In 2007 I spent some time with Ancestry and the census records for family on both sides of the pond. There were all sorts of interesting bits and pieces I was able to unearth about Sznarwakowski, Tibstra, Poulson, Jenkins, Forster, Williams, Shepherd and other parts of our family trees. Given the time limits on release of some data – such as census records, which are held for 100 years in the UK and 72 in the US – I soon ran out of available online information and moved on. Even so, I had found stories of my great grandfather, John Walden Poulson (Gamps’ dad) who was twice married and then ran off to Canada in 1910 leaving his second wife and six children. On Jeffrey’s side of the family, I found passenger lists for both his father’s and mother’s families, part of the great wave of migration to the US. To Detroit in Papa’s case and Chicago in Nana’s.

As new information has since become available, I started looking again this year and have been amazed to find more scandal surrounding John Walden Poulson – a third wife, embezzlement and prison time for fraud! – and a few more fun, sad and quirky stories about others in the family. The British Newspaper Archive has been a great source of additional information, not only about the Poulson clan in Knottingley, Yorkshire, but also a young actor & actress in weekly rep (David Poulson & Yvonne Forster), and how Peter Goss (my godfather) and David Poulson built up the New Theatre in Bromley, Kent, starting in 1955. I also found Nana’s high school yearbook photo from 1949 and the details of when Papa’s older brother George ran off and married a young lodger they had staying (and he lied about his age as he was under 21 at the time)!

I thought a way to make some of this accessible is make blog posts of some of the stories, rather than putting a whole story (or as much of it as can be pieced together this long after it happened) into one hard-to-digest narrative.

I’ll start with a small story about my “Upstanding Edwin” great-great-grandfather (Gamp’s grandfather) and you’ll soon see the need to attach nicknames to the cast of characters. At one point it seemed that there were a handful of names shared by so many people it was mind-warping to keep track – plus when telling the stories to Jeffrey, he often lost the thread until I added the nicknames – “my wastrel great-grandfather” (Gamps’ dad, the notorious John Walden Poulson).

Upstanding Edwin is Edwin Llewellyn Poulson who was born (1846), lived, and died (1925) in Knottingley, Yorkshire. That’s in the West Riding – one of the thirds of the county – and along with Ferrybridge, the town next door, was a center of ship building and supporting trades as the River Aire was navigable out to the North Sea.

Edwin and his older brother Thomas took over the family pottery (earthenware – nothing fancy) from their father Walden Poulson. Thomas Poulson did well and Edwin improved on that after Thomas died (1893), but the family politics seemed to be rooted in the experiences of a community that had to work hard to achieve – Edwin was for a long time involved with the local Liberal Party – rather than with the upper classes (in what was still a very class driven society).

One of Edwin’s community roles was as a justice of the peace. In this story, not only did I agree with my great-great-grandfather that this was despicable, but I learned a new word – mottying – and that coal miners were paid by weight, not hours worked. In a later story about a different case, I learned that the miners had to pay the salary of the worker who weighed their tubs of coal! Employment conditions in the early 20th century were brutal.

This is from the Sheffield Daily Telegraph from 5 May, 1924

STAMPING OUT MOTTYING.

The Pontefract West Riding Bench have for some time consistently sent to prison miners convicted of “mottying”—placing their numbers on tubs of coal filled by other men—and on Saturday they expressed their determination to stamp out, if possible, what the Chairman (Mr. E. L. Poulson) described as a “most contemptible, underhand, mean, and low trick.” They doubled the usual penalty and committed Richard Evans, a Knottingley miner employed at the Glass Houghton Colliery, to two months’ hard labour. Defendant, charged with attempting to obtain 2s. 6d. by this practice, had been 19 times previously convicted, once for false pretences.

It’s worth noting that 2s. 6d is half a crown – or one eighth of a pound. In 2018 money, that would be about £7.50!

I’ll next post with some more about the cast of characters, with pictures where possible. Edwin died a year before my father was born, but Upstanding Edwin helped my grandfather get his first job post World War I (Gamps had been a gunner in the Royal Field Artillery), so my sense of connection with Edwin largely stems from him being one of the few family members that helped my grandfather, his sister Goggie (the registered nurse who saved me from my Dad’s inability to make a bottle to feed an infant) being the other. The rest were mad, dead, on another continent or crooks! More details to come anon…

A note about the family group on the beach in Scarborough; the smiling woman standing at the back, 3rd from the left, is my grandmother (Gamps’ wife). The year after they were married (in Portsmouth), they traveled to have her meet Edwin and the Yorkshire family – minus the Wastrel John Walden Poulson who was in London on the run from the law…