My great grampy, the father of my maternal grandfather, was the only great grandparent I ever met, and he died when I was nine years old. Just before he passed away in 1985, he revealed a story of courage and compassion from his time as a soldier in WW1. This post pays tribute to his service, but also to his older brother, Harold. Harold was the only relation I know of who was awarded a gallantry medal. And Harold never came home.

Before the war

Harold John Underwood, the first child of Harry and Eliza Underwood, was born in Tring, Hertfordshire in the summer of 1893. His parents (my 2x great grandparents) were second generation grocers and lived at their shop on Tring’s Western Road. Harold soon had two sisters, Lily May and Marjorie Pearl. And in December 1898, he gained a brother, Harry Neville — my great grandfather — who was known as ‘Neville’. By 1908, the family was complete, with two more girls, Ivy Laura and Kathleen Enid, and between them one more boy, Warren Roy (‘Roy’).

In 1911, the Underwood family was living in the village of St Leonards, near Tring, and Harry senior described himself as an ‘English & Fancy Fruit Salesman (Wholesale)’. Lily was a school monitress, while Neville and his younger siblings were all of school age.

However, Harry and Eliza’s eldest son and daughter had moved away from the family home and business; 17-year-old Harold was a carpet salesman at J Fisk & Sons in St Albans. He lived on site with many other employees, and his 15-year-old sister Marjorie was a live-in cashier’s apprentice at a different store on the same street.

When war broke out in 1914, Harold was employed as a draper at Grose Brothers department store in Walworth, East London. Whatever dreams and ambitions he may have had, they came to an abrupt halt that autumn when Harold enlisted.

Signing up

When Harold attested (enlisted) in London on 10 Nov 1914 he was 21 years and 4 months old and 5’10 tall. Although a Bucks man, he then went to Winchester where on 12 Nov he joined the historic King’s Royal Rifle Corps 12^th Bn (60^th Brigade), B Company, as a Private (service number R/6760).

Harold’s younger brother Neville was keen to join up too. But he was only 15, and the minimum age to enlist was 18. So, together with a pal from St Leonards (possibly called Gilbert/Ginger) he ‘ran away’ from home and enlisted in Wiltshire. Neville was a tall man, and perhaps already tall at the age of 15, which may have helped him convince the recruiters that he was old enough. Neville joined the Wiltshire regiment as a Private (service number 36962 or 36963).

Harold’s service

Thanks to The Long, Long Trail, I know that Harold would have had his training at Blackdown and Hindhead in Surrey and finally Larkhill on the Salisbury plain in Wiltshire. Perhaps it was Harold’s location in Wilts that prompted his younger brother to head there to enlist. On 22 July 1915 the 12th battalion landed in Boulogne. However, Harold may have arrived in France later as he wasn’t declared fit for foreign service until 6 August.

Harold’s service records reveal very little about his military experiences. However, they do offer information about his health. In March 1916 he was off duty for three days with laryngitis. In September 1916 Harold was wounded at the Battle of Flers-Courcelette, part of the Battle of the Somme. His record states that he was at that time in the 9th Bn. C company.

He was admitted to Brook War Hospital in Woolwich with a fractured arm, and later transferred to the auxillary hospital in Bromley, spending 70 days in hospital in total. When he was discharged in December he was granted a furlough to spend his leave in St Leonards. I hope that he was able to spend that Christmas with his family. However, his arm hadn’t fully healed because he was back in hospital for another 43 days in April and May 1917. Finally, he returned to France ready for duty on 5 July 1917.

If Harold returned to the 9th Bn., he would have fought in the Battle of Langemarck in August and the Battle of Passchendaele, also known as the Third Battle of Ypres, in November. Or, if posted to the 12th Bn. he would also have been fighting at Ypres. Either way, by January 1918 he was with the 12th Bn. once again.

The Military Medal

The K.R.R.C. 12th Battalion’s war diary describes the events leading up to Harold’s act of bravery. On 10 January, 1918, they were in the middle of a six-day tour of duty on the Menin Rd in Ypres, Belgium, at a chateau called Beukenhorst, nicknamed ‘Stirling Castle’. There had been a heavy snowstorm and the ground was frozen. B Company was digging; ‘every available man was at work at night. Three American Officers came to learn the ways of a battalion in the Line: they seemed very interested and anxious to pick up ideas.’ The next day they marched to Manor Halt, and entrained there in three trains for Puzeville Station, arriving in camp at Reninghelst between 10 p.m. and 2.30 a.m. ‘The night was very cold and the men were glad of the hot porridge which was awaiting them’. Although the description of activities mentioned no attacks or enemy engagement, ‘The total casualties during the 6 day tour were 2 killed, 1 died of wounds and 5 wounded.’

On the morning of 13 January there was a voluntary church service, and that afternoon, four different medals were awarded to 18 soldiers. Nine of them received the Military Medal including L/Cpl. Harold Underwood. The Military Medal was created in March 1916 and awarded for ‘acts of gallantry and devotion to duty under fire’. More than 115,000 were awarded during WW1. Harold may have been promoted to Lance Corporal prior to this award, or perhaps simultaneously.

The diary doesn’t give any details on why the medals were awarded. Instead, the battalion’s losses and honours are immediately followed with reports of yet another night of snow, followed by a morning lecture about trench foot.

As well as the Military Medal, Harold received the 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, and Victory Medal — the trio of campaign medals nicknamed ‘Pip, Squeak and Wilfred’.

Neville’s service

Unfortunately, Neville’s service record hasn’t survived. Our knowledge is based on what very little he told his family about his experiences.

It seems that Neville’s company knew that he wasn’t old enough to fight. Even if they believed him to be 18, he had to be 19 to be sent overseas. So, at first, Neville was assigned to looking after horses. He may well already have had experience with horses; I do know that when he was a boy, he and the same friend he enlisted with had once mischievously unharnessed a horse, turned it around, and harnessed it backwards! Neville developed a life-long love of horses, and in later life would attend the Horse of the Year show every year. When I watched War Horse in the theatre a couple of years ago (an incredibly moving show), my great grampy’s experiences were very much on my mind.

Later in the war, Neville was trained to become a Lewis gunner. A Lewis gun was an early light machine gun. In 1915 each battalion only had 4 such guns, but by 1917 each infantry section had its own gunner and backup, totaling 46 guns per battalion. Each Lewis gun required a team of two gunners: one to fire and one to carry ammunition and reload. All of the members of an infantry platoon would be trained in the use of the Lewis gun so that they could take over if the usual gunners were killed or wounded.

In addition to these roles, Neville was also sent out of the trench and into No man’s land at least once. My mum remembers her gramp (Neville) telling her that he had gone over the top, and come face to face with a German, and had to bayonet him, as it was “either him or me.” As a child she couldn’t comprehend how that experience would have affected him. It’s discomforting to realise that when Harry had to take another man’s life (or perhaps more than one) in the line of duty, and for his own survival, he was only really a child himself.

Harold’s death, and a letter from his officer

Harold’s medal award was announced in The Gazette on 19 March (J.R.R. Tolkien’s promotion is listed in the same issue). Tragically, less than a week later, on 24 March 1918, Harold was killed in action.

From 21 March his battalion had been engaged at Offoy in the Somme. Operation Michael was underway in the ‘First Battles of the Somme’ — the British name for the German spring offensive called the Kaiserschlacht, over wasteland at the Somme. On the 22nd, as the Germans attempted to penetrate a gap in the wire in front of them, Lewis gunners successfully held them back. ‘The position, however, was becoming untenable. All the officers had been wounded or killed.’ There was also a dense mist and German planes overhead. On the 23rd, they were ordered to defend a bridge-head. This required them to cross a canal via a bridge that had been blown up. Meanwhile, the enemy was ‘close and organised’. On the day of Harold’s death, B Company (which may still have been his company) was deployed in a counter-attack. ‘It was a great charge. The bayonet was used with wonderful effect.’ However, ‘the Germans came on in greater numbers than before’. Somewhere amid the chaos and intensity of fighting, Harold was one of hundreds killed. He was 24 years old.

On 4 May 1918 the Bucks Herald reported on Harold’s death and memorial service . Thanks to this article, I was able to discover what Harold had done to earn the Military Medal, and how he had died. The piece also included the full text of a letter that Harry’s officer had sent to his mother after his death.

I transcribe the article here in full:

ST. LEONARDS.
KILLED IN ACTION.
His many friends and neighbours have heard with deep regret that L. Corpl. Harold J. Underwood, M.M., of the K.R.R.C., was killed in action on March 24. Deceased, who was 24 years of age, and the eldest son of Mr. and Mrs. H. Underwood, of this village, was prior to the war with Messrs. Grosse Bros. of London, E.C. He answered his country’s call early in November, 1914, and went to France in August, 1915. He was wounded at Fleurs [sic] in September, 1916, and after some months in hospital again went to France in July, 1917, when he won the Military Medal at La Vacquerie, in December, for ‘conspicuous bravery on the field’ and for ‘bringing in the wounded at great personal risk.’ He was home on leave in February, 1918. The greatest sympathy is extended on all sides to Mr. and Mrs. Underwood in their bereavement, especially as it is known that they are terribly anxious about their second son, Neville, who has just been officially reported “Missing: believed to be a prisoner of war.”

A memorial service was held in the Parish Church on Sunday evening, April 28, by the Rev. J. A. Walker, Vicar; it was well attended and most impressive.

The following is a copy of a letter received by his mother from the deceased soldier’s officer, Lieut. A. Cree: — “DEAR MRS. UNDERWOOD, Ere now you may have heard the very sorrowful news I must send you. I have just returned from England to the Company, or I would have written long ago, hard as it is to convey that your boy has been killed in this present great struggle. He died a brave soldier, while doing an important duty. His party came under heavy machine fire, which caught your boy, and, from another lad who was present at the time, I learn he died instantaneously. I cannot hope to tell you how I grieve his loss, for the mere name of ‘Corpl. Underwood’ was a bye-word in the Company for efficiency and bravery. He was easily one of the very best boys of a splendid Company, and one who uncomplainingly kept that ideal in mind which many of us are apt to forget—That we are fighting for our own country’s safety and for those whom we love. My sympathy goes out to you in this great trial; but I hope you can be brave and bear the loss, with God’s help, as willingly as your dear boy gave his life for his country’s cause. The battle was at its height at the time he died. Beyond that the information is meagre indeed: but if I can give you any further information please don’t hesitate to write and ask me, as I will only too willingly do anything which may in the slightest help to alleviate your great sorrow.”

Of course, the letter that Harold’s commanding officer had written to his mother was meant to reasssure her that Harold hadn’t suffered, and to fill her with pride that he was highly regarded among his fellow soldiers and doing useful work when he had been killed. Nevertheless, I find it very moving.

Eliza would also have received Harold’s possessions after his death, according to his military will. His hand-written note feels very personal and poignant.

Neville — Prisoner of War

As per the Bucks Herald article, at the same time that news came of Harold’s death, his grieving parents learned that Neville was believed to be a POW. We can only imagine how harrowing this must have been.

Nearly seven decades later, on his deathbed, Neville revealed to his son, my grampy, that he had been a POW in the war, and had worked in the mines. He had escaped with the help of a German soldier, and had made his way across Belgium and Holland to allied territory. On his journey he had been helped by two ladies, who sheltered and hid him in their home for several days. Once back to ‘safety’, he was deployed back to the front lines again! In spite of all of these ordeals, Neville survived the war. It’s an incredible story, which Neville had kept from his children or grandchildren all his life, and his family wondered how much of it was true. Unfortunately, we have only been able to corroborate a small portion of his story.

A POW index card confirmed that Neville was a prisoner of war in Germany. It also filled in a gap by letting us know which battalion he fought with — the 1st Wilts. In spite of the seriousness of Neville’s situation, I smiled when I saw that he had given his birth date as 5.12.1891 – seven years earlier than his actual birth date!

He had been taken prisoner at Vaulx (Vaulx-Vraucourt) on 24 March 1918. The battalion diaries on 23 March describe heavy attacks and note that ‘the Battalion suffered considerable casualties from shellfire’ but also that ‘the Battalion lewis gunners did great execution amongst many parties of the enemy’. The night was ‘somewhat lively owing to the enemy continuously trying to creep up and cut the wire.’ On the morning of the 24th, the whole trench system was shelled by the enemy, aided by ‘hostile aeroplanes’, their own planes meanwhile noticeably absent. The afternoon brought intense bombardment, followed by an assault. During the fighting, they received an order to pull out, but as some battalions returned, they broke, leaving some companies unable to get back to the trenches. They were then ‘practically exterminated by machine gun fire.’ 413 casualties were reported.² Perhaps Neville was one of those trapped soldiers. If so, he was fortunate to have been taken prisoner, when so many were killed. However, his capture seems to reflect a general trend at that time; according to The Long, Long Trail, more than half of British POWs during WW1 fell into captivity between March and November 1918.

Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that Neville had been captured on the same day on which Harold had been killed. At first I wondered if the similarity in their first names (Harold and Harry) could have led to a bureaucratic mix-up. However, the location of Neville’s capture on his index card matches the battalion diary entries that day. It’s a dreadful coincidence that just as Neville was being taken prisoner, his brother was killed in action at Offoy, about 50 km (30 miles) to the south.

The index card shows that Harry’s sister Lily, with an address in London, was the point of contact for news about her missing brother. Communication between Britain and Germany about the location of POWs would have been made by neutral intermediaries, especially the Red Cross.

On 13 June, Neville was at the Münster II camp. This was one of four camps at Münster, on the site of a racecourse. There was indeed mining there. However, POWs could also join an orchestra, participate in theatre shows, play football, write and read a weekly newspaper, and send postcards home. Contemporary inspections found conditions and treatment to be acceptable.

On 20 June he was transferred, for unknown reasons, to one of three camps at Sennelager (Senne I, II, or III), 100 km away. Sennelager was reputed to be the most brutal of Germany’s POW camps. One POW who spent time there wrote of the desperate condition of British wounded, and starvation of POWs. He said ‘Sennelager has the most evil reputation among the German prison camps for systematic brutality and unprecedented ferocity.’ Another prisoner who absent-mindedly went too near the fence, had a bayonet stuck through his shoulder. However, all camps were subject to neutral inspections, so had to meet minimal standards. The Royal Hampshire Regiment Museum has a collection of 200 photos and drawings that belonged to a sergeant who had spent most of his three years as a POW at Sennelager (I’ve shared three of them below). Although most of the men photographed are officers, they look well fed and apparently were free to walk around the camp.

In 1918, a German, Oxford-educated linguist spent time at the Sennelager camps recording audio of British and Commonwealth voices. This one from Bletchingdon in Oxfordshire is the closest I can get to how Neville might have sounded. It’s part of the oldest collection of English dialect recordings in the world, available for free at the British library website (a fascinating rabbit hole!)

During the time that Neville experienced life in the camps he was still just 19. His POW record ends at Senne, so unfortunately we don’t have any evidence of his daring return to his battalion. If he was helped to escape by a German soldier, could it have been because he had heard about his brother’s death and was anxious to get home to his family? I will never know the name of that sympathetic soldier, or the identities of the kind and brave women who helped him on his way.

Neville received the Victory and British medals for his service. At the end of the war, both he and his boyhood friend came home to St Leonards.

Commemoration

Lance Corporal Harold John Underwood is commemorated at Pozières, France (on panel 62.B). This memorial commemorates over 14,000 casualties of the United Kingdom and 300 of the South African Forces who have no known grave and who died on the Somme from 21 March to 7 August 1918.

He’s also commemorated on the War Memorial in St. Leonard’s churchyard, Bucks. Another name on the memorial is also a relation of mine — Fred Osborn (my great grandmother’s cousin).

Harold has a gravestone at St Leonard’s as well, which he shares with his youngest sibling Kathleen. Harold and Kathleen both died on the 24th of the month aged 24. Kathleen was a keen rower, and was killed by a very different deadly enemy — tuberculosis. For years after her death, her beau (possibly fiancé) continued to visit the family home. I wonder if Harold also had a sweetheart in London or back home in St Leonards, whose life was shattered by his death.

After the end of the war, Eliza had to deal with the administration of Harold’s medals, and requested that his Military Medal be sent to them by post. She also completed the necessary paperwork to receive a memorial plaque, hand-calligraphed scroll and King’s message (these were offered to the next of kin of soldiers who had died). All of these items were sent to Harry and Eliza Underwood at Craven Cottage, St Leonards. Sadly, I have no idea where Harold’s medals and plaque have ended up, but I have the scroll and King’s message in their original cardboard postal tube, which is one of my most treasured possessions.

After the war

The Underwood family, like millions of families in Britain and around the world, had to endure a tremendous loss. Eliza lost her eldest son, but also her younger brother, Richard William Maultby, who died at Ypres in 1916. Both Harry and Eliza had experienced many tragedies already in their lives, and these new losses must have been hard to bear. In 1920, 53-year-old Harry Underwood was caught red-handed stealing a pack of cigarettes from a shop in Wendover. The grocer had been his employer and suspected Harry of stealing stock from him over a period of time. Harry protested that he ‘had been about the district for about 20 years, and had nothing against him. He was supposed to have been respected, he believed’.¹ However, he was sentenced to 21 days with hard labour. This crime seems completely out of character for Harry, and possibly an indication of how much the loss of his son had impacted him.

When the war ended on 11 November 1918, Neville was a month shy of turning 20. I imagine that war had in some ways made him old beyond his years, and yet coming home to his parents and siblings must have been an occasion of joy, comfort and relief. I’m looking forward to seeing his entry in the 1921 census to see what he did next.

In 1925, Harry Neville Underwood married Dorothy Georgina Alexandria Taylor. Their son, my grampy, was born in 1927. The name they chose for him — Neville William Harold Underwood — honoured Neville’s brave brother Harold, the brother who never came home.

Credits, sources and further information

The lead image in this post is a silhouette of the KRRC memorial which faces Winchester Cathedral. Photograph by Dave via Flickr.

1. Bucks Herald, 11 September 1920
2. Wiltshire Regiment 1st Battalion War Diary, Nov 1915-Jun 1918. National Archives WO-95-2243-3.

As well as the Long, Long Trail, I referred to The Wartime Memories Project for battalion movements.

See Harold’s page on Lives of the First World War

See Harold’s page on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) website

Chances are, you have ancestors who were domestic servants, or who employed domestic servants. Have you taken the time to look at who their employers or servants were, and how the ‘other half’ lived?

Although it may seem that life upstairs and downstairs was very separate, many domestic servants lived and worked at close quarters with the family of the house. The status, lifestyle, and interests of an employer could have had a significant impact on servants, but servants also deserve recognition for their invisible role in wealthier ancestors’ history; their hard graft enabled their employers to enjoy a better quality of life and leave their much more visible legacy.

By including employers and employees, servants and masters/mistresses in your FAN club (Friends, Associates, Neighbours) you might uncover some rich and surprising stories. Here are two from my family tree …

Part 1: Polly Smith and the Gosselins

My great grandmother was named Mary Smith on every official record, but she was known to friends and family as Polly. Polly was born in 1878 in Stoke Mandeville, Bucks, the daughter of an Ag Lab and an ‘Ag Lab’s Wife’. However, changes in farming methods reduced the need for women and girls to work on the land, which presented a challenge to large families. In 1891, at the age of 13, Polly was enumerated in her parents’ home in Stoke Mandeville but was already working as a domestic servant. Her two older brothers, Edwin, 20, and William, 16, worked as wheelwrights. Her older sister, Annie, 19, was a domestic servant in Aylesbury for the family of a banker’s clerk. Only her two little sisters, seven-year old Emma and two-year-old Lizzie, weren’t contributing to the family’s income. (And two, or possibly three, more younger sisters had sadly died). The family of seven lived in four rooms.

Stoke Mandeville parish had a population of under 500, as well as an ebbing number of cholera patients who were treated in an isolation hospital on its border with Aylesbury. After WW2, Stoke Mandeville hospital became world-renowned for treatment of spinal injuries and as the birthplace of the paralympic movement. However, as the Victorian era came to an end this was still a very quiet, rural location. Although Polly had found work, and gained skills, her opportunities in Stoke Mandeville would have been very limited.

By 1901, Polly had left Buckinghamshire behind for Battersea, 40 miles away. In leaving the village of her birth, whether by choice or necessity, she was part of a local and national trend. Stoke Mandeville’s population more than doubled from 1801 to 1871, but since 1871 it had declined by one fifth. From 1891 to 1901, the population of England and Wales grew 12%, but Bucks only grew its population by 1.5% compared with London’s 7%.¹ The numbers show plainly that people, including young women like Polly, were leaving the countryside for urban areas. In industrial towns, women found work in factories, but elsewhere, women’s work was dominated by domestic service. In 1891, 1.38 million people in Britain were employed as indoor domestic servants.²

What was it like in London at the turn of the 20th century? The air was full of soot and smoke, and 300,000 horses were creating 1000 tons of dung on the roads every day.³ Battersea, which only 60 years earlier had been much like Stoke Mandeville, still had some green spaces, but was now packed with industrial buildings, railway sheds, and in some areas, slums. Nevertheless, there were plenty of comfortable new homes there for middle class people who could afford the convenience and status of employing a general servant.

In 1901, Polly, aged 22, was employed as a housemaid by the Gosselin family in York Mansions, 132, Prince of Wales Road. The family consisted of Nicholas Gosselin, 63, a ‘Retired Major of Infantry Army Man’ born in Plymouth, his wife Catherine Rebecca ‘Kate’ Gosselin (née Haslett), 57, from Londonderry, Ireland, and their unmarried daughter Selena Frances, 33, also from what’s now Northern Ireland (County Cavan).

York Mansions was constructed in 1897 and completed in 1901, so it was brand new when Polly moved in. The building consisted of 100 flats arranged around courtyards. Flats at the front overlooked Battersea Park. The apartments were purposely designed for a family with a live-in maid, and thanks to Wikipedia I have a detailed description of the layout, including the spaces that Polly would have lived and worked in:

Flats measured approximately 1,500 square feet (140 m²) for a 3-bedroom flat, and 1,800 square feet (170 m²) for a 4-bedroom flat, and included a drawing room, dining room, bathroom and rooms for a maid to live and work. A below-ground corridor ran the full length of the building, which provided internal access to the three separate courtyards and also acted as a servant’s corridor (servants did not use the main entrance to the building). In addition, the building was equipped with service lifts which led directly from the courtyards to the kitchens.

As had become standard, a small servant’s corridor was separated off within each flat and a separate servant’s lavatory (but no bathroom) was provided. Except at the ends of the building where it would have been considered too public and unseemly, the servants’ lavatory was outside, accessed from the balcony beside the kitchen door.

No separate scullery was provided and the original plans show the kitchen sink in the same room as the range and always in front of a window. At the time this was an unconventional arrangement, and was later termed ‘American style’. The flats at the rear corners of the building offered an unusual scenario where the maid, working at the sink, looked out at Battersea Park and had one of the best views in the whole flat.

When built the flats were modern, and had Queen Anne and Kate Greenaway style fire-surrounds, corrugated brass finger plates and plain ceilings. Ceiling roses were still being installed in many new houses but, by this date, were increasingly being viewed as somewhat “lower middle class”. The flats also had a chrome postal handle, some of the York Mansions’ flats still make use of the original fitting (the postal handle is a horizontal post flap with a fixed handle just below the opening, which is used to pull the flat door shut).

Although electricity appears to have been laid along Prince of Wales Drive, London at a very early stage, it was not extended into York Mansions until after the First World War. Lighting was by gas, utilising the new incandescent mantles, which concealed the naked flames and produced a softer, pleasanter light. Cooking was by solid fuel, using the rather square-rather-than-wide kitchen ranges. A coal-bin for each flat was provided in a cupboard outside the kitchen door in the servant’s corridor.⁴

From this description, I can tell that my great grandmother, though living in a family home, would (probably) have been kept as separate from her employers as possible. And unlike the family, she had no bathroom. Nevertheless, at least she could enjoy the view while she worked at the sink! Thankfully, Polly would not have been completely isolated, as she was not the only servant in the home. There was also a cook — 32-year-old Mary Stoat, from Ireland. Two servants for a family of three may sound very comfortable, but in 1891, the Gosselins had had three live-in servants — a cook, housemaid and parlour maid. Even if their previous home was larger, Polly was doing the work that had previously been done by two women.

A housemaid typically rose by 6 am and worked until late at night. Her responsibilities would have included cleaning and polishing, lighting fires, setting and clearing tables, bedmaking, and needlework.⁵ Without a parlour maid, she would probably also have answered the front door, attended to guests, and served meals. Although there isn’t room in this blog to go into more detail on domestic service, I can recommend a very evocative book, a day in the life of a Victorian Domestic Servant, by L. Davidoff & R. Hawthorn (George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1976), which, although set a few decades earlier, really brings their world to life.

As a working-class woman, Polly would probably have known about Battersea’s reputation for political activism. Britain’s first socialist party was founded there by John Burns in the 1880s, and in 1892, Burns became one of the first Independent Labour Party members of Parliament.⁶

Ironically, Nicholas Gosselin, the head of Polly’s household, had made his career leading efforts to suppress the ‘radical’ political movement for Irish Home Rule. Gosselin, the son of Major Nicholas Gosselin of County Cavan, Ireland, had joined the British army at 16, serving in the 39th (Dorsetshire) Regiment of Foot and the Royal Welch Fusiliers before becoming the adjutant of the Cavan Militia. In 1882 he was appointed as a resident magistrate for Ireland, and was stationed for a short time at Killeshandra, County Cavan, and at Sligo, before being head-hunted in 1883 by the Home Office, who put him in charge of the newly formed Special Irish Branch. Their mandate was to gather intelligence on Fenian organisations operating in Glasgow and northern England. The Fenians were a secret political umbrella organisation with members in Ireland and the United States, dedicated to Ireland’s autonomy. Seen as freedom fighters by some, and terrorists to others, between 1881 and 1885, the Fenians launched a series of dynamite attacks on England’s urban centres, terrifying the public. Over 80 people were injured and a young boy was killed.

Gosselin, nicknamed ‘The Gosling’, coordinated covert intelligence agents across Britain and Ireland, and worked closely with Dublin’s Metropolitan Police. Gosselin’s correspondence with Balfour, Chief Secretary for Ireland (and later PM), shows that he had an agent working within the Irish Party, code named ‘L’, whose palm was ‘itching’ for bribes. His papers also reveal that he employed agents provocateurs, including an American ex-Fenian, to seed conspiracies about Fenian dynamite threats. He was also instrumental in bringing down Parnell, head of the Irish Nationalist Party, who, with the support of Liberal leader Gladstone, hoped to achieve Home Rule for Ireland. By exposing more details of Parnell’s long-term affair with his mistress, Gosselin helped stoke the scandal that ultimately stalled Home Rule, removing an option that could have avoided another century of bloodshed. Fenian bombing campaigns continued in England and Ireland until 1900, but in the 1890s Gosselin turned his attention to Irish republican organisations like Clan Na Gael. Athough Gosselin claimed to be simply a retired army man in the 1901 census, he continued to work for Irish Special Branch until his retirement in February 1904.

I studied the ‘Irish Question’ in A Level History, but that was a long time ago, and this is an extremely complex subject, so I can’t claim to fully understand the role that Gosselin played. However, I’ve included some links to learn more about him below.

I wonder what Polly felt about Major Gosselin. Was he a hero? A man to be feared? Or simply an employer who paid her wages? Did she, in fact, have any contact with the ‘man of the household’, or only with the women of the family? After all, it was the lady or ladies of the house who typically oversaw its management. Unfortunately, I know much less about Kate and Selina Gosselin. Kate was the eldest daughter of William Haslett, a JP and the Mayor of Londonderry, so I imagine that she was a confident and educated woman who had always had servants at her beck and call.

After Nicholas Gosselin retired from special branch, he was knighted, and he and his wife moved to Kent. However, he continued to be politically active. In 1911, Deputy-Lieutenants and magistrates of Co. Monaghan met to discuss their approach to an imminent visit by the new King George V. Sir Gosselin expressed his wish to ‘pour oil on the troubled waters’; ‘they were assembled there to congratulate the king upon his succession to the Throne of this mighty Empire’ and ‘they should stick to that one subject.⁷ You can watch a newsreel of the royal visit to Ireland in 1911 here. In 1916, Gosselin’s was a prominent (and controversial) voice calling for conscription in Ireland^.8 Lord Gosselin passed away in 1917, followed by Lady Gosselin in 1920. Selina never married, and passed away in 1955.

In 1906, Polly Smith married William Wyatt, my great grandfather. William was born two miles from Polly, but had lived and worked in London as an engine driver on the Metropolitan Line, which connected Bucks to central London. They settled in Willesden and raised a family before finally returning to Buckinghamshire. My dad, their grandson, had no idea his grandmother had worked as a domestic servant. Polly’s death certificate gave her occupation as ‘wife of William Wyatt a Retired Railway Engine Driver’.

I’m proud that Polly had the courage to go to London to find work as a young woman, and the strength to carry out such physically demanding work. I now know that Polly also played a role, albeit behind the scenes, in the complex history of Irish independence.

Learn more about Nicholas Gosselin and the Fenians:

• Nicholas Gosselin – Wikipedia
• The Fenian Dynamite Campaign and the Irish American Impetus for Dynamite Terror, 1881-1885
• History Ireland: Keeping the lid on an Irish revolution: the Gosselin–Balfour correspondence
• Papers reveal British government plots to scupper

Further Reading: Christy Campbell, FENIAN FIRE: The British Government Plot to Assassinate Queen Victoria (HarperCollins, 2011)

In Part 2, discover the story of Millicent Gifford and the D’Arcy Ferrars.

1. https://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/census/EW1901GEN/4
2. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19544309
3. https://www.npr.org/2015/03/12/392332431/dirty-old-london-a-history-of-the-victorians-infamous-filth
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York_Mansions
5. http://www.avictorian.com/servants_maids.html
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battersea
7. Belfast Telegraph – Wednesday 28 June 1911 (BNA)
8. Freeman’s Journal – Tuesday 15 August 1916: Reviving the Conscription Cry (BNA)

In Part 1, I shared the story of my great grandmother Polly Smith, who was employed as a housemaid by the head of the government’s Irish Special Branch. Now we turn to another ancestor who worked in service, whose charismatic employer was a nationally renowned organiser of Tudor-style pageants …

Millicent Gifford and D’Arcy de Ferrars

Millicent Clara Gifford, my husband’s great grandaunt, was born in Bream in the Forest of Dean in 1873, the third child of Mark Gifford, a miner, and Harriet Ann Jones. Sadly, Millicent lost her mother when she was just over a year old, and her father remarried within the year. Millicent’s first-born step-sibling, Ida — my husband’s great grandmother — was sent to Lancashire to be raised by an aunt and uncle as a young child, but Millicent was able to stay at home with her father and step-mother; she was a scholar, aged 8, in the family home in 1881.

Whereas some Forest of Dean families passed down free mining rights through the generations, Mark Gifford was the son of a labourer; he had worked in the mines since he was a child and he toiled for the profit of colliery owners. After decades as an iron miner he switched to coal mining in the 1880s, as the region’s iron ore output plummeted. His occupation was both dangerous and precarious. 

Foresters were renowned for being insular, and even as an increasing number of railways connected the area to the rest of the country, it was primarily coal, not people, that travelled beyond its borders. The tight-knit mining communities were also judged by outsiders to be uncivilised, even savage, especially after the infamous ‘killing of the bears’ in 1889.

However, young women did leave the Forest in search of new opportunities. Millicent’s teenage older sister, Elizabeth, had left home by 1881, and by 1891 she was a general servant in Liverpool, working for her step-mother’s niece. Then, Millicent too left her village and her family to work in domestic service far from home. Only a teenager, she found a position as a cook in the elegant spa town of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, more than 50 miles away — but, really, worlds apart — from Bream and the Forest of Dean.

I wondered how Millicent had found a placement in Cheltenham, and how she had learned to cook well enough to prepare meals for a middle class family. Another Gifford descendant seemed to have the answer. She had discovered that Millicent’s step-mother, Phoebe Morse, had also been a cook in her youth, working for a clergyman and his family in a village just four miles north of Cheltenham. I assume that Phoebe had prepared Millicent for work as a cook, and it seems possible that Phoebe could have maintained connections in the Cheltenham area, or at the least, encouraged her step-daughter to seek work there.

Cheltenham’s heyday as a spa town was over by the mid 19th century, but the town continued to attract wealthy families, especially those who had served in the colonies, including the Army and East India Company. The town also attracted evangelical Anglicans, who established several new educational establishments such as Cheltenham College and Cheltenham Ladies College. Another, very different branch of my husband’s family — wealthy and devout — lived in Cheltenham in the 1840s, and sent a son to Cheltenham College. By the 1890s, genteel Cheltenham also had three railway stations (and a special one at the racecourse for race days), an opera house, theatre, free library, art gallery, parks, and even some new bath houses. The Montpellier Rotunda, built in the early 1800s and set in the Montpellier Gardens, had a dome inspired by Rome’s Pantheon. Formerly a pump room and ballroom, by the 1890s it was used as a concert venue. (it’s now the location of one of The Ivy chain of restaurants). 

Cheltenham had a vibrant music scene. During the early 1890s, numerous renowned musicians came to perform in the town, and there was also a wealth of local talent. A bandstand was installed in Montpellier Gardens and used for regular concerts. Sacred music also thrived. The organist and choirmaster of All Saints’ Church was Adolph von Holst, whose wife Clara was a talented pianist and singer. Their son Gustav, now best known as composer of The Planets, was born in Cheltenham in 1874. In 1890, father and son gave a piano concert together in the Montpellier Rotunda, and in 1891, Holst performed his own composition there.

That same year, Millicent, aged 18, was a domestic cook in the household of the exotically named ‘E.R. Darcy de Ferrars’, who was a 36-year-old Professor of Singing.

Their address, 3 Montpellier Grove, an elegant townhouse of four floors, was just a short stroll away from the Montpellier Rotunda and Gardens.

Ernest Richard D’Arcy Ferris, as he was named at birth, really was a fantastic character. He was the son of Samuel Ferris of the Indian Civil Service, and Fanny — a schoolteacher and the daughter of the hilariously named Reverend Evill. Born in Bath in 1855, D’Arcy (his preferred first name) lost his father at the age of three. While his older brothers went into conventional careers, he moved to London and worked as a ‘violinist and professor of singing’. In 1878 he sang in the chorus of the world premiere of Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore.

In the 1880s Ferris relocated to Cheltenham, where as well as continuing to teach, conduct, and perform as a singer, he advertised himself as a ‘Designer and Director of Fetes, Festivities, Festivals, and Functions’.

In 1885, he was hired by Lord and Lady Wantage to organise a summer garden party at Lockinge House, Wantage in Berkshire. Lord Wantage was looking for something a bit different, and D’Arcy Ferris conceived of an Elizabethan-style pageant which he called ‘The Festival of ye Summer Queene’. I first heard about this lavish and exuberant party, which became widely known as the ‘Lockinge Revels’, when I was volunteering at the Vale & Downland Museum in Wantage. The two-day event included morris dancing, a Robin Hood play, a hobby horse tournament, and a spectacular procession of the summer queen, in which Lady Wantage was carried through the gardens surrounded by costumed attendants and entertainers. Hundreds of guests — the movers and shakers of the day — attended in costume. The Vale & Downland Museum has an 18th century sackback dress on display which was worn to the party.

In addition to the hundreds of wealthy and influential guests, local workhouse children were ‘invited to the park, and duly regaled’, and tea was served to the villagers. According to several reports, spectators numbered in their thousands.

Thanks to the ‘technical knowledge and unwearied exertions’ of Master of the Revels D’Arcy Ferris, the Lockinge Revels were a huge success, and were reported in newspapers across the UK, with a wonderful illustration published in The Graphic. I have a framed copy in my living room. The Pictorial World also offered ‘numerous sketches by special artists’ of guests in costume. It was soon after researching the Lockinge Revels for the museum, that I discovered my own connection to D’Arcy Ferris!

I should note that not all coverage of the event was positive. The London Evening Standard published a very sardonic piece.¹ However, the event captured the public’s imagination, and buoyed by the nation’s interest in the Old English Revels at Wantage, D’Arcy Ferris then took a part of his show on the road, presenting the ‘Shakespearean Bidford Morris Dancers’ at ticketed events in 16 different venues across the country, including Cheltenham. As Master of the Revels to be hosted in Ripon in 1886, he proposed a grand performance of ‘Robin Hood’ near the Abbey with a chorus of 50 foresters and forest maidens, and offered to write to Oscar Wilde, then a little known poet, to ask Wilde to write the play! 

D’Arcy Ferris’s morris dancing troupe, formed from working class ‘rustics’, helped to revive this ancient tradition in the UK. He also showcased sword dancing, which also received fresh interest, particularly by the aptly named folklorist Cecil Sharp. (For family and local historians, an online database of hundreds of working class people that Sharp met while touring England from 1903-1923 is a fantastic resource). Ferris’s passion for traditional music, dance and art was part of a national trend that encompassed the Arts and Crafts movement and the folksong revival that in Britain was led by composers including Ralph Vaughan Williams. Holst, a friend of Vaughan Williams, also composed settings of traditional songs. It may be a coincidence, but in 1901, Millicent’s older sister Elizabeth was working as a cook in the household of Dr Edwin S Harland in Gloucester. A solicitor by profession, and the city’s mayor, Harland was also a founder member of the Folk-Lore Society and author of works on folklore.

In 1888 D’Arcy legally changed his surname to ‘de Ferrars’. It was fashionable for professional musicians to add an exotic touch to their names but the change to Ferrars was also a reference to George Ferrars, who had been appointed as Master of the Revels/Lord of Misrule to help entertain the teenage King Edward VI in 1552-3.

The following year, D’Arcy de Ferrars organised an ice carnival at the Albert Hall and also got married to Isabel Browne. In 1891, Millicent Gifford was cooking for the newlyweds and their first child, Mary M. Joan D’Arcy de Ferrars (known as Joan), just ten months old. The only other servant recorded in the household was a 15-year-old nurse (presumably to help care for the baby). Her name was Blanche Foster and she came from Gloucester, so I do hope she recited ‘Doctor Foster Went to Gloucester’ to baby Joan.

In 1892 D’Arcy de Ferrars and Adolph von Holst hosted and performed a benefit concert together at Cheltenham’s corn exchange², and the following year in the same venue, de Ferrars produced and conducted Gustav Holst’s early (and mostly forgotten) comic opera, Lansdown Castle, written when Holst was just 18.

Unfortunately I don’t know how long Millicent Gifford worked for the de Ferrars family, but I do like to think that she would have met Gustav Holst, and perhaps cooked for him.

What would Ernest and Isabel de Ferrars have been like as employers? 

It’s very hard to say what Millicent’s time in Cheltenham was like. Life as a domestic servant is never easy, but in a home with just three family members and one other servant, she must have experienced the sights and sounds created by her multi-talented and probably larger-than-life employer. Perhaps the monotony and physical exertion of daily cooking and cleaning would have been lifted by music drifting, or even loudly reverberting, around the house.

D’Arcy de Ferrars was also known to be passionate about the welfare of the working classes. In 1886, he attended a meeting to discuss the Kyrle Society in Cheltenham. This society had been set up in 1877 by Octavia and Miranda Hill with the aim of enhancing quality of life in communities through music, art, literature and open spaces. William Morris was a key supporter. Ferris (as he was then) ‘made an impassioned plea for the teaching of beauty, and for the improvement of the social condition of the people, especially urging the revival of old English games and sports to encourage a “spontaneous attempt among the masses of the people to amuse themselves”.’³ This could be viewed as rather romantic, since it didn’t address people’s basic needs — food, shelter, and clothing (or, in the longer term, employment and education). I hope that de Ferrars paid Millicent well and provided her with opportunities for leisure and intellectual stimulation.

Nevertheless, Millicent would not have enjoyed those benefits for long. In 1894, aged 21, she married collier William Ellway aka William Watts, at Viney Hill in the Forest of Dean. After several years in the household of a musician and party host, a short walk from a beautiful park and concert hall, she returned to live in a rural mining community, and raised six children — four girls and two boys. I hope that she was happy as a wife and mother, in the place where she had grown up, but it must have been a stark contrast.

The de Ferrars family also grew, adding two more daughters and a son. In 1911, the family lived in Highgate, and D’Arcy stated his occupation as ‘Pageant Master’. No servants were enumerated with them. D’Arcy de Ferrars also continued to compose and produce. His eclectic projects included an operetta, ‘Japan in Cheltenham’, in 1901. He was responsible for the ‘spectacular’ Liverpool Pageant of 1907, and his last major venture, the Worsley pageant, was held in 1914. 

D’Arcy de Ferrars spent his retirement years in Padstow, Cornwall, and passed away in London in 1929. Surprisingy, an obituary in the Cornish Guardian remembered him above all as a singer. He is buried in Highgate Cemetery.

D’Arcy’s eldest daughter, Joan, whose first meals were cooked by Millicent Gifford, grew up to be a popular coloratura soprano. In 1925 her performance as Marguerite in Faust at London’s Old Vic, was broadcast by radio, and heard ‘throughout the West of England’.

Millicent was widowed in 1917. She remarried to widower Reuben James, another colliery worker, in 1930, and she died in 1947. Millicent’s eldest son became a miner working underground. However, her youngest son, Winston Gifford Watts, took a leaf out of his mother’s book and worked as a butler in Anderson Manor, Blandford, Dorset. He lived to be 101, only passing away in 2012. 

Sources and Further Reading

Lockinge Revels complete programme and guest list printed in the Berkshire Chronicle, 29 August 1885 (p.8) and Reading Mercury, 29 August 1885 (p.4)

R. Judge, ‘D’Arcy Ferris and the Bidford Morris’, Folk Music Journal Vol. 4, No. 5 (1984), pp. 443-480 (38 pages), Published By: English Folk Dance + Song Society.

Judge, R.  (2004, September 23). Ferrars, Ernest Richard D’Arcy de (1855–1929), musician and pageant master. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Entry for Ferris, D’Arcy on Cecil Sharp’s People

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_dance

1. London Evening Standard, 28 August 1885
2. Cheltenham Looker-On, Saturday 21 May 1892 (BNA)
3. R. Judge, ‘D’Arcy Ferris and the Bidford Morris’ (see sources above)

Updated 9 Oct 2021 with information about Phoebe and Elizabeth Gifford, provided by Janet Rigby (Phoebe’s great granddaughter).

In Part 1, Fanny Talmer, a young unmarried woman from a Buckinghamshire hamlet, gave birth to two boys in Amersham workhouse — Richard in 1845 and Henry in 1850. Tragically, Henry died at nine weeks of age, and following an inquest, Fanny was charged with his murder. After several harrowing weeks in Aylesbury Gaol, and a trial at the Assizes, she was acquitted, and returned to the workhouse. Fanny and Richard were both recorded there just two weeks later in the 1851 census. It’s possible that Richard had not lived outside of the workhouse since his birth. In 1855, Fanny’s luck changed, when she married a local labourer. However, after only three years of marriage, she died of tuberculosis. Although Richard’s step-father was still alive in 1861, Richard was once again (or still?) in Amersham workhouse when the 1861 census was taken. Effectively an orphan, he seems to have been all alone in the world.

Part II: Richard Talmer

Growing up in the workhouse

When the 1861 Enumeration Book was filled out for Amersham Union Workhouse, there were nearly 200 paupers housed there, along with the workhouse master and matron (husband and wife), nurse, porter, and schoolmaster. Richard, aged 15, was a scholar, as were 61 other girls and boys aged 3-15 (the only exceptions in this age range being a 4-year-old whose place of birth was unknown (perhaps she had learning difficulties?), and a 15-year-old girl who was a domestic servant). The Poor Law Act of 1834 had many flaws, but it did require unions to hire a schoolmaster or schoolmistress, and to provide workhouse children with 3 hours of schooling per day.¹ Richard was, in some ways, lucky to receive an education at this age, as few children attended school after 12, and nearly half of primary age children in England and Wales in this period still had no access to education at all.² The workhouse schoolmaster was not much older than Richard — the 20-year-old son of a Sussex schoolmaster. (Later in his career he worked as a Relieving Officer, so I like to think that he was sympathetic to the difficult circumstances that forced people to seek poor law relief). The rest of the day, Richard, on the cusp of adulthood, probably would have been put to work doing manual labour, though he may also have been trained in industrial work, in preparation for life outside the workhouse.

Unfortunately, the next record I have of Richard isn’t a workhouse discharge, apprenticeship, employment record, or even a marriage. Instead, on 20 July 1867, Richard’s name appeared in the papers, publicly accused of a shocking and serious crime.

Richard was to be tried at Bucks Summer Assizes, which was to start on 22 July. What was this crime that he had committed with William Jennings, and that was so serious that it would be tried at the Assizes?

An unnatural crime

An ‘unnatural crime’, ‘unnatural act’, or ‘crime against nature’ was used euphemistically for a range of sexual activities (and also for suicide and child murder), but as a legal term, ‘unnatural crime’ was synonymous with buggery or sodomy — usually between people (regardless of consent), and, rarely, in cases of bestiality. Although noone had been executed for sodomy since 1838, it was only six years earlier that the Crimes Against the Person Act of 1861 had revoked the death penalty for this sexual act and replaced it with a minimum of 10 years’ hard labour, and as much as life imprisonment.

Technically, sodomy applied to oral as well as anal sex, and to heterosexual as well as homosexual unions. However, ‘convictions between men for sodomy were by far the most common and well publicised.’³ The newspaper report showed that Richard had been charged with another man. If intercourse with penetration could be proven, Richard faced a long prison sentence, even life. Even if he was acquitted, his name had been publicly and humiliatingly associated with a sex act with a man or beast; both were seen as abominations.

Who was William Jennings?

William Jennings, who faced trial with Richard, was another long-term or repeat inmate of Amersham workhouse. In 1861, when William was a workhouse schoolboy, William was also enumerated at the workhouse — a 31-year-old unmarried sawyer from Chesham. In 1867, when Richard and William were charged together with committing an unnatural crime, Richard was about 21, and William about 37.

William had also been in trouble with the law before. In the 1851 census he was a prisoner in Aylesbury Gaol. I’ve not been able to find out what his crime was.

A search of historic newspapers revealed that William had also been committed to Aylesbury Gaol in 1859, sentenced to 21 days for ‘misbehaviour in the workhouse’. The gaol receiving books record that William was a wood splitter, age 29.

Trial & Punishment

On 22 July 1867, the Bucks Summer Assizes opened for business.

Newspapers reported in detail on the trials heard that day for a wide variety of crimes including attempted murder and highway robbery. When it came to Jennings’ and Talmer’s case, newspapers revealed little about their crime, simply reporting their sentence — 12 months for Jennings and 3 months with hard labour for Talmer. However, although newspapers refrained from salacious details, I was shocked by one headline:

I had assumed that the men had been accused of homosexual sex. Had they in fact been charged with a sexual crime involving an animal? I examined other ‘bestiality’ cases reported in Buckinghamshire newspapers in the 1860s and found that there were just two (thankfully), and in each case, only one person was tried and convicted.

When I first researched and wrote this blog post in April 2021, I took the newspaper headline literally, with the same meaning of bestiality as we understand it today. However, I have since reviewed surviving records from the trial, at the National Archives, and thanks to this additional research, I now know that my original hunch was correct; Talmer and Jennings had been charged with the crime — as it was then — of homosexual sex.

Reading the indictment increased my sadness and anger at how the two men had been treated. Like Fanny, William and Richard were subjected to language that was fanatically religious:

‘the said Richard Talmer, not having the fear of God before his eyes nor regarding the order of nature but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the Devil … feloniously wickedly diabolically and against the order of nature was consenting to and did permit and suffer the said William Jennings … to have a venereal affair with the said Richard Talmer and then and there to carnally know him … and with him the said Richard Talmer … to commit and perpetrate the most detestable horrid and abominable crime called Buggery … to the great displeasure of Almight God to the great scandal of all human kind.’

The bombastic phrases stuffed with moral outrage and dripping with disgust were repeated several times over. Listening to the indictment before the judge, jury, and presumably friends, family, members of the public and newspaper reporters, must have been humiliating in the extreme.

According to notes added to the indictment, the men were found ‘not guilt of the felony [but] guilty of attempt to commit the same.’ The distinction was critical; if proven to have committed the act fully, the men could have faced life imprisonment.

Richard and William were tried and sentenced together. However, the fact that Richard was only sentenced to three months, compared with William’s 12 months, suggests that his actions he was judged to be less responsible, whether due to his age or some other factor. It is impossible for me to know what the relationship was between the two men; whether a one-off encounter or one of many, it could have been anything from abuse to mutual romantic love. Records also don’t tell me how their intimacy was discovered, though privacy in the workhouse must have been hard to come by.

The same day they were sentenced, they were registered on arrival at Aylesbury Gaol following their conviction for ‘Attempt to Commit B-y’. Their time in prison would be physically gruelling. The 1865 Prisons Act stated that prisons should be ‘hard labour, hard fare and hard board‘, and the men would have possibly been put to work on stone breaking, quarrying, or road building.

Richard had received an education and would have been able to read, so I take a modicum of comfort in the likelihood that he had no access to newspapers in gaol, and therefore didn’t have to endure seeing his name associated with an act that was viewed as bestial. However, I can imagine that his treatment in prison, by both officers and inmates, was extremely unpleasant.

Afterwards

After William Jennings and Richard Talmer served their sentences, it’s very likely that they immediately returned to the workhouse. In 1871, both men were enumerated there again — William a 41-year-old sawyer and Richard a 25-year-old Ag Lab. In spite of Richard’s stated occupation, I have no evidence that he ever worked in the outside world. If the men were friends or lovers, Richard would not have William’s company for long; the same quarter that the census was taken, William Jennings died, aged just 41.

However, for the first time since he was a child, Richard was with family members, as his grandparents William and Frances Talmer had (sadly) joined him at the workhouse. Nevertheless, though the three appear together, the inmates were enumerated alphabetically, so they may not have had a warm relationship. Frances died in 1876, and Richard and his grandfather were still in the workhouse in 1881, that time appearing on separate pages. William passed away in 1885 aged about 90.

Richard was still in the workhouse in the censuses of 1891 and 1901. In 1901, his place of birth was unknown, and a note in the last column (illegible to me) suggests that his health was failing.

In 1908, Richard Talmer died in Amersham workhouse, from acute catarrhal enteritis exhaustion. He was 62 years old. My 1st cousin 4x removed was born and died in Amersham Workhouse and was there for every census from 1851 to 1901.

Richard’s story is truly tragic. He was born into poverty and stigma, and his unmarried mother was so overwhelmed after having a second illegitimate baby that she probably caused that baby’s death. When he was a little boy, his mother spent months away from him in prison, and just a few years later she seems to have left him in the workhouse when she married. Richard was able to be a ‘scholar’ at the age of 15, so it’s unlikely that he had any mental disabilities, and he was described as an Ag Lab, so seems to have been physically able. However, he may well have been institutionalised at a young age, and it is likely that such a taboo crime, and his long association with the workhouse, would prevent him from gaining employment or any other support in his local community. It’s incredibly sad that Richard may have stayed in the workhouse for his entire adult life, anonymous and isolated, simply because he was gay.

Therefore, I was very surprised to see that Richard’s death was mentioned in a local newspaper. The notice of his death among other local obituaries was discreet, since it only included the workhouse’s street: ‘Whieldon Street, Amersham.’ However, elsewhere in the same paper, a notice of his death was also given by the workhouse Board of Guardians. I noted that in spite of Richard living his entire life in Amersham workhouse, he was said to be formerly of Great Missenden. By this time, my direct Talmer ancestors had moved from The Lee to nearby Great Missenden. I like to think that this tiny detail meant that Richard was still connected to his family, and that when he died, both he and his mother Fanny were remembered.

In 1867, Richard Talmer’s personal affairs brought him public shame and a criminal sentence, and were likely to have kept him in the workhouse for the rest of his life. Richard’s trial was held on 22 July 1867. On 21 July 1967, the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 in England and Wales finally made it possible for two consenting men over the age of 21 to have sex privately without breaking the law.

1. Education in the Workhouse (Workhouses.org)
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education_in_England
3. The Buggery Act 1533 (British Library article

Featured image = A convict sitting in a bare room on a stool with some work in his hands. Lithograph by Paul Renouard. License: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Wellcome Collection.