A decision taken in Austria ..........

The news headline that “Austrian State May Require Jews to Register to Buy Kosher Meat”* is profoundly disturbing but fits the bigger concern that anti-Semitism is on the march again.

I belong to that generation, born just after the last world war who thought that its worst excesses had been buried in the ruins of Berlin in 1945.

And while you overheard the casual comment spoken in a matter of fact way, the horrors of Pogroms and the Holocaust were locked in the past.

But not so.  The story comes from Haaretz, the respected and influential Israeli newspaper, which revealed that “A regional politician in Austria defended a plan to limit access to kosher meat, conditioning its sale on permits that would be individually issued to observant Jews.

The Wiener Zeitung daily reported Tuesday about the draft decree in the state of Lower Austria, one of nine states that make up the federal Republic of Austria. Gottfried Waldhäusl, the cabinet minister in the state government of Lower Austria who is in charge of animal welfare and several other portfolios, defended the plan as necessary ‘from an animal welfare point of view.’”

And this would involve the authorities in compiling a list of Jewish people which has echoes of the racist laws passed by Nazi Germany and implemented in Austria after its merger with Germany in 1938.

Now “the regional leader of the ruling Austrian People’s Party told the ORF broadcaster that the plan will not be implemented”*, but the mere fact that it should have been put forward is disturbing at a time when there has been a rise in recorded anti-Semitic incidents.

In 2017 CST recorded 1,382 such incidents in the UK - the highest total ever recorded for a calendar year. Three-quarters of these were in London and Greater Manchester.  In Greater Manchester 261 were recorded, which is an increase of 27% from the 206 incidents recorded in 2016.**

It is unclear if the decision extends to halal meat as well.

Picture; Italy, 2017, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* Austrian State May Require Jews to Register to Buy Kosher Meat, Haaretz, Jul 18, 2018, https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/austrian-state-may-limit-kosher-meat-sales-to-registered-jews-1.6289229

**CST, https://cst.org.uk/

Rediscovering a personal story, making a Canadian connection and opening up new online records

Now here is a connection I doubt I would ever have made between two of my family and a set of new online records about London from Ancestry.

William Henry Hall on board TS Exmouth 1913-14

We had always known that my grandfather went to sea, but the reason behind the career choice and the ship he sailed on was shrouded in mystery.

Then some years ago our Elizabeth made the discovery amongst the papers of the London Metropolitan Archives of the time granddad spent on the Training Ship Exmouth which was a naval boot camp.

We knew that along with his elder brother it had been decided that his wayward behaviour needed correction and a dose of discipline which involved both of them being sent to the training ship.

Conduct on T S Exmouth

But for reasons still not clear great uncle Roger opted to go to Canada as a British Home Child while granddad did his time in correction.

Sadly the condition of the records unearthed by my sister proved difficult to read and his destination after he had completed his sentence was impossible to read.

But now Ancestry have just added the London Metropolitan Archives to their online collection and as with digital records the quality has been enhanced and we now know that he joined the SS Megantic in the November of 1914.

This was no tramp steamer and he was no cabin boy.  The SS Megantic did the Atlantic run to Canada and with its sister ship was the largest vessel on the Canadian crossing.

SS Megantic, 1909-1920s

The name comes from Lake Megantic in Quebec but that is not the only connection because in the same month and the same year his brother also crossed to Canada as a British Home Child.

Neither lasted long in their new “careers.” Great Uncle Roger after three unsettled placements on farms in NS and NB ran away to join the Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1915 and granddad enlisted in the British Army in 1916.

Of their subsequent time in the military we know more about Roger than we do about granddad, simply because something like 60% of the British army records were destroyed in the Blitz while the Canadian ones are intact and are available online

Running out the guns, on board a training ship, date unknown

And that brings me neatly back to the Ancestry and their new offerings which include as we as the TS Exmouth Training Ship Records, 1876‑1918, Stock Exchange Applications for Membership, 1802‑1924, Freedom of the City Admission Papers, 1681‑1930, Gamekeepers’ Licences, 1727‑1839.

Now I grant you that most of us will be hard pressed to find a relative in some of these new additions, but you never know which of course is the beauty and the value of online records.

They are easy to search, often offer up quality reproductions and above all are readily accessible unlike some precious source material which only a few will ever see.

So I have no time for those who mutter darkly that such records are no substitute for holding the original, which is fine but if the original is on a dusty shelf in a university in Oregon or too fragile to be handled then give me the online substitute.

Of course there will always be a charge for many of these records but if the alternative is the cost of an air flight to North America I will happily continue my subscriptions to Ancestry and Findmypast.

Location; pretty much everywhere.

Pictures; entry of William Hall TS Exmouth, 1913-14, courtesy of London Metropolitan Archives in association with Ancestry.com the SS Megantic circa 1909-1920 from The George Grantham Bain collection in the Library of Congress and taken from SS Megantic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Megantic  a training ship, from the archives of the Together Trust, courtesy of the Archivist,http://togethertrustarchive.blogspot.co.uk/p/about-blog.html

78 Manchester Road, and a story ......... the Wood family

It is an ordinary looking house and past its best, sandwiched between the petrol station and supermarket on one side and a restaurant on the other, but 78 Manchester Road has caught my imagination.

I must have passed it lots of times and not even given it much of a thought. I remember one of the houses in the row was a photographer’s shop and for years there was a faded picture of a baby in the window.

But it holds a story. And it is one of those stories that has come together in bits and in its way says a lot about how we were, what Chorlton has become and offers that sense of continuity that comes from families staying in the same place for generations.

In 1911 number 78 was home to the Wood family but this was only fairly recent.

For a large part of his life James Wood had lived at Red Gates Farm which stood on the site of the present library. It had been there from at least the 18th century and I have followed its history through the first half of the 19th century when the tenants were the Whitelegg family.

Now I have to be honest and admit I wasn’t very interested in it after William Whitelegg ceased being the tenant in 1855. But like many of our farms it was still being worked into the 20th century. By then it was the home of Thomas and Mary Wood.

And like all of these things as soon as you delve into their lives so a whole new part of our farming past emerges. In 1881 Thomas described himself as “assistant farmer” living at Red Gates Farm, but if I have understood this correctly he was working for Elizabeth Kenyon who was a market gardener and at lived at Marsleach House which was demolished sometime in the 1890s or during the first decade of the following century and was on a large plot of land bordered by Selbourne, Manchester and Keppel Roads and so was almost directly opposite Red Gates. The Kenyon’s were an old Chorlton farming family and can be traced back to the early 19th century.

Red Gates had grown in size from 46 acres in 1841 to 62 by 1871 but in all probability was smaller by the turn of the 20th century. And I guess James had foreseen that the land was not his future and instead had become a clerk.

He had married Florence Cooke in 1905 and I guess this was when they moved to number 78. The farm was to disappear by 1914 and sometime between 1911 and 1921 the family moved to Romily and in the way of things that houses has also survived.

But what ties the family to Chorlton are a series of postcards they exchanged between 1904 and 1938. They are of the mundane and ordinary things of life which make them so valuable. Here are updates on family visits and of their health with Fred “being a prisoner with his face” which has “made him look quite pale,” along with descriptions of holiday weather and birthday greetings. And above all there are the references to farming, with John reporting that the farm was in the middle of harvesting and an acknowledgement of help at the forthcoming harvest festival in the old church.

There is something quite complete in these two messages which echo that way of life that had gone on for centuries in the township. First the frenetic activity of getting the crops in followed by the celebration that it had been achieved.

It is easy today with food available from around the world in the local supermarket to forget that on the success of the harvest hung not only the prosperity of the community but in a very real sense whether they ate well or not which is perhaps a fitting way to end the story of a family which had lived in Chorlton for half a century, and leaves me just to thank Carolyn Willits who has shared her family postcards with me and reflect that she also lives here in Chorlton.

Pictures; from the collection of Carolyn Willits

Trojan ....... the hidden ghost sign

It’s the sign that has been hidden, but as ever Andy Robertson brought forth a story, and like Samson’s riddle it will be fun to solve.  

He saw it on “Sunday morning whilst waiting to get my tyre done at Kwil-Fit.

The ghost sign is on Chester Road between Halfords and National Tyres, and has only recently been exposed as part of National Tyres sign fell down”.

Now someone will be able to offer up the story on Trojan.

Me and Andy will just sit back and wait ...... lazy historians.

Location; Chester Road

Picture; ghost sign, 2018 from the collection of Andy Robertson

*"And he said unto them, Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness. And they could not in three days expound the riddle". Judges 14:14

Be careful what you go looking for ........ digging deep into the family records

We don’t have any pictures of mum and dad’s marriage.

Nor would I expect there to be any.  They were married in 1952 in Camberwell and back then wedding photographs were for the well off.

That said both mum and dad had plenty of pictures taken of themselves before they met and plenty after we started to come along, but none of the wedding.

But then until today we couldn’t confirm they had actually been married.

So while the document places all of my four sisters as legitimate it leaves me out in the cold because I was born in 1949.

There has been an ongoing debate between me and my sisters about whether they were married which in part was because dad was very meticulous and kept lots of records.

These included the birth certificates of each of the four girls along with his driving licenses, dating back to the 1920s and all of his passports from the ‘30s onwards but nowhere was there a marriage certificate or my birth certificate.

Of course on one level it doesn’t matter.  We were loved, and brought up in a caring and safe home and never wanted for anything.

Our parents had lived through a world war, and the Great Depression, which brought mass unemployment, and the Means Test and so they made sure that we grew up in a better world.

But that marriage was always the elephant in the room and we never quite let the matter rest.

I had assumed that as they re-registered my birth in 1956, they may well have taken the opportunity to marry before my sisters were born, but I never bothered to go looking for the certificate until last Sunday when with the debate again in full swing I decided to lay the ghost to rest.

But looking at the certificate which arrived today only set new hares racing.

There were two witnesses, one was our uncle George, but the other was unknown to me. He was not someone I knew nor was he someone Dad ever mentioned, which left me just a name.

A search of the records offered up a suitable candidate who according to the electoral registers lived close by during the late 1940s into the 50s but there the trail ended.

If he was a work mate, we will get no where as the employment records of where Dad worked vanished decades ago and the possibility that they shared digs together seems remote.

The small glimmer of hope that I might track him and his family with the even vaguer chance of a wedding picture of mum and dad has proved illusory.

But I had misread the name, and while the surname was the same the initials were different which led to a new search leading to a woman not a man, but happily still very close to where we lived.

Sadly the marriage certificate offers up no other clues, save that they were married in Camberwell.

The Registrar and Superintendent Registrar are long dead, and none of us thought to ask Uncle George about when and where mum and dad were married.

But then I doubt he would have told us.

Leaving me just the Registry Office, which may or may not be the one at 34 Peckham Road.

I may strike lucky and find someone who has a pictures of the building as it was and maybe even of the inside.

Now that would be good.

Location; Camberwell







Pictures; dad and mum 1947-55, from the Simpson Family Collection

The winner of the Chorlton Caption Competition is ...........

Miss Mabel has spoken.

As many of you will know Miss Mabel Ackroyd of Martledge was asked to judge the Chorlton Caption Competition which we ran to accompany the Chorlton Beer and Cider Festival.

The poster, shown opposite was adapted from an old picture postcard of the early 20th century

It was a hard task but fortified by three bottles of Rumper’s Revenge which in Peter’s judgement was brash given the pint of Murk Wood Ale she had started the day with, she narrowed it down to four choices.

Now Miss Mabel is a seasoned festival drinker and took it all in her stride.

Her four were , Roger Callow’s "Eeny meeny miny moe I can't decide which way to go. Should it be West or should it be East, think I'll sit here a spell 'til I smell the yeast. Hop to it me lad", Lee Kenney’s "Will Bob Johnson sell his soul for a pint ?", Kathy Lee’s "All roads in Chorlton lead to beer" and finally Suzanne Howard’s,  “Where for out tho beer?” 

What particularly impressed Mabel was the international aspect of the competition remarking how “nice it was that Roger who lived in the south would want take part in a Northern Festival and that the equally nice Mr Kenney should wake up especially early to send in his entry”, given that he lives in British Columbia on the west side of Canada.

Both their entries she found inventive and funny, and also enjoyed Suzanne’s take on Mr Shakespeare, but in the end settled for Kathy’s comment arguing it would make a fine title for the film of the competition, if Hardy Films could fit it into their hectic film schedule.

So that is it ......... leaving me just to thank Miss Mable Ackroyd, and announce that the runners up will have a choice of a Peter Picture postcard of Chorlton, or a signed photograph of Miss Mabel.

We will of course be contacting them by Reg’s carrier pigeon.

And having done that Lee bounced back with another caption, "Went down to the crossroads, fell down apon my knees, Someone give me mercy , a pint if you please" which I really like.

Location; Chorlton

Picture, the Competition, adapted by Peter Topping from a picture postcard issued in 1907 by Raphael Tuck and Son, and now in the catalogue of Tuck DB, https://tuckdb.org/

A stretch of sun kissed water ......... a mystery and a flower

Now you can’t ask for more.

Yesterday Andy Robertson was out on one of his favourite jaunts that took him up to Cornbrook, and along the way he recorded a bridge, a pleasure cruise and some dumped sofas.

Now in the fullness of time all will appear on the blog, but today I have cherry picked, starting with that bridge and moving on to the mystery of the shaft.

Andy added that “here are a few of these knocking about. Could they be ventilation shafts? I read that there are network of tunnels running alongside the docks”.

And I am pretty confident that before this post has travelled far someone will offer up an explanation, with a detailed history, set of maps and old photographs.

They may also be able to suggest an answer to Andy’s other question “what is this flower? It is very widespread especially along the metrolink”.

And that I think it is.

Other than to say I suggest you follow Andy on his trip because before too long the landscape will have been altered forever.

Location; walking to Cornrbrook

Pictures; from the collection of Andy Robertson, 2018