An Eltham life that ended in a modest way..........the story of Ruth Pike, nee Patterson, 1782-1857

Mrs Pike grave, 1976

This is the grave of Ruth Pike in our parish churchyard.

It is located on the east side hard up against Well Hall Road and as graves go does not appear that remarkable.

Nor would we expect it to be so for this was one of the common plots and so resting here with Ruth were those with no family connections all of which suggests a life that ended in a modest way.

She was buried by the wall just one hundred and sixty-three years ago  and I doubt that there will be any one who now visit or tend the plot, and with the passage of time her story and her place in Eltham’s history has pretty much been forgotten.

But not quite because fellow historian Jean Gammons has brought Ruth Pike back out of the shadows and it is one of those stories well worth telling.

Her maiden name was Patterson and she married James Pike in 1809.  He was a widower and was also the postmaster for Eltham when the postal service was just beginning to take on its modern shape.

Eltham in the 1830s

His is a story Jean has already told* and so I rather think I shall stick with Mrs Pike, nee Paterson.

“Ruth was James Pike’s second wife and hers was a hard life.  

Her husband died in 1837  and towards the end of his life she practically ran Eltham post office, assisted only her friend Ann Lawrence who was the widow of an Eltham baker.

Her son had been apprenticed to the Pike’s who also ran a clock making business and when James Pike died he took over the firm along with the post office.

And sometime after this Ruth became a school teacher at the local school.”

Little enough I grant you for a life that was lived out over 75 years and its lack of detail stands yet again as testimony to how the lives of the modest and humble have gone unrecorded.

And even this would not have seen the light of day but for Jean’s work.

But history moves on and with each year new lines of enquiry open up as fresh documents are made available and so it is with Ruth.

A tax record for a Ruth patterson, 1805

Only today I found a series of tax records naming a Ruth Patterson of Eltham as paying tax for the years 1804 and 1805, which follow on from a series of other records for a Richard Patterson in the 1790s and yet more for another Richard Patterson in the mid 19th century.

Now I don’t know how common a name Patterson was in Eltham during the last decades of the 18th and into the next.  That will be a laborious task matching census returns, directories and parish records but is doable.

In the meantime it raises some intriguing questions about Ruth.  The sums she pays are not much but it is the fact that she is paying them which is important and marks out one more little detail.  She rented from a Nicholas Guilliard who also appears in the tax records from the 1790s through into the next century appears on the electoral roll in 1802 and is buried in the parish church seven years later.

The burial record of Mrs Pike, 1857

But as yet it is impossible to track where he held his Eltham land which in turn would tell us a bit more about Ruth. Still I know that he paid duties on the money he obtained for an indenture for the young apprentice Henry Roffey who he took on in 1787 and I am confident that more will emerge.

As will the details of Ruth’s life and that I think is a good point to close.

Pictures, the grave of Mrs Pike, 1978, the Eltham the Pikes would have known circa 1830, courtesy of Jean Gammons, Mrs Pike’s  death entry from St John’s parish records, courtesy of ancestry.co.uk, and the City of London Corporation Libraries, Archives and Guildhall Art Gallery Department, and the tax record of Ruth Patterson, courtesy of ancestry. co. uk, and London Land Tax Records. London, England: London Metropolitan Archives.

Original research By Jean Gammons

*It appeared in a series of short articles in the Eltham Society’s Journal.

At the vicar's jubilee in Eltham with Peter Wakeman in the field by the vicarage in the September of 1833

“in many of the homes of Eltham ..... so impressive were the demonstrations that took place [to commemorate his fifty years in office in 1833] that the children and grandchildren of those who witnessed them find to this day, a congenial theme for conversational purposes.”*

I still find it quite amazing that an event that took place in the September of 1833 could still be remembered so vividly over seventy years after it happened.

Of course it may well be that this has been exaggerated in the retelling, but I have no doubt that R.R.C Gregory who commented on the impact of the celebrations to mark the jubilee of the Reverend John Kenward Shaw Brooke’s tenure as vicar were accurate.

Mr Gregory was an excellent historian whose meticulous account of the history of Eltham is well researched and not apt to linger on the might have been.

John Kenward Shaw Brooke was vicar of St John’s in Eltham from the age of 24 in 1783 till his death in 1840.

Now that was indeed some record and that combined with his reputation resulted in John Fry’s newly built row of cottages taking on the name of Jubilee Cottages, a name they retained till their demolition in 1957.

And so to the celebrations which was held on the field by the vicarage behind the High Street.  Much of what we know of the event comes from a hand bill and a ticket of invitation which had sat behind a framed engraving of the vicar for seventy-five years.

One side was printed “1833. Eltham Jubilee, in commemoration of the 50th year the Rev. J.K. Shaw Brooke has resided within the parish as Vicar, universally beloved and respected” and invited “Peter Wakemean ... to partake on Thursday , the 5th day of September, of a dinner provided by public subscription in token of the respect and regard entertained the Vicar of the Parish Of Eltham, 1833
N.B. You are quested to wear this card with the other side in front, in a conspicuous manner, to attend on the day in the Court Yard and to bring with you a knife and fork.”

And that was what Peter Wakeman did for according to Mr Gregory “around the card are the needle marks to shew that it had been carefully sewn upon some conspicuous part of his attire.”

Along with the meal there was to be a host of activities including Gingling Matches, Scrambling for Penny Pieces, Eating Rolls and Treacle, with Dipping for Marbles, Dipping for Oranges, Climbing the Pole and Jumping in Sacks as well as  Hurdle Stakes and Flogging the Ball out of the Hole.

All of which was pretty straight forward apart from Gingling Matches which I discovered was  “an old English game in which blindfolded players try to catch one player not blindfolded who keeps jingling a bell”

And then as now the day was finished off with “A grand display of Fireworks.”

I suppose it might seem very tame but this was rural England at play, and these were the ways we would have entertained ourselves in the early 19th century.

Nor is this all, for the observant of you will have picked up on the fact that Peter had to provide his own knife and fork and that the meal had been provided by a subscription.

But in other ways our event looks forward for each guest had to bring proof of identity and wear it as both a way in to the event and as a means of securing their continued presence.

Our card may not be a smart device but it was nevertheless the way you proved who you were on the that September day.

I rather think I will now go off and search for Mr Wakeman for here I feel is yet another story.

Pictures;  from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm

*The Story of Royal Eltham, R.R.RC. Gregory 1909

As other saw us …… Mr. Greenwood and his superior map of Eltham, Woolwich and much else

Now this is one of my favourite maps of where we live.

Eltham, 1829-34

It comes from Greenwood’s "Atlas of the Counties of England, from Actual Surveys made from the Years 1817-1833".

Charles Greenwood was born in 1786 in Gisburn in Yorkshire, trained to become a surveyor and set up a practice in Dewsbury in 1815.

In the following year he began a survey of the county of Yorkshire, which was published in 1817, and a year later moved to London, with the intention of producing maps of the remaining counties of England.

These were to be produced at a scale of one inch to the mile for England and three quarters of an inch to one mile for Wales.

His intention was produce a set of forty two maps to be sold for 135 guineas.

But with stiff competition from other private map makers he reproduced the maps at a reduced scale and these sold in parts from 1829-1834.

Location; Eltham, from Greenwood’s Atlas

Picture; Eltham, from Greenwood’s Atlas, 1829-1834, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

Voting in the General Election at Eltham in the November of 1837

In the November of 1837 the electorate of Eltham went to the polls.  

Well Hall in 1844 with Well Hall House a

All 67 of them, which if my sums are correct represented just over 13% of the adult male population and 6% of the entire adults in Eltham.

This did not compare well with some other places.  In the smaller rural township of Chorlton-cum-Hardy just 4 miles from Manchester the figures were 16% and 9% respectively which was better than the national average which in 1833 stood at just 7% of the adult population.

Worse still only 35 of the 67 lived in Eltham and those who didn’t passed most of the year in places like Chorley in Lancashire, Corbridge in Northumberland and Swinthrop in Yorkshire and even where their residences were in the south they were across the Thames on the other side of London.

And stating these figures is important given that only men had the vote and the qualification to vote was tied to property.  Some of our Eltham electors were tenants and this compounded potential inequality.

In an age when voting was still conducted in the open there was always the possibility of intimidation.  A tenant would cast his vote under the watchful eye of his landlord and the tradesmen would share his political choice with all his customers.

In General Elections the powerful made it known who their favoured candidates were and it took great courage for electors to ignore that stated preference.

Eltham Street now the High Street, 1844, Samuel Jeffyres lived near 309

The 1832 Reform Act may have been greeted by some as an attack on privilege and out moded electoral practices and it did abolish some of the more indefensible ways of electing MPs, widen the electorate to some of the middle class and give the great northern towns of manufacture a representation in Parliament.

But is also deprived some working people of the vote, continued to ignore women  and “if there was less rioting and less bribery at an election, there was still much bribery and more intimidation and election day was still a carnival which usually ended in a fight.” *

So just two years earlier in 1835 in South Lancashire the Tories claimed the Whigs owed a “very great proportion of their votes to the direct interference of the [Whig] Earls of Derby, Sefton and Sheffield “and “200 votes were given to Lord Molyenux and Mr Wood at Ormskirk because Lord Derby had expressed his sincere good wishes in their favour” **

This may well have been the case but pales in comparison with the actions of the Tory landowners to their tenants.  According to the Manchester Times & Gazette, *** Thomas Joseph Trafford of Trafford Park instructed his tenants to vote for Lord Frank Egerton & Wilbraham while Lord Wilton followed the same practice, instructing his tenants to vote for Lord Egerton and use their second vote for the candidate of their choice.

 In Stretford all but one of Trafford’s tenants voted the Tory party line. The level of potential intimidation was all too clear from the one tenant who refused to follow the line.  He expected “in the spirit of the olden times, to hear of Tory vengeance.” 

Now much research has to be done on the Eltham result of 1837 because our 67 electors did not march with the general swing of things in the great big constituency of West Kent.

Election result for West Kent, 1835

Five years earlier the Whigs had swept to power on the back of the Reform Act but a combination of Tory fight back and a slowdown of the pace of reform made the Whigs look tired and over confident.

And so the Tory Party made gains in both the 1835 and ’37 General Elections.

In West Kent the two seat constituency elected a Whig and a Tory, but in Eltham the vote went overwhelmingly to the Tory candidates.

Election result for the Eltham Division of West Knet, 1837

Now this we know because the choices the 67 made were recorded in the poll books.

Our old friend Samuel Jeffryes used both his votes for the Tories as he did again in 1847.

So matching the electorate to their landlords and charting the political preferences of these great landowners will be revealing.

But one should be careful. Intimidation is more likely to work on the small tenant farmer or shop keeper and men like Samuel Jeffryes who styled himself “gentleman” and eventually retired to Westminster to live may just have voted as his conscience dictated.

We shall see.

Location,; Well Hall, Eltham, London

Pictures; Well Hall and Eltham Street in 1844 from the Tithe map for Eltham courtesy of Kent History and Library Centre, Maidstone, http://www.kent.gov.uk/leisure_and_culture/kent_history/kent_history__library_centre.aspx

*Young G.M., Portrait of an Age Oxford University Press 1953 Page 28
** The Hull Packet January 30 1835
*** Manchester Times & Gazette January 3 1835
****Thomas Joseph Trafford 1778-1852, owned Trafford Hall and land in Trafford and Stretford

Of letters, and postmasters in the Eltham of the 19th century

Eltham in the 1830s

I am back with the post office in Eltham and in particular two men who straddle the history of letters, parcels and other odd things sent by the postal service.

James Pike and James Lawrence were the postal service in Eltham for a big part of the 19th century and their stories have been unearthed by Jean Gammons and so I shall hand over to her.

“James Pike was Eltham’s postmaster for perhaps forty years.  He was a clockmaker and his house was in the High Street.  

Very little is known of him and the earliest reference is a record of the death of his first wife in the parish records in 1798.  I could find no record of his birth or his marriage to Elizabeth so he may not have been an Eltham man.

He remarried in 1809 when he was 49 to a young woman from Eltham called Ruth Patterson.*

She was some twenty years younger than him and the records show they ran the post office together.

This was on the High Street just up from the old Chequers inn.  They would have conducted the business of the postal service from a room in their house and people waited outside in the street to be served through a window.”

Burial entry of James Pike, June 1837

James died in the June of 1837, and was buried in the parish churchyard.  

His wife Ruth survived him by twenty years, but the business was taken over by James Lawrence whom the Pike’s had taken on as their apprentice in their clock making business.2

He had been born in Eltham in 1819 and we can follow him from the 1841 census when he was listed as watch maker through the next four decades.  By 1871 while he may still have had a connection with the clock business he lists himself simply as postmaster.

This was an important time in the development of the Post Office.

Looking towards the parish church

The year before “the post office had taken over the private telegraph companies and James Lawrence must have been very proud when his eldest son, then a lad of just 13 became one of the Post Office’s first Telegraph messengers.  

In 1876 Eltham’s little post office was upgraded to a Head Post Office and Lawrence was placed in charge of all the smaller post offices in the Eltham district with an overnight salary rise from £31 to £60 a year.

But his office was still at no 54 High Street in the old shop where it had been since the 18th century, roughly where the milkman’s cart is seen in the picture."

The Post Office is roughly where the milkman's cart stands

All of which takes us into a new and bold period in the history of Eltham and its postmasters.

Pictures, of the High Street in the 1830s, and in 1909 courtesy of Jean Gammons and Mr Pike’s burial entry from St John’s parish records, courtesy of ancestry.co.uk, and the City of London Corporation Libraries, Archives and Guildhall Art Gallery Department

*Another Eltham life brought out of the shadows, the story of Ruth Pike, nee Patterson, 1782-1857

Wishing you were here ........... Eltham in the past nu 3 the old vicarage 1833

The caption says "The Old Vicarage as seen from what is now Sherrard Road.  In the distance the Church. 

On the right the old Chequers Inn. 

Date 1833.  The shops on the immediate right are still in existence.”

And that is pretty much all you will get today, except to say that “today” was 1909 and back in 1833 Sherrard Road where it joins Eltham Hill was the start of Well Hall Lane, but that is another story, for another time.

Picture; the old vicarage, from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm

As others saw us, Eltham in 1831

Now whenever I want to get a sense of somewhere in England in the 19th century I turn to Samuel Lewis’s Topographical dictionaries.

Eltham Hill, from an engraving, 1778

First published in 1831 it  provided a description of all English localities as they existed at the time of first publication.

It showed exactly where a particular civil parish was located in relation to the nearest town or towns, the barony, county, and province in which it was situated, its principal landowners, and the diocese in which it was situated.

It also and this was new, named the Catholic district in which the parish was located along with  the names of corresponding Catholic parishes.

There were six subsequent editions, the last of which (1848-9) was in four volumes and an atlas.

“The village [of Eltham] is irregularly built, but contains many handsome houses, and the environs abound with noble mansions and elegant seats; Shooter’s hill so name from its having been anciently used for the practise of archery, and on which a singular triangular tower has been erected, by his lady, to the memory of Sir William Daines, Bart., is celebrated for the beauty of its situation and the extent and variety of its prospects; on its summit has been erected one of the telegraphs communicating between London and Dover.

The parish is within the jurisdiction of the court of requests held weekly at Greenwich, under an act passed in the 47th of George III [1808] for the recovery of debts not exceeding £5.

The living is a discharged vicarage, in the archdeaconry and diocese of Rochester, rated in the books at £3.2.6., endowed with £400 royal bounty, and in the patronage of Sir Gregory Page Turner, Bart.

The church is dedicated to St John the Baptist, is a plain edifice, with a spire.

On the summit of a hill south by east from the town, are the remains of a Roman camp.

Dr William Sherard the celebrated botanist resided here in the early 18th and cultivated a botanical garden.”*

And for those who want to read more the volumes are available on line

*A Topographical Dictionary of England, Samuel Lewis, Vol 2 1831

Picture; A view near Eltham in Kent, printed in London by R.Sayer & J.Bennett, December 1778, courtesy of Jean Gammons

Visitation of God or manslaughter, the death of John Bradshaw in Eltham in 1837

Rural communities have never been the peaceful idyllic places some would have us believe.

In just a short two decades, the small township of Chorlton-cum-Hardy experienced two murders, a series of daring burglaries and two cases of infanticide.

There were also groups of violent drunks from Manchester who persistently intimidated the local residents and just a mile or so away passengers on packet boats travelling along the Duke’s Canal from Stretford were pelted with stones.

Some of the crimes were opportunistic, others like the poaching of potatoes from the fields on the northern side of Chorlton were organised by gangs who came in from Hulme equipped with wheel barrows and their own sacks.

From the Times February 1 1837

And then because the southern end of the township opened out onto the flood plain and was relatively remote it was perfect for illegal prize fighting which could attract hundreds who if necessary could escape over the Mersey into Cheshire and thereby evade the Lancashire police.

All of which makes me think that the drunken attack on the landlord of the Castle in Eltham High Street in the January of 1837 will not have been an isolated case.  Indeed just a few months later an armed gang of escaped convicts from Woolwich were apprehended trying to make for the woods to the south of Shooters Hill.*

Now there is a danger in elevating two events into a crime wave, but I rather think it is just that we haven’t looked too closely at the newspaper reports or the Quarterly Sessions.

And so back to Mr John Bradshaw, late of the Castle in the High Street and the story of John Foster who came to the assistance of the landlord.

Like so many nice tales of the past its telling emerged from a chance discovery of a newspaper report of the inquest into Mr Bradshaw’s death and the work of my new chum Jean who is a descendant of John Foster.**

The Foster’s ran the smithy in the High Street and were well respected that stories of old Mr Foster were still circulating into the town almost a hundred years after he first arrived from Carlisle.

The Castle in 1909

The story itself is not an unusual one, a drunk by the name of Lucas fell foul of the landlord who ordered him out and in the subsequent scuffle Mr Bradshaw was hit and fell over.

And this was where the young John Foster came into the story attempting to remove Lucas from the pub not once but twice.

In the meantime Mr Bradshaw had died and the medial opinion was his death had been “caused by a sudden fit or a convulsion of the brain, produced by a fall.  His death must have been instantaneous.”***

The inquest was held in Mr Bradshaw’s pub which was a common enough practice, given that after the church the only other public place large enough would have been the school house or a pub.

Now I have come across quite a few inquests from the period and what I always find fascinating is that they provide a rare opportunity to hear ordinary people, many of whom have not left a scrap of written material about themselves or their times.

And so here we have John Foster, along with John Heritage and Mrs Bradshaw speaking directly to us of the event that happened that night.

Nor is that all for in the course of the inquest other people are mentioned all of whom it should be possible to track down.

But most striking is the clash between the coroner and the Jury.  He was satisfied and said so that the death was “by the visitation of God” rather than at the hand of Lucas which conflicted with their verdict “That the death of the deceased was caused by over excitement, produced by the conduct of James Lucas.”

Remarkably the Coroner refused to accept the verdict, directed them to think again and when by a majority they returned the same decision commented “I cannot agree with you that your verdict is a proper one. [and was] bound to order you all to appear at the Criminal Court and take the onion of the learned judge whether I am bound to receive such a verdict, which is in direct opposition to the evidence.”

This is a judgement by the Coroner made all the more odd given one witness reported that it was Lucas’s blow to Mr Bradshaw which had resulted in the fall and subsequent conclusion commented on by the surgeon.

Now unlike other inquests I have written about we do not know who the jurors were and that is a pity because they appear to have been a resolute bunch prepared to stand up to the Coroner.

So much so that the foreman was moved to comment that “If we are obliged to attend without returning our verdict, I am quite at a loss to know what use it is to call jury.  For my part I have come to the determination to return no other verdict.”

All of which makes me feel for these “little men” who were prepared to stand their ground against the professional with all his authority.

Now that could just be the end of the story but not quite.  John Bradshaw was buried in the parish church and there will opportunities to pursue the lives of the others mentioned in the inquest.

And so to Lucas.

From the court records, 1837

A search of the criminal records revealed that a James Lucas aged 51 went before the Kent Assizes on January 30th 1837 for manslaughter and was acquitted.

There is of course a slight mismatch in dates.  The inquest report is dated February 1st and the hearing was the day before.  But given that the Times reported that the inquiry was adjourned until the following evening when the Coroner had consulted a higher authority “as to whether I can receive your verdict” it may well be that the jury was once again ignored.

As it was James Lucas was in Well Hall in 1841, a widow living with his two daughters, Harriet aged 14 and Emmie aged 12.  His given occupation was a sawyer and so now a new search begins, for information on his wife Sarah and perhaps some of the other people named in the inquest who may well have worked with him.

*Convict Chase and Capture, the Times May 8th 1837
**Tragedy at the Castle Inn, Jean Gammons and based on a report in The Times February 1st 1837
***evidence of Mr David King, surgeon

Picture; The Castle Inn from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/ 

Sorting Eltham's letters at Blackheath in 1830

A short series looking at the story behind the picture.

Back in the 1977 my friend Jean gave a  talk on the postal service in Eltham during the 19th century which she later turned into a set of articles published in the Eltham Society magazine.

“This is the building in Dartmouth Row, Blackheath which was the sorting office for Eltham and all the surrounding districts from the mid 1830s.

This was where the people of Blackheath would have bought their Penny Blacks in 1840 or a 'Twopenny Blue'- the world's first postage stamps in 1840”

The Penny Black was the world's first adhesive postage stamp used in a public postal system. It was issued in Britain on 1 May 1840, for official use from 6 May of that year.

All London post offices received official issues of the new stamps but other offices throughout the United Kingdom did not, continuing to accept postage payments in cash only for a period.

It was still a post office in 1977 but today is a private residence.


Picture; the sorting office on Dartmouth Row in 1977 and text from Jean Gammons, and The Penny Black fro Wikipedia Commons

Finding one of those rare relatives who had the vote in 1832 .............. more records go online

Now if you want to find out if your ancestor voted in the 1830s then the Poll Books and Directories are the first port of call.

James Brundrett, a man with a vote

They are the records of all who were eligible to vote, will offer up how they qualified to vote and can also show who they voted for.

Not of course that any of mine back in the 1830s voted.

I am fairly confident that  all of our lot will not have qualified for the vote for another fifty-four years and it would then still be another thirty-four before some of the women in the family could take part  and not till 1928 that all my female ancestors had a vote in General Elections.

All of which puts the idea that we were a parliamentary democracy into perspective.

That said these Poll Books and Directories are immensely useful to anyone wanting to know about the history of where they or their family lived.

Not all have survived and those that have can be scattered across the country in reference libraries and local studies centres.

But more and more are on line.  Ancestry has been adding them and now today Findmypast has announced that they too now offer up the opportunity to “search through over 62,000 records to discover who your ancestor voted for in the election of 1830. This valuable census substitute can also include details of their occupation, residence, religious beliefs and even a short biography.”

James Bracegirdle, another who could vote

So even if yours like mine could only watch as the small group of electors cast their votes in the open the records allow you to dig deep into an area.

Here in Chorlton-cum Hardy in 1835 only 31 men in the township were entitled to vote which represented just 16% of all men over the age of 21, and 9% of the entire adult population. This was still better than the national average which in 1833 stood at just 7%.*

They were a mixed bunch of freeholders and tenant farmers.

And armed with their names it is possible to cross check them against the rate books, the tithe schedule, land and tax assessments  and census returns.

So as well as Chorlton I have wandered through Eltham where I grew up  and worked out who voted there which just leaves me Peckham where I was born to search.

And for anyone wanting to learn about those 31 Chorlton electors, they are all well documented in the book on Chorlton-cum-Hardy. **

Pictures, two Chorlton electors, Jeremiah Brundrett and James Bracegirdle from the Wesleyan Handbook, 1909, 

*Britain in the Nineteenth Century 1815- 2005, 2005, Chris Cook

**the Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 2012, Andrew Simpson, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/the-story-of-chorlton-cum-hardy.html