Two doctors, an Essex apple-grower, a Leicestershire lawyer, an architect and a real gent ... with their vendor's labels
Cuthbert Chapman Gibbs MD
Alban Henry Sharp and Alfred Dalton Sharp
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| Isaiah de Zouche |
H McCrea Worley
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| Edwards |
I don't know why folk can't correctly read the writing on the back of these photos. De Zouche is blessedly labelled in copper plate (I must investigate the other pix inscribed by the same hand) but some of the others need a touch of intelligent decipherment ...
Dr Gibbs wasn't Gibbs, he was GIBBES, Mr Edwards was labelled in faint pencil, but it was possible to decipher 'Basil W', and Mr Worley? He wasn't Mr Worley at all. Firstly the word was WARLEY, and that's where he came from. His actual surname was McCREA.
So, who were they.
Cuthbert Chapman GIBBES (b Sidmouth 5 September 1850; d Albany Hotel, Ifield 25 August 1927) was one the clergy-sized family of Heneage Gibbes, incumbent of All Saint's Sidmouth. He studied medicine in Aberdeen, married (1878) May Lucy Gransmore ('daughter of Frederick Gransmore Esq RN of Ilfracombe), settled in Kingston on Thomas (medical officer of the Kingston on Thames Rural Sanitary Authority), had a couple of daughters ... I see him noted in the diphtheris outbreak in Kingston, and giving a paper on Prognosis of Aortic Regurgitation .. and in his pre-married days practising in Plymouth where his success as a swimmer won him a mention in ... the Australian Papers. I also see him Freemasoning, being made a fellow of the Linnean Society, at the Chemical Society, and in 1919 go into legal battle on behalf of a wealthy old lady who seemed to have been swindled by her trustees ... he evidently wasn't just a quiet country G.P. Upon leaving Kingston, the Gibbes moved into a flat in Barkston Garden, Brompton, and he apparently had rooms at 89 Harley Street.
Alban Henry SHARP (b Highgate 15 June 1861; d Cox Green, Church Yard, Ramsden Heath, Billericay, Essex 11 November 1848)
Arthur Dalton SHARP (b North Grove, Highgate 16 March 1863; d Greenwich 14 June 1940)
were the fruit grower and the architect. I see Arthur attending King's College and Alban attending Gloucester House, Highgate ... and then they disappear for a while and I wondered why. I think I have found 'why'.
The boys were among the children of Mr Martin Richard Sharp, a newspaper editor, and his India-born wife Olivia Sophia McKie (b Berhampore, 19 December 1832; d ). Mr Sharp is not difficult to follow ...
but why are photographs of Mrs Sharp, the two boys and one sister, enshrined in the archives of Trinity College, Toronto? I suspect they may have been 'over there' during the decades I fail to find them in England. In 1881, Arthur is living with his elder brothers, Martin and Thomas, who have both qualified as lawyers ... in 1891 Mama Olivia is at home at Colvelly, Eastbourne, a widow with seven of her children, but not these two! ... in 1911, Arthur is with Mama Olivia 'private means' and three unmarried siblings ... Alban, whom I find nowhere, also remained single. I pick him up, finally, growing apples and being a country gent in Essex. Thomas's maiden daughter Dilys Miranda moved in with him ...
When Olivia died in 1918 (11 July) at Blackheath, she named Martin jr, Thomas and Arthur as her executors. Not Alban. Hmmm.
Isaiah de ZOUCHE (b 30 July 1839; d Clinton Springs, NY 4 November 1894) turned out to be of local (to me) interest. From 1875 until just before his death, he was a doctor in Dunedin, New Zealand. He died in America, whence he had gone for treatment, after a nervous collapse, aged just 55, but he had lived the larger part of his adult life in Otago, and is liberally featured in local papers ...
He certainly looked better without the beard!
I don't know where he was born, but it would seem to have been in the land of his father and mother: Ireland. But maybe after their emigration to New Jersey. I pick him up in 1865 at Queen's College, Galway, 1866 as 'one of the medical officers of the workhouse, Crosby', 1870 in Liverpool, then in 1875 in New York. His widowed mother had died in Albany (26 September 1872), but members of the large family were still there. His movements over the next years seem many and varied. I spot him in New Zealand in 1875, superintendant surgeon of an emigrant ship, in Australia in 1876, getting married and photographed in Liverpool in 1877, before settling down in Dunedin's Moray Place to produce a large number of children, and make himself a reputation as an expert on 'diseases of children' and as a staunch adocate of the theory that alcoholism was a disease (Inebrity and the Duty of the State in Regard to Inebriates).
Much, much later I came upon this photo. Daughter Beatrice Margaret (b Rochdale House, Moray Place, Dunedin 7 August 1878; d Gloucester 19 May 1960) aged 4 months ...
Beatrice married a cotton salesman from Rock Ferry ..
Henry Charles McCREA (b Dublin 17 May 1910; d Warley House 4 June 1901) is the gent of the bunch ...
There's no use my pretending I've looked far into him. As soon as I had sussed that he was 'of Wartley', I googled him and ... there was the whole story.
What can I say more? Except I hope they can match this photo with their excellent article!
Which leaves our Leics lawyer. He is, obviously a tad more modern, but he lived at 160 London Road, Leics, which is right near my brother and his friend, Jane. So ...
Basil Wynn EDWARDS (b Cefn, Denbighshire, Wales 13 July 1883; d 160 London Road, Leicester 19 March 1948)
'eldest son of the Vicar of Rhyl', but also at times rector of Llanycil, Wales and Misterton, Yorks ..
His partners don't seem to haves lasted: married Winifred Stafford Brook in 1918, but she seems to have bowed out briskly and become Mrs Birkinshaw instead; in the solicitor business with Raymond Guildford Frisby, partnership dissolved ...
That's all. He don't LOOK very exciting, do he ....
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| London Road, Leicester |
Could this be he as well ..
Oh well, you win some and you lose some ...
End of episode, who knows upon whom I shall stumble next ...
Garn .. here's one that was hiding in the corner. I wish I knew why this lady was in a wheelchair. It apparently wasn't a from birth thing. And look at her eyes. And the lifeless hand on the book of which she hardly seems aware. A stroke? Surely it's not a post-mortem photo. She died at the age of 49.
Ellen Harriett FOOT (b Long Bredy, Dorset 28 July 1829; d 12 Catharine Place, Bath 27 February 1879) was -- one could have guessed -- a clergyman's daughter. A rather well-off clergyman whose fortune came from an extensive empire of tobacco and snuff emporia known as 'Lundy Foot', established by his father, Jeffrey Foot of Dublin (and London), who had christened his son by the name of the firm.
Rev Lundy Foot seems to have spent his entire career at Long Bredy. He married (1) Elizabeth Vicars - sons, then (2) Harriet Cunningham 'granddaughter of a baronet' who gave him six more children before her death, aged 31. Which meant eldest daughter Sophia Elizabeth brought them all up. With the help of seven servants. I haven't followed the boys -- although I see that eldest son became Chaplain to the Asylum for the Blind, and later Vicar of Hanbury -- just the girls. Eldest daughter Sophia married wealthy Montague Williams Esq, and duly supplied him with a bundle of sons, but Ellen, Jane Olivia and Fanny Louisa stayed at home. In 1861 they can be seen holidaying in Torquay together (plus servants and a page boy); in 1871 they are at home, at Long Bredon rectory .. but part of the household is a Miss Johnstone, 'trained nurse, Devonshire Square sisterhood'. Ha! I thought: what has happened to Ellen? But it may not have been Ellen. Four months later, the youngest of the trio, Fanny, died. Less than two years later, it was father ..
So Ellen and Jane left the rectory where they had been born, and removed to the comfort of 12 Catharine Place, Bath, where Ellen died in 1879 and Jane, after a quarter of a century living alone with cook, lady's maid and housemaid, in 1906.
last surviving daughter of the Rev. Lundy Foot, died at 12 Catharine Place, Bath, co. Somerset, in her 77th year, on Wednesday, 8 January, and was buried in Locksbrook Cemetery, Bath, on Saturday, 11 January 1908, after first part of service at St. Andrew’s, Walcot, Bath. Will dated 17 June 1907, with
codicil dated 4 December 1907, proved in the Principal Registry 31 January 1908, by Richard Mildmay Foot of Berkhampstead, co. Hertford, formerly Major in H.M's Regiment of Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, and Colonel Robert Williams of Bridehead, co. Dorset, M.P.
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