What a terrible phrase: “A Base Child”. I looked it up to be sure, but it meant what I thought it did – a child born out of wedlock. People use phrases like “born on the wrong side of the blanket” in conversation, but to see the parish curate or vicar write something in the register seemed extraordinarily harsh, especially as the “sin” wasn’t the child’s.
My maternal great-grandmother’s immediate family lived in London, but her parents were both born and brought up in Devon in the Kingsbridge area and have roots going back several generations in Dodbrooke, Charleton and Stoke-Damarel.
Passenger liners were regularly criss-crossing the globe in the early 20th century – the British Empire on which the sun never set was still very much a thing. When you traveled from India to London or Australia to London, you didn’t go directly, either “calling” at a port to transfer mail and goods, or staying a couple of days before continuing the journey.
I started looking at newspaper accounts of voyages when I wanted to know a departure date – passenger lists had the arrival date and the port at which a passenger boarded, but not dates. What I saw was daily coverage of the movements of mail ships, liners and other traffic in newspapers around the UK – not just in the port cities.
Passing the Lizard
These lists stopped around the start of WWIII and were irrelevant thereafter, but provided fascinating insight into both getting or sending a letter or package then, plus the role of local newspapers for practical aspects of daily life, not just politics, sports and “celebrities”.
This world had its own lovely terminology – such as a headline “Ships Passing the Lizard” – and the tables with last times for mailing (to catch an outgoing ship) were massive matrices of places and routes.
Searching the 1939 register to find John Walden Poulson – the Wastrel – I located him in Brighton – a place we have no family connections (that I know of). “Elm Grove Home (temporary)” was noted by the street addresses on Vernon Terrace were I found the Wastrel’s name.
A little digging in old newspapers and web searches revealed that in 1930 The Brighton Poor Law Union handed over responsibility to the local council and only the elderly and infirm remained in the Elm Grove Home. In 1935, The Brighton Municipal Hospital took over the workhouse building and the Elm Grove Home residents were moved to vacant properties in the area. The era of workhouses and Poor Law Unions was ending.
John Walden Poulson – The Wastrel; my great grandfather – had so much going for him, but couldn’t seem to avoid turning every advantage into a tale of risk, broken promises, embezzling and very likely drinking and gambling. Some parts of his tale are very public (were covered in local newspapers), but lots of the details I’ll probably never know for sure. Today he might be diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but in the late 1800s even if there had been such a diagnosis, there wasn’t anything to be done other than watch a life unravel. Continue reading The wheels finally fall off for the Wastrel→
Some people know how to relax and have fun – and picnics are a wonderful way to do that. Some people bring their tensions and rigidity with them wherever they go, and not even picnics can help! This picnic is Clara Ann Williams (older woman) with her daughters Maisie (L of Clara), Sis (far L) and Billie (R in a scarf). Her granddaughter Muriel Maisie Beacon is sitting in her Mum’s lap, and if you look carefully, you’ll see there’s a kitten nuzzling with one of the other two women (friends, unidentified). I didn’t notice the kitten initially, but when cleaning up some of the image scratches and flaws, there’s a sleepy kitten nestling! Who takes a tiny kitten on a picnic? Continue reading Picnics are as loose or uptight as you wish→
My father had commented on this picture of his parents and Auntie Goggie in fancy dress that this was all his mother’s doing – his father just went along because Billie could be very persuasive! I never saw my grandfather in fancy dress and couldn’t imagine the man I knew could ever have permitted his face to be painted with a beauty spot or to be photographed in a costume like that. Yet there was the photo.
It wasn’t hard to imagine other people liking costumes – my mother, father and stepmother were actors – but Gamps…
My great aunt Maisie married Cedric Alfred Beacon in 1914. He was dead before I was born, but their story turns out to be quite a tumultuous one that I didn’t know much about until a week or so ago.
Cedric worked for a local store in Portsmouth, Wallace Ash Ltd., as a Publicist and Staff manager. On the marriage certificate, he’s a “Furniture Dealer” – not entirely false, but somewhat puffed up in my opinion.
Cedric’s dead father, listed on the marriage certificate as a Clergyman and in the newspaper announcement as “…the late Rev. A. A. Beacon, Ph.D., M.A., etc….” was variously a schoolmaster and Train Inspector (assuming this is the right Mr. Beacon; this is a tangled family tree).
Perhaps it is how someone behaves that matters, not a minor gloss over awkward details or a little bit of aggrandizement. By that yardstick, Cedric doesn’t fare well at all.
John Walden Poulson – The Wastrel – was my great grandfather and his first wife Polly (Mary Ann) was my great grandmother. After she died, he married Polly’s sister Emily, but ran off to Canada leaving his six children behind. It was only recently I learned that he had married a third time – no more children as Bertha was a 45-year-old widow when they were married.
Bertha Hollyer, neé Buckstone, John Walden’s third wife, came from a very famous theatrical family with sisters and brothers who followed in their father John Baldwin Buckstone’s footsteps and became actors. I have no pictures of Bertha, but based on pictures of two of her sisters, I’m guessing she was beautiful. He certainly didn’t marry her for money as there wasn’t any – her famous father had died when Bertha was 3 following a bankruptcy where he lost the lease of the Haymarket Theatre which he had run for over 20 years, in spite of the success of many of the plays he wrote as well as his own performances. Continue reading The Wastrel marries again – a widow from a well-known family→
Many of the family stories have some relationship to the place in which they occurred – Knottingley, Yorkshire, or Detroit, Michigan – or to what a house or location meant to the people in the story. Good vs. bad neighborhoods, city vs. country, showy and fancy vs. warm and cozy. Sometimes it helps to know how far apart or near each other people’s homes were – Google maps tells me that it would have taken Len (my maternal grandfather) 15 minutes to walk over to Winnie’s (my maternal grandmother’s) house. This picture is of a house I have very fond memories of – Little Snagbrook, where Jill & Sven, Tim, Kate and Clive (aunt, uncle and cousins) lived in the 1960s. This picture was from 2010 when I was lucky enough to (a) be allowed to walk around by the current occupant and (b) have a beautiful sunny day in September to light up all the old brickwork. Continue reading On the street where you live…→
Full disclosure: I’m not a cricket fan. I played in the back garden at home, but other than knocking rose buds off our Dad’s bushes, I don’t think I accomplished much. The slow pace, oddball terminology – such as silly mid off for a fielding position – and difficulty of knowing who is winning make it hard for newcomers to follow.
David, team Captain, Holmwood Park
Cricket does appear to have interested male Poulsons for generations though, starting with John Walden Poulson – the Wastrel – and his younger brother Thomas, both of whom played for the Knottingley Cricket Club (Thomas is second from right, back row). John Walden was captain of the Knottingley team (prior to life veering off the straight-and-narrow) – he took more than just a casual interest in the sport. That continued to his son – my grandfather, John Ernest Llewellyn Poulson – the bank manager, and grandson – my father, John David William Poulson, the actor/director – seen here looking very pleased with himself at his junior school, around 1938. Cricket has been supplanted by football with my brothers – three of them still play/coach as adults – although they all played cricket a little at school. Football, however, is more than just a casual interest… Continue reading For the love of cricket→
