Friday 29 January 1909
Filey News
Filey presented a perfect picture yesterday, thanks to the hoar frost-but it was not only yesterday, it has been a picture, reminding one of certain Christmas cards, for some days past. Yesterday, however, there was some damage to be seen owing to the fog, and the frost combined-as was reported in the “News” last night. The frozen rime on the telephone wires was so great that where there were long stretches of wire, the latter was weighted down with it, and in one or two places the wires snapped. whilst the huge poles supporting the wires were pulled completely to the ground or were bent to a dangerous angle. The latter fact will give some idea of the tremendous weight on the long stretches of wire.
Although the frost presented such a pretty picture especially for those well clothed, housed, and fed, the very poor people-and there are such at Filey-look upon it with rather different feelings. It is especially during such weather as has been experienced during the past week that the usefulness of soup kitchens and free breakfasts for children is plainly evident. The need is as great as ever, but it is to be regretted that the funds are getting low, although the vicar has received the sum of £5 5s: from a Scarborough lady who desires merely to be known as “A Friend.” Whoever the “Friend” is, she has shown human sympathy in a way that it would be good to emulate. It is proposed, too, to have a variety concert at the Infants’ School next Wednesday in aid of the fund for free breakfasts, when the artistes, it is said, will be “old and new.” Some of the “old” ones maybe “young”-but that is stretching the matter. “The Little Humourist,” it is said, will also appear. The question is Who is he? We can say that he is only nine years old, that he does not belong to Filey, and that is all. Those who wish to know more must go to the concert and see for themselves.
The Scarborough Mercury
Anniversaries
1898 · Birth FG&C gives the when of Maud Charlotte POTTER’s birth but not the where. It says she was a publican’s daughter and married Frank WADE at St Oswald’s in 1923. I went looking.
The search was time-consuming and hasn’t, so far, placed Maude on the Shared Tree. But her mother, Elizabeth Ann ROBERTS is there with her birth family on the Welsh border. I wonder at the journey a Scarborian took to find her there. It appears that John Fawcett Potter married Elizabeth twice – one ceremony in Overton (Ellesmere Registration District) and another at St James with Holy Trinity in Scarborough on 27 March 1897.
Maude showed up in the town at the end of January the following year, and in 1901 she is the daughter of a mineral water factory manager in Park Road. Ten years later, John is the landlord of the Star Hotel in Mitford Street, Filey. In the photograph below, taken on Saturday, 11 September 1920, you don’t need much imagination to pick out John, Elizabeth Ann and Maude from the throng. (Though you could be mistaken.)
Perhaps Frank WADE is in the picture too. He married Maude about ten months later and was part of his father in law’s household when the Census was taken in September 1939. The Potters had named their house in East Ayton “Asney Dee”, recalling Elizabeth Ann’s birthplace. The site of Overton Castle, on the banks of the River Dee, is in the vicinity of Asney Cottage.
Maude’s mother on the Shared Tree.
1824 Filey · Baptism Castle JENKINSON would learn that life wasn’t fair. His wife Grace ROBINSON died giving birth to their first child and six months later, on Christmas Eve, he buried the wee girl in St Oswald’s churchyard. He had four children with his second wife Mary CAMMISH and lost one, Elizabeth when she was 12 years old. A fisherman, he suffered the loss of herring nets in 1867, and the vessel he was skippering, Admiral Hope, in the October gale of 1880. The following year, attempting to make some money selling basic grocery items, he was found to be using scales weighing a quarter of an ounce short and was fined 5 shillings with seven shillings costs. He died in February 1882. I find the coble carved on his headstone both beautiful and heartbreaking.
1848 Filey · Marriage Within the first ten years or so of his marriage to Ann RICHARDSON, Benjamin SIMPSON stopped going to sea and sold fish from the relative safety of terra firma instead. He died aged 58 and Ann took on the fish merchant role. She outlived three of her five children and seven grandchildren.
1925 At sea · Death Robert Haxby JOHNSON. See Men Overboard.
1944 Filey · Burial Mary Ann LANE married Robert Jenkinson COLLING at St Oswald’s in 1888. Their headstone is on the Shared Tree as a memory but Mary Ann is currently missing her parents there. They have IDs but have not been brought together yet. William Jenkinson LANE MGC1-F1M; Isabella CARTER MGV1-TT5.
Water 53 · Martin’s Ravine
Looking at Filey REDUX 