I grew up hearing a romantic story about a mysterious figure in my family history — “Aunt Becky”. Becky was the second wife of my great great grandfather Alfred TALMER, and she was said to be a gypsy — as she lived in a traditional Romani caravan. I recently set out to try to find out whether she really was of gypsy heritage, and what her life had been like before marrying Alfred. My research led me to discover some highly dubious birth registrations, and fascinating links between a London workhouse and a rural village in Buckinghamshire.

Family lore: Aunt Becky

Growing up, my maternal grandmother, Joan Talmer, knew the woman she called Aunt Becky, who lived with Joan’s widowed grandfather Alfred Talmer in the same small village — The Lee, high in the Chiltern hills in Buckinghamshire. Alfred’s wife Emma had died of uterine cancer in 1928, the year before Joan was born. Alfred and Emma had been married for 45 years and had twelve children, two of whom died in childhood and two more while serving in the First World War. Alfred, a farm labourer, was 65 years old when Emma died, and their surviving children were by then all adults. In this new phase of his life he soon found comfort in the arms of the enigmatic Becky.

Fragments of their story were passed down from my grandmother, to my mum, and to me: Becky had a traditional painted gypsy caravan, which stayed in the back garden of their home, Cherry Tree Cottage. She  ‘kept house’ for Alfred, and their home was always pristine. The exact nature of their relationship was unclear, but she was known to have been his romantic partner. It was also unclear as to when she moved out of the caravan and into the house. I have never seen the caravan myself, and sadly have no photographs of Alfred or Becky. However, on a family history visit my mum made to The Lee 20 years ago, a dilapidated gypsy caravan could still be seen over the fence of Cherry Tree Cottage. I plan to go back to have a look for it myself, though it does not appear in recent estate agent photographs.

Joan always believed that Becky was a gypsy, but some years ago, my mum spoke to Joan’s youngest sister Margaret about this claim, and Margaret laughed, “noooo, she wasn’t!” In recent years, Margaret’s memories became more muddled, and she died just a few weeks ago — the last of her generation.

Becky wasn’t my ancestor, but I wanted to know more about this intriguing person in my family’s history. Where did she come from? Was she from a community of travelling people, such as Roma gypsies or Irish travellers? And what had brought her to The Lee?

A legitimate marriage

It’s not uncommon for family historians to discover that a couple with the appearance of being married, were in fact living together without a legal union. But with Becky and Alfred, the opposite was the case — although Becky had appeared to hold the ambiguous positions of housekeeper and romantic companion, and was known to Alfred’s grandchildren as ‘aunt’, I discovered that Becky and Alfred were in fact legally married. Rose Rebecca FLOOD and Alfred Talmer married at Amersham Registry Office on 26 January 1929, a year after his first wife’s death. And it was certainly not a secret ceremony; the marriage was announced in the Buckinghamshire Examiner. 

The marriage certificate stated that Becky, a spinster, was the daughter of George Flood, a general labourer (deceased). Witnesses included William Flood, who I thought was perhaps a brother. Interestingly, Becky signed her name, whereas Alfred only made his mark. Bride and groom were both living at Lee Common. Becky was 44 when they married (more than 20 years younger than Alfred) and the couple would have no children of their own. However, the Talmer family was large, and many of Alfred’s children and grandchildren lived nearby.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, Rose R Talmer (who I’ll continue to refer to as Becky, unless referring to a specific record), lived with Alfred at Cherry Tree Cottage, Lee Common. Becky gave her birthdate as 11 October 1884. Unfortunately, Alfred didn’t live to see the end of the war; he died in late 1944.

I was able to find a death record for Rose Rebecca Talmer, who died of heart failure on 16 November 1957. Becky was recorded as being 71 years old, which would put her birth in 1885-6. My mum was about six when Becky died, but she doesn’t know if she ever met her, or whether her mum had stayed in contact with her ‘aunt’ after leaving The Lee. My grandparents had no car in the 1950s, and visiting Talmer relations meant a hilly 18-mile round-trip by bicycle from Aylesbury, during limited time off work, so it was a rare occasion.

The search for Becky’s origins begins

Once I knew Becky’s maiden name and had a range of about two years for her birth, I began to look for records of her life before marrying Alfred, starting with a broad search for her in the area of The Lee. In the 1901 census, a 14-year-old girl called Rebecca Flood was boarding in Ballinger, just one mile south of Lee Common, with a poultry breeder called Jane RATCLIFFE. Jane was also hosting another girl, Alice BUTLER, aged 10. The two girls came from Wandsworth Union and their place of birth was unknown. They had no occupation, and neither were they stated to be scholars (school children). The age and proximity to Lee Common suggested that this could be the same Rebecca Flood who married my 2x great grandfather. 

However, were there other Rose or Rebecca Floods who might also be candidates? I found that between Q3 1884 and Q4 1886, four Flood girls with names like ‘Rose’ had been born in England (and none in Wales): Rose in Stoke on Trent, Rosanna Rebecca in Wandsworth, Rosina Emily in Shoreditch and Rose Emily in Chelsea. There were no births registered for a Rebecca Flood. The closest match seemed to be Rosanna Rebecca, registered in June quarter, 1885 in Wandsworth — even though the timing didn’t match Becky’s reported birthdate, she had the right middle name to be my Becky and the right birth place to be the girl boarding in Ballinger. I felt I was on the right track, and I was curious to find out what circumstances had brought her from South London to South Buckinghamshire.

Given that two girls had been placed in this rural Bucks village by a London Poor Law Union, I suspected there might be others nearby. I found that the Postmaster and Postmistress of The Lee had three EARMAN brothers boarding with them, aged 8-12 — all ‘boys from the Clapham and Wandsworth Union’. In Great Missenden, next door to The Lee, a woodsman had two boarders, CASTLE brothers aged 13 and 9, born in Wandsworth. The house next door also had two boarders, Albert ROBINSON aged 13 and Arnold TIEMAN?, 7, both born in London. Only the Earman boys were listed as attending school.

Peter Higginbotham’s brilliant website, workhouses.org.uk, on its page about Wandsworth Workhouse, explains that ‘In the 1890s, almost six hundred children in the care of Wandsworth and Clapham Union were at the North Surrey District School at Anerly. Another hundred of the union’s children were boarded out in various parts of the country, 80 were at institutions at Margate, 18 were in a convalescent home, and 100 were at Catholic schools. The union also sent many of its parentless children away to Canada.’ Among these many ‘creative’ ways of outsourcing the care of a huge number of poor children, Becky seems to have been one of those boarded out.

While waiting for an opportunity to investigate the records of Wandsworth Union, I searched for more records of Becky/Rebecca’s life. In the 1911 census there was no sign of her near The Lee, or anywhere else in Bucks. But a Rose Rebecca Flood, 25, was employed as a domestic servant for an Irish family in Worthing, Sussex. She came from Battersea; this tallied with a birth registered in Wandsworth and a child boarded out by Wandsworth Union. In 1921, the same Rose Rebecca Flood was working as a servant for an estate agent and his wife in Hampstead.  

Could I find Becky’s family in Battersea before 1901? The index to the birth registration of Rosanna Rebecca Flood in Wandsworth showed that the mother’s maiden name was SPARKS. A search of marriages found only one viable match — between Henry William Flood and Rebecca Sparks in Wandsworth district, 1873. Becky had said her father’s name was George. But I had a hunch that this was the right family, and on delving deeper, I would discover that many of the records of their lives didn’t quite ring true …

The Battersea Floods

The recent availability of instant digital downloads from the General Record Office makes it much more affordable to order birth, marriage and death records — and I was able to download the detailed part of Rosanna Rebecca’s birth certificate for less than the cost of a cappuccino. It gave her birthdate as 17 April 1885 and showed that her parents were, as expected, Henry William and Rebecca.

Next, I looked for the earliest census record I would be able to find for Rosanna Rebecca, in 1891. I found that Rebecca Snr. was a widow in Battersea working as a charwoman. She had three children, and the youngest, ‘Rose’, was four years old. This didn’t quite tally with Rosanna, as she should have been five (about to turn six). However, small variations in age aren’t uncommon in census returns (though it’s more unusual for a child).

Looking back at the 1881 census, I found Rebecca and Henry with four children. Rebecca’s age and the names and ages of the two younger children (Arthur and Ann(ie)) matched the family in 1891, so I was confident these records were for the same family.

It seemed that Henry William had died between the spring of 1886 (nine months before Rose’s birth) and April 1891, when the census was taken. However, the closest matching death record I could find was a Henry Flood who died in Wandsworth, Sep Q, 1883, aged 31. This age corresponded to Henry’s age in the 1881 census, but if this was the same man, it meant he couldn’t be Rosanna’s father. My interest piqued, I downloaded Henry’s death certificate. The address, occupation and wife’s name showed it was the right Henry, and that he had died from phthisis (TB) on 24 September 1883. It meant that Mrs Rebecca Flood had claimed her late husband was her new daughter’s father, one year and seven months after his death! She had also omitted to note in the registration that Henry was ‘deceased’.

But wait, there’s more …

Another online search for information on Rosanna produced a baptism record for Rose Flood at All Saints’, Battersea in 1887. But this Rose was born on 18 Feb 1887. Her parents were Rebecca … and Frederick Flood, who was, very intriguingly, a ‘traveller’. I was able to find this child’s birth in the GRO indexes and her mother’s maiden name was Sparks!

This younger Rose’s birth certificate confirmed that her parents were Fred and Rebecca Flood, and stated that Fred’s occupation was ‘boot repairer’, which was similar to Henry’s occupation of bootmaker/shoemaker. Although it was just possible that there had been two Rebecca Sparks marrying two different Floods, both of whom were bootmakers and had died within a few years of each other, I realised that the age of this Rose fitted perfectly with the Rose who was living with the widowed Rebecca in 1891 (and she was the only Rose Flood living in Battersea that year). But if it was the younger Rose living with her mother in 1891, what had happened to Rosanna Rebecca?

The answer was to be found in the registers of deaths: ‘Rose Hannah Rebecca Flood’ had in fact died at the age of four months. Her mother, when registering the death, stuck to the story that Henry (now admitted to be deceased) was the baby’s father.

I now had a family in Battersea whose surviving daughter, Rose, was born outside of the range for Becky, and who did not have the middle name ‘Rebecca’. The connection was far less robust but by now, I was fully invested! I was intrigued by the falsification of records and the conflicting fathers’ names, and the description of Fred Flood (supposedly Rose’s father) as a ‘traveller’ was tantalising. I knew that Rebecca must have faced financial struggles as a widow with young children, and it seemed plausible that it was this Rose who had been sent by Wandsworth Union to Buckinghamshire. Whether or not this was my ancestor’s family, I wanted to find out more about the girl who had been sent from London to The Lee at the turn of the 20th century.

Wandsworth Union Records

Records of the Wandsworth Union are held at the London Metropolitan Archives (LMA). Workhouse admission and discharge registers there only go back to 1919 but there are many other records. Before visiting, I searched the Poor Law and Board of Guardian Records, 1738-1926 database in Ancestry, which supposedly indexed digitised registers of reports on boarded-out children from 1891-1902 (reference WABG/153/001 and /002) as well as annual creed registers. Creed books had been required for poor law unions since 1868, and captured inmates’ religious affiliations; these registers can be useful alternatives to admission and discharge registers. No records for Floods came up for Wandsworth, but this result was misleading, as I’ll explain shortly …

I had my fingers crossed that Rose/Rebecca Flood would be included in the register of boarded-out children from 1883-1912 (reference WABG/154). The elegant book was neatly divided into sections for towns and villages across the UK where Wandsworth children had been placed. They were not in alphabetical order, but after leafing through villages in Bucks, Beds, Oxon, Suffolk, Surrey, West Sussex and Hants (Aspley Guise, Eversholt, Banbury, Mildenhall, Maulden, Milton Bryan, Penn, Surbiton, Slinfold, Hockliffe & Chalgrove, Nuthurst, and Thornden Hall) … I suddenly came to the section for Little Missenden — a village five miles from The Lee and two miles from Great Missenden. I quickly realised that it wasn’t just a handful of children who had been boarded out there, but dozens! In fact, Little Missenden, with 44 boarders, had one of the largest numbers of children among all of the places; these children had been placed in homes in a number of surrounding villages. 

On the first page for Little Missenden (shown above) I spied the entry for Rebecca Flood. It showed that she was an orphan, b. 1886, and had first been boarded out on 24 October 1895, when she was about nine years old. She had been placed with three other families before Jane Ratcliffe (also known as Jane Rackley):

1. Mr ? JAMES in Holmer Green (a village in Little Missenden parish) — there were more than 30 James’s there in 1891 (and I’m a James descendant myself); the heads of household were wood-turners and agricultural labourers.
2. Jane BURRAGE in Great Missenden town — Jane Burrage/Burridge was a widowed charwoman in 1891, living in a four-room house on the High St with her sister, who was a recipient of parochial relief.¹ Perhaps the payment for taking a child in from Wandsworth Union meant that they themselves were no longer dependent on local charity.
3. Mr Samuel? PEARCE in Little Missenden village — possibly the agricultural labourer living in a 4-room cottage with five children in the hamlet of Beaumond End in 1891 (but Pearce was a very common name in the area, and features many times in my own tree).

What must it have been like for a little orphaned girl from Battersea to be moved around between four different families in less than seven years? The register describes these families as ‘Foster Parents’. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find out whether the compensation they received would have much exceeded the cost of caring for the children, so it is difficult to know whether money was a motivating factor, or whether there were other influences, such as encouragement from their church. I hope Rebecca was treated with kindness.

In July 1902, Rebecca would have been about 17 years old. The register records that a letter was received about her from Mrs Rackley (Ratcliffe). The details are unclear, but three days later, she left Little Missenden to go into domestic service in Hampstead, and then in December she went to another employer in South Hampstead.

On the final page for Little Missenden, I noticed an entry for William Flood. Most siblings were listed together, and often (though not always) boarded together, but it still seemed likely that William was either a brother or close relation. William had, in fact, had one of the same foster parents as Rebecca — Jane Burrage (his third and final placement). Had they been boarded together for a while? Like Rebecca, William was an orphan. He was born in 1892 (six years after Rebecca) and had been boarded from 1896 (five months later than Rebecca). In 1899 he was discharged to the infirmary, for observation. The notes are hard to read but seem to say he needed ‘bed support’ and that he was ‘said to be fit for imbecile asylum’. Perhaps he was having trouble sleeping, or wetting the bed. William was, after all, just seven years old.

As well as finding Rebecca and a possible sibling in the boarding-out register, I was able to find the other children I had spotted in the 1901 census, including Rebecca’s house-mate Alice Butler, the three Earman (Easeman) brothers, who had two more siblings, and the Castle brothers, whose surname was in fact KOWALSKI.

At the end of the book, after Keswick (showing that children were boarded as far away as the Lake District) and Farnham, was the section for Canada. Hundreds of children were listed there. I found it particularly sad to see that many siblings had been separated and sent to areas hundreds of miles apart. In total, across the UK, 100,000 poor children were sent to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, most between 1870 and 1930. Known as  the ‘Home Children’, many were used as nothing more than free labour, and suffered abuse and neglect. Despite this, thousands went on to make lives for themselves in their new countries; it’s been estimated that one in ten Canadians today is descended from a ‘Home Child’.

Returning to the Wandsworth Union records, I found it hard to believe that Rebecca and William would not appear in the registers of reports on boarded-out children that were supposed to be in Ancestry. After checking with the helpful experts on the LMA reception desk, they showed me how to browse to that specific record, which is listed under ‘Wandsworth’ and ‘children’. I soon realised that the reports had not been indexed. Furthermore, they had been lumped together with several other records comprising more than 1000 pages in total. (I include this detail as a reminder that Ancestry’s databases are not always as comprehensive as they purport to be!)

Once I had found the right record, the book’s index pointed me to the entries for Rebecca and William. It was well worth the effort — the pages revealed that they had both attended school, and that regular checks had shown them to be satisfactory. I was touched to see that they had been able to receive an education, and that the Wandsworth Union had monitored their progress. However, while Rebecca had continued at school until 17 (four years beyond the minimum leaving age), William had been returned to the infirmary in 1899 (aged seven) and ‘appeared to be of weak intellect’.

As well as the reports on their progress, these records confirmed that Rebecca and William were sister and brother. Rebecca had been boarded following the death of her mother, a widow, in the infirmary on 29 May 1895. At that time William had been in the infirmary as well. The record also shows that Rebecca and William had another brother, Fred, with an address in Battersea.

Through a search for death registrations in 1895 I found that Rebecca Flood had died in Wandsworth in June quarter of that year, aged 44. Her name and age confirmed that the girl sent to the Little Missenden area was indeed the daughter of Rebecca, and therefore must have been the girl who was named ‘Rose’ at her birth and baptism. As further corroboration, her older brother Frederick had been living with Henry and Rebecca in 1881.

William was several years younger than Rebecca. So was he another son of the mysterious Fred? His birth certificate reveals that when Rebecca registered his birth she was once again very ‘economical’ with the truth; his father was stated to be ‘Henry William Flood, deceased’. It was quite a stretch to name Henry as the father eight years post mortem! Like Rose (‘Rebecca’), William was baptised at St Stephen’s, Battersea, and his father was named as William Flood, a bootmaker. I am not sure how she was able to have her late husband’s name included in the register; I can only assume that she wasn’t well known to the officiating clergyman.

My final search in the records of the Wandsworth Union were the creed registers, which have also been digitised, but escaped being indexed by Ancestry. These records provided the exact dates of admission into Wandsworth workhouse — Rebecca had been admitted a month before being boarded out — and stated that the children’s religion (creed) was Church of England.

The Wandsworth-Little Missenden Connection

I hoped to learn more about why Little Missenden had been selected as a boarding out location. Minutes of the Union Board revealed that each place had its own boarding out committee, but sadly, no records of the committee have survived. I wondered if the connection between Wandsworth and Little Missenden was Arthur Lasenby Liberty, founder of the famous Liberty’s store on Regent Street. Arthur was born in Chesham, next door to Little Missenden, and his grandparents lived just outside The Lee. In 1898 he purchased the Manor estate of The Lee, becoming Lord of The Manor. He was a major employer in the village, and also a social reformer. His many improvements included new cottages, fresh water pumped from Missenden Valley and a new well. He also improved villagers’ well-being with the provision of a village green, cricket pitch and football ground for their leisure time. Liberty’s Works in London were on the River Wandle (next to what is now called Liberty Avenue). Following the river or road directly north for three miles led straight into the heart of Wandsworth, passing very close to the workhouse. Could Liberty have been involved in persuading villagers in the Little Missenden area to take in poor children from London? Another possible link is James Clark, who was the pastor of the Strict and Particular Baptist chapels at Buckland Common (three miles from the Lee) and Wandsworth. When I next go to the Buckinghamshire Archives I will see what I can find out there.

Was Rose ‘Rebecca’ from Battersea my Becky Flood?

Much as I would like to prove that Rebecca, the girl who had been orphaned in Battersea just after her tenth birthday, was my Becky, there’s evidence that both supports and challenges this theory:

For:

• Becky’s name was ‘Rose Rebecca’ and the girl from Battersea was known as both ‘Rose’ and ‘Rebecca’ (perhaps taking the name Rebecca from her mother and deceased infant older sister).
• William Flood was a witness to Becky’s wedding in 1929, and Rebecca from Battersea had a brother called William, apparently the only sibling who had been boarded out with her (though unfortunately I have found no firm trace of William after he left The Lee as a child in 1899).
• Rebecca from Battersea was trained in domestic service and had years of experience as a servant. From census records I know that her mother was probably also a domestic servant prior to marriage. This background corresponds with Becky’s work as a housekeeper for Alfred, and their immaculate home. (However, domestic service was a very common occupation for women at the turn of the century.)
• I have not come across any other obvious candidate for my Becky Flood.

Against:

• Becky named her father ‘George Flood’ in her marriage record. However, the identity of Rebecca’s father was unclear, and it is likely she was illegitimate. She was also orphaned at a very young age, which could have left her with patchy knowledge of her family. She may have had a close relation called George Flood; there were three George Floods in Battersea at the time of her birth, and a George John Flood was a witness to Henry Flood and Rebecca Sparks’s marriage in 1873.
• In 1939, Becky gave her birth date as 11 October 1884, whereas Rebecca (Rose) from Battersea was born on 18 February 1887. However, Becky’s reported age at death places her birth between 1885-1886. The age at death could be due to error by the person who reported it, but we could also attribute differences in the birthdates to Becky’s lack of self-knowledge due to her circumstances.

Weighing up the evidence, it seems to me very likely that my ‘Aunt Becky’, was indeed Rose ‘Rebecca’ Flood, the orphan from Wandsworth who, having spent much of her childhood at The Lee (and hopefully having experienced some happiness there), wanted to return to the village as an adult.

Gypsy Rose In The Lee?

I started out with the primary question: Was Becky a gypsy? I’ve found nothing concrete to suggest that Alfred’s wife Becky or Rebecca from Battersea were gypsies or travellers. Birth, marriage and death registrations and baptism registers all included typical street addresses.

I have to bear in mind that ‘Gypsies lived in peri-urban encampments or even cheap lodging in cities over winter alongside working-class populations, making and selling goods, moving in regular circuits across the countryside in the spring and summer, picking up seasonal work, hawking and attending fairs.’²  So, a street address isn’t proof of a fixed abode. However, after Rebecca’s father’s death, her oldest brother (Henry William, known as Harry) attended school in Battersea regularly for four years, suggesting the family was settled there throughout that period.

Fred Flood, quite possibly a fake name, was said to be a ‘traveller’. However, that term was also used for commercial travellers, ie merchants or salesmen.

Wandsworth and Battersea were areas with high numbers of Romani gypsies, especially in winter months.³ Looking at the addresses of Rebecca Flood’s family, we do find some alignment with known gypsy encampments in Battersea.

In 1881, the family lived on Culvert Road, which was the long-term site of a gypsy encampment. The Romany & Traveller Family History Society’s website has a page about the Mills family, who lived there in the 1950s. Harry still lived on Culvert Rd in the 1920s. However, the 1881 census for that street includes hundreds of people, and I’ve not seen any entries among them that suggest they were gypsies or travellers.

William Flood was born on Sheepcote Lane in Battersea in 1892. The lane was omitted from Charles Booth’s ‘poverty maps’ from the same period (the road appears but with no colour code). However, a book published in 1951 included a photograph with this description: ‘Down by the railway tracks, hemmed in by streets of little houses, is this caravan encampment. Some of the dwellers in the old vans claim to be of pure Romany stock. Their ancestors came, so they say, year after year in the long ago when all around was Surrey countryside‘. Was the same road also occupied by Romani gypsies six decades earlier?

Below are some excerpts from an essay, ‘Van Dwelling London’, from Living London, published in 1902-3. The full article describes, often through prejudiced eyes, traveller families encamped in Battersea. The photographs are really atmospheric (all three volumes of Living London are available via archive.org).

Brief online searches for Rebecca’s siblings have not yielded any more evidence of a traveller family. What they do reveal are the stark effects of poverty. After Harry left school in Battersea he joined the training ship ‘Exmouth’. When he entered the ship at age 14 he was just 4’7, and when he joined the HMS Impregnable at 16, he was still only five feet tall.

Becky’s caravan

While it’s possible that Becky was from a Roma family, and obtained the caravan from the community in later life, it is also possible that she lived in a caravan in Alfred’s garden simply because it was affordable accommodation. She may even have acquired it from local gypsies; there were certainly gypsies living in the surrounding area; in the 1950s, Roald Dahl bought a cottage at Great Missenden which he named Gipsy House, after some Romani gypsies who lived in nearby woods. He purchased a gypsy caravan in 1960 and it’s still in the garden.

Alternatively, Alfred may have acquired the caravan. Perhaps he offered Becky free board there in exchange for helping him to care for him and his house. The idea that someone who was not of Romani heritage could have acquired a Romani caravan might be surprising. However, by the 1930s, the heyday of these decorative wagons was over.

It’s possible that in the 1930s, Becky and Alfred rented the gypsy caravan out, or lived in it themselves while renting their house. Returning to the 1939 register, we see that they were living with another family at Cherry Tree Cottage: The GOSS family. Geoffrey Goss, aged 38, was a commercial artist, and he and his wife Patricia, who was only 19, had a two-month old daughter, Anna. According to a blog about Geoffrey Walter Goss, which shows samples of his work, he was the grandson of Sir John Goss – composer and organist of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Geoffrey was a successful children’s book illustrator in the UK from 1921 to 1946; his work included several covers for the Tarzan series. During the war the family lived in Harpenden, Herts, and Geoffrey worked at the Vauxhall factory in Luton on designs for the Churchill tanks that were manufactured there. The Goss’s later emigrated to Canada, where both Geoffrey and Patricia had careers as artists; their three children also became artists and musicians.

Although this element of the story might seem like nothing more than an interesting ‘rabbit hole’, the Goss family also provide another clue to Becky’s identity. Geoffrey Goss was born and baptised at Battersea, and in the 1920s he lived in Wandsworth. It seems to me unlikely that this was a coincidence. I have attempted to contact their son, with a hope that he might shed some light on why his parents were living at The Lee, and whether they ever mentioned Becky and her caravan. It’s possible that Geoffrey and Patricia could even have painted a picture of the house, or its owners.

Perhaps one day I will find a photograph or sketch of Becky. Until then, I have used an AI tool to ‘imagine’ her smiling in front of her colourful wagon. After such a difficult start in life, and after spending many years as a servant in someone else’s house, I like to think that in the caravan, and at Cherry Tree Cottage, with my great great grandfather, she finally felt at home.

Update: In July 2025 I was delighted to be contacted by someone whose father was born in The Lee in 1952 and still lives there. He (the father) has always known Cherry Tree Cottage as ‘Becky Talmer’s’! Although he doesn’t remember a caravan in that garden, his great aunt lived in one just around the corner! That would have been in the 1930s-50s. Amazingly, the family still owns the caravan, and have kindly given me permission to share pictures of it below. They hope one day to restore it to its former glory. Is it possible that several caravans were sold to villagers at the same time? Or could this even be Becky’s caravan, that she passed onto a neighbour when she no longer needed it? What’s more, another long-time resident of the village, now in his 80s, has confirmed that the Libertys did indeed have a policy of encouraging local people to take in London orphans. Great stuff!

Romani & Traveller Historical Resources

Romani (Romany) people have been in the UK since the early 16th century, and are thought to have originally come from India.

Who Do You Think You Are has a good guide to gypsy family history. The Romany and Traveller Family History Society has many free records on its website. You can learn about different travelling communities at The Traveller Movement. Some websites about gypsy history in London include the London Gypsies and Travellers History and Heritage Map and ‘Gypsies and Travellers’ on Old Bailey Online.

References

1. 1891 England Census; Class: RG12; Piece: 1128; Folio: 20; Page: 10.
2. Britain’s Gypsy Travellers: A People on the Outside (History Today)
3. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/architecture/sites/bartlett/files/50_introduction.pdf

Updated on 18/9/25 to add the information and photos from John Pearce

You’ve heard the sassy song from Six, “Divorced, beheaded, died … divorced, beheaded, survived!” Well, this is my slightly less catchy version, with a military spin! In this blog I look at three men in my family tree who briefly served in the British army before leaving abruptly, probably without ever seeing action. Through a variety of records, I’ve learned about the causes … and repercussions … of their change of heart, I’ve discovered colourful physical descriptions of them as young men, and I’ve even found clues to their ancestral origins.

Case 1: Richard Maultby — Deserted

Richard, my 4x great grandfather, was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire in 1814. His parents, Thomas and Anna, had a shop next to the Abbey Church. However, by 1828, and possibly as early as 1816, they opened a bakery in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, close to Thomas’s birthplace. Richard learned the family trade, but by the time he was a young man, something motivated him to exchange his white apron and baker’s hat for a green uniform and Baker rifle.

However, the lure of the army was short-lived. On 25 January 1832 Richard Maultby, aged 18, born at ‘St Chad’s, Salop’, appeared in a War Office list among dozens of military deserters in Hue and Cry (The Police Gazette). He had deserted from the Rifle Brigade in London, on 10 November 1831.

It’s always a delight to find any physical description of an ancestor, and thanks to Richard’s desertion, I know that at the age of 18 he was 5’9, stout, with square shoulders, a round head and oval face (not sure how that works!). His nose, neck, arms and hands, legs and feet, were deemed ‘prop(ortionate)’. He had light brown eyes, brown eyebrows, and a mole over his right eye. Most surprisingly, his hair was grey (or perhaps it was simply dusted with flour?)! When he had absconded he’d not been wearing regimental clothing — he was dressed in a brown coat and grey trousers.

It wasn’t uncommon to desert the army; Findmypast’s database of ‘Army Deserters 1828-1840‘ includes 34,000 records! Most of the men were young, and deserted within the first year, often the first weeks. I suspect this was the case for Richard. The punishment when a deserter was apprehended was typically flogging or branding, though I have no record of whether this was applied in Richard’s case. I do wonder where he went when he ran away. Did he go straight home? Many deserters returned to the army, and eventually got used to the regimented way of life, continual travel, and physical danger. But Richard returned to the family home, and to baking. And he proved to be an excellent baker.

Soon after his father’s death in 1838, he married Martha Hopkins, who joined the family business. His mother Anna was still head of the household and a baker in 1841, but after her death in 1847, Richard and Martha took over the Maultby bakery. In the 1851 census Richard was stated to be a ‘Master Baker’, implying that he had completed an apprenticeship. If he was formally apprenticed, it was probably with his father, though it seems likely he had not completed his training before joining the army. I hope to review Rifle Brigade musters and pay lists at The National Archives in the future, in case they offer more information about his enlistment and service.

Richard Maultby, one-time rifleman and long-time baker, died in 1866. But the Maultby baking dynasty continued for nearly 40 years after his death: Richard and Martha’s son William was a master baker in Leighton Buzzard, and their unmarried daughter Ann ran a bakery business in the same town until after 1901.

In 1914, another Richard Maultby enlisted in the army; Richard’s grandson and namesake Richard Maultby (b. 1871), served with the CEF in WW1. Richard, like his grandfather, found military service very challenging, and he faced severe discipline on multiple occasions. However, unlike his grandfather, he also faced brutal mechanised combat, and never came home again.

Case 2: Henry Saword — Defaulted

Henry Saword, my husband’s 2x great granduncle, was born in Hornsea, Middlesex in 1869, the third youngest of 18 children (12 surviving) of Edward William Turner Saword, a merchant. His mother was Edward’s second wife, Sarah Gibson. Within this huge family, Henry managed to carve his own path, showing an early talent for rifle shooting and interest in the military.

In 1877, as a new recruit in the volunteer London Rifle Brigade, Private Saword took part in a prize-meeting of the N (Tower Ward) company at the shooting range in Rainham (now a nature reserve), and was awarded a Cup, value £2. The Lord Mayor gave a speech at the prize presentation, and the Lady Mayoress distributed the prizes. According to the London Metropolitan Archives, who hold the brigade’s records, ‘The London Rifle Brigade was founded in 1859 and was the first City of London volunteer unit formed during that year. Its members were City clerks and City “men of good position”‘.

In the National Archives Discovery catalogue I found a reference to a document relating to Henry Saword, within a sub-series of ADM 157 (Royal Marines attestation forms), which included ‘attestations for ranks who were not allocated official numbers and served only for days or months’. Henry’s papers (ADM 157/647/400) were described as ‘Henry Saword, born Middlesex. Attestation papers to serve in the Royal Marines at Portsmouth 1880 (when aged 18). Discharged 1880 as Paid £10.’

Intrigued, I ordered the papers on a visit to TNA. Without expecting anything beyond an official form or two, I was pleasantly surprised to find a small set of letters and notes, which gave me a glimpse into an eventful few weeks in Henry’s youth, 140 years ago.

On 18 June 1880, age 18 and 9 months, Henry Saword, a clerk, enlisted with the Royal Marines. He was 5’8 with a fresh complexion, grey eyes and light brown hair, and — showing him to be a natural fit for the Navy — a ‘slightly tattooed left forearm’. (I wonder what the tattoo was?) His attestation oath was taken at the Westminster Police Court, and he agreed to serve for 12 years.

However, less than a fortnight later, on 30 June, a letter was sent to Henry’s superiors from his previous employer, C. F. (Charles Frederick) Kell, whose Lithographic Drawing & Printing Offices were at 8 Castle Street Holborn. Unfortunately for Henry, Mr Kell wasn’t writing to wish him well with his military career. He complained that Henry had ‘left my employ abruptly’ and that ‘I am anxious he should complete his work.’ Charles Kell continued, ‘as I know he is seeking his release would you kindly let me know how soon he will be free’.

I don’t know if Henry was, as Kell asserted, seeking his release, but he was certainly making sure that he had received every penny owed to him. On 5 July, he wrote to A Company stating that he had only ben paid for two out of five days in London. This was investigated and found to be correct. On 16 July, Henry received the three days’ pay he was owed, and made out a receipt at the Swan & Horse shoe, Gardeners Lane, Westminster, a pub that was used as a recruiting base by the Royal Marines until it closed in 1899.

On 10 July, Henry purchased his discharge at the cost of £10. He had been in the armed forces for just 19 days. Had Henry fallen out with his employer and impulsively enlisted (possibly getting a bit of a tattoo as well), only to return to his employer just three weeks later?

Henry’s record closes with an entry in the ‘Company Defaulters’ Book’. I don’t know if he returned to Kell’s lithographic offices. In the 1881 census, Henry’s occupation was Commercial Traveller. However, in 1891, still living at home with his mother, Henry was a warehouseman — which I believe means he was a wholesaler. Unfortunately I don’t have any records for Henry after 1891. Perhaps he emigrated, or maybe, just maybe, he returned to the Marines, and was able to sharpen his shooting skills once more.

Case 3: Nicholas Ronksley — Discharged

Nicholas, my 5x great grandfather, married Elizabeth Thomas at St Leonard’s, Shoreditch in 1795. Over the next seven years they had five daughters, including my 4x great grandmother Elizabeth Ronksley, all baptised at St Olave’s, Southwark. The parish clerk, who had an elegant hand, consistently included the father’s occupation in the baptism register, showing that in 1796, new father Nicholas was a labourer, but from 1798 to 1806 he worked as a Porter, or more specifically, in 1798, a Wine Porter. Land tax records show that from 1807 until his death in 1816 he rented property at Great Maze Pond, from the governors of Guys Hospital.

Given the location, it’s very likely that he was a hospital porter. Wine was used medicinally in 18th-century hospitals (according to a commercial website, wine was the largest single expense of Leicester Hospital in 1773!). However, newspaper advertisements for hospital porters around this time typically called for a single man who could write well, whereas Nicholas was married, and probably couldn’t write, as he only made his mark in the marriage register (in contrast to Elizabeth, whose signature was neat and clear). Desired ages varied from ‘under 30’ to ‘about 40’ or ‘middle aged’, but more importantly, the job required someone strong and healthy. Whether Nicholas was a healthy young man, I can’t say, but he did not live a long life, dying when his youngest child was only 10. Nevertheless, the role of a hospital porter also required a ‘good character for honesty and sobriety’ and perhaps that is where Nicholas excelled.

Ronksley is an uncommon name, which in this period was confined almost entirely to an area just north of Sheffield. I found no evidence for any other Nicholas Ronksley in London, and the only potential baptism I could find in online databases was in Silkstone, Yorkshire, 1776 — the son of Francis Ronksley of Thurgoland. This potentially made Nicholas my first known Yorkshire ancestor and my first ‘gateway’ ancestor, with a family tree that goes back to Medieval nobility. But how could I prove that my ancestor in London was the same man?

Since he had an uncommon name, I searched for Nicholas in the National Archives Discovery catalogue, which found a very intriguing record: In books containing descriptions of men joining the Royal Horse Artillery (WO 69/1/3117) there was an entry for ‘Nicholas RONKSLEY. Born Throughland [sic], Yorkshire. Enlisted 1794 aged 17 years. Note: Claimed as apprentice 1798.’ I now knew that the Nicholas Ronksley from Thurgoland, b. 1776, had indeed come to London, and that he had joined the army. I also knew that he hadn’t stayed in the military. However, if this was my ancestor, how had he ended up working as a labourer and porter? And how could he have been an apprentice in 1798 when he was already married and employed?

At TNA I was able to examine the RHA record first-hand. Unfortunately, no further details were offered about Nicholas’s apprenticeship, only the words in the last column, ‘Remarks’, ‘Claim’d an Apprentice’ with a date, 16 January, a very faint year (not necessarily 1798) and other unreadable characters.

However, the description revealed that Nicholas’s previous Trade or Calling was ‘Farmer’, and that he had enlisted on 7 May 1794, at what looks like Kendal (though that’s 100 miles northeast of Thurgoland). He’d been mustered on 6 December 1794 in E company so was an early recruit to the RHA, which had been formed in February 1793 to provide mobile fire support to fast-moving cavalry units after Britain declared war on revolutionary France¹. His troop had been created at Woolwich on 1 November².

He was the only farmer on the page, out of 18 men; perhaps with that background, he had significant skills in working with horses. The horses used by the RHA had to be broken and trained to work in teams, harnessed together and pulling a ton and a half of artillery across rough country, under fire.³ He was also one of only two who could read, but not write; this mismatch of skills aroused my curiosity (leading to an interesting discussion on Twitter) but it was also a small piece of evidence that matched him to my ancestor (though admittedly, many labourers would have been unable to write their name).

Although I knew that the book contained descriptions, I wasn’t sure how much physical detail would be recorded, so I was thrilled to find out that 17-year-old Nicholas was 5’6 with a fresh complexion, brown hair and grey eyes.

According to the National Army Museum, the RHA was formed in 1793 after Britain declared war on Revolutionary France: ‘Later that year, the Royal Regiment of Artillery created a mounted branch to provide mobile fire support to fast-moving cavalry units. Initially formed of two troops, this new unit was known as the Royal Horse Artillery (RHA).’² Nicholas may have joined out of patriotism, a sense of adventure, economic reasons, or social expectations. Other researchers have found that he was among the younger of 14 children (I have not verified this). Some of Francis’s sons would have needed to find other trades or occupations, beyond the family farm. However, since the Militia Act of 1757 had created a professional army, it had also become a respectable, even desirable, occupation for a younger son who wouldn’t inherit land.

After examining this document I still could not be sure that Nicholas Ronksley, soldier and apprentice, and Nicholas Ronksley, porter, were one and the same. However, I found two key pieces of supporting evidence for the match elsewhere:

• I was drawn to the PCC wills of George Ronksley, victualler of Chesham, Buckinghamshire (d. 1817) and his wife Elizabeth Ronksley (d. 1822) — because these were other Ronksleys in the south of England, contemporary to mine. Moreover, they had married in London in 1796 … ~
  Bingo! Elizabeth bequeathed money to Elizabeth, the widow of her late husband George’s brother, Nicholas Ronksley, and to Nicholas and Elizabeth’s five daughters (all named). So, George and Nicholas were brothers. I then, critically, found a baptism of George Ronksley to Francis, in Silkstone, Yorkshire, 1765. Interestingly, George, more than a decade older than Nicholas, could write his name. Perhaps the family’s budget for education had run out by the time Nicholas was born.
• I also have a DNA match that connects me to Francis Ronksley: Francis would be my 6x great grandfather, and the handy Ancestry Thrulines tool only goes back to 5x great grandparents. However, I was able to look at my mum’s Thrulines, which takes me back one more generation, and found that she is a DNA match to a 6th cousin, a descendant of John Ronksley, who was baptised to Francis Ronksley in Silkstone in 1759.

With a high degree of confidence that Nicholas Ronksley from Throughland is indeed my 5x great grandfather, I wondered again about the circumstances of his leaving the RHA. It’s not clear whether he had seen any action overseas, and exactly when he was ‘claimed an apprentice’. That wording perhaps implies that he had absconded — escaping from an apprenticeship in Kendal by enlisting? If his master then caught up with him, showing his commanding officer their apprenticeship bond, he might have been forced to leave his military service. Nicholas might then have secured his freedom (but not his Freedom) before carrying on with his life on his own terms.

Alternatively, did his relationship with Elizabeth necessitate him leaving either the RHA or an apprenticeship? When they married, Nicholas was only about 19, a decade younger than his bride. The baptism entries for their daughters included birth dates, which reveal that their first child, Mary Ann, was born only eight months after the marriage. Did Elizabeth realise she was pregnant, and that she needed to marry her young beau as soon as possible? In these circumstances, he would have had to find work quickly. Since Elizabeth was from Shoreditch, she may have wished to stay close to home rather than go to Yorkshire. And since there was little need for a farmer in the Metropolis, and Nicholas was not fully literate, unskilled labour might have been his only option.

In failing to complete an apprenticeship, Nicholas wasn’t unusual; in 1814, a Parliamentary committee estimated that 70% of London parish apprentices didn’t complete their terms.⁴ Though Nicholas probably wasn’t a parish (pauper) apprentice, the overall apprenticeship drop-out rate in 17th-century London had been 50%, and these statistics point to it being extremely commonplace.

Despite leaving the RHA, and possibly abandoning an apprenticeship, by the time Nicholas reached full age he attained a respected appointment, which he retained for many years. But sadly, Nicholas Ronksley died before he reached the age of 40, and Elizabeth was left a widow with five young children. Her life can’t have been easy — she died 20 years after her husband, in St Olave’s workhouse.

Richard, Henry and Nicholas share many common threads, but they enlisted at very different times in British history, in different divisions, and thus would have had very different experiences. During Nicholas Ronksley’s service with the Royal Horse Artillery (approx 1794-1798), Britain was at war with France. Richard Maultby deserted the Rifle Brigade in 1831, when British troops were deployed to suppress uprisings of enslaved people in Jamaica, though the Rifle Brigade (95th Regiment) was not involved in that conflict. When Henry Saword joined the Royal Marines in 1880, the British empire had greatly expanded, and its army and navy were fighting in Afghanistan, Egypt and South Africa.

By examining some records of their premature exits from the military I have formed clearer impressions of these fresh-faced young men, all just 17-18 years of age. I hope to look at further sources to learn more about them as individuals as well as the historical context that would have shaped them. Although I will probably never know what drove their decisions to enlist or to leave, there are hints that all three were frustrated by their apprenticeships or jobs, and took a youthful leap at an opportunity to do something more exciting, perhaps even to travel the world. But after enlisting, the reality of military training and service didn’t live up to their expectations, and they were eager to return to the civilian life. I’m grateful that Nicholas and Richard left the army early and started a family, or I might not be here today!

References

1. https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/royal-horse-artillery
2. https://www.napoleon-series.org/military-info/organization/Britain/Artillery/RHA.pdf
3. https://www.britishempire.co.uk/forces/rha.htm
4. My Ancestor was an Apprentice, Stuart A. Raymond (The Society of Genealogists Enterprises Ltd, 2010)

The Painted Hall

In 2018, my family had the chance to get up close to the incredible ceiling of the Painted Hall in the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich during a major conservation project. Dubbed ‘Britain’s Sistine Chapel’, the hall features 40,000 square feet of paintings on the walls and ceiling. During its two-year restoration, a platform was installed just below the ceiling, and visitors could don hard hats and ascend the scaffolding to examine the paintings from just a few metres below.

The hall was designed by Sir Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor in 1696, and was painted by Sir James Thornhill to honour King William III and Queen Mary II. It took Thornhill 19 years (1707-1726), during which time he was knighted. His vast murals celebrated Britain’s wealth, intellectual achievements and naval power, and are packed with detail and rich with symbolism — there are 200 figures, including kings and queens, scientists, Greek gods, and personifications of Britain’s major rivers. As we craned our necks, our guide pointed out ships, musical instruments, animals and much more. You can explore the paintings yourself with this high-res virtual tour.

This room made a grand statement, but it was created not for royalty or the political elite, but as the dining room for Greenwich Hospital’s hundreds of resident naval pensioners — ex-sailors. And 251 years ago, on 5 February 1772, my husband’s 5th great grandfather William Gunton Saword was appointed as the hospital’s Butler.

William, at least the third generation of his family to work for the Admiralty, had spent the previous eight years as Clerk of the Royal Yacht Augusta (within the Clerk of the Cheque). That job took him between land (offices at Greenwich Hospital), river (the busy Thames) and sea, and the Augusta’s passengers included many members of Europe’s intertwined royal families. You can read about William’s experiences as Clerk of the Augusta in Part 1.

When William took up the position as Butler of Greenwich Hospital, he was about 32 years old. It was, I believe, a prestigious appointment, even though he would now be helping to feed maimed ex-sailors, rather than escorting royalty across the channel. It may have been a change that he made for personal reasons: William had been married for more than a decade, but so far, he and his wife Frances had not had any surviving children. Perhaps they had agreed he should take a position that meant he would no longer be frequently travelling away from home. And indeed, the following year they welcomed a son, Edward William Saword. It’s possible that there was also a family connection to the hospital, as the assistant dispenser (pharmacist) there, William Wheatley, may have been William Saword’s uncle. Whatever the reasons for this ‘sea change’, as Butler of Greenwich Hospital William found his calling — it was a job that he would do for more than 34 years.

The founding of Greenwich Hospital

The ‘Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich’ was established in 1692 by Queen Mary II, who had been moved to action by seeing wounded sailors returning from battle.

Her Royal Charter gave instructions for: ‘The reliefe and support of seamen serving on board the shipps or vessells belonging to the Navy Royall who by reason of Age, Wounds or other disabilities shall be uncapable of further service at sea and being unable to maintain themselves. And for the Sustentation of the Widows and the Maintenance and Education of the Children of seamen happening to be slain or disabled. Also for the further reliefe and Encouragement of seamen and Improvement of Navigation.’

Just as Chelsea Hospital cared for army pensioners, now, the Greenwich Hospital would provide a home for naval pensioners. The first pensioners arrived in 1705. In 1712, a school was opened there for orphans of seamen, in 1742, a splendid chapel was completed, and in the 1760s, an infirmary was constructed, where the pensioners were cared for by trained medical practitioners. By the time William joined the staff there were about 2000 in-pensioners who lived on site, and the hospital also paid out–pensions to retired seamen who lived elsewhere.

Greenwich Geese

Greenwich pensioners were not necessarily old by today’s standards, as most were invalided out of the Navy after sustaining life-changing, debilitating injuries at sea; the average entry age was 56, but it ranged from 12-99. All pensioners wore a dark grey uniform with a blue lining and brass buttons, and tricorne hats. In fact, they adopted a standard uniform long before the Navy. Their daily life was highly regimented. However, they were allowed to leave the hospital during their leisure hours, so could go to an alehouse or visit family (many pensioners’ wives and families lived nearby). Despite many pensioners missing limbs and eyes, the ‘Greenwich Geese’, as they were nicknamed by townspeople, were not a sedate bunch, and many locals witnessed them being rowdy and disorderly. Pensioners who broke the rules of the institution had to wear a conspicuous yellow coat known as the ‘canary’, and other forms of punishment included fines, confinement, menial chores or a bread and water diet. Learn more about the life of a Greenwich pensioner.

The Butler’s Role

William’s core job as Butler was to oversee the provision of food and drink to the in-pensioners. Their diet was bland and unvarying, but included protein every day: ‘The standard diet was bread accompanied by beef three days a week, mutton twice and pease soup and cheese on the other two days.’ Additionally, ‘Each pensioner had an allowance of four pints of ‘small’ (weak) beer a day, brewed on the Hospital premises – a much safer alternative to water which was often contaminated.’(1) The butler managed these provisions through two lists: The Butler’s List was for daily provisions, including beer, and the Chalk-Off List was for the weekly rations of beef, mutton and cheese — the Butler could mark certain tables with chalk, indicating that those men would receive money rather than meat. By 1806, the Butler was victualling six ‘classes’ of pensioners (1,352 of whom could dine in the Halls) as well as nurses, each with distinct schedules and rules for provisions.

The Butler was supported by two ‘Butler’s Mates’, though one of them primarily worked as a clerk, helping the Butler only when required. William was assisted by just four different mates over three decades.

It’s difficult to know where in the Hospital William spent most time. Although the Painted Hall had been originally built as the pensioners’ dining room, it was not used for that purpose after being painted. One of two halls that were used instead was located underneath the Painted Hall; it has recently been renovated and reopened as the Undercroft Café.

There’s some evidence that William’s responsibilities weren’t confined to feeding pensioners: In a 1786 letter by Sir Richard Bickerton, a previous commander of the Augusta, Bickerton stated that he had ordered ‘a Mr Seaward’ (a common variant of Saword) to help prepare his new ship Jupiter, on which he would take up the position of Commander-in-Chief at the Leewards Islands.

The Court & City Register — a who’s who guide to London — reported in 1776 that William Saword, Butler at Greenwich Hospital, earned £25 per year. This was a decent wage at the time, though the hospital’s organist was making £60 a year! By reviewing annual listings in the Royal Kalendar (the 1774 edition is shown here) I learned that although the Butler’s Mates’ salaries increased from £5/year to £15/year, William’s salary did not increase at all in 30 years!

However, the Butler’s salary was only a small piece of his income; some classes of pensioners had the option to accept money instead of provisions, and because the amount they were offered was less than the cost of the provisions, this saved the hospital a substantial amount of money. The Butler was entitled to a 1/12 portion of the savings, and in 1805, he received £572.9.5. (about £40k today), though he shared a portion of this with his Mates. It is also probable that for some of his tenure, William and his family received free accommodation at the hospital — which would explain why William and Frances’s daughter Ann was baptised in the hospital’s chapel in 1776. And Frances also brought wealth to the family, when, in 1777, she inherited a share of her father’s estate, along with several valuable items, including a coat of arms, books and silver.

Accusations of Corruption

During William’s career, Greenwich Hospital’s practices came under scrutiny in two major enquiries. The records of these investigations give fascinating insights into William’s responsibilities and challenges.

The first of these enquiries was opened in response to a scandal in 1778, when the lieutenant-governor of the hospital, a naval officer called Thomas Baillie, published accusations of corruption in the management of the hospital. The title, though not very catchy, summarised his chief complaints:

The Case of the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich, containing a comprehensive view of the internal government, in which are stated the several abuses that have been introduced into that great national establishment, wherein landsmen have been appointed to offices contrary to charter; the ample revenues wasted in useless works, and money obtained by petition to parliament to make good deficiencies; the wards torn down and converted into elegant apartments for clerks and their deputies; the pensioners fed with bull-beef and sour small-beer mixed with water, and the contractors, after having been convicted of the most enormous frauds, suffered to compound their penalties and renew their contract.

Worse was to come: In January 1779, a major fire destroyed the interior of the chapel of Greenwich Hospital and caused extensive damage. Five hundred pensioners had to be temporarily rehoused. (this must have been a frightening experience for William and his young family).

In response to these problems, the House of Lords convened a hearing. They summarised Baillie’s key allegations, including claims that there were abuses in the clothing and laundry, and that directors were paying themselves £1000 to clean the paintings in the Painted Hall! The institution’s charter had also been violated with the appointment of men who were not sea-faring (or women who were not the wives or widows of seamen); some had been promoted to officer positions ‘to govern seamen, of whose disposition, temper, and manners, they were wholly ignorant.’ These men were also being given apartments in the hospital at the expense of pensioners. Added to these complaints was the concern that the fire had been caused by neglect and lack of regulation.

However, the grievances most pertinent to the Butler were:

• That money, instead of provisions, is given by the directors to above 1,000 pensioners, which encourages drunkenness and disorder in the Hospital. [and that, moreover, they were not being given the full value of the provisions, and the savings were being passed on to civil officers]

• That the provisions have been frequently presented by the Council to the board of directors to be bad …

• That the beer in particular has been found so bad, as to oblige the council at one time to start 4,000 gallons, as unfit for use, to prevent its being served to the men, without any punishment being inflicted on the brewer, or any of the civil officers, whose duty it was to superintend the brewery.

In the ensuing enquiry, the sailing experience of individual staff was examined. Although one butler’s mate had no experience and the other very little, William was said to be an experienced seaman:

Go on to the next? —They are the butlers; the present one is William Saward [sic], who has been at sea.

When was he appointed?—On the 25th of February, 1772.

Had he been at sea before his appointment, or afterwards?—Before his appointment, he was clerk of one of the yachts, and had been many voyages, I believe.

In 1779, a rebuttal to Baillie was published: the ‘State of Facts Relative to Greenwich Hospital’. This acknowledged the criticisms of weakened beer but affirmed that the butler did NOT do it! Apparently, beer was designed to flow through subterraneous pipes from the hospital’s brewhouse to the dining hall, but for a while the flow was frequently interrupted and the beer watered down. ‘The Butler sent his Assistant to the brewhouse, to know the Cause of their sending Water instead of Beer’ and the foreman answered ‘with an ‘insolent sneer’, “Don’t you know?” “No.” “Then you never shall.” The best explanation he and his servants could later come up with was ‘a strange improbable tale of a leakage in a water pipe that was sometimes used to cleanse the beer pipes’. Presumably, after this discovery, the foreman lost his job. 

Clearly, with this delivery system, William had his work cut out to maintain quality control. (But, I do like the idea of installing beer pipes from my husband’s brewing shed directly to the house!)

When it came to the claim that pensioners were receiving money instead of food, which they would spend on alcohol, the State of Facts argued that although in earlier decades the poor quality of food and desire to drink had led to inmates choosing money instead, the institution now ensured, via the Butler, that a suitable portion of each man’s allowance would always go towards food, not drinking money. William’s role was evidently pivotal to maintaining the good health of the pensioners and the good reputation of the Hospital.

Personal tragedy

Just a few months after the ‘Baillie case’, Frances Saword, ‘the wife of William Saword, Butler of Greenwich Hospital’ died. She was about 42 years old. Their children Edward and Ann would have only been about six and three. Somehow, William managed as a single parent for more than four years (perhaps with help from the hospital’s nurses), until he married Ann Hall in 1783. William and Ann had no children of their own, but were married for 20 years.

Royal Visits

With his experience as clerk of the Augusta, which was moored at the hospital, he would no doubt have kept an interest in the royal yachts … and their prestigious passengers’ comings and goings. In 1778, King George III came to Greenwich Hospital on at least two occasions to board the Princess Augusta (as she had been named since 1773), which took him, and on one journey Queen Charlotte, to inspect the fleet at the Nore on the Medway and at Spithead. In 1781, the King and the Prince of Wales were received at Greenwich Hospital by the Earl of Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, the Governor, and principal officers of the hospital. (Did William provide the group with a welcome drink and bite to eat?) King George then immediately boarded a barge, which was accompanied by the Princess Augusta.

An infamous visit took place on 5 April 1795, when Princess Caroline of Brunswick (future Queen Consort) travelled on the Princess Augusta to Greenwich Hospital on her way to marry her cousin, the future King George IV. ‘Met by massed ranks of Greenwich Pensioners it was on this occasion that she was overheard to remark (in French), “Are all Englishmen missing an arm or a leg?”’(2)

And in 1797, King George III, along with his Generals, Admirals, and the Controller of the Navy, arrived at Greenwich Hospital ready to embark on the Royal Yacht Charlotte, ‘which, with the Augusta and Mary yachts, were moored off the hospital for their reception …The admiralty flag was displayed on the Princess Augusta yacht. … His majesty never looked better, or appeared in better spirits. A profusion of strong beer was ordered for the Pensioners at Greenwich on the occasion.’

There were numerous other notable visitors to Greenwich Hospital, many of whom came to see the fabulous art and architecture. One guest was Phillis Wheatley, a ‘negro’ poet and former enslaved woman from Boston, who had been received by eminent members of London society. Intriguingly, Phillis had been the ‘servant’ of prominent Bostonian John Wheatley (1703-1778), who may (based on name and dates) have been William Saword’s uncle (a thread I hope to investigate in the future).

Like father, like son

William’s son, Edward William, known as William, followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming one of two Steward’s Clerks at Greenwich Hospital. The Royal Kalendar of 1801 shows that William Jr., who was about 27 years old, was earning £50/year — twice as much (on paper) as his father!

When William’s second wife, Ann, died in November 1803, she left South Sea Annuities to her step-children in her will, further boosting William Jr’s fortunes and enabling Ann to live independently.

Nelson’s Lying In State

On Christmas Eve, 1805, the body of Lord Nelson, hero of the Battle of Trafalgar, was brought to Greenwich Hospital by yacht, surrounded by a mass of ships. His body, in a lead coffin and wooden sarcophagus, rested in what’s now known as the Nelson Room for 11 days, and then lay in state in the Painted Hall from 5-7 January 1806, before the state funeral at St Paul’s Cathedral. Following a private visit by the royal family, thousands of mourners came to pay their respects at the lying-in, and to watch the funeral procession as Nelson’s body was conveyed along the Thames by barge. 

‘Of all the pageantry that Greenwich has witnessed since it became a town,’ writes Charles Mackay, in his Thames and its Tributaries, ‘this was, if not the most magnificent, the most grand and impressive. The body, after lying in state for three days in the hospital, during which it was visited by immense multitudes, was conveyed, on the 8th of January, 1806, up the river to Whitehall, followed in procession by the City Companies in their state barges. The flags of all the vessels in the river were lowered half-mast high, in token of mourning, and solemn minute guns were fired during the whole time of the procession. The body lay all that night at the Admiralty, and on the following morning was removed on a magnificent car, surmounted by plumes of feathers and decorated with heraldic insignia, to its final resting-place in St. Paul’s Cathedral. From the Admiralty to St. Paul’s the streets were all lined with the military. The procession was headed by detachments of the Dragoon Guards, the Scots Greys, and the 92nd Highlanders, with the Duke of York and his staff, the band playing that sublime funeral strain, the ‘Dead March in Saul.’ Then followed the pensioners of Greenwich Hospital and the seamen of Lord Nelson’s ship, the Victory, a deputation from the Common Council of London, and a long train of mourning coaches, including those of the royal family, the chief officers of state, and all the principal nobility of the kingdom.’

William’s participation in this historic event is unknown, but I feel certain he would have paid his respects to Nelson’s remains, and perhaps he also marched alongside the pensioners in the funeral procession. 

Another Enquiry

By 1806, William had been the Butler at Greenwich Hospital for more than three decades when he was called to give evidence once again about the issuing of provisions at the Hospital. This time he was interviewed in detail, under oath, by the Commissioners of Naval Inquiry. The dialogue was published over three pages in The Fourteenth Report of the Commissioners of Naval Enquiry. Royal Hospital at Greenwich. Most excitingly this time, we hear William’s own words …

William seems to have answered the questions frankly and honestly. He explained in detail the different types of provisions that were offered. When asked if the men liked to receive money rather than provisions, William answered “Very much so.” He admitted that he relied on the Steward and Clerk of the Cheque to track much of the money exchanged through provisions. William was also asked if he received any provisions, or had any income outside of his salary and allowances. He answered (with pride? indignace? resentment?) “Never a farthing in my life-time.”

The committee was very concerned that the Butler was leaving himself ‘exposed to the effects of fraud as well as error’. They didn’t feel they could put a stop to the practise of allowing pensioners to choose money instead of provisions, as it was so entrenched. But they made numerous recommendations to improve accountability and prevent irregularities.

Read a detailed report about the enquiry, including descriptions of all six victualling classes, in the London Chronicle, 28 August 1806. (public domain).

Remarriage and Retirement

In 1806, four years after Ann’s death, ‘William Gunton Saword, Esquire, of Greenwich’ married for the third time, to Jane Hodgkin, daughter of the Rector of Elmswell in Suffolk, where the couple were married by licence. William was 63, and Jane was about 40. Elmswell was about 90 miles from Greenwich, but I believe that art may have brought the couple together. Jane was a miniaturist, and as ‘Mrs Saword’ she exhibited a ‘Portrait of a Lady’ at the Royal Academy Annual Exhibition in 1811 and showed a miniature of Shakespeare at the British Institute. Could Jane have travelled to Greenwich Hospital to see the famous Painted Hall and art collection, and fallen in love with the Butler? Sadly, Jane’s own artwork has vanished into the mists of time.

At first, William and Jane lived at 8 Cold Bath Row in Greenwich, about a mile from the Hospital. However, after William finally retired from his job as Butler and began to enjoy his superannuated naval pension, he and Jane moved to Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk.

William Saword died on 10 April 1812. He was buried at St John’s, Elmswell. In his last will and testament he left several hundred pounds, as well as bank stock, to his widow Jane, son (his executor), unmarried daughter and other relatives. Jane remarried less than a year later.

William Saword’s legacy

William worked at Greenwich Hospital for more than 40 years, first as a clerk and then as the Butler. He played an essential role in the running of this important institution, and was a fly on the wall at numerous historic events in British and European history.

William’s only son was at least the fourth generation of the Saword family to work for the Admiralty, but he eventually left his position at Greenwich Hospital to become a merchant. Edward William Saword died suddenly in 1815, just three years after his father, when his only child was just four years old. He was buried at the Devon coast, far from home, and may have died at sea. Despite his commercial work, when the death of his widow Sarah was registered 57 years later, the certificate stated that she was the ‘Widow of Edward Saword Clerk in Greenwich Hosp.’ Clearly, the family remained very proud of their history with Greenwich Hospital. Yet, over time, this history was forgotten. It’s been wonderful to rediscover the story and bring it back to life.

Image of The Painted Hall in section one by Robin Sones (Creative Commons)

Main blog image: The Greenwich Pensioner, Robert Sayer, 22 March 1791; Wellcome Collection 31286i (public domain)

(1) Life as a Greenwich Pensioner, ORNC.org

(2) https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-106349

Recently, thanks to a Google search by my mum, I discovered that two WW1 medals and a bronze memorial plaque for our ancestor Richard Maultby were sold at auction in Cornwall in 2015. At the age of 44 he was the oldest of my ancestors (as far as I know) to lose his life while serving his country. However, Richard’s service record shows that he did not fully fit the mould of the obedient, patriotic Tommy that is so often portrayed. I particularly want to explore some uncomfortable truths about his time in the trenches, and investigate his mysterious death, but I’d like to begin by telling the story of his life.

A difficult start

Richard William Maultby was born on 10 November 1871 in Newport Pagnall, Buckinghamshire, the fourth of nine children (seven surviving) of my 3x great grandparents Thomas and Eliza Maultby. Thomas Maultby was an ambitious railway station manager whose career took him from Newport Pagnell to Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire and then to Liverpool, as Assistant Superintendent of the Northern Division of the London and NW Railway Company. By 1881, Thomas was trying his hand at being a coal merchant, but met with financial difficulties. In spite of heart problems, and the death in autumn 1881 of his baby daughter, Thomas left his family in England for a new railway job in Toronto, but he died there in February 1882. Richard was just ten years old.

Just seven months later, Richard was badly injured in an accident. He was one of four boys who were playing in a pit in Leighton Buzzard when a heavy load of earth fell on them. Richard sustained a broken collar bone and hip injury, two others also had broken/fractured bones, and one was crushed so severely that it was feared he wouldn’t survive. Thankfully, they all recovered, though it was ‘almost miraculous that all four boys were not killed upon the spot’.

It must have been a terrible time for the Maultby family, but they were supported, and perhaps saved from destitution, by Theodore Harris, a kindly banker and Quaker, who had himself been twice widowed. Eliza had worked as a housemaid for Theodore prior to her marriage, and the families had a close and decades-long relationship (which deserves its own story). After losing her husband, Eliza became a housekeeper to Theodore’s son, who opened his home to at least one of her children as well. Eliza sadly had to place her two youngest children into an orphanage, but Theodore Harris acted as guarantor for payment. The Harris’s also helped some of Eliza’s children find suitable employment.

A young mariner

The teenage Maultby children soon entered the world of work. The eldest, my 2x great grandmother (also called Eliza), became a Post Office Sorting Clerk and Telegraphist, while another became a domestic servant. And Richard Maultby went to sea. He may well have been given a leg-up by Theodore Harris’s brother Frederick Harris, a prominent ship-owner. In 1887, the British Steamship Investment Trust was formed, and Frederick Harris was one of the company’s two Managing Directors. In 1891, Richard, aged 19, was boarding at 81, Chestnut Grove in Bootle, Lancashire, close to docks on the River Mersey. His occupation was given as ‘Mariner’. Broadly, he was a merchant seaman, since he worked on commercial ships. Specifically, he worked on passenger ships, as a Waiter and then Steward.

A world traveller

Thanks to crew lists, I can place Richard on a number of ships spanning 14 years. In 1889, after ending a contract on the Umbria, Richard, aged 17, was engaged as one of over 30 waiters on the Pavonia. The following year he began work as a waiter on the Gallia. Although he signed most monthly musters ‘Richard Maultby’, in September 1890 he gave his name as ‘Dick Maultby’, my only evidence that he had a nickname. In 1897, after another stint on the Umbria, Richard, still living on Chestnut Gr., Bootle, was a waiter on the Campania.

All of these ships were new ocean liners operated by Cunard. These massive express steamships were designed to transport passengers, post and cargo across the Atlantic (from Liverpool to New York or Boston) in about a week. They were built with cutting-edge engineering, designed to be record-breaking … Just before Richard worked on the Umbria, she had made the fastest Atlantic crossing on record, and when the Campania was launched, she was the largest and fastest passenger liner afloat. (To give you an idea of the ships’ capacity: S.S. Gallia had 300 first class two-berth cabins and space for 1,200 steerage (third class) passengers and 2000 tons of cargo. (However, she only had two baths!))

As well as being very fast and very big, these ships were very luxurious (at least for the wealthiest passengers); maritime Basil Greenhill, in his book Merchant Steamships, declared that the interiors of Campania and her sister ship Lucania ‘represented Victorian opulence at its peak — an expression of a highly confident and prosperous age that would never be quite repeated on any other ship.’¹

In 1898, after more time on the Gallia, Richard spent a year a little closer to home, as a Steward on the Fenella. She was operated by the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company and made regular round trips between Douglas on the Isle of Man, Glasgow and Liverpool. A steward usually helped to manage the dining room, but the term does not seem to have been applied consistently. Then, in 1899, he joined the crew of the new Omrah, built in Glasgow for the Orient Line, and travelled from London to Sydney.

Richard was probably at sea when the 1901 census was taken, as I haven’t found a record for him. Around this time he was employed on the Johannesburg, a cargo steamer operating between the UK and South and East Africa. In 1903, he signed an agreement in London to join the crew of the brand new White Star ocean liner, Ionic, which travelled between the UK and New Zealand. His home address had changed to 176 Victoria Dock Rd (probably in East London) and he was still a steward. However, there were 40 stewards on board (in addition to private stewards and two stewardesses), so I assume that in those large numbers, they were waiting tables.

Life on board

Richard would have spent much of his time below deck in the ships’ dining rooms, though records do not show which class of passenger he served. The Campania carried 600 first-class, 400 second-class and 1000 third-class passengers.² Its first-class dining saloon was over 10 ft (3.05 m) high, 98 ft (30 m) long and 63 ft (19.2 m) wide. ‘Over the central part of this room was a well that rose through three decks to a skylight. It was done in a style described as “modified Italian style”, with a coffered ceiling in white and gold, supported by ionic pillars. The paneled walls were done in Spanish mahogany, inlaid with ivory and richly carved with pilasters and decorations.’¹ However, the second- and third-class dining rooms that served the vast majority of passengers were much plainer, and the work presumably more demanding. Richard’s own quarters must also have been in stark contrast to these grand ships’ public spaces.

Passengers on the international ships included business travellers, tourists, and many emigrants from the UK and Europe, seeking better quality of life in the New World. They must have had fascinating stories to tell, if Richard had the opportunity to listen.

Although Richard worked on ships built with the latest engineering know-how and equipped with the latest technologies, such as wireless communication, journeys were not without their dangers. The histories of the individual ships in this time period include incidents of collisions, rescues and passengers overboard!

From seaman to soldier

I have no records for Richard between 1903 and 1914. But in late 1914, Richard was either living or passing through Canada — because on 2 November 1914 he volunteered for military service at Montreal. From his CEF service records, I learned that Richard, whose trade or occupation was ‘seaman’ and ‘steward’, was a week shy of 43 years old, but gave a birth date of 10 Dec 1874 — i.e. claiming to be 40. As I have no photograph of Richard, his medical history at attestation helps me to picture him: He was almost 5’7 tall, 150 lb, with blue eyes, black hair, and a fair complexion. (I found it interesting that he had black hair; his cousin’s daughter, Mabel Annie Maultby, also had black hair — sadly that information came from a description that was made after she was killed in the Guard’s Chapel bombing, 1944). It was especially delightful to learn that Richard had a tattoo on his right arm, and a ‘hairy chest and abdomen’!

Private Richard Maultby (service number 63623) joined the 23rd Reserve Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) and on 23 Feb 1915, his unit sailed for England on the S.S. Missanabie. The 23rd bn. was based in England but reinforced Canadian infantry troops in France, and in May 1915 Richard was transferred to the 3rd bn. (the ‘Toronto Regiment’) and sent to Rouen.

Perhaps it was at that point that Richard wrote his will, on the back of a list of pay rates. Though he had named his mother as his next of kin, he stated that in the event of his death, all of his money was to go to his sister, Mrs [Martha] Cotton.

Discipline in the Field

Richard’s service record reveals that within a few weeks of arriving in France, there were serious problems with his conduct. On 23 August, he was found to be drunk while on active service, and two days later was sentenced to ’14 days of F.P. No. 1′.

According to the Imperial War Museums website, Field Punishment No. 1 ‘was introduced in 1881 following the abolition of flogging, and was a common punishment during World War I. A commanding officer could award field punishment for up to 28 days, while a court martial could award it for up to 90 days. F.P. No.1 consisted of the convicted man being placed in restraints and attached to a fixed object, such as a gun wheel or a fence post, for up to two hours per day. This was applied for up to three days out of four. It was usually carried out in field punishment camps set up for this purpose a few miles behind the front line, but when the unit was on the move it would be carried out by the unit itself. During World War I, F. P. No1 was issued by the British Army on 60,210 occasions.’

In earlier years, men’s arms were spread wide apart, earning it the gruesome nickname ‘The Crucifixion’. When Richard was sentenced, the punishment would have looked like this contemporary illustration:

It would have been physically uncomfortable, but perhaps the greater hardship was the humiliation of having to go back into restraints, day after day. In addition to the restraint, Richard would have had to do hard labour, and even though he also continued in active service, he was penalised with a cut to his pay, as shown in the salary statement below. Through the lens of 2022, regardless of his behaviour I can’t help feeling angry that he was subjected to this harsh indignity.

In January 1916 Richard was granted nine days’ leave. I have no insight into why, or how he spent that time. As Andy Wade (Men of Worth Project) has pointed out, allowing for two days’ travel to and from the UK, Richard could have spent five days with family.

However, a few weeks later, Richard was in trouble again for ‘insolence to a superior officer’ while on active service. On 2 June he was sentenced to 28 days of F.P. No. 1, the maximum sentence that could be issued by a commanding officer (presumably, the same CO he had offended).

These documents do not record what Richard said to the officer. Given that Richard was repeatedly re-hired to work on some of the world’s most luxurious ships for more than a decade, he must have been a reliable employee, and used to taking orders and working under pressure. Is it possible that in the years leading up to the war, his life had come off the rails? One clue to that possibility is the will of his aunt, Ann Maultby (d. Oct 1915), who left legacies to all of Richard’s siblings, but excluded him. Or, was it the acute stress of conditions in the trenches that caused him to drink heavily and provoke his superiors? My mum has suggested that it would have been intensely frustrating for Richard, a working-class mature man with extensive life experience, if he had to take orders from a much younger, less experienced officer. Whether or not that was the case, we know that the trenches took their toll on many men’s mental health. Richard’s actions, seen then as military crimes, might today be recognised as symptoms of stress, anxiety, or PTSD.

Missing, Presumed Dead

The final events of Richard’s life are opaque, and the details many pages of surviving records are complex. The official report of his disciplinary sentence was entered into his record on 14 June. However, by then, Richard was (probably) already dead.

On 13 June 1916, less than two weeks into his 28-day sentence, Richard went missing in action. The battalion diaries of the 3rd Bn. have been fully transcribed by the The Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada Regimental Museum and Archive, and show that on 13 June the battalion was deployed in the Battle of Mount Sorrel, at Ypres in Belgium. The strategic importance of the location is explained in The Long, Long Trail.

The lengthy diary entry for that day (the final day of the battle) details intense fighting, starting just after midnight. Operation Order A436 (password SORRELL) was wired to the trenches, instructing artillery to begin bombardment at 12.45 am. Three companies then rushed to the German trenches under a smoke screen, taking the Germans by surprise — many were bayoneted in the trenches, and hundreds taken prisoner. Fighting continued into the afternoon and evening. By 11 pm, when they were relieved by the 8th Bn., the 3rd Bn.’s casualties were reported as follows: 3 officers killed, 1 officer died of wounds, 1 officer missing, 11 officers wounded. 40 O.R. Killed, 92 O.R. Missing, 207 O.R. wounded. Per WW1 researcher Andy Wade , CWGC records report that 83 men in Richard’s battalion died that day.

However, the day was seen as a victory: ‘The Germans had been pushed off the Mount Sorrel and Tor Top ridge, and the Canadians had most successfully executed their first deliberately planned attack on the Western Front.’³ On the anniversary of the battle, 13 June 1917, a Toronto lady sent the battalion a box of wood sorrel, which they wore in their caps to celebrate the re-capture of Mount Sorrel a year before. A memorial to the Canadians’ actions defending the region from April to August 1916 is located on Torr Top.

Richard was one of those initially reported missing. It was all too common for there to be confusion about what had happened to soldiers, especially in other ranks. Missing soldiers might have been taken POW, been wounded — perhaps taken to a hospital, or killed. My husband’s ancestor, also a Private in the CEF, was reported missing in April 1915, but wasn’t officially ‘presumed dead’ until November 1916. Richard Maultby’s family had to wait nine months for news, until in March 1917 he was, for official purposes, ‘presumed to have died on or since 13th June 1916’, when his unit was in an ‘ATTACK SOUTH OF ZILLEBEKE’. He was 44 years old.

Back in England, I can only begin to imagine the fear, and then the distress, that Richard’s mother Eliza must have felt. Her youngest son John was also serving overseas (as a Sapper with the Royal Engineers), as were her grandsons, Harold and Harry. Eliza had endured the sudden loss of her husband and the financial hardship that followed, but now she was nearly 80 years old, and the shock of her son’s death may have been too great; five months after his death was entered in his service record, she died of a brain hemorrhage.

Remembrance

Despite Richard’s questionable service record, his was not an ignominous death — he was treated in the same way as any soldier killed in action. Since his body was never found, he has no gravestone, but is remembered at Menin Gate, Ypres. He was also eligible for service medals, and his family was eligible for a memorial medallion. Eliza died before she could receive them, but someone in the family, probably Richard’s sister Martha, did receive them. Over a hundred years later, the discovery of the medals (even though they are in someone else’s possession) has prompted me to investigate Richard’s adventurous life and his death more fully.

Richard Maultby was far from home for most of his life, but eager to defend his country, and he quickly volunteered to serve, even though he was over-age. He had to suffer the humiliation of physical discipline in front of his fellow soldiers, but he fought alongside them in the battle that ended his life. I hope that Richard’s family never learned about his punishment, and that in their eyes, he deserved all the honour and respect given to the memory of the fallen of the Great War.

With thanks to genealogist Kelly Cornwell for sourcing additional crewlists, genealogist and merchant navy expert Lucy Browne, and in particular Andy Wade of The Men of Worth Project for his interest in Richard’s story, and helping me to make sense of the sequence of events in Richard’s service records.

References:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Campania
2. https://www.ggarchives.com/OceanTravel/ImmigrantShips/Campania.html
3. Actions in the spring of 1916, The Long, Long Trail

More resources:

Richard Maultby on the Canadian Great War Project

Richard Maultby on the Canadian Virtual War Memorial

Learn more about army discipline in WW1 (The Long, Long Trail)

On 21 June 1764, William Gunton Saword, 24 years old, boarded the Royal Yacht Augusta, where he was to fulfil the duties of clerk. From her Greenwich mooring, close to the Royal Navy Dockyards of Deptford and Woolwich, the Augusta sailed up-river to the City of London or down-river to the mouth of the North Sea, frequently making the crossing to the Continent.

Royal yachts provided private, convenient and comfortable transport for members of the royal family on personal trips and to political appointments. They also had a diplomatic role, providing stylish transportation for British and European nobility, ambassadors and other dignitaries, along with their numerous servants. Yet another task of the yachts was to help mark important royal events and anniversaries with glitz and firepower.

In 1764, the House of Hanover included the royal family of Great Britain and Ireland and the monarchies of many other European states, and inter-marriage was the norm. Indeed, just a few months earlier, HMY Augusta had transported the Hereditary Prince of Brunswick and his attendants to England for his marriage to Princess Augusta, sister of King George III. William was to be right in the midst of these important international alliances.

The crew of forty was mustered every other month, sometimes on land and sometimes at sea, and taking the muster roll would have been one of William’s responsibilities. On his second day as clerk the roll recorded that the ship had her full complement of 40 men. Muster rolls and paybooks show that while many of the crew came from the local area — William himself had been born in Deptford in 1739 — others came from further afield — like James Sutton from Normskirk in Lancashire, Thomas Garman from Pembrokeshire and Thomas Kindred, the Gunner’s Mate, who hailed from Dublin. 

As you’ll see in the paybook below, when William distributed wages to the crew, he also included a ‘Widow’s man’ — a fictitious crew member whose salary and rations were saved up and given to the widows and families of deceased seamen.

William, my husband’s 5x great grandfather, almost certainly had his sea legs before this appointment, and the world of the Royal Dockyards would have been second nature to him. His father and grandfather, both also called William Saword, had worked at Woolwich and then Deptford in different aspects of shipbuilding for the Navy. They were skilled craftsmen and masters of their trades, but they were also literate and business-savvy, carefully negotiating their relationship with the Admiralty, on whom they relied for steady work. 

In 1667, William’s grandfather (b. 1640), a blacksmith, sent a ‘humble petition’ to the commissioners of the Navy at Deptford. He had delivered reeds to His Majesty’s yard at Woolwich and trunnel wedges to Deptford, and these goods ‘were all used since his Majesties blessed Restoration’ but he hadn’t been paid. Moreover, 10,000 spiles had been requested from him by Mr Pett the builder (the ‘Pett Dynasty’ was a famous family of naval shipwrights). William made it clear that although he could make the items cheaply and well, he was unwilling to deliver more goods without at least a warrant showing that the previous goods had been received. He reminded them that he was ‘a poore man, and more a Cripple.’ Additional pieces of naval correspondence indicate that by 1700, he was in a more administrative position, responsible for contracting others to produce supplies. In spite of being disabled as a young man (and possibly from birth), he had his son and heir, William, at the age of nearly 60, and lived to the age of 78. William Gunton’s grandfather died before he was born, but it was his skill and determination that enabled the Saword family to flourish in the royal dockyards.

William’s father (b. 1700) started out as a shipwright, but by his mid thirties, he was a Clerk in the Store Office, King’s yard. (The Great Storehouse at Deptford, built in 1513, was a two-story building with an attic that stood 35 feet high. It survived until the 1950s.) By 1739, when William Gunton was baptised, his father was a ‘gentleman’. 

Now, three decades later, William was following in his father’s footsteps. But his father hadn’t been his only mentor. At the age of about 15 he had started a seven-year apprenticeship with Charles Carne, his father paying Carne a premium of £21. Charles Carne, gentleman of Paddington, was a master draper and at one point the joint owner of the linen-drapers Carne and Ellison. He was later a Master of the Drapers’ Company. While linen might seem far removed from shipping, Carne’s merchant business required the ownership of sea-faring vessels such as the Grantham. It could well be that William learned the art of a ship’s clerk from him.¹

However, William didn’t complete his apprenticeship; on 4 November 1761, two years before his apprenticeship was due to end, he married Frances Raggett, signing the marriage allegation at St Holy Trinity Minories with a flourish. Frances, who signed her own name in the parish marriage register too, was the daughter of Edward Raggett, a master joiner in Deptford dockyard (by 1765, her father retired on a pension after serving there for 63 years). There’s no sign that William took up the Freedom of the Drapers’ Company or of the City of London. Perhaps his father secured him the position on the Augusta before his term ended, or perhaps his desire to marry was so strong that he was willing to break his indenture. Either way, the newly-weds settled in Greenwich, and William embarked (ha!) on his new career. 

As clerk of the Augusta, William had one foot on land and one at sea. The position was based at the Clerk of the Cheque’s office in the Royal Naval Hospital in Greenwich (now known as the Old Royal Naval College), which was not a hospital in our modern sense, but rather a retirement home for hundreds of naval pensioners. William’s boss, the Clerk of the Cheque himself, was a scotsman, John Maule.

The Clerk of the Cheque was responsible for mustering and paying workers and managing expenses, such as maintenance and food (victualling).

A document from 1772 lists items that William had purchased for the Augusta — knives and sieves for the cook, a large white stone teapot and a large tin coffee pot, sheets for the state bed, towels, six decanters, two dozen plates and five dozen ‘dorlies’ (doileys (with various spellings) were fashionable ornamental dessert napkins).

(John Cross. Account of timber for which William Saword has been paid for the Augusta yacht and asks for it to be received at Deptford and a bill to be made out. 1772 Oct 14. The National Archives, ADM 106/1208/272).

However, the Augusta was also moored at the hospital when she wasn’t in service — Greenwich Hospital was ‘the London base for the royal yachts from the 17th century to the end of the age of sail.’² — and William was frequently on board the yacht, whether on a local journey on the Thames, or en route to and from Europe. On water, William’s commander was the ship’s captain, Charles Wray. Earlier in his naval career, Wray had been deployed to America, where in 1748 he captured Spanish and French privateers and took them to Charlestown. In the 1750s he served in the Mediterranean and by 1761 he was in command of the Augusta. Although Capt. Wray was twenty-five years Saword’s senior and an experienced naval officer, he later appointed William Saword as his executor, suggesting a relationship of mutual respect and even close camaraderie. 

The Augusta was one of several royal yachts; a list of the entire naval fleet with every vessel’s commander was published every year in the Royal Kalendar.

Muster rolls indicate that William also spent time on the Royal Charlotte. He was ‘presst’ from there in 1765. At other times, he was pressed from Paybooks. I rather think he would have been glad to get out of the office.

HMY Augusta, which weighed 184 tons and was armed with eight four-pounder guns, was rebuilt from the Charlotte and renamed the Augusta in 1761 (possibly when the engagement was announced between Princess Augusta and the Duke of Brunswick). At the same time, HMY Caroline was renamed HMY Royal Charlotte. The sumptuous refurbishment and new names were in honour of Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, bride of George III. The Royal Charlotte conveyed her from Kiel (in present-day Germany) to Harwich, accompanied by warships as well as royal yachts Augusta, Mary, Katherine, and the oddly named Fubbs. Although the Augusta had been renamed before William’s tenure, he was still listed as clerk of the Queen Charlotte in some muster rolls, whether due to habit or confusion!

In 1771, the Augusta was again rebuilt at Deptford. This painting of her launch, purportedly (but quite unbelievably) painted by the 8-year-old son of the king, was not an accurate portrayal.

(Launch of the Royal Yacht ‘Augusta’, Deptford 1771. Royal Museums Greenwich.)

Sources of information on who travelled on the Augusta include the muster rolls, ship’s logs and publications such as the Gentleman’s Magazine.

In musters, anyone on board who was not a member of the crew was referred to as a ‘supernumerary’. A list of the supernumeraries on 24 August 1765 included a group of 15 men who worked for the ‘Board of Green Cloth‘ (officials of the Royal Household). They comprised an entire team of kitchen staff, including cooks, pastry chef, baker, poulter, butler and butler’s mate, and several scullery men. Other local passengers recorded in the muster books included Customs & Excise men, and pilots, one of whom was travelling from Trinity House. That institution licensed the pilots who helped navigate shipping in and out of ports and along waterways safely. (To this day it is also the official authority for lighthouses in England, Wales, Channel Islands and Gibraltar.)

More pilots were on board the Augusta on 4-5 September, including Cornelius de Boo and Arey Pleuyer, who seem to have travelled between Helvoet Road and ‘Helvoet Sluyce’. Then, on 6 September 1765, at Helvoet Sluyce (Helvoetsluis), a royal party came on board, consisting of ‘His Serene Highness the Hereditary Prince of Brunswick’ and numerous attendants, valets, pages and others.

The master’s and captain’s logs of the Augusta are held at the National Archives. They give a flavour of both the mundane and thrilling activities on board. Thanks to mudlarker Nicola White, who I recently met at an exhibition in Watermen’s Hall, I know that the logs were initially taken on chalk slate boards, and then copied neatly into books later.

Weather was reported obsessively (they were very fond of the word ‘squaly’!) and each day began with an obligatory reading of the ‘Articles of War’. As the muster rolls had shown, many trips were extremely short and mundane, simply delivering people from the dry dock to a moored ship, or between venues along the Thames, but the Augusta also went on longer voyages and was involved in significant events.

On 3 October 1766, the Augusta picked up the newly-wed Queen of Denmark and her entourage at Harwich, where she received a 21-gun salute from the whole fleet. The queen was a British princess, Caroline Mathilda. The prior year she had been engaged to her first cousin, Christian, Crown Prince of Denmark, when Christian was 15 and Caroline just 13. In January 1766, wedding preparations were in full swing when Christian’s father, the king, died suddenly. Christian, a teenager, was now King Christian VII of Denmark. On 1 October, the marriage of Christian and Caroline was held by proxy in London (with Caroline weeping violently). Two days later the 15-year-old queen boarded a royal yacht (possibly Mary), which was to take her across the sea to her husband and her throne.

Sadly, although Caroline gave birth to the future Frederick VI of Denmark, the marriage was a desperately unhappy one that ended in divorce, imprisonment, execution of her lover, and banishment, before her death of scarlet fever, aged just 23. She became known as the ‘Queen of Tears’.

(Portrait of Caroline by Catherine Read, 1767 (Public Domain).)

In 1767, the Augusta transported the body of Edward, Duke of York and Albany (younger brother of the king, who had died at sea near Monaco) to Greenwich Hospital, where each royal yacht fired 20 minute guns³. Although it was peacetime, William would have often heard the sound of gunfire — in salutes for royal passengers and also to mark important dates, such as the King’s birthday (on 4 June), the anniversary of the King’s ascension to the throne (25 March), and on the 5 November, the ‘papist conspiracy’ (i.e., the gunpowder plot).

The King and Queen (George III and Charlotte) travelled on the Augusta several times. The ship’s log records one occasion on 26 September 1771:

At anchor off Deptford Yard at 7am. Lieutenant Perry came on board …  At 10 Capt Wray went on shore, received instructions and Signals…….At 2 o’clock His Majesty accompanied with the Queen and Duke of Cumberland came into the stage, manned the yacht and gave 3 cheers, saluted and immediately displayed our Colours which made a magnificent appearance.

It must have been exciting for William to travel to cities in Europe collecting princes and princesses, queens and dukes. I like to think that his responsible position meant that he was able to interact with the yacht’s prestigious passengers, or at least with their entourage. Even if he was not permitted to engage with the royal family, he would have been able to observe members of the nobility at close quarters. I imagine he was immensely proud of his position.

During William’s time on the Augusta, he and his wife Frances were also trying to start a family. Sadly, their first child, Frances, was buried in 1765, and a son, William Henry, was buried in 1771.⁴ Soon after his son’s death, William Gunton made a significant change to his life that would have enabled him to spend much more time on land; on 5 Feb 1772 he was appointed Butler of Greenwich Hospital. There was more good fortune to come … Just over a week later, he finally inherited his maternal grandmother (Eleanor Wheatley)’s property in Deptford, 16 years after her death. And in 1773, William and Frances had a healthy son, Edward William Saword, who would carry the family’s naval tradition forward another generation. 

At around the same time, the Augusta was renamed the Princess Augusta to mark the occasion of the King reviewing the fleet at Portsmouth. I wonder if the name change was also in honour of Princess Augusta, mother of George III, who had died the previous year. George had also named his second daughter, b. 1768, after her: Princess Augusta Sophia.

On 25 June 1773, King George III boarded the Princess Augusta to review his fleet at Spithead, an event captured in a painting by Francis Holman. 

On 24 October 1773, William and Frances Saword baptised their son Edward, probably in the beautiful chapel of Greenwich Hospital. Just a week later, on the last day of October, Charles Wray, Captain of the Princess Augusta, died. William Saword, ‘Chief Butler of his Majesty’s Royal Hospital at Greenwich’, was an executor of his will, a task for which he received £20.

William worked as the Butler at the Greenwich Hospital for more than 32 years. He was there when a major fire destroyed the chapel in 1779, witnessed the lying-in-state of Nelson in the Painted Hall in 1805 and gave testimony in two enquiries into alleged corruption at the institution. He also married two more times. You’ll find a link to the next part of William’s story below.

Meanwhile, the Princess Augusta continued to play a significant role in British history. In 1795, Princess Caroline of Brunswick (daughter of the Duke of Brunswick and Princess Augusta) travelled on the Princess Augusta to Greenwich Hospital on her way to marry her cousin, the Prince of Wales and future George IV. The marriage would be a disaster. But the optimism and pomp of her arrival was captured in this dynamic engraving by Isaac Pocock, which appeared in the Naval Chronicle. It was fully titled ‘View of the River Thames, with Greenwich Hospital in [the] distance and the ‘Augusta’ Yacht as she appeared on the Fifth of April 1795, with Her Serene Highness the Princess Caroline of Brunswick on board….’ A print of this picture has pride of place above my fireplace.

In 2021, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced plans to build a new royal yacht to replace the famous royal yacht Britannia. The lavish project was heavily criticised, but following the death of Queen Elizabeth II just three days ago, will HMY Elizabeth now be built and launched in Her late Majesty’s honour?

Read William Gunton Saword Part 2: Butler of Greenwich Hospital

Footnotes:

1. The information I have on William’s apprenticeship bond, published on LondonRoll.org, is derived from ‘Boyd’s Roll’, 1934 and does not state what art he was to learn; I don’t know if any original sources have survived. Charles Carne was listed as an owner of the Grantham in London Merchant 1695-1774: A London Merchant, by Lucy Stuart Sutherland.
2. ‘ATTRIBUTES REFLECTING NATIONAL, REGIONAL AND LOCAL VALUES’, Maritime Greenwich
3. All of the references I have found to ’20 minute guns’ are from interments (on land or at sea). I’m not sure exactly what form this salute took.
4. Frances and William Henry’s father was William Saword, ‘joiner of Greenwich’; although the timing and place match, the occupation does not, so this may have been another William Saword; research is ongoing.

Please note: I have endeavoured to decode the naval records of the Augusta to my best ability. Useful sources included the Captain Cook Society’s webpage on Musters. However, it is possible that some details have been misinterpreted. I will continue to update this blog as I increase my understanding.

Updated on 16 October 2022 to add information about the Widow’s Man and details of supernumeraries.