A bit of European postal history ... in my bottom drawer ...

 

I don't recollect having seen this before. But why would I? It doesn't immediately spring to the eye. Rather plain.. but today it fell out of its folder on to my desk and I said OK, OK ...

Its a postcard. Plain. 4 kroner and 10 heller's worth of stamps. The 4k one overprinted FLÜGPOST. Its postmarked Vienna Centralstation, and also Flügpost.Poczta.Lotnicza on the same date. Then back in Vienna ..  so, our card has made a day trip to Krakow. And Lvov! By airpost. Oh! I see. Grandfather Pepi is sending his little son Fritz (my father, b 1911) the equivalent of a first-day cover by the new commercial airpost. Kriegflügpost ... war post ... Grüsse!

Here it is explained: https://www.stamp-collecting-world.com/austrianempire_airmail.html. So Pepi's card was confirmedly sent five weeks after the introduction of airmail in Austria. Which, if I understand aright, means in the world!

Now I see why Father sent us special (empty) envelopes on occasions such as the first airpost out of Antarctica. I had that one until very recently. But this one is better ... I'm glad I found out it's significance. I'd better look some more ...

Oh! The address!  Bürggasse 72 ...

A century later, here is the house ...

Various Victorians

.

Today was our local race day, and a splendid day it was. Alas, my infirmities meant that I wasn't on course, I had to watch it on Trackside TV in my living room .. so instead of popping to the bar between races ... I popped into the 19th century ...

And there I found these folk who aroused my curiosity ... baby Alice Meriton, Mr Littleton Malling, Amelia wife of Percy Elliott, Mr J J Jacques, William H Double, Charles Hunwick, Mr Morley (registered). I've got a feeling that I may not wholly have avoided the Victorian clergy and the Indian army ...

Yes, I know: funny lot. I like Mr Hunswick, he's got a slightly louche look to him. Mrs Meriton and Mrs Elliott look OK too. 'Mr Morley' (who isn't of course) looks like the phoney preacher from yesterday's episode of Midsomer Murders. I wouldn't trust him a centimetre.

Well, tomorrow I will dig deeper!

I did. I spent a whole day on the Rev Punshon (Morley was his middle and his mother's name) who turned out to be in the DNB anyhow. And then blogger ate the whole day's work up. Let's just say he was an orator, demagogue, 'personality' of the Methodist persuasion. A sort of Billy Graham but inside the establishment. And those gifts took him to a very visible place in the hierarchy of the Wesleyan church in, particularly, Canada. 

Blogger didnt eat my notes, so here is a short biog from somewhere.

'Wesleyan Methodist minister. After spending a few years in business, he attended the Wesleyan College, Richmond. In 1845 he received his first appointment, at Marden, Kent, and was ordained at Manchester in 1849. For the next 19 years he travelled in several circuits, including some of the London ones (1858-1864). In 1868 he went to Chicago as the representative of the Wesleyan Methodist conference, and then settled in Canada. His preaching and lecturing drew great crowds both there and in the United States, and he was five times President of the Canadian Conference. In Canada, he often worked with and mentored Manly Benson, a Methodist minister who was an eloquent lecturer. While in Canada, he married his sister-in-law, thought this would have been forbidden by the British'

His father was a mercer, he started out as a timber merchant's clerk, but found oratory more to his taste and got into lecturing and preaching at a very young age. He became well known in the north of England, and gave his first London performance ('The Prophet Horeb -- his life and lessons') 17 January 1857 ... going on to become a media starlet ("Rev W M Punshon at the Falls of Niagara' is the one I remember from the amusing list I had compiled) and the recipient of an honorary LLD from a compliant American college.

Anyhow, here are a few little bits I had clipped about the Reverend Doctor William Morley PUNSHON (b Doncaster 29 May 1824; d Tranby, Brixton Rise 14 April 1881) that I clipped to illustrate what I wrote

And it's sorry I am that I spent my day on Morley, his two surviving sons and marriage-dead daughter .. and I'm going to get on to the rest of the folk.

Alice E S MERITON (b Hamburg 19 July 1865; d Sunderland 1955) and her mother Jane SCOTT (1841-1927).

Yes Hamburg. Father clearly had something to do with ships. John Henry Rich Meriton (b Greenwich 21 October 1838; d Monkwearmouth 20 February 1868) 'engineer and fitter' married Jane, had three children all with elongated names, and died in Monkwearmouth at the age of twenty-nine. Jane remarried, another shipyard engine man named Thomas Dand (1825-1904) in 1869 and the little family spent their lives in Sunderland. Mother and sister Sophia Jane Gwendolin don't seem to have had any ocupation. Sophia became Mrs Dixon, but Alice stayed single. She tried her hand at teaching music, then took up drapery and ended up running a fancy-goods shop. 

PS. Always revisit the scene: here is Annie Dand in the same box ... and she's taken from an album ... Grandpa and Grannie Birkett? Aunt Sithy Dent née Alderson (1822-1880), farmers wife of Bowes, Yorks? 

Annie Dand

Sithy Dent

The gentleman with the flower is Irwin Charles Lyttleton MALING (b Waikato, at sea nr Lyttleton, NZ 8 June 1877; d Brighton 1 December 1946). Yes, I know, what a name. But the Lyttelton is I guess fair enough. And he was quite an international chappie, even though he ended his life in Brighton. His father, Irvin Charles Maling (b Calcutta 2 FEbruary 1841; d Blckheath 13 June 1919) was born in India, to a scion of the East India Company, his mother was Miss Emily Ann Whitlock, a Sussex clergyman's daughter. Father became a Captain in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, CMG, the couple produced a dozen children, and I see young Irvin in the 1891 census in England, with his mother's family and the excessive clerical number of servants in Groombridge. It seems that father was posted as an ADC/private secretary to the Marquis of Normanby, Governor of Queensland, in the 1870s which accounts for Irwin jr (et al) being born down that way. 

Anyway, Irwin seems to have spent much of his life in Canada. He married there in 1907 (Jessie Edith Anton). I don't knowwhat he did there, but by 1930 he is down in Islip, NY with his second wife (Eileen Mary Glover of Carlow, m 1912) working as a florist's helper. In 1839 he is back in England, living with two of his unmarried sisters, and his sons Arthur Irwin Victor (4 July 1916, fitter) and Chistopher Whitlock (23 September 1920, car salesmam). I C L Maling is listed as 'labourer, agricultural hod-cutter'. Daughters Nina and Margaret are elsewhere, I guess.
Well, I didn't expect that smart little gentleman, brought up in a genteel vicarage with a squad of servants to end up as an itinerant hodcutter ...


Amelia, wife of George Percy Elliott (m 30 June 1846) was born as Amelia CANNON (b 1813; d 48 West Cromwell Rd 8 January 1886), the daughter of James Cannon and ... no one seems to know who. Or where.
The inscription on this card is an unpunctuated one. 

I took it to mean that George was the author of 'mystic books'. But he wasn't. He wrote number of books of a more conventional kind, but the 'mystic' was apparently Amelia.

George (d Awliscombe, 12 July 1874) son of the Rev Luther Graves Elliott and Elizabeth née Taswell graduated MA from St Mary's Hall and became a barrister, a magistrate, one of the Sudbury Bribery Commissioners, and twenty-five years a police magistrate at Lamberh courts. He was 'of Streatham Common and Egland House, Awliscombe, Devon', fathered eight children, kept half a dozen servants, left a tidy sum to his young(er) wife at his death  ... but may be exculpated from 'mysticism'.

Amelia's books -- written, if they were, under we know not name -- elude me utterly. Her children don't. One son died as an infant, another at University, one lived to become (sigh!) Rector of Stoke Damerel. One daughter wed a Major in the Cheshire Militia and ... well, there are plenty of descendants who can sort out the verity of mystic Amelia.

The muttonchops man. John Thomas JACQUES (b Birstall, Leics 25 March 1842; d Leicester 12 October 1902). I was afeared he might be yet another clergyman, but, no. J T Thomas, elder son of James Thomas (woolstapler) and his wife Ann (née Kinton) of Birstall was destined for his career right from his teens when he passed the Apothecaries Hall exams (1860) and was taken on as a dresser, and then a live-in medical pupil at Leicester Infirmary. He worked his way to become house surgeon and longtime chief medical officer at the Infirmary while conducting a pratice at 9 The Newarke, and sometime acting as Surgeon Major to the Leicestershire Yeomanry. He married (18 July 1872) Eleanor Eirene Johnston (d 30 Porchester Sq 16 September 1929), bred freely (Eirene Melina, Lilian Evelyne, Harold, Cecil Parker, John Bertram, Violet Lowder, Ernest William F, Eric Taylor) kept a household of a half-dozen servants ... I'm not chasing all those up, but I see that Violet married a Professor of Anatomy.

William Henry DOUBLE (b King St, Longacre 17 March 1853; d unknown)

was, like his father before him, a coach currier. In 1871, they are living in Wimbledon where father John and his wife Eliza have a business employing 3 men and a boy. By 1881, William has his own business at 30 Castle Street, Finsbury, and has acquired (1877) a wife, Frances née Gillingham. Soon after, a daughter, Mary Ann. Frances died, aged 43, in Kingston, and the following year William married Julia Elizabeth Starnes (née Hales). Mary Ann was witness. And then they all disappear ....

And finally, Charles HUNWICK (b Greenwich 1842; d Camden 7 March 1901)

I thought this cheeky chappie might be fun. He is, at the least, unusual. John Hunwick came, like many a Hunwick, from Feering in Essex. His wife, Maria née Hughes, didn't seem to know where she was born. Sometime she said Deal, sometime Ramsgate. John was a career fireman and, after the birth of their first son, John, they removed to Greenwich where they repeated with Sarah, Louisa, Maria, Charles, and Thomas. Charles started out as a simple labourer, but he found his niche around 1862 when he was employed by William Smith of 82 Regent Street as a billiard marker in his well-known Billiard Rooms. A billiard marker was not a simple adder-up, he had to be everything to everybody, a factotum with canny appeal ... Charles moved on the be 'proprietor of a billiard room' for a while, but had sagely resumed his old occupation by the 1881 census. 

Charles married (4 August 1867) Jane Kell and after her death in May 1882 wed Eliza Ray. He died in Camden in 1901.

And that's that. Time for a change .... unless, of course, something comes up ...

Grandfather and Grannie Birkett

A very striking farmer's wife ...

 

I should be finished in the 19th century for today. But the races have been called off for cause of flooding, it's starting to rain here and this lady fell into my net. Striking, eh? So .. why not ... Ann Bennett?

I notice that, though, that on the front she's labelled Ann Moore. On the back, Ann .. oh stuff and nonsense, I know a B from a K! Ann KENNETT.

Actually, she wasn't born under either name. Her birthname was Ann Whitmore, and she was born at Souldern Lock, Oxfordshire, the daughter of John Whitmore (d 27 November 1894), a brickmaker, and his wife, Elizabeth née Quarterma[i]n. I see that John signed his 1823 marriage entry with an illiterate cross.

They moved their family to Hillmorton in Warwickshire, where father made more bricks, but by the 1851 census only 11 year-old Thomas is with them. Ann was already, it seems, out in the world. And, in the world. she encountered farmer, John Moore (111 1/2 acres employing 3 men), whom she wed in 1856. They lived at Castle Farm in Westwell, Kent ('the property of the Earl of Winchelsea') until John died, early in 1865, at the age of just 34.

In 1868, Ann remarried, a farmer a decade older than she, Thomas Kennett (18 November 1868) They kept up Castle Farm, where I see them in 1871 (115 acres, 3 men and two boys) with Ann's parents. In 1870, they were the victims of an arson attack which made the news when Lord Montcharles and his private fire engine turned up, the noble Lord all decked in his colurful fire-chief's get out. The buildings were saved, but the wheat stooks were destroyed.

In 1881, the farm has been expanded to 275 acres (but the staff hasn't expanded!), and Elizabeth has gone, at the age of 64, to the Westwell churchyard.

Ann would join her there in 1890...

Thomas brought in a niece to housekeep for him and father John until John died in 1894. Thomas retired from farming in the 1890s, and in 1900 he and niece Laura Fairfax are living in Station Rd, Charing.  Thomas died 15 March 1903.

So my striking lady was .. a brickmaker's daughter, and twice a farmer's wife. Well, I have known a few decidedly handsome farmer's wives in my life ...

The vicar, the lawyer, the wine merchant, the bank manager ... and the actress!

 

I'm getting quite adept at picking out the odd jewel from the vast mines of ebay.  So, to start off 2021, after a jolly foray to the early-morning market ... farm-fresh veg and artisanal cheese, rose bushes ... and a thorough soaking of the gasping garden, I made my lucky dip. Today I happed on the shop of 'feldonstamps', and picked out some photos and two letters from a collection focusing mainly on postmarks and postal history ...

Here are the photos. Three nice gentlemen who looked as if they might have been in the law (Mr Feld has many many documents etc from law firms) or business or something else requiring a white collar...

and two photos of this chappie: one from Exeter and the other from France.

All are named (1) is Walter R Elliott (2) is Charles Drewe Harris and (3a/b) is Constantine Richards. 

So .. here we go.

Walter Robert ELLIOTT (b Kingsbridge, Devon 1851) was the son of doctor (MRCS, general practicioner) John Elliott (1808-1873) and his wife Mary née Luscombe (1809-1896). In the 1861 census, he is listed the ninth of their ten children (there were apparently eleven, so one must have been away), the first three having been launched on Devon as doctors, chemist et al. Walter, however, became an accountant. He married Harriott Augusta Heather, a notary's daughter from Portsea, rose ultimately to a position as a bank manager in Dartmouth, and quit this life at Roudham View, Paignton 21 January 1908. There were no children, but he left Harriott well provided. I see that in 1911 she was looked after by a cook, a housemaid and a parlour maid ...

Charles Drewe HARRIS (b Harfield nr Bristol x 28 April 1853) was the fourth child (of five) of solicitor Charles Harris and his wife Emma Eliza nee Drewe. Eldest brother Alfred followed in father's footsteps, but the teenaged Charles became a clerk to a wine merchant, then a wine merchant on his own account and 'manager to a whisky merchant'. He married (17 November 1880) Harriet Agnes Tomlin Harris, daughter of Stanley Harris, solicitor ... a cousin, by whom he had a daughter Stephanie Drewe Harris (d 1904 aged 23) and a son Oscar Drewe Harris (b 15 March 1884; d 1975) ... and in the 1891 census they are equipped with a housemaid, a cook, and a French governess at their home in Hampstead's Wood End Lane. Charles appears to have died in 1928, and Harriet the following year (33 Victoria Road, Sutton 30 October 1929). Her executor was her son Oscar 'theatre manager'. Wot! He didn't have much to execute. She left but a few hundred pounds.

Here we are, Mr Oscar D Harris ('Odee') 'well-known in the West End as manager of André Charlot's revues at the Prince of Wales'. Well, fancy that! In 1932 he reconverted into a publican at the Northey Arms, Box. Oh heavens! He was the husband of Maisie Gay! Maisie died in 1945, Oscar lived thirty years more. Mr Maisie Gay, indeed! Was she then 'Daisy Maude Harris'? Yes, she was. There they are living together in London in 1927 ... can't find the actual wedding, but never mind. Look! Here they are with Jessie Matthews ..  So Charles Drewe Harris has his moment of glory. Maisie Gay's father-in-law!

Constantine RICHARDS utter blank. Why? Was he perhaps a Frenchman who just visited England? Oh, well, can't win 'em all. 

STOP PRESS. Its not "Richards" its "Rickards". And his wife Jane née Arden (m 1869) was there too, but someone has snapped 'em up since yesterday. Son of William Rickards and Jane Damian. Died Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico, 19 February 1905. Wonder why he was there. I see they had several sons down there. Oh! 'Ya en 1873 habitaban en Oaxaca los ingleses Constantino Rickards (minero)'. 'Don Constantino Rickards, a most generous and hospitable Englishman, who has lived in the country thirty years', He or his son seems to have been an archeologist! And is it he or his son who is one of 'the state's most important businessmen'.  British consul. Thrre generations of consuls? Too much. Another story!

STOP STOP PRESS. Hehe it was my secret agent and ally who bought them. All's well. Here's 'Juana' née Arden!

Now the letters. 1851. This first is actually only an envelope. Addressed to Edward Lorence Gibbs, solicitor, at Henley-in-Arden. Don't know why I picked it, but thought I might as well look him up.

Edward Lawrence GIBBS born 1804. Son of Lawrence Gibbs (b Bethnal Green x 24 January 1768; d 13 July 1820) and his wife Sarah née Sturmey (d Aspley 22 September 1841).  

Should be easy enough. But, no. Lawrence (father) seems to have been a hairdresser, his father also called Lawrence, also with a wife named Sarah (née Cull), seems to have been a carpenter. 

So they are not of the family of the Norfolk Reverend LG, son of Stephen G, who married an Ann, nor of the LG son of another LG who married another Sarah (Hawthorne) ... this genealogy thing is full of traps!

But on to Edward. First sighting, 1835. Warwickshire. Getting married on 23 July to .. oh no! Another Sarah. This one is née Brown and is the daughter of the master of the Stonehouse Lunatic Asylum, Henley-on Arden. And Edward is already a solicitor. 

I don't know since when, but he's in partnership with one William Welsh Lea .... whaaaaaaat!

Parenthesis. I may be old and rather infirm. I may not be able to remember what I had for tea last night. I may forget the horse's mother's names. BUT ... I have seen that name afore! 

When a collection is 'disposed of' it doesn't always all end up in the same place. Here is Mr Gibbs's filed letter from 1851 in our friend's shop. BUT. Down in Hove, the always interesting 'hovebooks' has a bundlette of Lea and Gibbs letters from, especially, 1842.

Well, I see them, and later Edward without William (1791-1852), doing the usual duties of a provincial solicitor: mostly to do with estates ..

Their surviving son, Edward Brown Lawrence Gibbs (1837-1891) worked as a land surveyor. 

Well, apart from Maisie Gay, my day's diggings had been a tad regulation, but my reward was in store. I left it till last, because it was a letter from a Victorian clergyman -- not a breed of which I am over fond ...  to his lawyer. 

The lawyer, John Dyneley 'of Gray's Inn', described himself thus in 1829, during the Teynsham sanity case (seemingly in his capacity as 'Secretary of Lunatics') which is related in detail in the book The Report of the Proceedings on the trial of the cause Doe on the demise of Lord Teynham:

So respectable professional folk. Acting for the aristocratic and wealthy (and occaionally 'insane').

His correspondent is the vicar of St Mary's Church, Ottery St Mary. The incumbent of that church had in his gift the curacy of Kings-Kerswell: as he says he was 'patron of the perpetual curacy', a curacy which held a stipend of a natty 600L per year. Part of the jobs for the boys set-up of the time, and a way of shoving very obvious younger sons who had studied Greek and Latin into a gentlemanly sinecure for life. I see that in this case a wealthy widow (Mrs Phillipa Creed, of whom one can read in many places) had bequeathed five acres and houses in trust to shore up the said curacy (and undoubtedly save her soul) and that seemingly another wealthy sinner ('Mr Peck'?) is rallying to the cause as well. And someone has persauded the Governors of Queen Ann's Bounty to reverse their previous decision and allow the curacy their support. 

Anyway, here we have the presiding vicar of St Mary's writing to his London lawyer to get the modifications to the situation legally documented. So? Pretty ordinary letter. But ...

Who is the Rev who wrote it? George May Coleridge. Son of the previous vicar of Ottery St Mary: George Coleridge (1764-1828) who was the brother of one Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Buzzword! 

STC even wrote a poem to his brother...

A blessed lot hath he, who having past 

His youth and early manhood in the stir 

And turmoil of the world, retreats at length, 

With cares that move, not agitate the heart, 

To the same dwelling where his father dwelt; 

And haply views his tottering little ones 

Embrace those aged knees, and climb that lap, 

On which first kneeling his own infancy 

Lisped its brief prayer. Such, O my earliest friend! 

Thine and thy brothers' favorable lot. 

At distance did ye climb life's upland road, 

Yet cheered and cheering: now fraternal love 

Hath drawn you to one centre. Be your days 

Holy, and blest and blessing may ye live! 

even though "I quitted Ottery, when I was so young, that most of those endearing circumstances, that are wont to render the scenes and companions of our childhood delightful in recollection, I have associated with the place of my education".

He also penned a number of letters to his newphew which survive in collections round the world. But the modern Coleridge family didn't seemingly rate the Rev G M. His portrait sold at Sotheby's for a measly 624L ..

George May Coleridge (b Ottery St Mary x 27 November 1798; d Vicarage, St Mary 5 June 1847). At his death, a sermon was preached at his church by James Anthony Froude, another supporter of the Tractarian movement of which Coleridge was a staunch supporter

and the local press eulogised him in verse

His name lived on for some years thanks to another vicar, Rev William Smith of St Miniver. Otherwise Hart-Smith. So therefore some kind of relation. He lumbered a son with the resounding name of George May Coleridge Hart Smith ... the poor chap lies in Remuera gravyard, New Zealand. He made it to assistant bank manager ...

Well, there we are. My little handful of ephemera turned up not only the poet Coleridge, not only the fascinating Mrs Priscilla Creed ... but wow! Maisie Gay!  A good day's delving, I'd say.

A garden party at Ottery St Mary. I guess that's the Coleridge's church in the background ..