Personal Blogs

I am rather obsessed by my family history and have recently come across a revelation with surprised me a little. I have pieced this story together through looking at census returns, a fascinating resource for the family historian and one that I could spend hours pouring over asking social questions and plotting the comings and goings and fortunes and failures of my ancestors.

One of my Great Great Grandfathers (let’s call him AP) was born in a small village near Huntingdon. As a young teen he was recorded as a plough boy on the 1871 census. But something happened in the next ten years – AP was recorded on the 1881 census as a Railway Clerk living in the Midlands City of Notingham. He was a lodger with a family whose head was a Railway Cashier originating from York. It must have been quite an achievement for a plough boy from a tiny rural backwater to suddenly become a clerk in a large and bustling city in Victorian times. Perhaps he was just in the right place at the right time or maybe he was so determined not to live the poor lives of his ancestors that he was forced to break that cycle of rural labouring year after year by taking drastic action. AP must have been a brave and determined man to make that step.

On the next census, 1891 AP was married. His wife (LK) came from Shropshire. She also came from a poor rural background, a life of domestic service since her early teens and somehow ended up in Nottingham. Her mother frequently claimed parish relief according to the census and she was recorded as a pauper when LK was a child. Another document I have come across with regards to LK recorded that she was an illegitimate birth. Her mother married a young man shortly before LK’s birth but that man died a few years after - another tragic story as LK’s mother was also recorded as a young widow and pauper on the 1861 census.

AP and LK had several children, including a Great Grandfather of mine whom I shall blog about another time (HKP). AP worked as a Brewery Clerk in 1891 and again in 1901, however, in 1911 he was missing from the family home where LK was recorded as the Head of the household but was still married (rather than widowed). It has taken me several years to figure out what happened next. I finally found the 1911 census return that AP was recorded on. It appeared that he was living in a small house in a yard in Nottingham’s nastiest slum area. The area had been condemned as a health hazard decades before which were all the more ironic considering AP’s eldest son was a Sanitary Inspector for the City Corporation on the 1911 census. This slum area was torn down in the late 1920s / early 1930s and there is now a shopping centre in its place. So, what happened to AP? Well, he was recorded as an out of work clerk but how he ended up on his own in the slum, is a question I cannot answer, and I do not know what happened next. I would hate to think that he went from a poor rural background and built up some comfort, only to end up in poverty in an unhealthy slum in the city. Let’s hope it was only a temporary blip and in the 1921 census he will be back in the family home.  

The census is an important document, solving riddles but often creating more questions than it answers as it charts the ups and downs our ancestors’ lives. It is an incredible resource for historians, for social and family history and records the lives of ordinary people in a unique way.  

This year is the 125^th Anniversary of the legendary Matchwomen’s Strike in the East End of London, when 1400 women walked out of the Bryant and May match factory over pay, conditions and bullying by management. In Striking a Light – The Bryant and May Matchwomen and their Place in Hstory, author Louise Raw argues that the Matchwomen organised their own strike instead of conforming to the traditional historical view that the strike was organised by Annie Bessant. Whoever was behind the strike itself, the Matchwomen organised themselves into a strike committee, and following a two week strike which saw them forming picket lines, and demonstrating through the East End and finally marching to Parliament, they won concessions. As a result, their Employees reformed the conditions they worked in. Their major campaigning issue was ‘phossie jaw’, a disease which was linked to phosphorous in matches. When women developed this disease they were immediately sacked, with no compensation or hope of re-employment. This disease made the victim smell so badly that their families and loved ones had to force them out of their homes. It was reported that on the outskirts of London there were areas where suffers lived side by side in slum dwellings.

The Matchwomen should be an inspiration to all those campaigning within the labour movement. Evidence shows that these girls worked hard and also played hard. Mostly from Irish immigrant descent, as were many in the East End of London during the 1880s, they were well known in the area. They were a close community, who wore colourful clothes, heeled boots and distinctive hats. The hats are especially interesting, as the Women could not afford their own hats but paid into a club which allowed them to share them round. It was reported that they also liked a good night out, gin and stout and a good sing-along to the songs of the day made famous in the Music Halls. It is most no surprise then to hear that during the days of the strike the Women made up rude songs about their employers which they sang as they paraded through the streets. These were strong and feisty women. It is no wonder that they came to win the battle with their employers.

The catalyst to the strike was a newspaper article by Annie Bessant who wrote of the poverty that the Matchwomen lived in and the conditions in which they were forced to work. By all accounts, it seems that following this newspaper article, Bryant and May tried to get their employees to counter this accusation about their conditions and to tell the press what great employers they were. The Women refused to do this, which resulted in the dismissal of a popular factory worker. This was the last straw, and the Matchwomen walked out. And so, a legend was born. 125 years later, the first Matchwomen’s Festival took place. The Festival held at the Bishopsgate Institute in the East End, included speakers, such as Louise Raw herself, Francis O’Grady (the current and first female General Secretary of the TUC), and Ted Lewis, an elderly gentleman whose Grandmother was a Matchwoman in the East End in the years after the strike. As a six year old going to work at the factory, she was able to enjoy the better conditions won for her by those who went on strike in 1880. The Matchwomen’s strike opened the way for a new era of activism from working people, and over the next fifty years many others seized the chance to campaign for better working conditions, such as the London Dockers in 1889, the Suffragettes, and the Miners and the era also included the nine day General Strike of 1926.

The Island of Malta contains some interesting features which remain a mystery to scholars of both pre-history and history. The island is formed from limestone and within great patches of these lie the strange and enchanting cart ruts. They are found all over the island and they are lines, which run in pairs like tyre tracks except they form deep grooves in the limestone rock, rather than leaving surface tread.

The experts have agreed that these are not natural features, for example not caused by water run off, and this is about the only thing that they agree on. There is no consensus on age, although it is agreed they are probably pre-historic while others suggest Roman. As for who made them, the cart ruts, which often curve round corners and intercept each other are often associated with small scale limestone quarrying and this would be the most plausible explanation as also on Malta are scores of pre-historic temple sites made from the limestone rock. This rock would need to be moved somehow – hence the name ‘cart ruts’. A popular theory is the cart ruts were made by Neolithic or Bronze Age man dragging quarried limestone rocks to build these temples. However, the ruts cannot be traced from beginning to end as modern roads, farms and housing have destroyed their routes so this is impossible to prove. Also, the form of transportation involved also remains a mystery, as the expert’s debate whether this would have been in the form of a sledge. If so, would this have been pulled by domesticated animal, because there would be track marks expected to be associated with them, and as such, there are none. A possible explanation to this could be the ancient soil tracks covering the ruts containing traces were eroded away. So nobody really knows.

There are more of these ruts in for example, Sicily, an island not far from Malta and some in southern Italy itself. All remain a mystery. A beautiful mystery at that – when I visited the largest site on Malta, nick-named Clapham Junction due to the amount of cart ruts found here, the site was peaceful, and covered in purple and white autumn crocus’ adding to the me mystery and beauty of this site. Sometimes it is the sense of mystery that is the most interesting feature of historical sites.

Ref: David H Trump, Malta Prehistory and Temples