Friday, April 4, 2014

Create something today

My Gran didn't  know about facebook or the internet and didn't even keep a diary or journal so we know very little about her early life.  I wish she had kept a diary or journal so that we knew a little bit more about her.  People of my grandchildren's age however use networking sites like facebook or twitter as some kind of diary and are thus recording for posterity their activities and thoughts.


But how many think about that when they are posting silly selfies or  clicking "like" on something close to pornography ?

What will their grandchildren think about knowing just a bit too much about "Nan" when she was young ?  Then there will perhaps be great grandchildren, that they may not meet for whatever reason.  Will they be happy to know about the antics at those hen or stag nights ?

Next time that little box appears which says "write something" think about those grandchildren and their children and write something.

a poem, a little story about your first day at school for first job.

Cant write ?  Course you can.  You did it an primary and secondary school, you do it all the time
on the social networks.

So think about leaving something positive for those kids to know about you.  Life for some is all a laugh at the moment, but take care, it can turn round and bite you on the bum in no time at all.,

My Gran knew all about that.  Her mother died when she was 16 and she had to become "mum" to her younger brothers and sisters , siblings in modern day social work speak.  She married at 20 and had nine children of her own.  Her old Dad came to live with them and one day she found him cold in the back yard having had a fall.  He died soon after.  Her own husband died two years later and she was left with five children under 16 to care for, so if she wasn't working before then she needed to now, and she carried on working until she was over 70.

During the war she was bombed out of the house she had lived in for over thirty years and after a short time in the country, which she didnt like, she returned to London and ended her days in a first floor flat, reading the newspaper through a magnifying glass because she didn't, or wouldn't wear specs.





Tuesday, March 4, 2014

The Great Wall of Pennington Street.

Along the south side of Pennington Street in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets there is a 30 Foot high wall,  close to a quarter of a mile wall that was built in the early 19th century to be the northern boundary of the new London Docks. It was built this way as it was a part of the security of the bonded warehouses overseen by the customs and excise men.  There was only the one gate into the docks from Pennington Street which was called the Tobacco Gate.
With the decline of the docks due to their unsuitability to deal with the large containerised shipping  the area was later turned into an industrial area so that the the wall still had a security function.  When News Ltd moved their newspaper production to the area in 1986 the wall effectively kept out the striking print-workers and the inevitable scuffles which took place during picketing.  Newspaper reports referred to the" battle of Wapping" but of course Pennington Street was not in Wapping, it had never been.  Newspaper headlines need to be short and the "Battle of Stepney" would have made connotations with the "Battle of Cable Street" in 1936 when east London workers blocked the marches of Oswald Moseley's fascist black-shirts.  Comparisons would have been made.
News International have now gone and once again the site is to be redeveloped.

So will east London's Berlin wall come down ?  "Not on your Nellie" as any self-respecting cockney would say, supposing you were able to find one in Pennington Street these days.

No doubt the new development  will contain more yuppy accommodation and the wall will still be needed to keep the separation from the hoi poloi.   It will remain to cast its shadow over the street as it has done for close to two hundred years.

A hundred years ago my grandparents lived in Pennington Street in a  house which it was claimed had been built in 1767.  Two up and two down, no amenities and long since gone.  In 1881 almost opposite the Tobacco Gate was Lilac Place, just a few four roomed houses, one of which was occupied by 16 adults. Even by the normal overcrowded housing standards of the time for the east end, this was quite exceptional that the enumerator made a note "16 in 4!".  



Thursday, February 20, 2014

A bicycle made for two or more

Bicycle made for six or even more.


Heard a story the other day.
There was this cycling club on Merseyside which decided to do a fundraiser for a charity or a new clubhouse or perhaps, given the location, just a pub crawl.
Anyway, they decided to do something different like a  ride from Lands end to John o groats, and some bright spark hit on the idea of using the longest tandem they could find.  A tandem used to be for two riders, but then it developed into three or more.  Most serious cyclists have got bits and pieces of bikes in their sheds or garages, remnants of crashes, adaptations or what have you, so these were all pooled and eventually there was a tandem for six riders.  Looked a bit weird but still rideable they thought.

Six club members were chosen for the team and a practice ride was agreed for a Saturday morning, just around the town to see if any adjustments were necessary.
Off they went in high spirits and it seemed to be ok at first, a few stops to adjust a chain here, a gear there and so on.  Eventually though they agreed that it was more thirsty work than usual, and there were no stewards along the way handing out bottles of beverage so a refreshment stop was agreed on.

A suitable hostelry appeared not long thereafter, this being Merseyside, and a stop it was.  Pub car parks are notoriously unsuitable for the parking of bikes, particularly one that was eight foot long.  Across the road was a group of old  shops with those little posts on the edge of the pavement with chains in between, so they parked the bike there.  This was just outside one of those local art gallery and artists supply shops, so whilst five of the team went over to the pub, one of them popped inside the gallery to find some finger painting stuff for his five year old daughter.

Whilst inside a long haired type came in and asked the shop owner who had created the installation displayed outside.  Shop owner was a bit perplexed as he only had a couple of paintings on easels and a smallish garden ornament masquarading as a sculpture on his forecourt.  Long hair explained that he was referring to the “ conjunction of circles and angles linked by chains and cogs into a symmetrical whole obviously inspired by one of da vincis drawings and suggesting that humans needed companionship through the lifes journey”
Being a gallery owner he was quite used to interpreting art speak and  realised right away what was going on, so decided to have a quiet laugh and pointed out the cyclist as being the owner.

"How much do you want for it " says longhair .
Now the cyclist had already decided that Lands end to John of wotsit was going to be a bloody long way, and not being slow says "couldn't take less than two undred"
"I'll give you a hundred and fifty" says long hair wanting to strike a bargain.
"Hundred and seventy five and it's yours"
"Done"

Longhair whips out a cheque book and writes a cheque for £175,000 hands it over and straight out the door, loads the tandem into the back of his specially adapted Rangerover and was off before the cycling artist could change his mind.
The gallery owner agrees to cash the cheque for a ten per cent commission and Leonardo da Cyclist goes over to the pub to give his  friends the bad news that the ride was off until they could build another tandem.

Don't know if this story is true or not, seems a bit unlikely  to me, but there is something like that tandem on display in a Art gallery not far from you

Monday, January 20, 2014

How to stuff a rhinoceros

How to stuff a Rhinoceros ??
Well I don't know, but Jean's great great great Grandfather did.


A rhino had been imported in to England  1790 as a gift to Mr. Dundas a Scottish Member of Parliament, who apparently did not want the bother of keeping it and gave it away. It was subsequently purchased by Gilbert Pidcock for £700 and was exhibited at the Exeter Exchange Menagerie in the Strand and also as an exhibit in Pidcock's travelling menagerie.

 The animal is described as having been very docile, would obey his keeper's orders and would allow visitors to pat him. In October 1792, in an act of getting to his feet, the rhino dislocated the joint in one of his forelegs, which brought on inflammation. This injury resulted in his death about nine months later, but not before Pidcock, its owner, had taken out an insurance policy on the animal. The death occurred whilst the Menagerie was on the move and near the town of Portsmouth, (some sources state "Corsham near Portsmouth”). The odour from the remains was such that the Mayor of Portsmouth ordered that the carcass be buried. About two weeks later, the story goes, the remains were dug up, at dead of night and was subsequently preserved by Thomas Hall of City Road.


This event was commemorated on a number of tokens issued about 1795, one by Thomas Hall and another by Pidcock.

 Read the full story in our book Thomas Hall of City Road available on Amazon.co.UK



Monday, December 30, 2013

Dad's first job

A hundred years ago this Christmas my dad left school at the age of thirteen.  He never explained why he hadn't left at the age of twelve like most working class kids at the time.

 So early in the new year he started his first job at Gibbs soap factory on Green Bank Wapping.
For anyone familiar with Gibbs products they will probably think of SR toothpaste, and older generations will remember Gibbs dentifrice.  Dentifrice was a cake of dental soap (there is no other word) in a metal tin.  The taste was dreadful, and no matter how little you tried to get on the brush, your mouth stilled filled up with soapy foam, but there were not that many toothpastes around at the time, and when you think about it those little round metal tins were quite convenient for when travelling.  Except that people didn't travel as much then !

Apart from the dentifrice Gibbs also made a toilet soap and this was the section that thirteen year old Dad went to work.  His main memories of those days was first of all the smell from the boiling vats and secondly the sheer hard work of cutting up large slabs of hard soap into small tablets.

Most people are probably aware that soap in days gone by had as it's main ingredient boiled bones of all kinds with the addition of lye and various sodas.  The smell given off from the boiling process could not be imagined by anybody who had not experienced it

Later Dad progressed to the cutting department.  He said that when solidified the soap was in large blocks about the size of a tea chest which were then cut into slices and then into tablet size.

The cutting was done with a length length of wire which was pulled through the soap.  Although the soap itself was not hard at this stage, it was still hard work for a thirteen year old who was not even fully grown.   (Even when fully grown he was not that tall anyway)

There was also another cutting device which contained a blade whist I'll had to be pulled through the soap 

And still requiring a great deal of effort for a young boy.

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Source for the goose

To source or not to source ...etc

Those a lot written on genealogy message boards with the suggestion that those who do not show their sources on public family trees are somehow guilty of shoddy research.

Not so!

When I started well over twenty years ago I did not record my sources.  The simple reason was that I knew where I had got the information and did not have to prove anything to anyone else.

The method was quite simple really.  If I recorded a full date and place for a birth then it followed that I had a certificate.  Likewise for a marriage, christening or a death or burial.

If I put in "about". Then I didn't know or it came from a census.  For census info then it went into the notes that on the xxxx census they were living at .... so that is clear that the approximate dates for that family came from the census.

I have had folk complain about this lack of sourcing but I just point out that I am not doing "GENEALOGY" but family history.  If they have dates etc which differ too mine, then they can do the same kind of research that I have done and possibly come up with the same results.

Professional genealogists have a different criteria.  They will need to show to fee paying clients that they have done the job properly.

I don't have to prove anything to anybody except myself


Monday, November 5, 2012

Free Web hosting

One of my first attempts at creating a website was to create a place where people researching their ancestors with the surname WORSFOLD could share their experiences and hopefully help each other.  This was in Geocities one of the earliest free host sites as far as I know.  Well that worked quite well for a few years and then Geocities got swallowed up by Yahoo and my Worsfold page disappeared,

I then reconstituted the page on Bravenet, another free server and that also worked well for quite a number of year,but suddenly (I am not sure when it happened) my links the page have come upwith a virtually blank page saying that the page had expired,

No explanations on Bravenet website, the4y now only list their paid hostings.

OK, so I wasn't paying anything and a commercial company has no obligations to non fee paying customers, but at least they could have made an announcement before pulling the plug, to give folk the chance ti move their web pages elsewhere and repair links which would be broken when a page disappears,

Unfortunately my pages on Bravenet were not important enought tio be archived on the way-back machine.

we live and learn, or do we.