnsley Pals was a funny name for the square beside the Town Hall as he had not understood the reference. After the event on Friday, happily he now had a (limited) understanding that the Barnsley Pals were our soldiers in WW1.]

Barnsley Chronicle 29 January 2016

In January 2016 a piece appeared in the Barnsley Chronicle giving more details about the new plinth for the Barnsley Pals memorial in Serre, France. The cost of raising and moving the memorial was to be around £9,000.

For a fraction of that money the BWMP could have had a commemorative book printed giving information on all 4,000 Barnsley men killed in WW1 and an online database with information about all our 630+ war memorials and the 14,294 men named on them (Boer War, WW1, WW2, subsequent conflicts up to the present day), which would have been available to everyone. We are not allowed to get funding from the Barnsley Wards as the project covers the whole borough!!

Another illustration of how the terminology confuses our Councillors ...

In Feburary 2016 some of the Councillors (admittedly the cost was proposed to come out of their own pockets, but the Labour group paid the £1,000 in the end) bought a set of WW1 medals which had been awarded to a 'Barnsley Pal'. Sergeant Herbert Richard Johnson was born in Hull and had lived in Leeds. An old soldier (service reckoned from 1907), previously with the 3rd Y&L, he was transferred to 14th Y&L after they arrived in France in March 1916, probably to help train them up for the forthcoming battle. He was killed on 1 July 1916. Yes, he was a Barnsley Pal - but he was NOT from Barnsley.

Do you see the difference?

Barnsley Chronicle 26 February 2016

Also February 2016 this piece appeared in the Barnsley Chronicle.

"A Civic event is being planned to commemorate the centenary of the Battle of the Somme.

The event, which will be taking place at Barnsley Town Hall on July 1 at 1pm, will mark the anniversary of the start of the battle."

The Barnsley War Memorials Project were invited to this event although our letter was addressed to the Barnsley War Memorials Group!

I think it was at this point that I realised all we were going to get from the Council was the work from the Museum around the children's projects. I began to think about doing my own thing on the day. The government had already announced that country wide vigils would take place on the night before 1 July and I saw no reason why Barnsley couldn't do the same. If we had Council backing or even the support of some local business to open nearby toilets overnight I saw no reason why it couldn't be done very cheaply.

Mike Cotton at the Barnsley Chronicle approached the Barnsley War Memorials Project in early March 2016 about a commemorative issue of the Chronicle to be published on 1 July 2016. We had many conversations and he quickly grasped the numbers of men involved and the difference between Barnsley Pals and men from Barnsley. This was happily reflected in all future articles in the Chronicle, which despite the Council's continued lack of understanding of the difference, now frequently stated the latest accurate figures supplied by Pete and myself at the BWMP. We also shared our spreadsheets with Jemma Conway at Experience Barnsley so that she had a list of names to work from for the Stories of the Somme exhibition. Frequent additions and deletions were made to these spreadsheets as more and more of the soldiers were thoroughly researched or submitted by our supporters and family members.

Barnsley Chronicle 22 April 2016

In April 2016 it was announced that there had been a piece of public art commissioned to be unveiled on 1 July 2016. Research online showed that this had been first advertised for tender at the end of February 2016, at around the time of the announcement of the Council's Civic event (see above). It seems that is when they got confirmation of funding to the tune of £17,750 from the Arts Council England. Nothing about this had previously been mentioned by the Council or anyone from Experience Barnsley. I must confess that the idea of illuminated perspex plaques did not appeal to me at the time. And adding the children's clay models to it sounded dreadful.

In the same article Mike Cotton took the opportunity to ask for relatives of men killed at the Somme to get in touch with him to supply information for the Barnsley Chronicle commemorative edition.

There were no plans announced for any commemoration at Barnsley prior to the 1pm unveiling of the artwork. By May I had decided I would do my own vigil, limited in time, but hopefully meaningful all the same.

Our BWMP Somme wreath

Somme wreaths were available from the Royal British Legion along with packs containing suggested verses, remembrance events, music and background information. I downloaded the pack (I couldn't send for one as I am not an organisation) and to my great joy at the end of May our new Treasurer, Joe Pinguey from Penistone, gave me a Somme wreath for our Project which he had paid for personally.

Whistle for the Somme was promoted by the British Legion and the Western Front Assocation and this seemed like a very touching idea to me. I obtained my very own (replica) trench whistle and planned to blow it at 7.30am on 1 July 2016.

I began to advertise my intention to turn up at Barnsley's War Memorial at 6.30am on Friday 1 July with my whistle and my wreath. I informed the Council as advised by the poster on the left here.

I heard nothing.

The day before the commemoration I was told by a friend that the Council would be doing a two minutes' silence at the war memorial at 7.28am. OK, I thought, at least some recognition by them, and I included this in my tweets and facebook posts.

The OH and I arrived at Barnsley Town Hall just before 6.30am on Friday 1 July 2016. A few people were hanging around the memorial so my heart rose. As we walked up Regent Street (the OH was forced to park some distance away as many of the nearby parking spots had already been coned off) I could see that one gentleman was a Councillor I recognised. Better and better. Councillor Ken Richardson (who had previously helped us transcribe the 1918 Absent Voters list), thank you! He had turned up earlier and had been taking photos of the newly installed perspex plaques, which I now decided I did quite like. They were smaller than I expected and each one showed two men's profiles and had one flat disc of brown material affixed, roughly the size of a Dead Man's Penny, which turned out to be the children's art.

By 7.15am we had been joined by an ex-soldier, Andy, who also volunteers for the Barnsley War Memorials Project, and his wife, by an ambulance crew who pulled in across the road and came over to join us and all in all there were around a dozen of us there. I read the verse that starts, "They shall not grow old .." and then we stood in silence for the two minutes. I blew my three short blasts on my whistle and finished with the verse, "When you go home, tell them of us ...". I laid my wreath and Andy laid his, from his regimental association. A pair of men who had already told us about their relative who served in WW1 laid some flowers.

It was OK, it all went very well, I almost cried a couple of times, but I held it together. Thank you to the OH, and Cllr Ken and Andy and the other people who turned up. Thank you all.

I won't write about the ceremony at 1pm. That was OK too. Not what I had hoped for, but 'better than nothing' as I've been telling myself for months now. Everyone likes the perspex plaques and the #wearehere soldiers put in an appearance too!

Our wreaths on Barnsley War Memorial 1 July 2016

I'm at my Mum's for the weekend, we try to visit every three weeks or so and I don't generally take my laptop with me as it seems rude to work whilst I'm visiting, however as this is a long weekend and the OH is otherwise occupied I managed to carry a bag of stuff for the weekend and the computer on the long journey via the X19 bus from Barnsley to meet Mum at the Hare and Tortoise at Parrot's Corner, Rossington. It seems this will be the last time I will do this too - the X19 will terminate in Doncaster from September and I'll have to change buses, so I might as well catch one all the way to Bawtry and make Mum's journey to pick me up shorter.

My route on the X19 Route from Barnsley to the right angled kink
just before the airport, takes 1 hour 15 mins

After a visit to the Retford Bookworm (a rare independent bookshop with a large second-hand section at the back) this afternoon where I couldn't resist several WW1 books, I was reading out a paragraph to Mum this evening about people now not having much idea about the kind of thing soldiers in WW1 had to endure. I mentioned rations ... and Mum suddenly remembered that after WW2 her father, a Colliery Manager, was able to get hold of a box of surplus army rations, which were being distributed to all miners. She particularly remembered the chocolate and estimated it must have been 1946 or 1947 as she had been around 8 or 9 years old and living in Spennymoor, County Durham, by then.

As I had not heard of this before her comment led to a bit of Googling and a long search of the old newspapers on Find My Past. This is what I found:

It was announced in Parliament on 16 April 1947 by the Minister of Food Mr John Strachey that it had been arranged for three quarters of a million surplus army ration packs, each containing foodstuffs sufficient for one man for six days to be made available for purchase by coal miners all over the country through colliery managements and the National Union of Mineworkers. Hansard 16 April 1947 vol 436 cc185-6

There were some brief reports of this in many newspapers, this is the best article I could find. From the Yorkshire Evening Post dated 17 April 1947.

'EXTRA' FOR MINERS
750,000 Army Ration Packs
From our London Office
All underground miners are to be given a chance of buying one of 750,000 surplus Army ration packs, free of points and coupons. They are to be sent to mining areas under arrangements of the National Coal Board and the National Union of Mineworkers.
They will cost 30s each, but 7s 6d is returnable if the container in which the rations are packed is brought back whole, and 6s if the lid is broken.
The 50 cigarettes which are part of the pack will be a post-Budget bargain. Other contents are tins of bacon, vegetables, tins of fruit, soap, sweets, matches and tea.
The container is made of wood with a tin inside.
During the war packs of this type were dropped to isolated troops.

There were some complaints in the press about the packs being offered only to miners, however In November in reply to a question in Parliament Dr Edith Summerskill (Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food) replied, "The packs are being distributed to mineworkers by the National Coal Board. Points or coupons will not be required in exchange. I regret that there are not enough of the packs to issue to farm workers and other heavy workers." Then in reply to a further question, "There are about 700,000 packs and approximately 700,000 miners, and this decision was reached during the fuel crisis when we felt it necessary to give extra rations to the miners."Hansard 3 November 1947 vol 443 c1318

In December 1947 some articles appeared in newspapers reporting the distribution of the packs. I found one in the Yorkshire Evening Post dated 22 December.

EXTRA FOR MINERS
Food-Packs Distributed
Packs of food marked "Pacific", now being distributed to Yorkshire miners for Christmas, are surplus Army emergency rations identical with the standard packs issued to troops in Burma during the war.
Each pack contains sufficient food for six men for one day, besides cigarettes and sweets.
During the week-end clerks at many pits in the Doncaster area assisted in issuing packs to miners on payment of 22s 6d.

Another item from the Dundee Courier dated 24 December.

Miners' Boxing Day Means Food
Fife miners were offered 20,000 Christmas boxes yesterday. Costing 22s 6d (or 30s with the case) they contained ham, sugar, butter, tea and cigarettes.
Before the parcels were handed over, each miner was asked to sign a declaration that he would not resell the contents.
Surplus army "compo" rations, samples had been tested before being distributed to collieries.

And finally, the one picture I could find, which is from the Sunday Post, a Glasgow newspaper, dated 28 December 1947.

"Hugh Nesbett, Kennoway and William Baxter, Methill, like thousands of other Fife miners, smile despite their heavy load. They're carrying home their Christmas box - containing a varied assortment of tinned meat, fruit, biscuits, bacon, eggs, and cigarettes. These surplus Army "Compo" ration boxes were made available to miners at 22s 6d."

Happy looking miners hefting large boxes on their shoulders (from Find My Past newspapers)

My Mum was pleased I'd been able to find proof of her memories. She said that the tinned fruit would have been a special treat. My next task is to check the Barnsley Chronicle to see how the distribution of the boxes was reported in our area. That will have to wait until next week though.

There you go Mum, especially for you!

From the ME Association's website (http://www.meassociation.org.uk/about/the-symptoms-and-diagnosis-of-mecfs/):
"The predominant symptom of ME/CFS is usually severe fatigue and malaise following mental or physical activity. The full extent of this exhaustion often becomes apparent only 24 to 48 hours after the activity (assuming, of course, the person was not already in a ‘recovery period’ from a previous activity)."

My Rheumatologist says I have ME. On the above definition I would tend to agree. I have had no zing for weeks now, and each time I try too hard to do something I just end up back in bed.

Is this a choice? Yes, I could slowly and painfully dress and wash and go down stairs, but is spending the day on the sofa any better than being in bed? In bed I have a toilet nearby, no stairs; in bed my laptop is placed on an over bed table with room for my wrist rest; in bed I can lie down and stretch out comfortably when I need to stop (our sofa is too short even for me); in bed I am not on view to the world passing by our sitting room windows.

A month ago the Rheumatologist at the Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield (OH has to take the day off work to take me there as the round trip is six hours for me on the bus/train), stated that my symptoms, diagnosed as fibromyalgia at Rotherham over six years ago now, could also be interpreted as ME. I wasn't sure how to take this as just changing the name for my problem wasn't going to help me ... or was it?

I also have Crohn's Disease (controlled by drugs and avoidance of triggering foodstuffs) and I have been asthmatic all my life (fairly well controlled except when I have a chest infection). My joints are not arthritic, but I have instability and pain, excessive exercise causes strong to severe pain in my muscles (last year I pulled a shoulder muscle hanging a net curtain, last week I came close to the same amount of pain after picking green beans). It seems that my recurrent knee problems are caused by an "oblique tear in the lateral meniscus" of my right knee (MRI result reported to me by the physio at Barnsley Hospital, not by the orthopaedic consultant at the Northern General Hospital who discharged me saying there was nothing he could do). I was a Radiographer in a previous career incarnation, I know exactly what a tear in my cartilage can do!

All of this, plus the resultant loss of my social life (I was pitifully grateful when the OH agreed to me tagging along while he delivered CAMRA Good Beer Guide envelopes to far flung pubs, and yet an afternoon trundling around on various buses and only visiting four pubs worked out fine) have undoubtedly made me prone to depression. I am the kind of person who hates that word! I won't take drugs for this, I can pull myself out of it. Writing this blog has helped me a lot in the past.

Sadly when I am tired little things seem more important, or take on sinister aspects that probably don't exist. Look, I know this ... I am not totally silly! But sometimes the best I can do is curl up and cry.

In the summer (it was June when the problems began but it is still dragging on) I frequently felt like banging my head on the wall when Barnsley Council's Library and IT department refused to listen to what I was saying. Another of my career incarnations was IT, so again I know what I'm talking about here! They installed 'free' wifi in our local library. We had been promised this since the previous November, it was installed in January, but we weren't allowed to use it until April ('so everyone gets it at once across the borough'). At first we could connect by asking the ladies on the desk for a log in and password, this worked fine most of the time. We could get the History Group desktop computer, their laptop and our own tablets online during our weekly meetings. Very useful for looking stuff up on Ancestry, Find My Past, the CWGC, all kinds of useful historical resources. Then the system was changed at the beginning of June to a log in requiring a mobile phone. Two problems with this: firstly the phone signal in this part of Cudworth is appalling, in our house you have to stand upstairs in the back bedroom to get a signal; secondly, only one of our members regularly has a mobile phone with her. We submitted a complaint asking for the previous, functional system to be reinstated.

Further problems became apparent as the weeks progressed. If the lady with the mobile, LL, used her phone to get a code so we could log on the group's computer, she could not then use it to get a code for her own laptop, or her iPad. On some days the signal was so poor LL (who is elderly, as are most of the History Group members) had to walk out into the car park to receive the incoming text with the code. What if it was raining? Snowing? Was this really a sensible thing to ask elderly people to do? The codes only lasted 24 hours meaning we had to repeat this rigmarole every week. Finally, in late August, a technician came out to see us. He agreed we needed a permanent connection for our desktop PC, with a password, yes, but controlled in a similar way to the library's public access machines. He agreed the phone signal in the library was very poor, he had to go out of the building himself to get the log in text. This made the system unsuitable for our location, but other than a signal booster he did not know what to suggest to solve this portion of our problem. Since then the wifi has not been working in the library and we have heard nothing back from the IT man. The library is still displaying posters reading, 'Don't Panic We Have Free WiFi'. No, they don't!

I pushed for an event for the History Group around CWGC (Commonwealth War Graves Commission) commemoration and a national project called #LivingMemory. One of our members made a plan of 17 WW1 burials in our local churchyard and created a leaflet with explanations of the CWGC and biographies of the servicemen. Twenty two people, more than half not members of the History Group, turned up on the day and we had a nice walk around the churchyard. People said they had learned things they didn't know before, it was very successful. Sadly the local newspaper had reported the event the week before as a service for 41 men who had lost their lives at the Somme. This angered the local priest who asked who was holding a service in his church? The report after the event only appeared in the paper two weeks later following a phone call by our secretary (LL again) to the local reporter. The resultant article did not mention the CWGC or LivingMemory. I am told we can't control the press, but surely after providing a description of the event, a copy of the leaflet, and afterwards a report and five fully captioned photos, I was within my rights to expect an accurate account?

My 22 year old cat died on Tuesday. She had been ill for a while, in fact I frequently blamed her for my disturbed sleep. But I am sensible, she was old, it was time. We gave her peace and dignity at the end. That is more than my father got when he died of cancer five years ago!

Last week a friend emailed me because she felt she had been slighted by another mutual aquaintance, in print, in public. Well, poor judgement and very poor scholarship had been shown I admit, but no personal insult had been directly given. It was much more upsetting to me that a member of the clergy (aren't they meant to be above petty squabbles?) remarked on Sunday that he would have refused to accept a new war memorial to140 fallen First World War servicemen if he'd known it would cause friction. I hope this was a misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the events. Remembering our Fallen, wounded and traumatised servicemen has become very important to me, replacing active CAMRA involvement to a great extent.

Last night I got very indignant about a perceived slight to our Project to Remember these servicemen. I am hoping that today's email will bring an apology or at least a reasonable explanation about why the Barnsley War Memorials Project (not just me, all our volunteers) were not invited to the 'official opening' of Barnsley Museum's 'Stories of the Somme' exhibition. I was told, back in August, just before the actual opening on 24th of that month) that the official event would not be until September so that people who might be away could attend. That seemed reasonable. I was told, then and yesterday afternoon, that it would be an event for the new Barnsley Museums & Heritage Trust. Again, yes I understand that people who donate cash have to be thanked. What I cannot understand is how a voluntary organisation which happily GAVE vital information to the museum, saving them days of work, worked with them for weeks to ensure the information was accurate, who support the work of the museum and especially the Archives, were not sent just one token invitation to the event? Photos published last night on Twitter show relatives of soldiers featured in the exhibition at the event, they show bored, tired school children not listening to MP Dan Jarvis' speech at the event. The Mayor and our Barnsley Poet Laureate both seemed under the impression it was an actual OPENING (I've been twice and had a good look around since the exhibition opened to the public on 24th August!). The BWMP have been invited to similar events in the past, why could we not attend (without paying) yesterday!?

Am I being silly to let things like this, like the death of my cat, like my disillusionment with my fellow researchers and the established church, like my frustration with our local Council and Museum organisation, like my sadness that I can't attend CAMRA events unless they are suitable for my restrictions, am I being silly to be upset? Or is this all part and parcel of my reduced ability to cope, caused by my illness?

Maybe you can tell me.

One of the mini-projects that the Barnsley War Memorials Project has been undertaking to try to find as many WW1 Barnsley soldiers as possible for the Roll of Honour of Barnsley's WW1 Fallen is the indexing of the war years (August 1914 - March 1919) of the Barnsley Chronicle.

Part of the front page of a war time issue of the Barnsley Chronicle (with thanks to Barnsley Archives)

With the generous help of Barnsley Archives and the Barnsley Chronicle themselves, the BWMP has been able to provide home-working volunteers with digital issues of the Chronicle to read through at home, they then enter every instance of a man or woman affected by the war into an Excel spreadsheet and email it back to the volunteer co-ordinator for combination into a master index. Copies of the work done so far can be found on the shelves of Barnsley Archives who also have an electronic copy for their own use. This is hugely useful resource for anyone researching their servicemen (and women) ancestors in the WW1 period as it saves searching through the digital Chronicle one month at a time using the word search facility which can fall down when faced with fuzzy or damaged text.

I have been working on an issue from 17 March 1917. This month had a partial index in the Archives already, based on the WW1 cuttings files, but it was very sparse, including only a small percentage of the potential names which might be of interest to people researching their WW1 ancestors.

Yesterday I came across an unusually lengthy report of the Barnsley Tribunal concerning a man pleading conscientious objection on the grounds that he was a missionary. Tribunals were held regularly to hear the appeals of men who had been 'called up' once conscription began in 1916. Exemptions were sometimes granted for men on 'work of national importance' or conditionally for a few months to allow them to sort out their affairs before they reported to the services.

"George Lister Greenwood (40, single), described as a missionary, stated that he had not appeared before the Tribunal before as he had been out of England. He said he had been a missionary in the United States and Canada, and had got to England on Christmas day. [...] He claimed to have been an itinerant minister of the Gospel for nine years, during which time he had sacrificed pecuniary benefits and sometimes risked his life. Applicant added that he felt entitled to exemption granted to ministers. He had a conscientious objection to military service, but had no objection to taking up work of national importance."

To cut a long story short Alderman Rideal, examining George Greenwood, doubted the validity of his objection. The Clerk of the Tribunal agreed that as George was not in Holy Orders he was not covered by the blanket exemption of ministers. George, who stated that he had previously been a watch and clock repairer, offered to work on the land or in clerical work or teaching at which point Colonel Raley, another member of the Tribunal, noted that there was no work of national importance that was not connected to the war. George replied that prayer was work of national importance and asked if the panel believed in the 'Angels of Mons', to which Colonel Hewitt, military representative on the Tribunal replied, "We don't!". Eventually it was agreed that George should be sent to work on the land as a trial.

1939 Register snip for King's College Hospital, Lambeth (with thanks to Find My Past)

I was curious about George Lister Greenwood's background and wondered how he came to be a missionary and what happened to him next. I found a George L Greenwood born on 19 Nov 1876 in the 1939 Register on Find My Past listed as a Bible Teacher. He was, in 1939, a patient at King's College Hospital, Denmark Hill, London. This date of birth matches the registration of George Lister Greenwood's birth in Barnsley in the fourth quarter of 1876. This man died in the beginning of 1940 in the Lambeth registration district of London.

My search was complicated by a second man of the same name who was born in Keighley in West Yorkshire in 1877, which is near to Barnsley enough to suggest a possible family relationship between the two men. The second George Lister Greenwood died in Keighley in 1923 and probate was granted to a Minnie Greenwood, spinster.

You will have to forgive me if the following rambles a bit - I find it helps to write everything down as I find it and then sort it out afterwards.

Snip of 1889 Barnsley Town Plan showing 8 Cheapside marked

I traced the Barnsley born George Lister Greenwood back in the census returns. His father, George Greenwood, was born in Haworth in West Yorkshire in 1840 to John Greenwood a tailor and draper, and after an apprenticeship to a draper in Dewsbury (noted in the 1861 census) married Sarah Ann Cooper in Barnsley in 1867. In the 1871 census the elder George is a Linen Draper living at 8 Cheapside in Barnsley - one of the main shopping streets in the town centre on the edge of May Day Green. According to the Tasker Trust website G Greenwood occupied that shop from 1869 to 1876. But then the family moves to a Drapers shop in Keighley (1881 census) and Bingley (1891 census) where George snr is listed as a School Attendance Officer. This allegiance to to West Yorkshire adds to my suspicions that the two George Lister Greenwoods may have been related.

George and Sarah Ann have four children listed in the census returns:
Thomas Cooper Greenwood b. 1869
Kate Emily Greenwood b. 1871
John Henry Greenwood b. 1873
and
George Lister Greenwood b. 1876
All four were born in Barnsley and were baptised at St Mary's church.

In 1899 George Greenwood snr dies. He is buried in Cawthorne which confused me even more, especially as his abode is given as Haworth in the burial register. In the 1901 census his wife Sarah Ann has returned to Barnsley is living at the top end of Granville Street in the Old Town area. She appears to be supported by her three younger children, Kate and John who are Pupil Teachers and George who is a Clock and Watch Repairer (happily tallying with the newspaper report which prompted this investigation). Her eldest son, Thomas, who was a Solicitor's Clerk in 1891, has left home and I cannot find him in the census (yet).

1911 census snip showing 64 Hope Street, Barnsley (with thanks to Ancestry)

In 1911 Sarah Ann Greenwood now aged 76 is living at 64 Hope Street, Barnsley with her daughter Kate who is the Head Mistress of a government or municipal school. George, who is still a Watch and Clock Repairer is also still living with them. John Henry seems to have left home. Sarah helpfully tells us that she had been married 33 years and was 11 years widowed which confirms the information I had found on her marriage to George snr. She also notes that she had just four children and that in 1911 all are alive. This is valuable additional information and she need not have included it in the return as her marriage was not a 'present' one as defined in the census instructions, hence the red crossing out!

I have found a record of Sarah Ann's death in March 1918 aged 83, she was buried in Cawthorne too, which gave me the idea of back tracking her. Yes, she was baptised in Cawthorne in 1834, daughter of Thomas Cooper, a carpenter and Priscilla his wife, who gave their abode as Barnsley. Both Thomas and Priscilla are also buried in Cawthorne, so Sarah buried her husband George near her parents and then joined him in the fullness of time. While looking into burials at Cawthorne I also spotted that Kate Emily Greenwood was buried there in 1948, having died a spinster (not unusual for a schoolteacher in that era) in Bristol. The probate of her will is left to John Henry Greenwood, retired barrister, presumably her brother.

1915 Passenger List snip showing the SS Bohemian sailing from Liverpool

Meanwhile various searches on George Lister Greenwood had indicated that he had a Passenger List record arriving in the USA in 1915. I do not have a Worldwide subscription to Ancestry so I called into Cudworth Library, which like all the other library branches and the Archives in Barnsley has a subscription to the Library version of Ancestry. It is completely free to use and I was able to look up George's travels and email the relevant pages home to myself. As you can see above George sails in May 1915 to Boston, Massachusetts and gives his occupation as Missionary. His next of kin is listed as his mother Mrs Greenwood of 64 Hope Street, which agrees with the address of the family in 1911. A further Passenger List confirmed that George returned home on the "Finland" which arrived in Liverpool from New York on 25 December 1916. Ah, ha! Just as he claimed at the Tribunal in March 1917.

As I searched for George in the worldwide records I was surprised to get hits on his brother Thomas Cooper Greenwood. He had arrived in Canada before 1899 (which accounts for him being missing from the 1901 census entry for the rest of the family in Barnsley) because he marries a lady called Margaret Unger in Toronto in April that year. His occupation at his marriage was Journalist and his identity is confirmed by the names of his parents as George and Sarah Ann Greenwood. By 1910 he is living in the state of Michigan, USA with his second wife Mabel and her two children from her previous marriage. He states that he arrived in the USA in 1905 and that he is a Journalist. In 1920 Thomas applies for an American passport as a Naturalized Citizen for himself, Mabel and his adopted son Stanley. Details of his birth in Barnsley and his emigration from Canada to America in 1905 are given. He is still a Journalist. Could it be that when George visited America from 1915 to 1916 that he was visiting his brother?

A further fascinating document appeared on Worldwide Ancestry for Thomas Cooper Greenwood, a record of his death in France in 1933 aged 63. The names and addresses of his wife Mabel, stepson Stanley, brother John and sister Kate are given, but no sign of brother George! If George was the man in the hospital in London in 1939 he was still alive at this point, but his family don't seem to know where he is.

I am no wiser as to why George Lister Greenwood became a Missionary. He is not listed as a Conscientious Object in Cyril Pearce's list on Lives of the First World War, but I will add him to LFWW in a day or so (I have the power to do that as an official IWM volunteer). I can use the newspaper article and the passenger list as proof of his occupation as a missionary. I might have worked out why he went to America, but after his appearance at the Tribunal in Barnsley in 1917 he vanishes from the online records for over 20 years as far as I can see.

Three years ago I wrote about Matthew Taylor, the OH's 3x great grandfather. My problem was that Matthew vanishes from Castleford, Yorkshire somewhere between 1852 and 1856. By 1861 his widow is living with another man as a 'housekeeper' and appears to have had two more children since Matthew's disappearance. I could not pin down Matthew's death as during that time there were 28 deaths of men named Mat*hew Taylor across the country, none however in Castleford. Matthew had been a sailor in his youth and could conceivably have died whilst on a voyage with his uncles who still ran boats between Leeds and Hull and beyond, although after his marriage in 1848 he had worked in the glassworks in Castleford. As age at death was not given for these early records I had no way of narrowing down the possibilities.

A few weeks ago I heard via a newsletter from 'Lost Cousins' that the General Register Office (GRO) had updated their birth indexes to include mother's maiden name and death indexes to include age at death going right back to the start of registration in 1837. Follow the link to the newsletter above to find a very useful explanation of the new indexes.

"General Register Office: Official Information on births, marriages and deaths."

Additionally, for just a few weeks, the GRO were offering .pdf versions of certificates for just £6 instead of the usual £9.25 for a certified paper copy (£10 if you order them from your local Register Office), and we were promised them within five working days. By the time you read this the trial will probably be over as it was due to end on 30 November or when they had issued 45,000 certificates, whichever came first. Of course you can still order paper certificates from the GRO website and they are promising some further pilots over the next few months. More information can be found in the FAQs on their site. What makes this even more fascinating for me is that Baroness Scott, who proposed the amendment to the government's Deregulation Bill in 2014 (see this helpful article on Lost Cousins) is a distant relative of mine via my Bradford born Batemans!

Results for Matthew Taylor (or similar) deaths 1854 +/- 2 years, age 25 +/- 10 years

I dusted off my certificate 'wish list' and immediately tried a search for men named Matthew (and derivative variations) Taylor who died between 1852 and 1856. Only one was the right age to be the OH's 3x great grandfather who, as we know he had been born in 1829, would have been between 23 and 27 in that time period. Matthew Taylor aged 24 who died in Newcastle upon Tyne in the first quarter of 1854. I had cut 28 options down to just one and that's the certificate I sent for.

My certificates (I did order another, but I'll save that story for my next blog post) should have arrived by last Thursday, but the GRO site was experiencing a 'Period of High Demand' as the notice on their log in page explained. Not surprising really as I am sure that thousands of family historians will have done the same as me and sent for some certificates immediately they found out about the trial. I had a busy weekend (it was the OH's 50th birthday weekend!) but I kept checking my email as I knew from further Lost Cousins posts that the GRO were working weekends to cope with the demand. By the time I woke up today, very late after the long weekend, they had arrived in my inbox, time-stamped 12.33 and 12.34. Hooray!

1854 Death Certificate for Matthew Taylor aged 24 (with thanks to the GRO)

Here is Matthew's certificate. After such a long wait I am almost reluctant to accept that I have solved this genealogical 'brick wall' at last! The year and age fit - well, yes of course they do, they are the criteria I used to find the certificate! But we know it is the only recorded death that fits the man (I'll try not to worry about the possibility of an unrecorded death or a death at sea). His occupation is given as Bottle Gatherer, which I know from my studies of the glass trade in Barnsley was the man who picked up the blob of molten glass from the furnace ready for the blower to form the bottle. We know Matthew worked in the glass trade in Castleford in 1851. The name of his wife fits - Matthew married Susannah Rogers in 1848 in Sutton near Hull. Matthew died of 'Menningitis' (which has extra n's in 1854!) which is a horrible and sudden way to die so young.

So with so many points of correlation the only thing left to consider is what on earth Matthew and Susannah, with two young children (probably) were doing in what looks like Mill Quay, Hewith, Durham which I assume is Heworth, just south of the River Tyne. Given the Taylor family connection to trade and transport they will have know that there were glassworks along the Tyne. When Aaron Rogers Taylor, their second child, was born in Castleford in 1853 Matthew's occupation was noted as Labourer rather than Glass maker as he had been on the census two years earlier. Maybe there were reduced opportunities for skilled work in Castleford so the family packed up and moved to Newcastle looking for better paid work. Once Matthew was dead Susannah would have had little choice but to return to Castleford hoping the Taylor family there would help support her and her children.

Durham Records Online: Search or 3,364,673 Durham & Northumberland parish & census records containing 8,325,100 names

A search on Durham Records Online for Matthew's burial (easy to do now I know the year!) brought back a hit which tallied with the death certificate (searches are free and often give enough detail for basic family history purposes, but in this case I paid £1.50 for the full transcription).

Burials, Gateshead District - Record Number: 658836.2
Location: Heworth
Church: St. Mary
Denomination: Anglican
15 Feb 1854 Matthew Taylor, of Bill Quay, age: 24

This makes it clear that Hewith is Heworth and that Mill Quay is actually Bill Quay. The world is really getting smaller - I am sure that place name has cropped up in my own family tree, and it is a place the OH and I have visited on one of our holidays in the North East.

Thinking about the children I noticed I had no record of the marriage or death of Matthew and Susannah's eldest child, Mary Ann, who was born in Castleford in 1850. She appears in the 1851 census but not in the 1861 census (see my previous blog about the family as mentioned above). I thought I'd try a search for Mary Taylor in the new GRO death indexes. Castleford fell within the Pontefract registration district until 1862 and there is one record that might match. Mary Ann Taylor aged 1 who died in the Pontefract district in the first quarter of 1852. As she was 7 months old in March 1851 this age fits. However there is also a Mary Ann Taylor aged 2 who died in Newcastle upon Tyne in the fourth quarter of 1853, and now we know the family were there in early 1854 I cannot rule this result out. Something to come back to later I think.

That is quite enough for one day. I have found the OH's 3x great grandfather and closed off his record satisfactorily. The link with the North East is fascinating and I still have many other questions about Susannah, his widow and their daughter Mary to answer. But for now I am very happy.

Thank you to the GRO for making my day!

As I am no longer the secretary of the Barnsley War Memorials Project (BWMP) I do have a little more time on my hands these days. Sadly I have been quite poorly for the past couple of months and am spending more time at home resting or in bed than going out to the Archives, wandering around cemeteries or attending the local history group.

I am managing to catch up with some of my own family history (and that of the OH) while still contributing to WW1 research as an official Imperial War Museum volunteer by adding war memorials to the War Memorials Register and men who did not serve abroad to Lives of the First World War.

I have also continued to contribute to the BWMP by indexing issues of the Barnsley Chronicle from the war years.

Yesterday, feeling too woozy to try constructive thinking, but pain-free enough to try typing again I completed the index to the Barnsley Chronicle for 17 March 1917. A week ago I posted about a conscientious objector I found mentioned earlier in this issue and in the very last column of the very last page another article caught my eye.

Barnsley Chronicle 17 March 1917
(with thanks to Barnsley Archives)

This snip about Warde Aldam Hospital (a nice old postcard of the hospital can be seen here) was part of a section headed South Elmsall, but I do believe in entering every mention of a solider, ex-soldier or potential soldier (when I say soldier please understand that I also mean sailor, airman, munitions worker, male or female and anyone else affected by the war). After all this index is going to be on the shelves ofBarnsley Archives for people to consult to help them find their WW1 relatives, so let's include everyone!

It seemed odd to me that the managing director of a hospital would be killed in action - no date was given for his death but I thought it worth a search on Lives of the First World War and on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission to see if I could find out more about this man.

Snip from the CWGC website showing Joseph Noel Walker

Surprisingly there was only one Lieutenant J N Walker listed on the CWGC. As you can see from the snip above Joseph Noel Walker's entry does not include any useful personal information, no age, no additional family details. He was killed on 4 July 1916, so during the Battle of the Somme, and we we can tell that he has no known grave as he is listed on the Thiepval Memorial.

Carlton War Memorial showing enlarged inscription R-W (click to enlarge)

His entry on Lives was even more surprising; I discovered that I had already 'Remembered' Joseph as part of the BWMP because he is listed on the war memorial in Carlton, a small village about 3.5 miles north east of Barnsley. You can find the full list of names on this memorial on the BWMP page here. So what was the managing director of a hospital in South Elmsall doing listed on a war memorial in Carlton, Barnsley?

I am enjoying the new GRO indexes with mother's maiden names, full middle names and ages at death all the way back to 1837 but you can only search them 5 years at a time, so for speed it is easier to look for the birth of a person (provided they have a 'good' name) on FreeBMD first and then cross check on the GRO to find the mother's maiden name. Joseph Noel Walker was born in the York Registration District in the December quarter of 1882 and his mother's maiden name was Holloway.

With a fairly distinctive name like this I imagined it would be easy to find Joseph in the census returns and the parish records on Ancestry (my subscription site of first choice) Ha! I was beleaguered by spelling mistakes and bad transcriptions, so much so that I resorted to searching on Find My Past instead. Here I found him in the census in 1911 (head of the household with only two servants and visitor for company in Hooton Pagnall, occupation Mining Engineer), 1901 (Monk Bretton, occupation Mining Student, living with relatives). I was unable to find him on the 1891 census, when he would have only been eight years old and presumably living with his parents. The mystery deepens, how did a mining engineer get involved with a hospital? Was he listed on Carlton war memorial because of the family connection in Monk Bretton?

Snip from 1901 census for Osborne House, Monk Bretton (thanks to Find My Past)

A closer examination of the two returns showed that Joseph was born in Huxby or Haxby, that he was the nephew of James J and Mary Addy who both seemed quite old (51 and 49) to have two small children (Carlton aged 10 and Roland aged 9). James Addy was a Colliery Manager, and an employer. It does make sense that a nephew would be 'sponsored' in his future career by an interested uncle in a position of influence in the mining industry.

Leeds Times 13 October 1888 (thanks to Find My Past)

A bit of tracking backwards and forwards for James Addy revealed that he had married the widowed Mary Hammond in 1888 when he was 38 years old. Her maiden name was Holloway which provides the connection to Joseph as this was his mother's maiden name. I also discovered that James J Addy was the manager of the Carlton Main Colliery Company in 1923.

A Google search for Joseph Noel Walker turned up a memorial page to himcreated by Durham and Newcastle Universities. He had been away at school in Barnard Castle, Durham between 1893 and 1899, before studying Mining Engineering at Armstrong College (founded in 1871 for the study of physical sciences and later part of Newcastle University). The entry gives his date of birth as 13th December 1882 in Haxby, Yorkshire which fits with what I had already found. It does not give his parents' names, although his wife Grace (nee Dalton) whom he married in 1914, is mentioned. Annoyingly I cannot find a clear picture online of the memorial at the College which contains his name, even the usually wonderful North East War Memorials Project only has a transcription of the names.

As I was getting nowhere fast trying to find Joseph's parents with any of my usual methods I decided to see exactly what brothers and sisters he might have had. That at least would give me a clue as to when his parents married. When I do this kind of research, especially in my current woozy condition, I tend to attack it in a scattergun kind of way, and sometimes looking back as I am now I realise that I could have saved time and energy by trying other sources sooner. It would have made sense to try to find his marriage to Grace in 1914, as highlighted by the memorial page from Armstrong College, that would have given me his father's name if an image was available on Ancestry or FMP, and given the status of the family there was likely to be an entry in the newspapers ... but I didn't think of that until later!

Anyway, this is what I managed to find using the new GRO indexes [my notes in square brackets]:

Name:     Mother's Maiden Surname:

WALKER, -         HOLLOWAY       [female]
GRO Reference: 1875 D Quarter in YORK Volume 09D Page 1

WALKER, ALICE         HOLLOWAY       [dies same year]
GRO Reference: 1876 S Quarter in YORK Volume 09D Page 2

WALKER, ALFRED HOLLOWAY       HOLLOWAY
GRO Reference: 1877 D Quarter in YORK Volume 09D Page 2

WALKER, REGINALD         HOLLOWAY     [dies same year]
GRO Reference: 1879 D Quarter in YORK Volume 09D Page 1

WALKER, HAROLD CARLETON       HOLLOWAY
GRO Reference: 1881 J Quarter in YORK Volume 09D Page 1

WALKER, JOSEPH NOEL       HOLLOWAY
GRO Reference: 1882 D Quarter in YORK Volume 09D Page 2

WALKER, MARY WINNIEFRED       HOLLOWAY
GRO Reference: 1884 D Quarter in YORK Volume 09D Page 2

[It was adding this list to this blog just now which gave me an idea ... I knew Mary Winnifred didn't die young, so I have just searched for her. I had found the surviving sons in 1901 and 1911 (nice distinctive names, see below) all away from home but no sign of mum and dad. I finally found her in 1891, with her mother Emma, who was remarried to the vicar of Haxby, the village where the Walker family had lived!]

I digress, sorry. The nice distinctive names and the consistency of the family in the York area helped me to find a census return for 1881 showing Harold C Walker aged 1 month (lucky!) with parents Alfred and Emma and elder brother Alfred H all living at Haxby Hall (there is a nice picture of Haxby Hall here) in Haxby, about 4.5 miles north of York. Success! By 1911 Alfred Holloway Walker is a 'Clerk in Holy Orders' living in Cambridge, Harold Carleton Walker is a Colliery Salesman living at 33 Gawber Road, Barnsley (and the property appears to belong to James J Addy), and as we know Joseph Noel Walker is in Hooton Pagnall as a Mining Engineer.

It was at this point too, that realising how distinctive the family names were and what exalted circles they moved in that I tried a series of searches in the newspapers on Find My Past.

York Herald 19 April 1884 describing the death and principal mourners at Alfred Walker's funeral
(thanks to Find My Past)

This snip explains why the family was so hard to find, Alfred Walker died when Joseph Noel Walker was only two years old. Master Alfred Walker is mentioned as one of the principal mourners, he would only have been five years old himself. There are the Hammonds with a link to Barnsley and a Holloway, the family names I have been discovering while doing this research. The boys must have been sent away to school or to stay with other relatives and Mrs Walker, who was Emma Holloway, marries the vicar, Richard Bradley, in 1890 in Hastings. This family do seem to like getting married at the seaside!

This post is very long now and I have discovered even more about the family as I have written it. To complete the story quickly, Joseph Noel Walker marries Grace Winifred Dalton, the daughter of the vicar of Hickleton on 16 April 1914 at Hickleton. The couple honeymooned on the 'Continent and the Italian Lakes' according to a report in the Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer on 17 April 1914. Little did they know that war was approaching. Joseph joined up at the outbreak of war and was gazetted a 2nd Lieutenant within a month. He was 31 years old.

Why was he mentioned as the managing director of Warde Aldam hospital in that first cutting? Well, because hewas a assistant managing director of Carlton Main Colliery Company, probably still working under his uncle James J Addy. According to this page at The National Archives the hospital was built by the Carleton Main Colliery Co in 1911.

Thank you for reading!

Benllech Break marred by Mid and Post Holiday Tiredness

Sometimes the 100 year old Jigsaw take a Bit of Effort to Assemble

Making Adjustments to Cope with Disabilities - Compromise and False Vanity

What Happened when the Second Barnsley Pals Slept in a Church Schoolroom in 1915

Thomas and John Edward Davies - Two Brothers Who Lose Their Lives in Very Different Ways in WW1

An Appeal for First World War Lives to be Remembered

Re-occurrence of a lifelong knee problem not helping my mobility!

The History of the Brig Euxine from Hartlepool

The Marquis of Granby on Thomas Street, Barnsley

A YMCA Canteen Volunteer - Gladys H A Alderson of Huddersfield Road

Jericho - a western filmed in Barnsley - I wanted it to be better!

From the WW1 Barnsley Chronicle - "Barnsley Man's Escape From Internment in Holland - A Daring Exploit"

Making World War Casualties 'real' for non-historians - the CWGC Living Memory Initiative

Understanding Three WW1 Medals - John W Blatherwick, Herbert Purkis, John J Knowles

Working towards the Somme Commemoration 2016

Did you know Miners were sold Surplus Army Rations in 1947?

Some Days I Just Want to Give Up, Is it me or my illness?

George Lister Greenwood - Missionary and Conscientious Objector in WW1

Finding Matthew Taylor - using the new GRO Indexes

Managing Director Joseph Noel Walker Killed in Action on the Somme