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

Discovering the less than honest side of family history ............ new online records

Now I have always maintained that searching out your family history should come with a Government Health warning.

All too often the rather fascinating exploration of your past comes up against the not so nice side of 19th and early 20th century history.

For most of us it will be the discovery that one or more of our family had recourse to the Workhouse, ended their lives tragically or found themselves up before the Magistrate.

In my case it was all of them and in that I won’t be alone.

My great grandmother gave birth to her last child in the Derby Workhouse and when she couldn’t cope bringing up four children under the age of ten the Poor Law Guardians stepped in and placed all of them in care, later finding them juvenile employment and in the case of our great uncle Roger dispatching him to Canada as a British Home Child.

Her brother committed suicide and she had one memorable drunken brush with the law on Canal Street in the early 1890s.

All of which is a lead into another new set of records which have just gone online with Ancestry.

These are the UK, Police Gazettes, 1812-1902, 1921-1927 which the contains printed publications used for communication between members of the police force in the United Kingdom between 1812 and 1927. There are gaps but there is information on wanted criminals, crimes committed as well as criminals apprehended criminals and missing persons.

They supplement Ancestry’s  Criminal Registers, for England and Wales which are a listing of individuals charged with crime including information about those charged their trial, and the sentence if they were convicted from 1791-1892.

And these registers have proved invaluable in researching not just family but anyone whose name bounces off the pages of newspaper accounts and stories.

At which point I should also point to Find my past which not only has data from England & Wales on Crime, Prisons & Punishment, 1770-1935, as well as Prison registers and material from South Australia and Tasmania but some fascinating the Manchester Prison Registers 1847-1881.

So as Miss Marple might have said, here indeed is a bustle of stuff to unravel.

Picture; courtesy of Ancestry.co.uk


Picture; courtesy of Ancestry.co.uk

Blogs, scholarship and learning something new everyday

It was my old friend Joe Callaghan who on one of our senior citizen away day adventures told me that he likes to learn something new each day.
It is an idea I like, although sadly it has never stretched to working out the correct cycles on the washing machine. But on this I travel in hope.

And I was reminded of this when I revisited the blog site, Friends of Chorlton Meadows, http://friendsofchorltonmeadows.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/History Over the last few weeks David Bishop has been writing about our own 19th century botanists. Now I had been drawn to them when he introduced me to Richard Buxton who has appeared in the blog, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Richard%20Buxton Buxton was one of those remarkable working class people who despite living in poverty and being self taught went on to compile a comprehensive book on the botany of the countryside around Manchester. Nor was he alone and David’s posts are a good introduction to these men who tramped the fields and lanes of south Manchester 180 years ago.

In turn this led me to reflect on how local historians make a real contribution to our knowledge of the past. By and large we are not professionals and do not make a living from the trade. For most of us it is an interest, but as fellow local historian Ian Meadowcroft often remarks what we turn up can be the bedrock of scholarship.

All of which takes me back not only to my book which tells the story of mid 19th century rural Chorlton but to the work of people like David and the botanists. Both of us have been beavering away at discovering and passing on knowledge of the past much of which has been either forgotten or neglected.

And dear reader it leads me on to tell you about the minutes of the Poor Law and Ratepayers meetings which were held regularly in the old school house on the green during the 19th century. I came across the minute book which covers the years 1838 through to the late 50s a few years back.

Here were descriptions of discussions on the rate to set for the year, of nominations and elections for the various official posts in the township as well as some of the scandals that rocked our village in the mid century. Along the way there were the familiar names of farmers and others who made the system of local government work.

It is a wonderful insight into how a rural community ran its affairs and as such tells us so much about our people and their lives. But I have to also confess that setting that aside there was the sheer excitement of holding the book After all I suppose apart from Edward Smith who wrote the minutes I was one of perhaps just a handful of people to sit and touch and turn those pages. Pretty neat I reckon.

And that is what most of us try to do. We crawl over the forgotten bits bring them out for a breath of fresh air and post them for others to see and in the process learn something new, add to the scholarship and pass it on by blog or web site.

Pictures;from the Lloyd collection, and Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council

Following the family history trail

This is one of those family photographs I am drawn back to. We all have them and this is my grandmother and Uncle Roger in the back yard of 12 Hope Street in 1929. It is one of a collection that I inherited and set me off researching my family history.
At the time I was very much at “sea” and would have welcomed anyone who had a similar interest but a little more knowledge and experience of following the family trail.

I ended doing it the hard way, but on the way had tremendous help and encouragement from the staff at the Archives and Local Studies Centre of Manchester Public Libraries which are currently in two sites at Central Library, Elliot House on Deansgate, and the Manchester Room and Greater Manchester County Record Office on Marshall Street, http://www.manchester.gov.uk/libraries/a

It was there that I came across the Manchester & Lancashire Family History Society http://www.mlfhs.org.uk/ who hold sessions for beginners at Elliot House.

And now I have news of the ManchesterandSalford Familyhistoryforum at http://manchesterfamilyhist.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=pmview&view=1&id=3854#ixzz1qVYeq74S which “is a new family history web site and forum, dedicated to helping people find their ancestral roots in Manchester and Salford. We are looking for new members who are researching their family trees or who can help researchers with requests for information. We are also looking for copyright-free old photographs of people and the area, which could be used on our website.”

So the quest goes on. I still turn up pictures like this one which at present are a mystery, but I travel in hope and know that at some point someone will help me unlock the secrets of who these men were and where the photograph was taken.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Derby stories ............ from Derby

It is not just the landed aristocracy who can demonstrate a link with a place that goes back centuries. My mother’s family came from Derby and were there by the beginning of the 19th century, and only war and work drove some of them away.

For 130 years my family lived in the space bounded by Traffic Street, and Hope Street, and London Road, and Wellington Street. They worked the mills, maintained the railways and fought for Queen, King and Country. If they did ever leave, it is to here that they returned.

For this was one of the working parts of Derby. Within easy reach were timber yards, silk factories, print works, saw mills, an iron foundry, the canal and railway.

Now I was born in London and have lived in Manchester for over 40 years so my memories of Derby are from visits I spent there in the 1950s and until I began some family research a few years ago had all but forgotten the place. That is, until I began writing short stories of some of the family for the Derby Telegraph. Over the course of about a year Jane Goddard of the Telegraph published some of these stories and they are available on the site derbytelegraphbygones.co.uk

It is a wonderful source of stories, memories and pictures and should be of interest not only to people connected to Derby but to anyone who wants to sink themselves into the history of a place.

Picture; mother in the backyard of 12 Hope Street, Derby circa 1928, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Newspapers a key to the past

We all have that moment when we can describe exactly what we were doing and where we were when the news came through of the death of someone we thought important. . I guess for my generation it would have been the assassination of J.F Kennedy, for my parents perhaps the news that President Roosevelt had passed away and for my son’s generation the death of Lady Diana.
There will be other candidates, be it the news that we were at war on that September morning in 1939, the death of Churchill, the surrender of the Argentineans or the victory of our preferred political war in an election.
And of course for most of us it will still be a newspaper which provides the details. True in this digital age we may first hear the breaking news from a radio the television or the internet but the newspaper will still give the fullest coverage.
It was here that I read the coroner’s report of the suicide of my great grandmother’s brother her own drunken fight with the police and the fact that my uncle was missing in 1942 in the Far East.
So newspapers are a vital way for both the family and local historian to track the past. Two very good sites for British newspapers are http://newspapers11.bl.uk/blcs/ and www.britishnewspapersarchive.co.uk
And for those of us in Manchester and who possess a library card there are the Times, and Manchester Guardian and Observer which are all on line at http://www.manchester.gov.uk/info/500140/library_online_services
PIcture, front page of Derby Evening Telegraph April 17th 1943

Looking for sources ....The Manchester Archives and Local History Library

The Manchester Archives and Local History Library remains a wonderful source of historical records. In the course of the last three years I have read the handwritten minutes of the Chorlton–cum-Hardy Poor Law and Ratepayers Committee held on the green during the 1840s and 50s, followed the decision of the Manchester Corporation Water Works to bring piped water to the township in 1864 and examined the birth, marriage and death records of our own parish church.
Presently due to the work being done on Central Ref the library has been split with archives going to Marshall Street and local history to Eliot House on Deansgate. But with the completion of the restoration work to the Ref both will be reunited on a wonderful new site. Their catalogue is available at http://www.manchester.gov.uk/libraries/arls