Webb

Brotherly Love

In 1839, Joseph PHILO and Jane WEBB married in St Mary le Strand Church, London, and then created eleven children. Perhaps not surprisingly, Joseph and Jane were favoured names given to the six boys and five girls. We have, in order of arrival, Frederick Joseph, Frances Jane, Joseph Frank, Phillipa Jane, Jane, and Joseph Francis. The fourth boy, Philip, died before his first birthday in 1855. They called their next child Philip. Though it was not unusual for Victorian parents to confer the same treasured name on two or three children, death had to take a child before the name was given again. In this Philo family, however, Joseph Frank and Joseph Francis lived together for a number of years. Any likelihood of confusion, in the home or neighbourhood, seems to have been averted by calling the elder boy ‘Frank’ and the younger ‘Joe’.

This has, however, caused some trouble on the FamilySearch Shared Tree.

This “Joseph Francis Philo” has 11 sources attached to his record and all name him as “Joseph Frank”.

Plain Joseph has just three census sources and in 1891 he has the bonus of a middle name initial “T”. This is a mistranscribed “F” for Francis. Birth, marriage, death, 1911 census and the 1939 Register all give his full name as Joseph Francis Philo.

On 23 March 1873, Frank married Anna Maria GOLDSMITH in Foulden, near Norwich. Their first child, Louis Frank, was born in the March quarter of 1874 and Archie Thomas arrived five years later. Frank died early in 1880. When the census enumerator called in 1881 he unacountably described the two boys as Anna’s grandsons. Also with her on census night were brother in law ‘Joseph’, and a sixteen year-old servant, Sarah HENRY. Six months passed and the boys acquired a stepfather – Robert James PHILO, eighteen months younger than his brother Frank and about twelve years older than Joseph Francis. Robert and Annie had a daughter in 1886 and two years later the family crossed the Atlantic and settled in Ohio.

An accident in childhood blighted the life of Philip the Second. His injuries were not serious enough to prevent him earning a living but he would often complain of faintness, sickness and general debility. He was medically attended for many years by Dr WILLIAMS and was able to successfully run his own portmanteau-making business. When the good doctor died, Philip didn’t seek another, thinking nobody else would be able to understand the fragility of his constitution. Early in 1909 three family members died and he sank into a depression. (Two of the deceased may have been John Oakden SWIFT and his wife Ruth Cecilia nee SIMPSON.)

Philip ended his life on 17 June by swallowing poison he had persuaded a chemist to give him to put down a sick cat. He left a note for his younger brother:-

My dear Joe – May I ask you to do me a favour and be so good to see I am not buried alive, and to be as kind and considerate as you can. Yours lovingly, Philip.

The coroner’s jury returned a verdict of “suicide while temporarily insane”.

One of the floral tributes at Philip’s funeral had a message from the orphaned Oakden children – To dear Uncle, from Violet, Freddy, Dolly and Ruth.

The mourners were led by the woman Philip had married, late in his life – Fanny Wace FARNFIELD. I am having difficulty tracing her forebears but WACE is a family name that crops up a hundred years or more earlier in the Philo pedigree.  The Shared Tree provides many descendants of Francis Philo and Rose JARY but for more detail and easy access to page images of sources visit the Philo Phamily.

One other odd coincidence – Philip’s suicide note was handed to Joseph Francis by Detective-sergeant GOLDSMITH, who also found the empty bottle of prussic acid. I wonder if he was related to Anna Maria.

Landscape 137 · Bay Thicket

A small hollow by the path from the beach to The Bay Holiday Village

A Nice Little Workhouse

AmwellHertsJames DAY was born on 8 March 1815 in Wheathampstead, Hertfordshire.  He married in August 1840 and in the following year, working as an agricultural labourer, he was living in the hamlet of “Hamwell” with his wife, Elizabeth. Close by in this little green triangle, now Amwell, was the cottage of his parents, Thomas Day and Elizabeth née WEBB. Unusually, the younger Days didn’t bring their first child into the world until the summer of 1845 but went on to have six more.

To supplement his meagre wages, James took in lodgers – farm labourers and a blacksmith’s apprentice – and Elizabeth further boosted the domestic economy by working at home as a straw plaiter.

The 1861 census found the family in Hitchin, with five children at home. The second son, William, had left to be a soldier, and the birth of Alice Maria was still a couple of years away. James’ widowed father lived with them, still working at 74 as an agricultural labourer.

Ten years later, eldest son Thomas has flown and Thomas the Elder gone to that mythical better place, but three daughters and son George remain at home. Elizabeth is still plaiting straw and eldest daughter Mary is described as a farm labourer, age 19.

In 1891 James and Elizabeth are the only occupants of a dwelling in Welwyn Hill. No occupation is given for Elizabeth but, at 76, James is still working as an agricultural labourer.

By this time in my researches I had become quite attached to this family and when I discovered James in the workhouse in 1901, without his life partner, I shed a tear or two.

It seemed a miracle to discover that James’ final days may not have been as miserable as I had instantly feared.

By the early 1900s, the Welwyn workhouse had a reputation as operating a fairly generous regime for its inmates. This was, perhaps, because the town received a high proportion of its rates from railway companies rather than private householders. The Royal Commission looking at Poor Relief in 1906-9 heard that the workhouse was a small place, rather like an almshouse, with 17 inmates in residence. Each day 17.5 pints of beer were served, each person receiving it (as regulations required) under doctor’s orders.

The Workhouse, Peter Higginbotham

 

James died in 1902 and so did not enjoy the enlightened oversight of James Henry HILL and his wife Lizzie. In The Last Days of Welwyn Workhouse, their daughter Meta wrote: “our old people had a lovely time while they were there, they collected coloured soap, and oh, the tins of jam, etc!“

I wonder if, during his long life, James ever heard of Filey. Did he wonder what might become of his grandchildren, seven of them born in the north of England to soldier William? A second great-granddaughter of James has been a Filey shopkeeper for a number of years.

I wonder, too, what James knew about his forebears. His pedigree on FamilySearch has six generations of earlier Days – back to William who married Anne in Clophill, Bedfordshire in 1660.

 

Webb Log

Thomas WEBB was born in 1838, in Sutton St James, Lincolnshire, about 15 miles from the nearest port, King’s Lynn. In his early 60s, he appeared in a Scarborough Newspaper advertisement as an “old mariner” extolling the virtues of Bile Beans. “Indigestion, Sleeplessness and Influenza After Effects Cured.” For most of his working life, the various censuses attest, he was a labourer, brazier, or tinner.

In 1871, during a labouring phase, he was lodging with Robert SAYERS, a sailor, in Queen Street. Perhaps that’s where he got the idea from, though I think he may have tried line fishing for a while and not taken to it.

Thomas married Amanda LANE when he was 20. She bore him two children, then died at 19 a month or so before her infant son Thomas.

One wonders if grief pushed Thomas away from Sutton St James, but why move to Filey? There is a tantalising possibility that he was looked after kindly as a child by a young servant called Mary STORK, at a nearby farm. The 1841 census only tells us she was not a native of Lincolnshire but there is the remotest of chances that she was from the Yorkshire coast. Whatever, on 4 November 1866 Thomas married Mary Ann STORK, ten years his junior, at St Oswald’s in Filey. They would have seven children, but only one reached adulthood.

Thomas made several appearances in the local newspapers. In May 1887:-

At the Bridlington police court on Saturday, Thomas Webb, tinner, Filey, was charged with being found in possession of game unlawfully obtained on the 29th ultimo. Sergeant Nicholson said that whilst on duty near Primrose Valley, at 5 am, he heard two shots and shortly after saw defendant with a gun and something bulky in his pockets. Witness searched him and found two rabbits in his possession. He was fined £1 and 11s. costs.

Six years earlier, when he was 43 years old:-

At the Bridlington police-court on Saturday, Thomas Webb, a bill poster, of Filey, was charged with being drunk on licensed premises at Filey, on the 28th ult. [May]. Sergeant Cooper stated that at 10-45 p.m. on the day in question he was passing the Grapes Inn, and hearing shouting in the house he entered, and found defendant standing in the doorway of one of the side rooms, shouting to some men who were in the room. Witness had seen him before he went into the house, and he was then very drunk.—Defendant was fined 10s., including costs.

20180527Grapes1_7m

On a more positive note, following his brief local notoriety as an ancient mariner cured of biliousness, the Local Board Clerk, Mr W. B. GOFTON, told a meeting that –

only one application had been received for the position of Town Crier, that being Mr Thomas Webb, who offered the sum of £1 7s 6d (£111 at 2009 values), which was a similar amount paid by the previous holder of the position.

The offer was accepted and Mr Webb appointed, thus following in the footsteps of his former father in law, Robert STORK.

md_BellmanLifeboat.t

This undated newspaper image of Lifeboat Day, courtesy of Martin Douglas, shows the Bellman on the left. The fashions worn by girls and ladies suggest it may be Thomas. (I can’t identify the lifeboat. One of the Hollons, I guess.)

For several years Thomas gave work to the young John RAWSON before the lad went to work for Councillor GIBSON, presumably because he was “family”.  Thomas’ second wife, Mary Ann STORK, had died in 1890 and two years later he married Mary Prue née MAULSON, the older sister of poor John’s mother, Elizabeth Ann (pictured, last Friday’s post).  And Thomas’ only surviving child, Tom, married Elizabeth Ann’s daughter, Rose Annie. It was to her house that the unconscious John was taken on that awful day.

Somehow, Thomas senior navigated his way through countless reefs and shoals and died aged 76 in November 1914. This morning he had a foothold on FamilySearch Tree. I have given him a couple of wives and some children and hope to complete his families over the next few days.

There is one further curious element to establish. Our fake old salt seems to have had only one sibling, a brother called John or John Parker. He also appears to have crossed the Humber and settled in East Yorkshire, his death being registered in Driffield in 1905. When he was 51 he married Mary Ann Kirby, 56, in Langtoft but I don’t know yet if this was the first matrimonial adventure for either or both of them.

Thomas the Bellman on FST. (My thanks to Marilyn Briggs for information about Thomas’ first marriage.)