Did William Whybrew have a son after all?

This week, 24 October, marks the 100th anniversary of the death of William Whybrew (1884-1918). He died in France as the First World War was coming to an end, only three weeks before the Armistice was signed on 11 November, and just a few days before his 34th birthday.

His body was never recovered from the battlefield. He is honoured at the Vis-en-artois Memorial in Pas de Calais. His military service is also remembered on the Ipswich War Memorial (pictured).


William was the youngest of David and Susan Whybrew's sons (of those who survived infancy). When I last wrote about him I said that he and his wife Adelaide, nee Williams, were childless when he died. Now it seems that wasn't the case.

In 1939, just before the Second World War began, the British Government compiled a register of every civilian in Britain and Northern Ireland. It has been made available online since I last wrote about the family. Adelaide appears on this 1939 register at 7 Rydal Walk in Ipswich, with her second husband John Sanders. Living with them is 27 year old William Whybrew, born 20 August 1912.

Finding his name was a big surprise. One reason I previously believed that Adelaide and William senior were childless was that I couldn't find any births registered in the relevant period, with a father named Whybrew and a mother with the maiden name Williams. And I still can't, even knowing his date of birth. No matter what tricks I use with various search engines to try to find the younger William, I haven't found any evidence of his birth being registered. Perhaps it wasn't. Or possibly he was registered under a completely different name.

It has been suggested to me by the ever-helpful members of the British Genealogy Forum that he might have been adopted, which would mean he could have been registered with a different birth name. That would make sense. Especially since Adelaide and William senior had been childless for seven years by 1912.

So far the only trace I've found of the younger William, besides on the 1939 register, is his death in November 2002, in Colchester. It would be interesting to know if he was in any way related biologically to William or Adelaide. Did they take in a child from some other member of the family, perhaps to help out a single mother or widowed father? If so, I haven't discovered any likely candidate.

Adelaide's other adopted son

As I mentioned in the previous post, Adelaide also seems to have fostered a young soldier named Henry Alan Lawrence. He named her as his mother and gave her address on his military papers. I'm still trying to discover where and how their lives became linked.

Henry was born in Hertfordshire in 1890. His own mother, Martha Lawrence, (nee Archer) died sometime before his twelfth birthday and his family were scattered. He was an inmate of the workhouse at Bishop's Stortford in Hertfordshire at the time of the 1901 census. He joined the army as soon as he was eighteen.

I haven't found any evidence of Adelaide Williams living in Hertfordshire, but that doesn't mean much. I can't find her at all between 1871 and when she married William Whybrew in 1905. She spent time as a motherless child in the Stowmarket workhouse in Suffolk, so wherever she met Henry Alan, she would have had a bond with him. Fortunately for both of them, he survived the war, despite being badly injured.

William Whybrew - an update.

The Cemetery at Vis-en-Artois.
William Whybrew has no grave, his name is inscribed
on panel 5 of the curved memorial wall between
the two stone pillars.(image courtesy of wikimedia).

Back in March 2014 I wrote a couple of posts about the children of David and Susan Whybrew. At the time, much of what I wrote about their youngest son William (the youngest son to survive childhood at any rate) was speculative.

In the course of doing research for my book about Susan, I've been able to confirm many of the details for William and add a few new ones, though some create more mysteries than they solve. So here's an update.

William was born on 29 October 1884 while the family were living in Berry St, Sittingbourne, near Canterbury, Kent. At the time his father David was with the 3rd East Kent militia. Some time after William's birth David left the army without completing his five year contract, for reasons that are unclear, and the family moved to Colchester in Essex. Two sons, Alfred (1888) and James (1892) were born to Susan in Colchester but didn't survive infancy.

William was at home with David and Susan at the time of the 1901 census, working as an assistant gardener. In 1905, when he was 21,  he married Adelaide Williams, a woman from Ipswich, a coastal town in Suffolk, 30 km north east of Colchester.

At 38 Adelaide was considerably older than William. Their marriage certificate indicates that she was the daughter of Earle Henry Williams, deceased, a fish hawker of Ipswich. She seems to have spent some of her childhood in the Ipswich workhouse, and then disappears from the records until her marriage to William.

The couple moved to Canterbury, where William found work as a carman, driving a delivery cart for a mineral water company. They had a lodger living with them when the 1911 census was taken, an infirm elderly man named Abraham Langford, who was possibly cared for by Adelaide (or Annie as she was referred to on the census.)

In 1914, at the beginning of the First World War, William enlisted in the Army Veterinary Corp, which looked after the many horses, mules, dogs and other animals used by the army. He transferred to the Yorkshire regiment (Alexandra, Princess of Wale's Own) and fought in the trenches in  France and then saw action in Italy before returning to France in September 1918. I've now confirmed that William died in action in France on 29 October 1918, just a few days before his 34th birthday and only three weeks before the war ended.

The Hundred Days Offensive, August-november 1918
Battle of Courtrai.
British and Belgian wounded waiting to be taken
back by light railway. Dadezeele, 15 October 1918.

It’s likely that William was involved in the decisive “Hundred Days” battle or "Advance to Victory" in Picardy and Artois, which broke the Germans' resolve and ultimately led to the Kaiser’s abdication and the signing of the armistice on November 11. It was a massively destructive battle. William had no grave, perhaps no identifiable remains. His name is inscribed on the memorial at Vis-en-Artois amongst the 9,847 men of the Allied forces with no known burial place, who fell between August 1918 and the end of the war.

The news of his death would have been sent first to his widow Adelaide. In 1919 she applied for his medals, his belongings and the money still owed to him by the army. She was listed as the sole legatee. Later his name was inscribed on the war memorial in Ipswich, but strangely not the one in Colchester where he grew up and enlisted.

William and Adelaide had no children. However, it seems that Adelaide had either a son or a stepson by a previous relationship. A young soldier named Henry Alan Lawrence, born in 1890, joined the army in 1908 and gave a 'Mrs Whybrew' as his mother and next of kin. Her address at the time was in Colchester. He also listed two brothers, Archer and George Lawrence, whose address was in Stanstead in Essex.

At the end of WW1, in which Henry Lawrence was badly injured and became a prisoner of war, his address was the same as that of Adelaide Whybrew on William Whybrew's records - 195 Bramford Rd Ipswich.

How Henry fits into Adelaide's story is something I still haven't worked out. In the 1891 census he and his brothers  appear  to be the sons of William and Martha Lawrence of Sawbridgeworth in Hertfordshire. Martha Lawrence (nee Archer) died in 1897 and the family were scattered. There's no record of William Lawrence ever marrying Adelaide Williams. Perhaps she became an unofficial step mother to young Henry.

(I'm grateful to Andrew Beal of the Ipswich War Memorial and Cenotaph page on Facebook for some of these details.)

__________________

You can find out more about Susan and David Whybrew and their family, in my book Susan: convict's daughter, soldier's wife, nobody's fool.
It's available on Amazon and other online books stores

Disturbing the peace - the Salvation Army

As I've mentioned before, William Beales and his family were dedicated members of the Salvation Army in Colchester. Recently I've been reading more about the history of the Salvation Army. It's not only fascinating in its own right, but also includes some intriguing links with our family history, both in Australia and England.

Catherine and William Booth

William Booth, a Methodist minister, began what was to become the Salvation Army as a mission in the slums of the east end of London in 1865. His focus was on bringing the gospel to the vast numbers of working class and underprivileged people who had no connection with the established churches. His unconventional methods, which included allowing women to preach and holding open air meetings with bands playing catchy tunes, created controversy but proved very effective.

The Christian Revival Ministry, as it was then known, soon extended its work of gospel preaching and started providing education, food relief and "penny banks" for the poor and destitute. The name was changed to the Christian Mission and then in 1878 it became known as the Salvation Army. It adopted an army-style uniform for its workers and began using military terminology for many of it's activities. Ordained ministers became "officers", it's local congregations "corps", and its buildings "citadels" or "barracks". William Booth remained the General. His wife Catherine was actively involved in both ministering and preaching.

The organisation soon spread beyond London to other parts of what William Booth referred to as "Darkest England". The first meeting in Colchester was held towards the end of 1881 in the Assembly Rooms in Queen St. When the local skating rink was put up for sale in 1882 it was purchased by an agent on behalf of General Booth and soon became the local  meeting place. General Booth himself visited Colchester and preached to large audiences on several occasions.

Initially the Salvation Army faced a lot of opposition in Colchester as elsewhere. The uneducated heckled and threw rocks and bottles, while the better educated tossed off letters to the editor such as this one to the Essex Standard in July 1882:

Sir, -- A short space in your columns, if you please, for a few valueless remarks of a simpleton.
We have in Colchester sixteen Churches, besides a Roman Catholic Chapel, and Meeting Houses, I don't know how many; and I suppose to these buildings are attached between thirty and forty Clergymen and other Gospel ministers; nor am I the one to say, or even think, that any individual member of that staff is negligent or his duties toward either God or man. Each, I hope, is serving his Master and his fellow-men to the best of his ability. So that to me it seems, there was no need whatever for a Salvation Army to march into this town with trumpet and drum, and flying colours, as if we were destitute of religious instructors, and it lead me to think, sir, that if General Booth, who I take to be commander in chief of these quasi-military forces, had ordered his obedient regiment into such as town, for instance, as Northampton, where it seems the Gospel preachers much have been utterly neglectful of their duties, where infidelity and atheism is riding paramount, they would have been doing much more real service in the great cause which they profess to support, than by disturbing the peaceable inhabitant of this town by their disorderly, and certainly most irreverent behaviour.

Perhaps the residents of Northampton had a different view. In any case, the Salvation Army's right to hold meetings both at the rink and outdoors was upheld by the local mayor and magistrates.

The Salvation Army in South Australia 

Individual members of the Salvation Army soon began to arrive in Australia as immigrants. Two early converts, John Gore and Edward Saunders, established the first official Corp in South Australia in September 1880, leading their first meeting from the back of a cart in the Botanic Gardens. The following week they held an open air meeting in Light Square, notorious for being the gathering place of prostititutes and larrikins, and this became a regular occurrence.

Members of the Salvation Army band
in Adelaide, c 1890

When the first officers, Captain Thomas Sutherland and his wife, arrived in Adelaide in February 1881 they were met by 68 people associated with the Corp. Within 3 years there were 32 officers and 12 Corps in South Australia. Meetings were held every night in a building in Morphett Street off Light Square, attended by hundreds of people. Though most saw the benefits of the Salvation Army's methods, not all were impressed. On July 30, 1881, the South Australian Register carried this report from the City Police Court:

Thomas Sutherland, "Captain" of the Salvation Army, was charged, on the information of Denis Sullivan, Inspector of Police, that in a certain place situated in the City of Adelaide — to wit, King William street — he did unlawfully disturb the peace, contrary to the statute in such cases made and provided.
The defendant, who appeared in a species of dark uniform with a silver S on the collar, pleaded not guilty. Mr. Pater opened the case by stating that the defendant was the so-called captain of the Salvation Army, a religious body who were in the habit of parading the streets in the evening, singing, screaming, and shrieking. On the occasion in question they had seriously frightened the horses on the cabstand and in the street, besides crowding passengers off the footpath by reason of the throng... 

...John Piper, commercial traveller, of Adelaide, gave evidence as to hearing very indecent language used in the crowd with the army on the night in question, on Sunday, July 24, and that the mob nearly jostled him off his feet. The army was singing 'Will you go,' each one trying to shout louder than the other. By the defendant— Saw the leaders of the army sawing up and down in the air with their arms. Did not know they were keeping time. Considered it a disgraceful exhibition.

Sutherland was fined one shilling, which he refused on principle to pay, and he was sentenced to being imprisoned "until the rising of this court".

A "Special" reporter for The Adelaide Evening Journal provided a more sympathetic if slightly bemused description of one of the Salvation Army meetings in May 1883, too long to include here, but worth reading.

The Salvation Army in Adelaide, as elsewhere, had a strong ministry to women and girls involved in prostitution, and those at risk of falling into it. In England the Salvation Army were at the forefront of a campaign to raise the age of consent from 13 to 18. In South Australia they opened several homes for "rescued girls", providing accommodation and assisting them to return to their family where appropriate. It's not outside the realms of possibility that they had some involvement in Harriet Whybrew's return to her parents in England, though I have no evidence of this.

Meanwhile, in 1882 the newly married Captain James Barker and wife Alice left Colchester and arrived at Port Adelaide to join the work in South Australia. But due to a labour strike on the docks, they had to keep going to Melbourne. They decided on arriving and looking around that they would establish their ministry there instead. The Salvation Army expanded its work rapidly, not just in Victoria but throughout Australia, as a result of the Barkers' pioneering activities.

My grandmother, Rosina,
in her Salvation Army uniform

The Barker family eventually returned to England in 1890. Their daughter Evalina, born in Victoria in 1884, became a Captain and in 1909 she married Albert William Thomas Orsborn.  Orsborn later became the 6th General of the Salvation Army, as well as the author of many of the songs in the Salvation Army song book.

Albert and Evalina employed William and Eliza Beales' daughter Rosina as a servant at their home in Ipswich during her teens. This photograph of Rosina in her Salvation Army uniform, must have been taken about this time.

Once again I'm struck by how different her life must have been after she married and moved to Lancashire, leaving behind not just her family and Essex but the Salvation Army background of her childhood.

On this day in 1914

This year I thought it would be good to write some posts about the other side of my family tree, the Ortons and the Bentleys. Not that I've said everything there is to say about the Wards and the Beales, and I will keep adding posts about them, but my original intention was to cover the history of all four of my grandparent's families.

So as a sort of segue from one side of the family to the other, I thought it would be interesting to imagine what each of my four grandparents might have been doing 100 years ago today, on 12 January, 1914. It was a Monday and bitterly cold. (I like to think it was cold - we're having a heatwave here at the moment.)

Model T Ford c 1910

The first commercial airline flight had just taken place in the USA, and Henry Ford was about to open the first assembly line for Model T Fords. In England the Liberals were in power and George V was on the throne. Trouble was brewing in the far-away Balkans, the Suffragettes were becoming more and more militant, and there was industrial unrest. But the war that some were predicting was still 6 months away and unimaginable to most people.

Annie Kenney and
Christabel Pankhurst

The oldest of my grandparents, Thomas Henry Ward, would have been 31 years old. He was living with his widowed mother and his sister Fanny in the village of Milnrow, Lancashire. Perhaps his mother still owned the shoe retailing business in which he worked as a boot repairer, although by now she was over 70 years old. Thomas Henry's brothers and sisters were all married now apart from Fanny, and all were still living in and around Milnrow.

The 18 year old Rose Beales was probably working as a domestic servant with the Orsborn family in Ipswich, as she had been when the census was taken in 1911. Work as a domestic servant was the most common occupation for unmarried women at the time. Like her parents, the Orsborns were members of the Salvation Army. Their first daughter, Maria Evelina, was born in Colchester in 1910 so the two families no doubt knew each other. According to my father, Rosina was very much appreciated by her employers.

For the 10 year old Albert Edwin Orton in Pendleton, near Manchester, it would likely have been a school day. His father would have been at work at his gentleman's hairdressing shop, his older sister Edith May was working in a cotton mill and his brother Harold, 15, had probably also started work. His mother Sarah Jane may have been at home, or she too might have been working.

Gazette du Bon Ton
fashion plate 1914

Meanwhile the youngest of my four grandparents, the 9 year old (Margaret) Annie Bentley, was probably also at school. Home for her must have been a crowded, bustling place. According to the 1911 census, the family lived in a 3 room house. Along with her father, Walter Bentley, lived his three brothers-in-law, Albert, James and John Hough, his sister-in-law Lily Elizabeth Hough, Annie's brothers Walter (14) and Albert Bentley (5), and her sisters Alice (11) and Harriet (5). Annie's mother had died in 1909 and Lily acted as mother to the younger children.

While some were predicting war ahead, no-one could have forseen how drastically the coming years would change the lives of these individuals and the society in which they lived.

Rosina Beales

Name:			Rosina BEALES
Sex:			Female
Father:			William James BEALES (1868-1945)
Mother:			Elizabeth WHYBREW (1869-1949)
Individual Facts
Birth			11 Feb 1895		Colchester, Essex1–3
Census			1901 (about age 6)		16 Albion Grove, Colchester1
Census			1911 (about age 16)		54 Spring Rd, Ipswich4
Occupation			1911 (about age 16)		Domestic servant; Ipswich, Suffolk4
Death			1972 (about age 77)		Rochdale, Greater Manchester2
Marriages/Children
1. Thomas Henry WARD (1882-1952)
Children 4

        1. 1901 census (UK).

        2. familysearch.org.

        3. freebmd.org.uk.

        4. 1911 census (UK).

More about Rosina Beales:
From Essex to Lancashire