Elizabeth Atkinson

A Mysterious Child

Sophia WALLIS was baptised at St Oswald’s on this day in 1850 and buried in the churchyard less than a week later. The burial register offers “Inft” in the age column but I can’t find her birth registration in this country. She may have been born in Germany weeks or months earlier  – and baptised in Filey as her time for departure drew near.

Whatever forces brought this family to Filey, they didn’t keep the survivors here. I wonder how the parents fared.

Mary Ann was the fifth and last child of fisherman and lodging housekeeper Matthew CRAWFORD and Sarah JAMESON (FG&C). She married John Robert STORRY at Filey St Oswald’s on 3 December 1904 and they set up home in Scarborough. Henry was born in the summer of 1906 and may have been their only child. John, a labourer at marriage, was described as a “retired coal dealer” in 1932 when Mary Ann died. She left him effects valued at a little over a hundred pounds.

John was still living at 72 Commercial Street when The Register was taken in September 1939, working as a grocer and general dealer. He died at the Fair View Hotel in Scarborough in the first week of January 1951. His son Henry may have been the hotel’s proprietor because at probate John’s address was given as 2 St John’s Avenue. Henry and his wife Jane Ann are named in the Probate record; John’s effects were valued at £6,199 3s. 1d.

There are earlier two posts looking at Christopher and Elizabeth – End of a Line? and Coltas Continued.

Edward didn’t use all his given names all of the time and is remembered as just Edward on the family headstone in St Oswald’s churchyard. I have put him on the Shared Tree and connected him to Georgina, who was already there, waiting. There is a little more work to do on the family

It is Fanny the Second who was buried this day. She lived about sixteen months longer than her older namesake.

Townscape 80 · Filey

Standards

 From Old LaF 14 February 2011

A paragraph in the Filey Parish Magazine, January 1896 informs us that ‘The Diocesan Inspection was held in our National Schools on Thursday, 21st November, by the Rev. E. J. Barry. An excellent report both of the Mixed and Infants’ School has been received.’  In 1874 the National Schools replaced the 1839 Church School on the same site in Scarborough Road. (Source, Michael Fearon, The History of Filey.)  Though ‘National School’ was the official term it seems that most people referred to it as the Church (of England) school. Whatever, as the 19th century was drawing to a close it was being well run by the master, William Foster SMITH and his assistants. The Filey Parish Magazine for February 1896 reported that the National School had received the highest possible grant from Her Majesty’s Inspector and at the Prize-giving on 20th December 1895 Mr C. G. WHEELHOUSE, after praising the teaching staff, offered his congratulations to the children for the education they were receiving.

The National Schools were based on a monitorial system of instruction and four Monitors received prizes from Mr WHEELHOUSE – Lilian STOCKDALE, Harrison CAMMISH, Lillie COLLING and L. JENKINSON. The report goes on to mention other prize-winning children, two in Standard 4, seven in Standard 3, eight in Standard 2 and two in Standard 1.

I had been checking on the ages of some children for whom I had contradictory records and three were on this list! It dawned on me quite quickly though that Standard 4 wasn’t a class you entered at a certain age but one that you moved up to when you had reached a particular level of accomplishment in reading, writing and arithmetic. To get into Standard 4 you had to read a few lines of poetry or prose at the choice of the Inspector, write a sentence slowly dictated once and in arithmetic understand compound rules (money) and reduction (common weights and measures).

If you assume the Filey children who received the prizes were the bright ones it follows that they probably attained the ‘standards’ at an earlier age than their peers. I don’t have the complete class lists for 1895 so it is impossible to identify the youngest and oldest pupils in each Standard Class. I have estimated the age in December 1895 (in years and months) of all but two of the seventeen prize-winning children in Standards 1 to 3 and give the youngest and oldest below.

Standard 1

Youngest: Maggie COLLING, 8 yrs 9 mths

Oldest: Edward A. RAWSON,  8 yrs 10 mths

Standard 2

Youngest: Faith WALLER, 9 yrs 1 mth

Oldest: Christy WATKINSON, 10 yrs 11 mths

Standard 3

Youngest: Harry STOCKDALE, 10 yrs 6 mths

Oldest: Tom APPLEBY, 12 yrs 6 mths

The prize-winners represent a tiny sample of the school population but there’s a suggestion here that the age range within a class increases as the children climb the attainments ladder.

1884, William Foster Smith
courtesy Deirdre Lebbon

Anniversaries

Williamson Memory on the Shared Tree.

Mark of Man 83 · Filey Smiley