What A Life!

I started researching our family history perhaps 40 years ago and started writing them up some 20 years ago. My first books I printed myself on a laser printer and just sent copies to those family members that I thought might be interested. Later I started having my books printed on Amazon, originally Createspace and now KDP.

I started blogging about 15 years ago about genealogy and family history, odd stories about my research and so on and then started to include small anecdotes from my childhood before the war and as a evacuee from London.

I've written and published some ten books mostly family histories of our ancestors and two detective novels. Some of my family have read what I have written and suggested that I should write my own story.

I am not a great fan of autobiographies so I am reluctant to consider that my own life story is worth a book. Does the world really need another diary of a nobody? I suppose I have had a fairly interesting life, married and raised a family and done a variety of jobs. the archetypal Jack of all trades I suppose. Our travels as a family have taken us to the other side of the world and back, but we do not need another travel book.

I have promised to write my story, if only for the information of my family who have claimed that they know little of my life before they were born. I have started but it is a bit off and on, so many things get in the way. However it has come to me, on my birthday that whilst I am trotting towards the end of my life, my memory is actually galloping away. So many things that I used to remember quite clearly are not just fuzzy but non-existent. So many names and places that I can no longer recall, struggle as I might. So I will have to knuckle down and get it written soon.

Take heed all writers out there. If your story is worth recording then do it now.

Tempus fugit and all that as well as Memento Mori

WW1 Prisoners of War made to work

Saw a film on TV this week called Land of Mines.  Danish made and tells the story of a group of young German POWs after the end of WW2 being compelled to clear landmines on a Danish beach, with the inevitable consequences.

Reminded me that my cousin Harold Daynton had a similar experience in WW1.  He had been captured near Albert,in France in February 1918  and had been shipped off to Germany.   They were asked to volunteer for work as carpenters and as conditions in the camp were so bad many did so in the hope of better rations.  They were disappointed as then a group of the men where  taken back to battlefields in  France their "carpentry" work job being to locate and make safe booby-trapped buildings which the Allies had vacated in the massive German Attack of 21st march. 

They moved around with their Guards to various locations for different tasks. They apparently got on well with the four Guards who sympathised with their situation but explained how short of food and other vital supplies in Germany  actually were. They stayed with these Guards for the remainder of the war, receiving no rations so living  on what food they could steal or acquire. 

 On 11 November they all shook hands, with the Germans walking eastwards and the 10 British POW’s walking westwards. That took quite a time as they were actually released somewhere in the triangle of  Aachen/Verviers/Maastricht and their long trudge took until late November when they reached Calais. They finally reached England on a ship on December 2nd.

Tell it to the Marines

My Mums uncle, Edward Eder joined the Royal Marine Light Infantry

at the age of 19 in 1881. Served for twelve years in Gibraltar, Malta  and Egypt, including  the Sudan during the Mahdi rebellions but was not involved in the disastrous Siege of Khartoum as far as I can gather.  But he did receive the Egyptian Medal and the Khedive Star so he must have been around somewhere.

Left the Marines in 1894, mostly earned good conduct pay having spent only seven days in the cells which for the army of the time was good going over a period of just over twelve years.

Obviously he  did not settle to civilian life as he signed up again in May 1901 into the Royal Garrison Artillery and remained in until May 1905 spending most of his time in Gibraltar.  

There is a family story that Edward visited his Grandfather in Trieste during his military service but this seems unlikely as the journey from Gibraltar would have taken quite a long time.

When the first world war came along Edward signed up again in October 1915 but was discharged in December as being "unlikely to become an efficient soldier".  

According to his Service record Edward was 5 foot 6 and half inches when he joined in 1881 but was 5 foot nine and half inches in 1894.  Obviously the good life in the Marines. 

The qwerty keyboard and me.

 I have had an association with the qwerty keyboard for something like 72 years and sadly it appears to be coming to an end.  I am still a reasonably competent touch typist but an unexplained damage to my left wrist some four months ago has meant that I have not been able to use my left hand for typing and I think I am l;osing the ability to do so.

Many two finger typists would consider that not to be a problem.  But if you learned touchtyping all those years ago then that is the only way you can type.  The constant repetion of familiar keys when learning to touch type means that the fingers automatically go to the correct key to press without having to think about it.  I think this is called muscle memory consolidation.  Your right hand then  does not necessarily  know where the keys normally pressed by the left are located. 

I tried to use speech recognition software but the skill involved in thinking and talking at the same time is completely diferent to thinking and typing at the same time.  I used to be fairly competent in having my fingers on the keyboard keeping up  with my mental flow when I was writing, say  for instance something like a blog.   But to dictate to the computer and watch the words coming up  on the screen inhibits the thought flow.  At least  does for me. 

Its Census year again.

 The next UK census will be held in March 2021 continueing a process which has taken place almost every ten years in a constantly changing format since 1841.

Every census year the amount of information being collected has increased and this yar will be no exception.  As usual there will be many who disagree with this process of compelling citizens to disclolse what many regard as being private information.

Only being released after a period of a cedntury, the censuses are a continuos source of discovery for genealogists and family historians, like myself, providing information about birthplaces, accomodation, size of families etc. 

As an example, my Great Grandfather, Alphons Eder is recorded on the 1861 census on board HMS Ganges  somewhere in the North Atlantic ocean, they were not near any land so the chart oordinates had to be given. The place of census then is at Latitude 34.50 North: Longtitude 35.47 west

HMS Ganges was the last sailing ship to be the flag ship of a Royal Navy admiral and was returning to England after spending three years on the Pacific station, based at Valparaiso but spending much of the time at Vancouver Island.

Alphons Eder was a musician and had joined the ship in 1857 as a civilian bandsman, the other bandsmen on board were all members of the Royal Marine Light Infantry.  On the voyage home in 1861 from Vancouver Island the rear admiral, Sir Robert Baynes was accompanied by his wife and 6 year old daughter with two female servants.  They were the only females on board so one assumes that  there would have been little need for the small band to play dance music.

When Ganges finally arrived back in home waters in April 1861 she had logged up 60,100 nautical miles since leaving in 1857.  Our Great Grandfather married in London the following year and as far as we know never travelled again. 

The mat weaver,the tea packer and the corned beef inspector

 Occupations which have gone  from British industrial life, like the wheel tappers and the saggar maker's bottom knocker also include common occupations  in 19th century east end of London like the mat weavers and the tea packers.

There were numerous mat weaving factories in the east end in the late nineteenth century.  coconut fibre was imported in large quantities to be made into mats which were an almost staple floor covering on working class houses, particularly those with stone floors.  Coconut fibre was hard wearing and popular up to the 1950s but is almost lost as a material for the larger mats used in those days but is still popular for the small doormats.  Hard-wearing and able to withstand years of use where front doors of houses come straight in off the street and dirt and wet being brought in on the shoes of every visitor.

In December 1906 the newspapers headlined a mat carpet made to cover the great arena at Olympia in London, It was 83,000 square feet in areas and was claimed to be the largest ever made in the world. It was sent to London by rail, and it is reported that it filled 37 of Harrod's pantechnicons and the procession of vans through the London streets was more than a mile in length. It was manufactured in Glemsford in Essex and the London "Express" called it a triumph of British manufacture, but this industry, like many others came at a price. My Grand Aunt, Rebecca Worsfold worked at the Glemsford factory and died a few years later from Carcinoma of oesophagus at the age of 52.

My mother was a tea packer when she married in 1918.  The biggest tea company in the area at the time was Mazawattee who had a large factory at Tower Hill, quite a walk from Cable street, Stepney but not an unusually long distance for folk to walk to work then. Tea came into the country, mainly from India and Ceylon and was blended in the factory mainly by hand as the machinery for packaging was still rudimentary. The dust from the packing process was everywhere and and the hours were long and the work ardous affecting the health of all the workers. My mother only lived to the age of 60.

The corned beef inspector had a much safer job as of course he did not exist!  Corned beef came into the country already canned so could not be inspected.  The epithet "corned beef inspector" was given to anyone standing around with nothing to do.

Pure at London Bridge

Pure at London bridge

There is an eating place near London Bridge station with name "Pure".  I dont know who owns this chain of eateries but I wonder at their choice of location for a food shop with name Pure.  It may well be that they are not aware that in this part of south London that "pure" previously had a connotation far removed from food.

Many will know that this part of Bermondsey was originally the location of a large number of tanneries. 

I am an old pure-finder, yes pure is the word 

 What I find, me and my kind, you might find absurd 

 I searches out what lurchers left, it’s a strange kind of job

 Picking up a job or two, to pick up just two bob.

Yes dog poo as it is now almost quaintly called was used extensively in the curing of animal hides in the tanning industry.   Dog feces contain enzymes that break down collagen in hides, part of the tanning process called “bating.”  Skins arrived at a tannery bloody and wet with whatever animal remains still clung to them. First, they were soaked in water to clean them. Then came urine to help make them pliable enough that the hair could be removed with knives.

And that’s where the poo came in. It may sound wholly unappetizing now, but at a time when there were no ready-to-use chemicals, the lovely sheen of fine leather goods was achieved by soaking the hides in a mixture of water and dog poo.

The trade is barely remembered now except in the names of some of the Bermondsey streets , like Leather Market, Bevington street and so on.  The strong smells that pervaded this part of the borough probably still pervade the fabric of some of the yuppified flats in places like Snowfields.