What has family history ever done for any of us ………..?

 Now I ask that question not to offend anyone and certainly not to rubbish countless people including friends as well as my own sisters who have given up endless hours trawling the internet, reviewing dusty archives and standing in quiet churchyards confronting the graves of long dead ancestors.

Unknown and undated family member

And as someone who has done my share of all those things I understand the fascination to know who we are by knowing something of those in our family who went before us.

The journey often throws up tragedies, a fair few mysteries and some lost relatives.

During my research, I not only solved one dark secret, but uncovered a few more yet to be solved and discovered a new and exciting area of historical research. *

But all of which should come with a health warning, like the time on a warm sunny Saturday morning when I received one of those familiar family birth, marriage and death certificates which tell you so much about your chosen relative.

In this case that sunny Saturday became a whole less bright and sunny when the death certificate revealed that a brother of my great grandma Eliz had committed suicide with a cutthroat razor. The shock mingled with an overriding sense of voyeurism that I was somehow intruding on a family tragedy stopped me in my tracks.  This was not some light breeze into the corners of a relative’s life  but something very sad and dark.

And it raised the question of why do it, why burrow deep into  the lives of people just because they were once family and because I could courtesy of the internet?

Uncovering their stories, undated

More so because some will have spent a lifetime burying those secrets away from the gaze of loved ones, family and friends.

I always did and still do justify it by trying to place them in the context of where and when they lived and by so doing try to understand how they fitted into the bigger picture.

In the past that had led me to stop digging around the 1830s.  This was not an arbitrary decision but based on the official registration of births deaths and marriages in 1837 and the first fully accessible census return of 1841 which offers up details of when and where people were born and later lived, along with their occupations, and family members.

It was a decision which made sense, because they were easily found by searching genealogical platforms and it fitted with my own interest in the Industrial Revolution.

And so, I had rather answered that question of what had family history ever done for any of us, because it allowed me to better understand the great sweep of history by seeing how my family made all of it work.

"............ I have thrown away the scabbard"

Not for me that fruitless and questionable quest to discover if one of mine had fought at the Battle of Hastings and by degree had been rewarded by stolen English land or punished for not stopping that arrow that may have wounded Harold.

But now I have joined the quest because having known we originated in the east Highlands and were a member of a clan I have begun to wonder if we were mixed up in that disaster that was the battle of Culloden.  

It was indeed a disaster for many of the Highlanders who followed the fop who aspired to win back the throne for the Stuart’s. The defeat led the Young Pretender to scuttle back to Rome leaving those who had followed his vain glorious and misjudged gamble to be harshly punished by the authorities.

The Highland charge at Culloden, 1746

 I had  grown up with the stories from my uncles, two of whom fought with the Black Watch and listened to the Jacobite laments but the realities of the defeat had turned me against all things Culloden.

The Royalist army stand firm, Culloden, 1746

Until having done the ancestral DNA test which confirmed where we came from and rediscovering old family trees that took us back to a John Simpson born in the Highlands in 1780 I just wonder.  

He was born just thirty-five years after the battle, and so will have grown up with family members who might well have talked in hushed tones about the defeat and may even have known that his father participated.

It is a tad romantic especially given the daft nature of the Stuart attempt and the subsequent vengeance which settled on the Highlands and I guess is all most impossible to fulfil, but I wonder if we could get close to uncovering our part in the events of 1745-6.

Well we shall see, and despite the heaps of rabbit warrens I might vanish down I think it would be fun and end up with me deciding family history can do a lot for us.

Uncle George in the uniform of the Black Watch, 1918

Location; Our family

Pictures;  Unknown and undated family member and George Bradford Simpson 1918, from the Simpson collection, uncovering their stories,  undated courtesy of Ron Stubley "Gentlemen he cried, drawing his sword, I have thrown away the scabbard", from Scotland's story: a history of Scotland for boys and girls, , and The Battle of Culloden, David Morier, 1746

*British Home Children, the growing historical study of young people migrated from Britain and other parts of the old British Empire by the Poor Law Unions, and children’s charities. One of these was a great uncle of mine.

Travels with my DNA ……. history ….. geography …. and a lost Simpson

 When you do family history sooner or later you embrace the DNA test.

Where we woz from

I first began seriously researching the family history almost 20 years ago but only dipped into the DNA search to all things genealogical in December.

My late arrival was partly down to the cost of taking the test, but also a slight mistrust of the process and I suppose a big dollop of old-fashioned scepticism.

The scepticism arose out of that simple observation that I had done pretty well with dusty records and family memorabilia which had brought forth a heap of new ancestors, the uncovering of several mysteries, more than a few “lost relatives” and a whole new field of historical research.

That new field was the study of British Home Children who were those young people migrated to Canada and other parts of the old British Empire from Poor Law Unions and children’s charities.

And from there I explored one of Manchester children’s charity which in turn led to writing a book on its history.

But one of my Canadian cousins was keen for me to join her in the DNA journey and it has been interesting.

It confirmed that I am a Celt, with origins starting in the Highlands and Central Scotland and moving by degree into the Northeast of England which came from my father and the Midlands courtesy of mum.

Along the way it minimized the German side of the family and trashed the notion that a bit of us had originated on the sub-continent.

George Bradford Simpson, circa 1918

So pretty much as the census records and family tradition had already established.

Of course, there is also the opportunity to connect with others as Ancestry offers up possible relatives with matching DNA and in following up the connections have found some with elements of their family tree, replicating mine.

And then there was a suggested link to a  lost “first cousin once removed or half first cousin”.  Now technically he wasn’t lost.  I knew of his existence but had never spoken to him or even where he lived.

As you do, I reached out and yes, he is the son of my cousin Mary which has been a pleasant surprise to both my sisters and my kids.

Willian Ferguson Fergus Simpson, circa 1914

At which point I could launch into a detailed description of how that DNA test is reflected in my own research, the stories from my parents and uncles along with a treasured family tree produced by Uncle Fergus and shared with me and my “first cousin once removed”.  But I won’t.  One person’s fascinating family story is another person’s yawn.

Instead, I reflect that the DNA test has confirmed what I already knew about where we came from, making me one of those indigenous peoples who were here in these islands before the Romans and those upstart Anglo Saxons.

To which some in England will mutter “go back to your ancestral home”, which would be both prejudiced and unfair given that the maternal side of me has strong connections with both the west and east Midlands.

In time the journey back to Germany via my German grandmother may offer new sides to the family.

But for now I shall close with the knowledge that Marisa one of my Canadian cousins will be pleased that I have finally taken up her suggestion to “do the test Andrew”   and have shared with my kids and sisters the slightly odd, bizarre and maybe misleading “94 traits” which are most likely or unlikely to be in my make up.  Some are laughable and don’t match us, but alas male hair loss seems to fit the bill, to which one of my son’s replied “thanks dad something to look forward to”.

To which the only answer might be "its in the DNA, next July we'll reveal  it all"*

Location; in the Ancestry DNA lab

Pictures; confirmation by map of our Celtic origins, courtesy of Ancestry, Uncle George in the uniform of the Black Watch circa 1918, and Uncle Fergus in the uniform of the Black Watch, circa 1914

*"Have you heard it's in the stars

Next July we collide with Mars" .... Well, Did You Evah, Cole Porter, 1939

or with a nod to Julius Caesar "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars,

But in ourselves..."   Julius Caesar  Act 1 Scene 2 William Shakespeare 1599

A family mystery from the Great War

Now this metal notebook holder has been in the family for as long as I can remember.

It is small but quite heavy and  I am ashamed to say has suffered from being in the cellar.

Its metal exterior has been attacked by rust and I am looking at how best to restore it.

It carries the German Imperial Cross with the letter W and the date 1914, and given that my grandmother was German I assumed it belonged to one of her family.

But now I am not so sure.
The name inscribed on the front is not one I recognise.

Of course that doesn’t prove it is not one of our family but allows for some doubt.

Alternatively it could have been picked up on the Western Front by either my grandfather or great uncle Jack.

Both served in the British Army and both were in France.

Whatever its origins I do know that it passed to my uncle who served in the RAF and whose name, serial number and the words RAF were inscribed inside.

Uncle Roger enlisted in 1938 aged 16 and saw action in Greece, and Iraq before being captured by the Japanese in 1942 and died in a prisoner of war camp the following year aged just 21.

And that offers up a second mystery because it remained in our possession.  I very much doubt that had it headed out to the Far East with him it would have returned.

I am of course totally prepared to accept the commonsense explanation that he just left it behind for anyone of a number of reasons.

The German side of our family is the one that we have not explored and when we do we might find the answer to its original owner.

Sadly there is no one left to ask and had we not decided to clear out the middle cellar I suspect it would have been many more years before I came across it.

All of which is a lesson in how to look after family objects.  All too often because we have grown up with them we take the item for granted, and that can lead to neglect and eventually to the loss of the object.

So that is it.  The search has begun.  Leaving me only to reflect on the irony of the fact that it passed to my uncle who was in the RAF but like my mother had been born in Cologne.

Picture; metal notebook holder, circa 1914, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

“To prove them wrong” ……….

 I have never hidden that I had and still do have difficulties with literacy.

It made many aspects of learning in school a daily torture which presented a vast chasm between me and many of my contemporaries and plunged me into acres of self-doubt and feelings of unworthiness.

All of which was compounded by Miss Reeves in Junior Four who on the cusp of the eleven plus examination told Mother that I “was not academically inclined”.

A Solomon like judgement which burned in mum, and doomed dad and I to endless nights practicing eleven plus past papers in the kitchen by the stove through the winter months.

All to no avail, as I failed that “test of intelligence and future promise” confirming the assessment of Miss Reeves and consigning me to a Secondary Modern School.

A fact that years later further underlined my lack of academic credentials when I became a teacher in a Manchester High School and realized that I was the only Secondary Modern kid amongst an entire staff who had gone to grammar schools.*

Made worse by that simple realization that I could not trust myself to write on the blackboard, and so painfully all the words I might need to fall back on were written in advance.

At 75 the shame, and indignation still walk with me, but less so, but were reignited today while listening to Nigel McCrery on Saturday Live from BBC Radio Four.**

He is responsible for the long running crime series, Silent Witness and the delightful New Tricks along with a range of other works.

He is dyslexic suffered greatly at school, and confessed at 71 that he still hates a teacher who regularly publicly humiliated him. 

And it so chimed with me.

He said people thought he is well read, when in fact he is "very well listened" having spent ages with Talking Books, and said of his reason for writing that it was to "write for revenge" and so "prove them wrong".  Adding that "there are always "ways around things" to cover the difficulties with literacy.

So, as a policeman he would take his reports home and work on them to correct grammatical mistakes, and because he couldn’t read the menus in transport cafés he visited as a lorry driver he would work out what was on the board from the smells.

I still have to rely on a spell check and when it doesn’t recognise my attempts at spelling a word, I fall back on a different word which often means I am forced to rewrite the sentence.

Many of us will have those moments which can be as vivid now as when we were young.

For me, one of them was when I was sent out of class by the teacher to check the time on the hall clock only to be confronted by a bout of wild terror as the numerals and the hands meant nothing, and I clung on desperately to the hope someone would pass through and help me.

Of course, in the great sweep of physical and learning difficulties encountered by many, my dyslexia might not seem to count for a "hill of beans", but it was real then and still is now.

But like many I coped, came through it and while it still sits on my shoulder, I do now wear it with a bit of pride.

Not that I rank myself beside Mr. McCrery whose skill as a writer and whose literary output far outweighs me, but it is a confirmation that perhaps Miss Reeves was wrong and  I was not thick.

Location; 75 years of my time

Pictures; Young Andrew, circa 1958, and 1961

*To be strictly accurate, there were amongst the staff, three who had been "emergency trained" after the war having gone straight from the services into teaching and one plumber who switched from  the Direct Works Department of the City Council to the Education Department.

**Saturday Live Radio Four, BBC, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0024lhd

Jane ……. VE Day ….. and what I found in the cupboard

 It will be over 66 years ago that I came across a copy of the Daily Mirror, which was dated May 8th 1945.

Front cover, May 8th 1945

It had lain at the back of a cupboard drawer in my grandparents’ house carefully stowed away as a souvenir of the end of the last world war.

Like many they had endured the deprivations of six years of war, lost their only son and had lived through the hard peace which followed the Great War.

That copy still exists but is now very fragile and rarely comes out in the daylight.

And today I have been thinking about it and in particular the Zec cartoon which appears on page two and has the caption, “Here You Are Don’t Lose It Again”.

What prompted me to think about the cartoon and the VE Day edition was less the end of the war and instead the Jane cartoon.

Jane was a young woman who often got into scrapes which invariably resulted in her losing her clothes.  She was drawn by the artist Norman Pett and first appeared in 1932 and continued in the Daily Mirror until 1959.

Thinking back to the young 8-year-old who leafed through the pages of the VE Day edition, I can still remember being drawn to Jane.

The May 8th Jane strip was reproduced in Picture Post in the September of 1949 which looked back at the war years and given that this copy was less fragile it was the one I chose to scan, which had the extra bonus of another story.

I can’t date the second one but like the first it follows the unfortunate accidents that come Jane’s way.

In reproducing the first strip all I have done is represent the three frames separately so that the detail is clearer.

Alas the Daily Mirror was not dad and mum’s chosen newspaper, and so I never got to follow Jane, and just before my 10th birthday, she got married to a chap called George and left the paper for a new life.

Leaving me to reflect that despite all the celebrations on that May 8th, the war against Japan continued.

And in a telling addition to the Zec cartoon the paper carried an account with the headline “The war that is still to be won” which went on to describe the work of “analysing cipher telegrams that told of troop movements, campaign plans and battles in the swamps”.

All of which made grim reading along side the news of “the rejoicing floating through the half bricked windows from Whitehall …..to the operational nerve centre of the war that has yet to be won – the war of the million in South East Asia Command”.

More so for my grandparents and my mother whose thoughts were of my Uncle Roger who had been captured by the Japanese in 1942 and whose death would not be made official until the November of 1945.

“Here You Are Don’t Lose It Again”.

Location; May 8th, 1945 

Pictures; Jane in two strips, from Picture Post, September 3rd 1949 and Zec’s cartoon from the souvenir edition of the Daily Mirror, VE Day:  published on May 8, 1945, reproduced with story by Peter Willis, May 2nd 2015, https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ve-day-full-edition-daily-5619141

A hat ...... a lost industry and our Dad

Now this is a hat story.

That hat

There is nothing over remarkable about the hat opposite, which belonged to my father and long ago migrated north from London to Manchester, then sat in our cellar for decades gathering dust, until it ended up with our eldest, who wanted something of granddad’s.

All of which is natural enough and I bet many of us will have something similar whether it’s a pocket watch a ring or an old diary.

Ours just happens to be a hat although we do have the ring, the diary and plenty of other odd bits and pieces.

And when I post the story, my sisters will recognise the hat instantly because Dad always wore it, although he varied it with a beret.

Dad, circa 1930s

But the beret was only for going to work while the hat was for trips to the High Street and further afield.

Likewise my granddad and his brother would never be seen without a flat cap when they were out and about.

I think all four of us will be hard pressed to remember a time when Dad didn’t wear something on his head when he left the house.

And that of course was because he was of that age when virtually all adults wore something whether it was a hat, a beret or a scarf in an unbroken chain stretching back into the past.

All of which was good news for towns like Denton and Stockport which thrived as centres for hat manufacture well into the last century and for those with an interest the hat museum in Stockport is an excellent place to learn about the trade.

But in the 1960s wearing a hat started dropping out of favour.

I don’t recall wearing one or ever wanting to do so and only briefly took to a hat after Dad died but always remained a tad self conscious about being out wearing one.

All of which means I suspect that mine is the generation that helped kill off the fashion and by extension contributed to the demise of a whole industry.

Economists will point to deeper reasons for the end of a centuries old business but I cannot escape a bit of the blame.

So I am pleased we still have dad’s hat, if only to remind me of him and a piece of clothing which has all but vanished.

Payn's the outfitters, 1960s

I can’t be sure how old our hat is but I am guessing it must be at least from the 1960s, and was bought from G A Dunn.

Dunn’s were chain of men’s outfitters dating back to 1887 with shops across the country.

As well as hats it sold suits, shirts ties and jackets and trousers.

I chose Payn’s in the High Street rather than Dunn’s where I bought my first “sports jacket” in 1966, a Norfolk jacket the following year and a selection of those knitted ties which were the bee knees back in the ‘60s.

Me, the sports jacket and the two Ann's, 1968

What has only struck me just now as I look at the hat, is the connection between me and Dad, because although I never wore a hat we shopped at similar places, although I doubt Dad would ever have gone into Harry Fenton’s almost opposite Payne’s which was the cutting edge of all things “mod”.

But the clothes from Payn’s and Dunn’s were designed to last and so long after I had discarded the ties and cuff links dad was known to have added them to his wardrobe.

Now long after the two jackets, the knitted ties, cuff links and shirts that I bought have been lost, we still have the hat.

It has been cleaned and brushed and looks very much like it did when dad wore it and now has pride of place amongst our Ben’s clothes.

But stories should always end where they began.

So, just after I had posted this story, our Elizabeth sent over another picture of Dad's hat.

Other uses for Dad's hat, 1963

I had quite forgotten this photograph of the hat, and my two sisters.  With the the picture, Elizabeth added "Here is a picture of our Theresa wearing Dad's hat. Think she is not happy with me as I have the scooter and I think she wanted it".

Leaving aside the family squabble, what strikes me is that Dad allowed his hat to be used as a plaything, but, then judging by when the photograph was taken which looks to be summer, Dad would have been away and mother was always a little more casual about letting us play with "grown up" clothes.

And for those who want to know, it will be the summer of 1963, and we were in the garden of 26 Lausanne Road, in Peckham, before the move to Well Hall in Eltham.

Location; Eltham & Peckham

Picture; Dad’s hat, circa 1964, dad and “friend” circa 1930s, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, an advert for H C Payn, from This is Eltham, 1967, the sports coat, 1968 courtesy of Ann Hatch nee Davey and our Elizabeth and Theresa and Dad's hat, 1963, the Simpson Collection

The picture with secrets ………. or what to do with Montague?

 We will all have one of these pictures.

It is undated, has no name on the back and could be anyone in our family or no one in our family.

What I do know is that it comes from a large collection of photographs which date from the early 1920s into the 50s which belonged to our dad.

They have pretty much lain undisturbed since they came north from London in the mid-1990s.  

Every so often I look through them trying to identify some of the people and the locations and others I will use for stories.

But this one has always eluded me and at the same time fascinated me.

And yet again I am drawn back to it.

I doubt that his name was Montague who was my great grandfather and belonged to my mother’s side.

It is more likely that he was connected to Dad and if so perhaps I am looking at my paternal great grandfather, which means the baby could be dad, or one of my uncles.

But dad was born in 1908 and the picture I think may be a little later.  I am pretty confident it isn’t me, so he might be my cousin Mary who was born in the 1930s.

Or it might just be a distant family member.

So, with no idea of the identity of the man or child, what do I do with the picture?

I could bin it, but that seems outrageous, and an act of betrayal on dad who felt sufficiently connected to it to have kept the picture in his collection for perhaps 60 years.

And even though Dad will never know, I will, so it will go back into the collection prompting me to ponder that I should get the entire collection in order, given that at 74 there are fewer years ahead of me than behind.

And in doing so give our kids and perhaps grandchildren a better context on what they are looking at.

Leaving me just to reflect on the scene behind the two of them with its vague view of a cut glass bowl, a fireplace and what looks like another person.

The full picture reveals that they were sitting outside, possibly under a veranda with a door to the right and a bamboo thing to the left.

And that is it.

Location; unknown

Picture; unknown man and baby, undated, from the Simpson collection

On being 10 and a bit in Edmund Waller School ........ still living with a humiliation

Some memories just do not go away despite the passage of a full half century.

Edmund Waller School, 2007

This one I have carried for 63 years and goes back to Edmund Waller School and Miss Reeves sometime in 1961.

I was the lad who had been promoted at the end of what now we would call Year 5 into the top class, which I greeted at the time as a mixed blessing.

4A was what passed in Edmund Waller as the top class from which the bright and gifted would have their chance at the 11 plus and all the promise that followed from a grammar school place.

Not that I was one of them, having attained a place in 4A, the following September I joined the lads from 3B along with various other schools in the neighbourhood and began five years at Samuel Pepys Secondary Modern  School for Boys.

In the past I have been harsh about Samuel Pepys but on reflection given that they were afforded less cash than the grammar schools, I had an excellent education from teachers who were committed to giving us the best.

Me, 1961

None of which is relevant to the memory, which at the time confirmed by own low esteem.  Having not cut the muster with Miss Reeves I was made to feel even lower by a group exercise where working in teams of four we were tasked with a project.

I can’t now remember the topic, only the burning humiliation of being told by the other boy in the group that I shouldn’t make contribution.  I remember his name, and found him some years ago on a social networking site,  full of his achievements on this and the other side of the Atlantic.

I do remember one of the girls intervened on my behalf and I think I did add something, but my heart wasn’t in it.

Looking back almost sixty years I chide myself for continuing to harbour the memory, and reflect that many 11 year olds can be cruel, arrogant and self opinionated but even given those caveats, the humiliation burns deep, and will follow me to the grave.

Not that I wallow in that bitter moment, instead it is a permanent reminder that I went through an educational system predicated on the idea of failure, for with every 11 plus achiever there had to be a legion deemed second rate.

Detail of the school

The apologists for that system, then and now, will advance the fatuous argument that we were not failures just not suited for an academic career which is a falsehood, and a falsehood challenged by the many talented individuals who went on to achieve in a full range of activities despite having failed to make the grade at 11.

So I will continue to let that memory bubble to the surface from time to time.

I could have confronted the individual on his social media site, but I doubt that he would remember such a trivial incident, secure in his glittering achievements.

Nor will I name him.

Location; Edmund Waller School

Pictures; Edmund Waller School, 2007, courtesy of Liz &  Colin Fitzpatrick and me in 1961, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Forbidden bits of history ……….

Now even for writers there are the places we choose not to go and it is of those forbidden bits of history that have exercised my mind to day, sparked in part by a reflective piece on another blog.

Uncle Roger and mum, circa 1939

The other piece is from my old friend Lois Elsden who was musing on what triggers her writing.*

I have always classed myself as a jobbing historian, and so I will write about what ever takes my fancy along with requests.

And often the stories arise out of a document, photograph, or an event someone has shared or will bubble up from a research project.

And in return for looking into the history of a house or a lost relative l get to write the story.

So, we all win. They get a bit of their past uncovered and l end up with a piece for the blog.

Over the last thirteen years I have written about coins on Reynard Road, a picture of a dad on Stockton or the sad account of an RAF bomber crew buried in a wartime Dutch grave.

It all works well and to steal that old catchphrase the blog is “open all hours”.

But there are yawning gaps with subjects l can't go near.

Capture, POW record, 1942

They are usually linked to family. 

And the most obstinate one is my uncle who died in a Japanese POW camp in 1943. 

His early life in Cologne and Derby presents no problems nor his time in the RAF up to his capture. 

We have a wonderful 26 handwritten account of his journey from outside Manchester during the Christmas Blitz to a journey by sea to South Africa, through the Suez Canal and on to Greece where he escaped just before its fall to the Axis powers. 

The letter finishes in Basra and is supported by a series of photographs he took.

All of which is fine, but his period of captivity is a stumbling block. I have newspaper account of his “missing in action” the confirmation of his incarceration and  the stark official news of his death.

Added to which we have the replies to letters grandmother wrote to anyone who she thought might have known him in the camp.

News of his death, 1945

It is harrowing story which l can never do justice to. But nor can l summon up the will to read or write about the Japanese war.  

It extends to avoiding the classic films from David Lean's account of the men forced to build a bridge to the umpteen Hollywood accounts.

All of which means while I know the details of the European war I never go near the war in the East.

And when confronted with another family tragedy which befell the brother of my great grandmother l just blanked it.

I suspect it is a bit of wanting to avoid the unpleasant coupled with an acute sense that to do so places me as a bit of a voyeuristic tourist picking up a deep family tragedy.

And it was, for neither mother nor grandmother ever talked of the events, other than to call down insults on Winston Churchill who they believed knew from intelligence that the ships carrying the RAF personnel were heading directly into Japanese occupied territory.

So forbidden history.

Pictures; photographs and other documents of Roger Hall, 1940-45 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and the POW record from findmypast.co.uk

*What triggers my writing, https://loiselsden.com/2024/02/07/what-triggers-my-writing/

1951 ....... a Glenton Tour brochure and a window on a world we have lost

I was too young to remember 1951 but I know it was a year of promise.

It was after all the year of the Festival of Britain, the beginning of the sixth year of year of peace and for many a time when the Welfare State was offering care from the cradle to the grave.

And it was the year when Glenton Tours resumed their coach trips to the Continent.

The firm had begun in the 1920s when an estate agent settled a debt with a customer by accepting a coach and that started “Glenton Motor Coach Holiday Tours.”

Dad worked for them from the very beginning and finally retired in 1987 having driven their coaches around Britain and Europe from the early 1930s.

All of which I have written about already but today I came across their 1951 brochure advertising four, seven and twelve day tours Scotland, the Romantic West, Wales and the Lake District.

And it was on one of the Lake District trips that he met my mother who was working at the Queens Hotel at Matlock Bath sometime in the late 1940s.

The tours were all inclusive, offering “first class accommodation” and the “Chauffeur-Couriers have been chosen after exacting tests of their reliability and skill and give every attention to travellers.  

Nearly all of them were with Glenton Tours before the war and returned to the Company when we re-started in 1947.”

And it is this little entry which opens up the brochure as a wonderful record of that post war period.

Contained also in the “notes and information” is the advice that “Ration Books are not, necessary on any of our tours” and that passengers are advised take "a towel and soap in case some hotels are still unable to supply them.”

The cost ranged from 9 guineas for the “Special 4-Day Easter Tours to  58 guineas for the thirteen day trip to France, Austrian Tyrol, Italian Lakes and Switzerland.”

It is easy to get cynical of a holiday which in just under a fortnight took you through five countries and which you risked missing one if you fell asleep on the journey.

But this was before the internet, and before cheap air travel when even television was in its infancy and so the idea of visiting five countries taking in the views and the history while being catered for in first class style was very attractive.

Added to which as the brochure boasted “You do not have to bother about luggage, frontier, monetary or language difficulties” and “the inclusive charge provided for all food and accommodation, the sea crossing and gratuities to hotel staff."

Of course this was a holiday way beyond many working people but by 1973 many who two decades earlier would never have contemplated a coach trip abroad were signing up.

So in that year Glenton’s offered a total of 69 tours of which 24 were to the Continent.

It never appealed to me as a holiday but then I belonged to a different generation.

For those who the tour did go, many will have begun their holidays on train and coach excursions to seaside resorts taking full advantage of the paid holidays which were by the 1930s a bonus to the holiday trade.

And I won’t be sniffy at what gave dad nearly sixty years of full employment, put food on our table and provided a shed load of people with an experience they would not have otherwise had.

Location; Britain and the Continent

Pictures; from Glenton Coach Holiday Tours, 1951, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Images of our industrial past ...... nu 2 working the metal 80 years ago

I am back with two more “lost images” from the family collection.

I have no idea who this man was and can only guess that it was either my grandfather or one of his work mates.

Moreover I cannot date the pictures or offer up a location, other than that they will be over 80 years old.
If it is my grandfather then it will be Derby and a rare moment when he was in full time work.

According to my mother like many men during the period he faced long bouts of unemployment which only really came to an end with the outbreak of the Second World War.

Sadly there is no one left I can ask who could tell me about the pictures, and I of course never bothered to ask what he did during the interwar years.

So we are left with just one man at work, sometime in the 1930s in all probability somewhere in Derby.

But that said I am drawn to them, not least because both carry fingerprints which were left on these two negatives.

Not that I will ever be able to discover who they belonged or why the prints have long since vanished but the these negatives survived.

But then that is often the case.

The prints get handed around or put into a book while the negatives are stored away just in case they are needed.

Of course that is seldom the case, but that simple decision means they will survive long after the cherished print has gone.
Pictures, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

On losing your past ............ chasing the records

Now I have lost a little bit of my past.

I say me but that is not strictly true and the past in question may not be particularly significant.

But it is my past, and it has been lost and I doubt it will ever be recovered.

It all started three years ago when it occurred to me that my medical records might shed light on my early life.

Not that I was interested in what I had contracted as a child or the care I received, it was more basic and centred on just what the records might tell me about where we lived.

I knew from my identity card that we lived on Peckham Hill Street, and later Kender Street before moving to Lausanne Road, and that in the first few years we had spent time in Derby with my grandparents.

All of which is a closed book, and like most people I can only begin to put things together sometime after my fifth birthday and even then the memories are vague, fragmentary and pretty much open to question.

That said I have been surprised that some of those memories along with family stories I had assumed I had imagined have pretty much been confirmed.

So it seemed an interesting line of inquiry, although for a long time I thought it too trivial to bother the doctor’s surgery, but when I finally did it appeared that there was nothing before 1992, despite the fact that

I had been registered with the original practice from the early late 1970s.

Eventually two records from the early 1950s surfaced.  A search by the NHS turned up nothing although the chap on the phone did point out that lost was wrong and mislaid was nearer the mark.

And mislaid they still appear to be.

There will be some, who say this is not a big deal, and in the great sweep of things it isn’t, but anyone who has tried tracking the history of a family member will know all records are important and there remain many which are not accessible or have been lost.

Nor is this just a problem that increases with time.  The recent past can be even more of a closed book.

There are no census records available after 1921, the 1939 register has gaps due to confidentiality and a large number of military records from the Great War were destroyed in the Second World War.

Added to which those same considerations of confidentiality rule out a whole swathe of personal information, compounded by that simple fact that much was just thrown away.

Before the 20th century there can be a cornucopia of information which these days is fast  becoming digitilized making it easier to discover the lives of long dead relatives..

But it was still possible to fall out of the records.  My great grandfather never married my great grandmother and despite having four children together when the relationship ended he appears never to have made contact with any of his children and was confident that he had fallen through the cracks that married and raised a second family.

Likewise my great uncle who had been migrated as a British Home Child to Canada, ran away from his last placement, joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1915, changed his name and lied about his age.

But despite these limitations I know more about the early years of my grandfather and his siblings than I do my own.

So perhaps the medical records might have helped.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Secrets from a century ago ………

Now I say secrets, but if I am really accurate, they are less so and more a confirmation of what I really knew mixed with stuff that takes the family story just a bit further on.

Hope Street, 1900

And yes, this is family history story and I am acutely aware that one person’s family stories are another person’s yawn, but this is linked to the release of the 1921 census, which has been eagerly awaited by many.

Not only does this release take us all a decade on from the 1911 census but will be the last available until 1951, because the 1931 census was destroyed and the 1941 census never took place due to the war, leaving just the 1939 Registration document which acts as a sort of census.

If I am honest, I was going to leave accessing the 1921 census in the hope that it would in time become free to use on Findmypast which is the only genealogical platform where it can bee seen.  Although if like me you live in Manchester you can access it via the Central Reference Library for free.

William Hall circa 1930s, my grandfather

But on a cold day with the rain coming down like stair rods, I chose to pay to see the entry for my great grandmother and pay again to see the original form, which altogether cost just over a fiver.

That said what price finding your family from a century ago?

And found them I did, where I knew they would be in 1921 which was at Court 5 2 Hope Street, Derby and almost opposite the property my grandparents moved into sometime two years later.

The electoral address in 1921 recorded that great grandmother Eliza, and  two of her children were living there, but that was it, so the census has filled in the gaps.

And these are important because soon after the census was taken her son Jack had moved out to get married and her daughter Laura emigrated to Canada.  

Which left my grandfather still in uniform in the British army of occupation in Germany where he met my grandmother, got married and had two children one of whom was our mother.

Jack Hall, circa 1950s

Eliza remains a shadowy figure, who didn’t always walk with reality.  In her twenties she took up with my great grandfather travelled the country before settling in the south and then leaving him to have our great aunt Laura in the Derby Workhouse in 1902.  

Aged just 22 she was brought up in court for a brawl with a policeman, at 39 her children were taken into care, and a decade later she had been committed to the Derby Asylum.

So, 1921 does seem to mark a stable moment in her life, living with two of her four children, with the prospect of being reunited with another son, a daughter in law and two grandchildren, leaving just her son Roger who opted to be migrated to Canada in 1914 by the Derby Union rather than stay in care.

We know that she had made efforts to get all the children out of care, and so the census offers up some valuable information to both my family here in Britain and the Canadian grandchildren of Laura.

Jack the eldest son had been apprenticed to a blacksmith and Laura sent north to work in “service”.

By the time of the census Jack was employed at George Fletcher Company and Sons, on Letechurch Lane who were “Sugar machinery manufactures” while Luara was a “Tasle Maker” for the Textile Manufacturers, E Dould & Sons at Spa Lane.

Laura Pember, nee Hall 1968

Neither company now exists, and a walk down Letechurch Lane, and Spa Lane is a grim experience on a January day with little left of the original industrial buildings that once fronted these two streets and no indication if what are left are linked to our workplaces.

That said that wonderful site, Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History has a timeline and pictures of Fletcher’s, which was established in 1838, and went through a series of mergers during the 1950s and 60s.

And we do have a testimonial from E Dould & Sons when Laura left in 1925.

All of which confirms much of what we already knew, but the census also offers up an intriguing reference to our great grandfather, who was a Montague Hall, and never actually married Eliza.  In the column headed Marriage or Orphanhood, the entry reads “Husband missing not known whether Dead”.

In fact he had died in 1916, but I rather think Eliza would not have known this as they separated in 1902, with him remaining in Gravesend, and going on to get married and have another family.

Great aunt Laura's testimonial

Eliza appears to have only given her children the vaguest of outlines of their father, and in correspondence written in the 1970s Laura wrote that there was little they knew about her.

But then I suspect she was a family secret, and continued as such until 2008 when I stumbled on her in the course of working on our history.

All of which leaves me to comment on the census itself.  

Like it’s 1911 predecessor it is a single form recording the inhabitants of the family home, rather than those for the street, and requires more information about any children under the age of 16 but omits a reference to how long a couple have been married.

Plan of 5 Hope Street, 1947

And for me there is Eliza’s signature which is the first time I have come across her handwriting, all of which brings me a little closer to her.

As does the knowledge that the property was a two up two down, exactly like the one opposite which was inhabited my grandparents and where I stayed.

So that is it, I guess I will be returning to 1921 to look up dad, and in the fullness of time track others.

Location; Derby in 1921

Pictures; grandfather, circa 1930s, great uncle Jack, circa 1950s, and great aunt Laura who we called aunt Dolly, circa 1968, from the collection of the Simpson Pember families, Plan of 5 Hope Street, 1947, Syd and Pamela Dilkes, and Hope Street, Derby, 1900, from the OS map of Derbyshire, 1900, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

* Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History, https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/George_Fletcher_and_Co

The odd bits of family history

When I was growing up we didn’t possess a record player.

The record sleeve, circa 1920s

The first that came into our house must have been in 1964, and was followed by one of those stereograms, which sat on its elegant legs and took up half the side of one wall in the front room.

But we did briefly have an old 78 rpm player which as befitted the period, was a solid and grand piece of furniture.

It was powered by electricity but was not something I ever really bothered with, given that our radio collection in the 1950s, consisted of Bing Crosby, Burl Ives, some light opera and a mix of the classics.

They lay forgotten in one of Dad’s old leather suitcases in the cellar after having come up from Well Hall.

 But last week they came out into the daylight for the first time in four decades.

Dad and friend, circa 1920s

On one level there is nothing remarkable about them and all of them belonged to mother although a few are in record sleeves from shops in Newcastle where dad grew up.

As with most things about mum, her tastes were eclectic and so I am not surprised that Burl Ives should nestle beside Caruso and opera.

Dad like Kathleen Ferrier, a heap of the old romantic Scottish ballads about Bonnie Prince Charlie and on occasion would admit to liking the marching songs of the Orange Order.

What fascinates me about the collection are the sleeves.  Most are plain but a few carry the names and addresses of the shops they were bought from.

And as you do I went looking for them.

Dalton’s of London Road, Derby has long gone, and the site like so much of where mum grew up is a car park.

But J.G. Windows of Newcastle still exists and still trades from the Central Arcade.*

When Dad walked out of the store with his record, they occupied 4-7 Central Arcade, and now they are spread out over three floors from 1-7 Central Arcade.

According to the web site they opened in 1908 selling both records and musical instruments.*

In the 1920s they opened a second shop in Darlington which neatly dates my record sleeve to the 1920s because the Darlington store is advertised on the cover and I know that by the end of the decade Dad was in London.

It’s not perhaps page turning history but it is our family history and that will do for me.

Location; Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Picture; record sleeve, circa 1920s from the collection of Andrew Simpson, 

*J.G. Windows, http://www.jgwindows.com/about-us