Thriller Thursday - Jarndyce v Jarndyce in Gedling!

The sons, grandson and great-grandson of David Palethorpe

The market garden that my family kept in the village of Gedling for over 150 years, always seemed to represent everything I thought I knew about my Palethorpe ancestors.

Independent, hard working but contented Nottingham folk who enjoyed their food!  I certainly didn't associate them with scandal.

So, I was most surprised to discover that in 1858 there was a big Nottingham legal case - Palethorpe v Palethorpe - which disputed the very ownership of the garden.

The case, reported at length in the Nottingham and regional papers, arose after Thomas Oldknow Palethorpe left the garden to his son David in his will.  The problem was, that in doing so, old Thomas overlooked two elder sons, Tom and John, and four elder daughters.

Wedding Wednesday - A Good Catch!

Louisa Beardsall Baillon (centre) in the 1920s

Louisa Baillon cuts a grand - if slightly incongruous - figure in this picture from the 1920s, in which everyone else is dressed for the sun.

By all reports, Louisa was rather grand!

She had made a "good" marriage - a very good marriage - for in 1878 aged 21, she wed Andrew Edward Louis Baillon, the eldest son of a successful Nottingham lace manufacturer.

Wedding Wednesday - A Blitz Bride

Mystery Monday - "Are you going out, father?"

Ellen Milton Palethorpe daughter of
Arthur Milton & cousin of novelist
D.H.Lawrence

As Aaron Sisson left his house on Christmas Eve his daughter Millicent called after him "You won't forget our candles, will you?".  It was the last time that Millicent would see her father.  He was meant to be going out to buy final decorations for the tree they had just decorated and to play his piccolo for Christmas carols at the pub in the Nottinghamshire mining village in which he lived. He didn't return and Millicent, her sister and mother never discovered what happened to him.

According to novelist D.H.Lawrence, Aaron left his wife and children that cold Christmas Eve in a search for freedom that took him first to London and then across Europe to Italy and finally Florence.  Lawrence, had no further interest in  Millicent and her sister but I find the story of the two little girls deserted by their father on Christmas night heart rending.

Mine's a beer!

Copyright 1955 Steve Bowbrick Creative commons license

For over 150 years my family in the village of Gedling were market gardeners, so I was surprised to see that Thomas Oldknow Palethorpe - my great grandfather x 4 - recorded his occupation in White's trade directory for 1832 as beerhouse owner.

I speculated initially that Tom had set himself up in opposition to the village pub, the "Chesterfield Arms".  I knew that Tom had radical political leanings and wondered if he had taken against the Tory Earl of Chesterfield who was the biggest local landowner.

But further perusal through Whites revealed that in 1832 that the parish of Gedling had 7 beerhouses in addition to it's 4 pubs - that's 1 pub or beerhouse for about every 200 residents!

It seems that the explanation for this lies in a piece of legislation passed by parliament in 1830 with the aim of actually reducing the problem of alcoholism.  The 1830 Beerhouse Act permitted anyone who bought a 2 guinea licence to brew and sell beer in a shop or even in their own front room or kitchen.  The idea was that if people drunk beer in the beerhouse they would not be tempted by the evils of stronger spirits, and particularly gin, sold in fully licensed inns and taverns.

There was a massive growth in beerhouses immediately following the legislation but few survived for very long.  By 1847 the Lascelles and Haggar's directory listed just 2 "beer retailers" in the considerably expanded parish of Gedling in addition to the 6 fully licensed inns.  And great grandfather Tom had gone back to his first love - gardening.

Alvey and daughters ... the power of the post-mistress!

Copyright E Brown 2011 Creative Commons 

If you are a fan of Lark Rise to Candleford you will remember that Dorcas Lane establishes herself as a woman of independence and influence in late 19th Century Candleford through her role as the village post-mistress.  Flora Thompson's stories were based on her own experience as a post-mistress and appear to accurately reflect the curious authority of the role at a time when women didn't have the vote and faced significant restrictions on employment and property ownership.

Having enjoyed the TV dramatisation of the novels I was interested to explore the experiences of my 4x great grandmother Elizabeth Alvey who was post-mistress of the village of Burton Joyce in Nottinghamshire.   Although, this is not strictly a blog post about Gedling - the focus of my one place study - Burton Joyce is the neighbouring village and the story that I have unravelled about the changing role of the 19th Century post office is as relevant to Gedling as it is to Burton Joyce.   It is a story that put the large number of post-mistresses right at the heart of dramatic technological, financial and commercial change.

The early role of women in Britain's Post Office is highlighted in the earliest available Nottinghamshire trade directory - the Nottingham Directory of 1815 - which refers to a Post Office on the High-street in Nottingham that was run by a Mrs Rayner.  Pigot & Co's Directory still has Mrs Rayner in place 13 years later in 1828-9.  Mrs Rayner must have been a prominent figure in Nottingham at a time when women were almost completely absent from any kind of clerical work.

Burton Joyce 1951 Copyright Archmage01 2011 Creative Commons Licence

At this point in time there were no established post offices in the Nottinghamshire villages and the distribution of letters and parcels was largely the responsibility of various private "carrier" services.  Burton Joyce is less than 6 miles north east of Nottingham but in 1832 Whites directory recorded that the village carrier service run by a John Swinscoe ran just twice a week.

By 1847 Slaters directory records some competition between carriers with "Goodwin" offering a daily service from the Lord Nelson and Martin a Saturday service from the Dove and Railway.  This competition appears to have been temporary as by 1858 Wrights reports again just a twice weekly service by Goodwin departing from the Lord Nelson.  But in the late 1840s and early 50s other changes had taken place to undermine the carrier service.  A train station had opened at Carlton just a few miles away and by 1851 a post office of some form must have opened because in the census of that year my widowed 4 x great grandmother Elizabeth Jackson (nee Alvey) was recorded as "post mistress".

Copyright Steenbergs 2011 Creative Commons

The Post Office itself seems to have been less forthcoming with the title of "Post Mistress" for in its own directory of 1855, men in the role are described as "Post Masters" whilst women such as Elizabeth are just described as "Receivers".  It may indeed have been a simple service that Elizabeth was providing at this time.   The village had only 600 residents and the post arrived by foot from Nottingham just once a day at 10am.  Anyone in the village wanting anything more complicated such as Money Orders still had to go into Nottingham.

Elizabeth continued in her post - that she repeatedly recorded in the census as Post Mistress - right into her 80s.  In her final years she was supported by her unmarried daughter Patty, who had previously left Nottinghamshire to work as a domestic servant, and on Elizabeths's death in 1875 Patty took over the role of Post Mistress or as the 1876 Post Office Directory still insisted on calling it "Receiver".  By 1876 the post was delivered twice a day from Nottingham but the villagers had to go to Carlton to get Money Orders or make use of the new Telegraph Services and Government Annuity & Insurance Schemes.

By 1885 this had all changed.  Burton Joyce now had its own station and Patty was presiding over a Post and Money Order Office and a Savings Bank (Whites 1885).  And by 1891 Kellys Directory records that she had added the government Annuity & Insurance Scheme to the services that she offered.  Patty herself seems to have made use of the Savings Bank as when she died in 1903 she had saved enough money to leave her niece Ellen Sophia Johnson (nee Kirkham) the equivalent of £35,000 in her will.  Not an enormous amount but a significant achievement for a woman from fairly humble origins whose only previous employment had been as a domestic servant.

Ellen assisted Patty  in the Post Office before her Aunt's death and subsequently took over as Post Mistress and continued to run the service after the birth of her two children.  Just a year after Patty's death Ellen had added Parcel Post, Express Delivery and Telegraphic Money Orders to the services that she offered. (Kelly's 1904).  The instant transfer of money that Ellen's Telegraphic Money Orders allowed would have been quite unimaginable to her grandmother Elizabeth who just 50 years before had to wait for the post to arrive on foot once a day from Nottingham.

The final record I have found so far of Ellen's work as a Post Mistress is a rather sad one - it being a bankruptcy order against her son Herbert in the Edinburgh Gazette in November 1929.   I don't know how much longer Ellen continued to work at the Post Office after 1929 but between them Elizabeth, Patty and Ellen - a widow, a spinster and a married mother - continuously ran the Post Office in Burton Joyce for over 80 years during which communication between their little village of Burton Joyce and the rest of the world was transformed.

What's in a name?

Nottingham Council  House © 2009 G Rozsa Creative Commons

Palethorpes are found in Gedling, Nottinghamshire from the 17th Century.  In the 1760s a David Palethorpe married Winifred Oldknow and all their children were baptised with Oldknow as a middle name.  This seems a pretty straightforward story. But for the next 150 years all the Palethorpe children - boys and girls - were given the middle name Oldknow and it wasn't just the Gedling Palethorpes who did this.  There was also a whole host of other Nottingham families - Bardills, Bassets, Brandreths, Burrows, Clarkes, Hammersley, Harrisons, Huthwaites, Mussons, Oldhams, Swans, Weltons and Wrights - who all took on the name Oldknow in the 19th Century.

This desire by so many families to make a big deal of the name Oldknow obviously suggested that the Oldknows were important people in Nottingham.  And initial research revealed that the Oldknow family in Nottingham were indeed prominent industrialists and involved in local politics with members of the family serving as Mayor of the town on 8 different occasions between 1773 and 1879.

Something however still didn't ring true to me.  Families like the Palethorpes in Gedling seemed obsessed with highlighting to everyone in their village their very tenuous connection to the Oldknow family.  And then I discovered why.

Calling yourself Oldknow in 19th Century Nottinghamshire wasn't just a bit of social snobbery. It was an act of political alleigiance - the equivalent today of calling your children Obama or Romney!  Every time these Nottinghamshire families baptised their children Oldknow, they declared themselves "radicals" for the Oldknows were political operators infamous not only in Nottingham but also in Westminster.

Very broadly, English politics in the 18th Century was divided between Whigs and Tories.  In crude terms this was a divide between the Whigs who had supported firstly, the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 which overthrew King James II and established a constitution and secondly, the succession of the Hanoverian Protestant George I to the throne in 1714.  Again in crude terms, the Tories had opposed both.  Despite their differences, both parties largely represented the interests of the landed aristocracy.

By the end of the 18th Century new political forces were at work.  Both America and France had experienced spectacular revolutions and in Britain a new "radicalism" took hold amongst both industrial workers and new self-made industrialists who were religious non-conformists.

Nottinghamshire had a long tradition of religious non-conformity and political rebellion going back to the English Civil War and the Mayflower pilgrims.  By the late 1700s a cabal of Baptist industrialists - including the Oldknows plus the Birkin, Frearson, Rogers, Leavers and Heard families - had won political power in the town itself and the Oldknows had won themselves such a reputation as radicals sympathetic to the French Revolution, that their house was attacked by a Tory mob.

Robin Hood © 2012 D Harris Creative Commons

Political tensions in Nottingham came to the fore in the 1802 election at which the Tory MP Daniel Parker Coke was defeated by the Whig Joseph Birch.  Coke was seen to represent the interests of Tory landowners in Nottinghamshire whilst Birch was supported by the radicals on Nottingham Town Council including the Oldknows.  Although defeated by a large margin Coke refused to accept the election result and claimed that Thomas and Joseph Oldknow, the magistrates responsible for overseeing the election, had willingly let radicals run riot through the streets of Nottingham, preventing him from speaking and forcing him to leave the town.

Coke, with the support of the Tory establishment in the County, took his case to Parliament and in 1803 a fierce debate was held in the House of Commons as to whether the Nottingham election result should be over turned.  In the debate the Oldknows were accused of just about everything under the sun including a "systematic plan ... founded on French principles" - i.e. revolutionary activity - to overthrow Coke.  And with the bit between its teeth the Tory majority in parliament pushed to overturn the charter of 1284 by which Edward I had granted the town of Nottingham government of its own affairs.

It fell to Charles James Fox, the leader of the Whigs, in a long and commanding speech to defend the Oldknows, Nottingham's ancient rights and the liberty of the British people themselves:  "They [the Oldknows] were ready to answer any charges that could be brought forward.  They desired to know the nature of their guilt, if any could be alleged, and the degree to which they were guilty? But this was not done.  They were not to be taken before any legal tribunal, but they were to suffer from a kind of punishment which excluded trial and defence." Fox cautioned the House "to beware of the nature of this bill which went to establish a precedent for the invasion of ancient charters ... for it would enable the magistrates of the King's appointment to rule over the magistrates of the people's election.  It would be extending that dangerous power of the crown ... for the first attack of all those who meditated the subversion of British liberty was upon corporate towns, upon those charters which formed the best security of popular rights, and the most effectual control on ministerial power - Nottingham was about to lose its privileges for exercising its control.  The independent spirit of its corporation was to be the cause of that privation."  Stirring stuff and the House of Commons did indeed step back from revoking Nottingham's charter but by a large majority overturned the election that the Oldknows had administered.

Council  House © 2005 S Cadman Creative Commons

Despite this defeat, the Oldknow family and other radical Baptist industrialists continued to be at the heart of political power in Nottingham.  The town council was a vehement supporter of extending voting rights and bitterly condemned the deaths of protesting workers at the "Peterloo Massacre" in 1819.  And in the next generation the Oldknow family were notably willing to involve themselves actively in political protests by the ordinary people of Nottingham.  In 1817 Octavius Oldknow signed a petition to parliament calling for universal suffrage and in 1832 he attended meetings organised by the working class "Nottingham Political Union" in support of the Reform Act.

It is not clear how many if any of the 19th Century Nottinghamshire families who took the name were directly related to the infamous Oldknows who dominated Nottingham politics but for over a hundred years families such as the Palethorpes in Gedling pinned their colours to their sleeve and let everyone in their village know exactly where they stood politically.  Unfortunately, the tradition came to an end with my great grandmother - a staunch Tory and Anglican - who refused to call her Palethorpe children after "those Oldknows".

Quietly to die, untouched by workhouse hands

"Old Betty Higden fared upon her pilgrimage as many ruggedly honest creatures, women and men, fare on their toiling way along the roads of life. Patiently to earn a spare bare living, and quietly to die, untouched by workhouse hands — this was her highest sublunary hope." 
OUR MUTUAL FRIEND, by Charles Dickens, Book 3 Chapter 8

Many of our ancestors will have shared Betty Higden's desire to escape the workhouse but sadly, too many will have failed in this hope.

A "workhouse" was first opened in Gedling in Nottinghamshire in 1787, following the Gilbert Act of 1782, or rather a "poor house" as the act only allowed for the admission of the elderly, infirm and orphans.  Gedling, like all other parishes, was still required at this time to provide relief outside the poor house - "outdoor relief" - for the so called "sturdy" poor who were able to work.

_{© 2010 Stephen Jones Creative Commons Licence} 

The Gedling poor house was built in association with 6 other local parishes on 8 acres of pasture land on Stoke Lane close to the river Trent.  The poor house had a garden of 1 and a half acres and cows were kept on the pasture to provide for the inmates.  As it was a poor house and not a work house no employment was provided.  By 1834 the poor house was home - if it can be called that - to 53 people; 11 men, 21 women, 10 boys under 7 and 11 girls under 15.

Gedling's poor house was subject to much criticism in the 1834 poor law commission.  The commission noted that the poor house and the 5 local gentlemen who managed it were not inspected or scrutinised by the parishes who were paying for it.  In turn the commission concluded that "the buildings are constructed without the means of proper separation consequently the poor are intermingled without regard to the personal comfort of the guiltless, the punishment of the sturdy or the  moral improvement of the young."

Whatever its limitations, the Gedling poor house did provide some care within the village for those who could not provide for themselves and those living there were not completely isolated from the rest of village life.  Those men and boys able to, for example, attended church every Sunday at Gedling's parish church of All Hallows.

The 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act which followed the poor law commission changed all this.  Henceforth, anyone in Gedling unable to provide for themselves would be required to enter the work house and this would not be the small establishment in their own village but a new work house provided by over 30 parishes who combined in the Basford Poor Law Union.  Most importantly the new work houses were intended not as places of care but as deterrents to unemployment and it was mandated that conditions should be worse than those of the poorest working labourer.

All the poor of Gedling who could not support themselves were now meant to go to the new Basford Union workhouse which was 6 miles away in Bulwell.  (The site on Highbury Road is now used as a hospital).  Despite the intentions of the act, it appears, at least from the snapshot of census records listed below, that it was the "guiltless" elderly, orphans and widows of Gedling who ended up touched by the hands of the workhouse:
1861: Charlotte Bennett 10, John Bennett 7, Charlotte Brown 29, John Deabill 65, Thomas Oldknow 62, John Alvey 12 
1871: Cornelius Allen 72, Richard Buttler 73, John Cowlishaw 74, Hannah Monks 38 
1881: Joseph Bennett 76, Arthur Colishaw 79, William Seapers 39, William Palethorpe 78, Mary Crowther 69, John Eggleston 63 
1891: No one
1901: Thomas Cottingham 72 
1911: No one

The elderly of Gedling who ended their days in Nottingham's workhouses may not all have been "ruggedly honest creatures" like Dicken's Betty Hidgen but it was a terrible finale for those who had toiled all their working lives in Gedling to be torn from the care of the village at their very end.

Please feel free to link to your own posts on workhouses via the linky below:

I highly recommend Peter Higginbottom's excellent website www.workhouses.org.uk as a starting point for anyone wanting to research work houses in places their British ancestors came from.  You may also be able to find details of poor houses in your areas of research in the poor law commission.

I searched census records with "Gedling" as a place of birth and "inmate" as a key word to find workhouse residents from Gedling.  This did produce some confusing results in the 1851 census where a large number of people living in Gedling with people other than their family were recorded as "inmates".  I am currently researching whether these were actually boarders or whether they provide an example of areas of Nottingham - which had a record as England's most radical city at the time - contravening the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act and continuing to provide "outdoor relief" to the unemployed poor outside the workhouse.

A source of scandal ...

Bothamsall Church from Southwell & Nottingham Churches

Adultery, bastardy and incest - it sounds like the latest episode of Eastenders! But it is in fact the goings on in Bothamsall, a small north Nottinghamshire village, in the 17th Century and all revealed in the Presentment Bills that Church Wardens submitted twice yearly to their Archdeacons.

Church Wardens were required to report in the Presentment Bills on both the morality and religious practices of the people of the parish plus the behaviour of the clergy.  Hence, the Bills provide insight not only into the social mores of the time and place but also religious dissent in a century riven by the English Civil War and migration to America.

Bothamsall never appears to have had more than a few hundred residents but at first glance certainly seems to have had its fair share of sexual scandal with in just 30 years from 1608, 7 reports of fornication, 2 of adultery, 3 of bastardy, 3 of drinking on Sundays and 1 of general sexual immorality, whatever that might be:
Adultery: Richard Nicholson, Isabel Trundle
Bastardy: Elizabeth Baker, Katherine Reckingham, John Greenswood
Fornication: Margaret [no surname], Jane Wakeland, Margaret Staniland, Elizabeth Tomlinson, Francis Tomlinson, 
Drinking on Sundays: George Marriot, Christopher Warriner, Athren Whitehead
Sexual Immorality: Robert Sharpe

Although, the sexual affairs of Bothamsall in the 17th Century seem lively enough, they were in fact very restrained compared with the goings on in some other Nottinghamshire villages where there are multiple accusations of fornication at every Presentment.  And accusation seems to be the key word here as in some cases the level of "misbehaviour" seems quite incredible and one has to suspect that at least some of it is sheer gossip mongering and point scoring between neighbours.

Bothamsall Church from Southwell and Nottingham Churches

The Presentments ceased during the English Civil War, (1642-1651), and then resumed after the Restoration of the Stuarts in 1660, but they are perhaps at their most interesting in the period up to the Civil War when they provide a record of the simmering cauldron of religious dissent in villages across the country.  Bothamsall itself was very close to the Scrooby Congregation of dissenting Protestants who migrated to Leiden in Holland and founded the community from which the Mayflower Pilgrims would set sail for America.  The presence of dissenting Protestants in Bothamsall can be seen in the Presentment Bills for 1608-1610 with 10 parishioners being accused of either "Not attending church - lay non-conformity" or "Not receiving holy communion".  These specific  accusations stop after 1610 and it would be interesting to know if any of the accused did migrate to the Leiden community which was founded at this time:

Not attending church, lay non-conformity: Robert Carlisle, Mrs Carlisle, Anne Dobson, Joyce Lanfield, Stephen Lanfield
Not receiving holy communion: Barnaby Williamson, Mrs Williamson, Francis Marriot

There is another burst of religious dispute within the village in 1625 and 1626 when 4 villagers - George and Anne Booth, Elizabeth Cos and William Robson - are repeatedly accused of Recusancy, that is Roman Catholic worship and rejection of the Anglican settlement.  Again this flurry of accusations dies down and again it is not clear whether this is because the accused changed their behaviour or left Bothamsall or whether  more tolerant church wardens were in place.  Whatever the case, it is clear that contrary to the intentions of Queen Elizabeth 1, prayer and how people prayed was very much treated as a window on people's heart and a source of scandal and dispute within even the smallest of English villages.

The Nottinghamshire Presentment Bills are available in the excellent Nottingham University archive.  To search the Bills, Click on the Search Archdeaconry link on the right and in the new search page enter the village in the Name field and select Presentee from the role list.  Most of the offences which fabulously include - playing unlawful games, abuse of church wardens, clandestine marriage, working on Sundays, and harbouring a fornicator - are fully listed in the search results but you can click on the hit links on the right and then the view link by the presentee to see if any more detail is given.

I haven't yet explored the Presentment Bills outside Nottinghamshire but will update the blog with details of their availability when I do.


PRESENTMENT BILLS LINKY
If you have any great posts on using Presentment Bills please do add links with the linky below ...

The Google of its day ...

The Historical Directories website is one of my family history favourites.  The 19th century directories from Wrights, Pigots, Whites and Glovers, really were the Google of their day covering everything from local businesses and every small trades person you could imagine to post delivery times, stations, pubs, theatres, church services, fire brigades, police stations, military regiments, charities, horticultural societies and, in Nottingham at least, the Antedulivian order of buffaloes!

They are fascinating just to browse through - I found an advert for some gorgeous lace curtains that I rather fancy! - but are really the best starting place if you want to discover more about where your family came from.

I am going to use the  Historical Directories website for a lot of my posts so I thought it was worth starting with a few tips on how to use the website as although it is really worth the effort it is not the friendliest in the world.  On the home page you are offered three search options as below - I think the easiest thing to do is search by location, i.e. the County of the parish or town that you want to find out about:

Once you've selected your county on either the map or a drop down list, you'll get a list of all the directories available for that county and you need to select one by clicking Directory on the right.  I found it easier to start with earlier directories as there's less information and later ones can be a bit overwhelming in the amount of information available:

When the directory opens you can chose between Search and Browse modes.  Initially, I would chose Browse which allows you to step through the images to the directory's main index.  The directory defaults to Search mode, so click Browse Directory on top right:

Once you've found the main index you can enter the page number of the place you're looking for or any sub-index you need to use in the Go To Image field.  All sounds easy enough so far but unfortunately the page numbers in the index don't directly relate to the image numbers you can enter so you will need to use the next and previous image buttons to go about 20 pages forward or back.

Hmmm, definitely starting to sound a bit complicated but the benefits are that if you're looking for a small parish or village you'll get a fabulous little summary snapshot which covers the life of the place in which your ancestors lived.  As this one below, for the village of Gedling in Nottinghamshire - in which my mother's family lived for time immemorial - which shows for example, that in the 1850s Gedling had: a couple of big houses, (one occupied by a "new money" industrialist); a pub - the Chesterfield Arms; a school with a separate class for infants; it's own local bobby - Angus Slater; a shop; a good number of farmers; a couple of competing black-smiths one of whom also made machines and was probably servicing the local framework knitters; a delivery service twice a week into Nottingham; and finally, a few very small-scale tradespeople including a framework knitter, a corn miller, 2 brick layers and my 3x great grandfather David Palethorpe who had just inherited his father's market garden following an acrimonious court case - but more of that in another blog!

If you've written a great post about trade directories please do add a link below: