PIP Assessment Time

October 17, 2017, 3:04 am

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I have a dreaded PIP assessment on Friday this week. I can assure you it will be much less fun than the dreaded 'Dance Off' on Strictly!

My MP Stephanie Peacock has recently spoken about the numbers of decisions on PIP and ESA which are overturned on appeal.  It seems that in Barnsley two-thirds of people initially refused these benefits are granted them after appeal, but this can take fifteen weeks!

Advice on Appeals from the charity Scope

I received a form from the PIP people in the post in June this year. I have been getting the benefit for around two years and it seems it is time for them to check up on me. I rang around trying to find somone to help me fill it in and was lucky enough to get an appointment several weeks later with the Citizens Advice Bureau. In 2015 I received help to fill in the form from Age UK, but it due to cut backs they cannot assist me now as I am only 56 years old. It seems unwise to assume that because I qualified for the benefit in 2015 that my assessment will be plain sailing. I have been reading the supplied leaflet and online advice to make sure I have covered everything.

In the last year my health and mobility has declined to the point where I don't go into Barnsley by myself except in exceptional circumstances. I haven't driven for years, and in June, following a seizure, was officially told to stop driving by my consultant. The bus ride into town is long and tiring, and everywhere I need to go is a long way from the bus station. I do still manage to get to our local Co-op on a good day leaning on my Sholley. I don't go to the Archives any more, partially because a snub by the Council last year caused me to lose a lot of confidence and as a consequence I have lost touch with fellow researchers.

My mother in law has become my lifeline. Despite being very poorly herself she always comes to my rescue by booking a taxi to get both of us to places. I confess to being scared to get in a taxi by myself, I can't pin point why, but probably connected to my long standing dread of having workmen in the house. Sadly I always assume they are casing the joint for a later burglary. When I lived on the Manor in Sheffield we were burgled, that must be more than twenty two years ago as I remember Persephone was a new kitten at the time. We were very, very poor. All they got was our tiny rented tv and some dvds which they carried away in my first mother in law's borrowed shopping trolley!

We went to see Citizens Advice with my form in July. My m-in-law booked a taxi to pick her up and then me.  She came with me into the interview room and was able to contribute to the form filling by recalling things I had forgotten or had thought were not important enough to mention.  Both she and the CAB man told me several times to stop saying that I worked around a thing or could just about manage, because as that was only applicable on a good day what was I doing the rest of the time?

Yes, on a bad day (like today and yesterday) I stay in bed in my nightclothes all day and eat toast, cheese and crackers and instant porridge. I am too tired to read and writing this post has been taken in short spurts over the last two to three hours. I either sleep a lot, or watch tv, often both at the same time!

At the end of the session in July, which took several hours, the man said he thought I should be getting more PIP.  I don't quite know how to take that, I know I'm worse than I was two years ago, and add on the escalating knee problems and the epilepsy ... I do spend more now on the taxis, and tins of soup and ready meals. I have even arranged a deal with the hairdressers a few yards up the road. They will wash, but not dry, my long hair for £4. Which is good as bending over the sink is getting very difficult. Oh, and I'm not supposed to bath or shower when I'm alone - that's the epilepsy again.

My m-in-law has booked a taxi for this Friday. Cross your fingers for me. That's more than two whole days away, and I am going to worry every second of it.

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WW1 Soldiers' Stories - the Cox Brothers of Barnsley and Sheffield

May 21, 2018, 5:23 am

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I was recently asked via Twitter whether I knew of the whereabouts of the war memorial for St Peter's church on Doncaster Road in Barnsley. Well, follow the link and you'll be as wise as me!  Sadly the person who was enquiring did not find their relative listed, however his query led me first to one of the few men named Cox on the Barnsley War Memorials Project (BWMP) master spreadsheet (who is not remembered on any memorial in the Barnsley Borough) and onwards to one brother and then another. Be warned, this is a sad story!

Firstly, though, let me explain the Barnsley War Memorials Project. Set up in early 2014 following an initial meeting at Barnsley Town Hall in late 2013, the project aimed to create a Barnsley Borough WW1 Roll of Honour, and you will be pleased to know that this will be launched in November 2018 - not long to wait now!  It was to be compiled by recording and researching the names on the borough war memorials. We thought this would be a fairly straightforward task for a team of experienced family historians, as was the initial group at that time.  To be included on the Roll of Honour a man or woman killed/died due to the First World War had to have been born within the borough boundaries or lived in the borough at the time of their entry into the forces or remembered on any war memorial in the borough. It had been decided to include civilian deaths too, such as casualties of attacks or deaths whilst engaged on war related work.

In 2013 we were aware of around 70 war memorials within the borough boundaries which were listed on the Imperial War Museum's War Memorial Register. Note that the project uses the modern boundaries, not the historic ones. This is to avoid 'treading on the toes' of neighbouring towns' history groups who may be carrying out their own WW1 projects.  Surprisingly, there are many more war memorials in Barnsley than we had first thought.  In fact at the last count there were 717 different war memorials commemorating conflicts from the Boer War to Afghanistan. It also soon became apparent that Barnsley men appear on many war memorials scattered across Britain and beyond, due to family movements both whilst the soldier was alive and after his death. This meant we had become family history detectives on an international scale to discover if 'our' men were recorded anywhere in the world.

This brings us to the Cox family.  

The head of the Cox family, William, was born in Chesterfield in Q4 1858 (mmn Pendleton). He married Bertha Sterland, who was also from Chesterfield, in Sheffield St Peter's (now the Cathedral) on 17 August 1884. Bertha was in reality two and a bit years younger than William (her birth was registered in Q2 1861 mmn Scott), but for some reason on their marriage register entry both declared themselves to be 23 years old. William had knocked two years off his age! 

In the 1891 census, when the family are living in Barnsley at 46 Rock Street (which runs off Sackville Street near the modern Gateway Plaza complex) William, working as a Driller, gives his age as 32 (fairly accurate) and Bertha says she is 27 (now she's knocking a few years off!) They have three children living with them on the census return, Alice b.Q4 1884 in Chesterfield (hmm, that's rather soon after the marriage ... is that why they married in Sheffield, away from the Chesterfield gossips?), Walter b.Q4 1887 in Basford, Nottinghamshire and Lottie b.Q1 1889 also in Basford. A search of the GRO online indexes also gives us an Edith b.Q3 1886 in Basford, but she appears to die shortly after her birth.

Here is the full list of the Cox children (mmn Sterland or Stirland) that I have found on the GRO site:

Alice Cox b.Q4 1884 Chesterfield
Edith Cox b.Q3 1886 Basford died young in Basford
Walter Cox b.Q4 1887 Basford 
Lottie Cox b.Q1 1889 Basford
Frank Cox b.Q4 1891 Barnsley
Minnie Cox b.Q4 1892 Barnsley died aged 4 in Barnsley
Alfred Cox b.Q1 1894 Barnsley
John Ernest Cox b.Q4 1896 Barnsley died aged 1 in Sheffield
Elsie Cox b.Q2 1899 Sheffield
Leonard Cox b.Q2 1902 Sheffield

Bertha has a child at roughly two year intervals for at least eighteen years. Poor woman!

As you can see from the birthplaces of the Cox children the family moves from Basford after the birth of Lottie in early 1889 and we know they are in Barnsley in April 1891. They move from Barnsley after the birth of John Ernest in late 1896 and are listed in the 1901 census in March of that year living at 12 Crown Alley, in the Park district of Sheffield. William is working as a general labourer underground. John Ernest Cox is missing from the 1901 census, suggesting he was William and Bertha's third child to die young, however I did not find a death for him under that name.

This tallies with the 1911 census return where Bertha reports having been married for 27 years and having given birth to 10 live children, three of whom had died before the census return was made. She and six surviving children (her eldest daughter is also not at home - maybe she had married?) are living at 22 court, 1 house, South Street still in the Park district in April 1911. William is not included on this return however Bertha still gives her status as wife and married, so we can only assume he just away from home not dead. 

There is a married William Cox, right age, right birthplace, occupation Window Cleaner, living at Rowton House, Lordsmill Street, Chesterfield with no sign of a wife. It seems to be some kind of lodging house as there are 39 unrelated people living there.

My next step was to look at parish records to try to fill out the gaps. 

The only Cox baptism I could find on Ancestry (children named Cox with parents names William and Bertha) was Alfred on 11 February 1894 at St John's church in the Barebones area of Barnsley. Oddly that is not the parish for Rock Street, which lay in St Mary's parish, although their Rock Street address is given. 

On Find My Past I found two baptisms which fitted, George Ernest Cox on 25 October 1897 and Leonard Cox 1902 both at St John's Sheffield Park. With this clue I was able to find the death of George Ernest Cox on the GRO index - in Sheffield Q1 1898 aged 1 year.  Oddly George's birthdate is given in the baptism register as 7 October 1894 ... this does not fit any other information I have, but from his age at death I am assuming this child was the John Ernest Cox born in Barnsley in late 1896 and that maybe the clergyman at St John's Park had incorrectly recorded his birth date in the baptism register.  The family's address in 1897 was 2 court, 2 house, Bernard Street and in 1902 they were at 12 Crown Alley which we already know was their address on the 1901 census return.

So, we have now established the family within the census, birth, marriage and death records and parish records. How does this relate to the First World War?

The site Sheffield Soldiers of the First World War lists hundreds of memorials in the Sheffield area. There is a war memorial outside St John's church at Sheffield Park, but it bears no names. The panel with the names is inside the church. I have seen this arrangement before - the panels or plaques were usually erected in the churches or chapels first, but then to give better access for all denominations an outside memorial was often added a few years later.  There are three men named Cox listed on the panel. The names are sorted by regiment, which is helpful, but only initials are given, not full forenames. Sadly A, F and W Cox have proven to be three of Bertha and William's boys. More fortunately, Leonard, unless he tried to enlist underage, was far too young to serve in the war.

According to the name index on the above website: 
A Cox served in the Alexandra Princess of Wales Own (Yorkshire) Regiment
F Cox served in the York and Lancaster Regiment
W Cox served in the York and Lancaster Regiment too.

With this information it was possible to look for the men on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) website. 

Only one A Cox served in the Yorkshire Regiment - Private A Cox fell on 9 August 1917 and is buried at Guemappe British Cemetery, Wancourt, plot I.A.17. His service number was 15888. No family information or citation is mentioned on the CWGC site.

There are four possible F Cox soldiers on the CWGC in the York and Lancaster Regiment, but three are Fred or Frederick, leaving Private F Cox who fell on 29 April 1915 and is buried at Y Farm Military Cemetery, Bois-Grenier, plot H.22. His service number is 2353. Again there is no family information connected to this record.

Finally W Cox in the York and Lancaster Regiment gives us two results. Disregarding W R Cox we are left with Private W Cox who fell on 1 June 1918 and is buried at Mailly Wood Cemetery, Mailly-Maillet, plot I.N.3. His service number is 13107 and this time we have an age, 31 and some family details. "Son of Mrs Bertha Cox, of 209, Duke St., Park, Sheffield". Well, this definitely seems to be one of the family we have been looking at.  I also looked at his ''Soldiers Died in the Great War' record which states that he was born in Beeston, Nottingham and enlisted at Sheffield. Beeston is the place of birth given for Walter on the 1911 census when the family are living in Sheffield.

At this point I could only assume A and F Cox were also Bertha's boys. But there are still lots of other sources to check if you know what you are doing.

One of my favourite sites is Lives of the First World War (LFWW). Sadly this site will be 'frozen' in early 1919 as its funding comes to an end, but the data entered will be preserved by the Imperial War Museum and made available in a static form as soon as possible thereafter.  In the meantime the way that it is organised is a great help to a research project like this and for only £6 a month you get access to all of Find My Past's military records.

Alfred Cox was already listed on LFWW as a Barnsley man. This is because his SDGW record notes that he was born in Barnsley. It tells us that he had been killed in action on 9 August 1917 - so this all fits with the CWGC information I have listed above. He was, of course, also listed on the BWMP master spreadsheet and will be in the Roll of Honour when it is prepared for presentation to Barnsley Council in November this year, 2018, the centenary of the Armistice.  I have 'Remembered' thousands of men on LFWW over the past four years and it not surprising that I had forgotten adding some records to Alfred's Life Story page already. One of these was his record in the 'Army Registers of Soldiers' Effects' from the Ancestry website. Names, rank, regiment, service number and date and place of death are listed. But these records are particularly useful because they give the name or names of the soldier's next of kin. In Alfred's case the name given is his mother Bertha. So the family connection has been confirmed and we can assume that by 1919 when the sum of £13 War Gratuity was dispatched Alfred's father William was no longer around, whether that be by death or separation I fear we may never know. There is a handy little tool available online which estimates the enlistment date of a soldier from the War Gratuity paid.  For Alfred this works out at November 1914, so he was one of the earlier volunteers.

Here are links to Frank Cox and Walter Cox on Lives of the First World War. Their pages are much less populated as I was not aware they had a Barnsley connection until a few days ago.

Using the basic information we had from the war memorial at St John's I was able to look up Frank Cox in the York and Lancaster Regiment in the 'Effects' records. Frank was the first of the brothers to be lost, and his war gratuity was only £3. His next of kin was his 'sole legatee', his mother Bertha, so now we have linked Frank to Alfred and Walter by their mother's name. Using the War Gratuity calculator again this suggests he had been enlisted for less than 12 months. Not surprising given that he was killed in April 1915. Frank's SDGW record does not give his birth place, which I had discovered from the GRO records was Barnsley, so I got in touch with my contacts at BWMP and he has been added to their master spreadsheet and will hopefully make it into the Roll of Honour, which was still at the draft stage last I heard.

Finally I looked at Walter Cox's 'Effects' record which surprisingly gives his mother's name as Martha!  But we know from the CWGC record that his mum is definitely Bertha ... it might be a transcription error, Martha / Bertha, similar I suppose ... it just goes to show that you should not depend on a single source, always try to corroborate your evidence by finding different sources to cross check. I double checked the service number and date of death just to be sure - but he was the only Walter Cox in the Y&L regiment who fell and all the other information on the 'Effects' record matches the CWGC record.  The amount of War Gratuity in Walter's case was £17 10s (10s is 50p), and this calculates to an enlistment in around October 1914.  It does appear as if all three of Bertha's boys volunteered very early on in the war.

I wondered if any of the young men (calling them boys is actually rather trite as Walter would have been 27 in 1914, Frank 23 and Alfred 20 years old) had been Territorial soldiers before the war. If so they might have already had some part-time military training with weekend parades and a summer camp every year.

The Long, Long Trail website is a fantastic resource compiled by military historian Chris Baker over many years. One of its most useful features is a list, by regiment, of when and where each battalion was formed, and which Brigade and Division it was in. Frank Cox was in the 1st/4th battalion of the York and Lancaster Regiment. A double number like this immediately tells you that it was a battalion of the Territorial Force. The 1st/4th Y&L were known as the Hallamshire Battalion and they were mobilised in Sheffield in August 1914. So this fits as we already know that the Cox family were living in Sheffield in 1911. Frank's Army Service Records have survived, which is quite lucky as as much of 60% of this record set was destroyed during the Blitz of the Second World War. From these I can see that he did not join up until 7 September 1914, so he was not a part time soldier before the war.  He only just scraped in as he is recorded as being just 5' 3" tall which was the absolute lowest limit at the time.

The 1st/4th landed at Boulogne on 14th April 1915 and poor Frank was killed on 29 April 1915. I was lucky enough to find some newspaper cuttings about his death in the Sheffield newspapers on Find My Past (which are the same data set as the British Newspaper Archive).  According to the Sheffield Independent and the Sheffield Daily Telegraph Frank was 23 years old and worked at Davy and Son's, provision merchants, Paternoster Row. His occupation on the 1911 census, when he was 19 years old, was Pork Trade Assistant and helpfully for us whoever filled in the form had incorrectly put the name of his employer rather than the type of trade and this is still visible below the census enumerator's crossings out.  It confirms A. Davy and sons, General Food Providers.  I also found two 'In Memoriam' notices inserted in the Sheffield Evening Telegraph on 28 April 1916, a year after Frank's death. One was from his mother, sister and brother and the other from 'Elsie'. A sweetheart maybe? 

Alfred Cox was in the 7th battalion the Yorkshire Regiment, also known as the 'Green Howards'. According to the Long, Long Trail this was a Service battalion (ie created during the war) formed at Richmond in September 1914 as part of Kitchener's New Army. It landed at Boulogne on 14 July 1915 and was attached to the 50th Brigade, 17th (Northern) Division. So by the time he arrived in France Alfred would have been aware of his brother Frank's death. Alfred was killed after he had been overseas for over two years. I have checked his battalion war diary on Ancestry and no deaths are reported for 9 August 1917. The battalion were working as carrying parties during the day and on wiring at night. There is only one other man from the Yorkshire Regiment buried in the same cemetery as Alfred, and he was in a different battalion and was killed two days later. This suggests that Alfred was not killed during an attack or raid which would have involved other men of his battalion, rather his was an isolated death, maybe from a sniper bullet or a stray shell. I have not found any newspaper cuttings referring to Alfred's death.

Walter Cox, service number 13107, was in the 7th (Service) battalion of the York and Lancaster Regiment according to the CWGC, the SDGW and his 'Effects' record. His Service Records have also survived and are on both Ancestry and Find My Past. The first few pages do complicate the mystery of the name Martha from the 'Effect's record. His mother is named as Margarett, but the writing makes 'mother' look like Martha. To make matters worse these are not the records of a man from Nottinghamshire, this Walter Cox gives his place of birth as Hoyland, which is in Barnsley. Even more oddly Bertha's address on South Street, Park, Sheffield has been entered against Martha's name after an address on Rotherham Road, Dinnington was crossed out. This Walter is five years older and married a lady called Harriett Bettney in Rotherham in 1905. Drat!

Mysteriouser and mysteriouser, a few pages into Walter's Service Records a second Attestation form appears which is marked Duplicate. Except it is not. This is for a man born in Beeston who is 26 years (nearly 27) of age and an Electro Plater from Sheffield!  Yes, this is the right Walter Cox. His age is correct. He even has a very nice 'Next of Kin' form completed in September 1919 by Bertha and witnessed the clergyman from the Sale Memorial Church on South Street. It confirms that his father is not around, that he only has one brother (as this form is being completed in 1919 and poor Bertha only has 17 year old Leonard left) and three sisters, including the married Alice whose surname looks like Mason. I now know he joined up on 3 September 1914, possibly the first of the brothers to enlist if the calculation of Alfred's gratuity payment is accurate. He appears to have been wounded several times, including a wound in his arm and shoulder that necessitated him being sent back to England to recover. This did at least mean that he got some leave in the October and November of 1917 - there is a tattered form stating this in his file. He returned to France in March 1918 and was killed in action in June. I even found a very faint image of a Soldier's Will leaving all his "property and effects to my mother Mrs B Cox 209 Duke Street, Park, Sheffield".

I wonder who the other Walter was? 
Ah, b.1882 in Hoyland, son of Henry Cox (b.Barnsley) and Martha (nee Jones, b.Monmouthshire) with brother William and sister Eliza all living in Rotherham in 1891. So no relation. He survived the war and living in Rotherham with wife Harriet in 1939 (information from the 1939 register which can be found on both Ancestry and Find My Past). Even his birthdate matches that scribbled on the side of his Attestation form. A bit worrying for his descendants if they ever see this form in his Service Records crossed through with a big pencil label, 'Killed in Action'.

The final item I found referring to the three brothers was another 'In Memoriam' notice, this time from 2 June 1919 in the Sheffield Evening Telegraph.

COX - In loving memory of the late Privates Walter, Frank and Alf Cox, Y. and L. Regiment, late of South Street, Park. Killed in action.
Some may think that we forget them, When they sometimes see us smile, But they little know the sorrow, That the smile hides all the while. - From their loving Mother; Sisters, Brother, Brother-in-law, and Walter's Sweetheart, Amelia.

I was able to find Alice, the eldest sister's, marriage on FreeBMD. She marries John Mannion (I suppose it has some letters in common with Mason) in Q2 1910 in Sheffield. I think I have also found the couple in the 1939 Register living at 26a Harborough Avenue in Sheffield, although the husband's name is given as Thomas Mannion and he is five years younger than Alice's declared age - if it is Alice Cox she has knocked a year off her age. Family custom it seems!  I cannot find any children to this marriage on FreeBMD.

I have tried my usual websites and can't find out what happened to Bertha, Lottie, Minnie, Elsie and Leonard Cox. Research online after 1911 is not as easy as during the census years, but I would have expected to find a marriage or a death for some of them in Sheffield.

As I appear to have ground to a halt with this story I will close it now ... My next plan is to contact the webmaster of the Sheffield Soldier site and let them know what I have found out about the Cox brothers. 

Thanks for reading - If I find out any more about this family I will link it here.

Lack of Support for Blue Badge Applications

May 23, 2018, 4:41 am

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This is the letter I sent to my MP Stephanie Peacock, the Barnsley MP Dan Jarvis, and the Cudworth councillors Steve Houghton, Joe Hayward and Charlie Wraith today.

Dear Sirs and Ms Peacock,

I have a Blue Badge. It is due for renewal in July. Several years ago, when I was first awarded PIP I was able to get an appointment at Cudworth Library with a helpful lady who photocopied my PIP letters, my proof of Address & ID and my photo. She filled in the form for me and sent it into the proper department.

Yesterday I was in the queue in Cudworth Library. The gentleman in front of me, who was enquiring on behalf of a relative, asked about getting help to renew a Blue Badge. The librarian apologised but said applications had to be done online now. The man explained that he had no computer skills, even if he came into Cudworth to use a library machine he would need help. Then he stormed out saying he would (swear word) pay for parking in future.

I was next, and as this had reminded me that I needed to renew my badge I asked for more information. I was told that their support service had been (or was about to be) taken away from the library. However it might be possible to find someone to help a customer use a computer in the library. I imagine this would have to be an appointment as they have very few staff.

I have computer skills, as you can see. I came home and looked at the online site. https://www.gov.uk/apply-blue-badge
The site did not tell you all the documents you needed before you started the process or explain that they needed to be scanned or digital images.

The process could be stopped and saved to continue later.

The Barnsley Council website https://www.barnsley.gov.uk/services/roads-travel-and-parking/blue-badges/  gives no other option but to engage with the .gov.uk site.

Please take note that I am concerned for other Blue Badge holders and potential Blue Badge holders in Cudworth and area as well as myself. I have computer skills but I know that most people my age (57) and older do not.

It took me nearly three quarters of an hour to complete the online process. I had to stop the process to find and photograph my driving licence, I had to stop the process to photograph my PIP letter, I had to get my husband to take a photo of me with his phone and then get it to my computer so I could attach that. I had to use the PIP letter as proof of address as all our utility bills are in my husband's name and anyway they are paperless these days.

This is a long and complicated process for someone with computer skills. Someone who can't even operate a mobile phone has no hope.

It seems the administration will take six to eight weeks ... I am on the limit of that now as my current badge runs out on 19 July. There was no warning about this on either site and I have not received a reminder letter, which was alluded to at the start of the online form.

The Council site says you have to pay £10 in advance and put a number in a box on the form. There is no such box on the online form, so I can only assume this refers to the old paper form.

I tweeted about my concerns last night and got an answer this morning. I was told to ring "the Blue Badge team on 01226 773555, who can provide guidance. For example, they could make an appointment at one of our libraries for assistance with IT."

I rang the number. I was on hold for 31 minutes being #9 in the queue initially. Finally a lady spoke to me. She confirmed that Cudworth Library could no longer give support with Blue Badge Applications and suggested I go to Central Library, Wombwell, Goldthorpe, Mapplewell or Hoyland. I explained that I am disabled, I no longer travel alone, can't manage bus rides by myself, am not allowed to drive, it would mean a long taxi ride with my elderly mum-in-law for support, there and back. She eventually offered to send out a paper form. When pressed she confessed that their paper forms were in limited supply and that when they ran out there would be no more. So if I get one I will post it back for someone else to use! There was no mention of an appointment with someone in Cudworth Library who might be able to help with the IT side of things.

I would like to appeal to you, Stephanie, Dan, Steve, Joe and Charlie, to reinstate support at Cudworth Library for Blue Badge applicants. Facilities to help with scanning documents to digital and taking photos of customers are essential. Help for the elderly and less able with engaging with the complex online form is essential. Prior notice and clear information needs to be given to applicants about what documents they need to apply so they don't need to make multiple trips to the Library. Imagine if I had gone to the Central Library in town, for an appointment, but not know I needed proof of ID and address as well as my PIP letter and photo.

Please take some action on this matter.

Yours
Linda

Linda Hutton
[email address redacted for this post ... contact me via Comments below or via Twitter]
@HuttonCroft
http://barnsleyhistorian.blogspot.co.uk
  
  

The Sad State of Some War Memorial Gravestones in Barnsley Cemetery

May 24, 2018, 7:24 am

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Since March this year a kind Barnsley volunteer named Wayne Bywater has been walking around Ardsley and Barnsley Cemeteries photographing war memorial gravestones. He submits these to the Barnsley War Memorials Project (BWMP) and via Twitter to me. My file of his photos contains 103 images!  The Barnsley War Memorial Project now have records of 112 war memorial gravestones in Barnsley Cemetery alone, but sadly many of these are in very poor condition. Without volunteers like Wayne these memorials may not ever have been recorded and in a few years many could crumble away as if they never existed.

Wayne's helper Alicia applying a dusting of soft chalk to a gravestone to aid in photography (photo from Twitter on 28 April 2018)

The Imperial War Museum's War Memorials' Archive defines a War Memorial as "any tangible object which has been erected or dedicated to commemorate those killed as a result of war, conflict or peacekeeping; who served in war or conflict; or who died whilst engaged in military service."  This includes gravestones which commemorate a casualty buried elsewhere.  There must be a clear statement on the memorial (or in a printed document such as a newspaper report from the time) that defines the commemorative purpose of the feature and reports its erection. Thus gravestones which include wording such as: died of wounds received in action, killed in action, fell in France, died on active service, reported missing in action, or even killed accidentally while on active service all count as War Memorials.  The wording is a "clear statement" that the purpose of recording that person's name on the gravestone is as a memorial.

Yesterday I saved Wayne's latest photographs to my files. They included these photos
 
All credit to Wayne for spotting the significant wording on this pile of broken stones.

Three of the corners of the grave kerb edging have broken away and are lying down. There appears to be an inscription on both long sides and one end.

Zooming in on this photo I can see that Ann Outwin is commemorated on the right and Elsie on the left. As both inscriptions start with the word 'Also' I think there should have been an inscription at the top of this plot as well.

Wayne also provided a close up of the relevant war memorial part of the inscription.
"Also Herbert ... who was ...
Killed in France Nov 20th 1917
... ed ... Years"

That "Killed in France" and the date is what makes this a War Memorial.

It is only by combining the information from all the inscriptions that we can work out that Herbert's surname was Outwin.

I looked up these names in an index to the burials in Barnsley Cemetery (available from Barnsley Archives) and found that Ann and Elsie Outwin were buried in plot M 826 in Barnsley Cemetery. Ann was 78 years old when she died in 1926, Elsie was 50 in 1941. Also in the plot are Ethel who died aged 9 months in 1890 and James who died in 1921 aged 78. I assume from this that Ann and James were Herbert's parents and that Ethel and Elsie were his sisters.

Herbert's name rang a bell with me and I looked him up on the BWMP master spreadsheet. He was 37 years old when he was killed in action on 20 November 1917. He is buried in Flesquieres Hill British Cemetery in France. His wife was called Jane and she lived on Eldon Street North. He is mentioned on the Barnsley St Mary's War Memorial and he is mentioned twice in the Barnsley Chronicle during the years indexed by the BWMP volunteers. 

I have started to add more information to Herbert's Life Story on Lives of the First World War. This site is free use if you want to browse and add photos and free text family stories to your relatives. You only hit the paywall if you want to access the military and historical records provided and, *handy hint* these are available free of charge in Barnsley (Ancestry) and Sheffield (Find My Past) libraries.

I was sure there was something else about this man so I also searched for the name Outwin in my husband's family tree. Sure enough he appears there, married to the sister of the wife of my husband's great, great uncle Thomas Croft (of 'Daring Escape from Holland' fame). Thomas's wife was Matilda Dutton, older sister of Jane. Herbert and Jane had at least six children, Herbert b.1907, Ernest b.1908, George b.1909, Harold b.1910, Leonard b.1912 and Gladys b. 1916.  Jane also came from a large family, as she and Matilda were the youngest of at least nine children born to George and Eliza Dutton in Monk Bretton. 

Between the Outwins and the Duttons there must be lots of descendants and relatives of Herbert still living in Barnsley. The care of gravestones falls to the owners of the graves and their next of kin according to Barnsley Council. They are not the responsibility of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission or the War Memorials Trust. Please could someone take responsibility for this grave and show Herbert the respect he deserves. 

This is not the only damaged and poorly maintained grave plot in Barnsley Cemetery. If you are lucky enough to have a family memorial of any kind (and in my husband's family many of his ancestors were too poor to buy a stone and are buried in unmarked grassy plots) then it would be nice if we could care for them.

Lest We Forget.

 

Frustrated by Technology: Trying to get a Pension Forecast

August 17, 2018, 8:27 pm

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A few days ago I received my annual statement from the Local Government Pension Scheme. As I only worked for Sheffield Hallan University for nine years this does not amount to much! I was curious as to how much government pension I was entitled to as my working life was interrupted by child care and before my first marriage I had several low paid, short-lived jobs, two or three years each, with no pension provision attached.

State Pension Forecast Application page image

I did attempt to get my small LGPS pension released to me last year as I am permanently disabled by the effects of Crohn's Disease and Fibromyalgia. I get Personal Independence Payment and have a Blue Badge and a Disabled Bus Pass. Sadly the doctor who reassessed me on behalf of the pension authority was of the opinion that my symptoms would be alleviated by Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, Graded Exercise Therapy and some different drugs from my consultants, and that therefore I would be fit for work again within three years! I should point out that my last day at work was in August 2009, and that Sheffield Hallam University tried to terminate my contract due to ill health in 2010 after I had been off sick for a year! I fought this because I wanted to be recognised for ill health retirement as recommended by the SHU occupational health doctor. Having been unsuccessful in this (the panel doctor back then also said I would be fit for work again within three years) I applied for voluntary redundancy, which I was eventually granted, with a final leaving date of early 2011.

My GP has since reviewed my medication and the reports from my three consultants (gastroenterologist, rheumatologist and neurologist) and stated that no changes are needed or desirable at this time to my treatment. A physiotherapist was consulted and stated that graded exercise therapy was not suitable for me because of my damaged ankle (broken multiple times due to my weak, hyper-extending joints) and knee (obloque tear to the lateral meniscus of my right knee making it unstable, weak and prone to locking up). Hydrotherapy might be suitable, but as I have been recently diagnosed with epilepsy I cannot go in a pool until more time has elapsed since my fit. I saw a nice mental health practitioner for six weeks (self referred), and we discussed relaxation, breathing, and mindfulness, which I was happy to take up, even paying to attend classes at our local library, but she was unable to offer me more in depth cognitive behaviour therapy or a councillor. Apparently I don't tick the right boxes on their assessment of my mental health problems. She did suggest a pain clinic, but as that is at Mexborough just getting there (as it would have to be under my own steam on public transport) is impossible, I would be exhausted by the time I'd got halfway. So that has covered or ruled out all of the pension doctor's suggestions.

The pension doctor also said that studying part-time for an MA proves that my cognitive faculties are not impaired.  Doing that proves (he claims) that I must be well enough to go back to work in due course. I'm glad my brain does still work, for a few hours a day at any rate, or I would be completely useless. Find me a job that I can do at home, for no more than two to four hours a day (variable depending on my physical symptoms) and for three to four days a week (not all consecutively) that involves no more physical effort than using a computer or reading .... yeah .... I know, poor isn't it ... would you employ me? And yet that is what the MA consists of. I expect that I will never succed in getting this pension released early (I will be 65 in 2026) as after the MA is complete at the end of 2019 I really want to do a PhD next which will take another five years at least! At home, part time, etc, etc.

Going back to the Pension Forecast.

It seems you can get a forecast if you can log into the Government Gateway. I must have managed that a few years ago as I was able to renew my driving licence, but my log in details from then don't work now, maybe too long has elapsed? I tried to set up a new account but got completely bogged down by the technology. You have to use an app or a mobile phone to scan a QR code (with the same tablet that is displaying the QR code? Ehh? That's impossible), to get a six digit secure code or enter personal/financial information and some important dates (do you know when you set up your Google account or moved into your latest address?) to pass a credit check. I failed, not once, but two days in a row, even with my husband to help me.

We photographed the QR code with his phone so I could scan it with my tablet. We looked up when we bought the house in Cudworth, we checked when I changed my name by deed (good job I file everything as that was many, many years ago), we entered my driving licence data, my debit card data, answered questions about previous addresses, but nothing worked. It seems I can't be identified. He thinks that it might be because our credit card is in his name, I am an additional name on that account, we have a joint bank account, our mortgage is in his name as I wasn't working by the time we bought this house, and I've not bought anything by hire purchase ... ever, let alone in the past six years! Also I have no passport as mine ran out a few years ago and as we can't afford (and don't have time to take) holidays abroad we didn't bother to renew it.

You may recall that I had trouble proving I was myself for my student loan last year? Follow the link to read THAT fascinating tale, which itself refers to the problems I had getting a simple post office account some years before that. This seems to be yet another similar problem.  The student loan issue was solved in the nick of time for the start of the academic year after I bought a new copy of my 1985 marriage certificate (my ex has the original) and submitted my original birth certificate twice (they didn't record the details the first time and lost it for several weeks the second time), and after weekly phone calls to them all summer. Happily I don't have to go through that all again for my second year's funding, it just rolls over automatically.

My worry is that by the time I reach 65 or 67 or whatever the age is by then I won't even have a driving licence as that seems to be the only thing left that they believe. Will I be able to get my pension? Will everything be automated by then?  Oh, dear!

Edit - about 12 hours later:
Experian have verified my driving licence and after a few more questions (multiple choice, what bank accounts do you have, how long have NPower been your electricity supplier, etc) I was able to access my pension forecast. I need two more years NI contributions to get the full State Pension, so as long as the DWP keep giving me credits for being disabled I'll be fully entitled before 2028 which now seems to be my vital date.

Hooray! But it was a long haul ... two days trying, and with my husband's assistance I eventually got through their ridiculously complex system.

Two Members of the Same Family both named Irving Killed in Action a Generation Apart

August 29, 2018, 1:06 pm

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There are at least 154 war memorial gravestones in Barnsley Cemetery, Barnsley, South Yorkshire. These grave markers commemorate a man who has been lost in a conflict, be it the Boer War, the First World War or the Second World War by an inscription on the stone work upon or around their family's grave plot. The men in question are NOT buried in the Cemetery, most lying in Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries overseas or commemorated on CWGC memorials across the world.

Recently, from March to July 2018, a volunteer has been walking the cemetery checking every plot for these inscriptions. Wayne Bywater has now moved onto the cemetery in Bolton upon Dearne but the Barnsley War Memorials Project and myself are very grateful to him for finding and photographing so many of these memorials which give valuable family information about our servicemen. Wayne's work has added names to the BWMP First World War Roll of Honour (due to be presented to the Mayor of Barnsley in November 2018) and has identified many Second World War men for future researchers.

The gravestone that I was logging this morning is particularly interesting as it commemorates two servicemen in one family, one killed in the First World War and one killed in the Second World War. Coincidently both were called Irving. Irving Lindley was killed in action 20 November 1917 and Irving Parry was killed in action 19 November 1944.  Intrigued by this I decided to find out exactly how the two men were related.

Lindley family gravestone, plot 7 371, Barnsley Cemetery Photo by Wayne Bywater in July 2018

The gravestone gives us lots of clues. Irving Lindley's parents were Violet C, who died in 1929 and Arthur who died in 1933. Irving Parry was their grandson.  

Arthur Lindley, born 1870 in Wombwell, married Violet Charlotte Bower, born 1875 in Sheffield, in Wombwell Parish Church on 24 December 1895. It seems they had known each other for a while for in the same church on 7 January 1894 their daughter May Lindley Bower was baptised. No father's name is given, but the inclusion of the Lindley name in the child's forenames is a huge pointer towards her parentage!

Following their marriage Arthur and Violet had three more children, Edgar, born in the September quarter of 1896 (so around nine months after their wedding), Irving, born in December quarter 1897 and Ida, born in the January quarter of 1899.  All four of the Lindley children are at home with Arthur and Violet in the 1901 census when the family are living at 28 Gower Street in Wombwell. May is listed as a Lindley and all the children were born in Wombwell. Arthur's occupation is Coal Hewer. Gower Street runs off Park Street, to the left of the 'Last Orders' pub. On Google maps I can see that there are only three older terraced houses remaining on the street, most of the housing now being modern bungalows.

The 1911 census finds the Lindley family in Worsborough Dale, a few miles outside of Barnsley town centre. Their full address was 23 James Street and that house can still be seen on Google maps. Arthur Lindley, now aged 41, is listed as a Ripper in a Coal Mine and Violet's entry gives us the following information; they have been married for 15 years, and have 3 children born alive, all three are living. Under Violet's name the whole of the next entry has been scratched out but enough is visible to suggest it did read May Lindley. Under that are the other three children. Edgar is 14 years old and a Labourer in a Saw Mill, Irving is 13 years old and a Screen Boy at a colliery and Ida is 11 and still at school.

It seems that May had been mistakenly entered on the census by her father as she can be found listed in the 1911 census at Croft House in Linthwaite in West Yorkshire working as a Housemaid to Benjamin Walker, the local Registrar of Births and Deaths.  She is 17 years old. The fact that she is not included in the tally of Violet's children on the census return could have been to cover up the fact that she was born prior to their marriage, or just purely in strict adherence to the direction at the top of the column which asks for 'children born alive to the present marriage', and of course she was born before the wedding.

At some point in the next seven years the family move to 58 Agnes Road, much nearer to the centre of Barnsley. This long street of terraced houses with several local shops runs from Park Grove to Princess Street, just a few hundred yards south of Morrisons on Westway, Barnsley.

From the Barnsley Chronicle 9 February 1918 With thanks to Barnsley Archives

The next record of the family that I have been able to find is the report of the death of the second son, Irving Lindley, born late 1897 in Wombwell, who was 20 years old in 1917. He had been working at Barrow Colliery, which is in Worsborough, until his enlistment in the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. His service records have not survived so it is difficult to tell exactly when he signed up, but his service number is 41914 and his war gratuity (paid to his father after his death and which can be seen on his Army Register of Soldiers' Effects record) was only £3 and 10 shillings, we can estimate that he enlisted in November 1916, this making it likely he was conscripted. The cutting from the Barnsley Chronicle on 26 January 1918 is the source of the family's address and Irving's occupation. There are no details given of how he met his end.


We know he was in the 2nd/5th KOYLI when he was killed and that he was subsequently buried in Hermies Hill British Cemetery in the Pas de Calais area. According to the CWGC site for the cemetery there are buried on this site 70 soldiers from the UK who fell on 20 November 1917, the first day of the Battle of Cambrai, most of whom belonged to the infantry of the 62nd West Riding Division (which included the 2/5 KOYLI). Some of these graves were concentrated (gathered in from) other cemeteries after the Armistice and it not always possible to know the exact location of a particular grave. Irving Lindley is named on a special memorial in the cemetery along with 30 other men who are also believed to be buried there.

Some of Irving's story can be found on Lives of the First World War.

The Lindley family story continues with the marriage of May Lindley (or Bower) in the final quarter of 1918. Her husband was David Parry from Chapel Street, Carlton and he had been discharged from the army in December 1918, 'released to coal mining' according to his service record. This record also tell us that they married on 31 October 1918 in Barnsley Register Office, so whilst he was still a soldier. He had not served abroad probably because he was only mobilised in April 1918 and caught influenza shortly afterwards. May and David have four children, Irving born in the December quarter of 1919, and no doubt named after her brother, David, born in the June quarter of 1921 (the only one of the children whose mother's maiden name is given as Lindley, the others are all Bower), Marjorie C, born in the December quarter of 1923 and finally Hazel J, born in the June quarter of 1929. Irving Parry, their eldest son, is the man named last on the gravestone above, below the uncle after whom he was named.

Ida Lindley marries Horace William Ibbotson on 25 December 1919 at St John's Church in Barnsley. This is in the area once known as 'Barebones' because of the way the boulders of the underlying terrain protrude into the streets (although some people claim that the name was given because of the poverty and hence poor clothing of the inhabitants!) Ida's home address is 58 Agnes Road, so the Lindley's are still based there. She is 20 years old and a Machinist. Ida also chooses to remember her fallen brother in naming her children. Horace Irving Ibbotson was born to David and Ida on 31 December 1920. They also had a daughter, Violet Gwendolyne born 24 September 1927.

Edgar Lindley, the eldest son of Arthur and Violet marries last. He is of the right age cohort to have served in the First World War but I am unable to work out if he did or not. There are two possible Edgar Lindleys listed in the Medal Cards, but if he did not serve abroad, like his brother in law David Parry, then he would not be included in that record set, so he could be neither of the men I have found. Edgar marries on 20 September 1924 in St Mary's Church in Barnsley. His bride is Elizabeth Linsley (confusing?) and he was 28 years old, a miner and still living at 58 Agnes Road with his parents. Edgar and Elizabeth have a total of four children, Raymond b.1925, Irene b.1927, Betty b.1933 and Una b.1938.

We know that Violet Lindley is buried in Barnsley Cemetery on 5 June 1929 having died on 1 June. She has seen the death in war of her younger son, the marriages of her other three children and the births of at least eight grandchildren. We don't know if her son's (Irving Lindley) details were added to her gravestone straight away, or even when the stone was erected. It could have been put up at any time and the style and age of the lettering does look similar suggesting it was mostly all done at once, so maybe after the Second World War.  We do know that she had been living at Birk Avenue, Stairfoot or Kendray and she was only 54 years of age. That's younger than I am now!  She left £180 and her husband Arthur was granted administration of her affairs.

Arthur Lindley joins his wife in plot 7 371 in October 1933, just four years later. He was 63 years of age and died in Beckett Hospital. His Probate Calendar entry tell us that he had been living at 1 Birk Terrace, Kendray and that adminstration of his estate was granted to son Edgar. Arthur left £299 17s and 6d. He will have seen the birth of another grandchild, Edgar's Betty in early 1933. 

At the beginning of the Second World War a register was taken of everyone in the country (although servicemen and women are not listed on the records accessible online). These listings were used for many years afterwards as the source of numbers for the National Health Service as well as being the basis of the ration card system in the war itself. These records give the actual birth dates of the people listed, but some records are obscured (officially closed) as they belong to people who may still be alive, that is those people under 100 years old and not recorded by the NHS as dying in the intervening years.

In 1939 Edgar Lindley was living at 56 Lambert Road in Barnsley with Elizabeth. He is still a Ripper in a coal mine, although his occupation now reads Contractor as well. Only their children Raymond and Betty's records are visible, but there are two blanked out lines which must obscure Irene and Una's details.

Ida and (Horace) William Ibbotson are living on the Manor Farm Estate somewhere in Hemsworth in 1939. William is a Colliery Ripper or Stone Contractor and appears to have chosen to use his second name for official purposes. Their children Horace I (already working in Colliery Haulage) and Violet G are listed too.

In 1939 David and May Parry are living at 178 Carlton Road, Barnsley. David is a Colliery Deputy and of their children only Marjorie can be seen listed. There is an obscured line above which must hide David and another below which must be Hazel. If Irving had still been at home his record would have been visible as we know he was killed in 1944. I cannot find a separate entry for him which suggests he was already in the forces.

Irving Parry, son of David and May, joins the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve in the Second World War. When he is killed on 19th November 1944 he is a Sergeant Pilot in 70 Squadron. He was 24 years old. His CWGC entry tells us that he was married to Eva Dorothy Parry and that after the war she lived at Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex. He is buried in Belgrade War Cemetery in the old Yugoslavia now Serbia. You can see his gravestone on the Find a Grave website. Interestingly it is a collective grave and Irving is buried with three other airmen from the same squadron, killed on the same day. 

Irving had married Eva Dorothy Hall in the Brentwood district of Essex in the June quarter of 1943, so maybe he met her whilst he was training in the RAF.  They had only been married for a year and a few months when he was killed.

There are a couple of online trees on Ancestry for this family, so someone out there is researching these people. Maybe writing this blog will help them, and at least they will now know where to find one of their family gravestones, complete with the sad story of two men from Barnsley with the same name who lost their lives in the World Wars.

Remembrance Mural in Cudworth

October 10, 2018, 9:07 am

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The demolition of the obsolete public toilets on Barnsley Road in Cudworth this last summer has revealed the Remembrance mural on the side of the Star Inn, St John's Road, to bus passengers and other passers by on the main road. Today's brilliant sunshine was a perfect opportunity to take some different views of the mural to add to my records.

Star Inn, Cudworth from Barnsley Road (photo taken 10 Oct 2018)

The mural was painted in 2015, commissioned by landlord Simon Davey, the artist was Craig Hoyle from Sheffield (information from the Barnsley Chronicle 13 Nov 2015). It is nice to see that three years later the paintwork still looks as good as new and has escaped the vandalism that has plagued the Memorial Garden in Cudworth Park which also features a mural.

Close up of mural, artist's signature bottom left

Side view of the pub from the adjacent garden

There is (was?) a similar painting on the side of the former Manx Arms (most recently Tykes Sports Bar) on Sheffield Road on the approach to Barnsley town centre. I must get the OH to take a photo of that if it is still there.

What is the future of these memorials, because memorials they surely are? The definition of a war memorial can be found on this page on the UK War Memorials website. It includes any tangible object that commemorates war, conflict, victory or peace. By the nature of these murals they will probably not last as well as a stone monument by the roadside or a plaque in a church, but we should value them whilst we have them and the meaning behind them.

Lest We Forget.

The Return of a Family Medal

December 6, 2018, 5:45 am

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I have written this post to thank the eagle-eyed reader (AP) who spotted my grandfather Hutton's Defence Medal for sale on ebay earlier this week.

Screen shot of ebay sale (after purchase) with price redacted

I wrote about my grandfather back in January 2013 after finding some of his WW2 Home Guard paperwork and mementos in a box at my mum's house. Later I found more information about his service and was sent a photo of him in the Home Guard by my second cousin. This formed a second blog post in June 2013.

At the time I did not know where my grandad's Defence Medal was, although the paperwork showed that he had claimed it in June/July 1946, so it was fantastic that AP had spotted the ebay entry and linked it to me via my grandfather's name and address. I have blanked out the asking price in the snip above to avoid embarrassment as I really, really wanted to buy it! Thankfully the OH agreed and it came in the post this morning.  I know that Second World War medals don't have the recipient's name engraved upon them like First World War medals and I already have my paternal grandfather's Defence Medal, so basically I now have two the same, but the box is special. 

I did message the seller to ask if he had anything else that might be linked to my family, and if he could tell me when he obtained the medal. He wrote back within a few hours saying that he thinks he bought it on ebay around 18 months ago, and that he was delighted that it would be returning to a family member. He had nothing else related and was selling the medal to concentrate his collection on First World War items
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My grandfather's Defence Medal with original packaging

This is what came, and I am very happy. To think that I am holding an item my grandfather handled over 70 years ago is quite a feeling.  I have informed my mum about my purchase and look forward to showing her the medal and box when I see her next week.

So thank you AP for the heads up and 756Keith somewhere in Darlington (the seller) for the swift response and dispatch of my grandfather's medal.

 

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An Introduction to Cockermouth and my family connection to the town

May 6, 2019, 5:18 am

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I submitted the fifth and final module essay for my MA in the History of Britain and the First World War a couple of days ago. Only the Dissertation Preparation essay (4k words) and the Dissertation itself (15k words) to go now.  I have been really enjoying the course and getting to know a group of new people (in safe surroundings) played a great part in that. It has meant that my Barnsley War Memorial studies and my Family History have been mostly put on the back burner for the past two years though. 

The first deficit is about to be addressed, and this will come as no surprise to those of you who have read other 'episodes' of my blog; the title of my MA Dissertation is to be "Who Wanted War Memorials? A study of community and politics around Remembrance and Commemoration in Barnsley during and immediately after the First World War".  You might remember that this was the topic of a talk I gave at Experience Barnsley back in November 2014 (and it can be found in two parts on YouTube!)

As far as family history goes I have taken the opportunity over the past few weeks, when too tired or poorly to put together academic standard writing, to review the Cumberland branches of my family tree and start to put together an itinerary for myself and the OH for our holiday in Cockermouth later this year.

Cockermouth by Thomas Allom circa 1832 (from Antique Maps & Prints)

Cockermouth offers lots of scenery (ruined castle, hills, nearby lakes), is the birth place of my 2x great grandfather Joseph Moderate and has a brewery - so perfect for a Hutton-Croft holiday!  We visited the Lake District on our honeymoon and that will soon be fifteen years ago, so a return visit seems overdue. 

I have a guide book from 1988 which describes Cockermouth as a 'fine attractive market town' and another from 1991 which waxes lyrical about Jennings Brewery.  Both books mention the castle and various coaching inns - I look forward (with some trepidation) to seeing how the pubs have survived the past 30 years.  Jennings was taken over by Marstons in 2005 and it was only when I checked this information on the brewery website that I discovered it was started by members of the family in the 1840s in Lorton, a village about six miles from Cockermouth.  I had to rush back to my family tree at that point because I suddenly remembered establishing a link to a distant branch of my Musgrave family over the past few days - and one of them married a lady called Grace Jennings, in Lorton, in 1802.  I wonder if I am connected to yet another brewery!

WhatPub, CAMRA's online pub guide site, lists 15 real ale pubs in the centre of Cockermouth, which should keep the OH busy for a few days and another 20 within six miles, well within his easy walking distance.  The local library has no information about any family history resources being available, but one of the four Cumbria Archive Centres, the Whitehaven branch, is only 14 miles away (less than the distance from Barnsley to Sheffield), and if we go on the bus (which is free for me with my disability pass) then that opens up another chunk of real ale pubs for the OH to explore whilst I've got my head in a microfilm reader.  Yes, I've checked, it does hold the records for Cockermouth and Lorton on film, but I will make sure I take the necessary proofs of ID for a CARN card in case I need to ask for any original documents - ah, except by following the links on Cumbria's info page I see that the CARN system is about to be replaced by a new online system from April 2019 ... hmmm!  I will have to keep an eye on that as currently it seems the roll out has been delayed until August 2019. Why am I not surprised?

A selection of relevant books (and a map) from my shelves

On our previous visit I bought a selection of booklets by the Cockermouth and District Civic Trust - they are facsimiles of hand-written notes and illustrations by Bernard Bradbury - and I have just four out of the 11 that were then available. The definitive history, Bradbury's History of Cockermouth, was out of print for years but revised and reprinted in 2006 (after our honeymoon) by the Civic Trust, so I have just bought a copy from Abe Books (after I had promised the OH my book buying bill would reduce now I am approaching the end of my MA, sorry).  In the picture above the most recent book is Exploring Cumbrian History, a coffee table book with lots of colour photos, from 2009. Sadly it has no chapter about Cockermouth - despite the castle - which worries me a bit, although as it has no index I might be overlooking a brief mention. 

My 2x great grandfather Joseph Moderate's parents and grandparents (click image to enlarge)

This snip from my family tree shows Joseph Moderate born in Cockermouth in 1840 and his direct ancestors. Joseph's parents moved to Carlisle between 1843 and 1845 (based on the birthplaces of their children), Joseph married in 1863 and moved his family to Newcastle-upon-Tyne. My great grandmother, born in Carlisle in 1865, was their last child to be born in Cumberland.  I wrote a blog post about the Moderate family in 2013.

Prior to my current bout of research I had not investigated the Musgrave side of my family tree very much at all.  Things have moved on in family history in the past 30 years and the GRO's index to births and deaths is particularly useful when trying to sort out multiple families with the same forenames as well as surnames.  Until I had access to this resource, which gives mother's maiden names for births right back to 1837, I was struggling to make sense of a host of Musgraves in and around Cockermouth in the 19th century census returns.

In the past week I have added over 80 new names to my tree in this branch and discovered some interesting stories along the way.  I feel I have to defend myself from criticism at this point - I am not the kind of person who 'borrows' pieces of other people's trees from Ancestry and Family Search, although I do refer to them (frequently bashing my head on the desk in despair at some people's poor research). To be added to my tree a person must be referenced in at least one (and preferably more) kind of primary source - a birth, death, marriage, baptism or burial, census return or newspaper report - which links them with a high degree of certainty to my pre-existing research.  I have linked in a branch this week which fits for time, location and naming strategies (and pre civil registration that is probably the best I can do online) but I reserve the right to remove it once I have seen the actual records in Whitehaven later this year.  Happily that branch doesn't include all the great stories I've found - just the ones connected to large houses and lots of money!

I will finish this today with just one example that illustrates how everything links up in the world of family, local and military history and how my branching out into the latter is not a desertion of the first two, but a way of giving myself a better grounding in understanding different aspects of my family history.

Snip of the Find A Grave entry for Edward McGill

The soldier in this snip, Sergeant Edward McGill, killed on the Somme in September 1916, and remembered on the Thiepval Memorial there, would not strike me, at first glance, as having any chance of being connected to my family.  I am really sad that I didn't find him before Lives of the First World War was frozen as I have very few documented First World War servicemen (or women) in my family, compared to the OH for example.  Edward McGill was my 3rd cousin twice removed (according to my Family Historian software).  His great grandfather was the elder brother of my 3x great grandmother Mary Musgrave (shown in the snip above, born 1808 in Cockermouth).  His mother, Elizabeth Agnes Musgrave, had married a Master Mariner in Cockermouth in 1888, and this maritime connection is presumably why the family later lived in Birkenhead.  His brother John Philip McGill also served and there is a story in the Old Boys' newsletter for the school they both attended which states that they were together when Edward was killed and that John buried his brother in a shell hole on the battlefield before himself returning to the British trenches at nightfall.

Without my studies of the First World World War since 2012 I would not have known to check every man in my tree in the 1870 to 1905 age cohort for war service. As there was conscription from 1916 onwards most men between 18 (and less if they lied about their age on enlistment) and 50 served in some way unless they had a really good claim to exemption. I would not have known about Soldiers' Effects records which state a man's next of kin (a very good way to tie down exactly who he was) and in this case even gives his brother's Regimental Number, or how to find records of lists of names on war memorials - often with photos.  Edward McGill is remembered on the Birkenhead War Memorial and on the Old Boys memorial at the the Birkenhead Institute, a 'Public High School' opened in 1889 to provide a 'course of instruction to fit pupils for Commerical Life, the Civil Service, the various professions ... and the various branches of industry requiring Technical Education.'

The only thing that does surprise me about Edward McGill (whose Service Records have survived) is that he had served in the Territorial Force before the war and his occupation was given Architecture and Surveying in 1909.  In the 1911 census he was an Architect's Articled Pupil aged 20.  His educational level and previous military experience would have made him a prime candidate for commissioning as an officer - but he was killed in September 1916 as Sergeant in the 1st/6th Battalion of the King's Liverpool Regiment, the same battalion he originally joined in June 1909 aged 18.  His brother, who became a Chartered Accountant,  remained in the same regiment reaching the rank of Sergeant shortly before his demobilisation.  I feel I should go back and read one of my MA books again which actually directly covers the 1st/6th KLR and see if I can find out why the brothers were not commissioned despite their background. (Citizen Soldiers: The Liverpool Territorials in the First World War  by Helen B. McCartney)

Edit 7 May 2019: Three chapters into McCartney's book (which I last read for an essay so it is bristling with post-it tags near references to maintaining morale!) it has become very obvious that the reason the McGill brothers were non-commissioned officers in 1916 was that the 1st/6th battalion had a pre-war tradition of recruiting middle-class men. After the severe losses at the Somme the battalion was reinforced with a wider range of social classes, but even in 1918 the proportions of middle-class men to working-class men in the battalion did not match the proportions in the general population. There continued to be a bias towards the middle-classes. McCartney also notes that the clerks, accountants and men from similar occupational groups had the necessary educational skills to be good sergeants, coping well with written orders, returns and battlefield accounts. So the McGill brothers were just two amongst many from very similar social and occupational backgrounds.

I must buckle down to writing my diss prep essay soon, which is due in on 8 July, but at the moment that feels like long enough off to allow me to continue some forays into family history on my less well days, so you might see some more stories from me in the next few weeks.

Thanks for reading.

Researching a Re-Discovered Roll of Honour: Brampton Parish Hall

February 19, 2020, 4:10 am

≫ Next: Brampton Parish Hall Roll of Honour, Cortonwood War Memorial and a Name Listed Twice in the Same Census

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A Roll of Honour found recently. Photo by AT

My friends know that I like a good (or even bad and indifferent) war memorial, especially if it's new to me. Bearing in mind the huge range of things that can be war memorials that includes a lot of items for them to spot. Gravestones (with a war related inscription, but where the man or woman named is NOT buried in situ), a bench, a mural on a wall (temporary art counts), as well as the more well-understood outdoor memorals, tablets in churches, and like the one pictured above, framed pre-printed paper items with hand-written (sometimes typed) names inserted.

This example was found by AT at Brampton Parish Hall when he attended a wedding reception a few weeks ago (early 2020). I have transcribed the list of 100 names and published a descriptive post on my other blog. Although Brampton is just outside the Barnsley Borough boundary I know that boundary memorials often list men who were born or who lived in Barnsley. They could be named simply because a member of their family lived in the catchment area after the war.

The names on this Roll of Honour are in a roughly alphabetical order, except for one name at the very end which was added in pencil rather than ink. This suggests that the memorial was created after the war (or at least a good while into it) for so many names to be ordered rather than entered in order of enlistment. It includes men who died, but the majority of men named survived the war. The men who fell are not indicated in any way, which is unusual in a Roll of Honour in my experience.

This post is about the methods I am using to research the names. I would like to know where this Roll of Honour originated, what church or chapel, workplace or school thought it important to record the men (and they are all male names) who went from their community to serve in the Great War. By discovering where they lived, their ages, their occupations, their religious affiliations, I hope to narrow down the options. I have approached Brampton Parish Hall for information, but thus far the Parish Clerk has not found anyone who knows how this large framed, but battered, document came to be displayed in their building.

Over the past few weeks my research methods, using online resources accessible from my home, as I am limited in my available time and energy at the moment, have expanded in scope to include cemetery registers, newspaper indexes and local history society websites. Finding information on men who died in the war is somewhat easier than for those who served as the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website is very easy to search and a Roll of Honour for Barnsley's First World War Fallen was recently published and is accessible online. At my present count 14 of the 100 men named died in the war. 

My initial searches began by entering the man's name into the 1911 census search pages on either Ancestry or Find My Past (FMP). I have subscriptions for both but they are available free in Barnsley (Ancestry) and Sheffield (Find My Past) libraries. I entered a year of birth range of 1892 +/- 10 years. Ancestry expand results beyond that range where other similar results are found. FMP seems less forgiving. I left place of birth blank. Inward migration to Barnsley was very common in the 19th and early 20th centuries as new industries, such as glass making and coal mining expanded. I did however enter Wombwell as a place the man may have lived, as that is a larger town than Brampton, but immediately adjacent.

After a few searches I was finding enough common features in my results to lay out a spreadsheet which I am keeping on Google docs so that I can update it on both my laptop and my tablet. I do a lot of work in bed in the early hours when I can't sleep, and the tablet is perfect for that, less likely to disturb my other half (OH).

I also searched for the names on some nearby memorials for which I could find a transcribed list of names. Barnsley's war memorials are listed on the Barnsley War Memorials Project (BWMP) website. A Roll of Honour in Christ Church, Brampton is listed on the Imperial War Museum's War Memorials Register website.  As an online volunteer for this project I submitted the Brampton Parish Hall Roll of Honour as soon as I had tidied up the photos and transcribed the names. Unfortunately adding the names to their site is currently a laborious task, so I have been putting it off ... it is easier to refer to my own list.

I also cross checked Rolls of Honour for Wath Main and Cortonwood collieries which I have on file. Cortonwood's War Memorial stands right outside Brampton Parish Hall, so that was an obvious one to check. Only the names of the Fallen are listed on the BWMP website, there are three times as many names of the men who served on the memorial, but fortunately I have photos which the OH and I took many years ago on file from which I could make my own transcription.

Only 24 out of the 100 names on the new Roll of Honour appear on the Cortonwood Memorial.  Thirty-nine names appear on Brampton Christ Church's Roll of Honour with only a couple appearing on both. Some are only possible matches when it is a common surname as both only list initials for forenames. Five names appear on the Wath Main Colliery Roll of Honour including the distinctive Alonzo Turner, who does not appear on either of the two memorials previously named. Eleven names (still bearing in mind my proviso about common surnames), appear on the main Wombwell war memorial outside St Mary's church, and 4 on the Wombwell Reform Club memorial, all men who died. Only James Crawford is named on the Wombwell Church Lads Brigade memorial, and apart from a couple of possible common surnames no men are named on the Wombwell Methodist plaque or the Wombwell Conservative and Unionist Club Roll of Honour.

The various places of origin of the men (admittedly mostly Wombwell and West Melton, but also Staffordshire, Birmingham, Huddersfield and Grimsby and I have only reached F on the list as yet) and their disparate ages (from 1878 to 1900 so far) appear at first sight to preclude a school memorial.  However I did find a community, that had a nearby school and chapel, which appears fairly frequently amongst the address information I have discovered thus far.

1907 map of Cortonwood Colliery and Concrete Cottages. From Old Maps.

The most noticeable common factor is the housing at Concrete Cottages, also known as New Wombwell, centre of the above map snip. According to Melvyn Jones in his book South Yorkshire Mining Villages, these flat roofed concrete house were built for the workers at Cortonwood Colliery in 1876. Some of the men who were living further afield in 1911 can be traced back to 'Concrete' in previous census returns or at their baptisms (many in Christ Church Brampton).  There were 106 houses in total and, as you can see above, the community included a school and a chapel.

Other men were living on Wath or Brampton Roads in 1911. These are the two roads running south east from the centre top of the map snip above. Wath Road is labelled. One man's father is the signalman at Brampton Crossing, a couple more live at The Junction, seen at the top of the map, which appears to be named for the junction of two canals. There are (so far) very few who give an address in Brampton itself, which is just off the map to the bottom right.

Once I have found a likely man in the 1911 census I check the previous census returns, 1901 and 1891. Most of the men found so far were born between 1880 and 1897. Not surprising as that makes them 34 to 17 years old when the war breaks out in 1914. I have found Service Records for a few, Medal Cards for most, Pension Ledger entries (via my Western Front Association membership access) for those I have looked for.  The Pension Cards/Ledgers give addresses post war for men or their dependents, and many of these are still 'Concrete' into the late 1920s. I have also been searching for the men or their families in the 1939 Register.

Some of the men, but not many, are buried in Wombwell Cemetery. Other burials in Barnsley Cemeteries can be searched on the Dearne Memorial Group's Barnsley Cemeteries website. I have no access to burials in churchyards that are not covered on Ancestry or Find My Past, and few of those that are include burials in the later 20th century as the church yards would have been full by then. As yet I have found no online index to Rotherham cemeteries. However I can check death registration entries online at FreeBMD (also on Ancestry and FMP but I find FreeBMD very easy to use). One man, with an uncommon surname, Fred Bristow, has eluded me so far. He is not killed in the war, but does not appear in 1939 or in the marriage or death registrations. Did he emigrate?

I have found some transcribed newspaper entries with photos of 8 men on the Dearne Valley History website, all taken from the Mexborough and Swinton Times (MST). As this group cover Wombwell and Brampton I wanted to ask them if they knew about this Roll of Honour, but I couldn't find a contact email address. I have sent a message to their Facebook page, but it doesn't seem very active. The photos on their website are greyscale, which suggests they were not taken from the microfilm copy of the newspaper which I have seen in Barnsley Archives. That was scanned in black and white and the photo reproduction is poor.  I have a copy of an index to the First World War entries in the MST that a friend obtained from Doncaster Library. It covers Wombwell, Thurnscoe, Bolton on Dearne and Goldthorpe which are all in the current Barnsley Borough. Brampton, West Melton and Cortonwood, which are in Rotherham, are also included. I have added a search of this to my routine for each name on the list.

I do have access to an index for the wartime Barnsley Chronicle newspaper, but in my experience its coverage of the eastern areas of Barnsley Borough is poor.

So, to summarise:

Search the BWMP's Roll of Honour of the Fallen.
Search the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website.

Cross check with other memorials in the area.

Search the 1911 census, year of birth 1892 +/- 10 years, residence Wombwell.
Follow that up with searches of the 1901 and 1891 census returns using the information from the 1911 entry.
If the man cannot be found with my search terms in 1911 try 1901 directly.
Look for the men, or their families if they were killed in the war, in the 1939 Register.

Check for a baptism and/or marriage in Brampton or Wombwell, and other South Yorkshire record sets available online. Look for a marriage registration on FreeBMD and follow that up on the genealogical sites.

Check the MST index and the bural index for Wombwell Cemetery.
Look for a death registration on FreeBMD.

Google the name ... a last resort, but sometimes the families turn up on other people's genealogy pages.

A friend has offered to research a few names towards the end of the list, and as it has taken me over two weeks to get to Fenton I am very grateful. I am still wating for news on the provenance of the Roll of Honour, but a guess based on a descriptive history page on the Dearne Valley History Group website is the Weslyan chapel that was originally adjacent to the Concrete Cottages.

Wish me luck!

Brampton Parish Hall Roll of Honour, Cortonwood War Memorial and a Name Listed Twice in the Same Census

February 26, 2020, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Four brothers Moorhouse from the Concrete Cottages in Brampton who Served in the First World War

≪ Previous: Researching a Re-Discovered Roll of Honour: Brampton Parish Hall

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I am continuing my research into the men named on the Roll of Honour (RoH) at Brampton Parish Hall. A recent contact with a retired member of the Parish Council did not really shed any light on its provenance but we have agreed to meet face to face along with an interested local historian to see if we can work it out.  My contact was under the impression that the Roll of Honour was a forerunner to the 'Cortonwood Cenotaph' as he called the memorial now situated outside the Parish Hall. However of the 100 men named on the Brampton Parish Hall RoH (I will continue to call it this for now, but the current Parish Hall is not old enough to have been the original home of the document) only 58 men (including some possibilities with common surnames) are listed on the massive Cortonwood memorial. 

Cortonwood Colliery war memorial and memorial to the Colliery 1873 to 1985. The Parish Hall is the low brick building behind on the right.

Cortonwood Colliery War Memorial

As a result of the current investigation I was prompted to complete a task that has been on my 'to do' list for some time. This was a transcription of the names of the men who served listed on the Cortonwood Colliery memorial, as only the names of the Fallen appear on the Barnsley War Memorials Project's page for the memorial. I started this as a Microsoft Word document but it soon became apparent that keeping my place amid the host of names as I typed required some kind of double checking system so I decided to lay it out in an Excel spreadsheet in columns as presented on the memorial. This way I could check the rows of names for accuracy as well as the columns. I did make a few mistakes, but the new system enabled me to spot them fairly quickly. 

Panel 4 of the Cortonwood memorial

There are four panels on the Cortonwood memorial. The first, for “Men of the Cortonwood Collieries who have Fallen During the War” lists 94 names and there are three for “Men Who Joined H.M. Forces from the Cortonwood Collieries”.  The second panel lists 162 names, mainly surnames A to Gr, the third lists 165 names, mainly surnames Go to Po, and the fourth 171 names, mainly surnames Pl to Wo.  I say mainly because the names are not in a completely alphabetical order and at the end of each panel are a number of names obviously added later and from across the alphabet. The final panel in particular lists, at its foot, 33 names that are totally out of order. This gives a grand total of 592 names.  I was able to use the Find facility in Excel to search these names in my new spreadsheet for each of the men named on the Brampton Parish Hall RoH.  

The Cortonwood memorial lists initials and surname only.  The Brampton Parish Hall RoH gives most, but not all, of the men's forenames in full.  This makes it easier for me to research them, but means that a tally between the two memorials is, in the cases of common surnames, a matter of some guesswork. Roughly 12 of the 16 men who fell who are named on the Brampton Parish Hall RoH are also named on the 'Fallen' panel of the Cortonwood memorial. Roughly 46 of the remaining 84 men named on the Brampton Parish Hall RoH are listed as 'Men who Joined' on the Cortonwood memorial. Therefore just under half the names on the Brampton Parish Hall RoH are NOT listed on the Cortonwood memorial. The 4 fallen men who not included on Cortonwood's memorial are all listed on memorials in Wombwell - but so are a number of the men who ARE listed on the Cortonwood memorial.  It is very complicated!

As a result of this analysis I am fairly sure that this RoH was NOT a forerunner to the 'Cortonwood Cenotaph' as my contact suggested.  Further research necessary!

Fred Kelham - Named Twice in the 1901 Census

Returning to investigating the individual names on the Brampton Parish Hall RoH I was fascinated to see an example of a person (actually one man who was named and his younger brother) being enumerated twice in the same census.  I have looked at a lot of census returns over the past 30 years and this is not a common occurrence.

Four names from the Brampton Parish Hall RoH

Fred Kelham is clearly named on the Brampton Parish Hall RoH (see right).  It is an unusual name and I hadn't expected much difficulty finding him in the census returns.  Fred is also named on Cortonwood Colliery war memorial, the Roll of Honour in Christ Church Brampton and the Wath Wesleyan Church memorial tablet.  He survived the war.

The image above, including Fred's name, shows an example of the damaged state of the Brampton Parish Hall RoH.  There is a tear, maybe on an old fold, right across the lower third, and a flake of paper has been lost obscuring part of one surname.  There is a lot more flaking damage around the edges of the document and a dark stain on the lower left (see the photo on this other post).

When I searched for Fred in the 1911 census on Ancestry I did not find him immediately. It later transpired that the family had been transcribed as Kelhan, rather than Kelham. My secondary strategy was to search the 1901 census with similar search parameters, birth 1892 +/- 10 years, living in the Wombwell area. This is where it got confusing. 

1901 census for 6 Concrete, Wombwell, in the Parish of Brampton Bierlow

I found a possible candidate, Fred Kelham, aged 6, living at 6 Concrete Cottages (described in my previous post) in Wombwell with his younger brother, William aged 5 and their grandparents, William and Elizabeth who had both been born in Sudbrook, Lincolnshire. The boys had been transcribed by Ancestry as the sons of John W. Kelham, aged 28, who was in turn the son of William. John was the third listed occupant of the property.  As John was described as 'S' for single it seemed a bit strange that the two boys were his sons. If he had been a 'W' for widower I would probably have thought no more about it, as it was common for widowed young men to return to their parents' homes for assistance with childcare. John W Kelham was described as being born in Barnsley, whilst Fred and little William were described as having been born in West Melton.

1901 census for 55 Castle Avenue, Rotherham

There was a second hit in the 1901 census for a Fred Kelham of the same age, but this time in Rotherham at 55 Castle Avenue.  This address is about 1.5 miles south of Rotherham town centre in an area called Canklow. This second Fred Kelham, who was described as having been born in Wombwell, was living with his parents Fred snr and Bessie along with younger brother William aged 5 and younger sisters Daisy aged 2 and Ethel aged 1. There is a distance of about 8 miles between the addresses for the two Fred Kelham hits. The co-incidence of a brother called William in Rotherham also the same age as the one found in Concrete Cottages was sufficiently interesting to keep me poking around to try to find an answer.

With Fred only being 6 years old in 1901 the only other option was to look for him again in the 1911 census, as he would not have been born at the time of the 1891 census.  With the additional family information from the 1901 census Fred snr, Bessie and their children, starting with Fred, William, Daisy and Ethel, were much easier to find in the 1911 census.

1911 census for 4 Concrete Cottages, Wombwell

The address for the family was 4 Concrete Buildings or Cottages, Wombwell. The addresses vary between the actual schedule, which states Buildings and the schedule's cover sheet which states Cottages. This may reflect a different understanding of the address by the occupier, William Kelham and the census enumerator who distributed and collected the schedules. William and Elizabeth had been living at 6 Concrete Cottages in 1901 but they were no longer at that address in 1911. This entry is the only hit for the combination of Kelham family forenames and ages, adding some corroboration to the theory that the boys Fred and William were enumerated twice in 1901. Examining this entry it is not surprising that Ancestry transcribed the family surname as Kelhan, the final letter of the surname is unclear.

As we now know that Fred snr and Bessie married in 1894 (this year is just visible in column 6, completed years of marriage, but has been over written with 17, the correct format for that field), it was quite straightforward to find a record of their marriage in the indexes. Fred Kelham married Bessie Drew in the first quarter of 1894 in the Rotherham Registration District which includes Brampton. There is no sign of a parish record for their marriage on Ancestry or Find My Past, which suggests they may have married in the local Register Office. In 1911 a John H Drew aged 41 is listed as a visitor on Fred and Bessie's census return, could this be Bessie's brother?  Their birthplaces are both given as Crediton, Devon, so it seems likely.

The probable reason for grandparents William and Elizabeth's absence from 6 Concrete Cottages is that William Kelham snr, who had been enumerated as 68 years old in March 1901, appears to have died in the fourth quarter of 1901 in the Rotherham Registration District.  A William Kelham was buried at Christ Church in Brampton, aged 66 from 58 Concrete Row on 22 December 1901. Despite the slight difference in ages and address it is very likely that this is Fred jnr's grandfather as there are very few families named Kelham in the area.

I was able to find Elizabeth Kelham in the 1911 census, aged 74, in the household of her son John William Kelham aged 38, the same John W Kelham who had been living with William and Elizabeth in 1901. Their 1911 address is 24 Gower Street, Wombwell, less than a mile from the Concrete Cottages. The Elizabeth Kelham who dies in the fourth quarter of 1920 aged 83, in the Barnsley Registration District is probably Fred's grandmother as this age fits with the age given for her in 1911. I imagine William's death in late 1901 could have prompted the return of Fred jnr and little William to their parents as their elderly grand-mother would now have been entirely dependent on her son John for support.

Note that in April 1911 Fred snr and Bessie have 6 children living with them and in the marriage information fields they state that 11 children had been born to them in 17 years of marriage, 5 of whom had died prior to the 1911 census. Bessie had borne at least 4 children by 1901, possibly more, if some of 5 deceased children were born and died between Fred jnr, William, Daisy and Ethel. She may have been pregnant again in March 1901.  

Further research could be done on this question by using the General Register Office (GRO) online birth indexes which now give mother's maiden name for the period 1837 to 1920 (updated each year to include the last 100 years). A search for Kelham births with mother's maiden name Drew should result in a list of Fred and Bessie's children, although still born children were registered differently and any early miscarriages may not have been recorded at all by anyone but Fred and Bessie themselves. The pressure of continual pregnancy and small children to care for may explain why grandparents, William and Elizabeth, are caring for Fred jnr and little William in 1901. 

The reason for the double enumeration may have been that Fred and Bessie interpreted the instructions of the enumerator to mean that they should list all the members of their family. William and Elizabeth included Fred jnr and little William on their schedule because they spent the night of the census in their house, which is the correct interpretation. 

Fred and Bessie Kelham's family - did she really have 11 children?

Fred jnr was baptised at Christ Church, Brampton on 5 August 1894, at the most seven months after Fred and Bessie's marriage. As only the quarter date of their marriage is known for certain they could have married at any time in January to March 1894. The fact that Bessie was already pregnant with Fred jnr is another reason they may have chosen a Register Office wedding. It would have avoided calling the banns in the local church and kept the actual date of the wedding out of the public eye. The address given at Fred jnr's baptism is simply 'Concrete'. Of the six children in the 1911 census with Fred snr and Bessie all were born at 'Concrete' except Ethel who was born in Rotherham in about 1900, which fits nicely with the 1901 census information. There is a gap between Ethel and the next surviving child Elizabeth, who was born about 1908 at 'Concrete' so it is difficult to say exactly when the family returned to Brampton/Wombwell from Rotherham. 

A search for children born to surname Kelham, mother's maiden name Drew between 1894 and 1915 was carried out on the General Register Office (GRO) site.  Despite Fred and Bessie declaring a total of 11 children up to 1911 the search only produced 8 birth registrations.  As Rotherham Registration District (RD) includes Brampton and Canklow this information doesn't assist in working out when Fred and Bessie moved to and from Concrete Cottages. The birth of Jim Kelham in 1905 in Barnsley RD is the only variation.

Fred Kelham born Q2 1894 in Rotherham RD

William Kelham born Q3 1895 in Rotherham RD

John Kelham born Q1 1897 in Rotherham RD

Daisy Amelia Kelham born Q3 1898 in Rotherham RD

Ethel Kelham born Q1 1900 in Rotherham RD

Jim Kelham born Q3 1905 in Barnsley RD

Elizabeth Kelham born Q1 1908 in Rotherham RD

Emily Kelham born Q4 in Rotherham RD 

A search of the burials at Christ Church, Brampton on Find My Past (FMP) revealed a burial for one of these children. 

John Kelham [Abode] Concrete [When Buried] 3rd July 1897 [Age] 6 months

This must be John born Q1 1897.  Concrete will be the Concrete Cottages, which lie in the Civil Parish of Brampton, in Rotherham RD, despite the enumerator and the householders (in 1911) all adding Wombwell to the address.  Burials at Brampton are only listed by FMP between 1855 and 1911 and this is the only relevant Kelham burial.  If there are other Kelham family graves at Christ Church the information will be in the parish registers, which are apparently not in the collection at Doncaster Archives.  The later burial register(s) may still be in the possession of the church.  This burial does suggest that Fred and Bessie were still living in the Concrete Cottages in mid 1897.

A search of burials in Wombwell Cemetery (the Dearne Memorials Group's Barnsley Cemeteries Project provides a search facility, but full results require a small payment) uncovered a burial which fits with the children found above.

KELHAM    Jim    [Burial plot] Con 9    4117    [Date of Death] 16-4-1906  [Date of burial]   18-4-1906 [Age]   9mths   [Place of Death]     14 Gower Street, Wombwell

This must be the child born Q3 1905 in Barnsley RD. So was Gower Street in Barnsley RD? It was only one mile away from the Concrete Cottages. UKBMD provide a downloadable index places in Registration Districts, and sure enough Wombwell was in the Barnsley RD between 1850 and 1938, whereas Brampton (also known as Brampton Bierlow) was in Rotherham from 1837 to 1938.  'Con' in the entry above means Consecrated.

There was another Kelham burial from the same address:

KELHAM    Infant    U/C    CPG    no entry    25-3-1904    Stillborn        14 Gower Street, Wombwell

Stillborn children were not registered in the same way as live births until 1926, which is why there is no correlating entry for this child in the GRO index.  In the entry above U/C means Unconsecrated and CPG means Children's Public Grave. 

Assuming this stillborn child was born to Fred and Bessie Kelham that brings the total number of children found to nine.  The problem here is that the instructions on the 1911 census say to only declare children 'Born Alive', so stillborn children and miscarriages, which the couple may have thought ought to count, should not have been declared.  This burial entry also suggests that Fred and Bessie have returned from Rotherham by early 1904.

A search of deaths on the GRO site between 1894 (when Fred and Bessie married) and 1925 revealed a little more relevant information. 

The early death of another of their children.

Name:     Age at Death (in years):

KELHAM, DAISY  AMELIA       14 
GRO Reference: 1913  M Quarter in ROTHERHAM  Volume 09C  Page 1012 

And the deaths of Fred Kelham snr and his wife Bessie.

KELHAM, FRED         55 
GRO Reference: 1925  M Quarter in ROTHERHAM  Volume 09C  Page 850

KELHAM, BESSIE         65 
GRO Reference: 1932  M Quarter in ROTHERHAM  Volume 09C  Page 926

None of the three above deaths correspond to burials at Wombwell cemetery.  The spreadsheet which I have access to contains entries into the 2000s.  This suggests that the family moved out of Gower Street at some point before Daisy died in 1913.

This brings the family of Fred and Bessie Kelham to a conclusion. This section has been a very interesting puzzle to solve and gives a clear insight into some particular challenges, mobility, fertility, frequent childbirth and infant deaths, faced by working class families, especially women, at the turn of the century.

This story began with Fred Kelham jnr's name on the Brampton Parish Hall Roll of Honour. His story continues, but will have to wait for another day.  In a tiny sneak preview I can reveal that Fred jnr's Army Service records his father's address (as his next of kin) as 15 Hoober Street, West Melton in 1915 and 1919.  So the family did move again, and back into the Rotherham RD, maybe to the address at which Daisy died in 1913.   

Thank you for reading.

Acknowledgments

Photos of the Cortonwood war memorial by Nigel Croft 8 February 2014.

Photos of the RoH at Brampton Parish Hall by Andrew Taylor on 2 February 2020.

Census images from Ancestry. 

Census and Parish Register information from Ancestry, Find My Past and FreeBMD.

Four brothers Moorhouse from the Concrete Cottages in Brampton who Served in the First World War

March 11, 2020, 4:28 am

≫ Next: Distant connection - the Brampton Parish Hall Roll of Honour

≪ Previous: Brampton Parish Hall Roll of Honour, Cortonwood War Memorial and a Name Listed Twice in the Same Census

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There are 100 names on the Brampton Parish Hall Roll of Honour and the men appear to have come from a small community focused on the 106 Concrete Cottages which were on the boundary of Brampton and Wombwell [now] in South Yorkshire.

Now that I am about halfway through the list, having reached 'M' for Moorhouse a few days ago, I have discovered that the connections of the men with the area are sometimes more obscure - but in every case I have researched, at some point, the man or his family have lived in either the Concrete Cottages or on Wath or Brampton Roads nearby. The families sometimes intermarried and brothers, cousins and in-laws have been remembered together.

1930 amended 1955 map of The Junction and Concrete Cottages. From the National Library of Scotland.

This map from 1955 shows the Concrete Cottages. Compared to the 1907 map in my first  post about researching the names the school and chapel have moved south down Knoll Beck Lane. I know that the cottages were built in 1876 for Cortonwood Colliery, and judging by an Ordnance Survey map from 1964 available on the National Library of Scotland's website they had disappeared by the 1960s and been replaced by Garden Drive, which according to Street View on Google Maps is a street of council style bungalows and houses.  An aerial photograph dated 1958 published in the 'Barnsley Memories' magazine for Winter 2007 appears to show the Concrete Cottages partially demolished.

It would be interesting to discover whether the people from Concrete Cottages were rehoused locally and if anyone can remember them or indeed used to live there.

In my last post I discussed the possible origin of the Roll of Honour. I am satisfied that it was not a Cortonwood Colliery related document, but it may be connected to the Methodist Chapel or school associated with the Concrete Cottages. Someone who used to live in the area might know the origin of the Roll of Honour - or even have donated it to the Parish Hall.

The Four Brothers Moorhouse

Four men named Moorhouse on the Brampton RoH

The Roll of Honour lists four men with the surname Moorhouse.  I suspected that it was possible they might be brothers, but now my research has proven that this was indeed the case. Sydney Moorhouse b.1881, William Moorhouse b.1882, both born in the Wakefield area and their brothers John Moorhouse b.1892 and Henry Dean Moorhouse b.1894 were born in West Melton, were four of the sons of George and Julia Moorhouse who had married in 1880 in Wakefield. The family lived at 49 Concrete Cottages in 1891 and 46 Concrete Cottages in 1901. That, in itself, suggests that John and Henry were actually born in the cottages. 

1901 census snip for 46 Concrete Cottages (from Ancestry)

The family included another son confusingly also called Henry in the 1901 census. He was born in 1884 in the Bramley near Leeds and registered and baptised as Harry Moorhouse. It could be that his listing in 1901 as Henry was an error on the part of the census enumerator. To complete the household in 1901 there were four daughters, Ethel b.1887, Gertrude b.1890, Laura b.1896 and Doris b.1899.  A further daughter, Mabel b.1886, was living a few doors away at 65 Concrete Cottages, as a boarder with the Simpson family. She was listed as a Domestic Servant, and may have been there to help the wife, Maria, with her 7 month old baby.

1911 census snip for 16 Concrete Buildings, Wombwell (from Ancestry)

 Unusually for a family of so many children, 10 that I can trace, none had died in infancy.   George Moorhouse, the father of the family, died in unfortunate circumstances in December 1902 and Julia remarried in early 1905 to Joseph Ray.  She and six of her Moorhouse children were living at 16 Concrete Buildings (aka Cottages) in 1911. She has added another child to the family, Charlotte Ray b.1906.

Sydney Moorhouse presumably moved out of the family home when he married on 25 December 1902 at Christ Church in Brampton, to Lydia Hunston who had lived at 72 Concrete Cottages.  The terrible thing that I noticed about this connection is that Lydia was named in the newspaper report dated 9 December 1902 that relates the circumstances of George Moorhouse's death. It seems that Julia borrowed a bottle of laudanum from Lydia (her daughter in law to be) on Monday 1 December when George came home from work sick and unable to rest. He became progressively more ill during the following week and with the bottle of medicine left at his bedside he made a dreadful mistake on the Friday evening. Instead of taking a drink of the whisky his wife had also left for him he had taken the remainder of the bottle of laudanum, and he died the following morning. 

1911 census for 6 Concrete, Wombwell (from Ancestry)

Sydney and Lydia Moorhouse are living at 6 Concrete [Cottages] in the 1911 census. Sydney's occupation was Colliery Banksman, a surface worker. They have three children, George b.1906, and presumably named for his father, Ivy b.1908 and Gertrude May b.1910.  In the following years were added Arnold b.1912, Walter b.1914, and Stanley b.1917.  Their children also appear to survive the dangerous childhood years.

On the outbreak of the First World War there was a flood of volunteers to serve in the forces, but this had slowed by late 1915. Following the Derby Scheme which encouraged men to attest that they were willing to volunteer for the war, conscription came into force in early 1916. Sydney Moorhouse had attested on 26 October 1915 for the York and Lancaster Regiment, but was discharged the following April as 'not likely to become an efficient soldier'. His service number was 23788. His discharge records show that he had been suffering from arthritis for several years and that he was 'edentulous', ie lacking teeth, in his upper jaw. Sydney would have been 34 years old in early 1916 and the family were still living at 6 Concrete Cottages. I can only presume that he went back to work at the colliery.

I have previously found that there are gaps in families when men join up to serve in the First World War, but Sydney was not away from home long enough to make a great deal of difference.  The only observation I can make is that Walter was born in December quarter 1914 and Stanley in December quarter 1917, so at least Lydia had slightly more time to recover than she had with her earlier children who appear to have arrived regularly at two year intervals.

William Moorhouse's family in his FWW Service Records (from Ancestry)

The first of the brothers to join up had been William, who enlisted on 4 September 1914, just a month after the war broke out. He served in the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (KOYLI) and his service number was 15536. He was 31 years old. William had married Mary Ellen Eyre on 26 December 1911 at Rotherham Register Office. In the 1911 census, taken in April, William's occupation had been Coal Miner - Hewer, one of the better paid roles in a colliery. It is a puzzle therefore why William and Mary Ellen had not married before this, especially in light of the information in his Army Service Records which shows that he and Mary Ellen already had one child together, Mabel Moorhouse Eyre, born 25 October 1910. Mabel was clearly registered under both names suggesting that despite being born before they were married William was happy to accompany Mary Ellen to the Registrar and have his name put on the birth certificate. Two days after they were married William and Mary Ellen's daughter Ethel was born.  We know this because when she was baptised on 29 April 1912 at Christ Church Brampton, her birth date, 28 December 1911, is given in the margin. Maybe having one child out of wedlock was enough and Mary Ellen was unwilling to have another, managing to get William to the Register Office just in time!  Sadly Ethel died aged one year in early 1913.

William and Mary Ellen had a son, George William in early 1913, but he is not mentioned on William's service records either for he died only a few months later.  The couple had lost two babies in the same year.  The burial records on Find My Past (FMP) for Brampton are only available up to 1911 so I am unable to be more specific about the dates that Ethel and George William died or were buried. A daughter, Lottie, was born 26 June 1914, so at the time William enlisted his wife had a four year old and a very young baby to care for. Her address, as William's next of kin is given as 50 Concrete Cottages. I do wonder what prompted William to volunteer with such a young family and presumably his wife in a fragile state after the loss of two previous children - sleepless nights maybe!

The next brother to enlist was John Moorhouse who joined the 14th Battalion of the York and Lancaster Regiment. This was better known locally as the 2nd Barnsley Battalion. As this battalion started recruiting in November 1914 and John's service number is 182, which is fairly low, we can assume he joined up in November or December 1914. His Service Records do not appear to have survived. John was not married and was 22 years old.  There was still a wave of enthusiasm in late 1914 and a worry among some young men that the war would be over before they had had a chance to join in. John may have been one of these.

Henry Dean Moorhouse attested for the York and Lancaster Regiment at the same time as Sydney, October 1915, as his service number was 23791, just three numbers on from his brother. He would have been 21 years old. 

The choice of Sydney and Henry Dean Moorhouse to attest in late October 1915, two years after their brothers had volunteered, may have an underlying reason.  William Moorhouse's Service Records, which include his Pension Records, have survived. He was granted a pension in March 1916 after being wounded in action on 26 September 1915 at Loos. He had suffered a gun shot wound to the head with 'a gap in the skull on each side of the middle line in the upper occipital region'. This is a bone at the base and back of the skull. As a result William has lost almost all vision. He had been discharged on 29 February 1916.

William's wounding had been reported in the local newspapers. From the Sheffield Daily Telegraph on 20 November 1915:

Bomb-thrower Blinded
Private W. Moorhouse, 25, Concrete Cottages, Wombwell, had the misfortune to be shot through the head whilst engaged in bomb-throwing in France. He is now in hospital, and in spite of careful nursing has not yet regained his sight. It is feared that he has been permanently blinded. He formerly worked at the Dearne Valley Colliery.

Did the wounding of their brother prompt Sydney and Henry Dean Moorhouse to enlist?  It is certainly possible. In the book 'Barnsley Pals' Jon Cooksey relates a story told to him by one old soldier, Frank Lindley, who enlisted aged 14, after his brother's ship was sunk. He clearly stated that his motive for enlisting had been to 'avenge' his brother's death.

William Moorhouse died on 20 March 1918 aged 35 and his death was registered at Hampstead in London. I suggest he might have been in hospital in that area. The cause of his death is noted on his Pension Card as Cerebro Spinal Fever. William had been discharged from the army in February 1916 and had received a pension of 25/- a week for six months plus 2/6 for two children. I assume this continued until his death and his card notes that at that time he was in receipt of 36/8 per week. In his Service Records, as seen above, a son, Jack, is born to the couple on 4 January 1917. As Mary Ellen receives no pension for this child we could assume he died young, unless pension was not payable for a child born after a soldier's discharge.

After his death Mary Ellen received a grant of £5 in July 1918 and 25/5 a week from 11 September plus a lump sum for the arrears owed.  The dates of birth for Mabel and Lotty were noted on the Pension Card, and their entitlement to pension will have ended when they reached 16 years of age.

William is not remembered on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website, although if the cause of his death can be shown to be attributable to his wound a case could be made via the 'In From the Cold' project to have him added. 

By the time of William's death the Moorhouse family had already suffered a loss. Corporal John Moorhouse was killed in action on 25 July 1916. He was 24 years of age. As he was not married his next of kin was his mother Julia Ray, and according to his Pension Card she was living at 87 Brampton Road, Wombwell. She received his back pay, a war gratuity and eventually a pension of 15/- for life.  John is buried at Rue-du-Bacquerot No.1 Military Cemetery, Laventie, in the Pas De Calais area of France.

I cannot imagine the worry that Julia must have suffered whilst her sons were at war. She and Lydia must have been relieved when Sydney was sent home. The loss of John at such a young age must have hit her hard, especially after the news of William's serious wounds. Mary Ellen and Julia must have suspected that William would not come home, and I hope that they were able to visit him in hospital in the years between his wounding and his death. 

There was more bad news to come. Henry Dean Moorhouse, aged 24, died of wounds in France on 27 May 1918.  As he too was not married his mother was his sole legatee and the recipient of a gratuity in lieu of pension. In his surviving service records (available on both Ancestry and Find My Past) there is no record of the cause of his wounds, however the Mexborough and Swinton Times (available on the Dearne Valley History website) notes on 8 June 1918, that he died 'in a casualty clearing station in France of wounds received in action the previous day'. He is buried at Bagneux British Cemetery, Gezaincourt in the Somme area of France. 

Army Service Records Next of Kin form for Henry Dean Moorhouse (from Ancestry)

In his records is a copy of the form his mother completed in September 1919 listing his next of kin in order that his commemorative plaque and scroll be sent to the correct person. His brother Sydney, aged 38, is living in Cortonwood Cottages, presumably the Concrete Cottages, his sisters Ethel, Gertrude and Laura have married and are living not much further away. His other brother Harry aged 34 and Doris, his youngest full sister, aged 20, are still at home as is his half-sister Lottie Ray, now 14 years old.

Pension Card for John and Henry Dean Moorhouse. On the Fold3 website and accessed via the Western Front Association.

John and Henry Dean Moorhouse's details appear on the same Pension Card. These cards can be accessed via Ancestry by paying an additional subscription to the Fold3 website, or as a member of the Western Front Association (WFA), as part of their membership package.  There is actually one card for each man but both have their brothers listed as well. Their Pension Ledger entry, from the same source, lists the amounts of pension paid to Julia Ray.

Mary Ellen Moorhouse, William's widow, remarries in 1924 to an older widower named Edward J Sale. At the time of her marriage she was living at 25 Concrete. It was common for widows to remarry after the First World War, especially if they had dependent children. Mary Ellen's daughters Mabel and Lottie were still only 14 and 10 years old respectively in 1924. Jack, presuming he was still living, would have been 7 years old.

Mary Ellen is listed with Edward Sale in the 1939 Register at 19 Orchard Street in Goldthorpe. Also in the household is Lottie Freeman, married, born on 26 June 1914, who must be William's last child. Mary Ellen was 41 years old when she remarried, but also listed in the 1939 register is a Mary Sale, single, born on 24 September 1925. So despite her age she was able to bring at least one child to her new marriage. It could be more because two of the entries for the address are redacted meaning that the people named there might still be alive.

Julia Ray dies in Q2 1939 (Apr May Jun) aged 76, so before the 1939 Register. In that census substitute, Sydney, Julia's eldest son is listed living with his son Walter at 12 Knoll Beck Lane, not far from the Concrete Cottages.  With the information from the Next of Kin form in Henry Dean Moorhouse's service records we could track down Julia's daughters as three of them give their married names and addresses in 1919. 

Julia may have had many grandchildren, but the pain of the loss of three of her sons in the Great War must have always been with her.  Mary Ellen Sale dies in Q2 1962 aged 79, we can hope that she too had grandchildren as a consolation for the loss of her husband after such a short marriage. Researching what happened after the war is not really part of this story, so I will finish here.

Thanks for reading.
 

Distant connection - the Brampton Parish Hall Roll of Honour

March 28, 2020, 2:23 am

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It was bound to happen eventually ... I have found a connection between some of the men named on the Brampton Parish Hall Roll of Honour and my husband (aka the OH).  As I have been researching the OH's family history for the past twenty years or so I have come to realise that Barnsley really isn't that big a place. If your family has a line that stretches back two hundred years in the area, just beyond the census returns and into the realms of the parish records being the best available sources, there is a very good chance that you are connected to everyone else in the area who has equally long lines.

Quite a few years ago now I discovered that the OH's father and one of his best friends, who had for many years, with their wives, been accustomed to taking Tuesday nights off and going out for a drink together, were fifth cousins. I have shown that the OH is related to a number of his own friends, admittedly in some cases with marriage links rather than blood lines, and using the OH as an intermediary one of my BWMP (Barnsley War Memorials Project) colleagues was related to her husband!  These connections are usually via the OH's paternal grandmother Mary Blackburn; I have determined that thirteen of her great-grandparents (out of a possible sixteen) were born in the Barnsley area between 1800 and 1831. In comparison, on his mother's side not a single one of her great-grand parents were born in Barnsley!

Cropped section of the Brampton Parish Hall RoH showing Joseph and Walter Savage's names

The connection with the Savage family is via a marriage link. In 1957 the OH's great aunt married into the Savages, a family who have been in Barnsley since about 1819.  George Savage, born 1767, his wife Mary and at least three of their eight children (that I am aware of) moved to Barnsley in time for the birth of their youngest son Joseph in 1819. They had previously lived in Newark in Nottinghamshire and George, head of the family, was a weaver. The OH's connection descends from that Joseph Savage born in Barnsley in 1819 and the two brothers on the Brampton Parish Hall Roll of Honour descend from his older brother, George Savage, born in Newark in 1806.

A short history of the Savage family by Vivian Thomas can be found in Moving Lives: Stories of Barnsley Families (Barnsley Family History Society, 2007). Vivian is the granddaughter of Walter Savage who was listed on the Roll of Honour and her article includes a photo of Walter in uniform. I confess that I have only just noticed this, my only excuse is that I bought the book years before I really started researching the OH's First World War relatives.

I have been researching the names on the Brampton Parish Hall Roll of Honour since the beginning of February. At a rate of one or two men a day, and with a hundred names on the list, it is not a quick job! Yesterday I reached Joseph and Walter Savage. I did wonder about them as Savage is not a common name in Barnsley, but with them being in Brampton I didn't immediately assume there was a connection to the Barnsley family I knew were related to my husband.

1911 census for 6 Wath Road, New Wombwell (from Ancestry)

My first search was in the 1911 census where I found the two men, obviously brothers, living at 6 Wath Road, New Wombwell, with their father George, mother Mary Jane and two other siblings, Charles and Sarah. The address is in the vicinity of most of the others I have traced on the Roll of Honour and therefore I accepted that I had found the correct men.  In a previous post I explain how most the men named (that I have researched so far) appear to come from a small area around the Concrete Cottages and Wombwell Junction.

I noticed that George Savage, the father of the assumed soldiers, was born in Barnsley in 1866, and my suspicions were aroused. It was fairly easy to find his marriage to Mary Jane Skiffington at St George's Church in Barnsley in 1886 on Ancestry and I saw that both he and his father Charles Savage were described as Publicans. I remembered that the Savages in the OH's family tree had run a few pubs so I tracked back one more generation. Charles Savage married Sarah Naylor at St George's Church in Barnsley in 1864 and his father was George Savage 'Inspector of Nuisances'. Yes, they were connected to the OH!  I wrote a post about the family in 2013.

1891 census for 1 and 2 Wombwell Junction, Guide Post Inn (from Ancestry)

In 1891 Charles Savage was running the Guide Post Inn at Wombwell Junction. George, his son, already married to Jane (aka Mary Jane), was still living in his father's household along with his sons Charles and Walter.  Charles had previously run the Melbourne Hotel on Sheffield Road in Barnsley which is where I found him and his family in the 1881 census.

1905 map snip of the Wombwell Junction area (from National Library of Scotland)

Vivian Thompson, in her article in Moving Lives, refers to the triangle of houses with the Guide Post Inn at the apex (see map on left) as 'the three cornered hell' which seems a little harsh. She does not explain from where she got this term.

There is a picture of the pub on the Old Pictures of Barnsley Facebook site which probably dates from the 1960s as the houses behind it appear to have been demolished. In several of the comments attached to the picture the term 'three cornered hell' is also mentioned.

Walter Savage enlisted in the Royal Artillery in 1909 giving his address as 6 Wath Road, Wombwell and his occupation as Colliery Trammer. His place of birth was New Wombwell, which I have noticed is the term used for the area covered by the Junction and the Concrete Cottages.

You might have spotted that in 1911 he is listed as a Soldier in his father's census return. As George also includes a deceased child, Tom Savage, he appeared to interpret the census instructions very broadly, including all his children whether at home or not, so the presence of Walter on the return does not mean that he was living at home in 1911.

A further search of the 1911 census, now that I know Walter had enlisted in 1909, uncovered him in Kirkee, India (now known as Khadki) in an army barracks with the 81st Battery, Royal Field Artillery. Some information on the 81st Battery and the 5th Brigade of which it was part can be found on the Long, Long Trail website.  Walter's Medal Card, service number 54143, informs us that he reached a theatre of war (unspecified, so it could be Egypt or France) on 6 November 1914, which qualifies him for the 1914 Star. His rank was Gunner.  The Barnsley Chronicle on 13 November 1915 reports that he had a brief return home to Wombwell.

Corporal Walter Savage, R.F.A., on Wednesday, made an unexpected re-appearance amongst his family and friends at Wombwell Junction, Wombwell, after being absent for over six years. At the outbreak of war Savage was serving in India. The regiment was recalled after the outbreak of war, and he was drafted to France in October without having the pleasure of paying a visit to his home. He has seen a great deal of heavy fighting, but, fortunately, so far has received no injury. He was given a great reception by his old friends. Savage was once prominent in local football circles.

He was discharged on 1 January 1921 and the address he gave at that point was 74 Hawes Side Lane, Blackpool.  He had married Faith Hope Charity Pearson (lovely name!) on 24 December 1920 at Marton in Lancashire, presumably whilst on his final leave from the army. Marton is now a suburb of Blackpool and is very close to Hawes Side Lane. By 1939 he had moved around the corner to Powell Avenue. Walter and Charity (Vivian refers to her by this name) appear to have only had one child, Alice born in 1922 in Wombwell oddly enough.

Joe Savage, Walter's younger brother, enlists into the Territorial Force in June 1915 and joins the (West Riding) Royal Horse Artillery, service numbers 4050 and 831644. Joe's Service Records have survived and can be viewed on Ancestry and Find My Past. He was a tall man for the time, 5 feet 11.75 inches and with a 38 inch chest. He gives his father's address as 6 New Wombwell, but I assume this is the same as 6 Wath Road. He lands in France on 23 May 1916 and is wounded in the right leg in September 1917, but this does not appear to cause any lasting disability.  He was discharged on 13 March 1919 and gives his address as 6 Wath Road, New Wombwell. He marries Nellie Count on 21 September 1919 at St Mary's Church in Wombwell. They have three children, Betty who dies young, Jessie and George. In 1939 the family is living at 80 Wath Road in Wombwell. Joseph is listed as a Licensee - but of which pub?  Vivian's article helps again telling us that the Guide Post Inn was run by three generations of the family (although not continuously), Charles, George and Joseph before its closure in 1968.  Joseph apparently ran it for 38 years!

It is always nice to link the OH to pubs as he is a longstanding member of the Campaign for Real Ale (Barnsley Branch). But he hadn't heard of the Guide Post Inn before so I look forward to telling him his tenuous connection.

Thank you for reading.

I'm a real PhD Student at long last!

May 11, 2020, 4:06 am

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It has been my ambition for many years, since completing my first degree back in 2000 in fact, to continue my studies to Postgraduate level. I finally achieved that this year with a Pass with Merit for my Masters degree in The History of Britain and the First World War at the University of Wolverhampton. 

My Unconditional Offer

With that under my belt I applied for and was accepted to study for a part-time PhD, also at Wolverhampton, and officially enrolled a week ago.  This is going to keep me occupied for the next six years.

It is funny, but way back in 1978, when I was doing my UCAS application for university, my back up choice, just in case I didn't get the grades to go to my first choice, was Wolverhampton Polytechnic.  Which is, of course, the same institution that I am now attending, if in physical form only a couple of times a year.  I can still remember the day in 1979 that I went for the interview, but not the interview itself - what sticks in my mind much more is that it was the day I bought Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell album!

Unfortunately I failed my A levels in the summer of 1979 (long story) and had to wait until 1998 to start a degree course with the Open University. I used my Radiography Diploma as transferred credit, added some history modules and graduated in 2000 with a First Class BA (Hons) Open Degree. That was enough to get me an offer of a fee waiver for a part-time MPhil at Sheffield University (on Freehold Land Societies in 19th Century Heeley, Sheffield) and a good job with prospects at Sheffield Hallam University (SHU). Sadly I wasn't able to balance work, childcare, living on the Manor in Sheffield (horrible, horrible, horrible) and research so I withdrew from the MPhil after a year.  

I continued to work at SHU until I became ill in 2008/2011. I worked my way up from a lowly envelope stuffer and tea maker to a role in the Registry working on the Student Records system SITS. During my time there I took some other OU modules, things more relevant to my day job, and these I did manage to fit in with working. After I had to finish work, due to my progressively worse ill health, I was able to take a few more history modules to complete another undergraduate degree in 2014! This time it had a subject title, a BA (Hons) in Humantities with History - Upper Second Class. Somewhere along the way I fitted in a PGCE in Life Long Learning (I had hoped to become a part-time IT tutor for the elderly), and although my illnesses meant I only completed three-quarters of the course (all the written work, but not the final full time placement - impossible with my chronic health conditions) I have a nice University Certificate from Huddersfield University (Barnsley Campus) to say I tried.

Other things had come along to interest me in the meantime, I did my first public talk in February 2013 on Researching Barnsley Soldiers in the First World War for the Friends of Barnsley Archives and over thirty others up to the autumn of 2016 at which point sadly I had to call a halt as I had become so ill that I could not guarantee I would be able to turn up to a booking.

You will have noticed that my health has prevented my from continuing or completing a few things in recent years. Since I left work I have been trying to get my (very small) pension released on the grounds that I am unable to work any more - however it seems that studying, even part-time, indicates that I could hold down a 37 hour a week job with similar duties to my role at SHU (there is no chance of that!) and that I will be fit enough to return to work within three years. I have been refused it on two occasions so far, with applications three and six years after I finished work. You would think they would have noticed that I am not getting any better and that I have been unable to work, even part time, since I left SHU. I assume there is no point me trying to apply for it again this year, my nine year anniversary of leaving SHU, as no doubt doing a part-time PhD, working at home for a few hours a day no more than three or four days a week, means that I will be (magically) well enough to go back to full time work again soon. My opinion of the panel doctors who work for the South Yorkshire Pension Fund is very low.

Then there was the volunteer work for Barnsley War Memorials Project (BWMP) and as an official remote volunteer supporting the Imperial War Museum's Lives of the First World War, which fitted in better with my fluctuating health conditions and really got me interested in the huge number of different kinds of memorials there are and how Barnsley has a lot more than anyone who hasn't looked into it (or been to one of my talks) could ever imagine. At the last count there were 805 within the boundaries of Barnsley Borough and another 40 on the borders in villages which had, in the past, been in Barnsley.  This is not including all the memorial benches that have been installed during the Centenary - I lost count of them a couple of years ago! Sadly the above projects officially drew to a close in late 2018 and early 2019.

One of Barnsley's many new Commemorative benches - from the Barnsley Chronicle

In early 2017 I noticed that Postgraduate Loans for Masters degrees had been made available. I have no problem with Student Loans (well, their administration leaves a bit to be desired, but as they are more like a graduate tax than a debt I can't see the problem). The increase in tuition fees had made my fees on my last few modules at the OU dependent on my 'transition' status - in other words because I was an existing student I had the opportunity to finish that second degree at the old prices providing I didn't break my study. However the increase did mean that the fees for a Masters, even with the OU, were way beyond my means as a non-working disabled person in 2014.  The new Postgraduate Student Loans suddenly made it all possible again.

I chose Wolverhampton because I was following Professor Gary Sheffield on Twitter due to my interest in all things First World War. He had written some interesting pieces on the Centenary which had caught my eye. At that time I knew that my PhD subject (maybe after I officially retired) had changed to be about War Memorials as I had accumulated a mountain of information in Barnsley Archives while volunteering for the BWMP which was crying out to be written up. I knew that I didn't know enough about the First World War's other aspects - the dates of battles, the way the army was organised, why we actually went to war in the first place (when I studied the First World War as a small part of my final OU module my lack of general knowledge about it had become obvious) so it seemed a good idea to take a taught Masters course to give me a good background for a PhD and refresh my academic writing skills. 

I was able to start studing in autumn 2017, part-time, with only a few visits to Wolverhampton for Saturday Schools necessary (huge thanks to my OH for taking me to Wolverhampton and making every trip - even the one in the heavy snow - a great adventure for someone normally confined to the four walls of our home). I was part of a great cohort of mainly mature students from varied backgrounds with interests in all kinds of aspects of the First World War and enjoyed lectures from many well known historians. The cherry on the cake was a big conference at Wolverhampton in September 2018 when I met Jay Winter who has written some of the best (in my opinion) books there are on Remembrance. 

Professor Gary Sheffield

Gary Sheffield was my supervisor for my MA dissertation which was on War Memorials (of course) and I am very happy to say that I got a Distinction for that. The trouble was it was only 15,000 words and it barely scraped the surface of what I knew I could write on Barnsley's First World War commemoration and remembrance experiences. 

Gary was unable to accept me as a PhD student, he already had his quota and also thought I needed someone who had a greater experience in my particular topic. However he did promise to write me a glowing reference! His field is much more the military side of the history of the First (and Second) World War including morale and leadership, but he doesn't cover a great deal of cultural history or memory studies.  Gary became the president of the Western Front Association in 2019 (the image on the above is from their website) taking over from Peter Simkins who also lectured on our course.

Eventually, and on his recommendation, Professor Laura Ugolini accepted me as her student. She writes about the more social and domestic aspects of the First World War and is already supervising at least one student who is researching commemoration.  I had met Laura at Wolverhampton when she lectured on our course.

My PhD Student Loan is just enough to pay my fees for the next six years,  and because I am a University of Wolverhampton alumni I get a 20% discount - enough to pay for some more books, much to the OH's relief.

Last week Laura set me my first proper task - a 10,000 word literature review on the historiography of commemoration particularly concerning physical war memorials (leaving remembrance events for another time).  I wrote a first draft yesterday, mainly headers and notes and a list of some of the books and authors that I intend to discuss. That came to over 3,000 words (not counting the bibliography)!  I look forward to honing my research and critical writing skills over the next few years and working towards writing my thesis - 80,000 words sounds like a lot, but once you start outlining themes and chapters it really breaks it down into manageable chunks.  

Just a few of my newer books by the side of my bed

Cross fingers my health becomes no worse and this current pandemic situation is resolved as soon as possible. Research in Archives is out of the question at the moment, but I have lots of books to read. 

Do you see the top one on this pile? That's Laura's book Civvies. It's about  middle class men on the Home Front during the First World War. I thought I should read it as she's going to be looking after me for six years!

 

I am still in touch with many of the people in my MA class and look forward to seeing them all again when we finally have a Graduation ceremony.  Although your guess is as good as mine when that might be!

Thank you to Gary and all his team for the past two years, it was very enjoyable and I learnt a lot. I feel well prepared and ready for the next step.

Wish me luck and thanks for reading this.

The Brampton Parish Roll of Honour Mystery - Where Did it Come From?

May 29, 2020, 6:58 am

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The Brampton Parish Hall Roll of Honour is a framed pre-printed paper Roll of Honour (RoH) filled with 100 names of men from the area who served in the First World War. It is on display in the Parish Hall on Knoll Beck Lane in Brampton, but no-one knows for which local organisation it was originally drawn up.  My suggestions have included the local school or the Methodist Chapel, and at a meeting on 8th March 2020 in the Parish Hall local historians suggested it was a precursor to the Cortonwood Colliery 'Centotaph' which was relocated to a little park beside the Parish Hall when the Colliery was closed in 1985-86.  In an aside, two of the men who attended the meeting had been part of the group who rescued the memorial using colliery equipment and moved it to Knoll Beck Lane and they were able to show us some fantastic photographs of that project.

Relocation of the Cortonwood Colliery War Memorial (with thanks to the local historians I met on 8 March 2020)

My research over the past few months has shown that the Brampton Parish Hall RoH is very unlikely to have been a provisional listing for the Cortonwood memorial, as only 56 or 58 (including some possibles with common surnames) of the 100 names on the Roll of Honour also appear on the Cortonwood Colliery Memorial. Fifty-six is not many out of the 592 names listed on that memorial.  The Cortonwood memorial lists hundreds of men who served as well as 94 who fell.

A list of 21 men from the Cortonwood Methodist Chapel has been discovered online (see above). Although this list is titled a 'Roll of Honour' all the names included are of men who were lost in the war. Eighteen of those included are also listed on the Brampton Parish Hall RoH. Oddly one of the other three, and remember this is a man who lost his life, is a brother of a man who IS named on the Brampton RoH. Both brothers are listed on the Methodist document, so why one brother is present on the Brampton Parish Hall RoH and the other is not is yet another mystery awaiting a solution.  The Brampton RoH lists 22 men who fell which means that four of them are NOT listed on the Methodist document.  This suggests the the Brampton RoH did not originate in the Methodist Chapel.

Since starting this research I have found four more men from the area, which I suggest is closely related to the Concrete Cottages and Wombwell Junction areas, who are not named on the Roll of Honour, but who did definitely serve in the First World War.  Including the man mentioned above two of these four men are brothers of men listed and another is possibly a cousin. This suggests that a thorough search of local sources such as the 1918 and 1919 Electoral Registers of the area (available on Ancestry.co.uk), which indicate men who were serving by the notation NM, might reveal even more names of men from the Concrete Cottages and Wombwell Junction who were not included on the RoH.

I have cross-checked the 100 names on the Brampton Parish Hall RoH with a number of other war memorials in the area including the Cortonwood memorial mentioned above and also memorials in Wombwell, Wath and Brampton itself.  Some names appear on one, some on another, some on more than one. There is no pattern. The original source of the Brampton Parish RoH remains a mystery. 

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James and Albert Crawford First World War Soldiers from Concrete, Brampton

June 16, 2020, 8:57 am

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The section of the Brampton RoH showing James Crawford's name

I have been investigating the Brampton Roll of Honour which hangs in Brampton's Parish Hall since February this year. For briefness I will refer to it as the Brampton RoH or just the RoH.

There are 100 names listed on the RoH, 22 of these men (and they are all men) were killed in the First World War, the others survived to return home to their families.  I have found census data allowing me to establish who these men were and where they lived for 91 of these names and military information for 73, an increase of one since my last post. 

I have also begun to collect a list of men from the area covered by this memorial, ie the Concrete Cottages and Wath Junction, who served in the war but who were not listed on the RoH.  There were three additional names on the Cortonwood Wesleyan Methodist Roll of Honour (found online) which are not on the Brampton RoH, 29 more men were marked as Absent Voters in the 1918 Electoral Roll for Brampton or Wombwell South (the wards which include Concrete and the Junction and which available on Ancestry.co.uk) and three more have been found (so far) in the local newspaper, the Mexborough and Swinton Times (MST).

The Mexborough and Swinton Times was added to the British Newspaper Archive this month, June 2020 (also available on sister site Find My Past). It covers the southern part of Barnsley including Wombwell, Great Houghton, Thurnscoe (all within the modern Barnsley boundaries) plus Brampton, Wath, Swinton, Mexborough and Conisbrough. In the last two days, purely with a search on the word 'Concrete' I have added three more names to my research list, including one man from Concrete, George Clark, who was killed.

One odd thing about these additional names is that they include men who are the brothers of men who are listed on the Brampton RoH. We could suggest a couple of reasons for this, maybe they moved away from the area before the list was compiled? Possibly so, but many of the men listed on the RoH, despite living in Concrete earlier in their lives, were already living away from the area in 1911.  Maybe their families did not want them included - which is strange if one brother is listed but not another.

James and Albert's names on the Cortonwood Wesleyan RoH

For this post I am focusing on James (b.1896) and Albert (b.1891) Crawford, brothers who were both killed in the war. James Crawford is named on the Brampton RoH, Albert Crawford is not, but I had found him on the Cortonwood Wesleyan RoH alongside his brother.

They were living at home, 11 Wath Road, Wombwell Junction, with their parents James snr and Emily Crawford in 1911. Also listed on the census return is another brother, William (b.1893) and a sister Rose (b.1901). The return states that Emily has been married for 20 years and has had five children, one of whom had died before 1911. A search of the General Register Office (GRO) indexes tells us that Ann Crawford was born in 1895 and died the same year. These searches can be carried out in five year chunks using a surname and mother's maiden name. They are very useful for discovering the absent children that the 1911 census additional information tells us about. According to the census only Rose was born in Wombwell, the other children having all been born in Worsborough Dale.

James Crawford snr and Emily Pickard had married in Worsborough Dale (the second 'o' was lost from the area name in the early to mid 20th century), about five miles from Wath Junction, on 31 December 1890. James was originally from Thirsk, North Yorkshire and Emily from Otley, West Yorkshire (according to the 1901 and 1911 census returns), although in the 1891 census when James and Emily were living with her parents in Worsborough Dale, all her family (including James Crawford) are listed as being from Worsborough Dale itself.  This is an error as the 1881 census tells us that Emily's father William Pickard was from Otley, her mother Hannah from Darfield, Emily and Samuel, the older of three children, from Otley and Herbert, the youngest child, from Darfield. So the family moved around quite a bit, Otley being about 44 miles from Darfield.  It is always best to cross-check information found on a source as transcriptions or information given to the census enumerators or even to clergy for marriages, baptisms or burials can often be in error.

The Cortonwood Wesleyan RoH helpfully tells us that James was in the K.R.Rif., the King's Royal Rifle Corps, and gives us his Service number 467. This information tallies with his Service Records which have fortunately survived (60% of these records were destroyed in the blitz during the Second World War) and his entries on Soldiers Died in the Great War (SDGW) and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) website. He was killed on 18 June 1916 and his CWGC entry confirms that his father was James Crawford, of 11 Wath Road, Wombwell, Barnsley and that he was buried in the Cambrin Military Cemetery in France. His SDGW entry adds that he was killed in action and that he was born in Wombwell - which is therefore in disagreement with the 1911 census return. The information about his regiment reminded me of another memorial in Wombwell - the Church Lads Brigade memorial in St Mary's Church which was affiliated to the King's Royal Rifle Corps. Sure enough a Crawford, J. is listed there as well. He is also listed on the Wombwell Reform Club Members RoH in the Killed in Action section at the top alongside a Crawford, A. Pte. Y.L.

Two Crawford men named on the Wombwell Reform Club RoH

According to the Cortonwood Wesleyan RoH Albert was in the R.N. Lanc. Regt., Service number 31329. Tracing Albert's records was more complicated. His CWGC entry tells us that he was in the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment Service number 42151 (could someone have confused Loyal with Royal when preparing the Cortonwood RoH?) - this is the correct man as his parents are listed as Mr and Mrs J Crawford of 11 Wath Road, Wombwell. We also discover from this record that Albert was married, to a Mabel F. Crawford, and that her address at the time the CWGC information was collected was 4 Hough Lane, Wombwell. Bear in mind that the addresses for widows do not necessarily reflect the place where a soldier lived before he enlisted. Widows often moved after a man's death, maybe to return to their parents' home, or after re-marriage. Albert's SDGW entry adds that he was formerly in the York and Lancaster Regiment Service number 44591 and that he was born in Worsboro' Dale - which is correct according to the 1911 census return. He was killed on 4 November 1918 and was buried in the Mazinghien Communal Cemetery in France. Interestingly the additional documents on the CWGC page for Albert Crawford include a Graves Registration form which tell us that he was one of eleven Loyal North Lancs men killed on that day buried in that cemetery which suggests that a significant action had taken place (in my opinion). There seems to have been some confusion about his identity at some point as the type written entry reads 42151 Crawfers Pte.A. which is overwritten in ink, 44591 Crawford. Note that this is his Y&L Service number!

Graves Registration for Mazinghien Communal Cemetery CWGC

Now having the information that Albert had initially served in the York and Lancaster Regiment the Wombwell Reform Club entry makes sense.  Both James and Albert are also listed on the main Wombwell memorial outside St Mary's church - but as these names were renewed and updated in the last 10 or 20 years (see a photo from the 1930s on the Yococo website) it cannot be ruled out that they were added during the update.

Albert Crawford and Mabel Florence Hazzard had married on 23 May 1918 at Wombwell Parish Church and that record states his occupation is miner. So when did he join the Army? If it was after their marriage he was not long in the forces before he was killed. Barely enough time for initial training compared to the men who enlisted earlier in the war. After his death two death notices appear in the Mexborough and Swinton Times (MST) on 23 November 1918, one from Mabel and one which names his parents, James and Emily, giving their address at 11 Wath Road. Albert's photograph appears in the newspaper the following week, although it gives his regiment as the York and Lancaster, despite the death notice the week before more accurately reporting him in the Loyal North Lancs.

Albert and Mabel do not appear to have had any children. Mabel remarried in the September quarter of 1923 to Samuel Wardell (according to FreeBMD) and bore him two children, Albert in Q3 1924 and Mabel in Q4 1926. It is touching to see that her first child was named after her previous husband. In the 1939 Register the couple were living at 25 Cemetery Road in Wombwell with Albert and a redacted entry, probably young Mabel. In the comments column at the far right it was noted that Samuel was an Air Raid Warden.

Albert Crawford's Pension Card from the WFA website

So why was Albert not included on the Brampton RoH?  It could be that his wife Mabel did not know about the RoH or did not want him included. It could be that at the time of the compilation of the memorial there was some uncertainty about Albert's death.  However Albert's Pension Card (on the Western Front Association website and also available via Fold3 on Ancestry) states that his death was notified on 27 November 1918 which is not a long delay. This tallies with the date of the death notices published in the MST on 23 November.  On the Pension card Mabel's address has been changed from 4 Hough Lane, Wombwell (the address we saw above on the CWGC entry and the address from which she married in May 1918) to Laurel Dene, Lepton, Huddersfield so maybe she was living away from home for a while (there is no mention of her second marriage on the card). But why would his parents James snr and Emily omit him? It seems unlikely that a list of 100 men was compiled as soon as the Armistice was announced - and that the news of Albert's death came too late for him to be added. Could it be because he enlisted so late? Was the RoH compiled before his enlistment?

James and Albert are listed side by side on the Cortonwood Wesleyan Methodist RoH and the Wombwell Reform Club RoH but not on the Brampton RoH. And what happened to their brother William (b.1893), he was the right age to have served in the war and but I have found no military records for him yet. More questions that require further research if I am ever to understand this document.

William Crawford married Winifred Carr in Q3 1918 and I have found them in the 1939 register. They had two children, Albert b.1920 (another named after the Albert who died in the war?) and Joan b.1923. I have also found them in the 1939 register living in Hemingfield near Wombwell. William dies just two years later from the same address 16 Garden Grove, aged just 48. He predeceases his parents James snr, who dies in 1945 and Emily, who dies in 1948. They are buried in adjacent plots in Wombwell Cemetery. Sadly whilst searching in the Cemetery records I discovered that Rose Crawford who had married Lionel Hawksworth in Q1 1919 died in January 1922 and was buried from 11 Wath Road, her parents' home. This means that James snr and Emily outlived all their children.  The only consolation that I can find is that Rose gave birth to a daughter, Bessie, in 1920, who in 1939 is married and living with her widowed father and his mother in Wombwell. 

I have not yet confirmed which organisation compiled the Brampton RoH or when it was drawn up. It was apparently discovered in a poor state in the papers of a Brampton Parish Clerk as he handed over to a new incumbent very recently.  The discovery of the document was reported in October 2018 in the local parish council magazine where it was also noted that the former Parish Clerk had retired on 31 March 2018 after 32 years service!  So the RoH had been hidden away for many years.

Thank you for reading.

References:

1939 Register, Find My Past, https://search.findmypast.co.uk/search-world-Records/1939-register, accessed 16 June 2020.
British Army Service Records, Ancestry, https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/1219/, accessed 17 February 2020.
Census returns, Ancestry, https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/categories/ukicen/, accessed various in February - June 2020.
Commonwealth War Graves Commission, https://www.cwgc.org/, accessed 16 June 2020.
Cortonwood Wesleyan Methodist Roll of Honour, My Methodist History, https://www.mymethodisthistory.org.uk/topics-2/war_memorials/a_further_204_late_returns/cortonwood, accessed 9 March 2020.
General Register Office, Online Ordering Service, https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/login.asp, accessed 16 June 2020.
Mexborough and Swinton Times, British Newspaper Archive, https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/titles/mexborough-&-swinton-times, accessed 15 June 2020.
Parish News, Issue 21, October 2018, Brampton Bierlow Parish Council, https://www.bramptonbierlow-pc.gov.uk/sites/default/files/pdf_docs/brampton_bierlow_oct_18_3_0.pdf, accessed 16 June 2020.
Parish Records for Worsborough Dale, Yorkshire Marriages, Find My Past, https://search.findmypast.co.uk/search-world-Records/yorkshire-marriages, accessed 16 June 2020.
Pension Records, Western Front Association, https://www.westernfrontassociation.com/ancestry-pension-records/, accessed 16 June 2020.
UK, Soldiers Died in the Great War, Ancestry, https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/1543/, accessed 16 June 2020.
West Yorkshire, England, Electoral Registers, 1840-1962, Ancestry, https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/3057/ accessed 22-28 May 2020.
Yococo Image Database, Barnsley Council Online, https://wwwapplications.barnsley.gov.uk/librarydigitisation/details.aspx?imageID=2755 accessed 16 June 2020.

Possible Source of the Brampton Parish Hall RoH - The Guide Post Inn

June 21, 2020, 8:26 am

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I have been researching the Roll of Honour (RoH) rediscovered recently in Brampton Parish Hall since February 2020.  It was found in the papers of an outgoing Parish Clerk in 2018, conserved by the Clifton Conservation Service - Rotherham, framed and then hung in the Parish Hall. A friend spotted it whilst at an event in the Hall and photographed it for me. I have yet to work out where the RoH originated, though suggestions have included Cortonwood colliery, the local school or the nearby Methodist Chapel. In each of these cases there are sufficient discrepancies to suggest that the RoH did not come from there.  This morning I may have found another candidate.

The top of the front page of the Mexborough & Swinton Times 5 June 1919

The local newspaper for Wombwell and Brampton during the years of the First World War was the Mexborough and Swinton Times, later the South Yorkshire Times.  Some digitised copies of this newspaper were recently released by the British Newspaper Archives and its sister site Find My Past.  I have been gradually working my way through the names on the Brampton Parish Hall Roll of Honour searching the newspaper for mentions of the men.

Searches using the term 'Concrete' for the Concrete Cottages that used to stand where Garden Drive and Springhill Avenue are, brought back a number of relevant results including the names of men from the area who are not on the RoH.  One interesting hit was in a list of Wombwell 'Notes and News' from 30 September 1916. 

Patriotic Fund - Over 102 soldiers and sailors have benefited by the Guide Post Inn Patriotic Fund, which includes Concrete, New Wombwell, Park Road and Park View.

I am aware of a pub RoH from the Second World War from the Honeywell Inn just outside Barnsley town centre, so I would not be surprised if the Guide Post Inn had started their own list, especially as they were obviously keeping track of the men from their area who were in the forces for the purposes of their Patriotic Fund.

Last week I wrote about two brothers, James and Albert Crawford, from Concrete Cotttages who were both killed in the war.  James is named on the Brampton Parish Hall RoH but Albert is not.  I suggested that this might be because Albert did not enlist until after his marriage in May 1918.  If the RoH was drawn up before that, and the space filled after the addition of Fred Godfrey in pencil at the very end, maybe a second RoH was begun for men who joined up later and this has yet not been found.

The Guide Post Inn was situated on the junction of Wath Road and Brampton Road, just to the north west of The Junction, where the Elsecar Branch of the Dearne and Dove canal joined the main canal.  It and the housing around it appear on the 1890 Ordnance Survey map of the area.  That area was sometimes known as New Wombwell.  On the 1855 map of the area several guide posts are marked on the route between Brampton and Wombwell, one of which was on this corner - however there was no housing there at that time.  So the pub was built after 1855 and before 1890, which fits with the expansion of housing provision in the area as Cortonwood Colliery opens.

1905 map of The Junction, Wombwell (from NLS maps)

On the 1905 map (above) the Guide Post Inn is indicated and a G.P. for a guide post. The triangle of housing is completed by Junction Street, and there is a terrace of housing on Brampton Road just south east of the pub. There is another guide post marked at Tunstall Cross, at the top left of the above snip.

1931 map of The Junction, Wombwell (from NLS maps)

By 1931 housing has spread up Wath Road towards Wombwell, between the Guide Post Inn (now labelled simply as Inn) and the crossroads (which was Tunstall Cross on the earlier map).  Park Street begins after the crossroads and continues into Wombwell going north east. I cannot identify Park Road and Park View on these old maps. They may have been the names of individual terraces or groups of houses on Wath Road.

The 1918 Electoral Register for the South-East Ward of Wombwell includes Park Street, Wath Road, Wombwell Junction and Brampton Road.  It also mentions Park View but not Park Road.  Could the newspaper article have been mistaken and written Park Road for Park Street?  The 1918 and 1919 Electoral Registers are particularly useful for First World War research as they indicate which men were 'Absent Voters' and 'Naval and Military'. Men who were aged 19 and over and in the military were included despite the usual voting age being 21 years and over.

The first man named on the Brampton Parish Hall RoH is John Andrews who may be the man listed in the 1918 and 1919 Electoral Registers at 28 Park View, however he is not indicated as being an Absent Voter in either register.  There is a Thomas Atmore of 74 Concrete who is not listed as an Absent Voter in either register, however this is probably the father of the family (at 55 years old in the 1911 census he was rather too old to have served in the war) because in 1919 a Thomas Atmore jnr is also listed. As he was 19 years old in 1911 this raises the question why was he not listed in 1918?  Sydney Beckett [Sokell] listed third on the RoH is indicated as an Absent Voter from 46 Concrete in 1918 but he is listed and not absent in 1919 suggesting he had returned home by the late winter of 1918. Information for the 1918 registers was collected in late winter 1917 and early spring 1918.

The first three names on the Brampton Roll of Honour

Going back to check on the Crawfords whom I mentioned above, Albert and his other brother William (James having been killed in 1916) are both listed in the 1918 Electoral Register but in 1919 only William is listed - on both occasions the address is 11 Wath Road, the family home. Albert is not indicated as an Absent Voter at all, despite us knowing he served, but the late date at which we know Albert Crawford enlisted, after the collection of the data, might explain why he is still registered at home. The omission of his name in the 1919 register suggests that his death in November 1918 was known before the data for that register was collected.

The only photograph I have found of the Guide Post Inn (so far) is on a Facebook page for old photos and shows it standing alone, the triangle of housing behind having been demolished. I mentioned the pub in a blog post some months ago as three generations of the Savage family ran the pub between 1891 and 1968. Joseph and Walter Savage are mentioned on the Brampton Parish Hall RoH. Having members of the landlord's family in the forces would have been an additional incentive to create a Roll of Honour for display in the pub.

Other addresses associated with the Brampton RoH men beside Concrete include Brampton Road, Wath Road, Carnley Street in West Melton, Elliotts Terrace in New Scarborough, Wombwell (listed in the South East Wombwell ward in the Electoral Registers), Hough Lane, Wombwell (listed in the South West Wombwell ward), Hawson Street, Wombwell (South East Wombwell ward), Gower Street, Wombwell, Milton Street, Wombwell (South West Wombwell ward), Deputy Row, Wombwell (I don't know where this was, but it sounds like housing connected to the colliery).

The area covered by the Brampton RoH is fairly discrete - where a man named did not live in the area in 1911 he had usually lived in Concrete Cottages beforehand and had moved a short distance to Stairfoot, Ardsley, Hoyland or Barnsley itself.  It is not unreasonable that a man might pop back to visit his friends in his old local, keeping in touch up to the beginning of the war.

Further research on the Electoral Registers and the dates when men enlisted will help to narrow down the time span in which the Brampton RoH was created.

Thank you for reading.

References:

Absent Voters, Barnsley War Memorials Project, http://www.barnsleywarmemorials.org.uk/p/absent-voters.html, accessed 21 June 2020.

Mexborough and Swinton Times, British Newspaper Archive, https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/titles/mexborough-&-swinton-times, accessed 15 June 2020.

West Yorkshire, England, Electoral Registers, 1840-1962, Ancestry, https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/3057/, accessed 21 June 2020.

Yorkshire CCLXXXIII.NW, Revised 1901, Published 1905, National Library of Scotland (NLS), https://maps.nls.uk/view/100949606, accessed 21 June 2020.

Yorkshire CCLXXXIII.NW, Revised 1929, Published 1931, National Library of Scotland (NLS), https://maps.nls.uk/view/100949603, acccessed 21 June 2020.

Who was A Gibson? Where did he come from? Where did he live? I love a mystery!

June 28, 2020, 4:33 pm

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I am trying to identify all of the men on the Brampton Parish Hall Roll of Honour (RoH) which was brought to my attention in February this year.  This is the latest of many posts I have written about the puzzles I have found along the way.  I have identified the majority of the men but I have a few who require more work.  Most of the men on the RoH have a full forename so when I only have an initial to go on the task is more difficult.

Snip of the Brampton RoH showing Gibson A.

My first clue to the identity of Gibson A. on the Brampton RoH was in a newspaper article dated 18 January 1915.  It was from the Sheffield Daily Telegraph and was found using Find My Past's newspaper search. Find My Past (FMP) shares the same newspaper resources as its sister site the British Newspaper Archive (BNA), which has a better search engine to be honest, but as that would be an extra subscription for me sometimes I search on the BNA and use the results to look for the newspaper on FMP.

Saw Sheffield Private Killed

Private Albert Gibson, of 40, Thomas Street, Swinton, of the 1st East Yorkshire Regiment, has just been invalided home suffering from rheumatism, the legacy of a long period of duty in the trenches up the waist in mud and water. He was at Mons acting with the reserves during the retreat. He first came into action on the Aisne, after forced marching for three days and three nights. It was in the early morning that they received the command to advance and capture some German trenches. This they accomplished, and then for seven days they were confined to the trenches "potting". His friend, Harry Ballard, of Attercliffe Road, Sheffield, who enlisted with him, was killed by his side in a charge the first Sunday after they came into action.  It was between two and three o'clock in the afternoon when they left their trenches in order to charge across a ploughed field, the German trenches being their objective. These, however they did not reach, and Ballard, when about in the middle of the field was killed, his body being almost riddled with bullets from a machine gun. In another charge Gibson saw Joe Allott, a Wombwell man, fatally wounded. Allott and he had worked together in Cortonwood Colliery. Gibson was in several bayonet charges which resulted in trenches being taken and retaken. Later he went to Armentiers, where in taking the enemy's trenches several prisoners were captured, including an officer.

There is a lot of detail here and I will pick out what I spotted that might help solve the riddle of Gibson A. on the Brampton RoH.

(1) Albert Gibson used to work at Cortonwood Colliery with Joe Allott.  I checked the list of names on the Cortonwood war memorial and found A. Gibson on the first panel of 'Men who joined H.M. Forces from the Cortonwood Colliery - there are three panels of men who survived the war and one of men who were killed. J. Allott is listed on the same panel as Gibson, and yet the cutting says Gibson saw him fatally wounded. Let's assume that this means Gibson survived the war - but be skeptical.

(2) Gibson was in the 1st East Yorkshire Regiment and was at Mons with the Reserves.  So he was a regular soldier called up from the Reserve - therefore I am looking for a man who enlisted before the war and who was awarded a 1914 Star.  We know he was in the Reserves, so he had served his seven years and was in his five year reserve period when war broke out. So he must have originally joined up before 1907, therefore he was probably born before 1889.

(3) The date of the article was 18 January 1915 and the action described was the Battle of the Aisne in September 1914 - I should look for the deaths of Harry Ballard and (maybe) Joe Allott around that time.

(4) Albert Gibson was living at 40 Thomas Street, Swinton when he enlisted. It is only four miles from Swinton to Cortonwood, so he may have lived in Swinton while working at Cortonwood Colliery.

Section of the Pension Card Ledger entry for Albert Gibson (WFA)

A likely candidate for Albert Gibson is Pte 7545 Albert Gibson of 1 East Yorkshire Regiment, entered a Theatre of War 8 September 1914 and discharged with a Silver War Badge on 23 September 1915 with sickness. His Pension Card Ledger on the Western Front Association (WFA) website gives his address as 29 Thomas Street, Swinton and suggests he was married but doesn't give the name of his wife. It looks as if a pension for 20% disability was being paid up to 1923 and appeals are noted in 1928 and 1932.  Albert Gibson's Silver War Badge card gives us the additional information that he enlisted on 15 September 1903, so proof that he was a regular soldier.  His seven years would have been up by 1910, but he could well have chosen to re-enlist for a while longer, some men did.

The 1st Battalion the East Yorkshire Regiment arrived in France on 10 September 1914. They were part of the 18th Brigade, 6th Division (Long, Long Trail). This Brigade was attached to I Corps under Haig for the actions on Aisne Heights, 20 September 1914 (Long, Long Trail).

Soldiers who were killed in the First World War are usually easier to find as there are more records online covering their commemoration and burial information.  I began with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) website, but despite there being 9 records for men who died from the United Kingdom called H* Ballard in the First World War none of them died in 1914 and none were in the East Yorkshire Regiment. Neither could I find Harry Ballard on the Sheffield Soldiers of the Great War website where I would expected him to be as the article quite clearly states he was from Sheffield. I searched for Harry Ballard in Soldiers Died in the Great War  (SDGW) on 'Ancestry' - nothing.  There were no other mentions in the Sheffield newspapers for this man, I would have expected an obituary or a death notice from his family in addition to the article above. It was time to try some variations on my searches.

On the CWGC website I searched for anyone in the East Yorkshire Regiment who was killed in September 1914.  That brought back 48 results. One was Henry Bolland, Pte 7796 1st Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment who died on 20 September 1914. This seems to be close enough, the right date, Bolland instead of Ballard  is understandable and Henry for Harry is no surprise.  His widow's address appeared to confirm my hopes. He had been married to Clarible (?) but by the time the CWGC records were collected she had remarried to a Micklethwaite and was living at 46, Birch Road, Attercliffe, Sheffield (Attercliffe is spelt Akercliffe on the website). He is remembered on the La Ferte-Sous-Jouarre Memorial in France so that means he has no known grave.  With this information I went back to my other resources. Sheffield Soldiers notes the same information that is on the CWGC site but adds that Henry was from Heeley in Sheffield and enlisted at Beverley, this extra information looks to have been taken from his SDGW record. He is remembered on the Sheffield Council Official Roll of Honour. 

We know that Joe Allott worked with Albert Gibson at Cortonwood so I decided to look for him in the same way I would look for one of the Brampton soldiers, starting with the census records. In the 1911 census Joseph Allott, aged 30, Coal Miner and Army Reservist (useful!) was living at 1 Inkerman, Jump, near Barnsley.  He had a wife, Harriett and two children Sarah Eliza aged 3 and John aged 1.  Joe was born in Hoyland in 1879 according to the 1881 census (although 1911 minus 30 gives us 1881) where he is living with his parents William and Sarah on St Helen's Street.  He had a younger brother George who may be the man listed on the Hoyland Roll of Honour and the postcard Roll of Honour for the Elsecar Midland Working Men's Club on St Helen's Street.  Interestingly there is no mention of a J. Allott on either of these memorials or the memorial at Jump. I found Joseph's pre-war Militia enlistment records on FMP - he had enlisted in the York and Lancaster Regiment in 1902 but was immediately transferred to the Artillery.

Section of the Pension Card Ledger entry for Joseph Allott (WFA)

Joseph Allott was quickly found in the Pension Cards on the WFA website.  He was Joseph Allott Gunner 27656 in the Royal Field Artillery and he was discharged on 2 November 1915. His address was the same as in the 1911 census. There are more details on his card - he was paid 12/- for himself and 8/10 for his wife in 1921 for a few weeks for a 30% disablilty, and then reduced to 8/- and 4/8 for a 20% disability until September 1923. There are dates up to 1932 on his card but notes OK and No Action in the later years.  So if this is the same man Albert saw being shot Joe was severely wounded enough to be discharged but happily he did survive the war. Which is as we suspected after seeing him remembered on one of the Men Who Served panels of the Cortonwood Colliery Memorial.

I could not find Albert Gibson in the 1901 or 1911 census returns in Swinton or anywhere else for that matter.  However a likely hit turned up in 1891 in Rotherham Workhouse aged 8 with a sister Jane and a brother Benjamin. All three were born in Swinton. I was able to find the birth registration of Albert Gibson Bailey in Q1 1884 in the Rotherham Registration District (RD).  Both Jane Ann (b.Q4 1881) and Benjamin (b.Q1 1883) were also registered as Gibson Bailey. In November 1884 Jane Ann Gibson and Benjamin Gibson were baptised at the Parish Church in Swinton (baptism records on FMP).  Their parents were John and Ada Gibson of Swinton. John was a Glass Blower.  Oddly Benjamin and Albert were baptised again in 1898, this time from the Workhouse - their birthdates were given as 8 August 1883 and 23 December 1884 respectively.  Sadly Benjamin died in 1900 aged 17 in the Workhouse, but in the residence box someone has helpfully added 'formerly Bow Broom', which is an area of Swinton including Thomas Street where Albert Gibson lived before the war.  Just imagine, Benjamin was baptised aged 14 and died aged 17 - this suggests to me that he was sickly as surely they would have tried to find work for him before that?

Snip from the 1930 Ordnance Survey map for Swinton showing Bow Broom The road running top to bottom on the left is Thomas Street (from Old Maps)

This map snip shows the Bow Broom area of Swinton and the houses on Thomas Street. A later map includes the numbers and so I know that the lowest house shown here is number 40 and that the numbers run contiguously from north to south, not odds on one side and evens on the other.

I was able to find John and Ada in the 1881 census living at 8 William Street in Swinton. John was from Sunderland (which was an exciting moment as I was born in Sunderland!) and Ada was from Adwick, Yorkshire.  There is no record of them ever having married, which is no doubt the reason for their children being registered as Gibson Bailey.  Ada appears to have been a bit of a character appearing in court reports in the local newspapers in 1882 and 1886; on both occasions it was for fighting with another woman after a quarrel.  In the latter report Ada is Rotherham Workhouse, so we can assume that her children had been there from at least that date. There is no further sign of John Gibson but Ada Bailey married John Bloore in Q1 1891 (while her children were in the Workhouse!) and in the 1891 census return (5 April 1891) she is living with him at 16 Hicks Square, Glasshouse Road, Kilnhurst, near Rotherham and only two miles from Swinton. They already have one child, Harriet Ann aged 1 born in Kilnhurst. I am 100% certain this is the same woman as she gives her place of birth as Adwick and Harriet Ann's mother's maiden name is given as Bailey in her birth registration Q1 1890 in Rotherham RD.  I can find only one Ada Bailey of the right age born in 1862 in Adwick upon Dearne, to Charles and Emma Bailey.

Ada and John Bloor (also Bloore, Blower and Blewer) were living in Denaby Main at the time of the 1901 census by which time Sarah Ann, Polly and Mary had come along to join Harriett. Ada Bloor(e) continues to have an interesting life. She appears in the Mexborough and Swinton Times on 4 March 1905 accusing another woman of using obscene language towards her.

Obscene Language at Denaby Main

A lady who rejoices in the somewhat ill-fitting cognomen of Matilda Spruce, and who is described as a married woman, of Denaby, was summoned by another lady, by name Ada Bloore, for using obscene language towards her, on 21st February. The complainant stated that the defendant was always calling her filthy names, and that she wanted a stop putting to it. Defendant denied the insinuation that she used filthy language, stating that she was a respectable women. The Bench dismissed the case, whereupon the defendant, who only restrained her evident surprise and glee as "having won the day", with difficulty said: "Thank you sir, have I anything to pay?"  Upon being informed she could go, the defendant excitedly waved her "fur boa" in the air and exclaimed: "Three cheers", and merrily bounced out of court.

Despite her abandonment of her first three children in the workhouse (presumably after her desertion by John Gibson) I had hoped Ada found some happiness with John Bloor. Sadly it was not to be as he died in 1907 and by 1911 Ada is living with a John Hegin on Manningham Road in Attercliffe, Sheffield. This is definitely the right woman as the Hegins have Polly and Mary Blower living with them and Harriett Ann and Sarah Ann Blower are listed and then crossed out, all as step daughters - presumably because Ada gave her older girls names to the person who filled the schedule in for her (she signs with a x) before telling them that the two oldest were not living with her at that time.  Again I can find no sign of a marriage for Ada Bloor or Bailey to a John Hegin, but as the form was filled in by someone else and Ada was illiterate Hegin may be just as poor an intepretation of what was said at the time as Blower was for Bloor.

Having digressed to follow Ada around Yorkshire I must get back to Albert Gibson as he was the orignal object of this post.

In the 1918 Electoral Register an Albert Gibson is living at 39 Thomas Street in Swinton which is obviously very close to number 40, the address given in the newspaper article I first found. There are three other men at the address, Frank Arthur Waite, Leonard Hanking and William Abbott, although Abbott is marked as an Absent Voter in the Forces.  Albert is at the same address every year up to and including 1934, with various other occupants. In 1920 Grace Mary Abbott is listed there but no sign of  William Abbot, but Albert Gibson, Frank Arthur Waite, Leonard Hanking are there plus two other men. Grace Mary Abbott is still at 39 Thomas Street with Albert Gibson in 1934 and so is Frank Arthur Waite, now joined by Ethel Waite.  Albert would have been 50 years old by this time.

Section of 1939 Register for 39 Thomas Street, Swinton (from FMP)

Of course this turns out to have been all too simple ... at the same address in the 1939 Register I found Grace M Abbott apparently born 29 November 1852 and Albert Gibson born 22 November 1917!  There are two redacted names between these two people.  This cannot be the same Albert Gibson named in 1918 - he would have only been 1 year old!  And the birth day and month do not match that given in his workhouse baptism record. Is this a mistake? or his son? or a complete co-incidence?

1911 census for 40 Thomas Street, Swinton (edited to save space)

If Grace Abbott was indeed born in 1852 that made her 87 years old in 1939, which seemed a good age, so I thought I would investigate her.  Jackpot! In the 1911 census William and Grace Mary Abbott are living at 40 Thomas Street, Swinton, the very address Albert Gibson gives in the newspaper report in 1915. Grace Mary Abbott gives her age 57, which is within two years of the birth year of 1852 she reported in 1939. William and Grace say they had been married for 40 years and reported twelve (!) children to their marriage, of whom eight were still living in 1911. Only two of their children were still at home when the census was taken, but they also had two nephews living with them.

It seemed that despite the smallness of the house, with only four rooms declared, they managed to fit six people in somehow. This obviously continued for many years, but boarders/lodgers replaced children and nephews. An Albert Gibson appears to have lodged with them for many years, and Albert Gibson the soldier says he lived at 40 Thomas Street, but whether, over the years, it was the same man or two men with the same name, has not been demonstrated yet. 

One thing that may make sense is that the William Abbott who was an Absent Voter in the 1918 Electoral Register was probably the William Abbott jnr listed on the 1911 census as 13 years old.  I have mentioned before men aged 19 and over and in the Forces were also able to vote in 1918, so William jnr at 20 would have been listed.

For the sake of completness and with my fingers crossed I checked the 1901 census for Thomas Street. William and Grace Abbott are at 38 Thomas Street with five children. Grace gives her age as 48 years, that is born in 1852/3 in agreement with the 1939 Register.  William said he was 50 years old, but in 1911 he gave his age as 65.   That would have made him 72 years old in 1918, defintely too old to have been in the Services as an Absent Voter.

Remember this for later ... Jonathan Abbott aged 23 born in Normanton near Wakefield is living at 40 Thomas Street just two doors away.

It took a couple of looks for me to spot something strange ... in the 1901 census William and Grace's children are listed out of order and there is someone missing.  (in the lists below 'Do' means ditto)

William Abbott    Head    Married     M    50    

Grace M     Do     Wife    Married     F    48

Harriett       Do    Dau       Single        F    18

Sarah Jane    Do    Dau    Single        F    13

Albert         Do    Son      Single        M    19  (which has been over written in very heavy ink)

Hannah L    Do    Dau    Single        F    11

Edith L        Do    Dau    Single        F    8

I looked back at the 1891 census entry for the same family and found them at 38 Thomas Street in Swinton.

William Abbott    Head    Married    M    44

Grace     Do        Wife    Married    F    37

Thomas    Do       Son    Single    M    15

Jonathan    Do    Son    Single    M    13

Francis    Do        Dau    Single    F    10

Harriett    Do        Dau    Single    F    7

Grace        Do    Dau    Single    F    5

Sarah Jane    Do    Dau    Single    F    3

Amelia Eliza   Do    Dau    Single    F    1

Can you spot the difference?

(1) Where is Albert aged 9 in 1891?  If Albert is actually 10 in 1901 which would better fit the placing in the list, why has it been heavily written over as 19 to emphasise it?

(2) Where is William Abbott jnr in 1901, if he was 13 in 1911 he should be 3 in 1901?

I should comment on one of the girl's names - Amelia Eliza in 1891 becomes Hannah L in 1901 - that could just be transcription and enumerator error.

And look ... Jonathan Abbot who was living two doors away in 1901 is the right age to be their son shown as 13 in 1891 and ... both were born in Normanton. So by 1901 the Abbott family were occupying two houses, numbers 38 and 40.

I went back to check 1911.  The name of the person who filled in William and Grace's census form was Albert Edward Cook, he also filled in the census form for the house two doors away, where he appeared at the top of the schedule as 'Nephew' not the head of the household ... and this house was apparently also 40 Thomas Street!  A closer look suggests that actually William and Grace were living at number 38 according to the address information on the page following their return and number 40 was occupied by six men, four nephews and two boarders with, as we have noted, no head of household indicated. The name given on the address information was also W. Abbott. So the Abbott family was still occupying both houses and number 40 - the real number 40 was being used as a kind of lodging house.

Back to Albert ...

 

I hoped I wasn't on a wild goose chase ... but maybe William and Grace took Albert Gibson in as a lodger when he left the workhouse and the enumerator mistakenly listed him as their son in 1901. He wasn't have been living with them, in either house, in 1911, maybe because he had joined the army in 1903 and stayed on a bit longer than his seven years, but it seems to fit that in 1915 he gives the address of their second house, the lodging house, 40 Thomas Street as his home.

I needed to check William and Grace's children on the General Register Office (GRO) online index of births. I prefer to do this on the GRO because mother's maiden names are not recorded before 1911 on the FreeBMD or Ancestry indexes.

Let's take Harriett Abbott, she's in both census returns.

Born 1883 or 1884 in Bolton upon Dearne (which would be in the Doncaster RD)

Abbott, Harriet Robertson [mmn] Robertson

GRO Reference: 1883 J Quarter in Doncaster Volume 09C Page 722

Ok, now Sarah Jane Abbott, born 1888 in Swinton (which would be in the Rotherham RD)

Abbott, Sarah Jane [mmn] Robertson

GRO Reference: 1888 M Quarter in Rotherham Volume 09C 654

We have established that Grace Mary's maiden name was Robertson, and sure enough on FreeBMD I found the marriage of Grace Mary Robertson to William Abbott in the December Quarter (Q4) of 1872 in the Pontefract RD.  That makes Grace Mary Robertson 20 years old when she marries William, a very reasonable age.

Here's the crunch ... is there an Albert born to this family, surname Abbott mmn Robertson in either 1882 or 1891. This is what I found.

Tamar Howarth Abbott b.Q3 1872 in Pontefract

William Oath Abbott b. Q3 1874 in Pontefract

Thomas Robertson Hoult Abbott b.Q2 1876 in Pontefract

Jonathan Robertson Abbott b.Q2 1878 in Wakefield

Frances Tamar Abbott b.Q4 1880 in Barnsley Union

Harriet Robertson Abbott b.Q2 1883 in Doncaster

John William Abbott b.Q1 1885 in Rotherham

Grace Ann Abbott b.Q1 1886 in Rotherham

Sarah Jane Abbott b.Q1 1888 in Rotherham

Hannah Eliza Abbott b.Q2 1890 in Rotherham

Edith Elizabeth Abbott b.Q3 1893 in Rotherham

Eleven children born to William and Grace Mary Abbott - not the twelve they declare in 1911, but sometimes people counted miscarriages. No Albert! And no William Abbot jnr born in 1898.  We will never know for certain but it does look as if Albert Gibson could have been living with William and Grace Mary Abbott at 38 Thomas Street in 1901 and later in the other house they owned, the lodging house at 40 Thomas Street two doors away. 

When a stray child like William Abbott jnr turns up in the household of an older couple one common reason is that they have taken in a grandchild by a daughter to help her out. 

I haven't found deaths for Albert Gibson, or Ada Hugin/Bloor/Gibson/Bailey yet so their stories are not completely finished, but that is enough for today.  This has turned  into a mega post!

Thanks for reading.

References:

1939 Register, Find My Past, https://search.findmypast.co.uk/search-world-Records/1939-register, accessed 28 June 2020.

British Newspapers, Find My Past, https://search.findmypast.co.uk/search/british-newspapers, accessed 28 June 2020.

Commonwealth War Graves Commission, https://www.cwgc.org/, accessed 28 June 2020.

General Register Office, Online ordering service, https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/Login.asp, accessed 28 June 2020.

Long, Long Trail, 'Enlisting into the army', https://www.longlongtrail.co.uk/soldiers/a-soldiers-life-1914-1918/enlisting-into-the-army/, accessed 28 June 2020.

Pension Records, Western Front Association, https://www.westernfrontassociation.com/ancestry-pension-records, accessed 28 June 2020.

Sheffield Soldiers of the Great War, http://sheffieldsoldierww1.co.uk/Home.html, accessed 28 June 2020.

UK, Soldiers Died in the Great War, Ancestry, https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/1543/, accessed 16 June 2020.

The Brampton Parish Hall Roll of Honour - List of Posts

June 29, 2020, 3:13 am

≫ Next: Lister Beckett - Part 1 - father of Sidney Beckett Sokell a First World War soldier from Concrete Cottages

≪ Previous: Who was A Gibson? Where did he come from? Where did he live? I love a mystery!

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I have created a good number of posts in the past few months about the framed Roll of Honour recently rediscovered in the papers of the outgoing Brampton Parish Clerk.

This is an index to them for my reference and for anyone else who'd like to read them in order!

I made an initial Post about the memorial on my Commemoration and Remembrance website.

It has a full sized photo of the Roll of Honour taken by Andrew Taylor and a transcripton of the names.

If I discover any more facts about the memorial this page will be updated.

https://commemorationremembrance.blogspot.com/2020/02/brampton-parish-hall-roll-of-honour.html

Blog posts on 'A Barnsley Historian's View'

When (and if) I write more posts on the RoH I will add the links to this page.

(I'd like to write an academic article about the RoH, but I think I need to solve the mystery of where it came from first - but it that never happens I suppose it could still be an article, but it would be a bit open-ended.)

19 February 2020 Researching a Re-Discovered Roll of Honour: Brampton Parish Hall

http://barnsleyhistorian.blogspot.com/2020/02/researching-re-discovered-roll-of.html

26 February 2020 Brampton Parish Hall Roll of Honour, Cortonwood War Memorial and a Name Listed Twice in the Same Census

http://barnsleyhistorian.blogspot.com/2020/02/brampton-parish-hall-roll-of-honour.html

11 March 2020 Four brothers Moorhouse from the Concrete Cottages in Brampton who Served in the First World War

http://barnsleyhistorian.blogspot.com/2020/03/four-brothers-moorhouse-from-concrete.html

28 March 2020 Distant connection - the Brampton Parish Hall Roll of Honour

http://barnsleyhistorian.blogspot.com/2020/03/distant-connection-brampton-parish-hall.html

29 May 2020 The Brampton Parish Hall Roll of Honour Mystery - Where Did it Come From?

http://barnsleyhistorian.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-brampton-parish-roll-of-honour.html

16 June 2020 James and Albert Crawford First World War Soldiers from Concrete, Brampton

http://barnsleyhistorian.blogspot.com/2020/06/james-and-albert-crawford-first-world.html

21 June 2020  Possible Source of the Brampton Parish Hall RoH - The Guide Post Inn

http://barnsleyhistorian.blogspot.com/2020/06/possible-source-of-brampton-parish-hall.html

29 June 2020 Who was A Gibson? Where did he come from? Where did he live? I love a mystery!

http://barnsleyhistorian.blogspot.com/2020/06/who-was-gibson-where-did-he-come-from.html

Lister Beckett - Part 1 - father of Sidney Beckett Sokell a First World War soldier from Concrete Cottages

August 6, 2020, 11:27 am

≫ Next: Lister Beckett - Part 2 - His marriage to Elizabeth Haigh

≪ Previous: The Brampton Parish Hall Roll of Honour - List of Posts

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The saga of Lister Beckett has taken me four sessions to write, and has become more complicated than I ever imagined. Further questions became apparent during the writing requiring additional research. As a consequence I am going to split his story into more than one post. I am not as able to concentrate as I used to be, which is why I don't post very often any more, and now I have my wonderful academic studies to fill up my time as well, but researching this story presented some intriguing puzzles and has been very satsifying to write.

Part 1 - this post - Lister Beckett's birth and his parents

Part 2 - His marriage to Elizabeth Haigh

Part 3 - His relationship with Edith Sokell

Part 4 - His death and what happened next for his family

Those of you who have read my blogs before will not be surprised to learn that I have managed to link Lister Beckett to my husband and have, in the process, added the potential for connecting to many more First World War soldiers. According to my 'Family Historian' software: Nigel R. CROFT (my OH) is the great (x5) great-nephew of Charles HAWCROFT and Charles HAWCROFT was the husband of the great-aunt of the wife of Lister BECKETT.

This is a story of a man who had two 'wives'. Charged with deserting his first wife in Dewsbury, he was caught by the authorities playing cricket but claimed in court to be 'under the doctor' and thus unable to pay any maintenance! Lister's second family lived in Concrete Cottages in Wombwell after his death and his son Sidney served in the First World War and is remembered on the Brampton Parish Hall Roll of Honour, hence my initial interest.

Sydney Beckett named on the Brampton Parish Hall Roll of Honour (photo by Andrew Taylor)

One of the main things that intrigued me about this story is the difference in social class between Lister's first wife, daughter of an apparently comfortably off woollen manufacturer, and his second 'wife', daughter of a coal miner. None of my research has (as yet) supplied any answers to my questions about why Lister deserted one for the other ... and why this appears to have been socially accepted not only by the working class and cricketing communities in Barnsley but also by his family. It may be that our ancestors had a much more relaxed view of illegitimacy and unmarried cohibitation than we tend to imagine. This could have been because divorce was very difficult and very expensive before 1938, after which the new grounds of desertion were accepted and the number of divorces per year almost doubled. (See Rebecca Probert's 2015 guide to marital breakdown for family historians, which is listed in my references below for more information).

Lister Beckett's family has a well referenced page on WikiTree (https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Beckett-1060). The author is aware of the irregularity in Lister's marriages, but has not used (or had access to) the newspaper sources and local history resources that I have used to fill in more details of the background to his story.

Part 1: Lister Beckett's birth and his parents

On 22 January 1860 a boy was baptised Lister Beckett in St Mary's church in Mirfield, West Yorkshire. His parents were Adam Beckett, a clothier and Anne, his wife. They lived in Newthorp, Dewsbury.  Lister had been born on 7 July 1859. Six months seems a long time to wait to baptise a child, but looking down the pages of the baptism register he was not the only child of a similar age or even older. The vicar of St Mary's Mirfield seemed to have had a lot of late baptisms in his parish.

I can also see the baptisms of two potential siblings for Lister in the Ancestry West Yorkshire Parish records. Joseph Thackrah Beckett, was baptised on 28 June 1857 (born 13 April 1857) in the parish of Dewsbury, father Adam a clothier and living in Mirfield, and Jane Ann Beckett, was baptised on 17 May 1884 in the parish of St Phillip's, Dewsbury, father Adam a gentleman, living at Eightlands Cottage, Dewsbury.

Adam Beckett had married Ann (no 'e') Lister in Q1 1856 in the Dewsbury Registration District (RD) according to 'FreeBMD'.  I was able to find this marriage on Ancestry in the West Yorkshire records. It had taken place in the Parish Church in Dewsbury on 6 March 1856. Where the name of Adam's father should have appeared there was a remark: 'Declined to Answer'.  Both Adam and Ann's father, Isaac Lister, were recorded as clothiers. It seems safe to assume that Lister Beckett was named in acknowledgement of his mother's maiden name.

There is a tree on Ancestry for Adam's family. I am not in the habit of accepting the information in an online tree as fact, however I am happy to consult them in case they have spotted a connection I have missed. I always seek confirmation of the information by looking for primary sources such as parish records and/or census returns.

In this case the online tree showed that the reason for Adam not declaring his father at his marriage probably was because he was born in 1827 prior to his mother, Tallis Beckett (baptised Beckitt), marrying Joseph Thackrah in 1829. This would explain where Lister's older brother Joseph obtained his unusual middle name of Thackrah, he was named after Adam's step-father. Giving children surnames as middle names was not uncommon in the 19th century - I have several examples in my own family tree. I was able to confirm these circumstances by accessing (via Ancestry) Adam's baptism record from Dewsbury Parish Church on 25 July 1827 which only records his mother's name, Tallis Beckett, and the marriage register entry for Joseph Thackray and Alice Beckett, in Dewsbury All Saints (which is the parish church) on 12 January 1829. Neither Joseph nor Alice could write their names - both had signed the register with a X - so they would have been unable to check the way in which the minister had written their names. The only explanation of the name 'Tallis' I can find is that it is a habitation related surname meaning 'a clearing in woodland', so maybe Tallis Beckett was also named for a relative or ancestor's surname.

With the help of the above online tree I was able to find 1841 and 1851 census returns for Joseph Thackrah and his family. Although there was an interval of more than two years between Adam's conception and Tallis' marriage Joseph Thackrah appears to have accepted Adam into his family giving him his name and in 1851 recording him as his son. In this census return Adam's occupation was woollen spinner and Joseph Thackrah was a publican (I do love a pub connection!) at Daw Green, just to the south west of Dewsbury. Adam obviously knew that Joseph was NOT his father, otherwise he would have declared him when he married and not used his mother's maiden name. We have found an example of illegitimacy being socially accepted in shape of Lister Beckett's own father.

In the 1861 census returns Adam and Ann Beckett were living at the 'Albion Hotel' on Wormalds Row or Pattison Square in Mirfield with three children, Joseph aged 3, Lister aged 1 and Susan aged 2 months. Adam is 34 years old and an inn keeper rather than a clothier, possibly following in his step-father's footsteps. He has one live-in servant and a vistor on census night. The street names, Row and Square, suggested to me that neither place would still exist; in Barnsley names like that are indicators of 19th century close packed terraces and courts which were redeveloped in the early 20th cenury - but I checked on the maps.  There is an Albion Street on the 1893 map of Ravensthope near Mirfield which appears to lie in the correct area, between Raven House and Tanhouse (hint: page backwards and forwards from the census return showing the family of interest and note the street names either side of the one where your family lives). The 1889 'town plan' (1:500) shows an Albion Hotel at the corner of Albion Street on the main road (Huddersfield Road). This could have been the Beckett home in 1861. It no longer exists.

1889 1:500 Town Plan of Ravensthorpe, showing the Albion Hotel (Old Maps)

In the same census Joseph and Tallis Thackrah, Adam's step-father and mother, were living at 294 Middle Road, Daw Green, Dewsbury. This was the Saville's Arms public house. It could be the same place as the unnamed pub which Joseph Thackrah was running in the 1851 census. A study of trade directories or rate books might be able to prove if this was the case. It appears to have been a substantial building in the centre of a densely packed area, which had been, according to a 1837 trade directory entry on Genuki, a 'detached hamlet' as recently as 20 years previously (ie 1817).

1852 1;1,056 Town Plan of Dewsbury showing Saville Arms (Old Maps)

In this map snip from 1852 the Saville's Arms is in the centre of the image, just above and to the right of the 'N' ending the place name DAW GREEN coming in from the left. On a larger map the shapes of the roads it sits between are visibly more irregular than the surrounding geometrical blocks of back to back houses and names like High Street (the upper road), Middle Road and Lower Road suggest an original village core. If this is the orginal Daw Green hamlet the Saville's Arms could have been there before the town expanded around it. It had a long history  - the pub building could still be identified 100 years later on 1950s maps on the Old Maps site - although it had gone by the 1960s.

Joseph Thackrah had been widowed and was retired by the time of the 1871 census and was living on Barber Street near Eightlands with two adult children.

In 1871 Adam and Ann Beckett were living at the Railway Hotel on Bradford Road in Dewsbury. They now had seven children, Joseph Thackrah aged 13, Lister aged 11, John aged 7, Susan aged 9, Charles Henry aged 5, Tom aged 3 and Jane Ann aged 10 months. Adam had continued in the pub trade but moved to a larger establishement. He had one servant living in.  This location lay near the start of Northgate (using the paging back and forth method again) so I think I have located it on the 1890 town plan of Dewsbury. The Railway Hotel no longer exists, although the building behind it, the Cloth Hall Mills, is still visible on Google Maps (https://goo.gl/maps/HYfjWjUJhiUmvgp66).

1890 1:500 Town Plan of Dewsbury, showing Railway Hotel (Old Maps)

In 1881 Adam and Ann Beckett still were living at the Railway Hotel, Northgate. Six of the children listed in the 1871 census are at home with their parents. Adam is the inn keeper, with Joseph T, his eldest son, as inn keeper's assistant. The next two sons are both jeweller's assistants. One servant is living in. Lister Beckett has left home - his story continues in the second part of this lengthy blog.

At some point between 1881 and 1891, Adam and Ann moved to Eightland's Cottage. Their last child, Jane Ann, was baptised in 1884, at the age of 14 years, from that address. I can only assume they had retired from the pub trade and had used the money they had made to live in some comfort in their retirement. This is supported by the fact that Adam gave his occupation at Jane Ann's baptism as gentleman. It is not immediately obvious on a map but this location is up a steep hill from the town centre and is above the railway station. The house still exists and helpfully has its name on the gate post which can be clearly read on Google Maps.

1890 1:500 Town Plan of Dewsbury showing Eightlands Road (Old Maps)

Eightland's Cottage is the first house off Eightlands Road at the top right of the map. It appears to be divided into two houses, though (as you will see) it had been built to look like one large house. As the gateway with the post bearing its name is at the side with the triangular lawn I assume it is the second house, with the large lintel over the door. This sizable house (compare it to the back to backs further up the road to the left on the map) has good views across the town. I assume that being to the north the wind would have generally blown the smoke and dirt of the town centre in the opposite direction. This location of more expensive housing to the north and west of an industrial town can be observed in other places in Yorkshire like Sheffield and Barnsley.

The front of Eightland's Cottage on Google Maps

Joseph Thackrah, Adam Beckett's step-father, had also chosen to live at Eightlands after his retirement. In 1871 we found him on Barber Street which was the road on the second right up Eightlands Road beyond Eightland's Cottage.  He was still living there in 1881. It is possible that Adam chose to move to the area to support his step-father in his old age. Joseph Thackrah died in 1886 at the age of 79 years.

By 1891 Adam and Ann Beckett were living at 9 Crackenedge Terrace which was not far from Eightland's Cottage, directly north of Dewsbury's centre. Adam was 64 years old by now and 'living on his own means', in other words a pension or sufficient savings or investments to provide an income. Jane Ann, their daughter, who was 20 years old, was living with them. The houses in that area appear to have been extensively redeveloped now.

Adam and Ann Beckett moved again between 1891 and his death in 1895. Adam's funeral was reported in the Batley Reporter and Guardian on 22 June 1895, four years after the census return discussed above. Note that Lister Beckett attended the funeral.

DEATH OF A DEWSBURY GENTLEMAN

Yesterday, the remains of Mr. Adam Beckett, aged sixty-eight years, of Victoria Crescent, Birkdale Road, were interred at the Dewsbury Cemetery, in the presence of a large number of people. Deceased, who owned the Railway Hotel, in Bradford Road, retired from business many years ago, and resided for some time at Eightlands. He was of a quiet disposition, and highly respected by all who knew him. He died from the effects of an operation performed upon him. The chief mourners were Messrs. Joe Beckett (the present landlord of the Railway Hotel), Lister Beckett, John Beckett, Charles Beckett, and Tom Beckett (sons of the deceased). Joe Thackrah (Heckmondwike), C. Fearnsides, Ellis Greenwood, T. Exley, F. Bould, Joe Thackrah (Boothroyd Lane), Wm. Tunnicliffe, Walter Tunnicliffe, Harry Tunnicliffe, Fred Sykes, Herbert Walker and Dr. Hall. Beautiful wreaths and crosses were sent by Mrs. Joe Beckett, Mrs Greenwood, Miss Earnshaw, Mr. and Mrs. Joe Thackrah, Mr. and Mrs. Fearnsides, Mr. and Mrs. Tunnicliffe, Mr. Herbert Walker, Mr. and Mrs. S. Lyles, Mr. C. Thornes and friends, Mr. J. Whittles and family, and the Licensed Victuallers' Association. [...] Deceased leaves a widow and seven children, five sons and two daughters, to mourn their loss.

This appears to have been the funeral of a well known and well respected gentleman.  The houses on Victoria Crescent can still be seen today on Google Maps and are bay-windowed terraced houses of varying sizes surrounding a little grassy central area with mature trees. (https://goo.gl/maps/UyXcHpHn7pnEgjyJA).

1894 1:10,560 map of Dewsbury showing Victoria Crescent (Old Maps)

There is a reference in the newspaper report to Adam Beckett having lived at Eightlands for some time, which which tallies with the address given at his daughter Jane Ann's baptism in 1884. This is jumping back chronologically a little but the extra information to allowed me to track Adam and Ann's movements.  Note too that Adam's son Joseph was, at the time of Adam's death, the landlord of the Railway Inn, so he may have taken over from his father on his retirement.  In the Probate Calendar Indexes on Ancestry I noted that Adam Beckett left effects of £7076 12s 11d, this is worth roughly half a million pounds today.

So far I have demonstrated that Lister Beckett came from a line of publicans who were able to retire to live in comfortable circumstances in their old age. The report from Adam Beckett's funeral notes he was well respected with no suggestion of his own illegitimate birth. Lister's step-grandfather Joseph Thackrah had given Adam a home and his name, although Adam chose to revert to his baptismal surname of Beckett when he married.  The next section will look at how Lister appeared to settle into this comfortable class by marrying the daughter of a well off wool manufacturer.

References:

Ancestry - for census returns, parish records, probate records and electoral registers

Find My Past - much the same as Ancestry plus newspapers covering the whole country, but with parish records for the more eastern parts of Yorkshire

FreeBMD - a free index to births, marriages and deaths from 1837

Genuki - Dewsbury: Geographical and Historical information from the year 1837.

GRO Online Index - as FreeBMD but you have to create an account and helpfully shows mother's maiden names all the way back to 1837 unlike the FreeBMD index.

Index of English and Welsh Registration Districts - on the UK BMD site - a downloadable resource

The National Archives - Currency Converter - gives value of money in history by its purchasing power

Old Maps - very good map site with a variety of dates and scales. I hope adding links to the snips I have used covers me for copyright! My blog has no commercial links.

Probert, R. Divorced, Bigamist, Bereaved? (Kenilworth: Takeaway (Publishing), 2015).