Z is for zoo

On 15 June 1839, shortly before emigrating to Australia, my 3rd great grandfather Philip Chauncy visited the London zoological gardens with his friend Cheyne. The previous day he and Cheyne had been to see the Armories at the Tower of London. (I do not know anything more about Cheyne, not even his full name.)

The Zoological Society of London, which claims to have established the world’s first scientific zoo, was founded by Sir Stamford Raffles in 1826. It opened to Fellows of the Society in 1828 and to paying visitors in 1847.

Visit to the Regent Park. The Zoological Gardens: hustle and alarm occasioned by the escape of the Kangaroo from Egan, Pierce and Cruikshank, Robert, 1789-1856 Pierce Egan’s Finish to the adventures of Tom, Jerry, and Logic, in their pursuits through life in and out of London. London Reeves & Turner, 1887. Page 246. Retrieved through archive.org.

A history of the Zoo in the nineteenth century was published by the Society in 1901. Progress over the thirteen years from from its founding to the time of my 3rd great grandfather’s visit gives an idea of what he might have seen on  his visit there. (We may also note that Chauncy was not a paying visitor. Perhaps his friend Cheyne had arranged
some special entrée for them?)

1826: “The first living animals to come into the possession of the Society were a Griffon Vulture (Gyps fulvus) and a White-headed Eagle (Haliaetus leucocephalus), presented by Mr. Joshua Brookes, and a “female Deer from Sangor.” On June 3rd, the house No. 33 Bruton Street was taken for the Offices, and Museum, and here living animals were
kept even after the Gardens were opened. There is an amusing story…of a Wanderoo Monkey (Macacus silenus) kept in Bruton Street, which snatched the wig from the head of a bishop and put it on his own.”

1827: Sir Stamford Raffles died not long after the Society was founded. His Sumatran collection was presented to the Society.

1828: the first sheet of “Occurrences” was recorded. This daily journal was kept until at least 1901, the date of publication of the record of progress. On 25 February 1828:

Menagerie. Received 11 wild ducks, from the lake, caught for the purpose of pinioning and then to be returned. [This lake was the pond in Regent’s Park that for some time was in the occupation of the Society.]
Received 6 silver-haired rabbits from Mr. Blake.
Otter died in consequence of a diseased tail.
Emu laid her fourth egg on 24th.
All animals and birds well.

Works. Pit for bear, house for llamas in progress.
Boundary wall for supporting the bank next the bears’ pit begun.

Servants. All on duty.
No. of Visitors. — Four.
Particular Visitor. Lord Auckland [Governor-General of India, 1836–1842].

Llama House & Macaw Cage at the Zoological Society Gardens 1831 The large bell discernible attached to the side of the building was rung to indicate closing time until recently. Image retrieved from the British Library.

In 1828 the gardens had 450 specimens of mammals, arranged into five groups, which seems to be loosely based the system of classification of the naturalist Carl Linnaeus, whose arrangement of mammals was based upon the number, situation, and structure of their teeth. Linnaeus’s system had eight orders and genera.

In 1829 the Society was granted a Charter by King George IV and negotiations were completed for the occupation of a farm of about thirty-three acres, in a “beautiful situation just under the wall of Richmond Park.” A tunnel was built to connect the two gardens.

In 1830 King William IV became patron of the Society and presented to it all the animals belonging to the Royal Menagerie in Windsor Park, including 18 kangaroos and 11 emus.

In the North Garden houses and sheds were built for deer, antelopes, zebras, ostriches, kangaroos, and swine. In the South Garden a pit with a pond was provided for the polar bear, and a den and pond were made for seals.

The Society was able to offer some duplicate animals to a newly formed
Society in Dublin and to the Royal Menagerie in Paris.

Zoological Society of London: two emus. Coloured etching by W. Panormo after W. Berthoud.- Wellcome Collection CC-BY-4.0 retrieved from Wikimedia Commons

 

In 1831 the King presented to the Society the collection of animals in the Tower, expressing a wish that such as were not required for the Regent’s Park Collection should be sent to the Zoological Society of Dublin. Armadillos were bred in the Gardens, and “hopes were entertained of this animal, so valuable as an article of food, “becoming naturalised in this country.”

At the Gardens the chief works carried out were the elephant paddock and pond.

In 1832 25 mammals and 26 birds, new to the collection, were exhibited. The breeding program was successful.

In 1833 John Gould (1804 – 1881), the noted ornithologist and bird artist, was appointed Superintendent of the ornithological department of the Museum. In 1824 Gould had set himself up in business in London as a taxidermist, and his skill had helped him to become the first curator and preserver at the museum of the Zoological Society of
London in 1827. Between 1830 and 1832 Gould published in stages A Century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains based on a collection of birds given to the Zoological Society.

A Medical Superintendent was appointed to visit the Gardens regularly and record the diseases of the animals and the remedies employed.

In 1834 the Society acquired 10 acres on the south-west of the gardens. New animals were exhibited in 1834 including an Indian rhinoceros, bought for £1,050.

Monkey House 1835 image retrieved from Wikimedia Commons

In 1835 a house was built for elephants and rhinoceroses. His Majesty the King presented to the Society a fine young Indian elephant, and the specimen until then living in the Gardens was sent to the Dublin Zoological Society. A chimpanzee (Anthropopithecus niger) and ten other species of Mammals and ten of birds, were exhibited for the
first time.

In 1836 four giraffes joined the gardens. In 1837 Her Majesty Queen Victoria became patroness of the Society. Charles Darwin became a Fellow of the Society, presenting his mammal and bird specimens collected during the second voyage of HMS Beagle. They were examined by John Gould who classified them as new and separate species, this work an important step in the development of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.

Zoological Society of London: three giraffes surrounded by men in arabic costume. Coloured lithograph by George Scharf 1836 – Wellcome Collection CC-BY-4.0 retrieved from Wikimedia Commons

In 1839 a Monkey House was built. Admissions to the gardens were 158,432; this was the lowest annual visitation in more than ten years – annual admissions figures during the 1830s had been as high as 263,392 in 1836. Although the paying public were not admitted until 1847 Fellows of the Society and their guests could visit. From 1828 “strangers [could] be admitted to the Gardens by the written order of a Fellow on payment of 1s. each ; the holder of a ticket to be allowed to introduce any number of companions at 1s. each.”

It seems very likely that when Philip Chauncy visited the zoo in June 1839 he would have seen some Australian animals including kangaroos and emus among the many animals on display there.

The London Zoo is in the north west of the map marked with a black x, the entrance is just over 2 1/2 miles north of Charing Cross. The Zoological Society’s offices and museum were in Bruton Street, Mayfair, not far from St George’s Church Hanover Square. These are also marked with a black x to the south of the zoo.

Source

• Zoological Society of London and Sclater, Philip Lutley, 1829-1913 A record of the progress of the Zoological society of London during the nineteenth century. London Printed by William Clowes and sons, limited, 1901. Pages 147 – 163. Retrieved through archive.org.

Y is for YouTube

A fascinating video tour of London, which includes footage taken towards the end of the nineteenth century, is available on YouTube, at:

 

The early material is by an English inventor named Wordsworth Donisthorpe (1847 – 1914) and his cousin William Crofts (1846 – 1894), who in 1889 patented a moving film camera and projector, which they called the Kinesigraph.

The following year Donisthorpe and Crofts used their Kinesigraph to take a moving picture of Trafalgar Square. Ten frames survive, of the fountains and the National Gallery.

Ten frames of Trafalgar Square shot by Wordsworth Donisthorpe in 1890. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons

These frames have been included in the YouTube video with other early films of London between 1890 and 1920, juxtaposed with shots taken from the same location in 2015. Maps show where the cameras were positioned.

Some stills from the video:

 

X marks the spot at Charing Cross

Many years ago we had a short holiday in Perth, Western Australia.  An activity arranged by the city tourist authority for bored and fractious or, possibly, clever and inquisitive, children  was a follow-the-clues hunt that led, one after the other, to the city’s major attractions. We took part with our children and got acquainted with the geography of the inner city by solving the puzzles. The final destination turned out to be Point Zero, the cadastral centre of the city.

Ballarat, where we live now, also has a Point Zero, from which all references to the geographical entity of the city are ultimately referable. Perth’s Point Zero was a brass plaque; Ballarat’s, in its main street, is a mile-post marking 0 miles to Ballarat.

London’s Point Zero is at Charing Cross, represented by a plaque in the footpath a few feet behind an equestrian statue of King Charles I, on a traffic island just south of Trafalgar Square. It is inscribed:

“On the site now occupied by the statue of King Charles was erected the original Queen Eleanor’s Cross, a replica of which stands in front of Charing Cross station. Mileages from London are measured from the site of the original cross.”

View in 1828 from the top of Whitehall, looking west towards Cockspur Street and what is now Canada House on the west side of Trafalgar Square in London. In the foreground is the Equestrian statue of Charles I by Hubert Le Sueur installed in 1675. From page 199 of Metropolitan Improvements; or London in the Nineteenth Century, by James Elmes. Original held and digitised by the British Library; image retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

The notion of the defined central point of a city is fairly recent, and it was not until the 19th century that the statue of King Charles at Charing Cross began to be treated as the centre of London, the agreed point from which all distances from the city were to be measured.

The original Charing Cross was one of twelve medieval Eleanor crosses that stood at the heart of the hamlet of Charing, Westminster, from the 1290s. The Eleanor crosses were a series of twelve tall and lavishly decorated stone monuments topped with crosses erected in the east of England by King Edward I between 1291 and about 1295 in memory of his wife Eleanor of Castile, who died in November 1290. The crosses marked the nightly resting-places along the route taken when her body was transported to London. Eleanor’s bier spent the final night of its journey, 16 December 1290, in the Royal Mews at Charing, Westminster, a few hundred yards north of Westminster Abbey. The cross erected at Charing was the most expensive of the twelve, built of Purbeck marble.

Old Charing Cross, probably a not very accurate depiction as the picture was made well after its destruction. Image from Old and New London; illustrated. A narrative of its history, its people, and its places [vol. 3 Westminster and the western suburbs by E. Walford] page 124 retrieved from archive.org

Charing Cross was destroyed by order of Parliament in 1647, under “An Ordinance for the utter demolishing, removing and taking away of all Monuments of Superstition or Idolatry,” which had been passed four years previously (early in the period of the First English Civil War). In 1675 the present bronze statue of Charles I was erected on the site of the Eleanor Cross, fifteen years after the restoration of the monarchy.

Geographers distinguish between the centroid of an area and its stipulated centre. The centroid is the mathematical centre, the point at which it would balance on a pin. The centre, of course, is more or less arbitrarily assigned. Interestingly, in 2014 the geographic centroid of London was calculated by Army cartographers to be 51°30’37.6”N
0°06’56.3”W, about 900 metres east of the Charing Cross marker. Despite several hundred years of expansion and a population increase from 250,000 to more than 8 million, the centre of the city of London has stayed close to its centroid.

Point zero in London is beside the Equestrian Statue of Charles I in Trafalgar Square. This is the location of the original Charing Cross. Charing Cross station is nearby. The geographic centroid of London is about 900 metres away on the Victoria Embankment in front of King’s College London.

Sources and further reading

• Perth (W.A. : Municipality). Council The secret of Point Zero : a guide for adults and children to a walk between the Perth Cultural Centre and the Swan River. City of Perth, [Perth, W.A.], 2000.
• Horne, Mike. “London Milestones and Mileposts.” , Metadyne (Mike Horne, Writer and Researcher), 17 Aug. 2019, www.metadyne.co.uk/n-milestones.html.
• ‘The statue of Charles I and site of the Charing Cross’, in Survey of London: Volume 16, St Martin-in-The-Fields I: Charing Cross, ed. G H Gater and E P Wheeler (London, 1935), pp. 258-268. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol16/pt1/pp258-268.
• ‘August 1643: An Ordinance for the utter demolishing, removing and taking away of all Monuments of Superstition or Idolatry.’, in Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642-1660, ed. C H Firth and R S Rait (London, 1911), pp. 265-266. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/acts-ordinances-interregnum/pp265-266.
• Prynn, Jonathan. “London’s Real Centre Point Is next to Bench on the Victoria Embankment.” Evening Standard, London Evening Standard, 16 May 2014, www.standard.co.uk/news/london/londons-real-centre-point-is-next-to-bench-on-the-victoria-embankment-by-the-thames-9381800.html.

W is for Whitehall

In my 2020 A to Z blog challenge each letter links a bit of my family history to a London place-name. The connection is sometimes rather tenuous, so I’m pleased to say that I’ve got a fairly direct link to a well-known ‘W’: Whitehall, the district of the City of London that comprises the administrative centre of the government of the United Kingdom.

The Old Palace of Whitehall by Hendrick Danckerts, c. 1675. The view is from the west, in St. James’s Park. The Horse Guards barracks are on the extreme left, with the taller Banqueting House behind it.  Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

 

On 18 December 1768 my fifth great grandfather Edmund Dana (1739 – 1823) was ordained first as a deacon then, a few months later, as a priest of the Church of England at the Chapel Royal of the Palace of Whitehall.

 

The Reverend Edmund Dana (1739-1823), a miniature in the possession of my father.

The function of the Chapel Royal was (and is) to serve ‘the spiritual needs’ of the reigning monarch and the Royal Family. In practice this meant conducting private religious services for the sovereign. Attached to the Chapel Royal was a choir; the liturgy was often choral.

Administrative structures have a momentum of their own, and by Edmund Dana’s time the Chapel Royal’s role had expanded to include ordinations of well-connected candidates for ecclesiastical office.

It seems likely that self-interest and the ambitions of his wife’s family rather than a sudden rush of religious fervour brought about Edmund Dana’s interest in the Church. He had commenced studying medicine, but when in Edinburgh in 1765 he married Helen Kinnaird, her family, specifically her maternal uncle William [Johnstone] Pulteney
(1729 – 1805), sponsored Edmund Dana’s change of career and supplemented the Dana family income to ease the transition. (His qualification for the role was an MA from Harvard College. It seems likely he received training for the Church of England in London.) Three days after his ordination Edmund Dana was appointed as vicar of Stanion Chapel, at Brigstock in Northamptonshire.

This painting by an unknown artist records the magnificent flotilla of barges that sailed to Westminster to commemorate Sir Henry Tulse being sworn in as Lord Mayor of London on 29 October 1683. In the background is the sprawling palace of Whitehall. The Palace of Westminster is on the left  and the roof of the Banqueting House can be seen on the right. Retrieved from The Royal Collection Trust.

 

Following a fire in 1698 which destroyed most of Whitehall Palace, Sir Christopher Wren was instructed to fit out the Banqueting House, the only part of the Palace that survived the fire, as a Chapel Royal to replace the ruined Tudor chapel. It remained in use as a chapel until 1890.

“Whitehall-Chapel” in Pyne, W. H. ; Combe, William; Ackermann, Rudolph; Rowlandson, Thomas; Pugin, Augustus, The Microcosm of London or London in Miniature, Volume III, London: Methuen and Company, (1904) [1810] . Pages 237 – 239 including Plate 95

The Banqueting House, marked with a black x, was the only part of the Palace of Whitehall that survived the 1698 fire. It is 1/3 of a mile north of the Palace of Westminster.

Sources

• Details of Edmund Dana’s ordination and career in the Church of England are provided by The Clergy Database at jsp/ persons/10426
• ‘Whitehall Palace: Buildings’, in Survey of London: Volume 13, St Margaret, Westminster, Part II: Whitehall I, ed. Montagu H Cox and Philip Norman (London, 1930), pp. 41-115. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol13/pt2/pp41-115

Related posts

• S is for Shrewsbury
• 52 ancestors: Whitehall June 15 1727

V is for Victory

In Australia today is ANZAC Day, the anniversary of the first large (and pointless and losing) military action by Australian and New Zealand soldiers (the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps), their landing at Gallipoli on April 25, 1915.

11 November 1918, when WWI came to a halt, was called Armistice Day. It was a truce, not a victory. Armistice Day is set aside as a day to remember all the men and women who served in Australia’s armed forces.

When WWII in Europe ended with the surrender of Germany on 8 May 1945, the day was known (on the Allied side) as V-E (Victory in Europe) day. In London there was great celebration.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill waves to crowds in Whitehall on the day he broadcast to the nation that the war with Germany had been won, 8 May 1945. Imperial War Museum photograph H 41849 retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

British Movietone News Film of VE Day in London 1945:

V E Day began with Mr Churchill’s broadcast officially announcing the end of war in Europe. Londoners took to the streets in celebrations which continued for nearly two days. Outside Buckingham Palace the crowds chanted ‘we want the King’ and were rewarded by the Royal Family appearing on the balcony. At nine o’clock in the evening the King broadcast to Britain and the Commonwealth.

Plans for V-E day had been announced in Australian newspapers on 2 May, a week before.

The war was not finished for Australians, however. The Japanese had not yet surrendered and Australia and its allies were still fighting in the Pacific. The Adelaide News noted that “the Allied victory in Europe, V-E Day, was [celebrated] in Adelaide in an atmosphere of sober satisfaction and thanksgiving rather than one of wild rejoicing.”
(News (Adelaide), 8 May, p. 3.)

The front page of the Adelaide News on 9 May did not report local V-E celebrations. It gave prominence instead to an article announcing that King George VI had pledged Britain would use all her resources in the war against Japan.

It was more than three months before Japan surrendered, on 15 August 1945 August, finally ending WWII for Australia. This day was celebrated as V-J (Victory over Japan) Day.

WORLD REJOICES AT VICTORY (1945, August 17). The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA), p. 1. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article43506752

“The Fallen of World War II” is an animated documentary about war and peace that looks at data on the human cost of the wars in the twentieth century and how these compare to wars in the distant past and more recently.

 

I hope we never forget the suffering and misery of war and the unspeakable wickedness and stupidity of people who let it happen.

U is for unknown fate of Gerald Mainwaring

In 1879, Gerald Mainwaring, my first cousin four times removed, just 24 years old, was tried and found guilty of murder. The case, widely reported, caused a sensation.

From the mid-1870s Mainwaring had lived in Canada, farming in Manitoba. In April 1879 he returned to England to attend the wedding of his sister Julia.  A few months later, due to return to Canada, he went on a spree in Derby.  He got drunk, and driving a trap with a ‘female companion’ too fast through the town, was pulled over by the police. When they began a search of his lady friend, Mainwaring fired several shots from a revolver, wounding two policemen, one fatally.

Found guilty of murder, he was sentenced to hang. It transpired, however, that the jury, unable to agree, had drawn a ballot to decide Mainwaring’s fate. There was an appeal to the Home Secretary and his sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life.

Report in The Times 19 July 1879 page 11: Gerald Mainwaring being committed to trial for murder

New York Times 19 Aug 1879

House of Commons Aug 11 The Times 12 August 1879 page 6

Report in the Sheffield Daily Telegraph 14 August 1879 page 7 that Gerald Mainwaring’s death sentence had been commuted to life imprisonment

A Calendar Of Prisoners Tried At The Derby Assizes: Gerald Mainwaring. Series HO140 Piece number 45. Retrieved through FindMyPast.

On 11 September 1879 Mainwaring was transferred from Derby to Pentonville Prison. In December 1880, after a brief stay in Millbank Prison, he was moved again, and on the 1881 and 1891 censuses he was recorded as a prisoner at Her Majesty’s Prison at Chatham, Kent. In 1891 he was moved to Portland Prison on the Isle of Portland, Dorset.

Pentonville Prison Register record for Gerald Mainwaring Occupation None Court Derby Assizes Series PCOM2 Source Pentonville Prison, Middlesex: Register Of Prisoners Piece number 77 Page number 660. Retrieved through FindMyPast.

Chatham Prison, Kent: Register Of Prisoners record for Gerald Mainwaring Occupation None Age 23 Court Derby Assizes Series PCOM2 Source Chatham Prison, Kent: Register Of Prisoners Piece number 4 Page number 312. Retrieved from FindMyPast.

On 16 May 1894 Gerald was discharged from Portland Prison. The Habitual Criminal Register of 1894 describes him as of fair complexion, with brown hair, grey eyes, 5 foot 7¼ inches tall. He had a large cut to the back of his head, a cut on his second right finger, a tattoo mark outside wrist and stab ribs, dot inside left forearm, anchor outside wrist and two moles near armpit. His destination on discharge was London.

Habitual Criminals Register 1894 description of Gerald Mainwaring Series MEPO6 Piece number 6 Retrieved from FindMyPast

I can find no record of Gerald Mainwaring on the 1901 census nor in death records of the period, and there no newspaper mention of him. I have been unable to find a shipping record with his name. A family history compiled in the 1930s asserts that he died in America, but it does not specify the place and date of death.

Since I last wrote about Gerald, in 2013, my father’s cousin, Christine Cavenagh-Mainwaring, has published a history of Whitmore Hall and the Cavenagh-Mainwaring family. She writes that Gerald was released after 15 years in prison on licence after innumerable pleas for clemency from his family. A family story has it that Gerald made his way to his old home at the Whitmore Rectory. His brother Percy, then Rector of Whitmore, would not let him in the house and sent him away with 5 pounds and an overcoat for the cold weather.

Christine Cavenagh-Mainwaring also wrote that some Mainwaring family relations were entertaining the former governor of the Portland prison for tea. One of the women “was holding forth about the Mainwaring family with its rather illustrious pedigree and its royal connections, when the governor suddenly said, ‘Mainwaring … why I had a Gerald Mainwaring as one of my prisoners.’ ” There was some consternation and embarrassment. “The governor, realising the effect that his remark had made on the
party, patted Mrs Colhoun on the arm and said, ‘Don’t worry my dear, he was one of the most charming men that I have ever had the privilege to meet.’ ”

The prisons

Pentonville Prison was built between 1840 and 1842 to house convicts sentenced to imprisonment or awaiting transportation. When Gerald Mainwaring was incarcerated there Pentonville was a place for all male convicts to serve their probationary term of nine months, after which they would be sent to a public works prison. In the late 1870s
Pentonville held about 1,000 prisoners.

Millbank, in Pimlico, was opened in 1816. It was the first modern prison in London. In the late 1870s Millbank, like Pentonville also had a daily confined rate of just over 1,000 convicts. Millbank was demolished in the late nineteenth century. Among new buildings erected on the site was the National Gallery of British Art, now Tate Britain, which opened in 1897.

Chatham Prison, which opened in 1856, stood on St Mary’s Island near the Chatham Dockyards.  In 1880, it was selected for the receipt of “star class” convicts: men with no previous convictions and kept separate from other classes of prisoners were sent there for public works. It closed in 1892.

Interior of Chatham Prison 1861 from the Illustrated London News 9 March 1861 page 218 retrieved from FindMyPast

Prisoners at Chatham prison were used to build the extension to the Royal Navy Dockyard at Chatham. From the Illustrated London News 9 March 1861 page 219 retrieved from FindMyPast

Portland Prison in Dorset, 140 miles south-west of London, was a male convict public works prison, receiving prisoners who had already undergone periods of separate confinement at Millbank, Pentonville and specially contracted local prisons. It opened in 1848 and is still in operation today. In the early 1890s the daily confined rate was just over 1,000 convicts.

The prisons Gerald Mainwaring was incarcerated in near London are shown with black xs. Pentonville is to the north of the city, Millbank to the south and Chatham is far to the east of London.

Sources

• Prison and criminal records from FindMyPast
• Cavenagh-Mainwaring, Christine Whitmore Hall : from 1066 to Waltzing Matilda. Adelaide Peacock Publications, 2013. Pages 208-9.
• prisonhistory.org
  • Pentonville
  • Millbank
  • Chatham
  • Portland

Related post

• Gerald Mainwaring (1854 – ? )

 

T is for Tower Hamlets

Greg’s great great grandfather John Plowright (1831 – 1910) was a seaman from King’s Lynn, Norfolk. On admission to Maryborough Hospital in Victoria in 1873 for an ear injury he stated that he had arrived in the colony on the “Speculation” from London about 1853 and that his occupation was mariner. He wasn’t listed as a deserter; perhaps he left the ship legally. His statement is anyway at least partly corroborated by the facts: in 1853 the “Speculation” had indeed sailed from London on 19 May, arriving in Victoria on 21 September.

John Plowright’s merchant seaman record from 1848. These records were created to monitor a potential reserve of sailors for the Royal Navy. Retrieved from FindMyPast

 

Two years before the “Speculation” sailed from London, in 1851, John Plowright was recorded as a twenty-year-old seaman living in a boarding house at 7 & 8 Albert St, Tower Hamlets, in the parish of St Pauls Shadwell. At the same address were nine other seamen from King’s Lynn. There was also a seaman from Wells, one from Bristol, one from Dublin, and one from London. The boarding-house keeper, named Thomas Ward, was from Southery and his wife Ann from Stoke Ferry, villages ten miles south of King’s Lynn. There was one live-in female servant from Cork.

1851 English census record for 7 & 8 Albert Street Civil parish St Paul Shadwell County Middlesex: Name of head: Thomas Ward Age 58 Estimated Birth Year 1793 Spouse’s Name Ann Ward Gender Male Where born Southery, Norfolk Retrieved from ancestry.com Census returns for England 1851: Class: HO107; Piece: 1550; Folio: 250; Page: 37; GSU roll: 174780

1851 English census record for 7 & 8 Albert Street continued. John Plowright is the fourth person listed. Name John Plowright Age 20 Estimated Birth Year 1831 Relation Boarder Gender Male Where born Lynn, Norfolk, England Retrieved from ancestry.com 1851 England Census Class: HO107; Piece: 1550; Folio: 251; Page: 38; GSU roll: 174780

Albert Street was 1½ miles north of the Thames docks. From 1846 the area was becoming more and more urbanised. Included in the development were cottages, flats and lodging houses built by the Metropolitan Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Industrious Classes. This was a privately-run for-profit society founded in 1842 with the aim of providing affordable housing for the working classes. The buildings in Albert Street, Mile End New Town were exhibited for the 1851 Great Exhibition. (Example model dwellings were built next to the Crystal Palace and plans and publications displayed inside).

In  the twentieth century Albert Street was renamed Deal Street. Some of the buildings survive, but with streets renamed and buildings renumbered I am not sure where the boarding house at 7-8 Albert Street was and if it is still standing. I am also not sure if John Plowright was living in one of these new buildings or in an older building; on the north side of Pleasant Row there were buildings which had been developed in the latter half of the eighteenth century.

 

Albert Street now Deal Street April 2019 Google Street View

Albert Street is not yet shown on this 1851 Cross’s London Guide retrieved from http://london1851.com/cross14b.htm

The location of Albert Street in 1868. Detail from Map Of London 1868, By Edward Weller, F.R.G.S. Revised And Corrected To The Present Time By John Dower, F.R.G.S. retrieved through http://london1868.com/weller33b.htm

Deal Street, formerly Albert Street, from Google Maps in April 2020. Businesses and community facilities in the area temporarily closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

I have yet to follow up if any others of the seamen living at 7 – 8 Albert Street in 1851 also came to Australia. I don’t know if John Plowright kept in contact with them.

Deal Street, formerly Albert Street, is marked with a black x. It is north of St Katherine’s Docks

Sources

• 1851 English census retrieved from ancestry.com
• ‘Mile End New Town’, in Survey of London: Volume 27, Spitalfields and Mile End New Town, ed. F H W Sheppard (London, 1957), pp. 265-288. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol27/pp265-288 [accessed 22 April 2020].
• Leckie, Barbara. “Prince Albert’s Exhibition Model Dwellings.” BRANCH: Britain, Representation and Nineteenth-Century History. Ed. Dino Franco Felluga. Extension of Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net. http://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=barbara-leckie-prince-alberts-exhibition-model-dwellings [accessed 22 April 2020].

Related posts

• K is for Kings Lynn
• John Plowright (1831 – 1910)

S is for St George’s Hanover Square

From 1600 to 1700 London’s population trebled, from 200,000 to 585,000, outstripping the supply of what was then almost universally held to be an essential element of the city’s infrastructure, enough churches to accommodate worshippers and would-be worshippers, in particular, those of the Established Church of England.

Population estimate of Inner London (Former London County). Figures from http://demographia.com/dm-lon31.htm which in turn obtained pre-1801 data from The London Encyclopedia, Edited by Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert

Early in the next century, in March 1711, the House of Commons considered a report on the estimated population of the London suburbs and the churches available for worship. In the most populous parishes, there was a total of just forty-six churches and chapels for a population of over half a million. It was estimated that only one person in three could find a place in the pews of the Church of England.

On 1 May 1711 the House of Commons resolved “That a Supply be granted to her Majesty for the Build of fifty new Churches, and for purchasing Sites of Churches and Church-Yards, or Burial-Places, and also Houses for the Habitations of the Ministers of the said Churches, in or about the Cities of London and Westminster, or the Suburbs thereof, and for making such Chapels as are already built and capable thereof, Parish-Churches; and also for finishing the Repairs of the Collegiate-Church of St. Peter’s Westminster, and the Chapels of the same.” This was followed up by legislation in 1712 “An Act for granting to her Majesty several Duties upon Coals, for building fifty new Churches, &c.” A Commission was established to oversee the building of the churches.

Building fifty new churches would ease the pressure for places where members of the Church of England could gather to worship and, it was hoped, potential Dissenters would have a reduced incentive to separate from the Established Church. (My Plaisted forebears became Dissenters about this time.)

The Commission did not achieve its target. Only twelve new churches were built, and just five existing churches were rebuilt.

One of the new churches was St George’s Hanover Square. The architect was John James, a pupil of Sir Christopher Wren. James’s neoclassical design, with a portico of six Corinthian columns, set a new trend in English church architecture.

“St George’s Hanover Square,” aquatint, by T. Malton. Dated 1787. From the collection of the British Library retrieved through Wikimedia Commons.

 

Its location in Mayfair made St George’s Hanover Square the venue for many fashionable weddings. The first entry in the Marriage Register is dated April 30th, 1725. The most weddings in a single year was 1063, in 1816.

On 20 March 1813 my 4th great grandparents Charles Fox Champion Crespigny and Eliza Julia Trent married at St George’s Hanover Square. Charles Fox was twenty-seven. Eliza was a minor of sixteen, and her mother’s consent had to be provided. Charles’s half-brother Philip C Crespigny and Eliza’s brother John Trent were witnesses.

Bishop’s transcript of the marriage of Charles Fox Champion Crespigny and Eliza Julia Trent 20 March 1813 at St George’s Hanover Square. Image retrieved from ancestry.com London, England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754-1932

Crespigny Trent marriage announcement in The Suffolk Chronicle; or Weekly General Advertiser & County Express. 8 May 1813 page 4. Retrieved from FindMyPast.

 

In 1813 weddings were not reported in the newspapers. However, in 1903 when Valerie Champion de Crespigny married Captain John Smiley at St George’s Hanover Square, her dress and the dresses of her six bridesmaids were described in detail.

The 26 November 1903 wedding of Captain John Smiley and Valerie Champion de Crespigny from The Queen 5 December 1903 page 58 retrieved from FindMyPast

 

In 1917 when Rose Champion de Crespigny née Gordon, a widow, remarried at St George’s Hanover Square, her photo appeared in The Tatler and a wedding photo appeared in a newspaper.

Rose Champion de Crespigny marries William Morrice. Newspaper clipping was being sold on EBay 2020, no other details available.

Ms William Morrice from The Tatler 21 November 1917 retrieved from FindMyPast

 

The composer George Handel (1685 – 1759) was a parishioner of St George’s from the time it was first built. He was consulted on the organ installation.

It is said that St George’s has changed little since it was first built and that “a parishioner from two centuries ago, if he could return today, would not find much to startle or dismay him.”

St George’s Hanover Square Church is shown with a black cross to the west of the City of London

Sources

• Church website at https://www.stgeorgeshanoversquare.org/
  • https://www.stgeorgeshanoversquare.org/historical-weddings.aspx
  • https://www.stgeorgeshanoversquare.org/history.html
  • https://www.stgeorgeshanoversquare.org/history/the-exterior.html
  • https://www.stgeorgeshanoversquare.org/history/handel-and-st-george.html
• “Introduction.” The Commissions for Building Fifty New Churches: The Minute Books, 1711-27, A Calendar. Ed. M H Port. London: London Record Society, 1986. ix-xxxiii. British History Online. Web. 21 April 2020. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/london-record-soc/vol23/ix-xxxiii.
• White, Jerry London in the eighteenth century : a great and monstrous thing. London Vintage Books, 2013. Page 19.

R is for refugees

Eight of my eighth great grandparents were Huguenots, French Calvinists, members of the Reformed Church of France.

(This is about 1.5% of my 8th great grandparents; everyone has up to 512 ancestors at this level of their family tree).

Marie, Comtesse de Vierville (1628–1708), wife of Claudius Champion de Crespigny, one of my 8th great grandmothers. Portrait hanging in Kelmarsh Hall, image retrieved through artuk.org

All four grandparents and seven of the eight great grandparents of Philip Champion de Crespigny were Huguenot refugees. Philip was my 5th great grandfather. His Huguenot forebears are highlighted in purple on this fan chart. His great grandparents are some of my 8th great grandparents.

 

From 1598 the Edict of Nantes had granted the Huguenots the right to practice their religion in France without persecution from the state. When in 1685 the Edict of Nantes – the law of toleration toward Protestants – was revoked, my Huguenot forebears abandoned their homes and property and fled to England.

When Louis XIV revoked the Edict he claimed it was no longer needed because there were no Huguenots left in his kingdom and so their special privileges had become unnecessary. He had been persecuting Huguenots for some time, but in 1681 the campaign against them entered a new phase. Louis instituted a policy of ‘Dragonnades‘, meant to intimidate Huguenot families into either leaving France or returning to Catholicism. The policy, in part, instructed officers in charge of travelling troops to select Huguenot households for their billets and to order the soldiers to behave as badly as they could. Soldiers damaged the houses, ruined furniture and personal possessions, and attacked the men and abused the women. Huguenots could escape this persecution only by conversion or by fleeing France.

Protestant engraving representing ‘les dragonnades’ in France under Louis XIV From: Musée internationale de la Réforme protestante, Geneva and retrieved through Wikimedia Commons.

It is estimated that some 50,000 Huguenots fled France to England. Others settled in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Brandenburg-Prussia, Ireland, and America. It was illegal for Protestants to leave France. The borders were guarded, and disguise and other stratagems were employed to get across.

The majority of the refugees established themselves both as members of the French community in England and also as British subjects. There were three stages to the process: reception by a church in England, grant of denization or permanent residence by the British government, and formal naturalisation. Denization and naturalization required an Act of Parliament, and those seeking naturalization had to present a certificate confirming that they had received the sacraments according to the rites of the Church of England.

When they arrived in London, many Huguenot refugees presented their credentials, ‘Témoignages‘, which were documents from a previous congregation witnessing that the holder was a member of the Reformed Religion, Calvinist Protestantism. With this they could be received into a new congregation. The document gave an indication of when the family had arrived and from where.

Noon: Plate II from Four Times of the Day by William Hogarth 1736. The scene takes place in Hog Lane, part of the slum district of St Giles with the church of St Giles in the Fields in the background. The picture shows Huguenots leaving the French Church in what is now Soho. Hogarth contrasts the fussiness and high fashion of the Huguenots with the slovenliness of the group on the other side of the road. The older members of the congregation wear traditional dress, while the younger members wear the fashions of the day. Retrieved from Wikipedia.

The de Crespigny family presented their témoignages credentials at various times. Claude Champion Crespigny (1620-1695) and his wife Marie née de Vierville (1628-1708), my eighth great grandparents, and four of their children: Pierre, Suzanne, Renee and Jeanne, registered their témoignages on 30 June 1687 at the Savoy Church in the West End of London. The two elder daughters Marguerite and Marie were already married and travelled separately. My 7th great grandfather Thomas Champion de Crespigny and his brother Gabriel had been sent separately to England by their parents when they were about 12 years old; Thomas in 1676 and Gabriel in 1678.

from Rocque’s 1746 Map of London showing the French Church, the Savoy Church, marked with an orange arrow

The next step was to obtain denization. A denizen was neither a subject (with nationality) nor an alien, but had a status akin to permanent residency today. A denizen had the important right to hold land.

All eight children of Claude and Marie became denizens of England by an Act of 5 March 1691. Their parents, however – Claude and Marie Champion de Crespigny – did not find it necessary it necessary to take that step.

Gabriel was naturalized on 12 March 1699, but Peter and Thomas waited until 1706. It is clear that this final step was not considered urgent: by 1706 Pierre had been in England for twenty years, Thomas and Gabriel perhaps ten years longer; and both held full commissions in the army. There is no mention of any women of the family being naturalised.

When Huguenot refugees first arrived in England they relied on private charity, but in 1689 the joint monarchs William and Mary inaugurated the Royal Bounty with funds from the Civil List – money allocated by Parliament for personal expenses of the royal family. The Bounty was later maintained by Acts of Parliament. During the reign of Queen Anne from 1702 to 1714 the program was known as the Queen’s Bounty. The list of recipients is held in the library at Lambeth Palace, and an extract copy was provided to our cousin Stephen Champion de Crespigny in 1986. In 1707 Marie and Renée – with the surname Champion de Crespigny – were living at 37 Wardour Street, Soho, and the amount of the pension was £18.

Claude and Marie died in London, Claude in 1695 and Marie in 1708. They are buried at Marylebone. Their gravestone indicates that they were refugees from France. Many other members of the family were buried at Marylebone in the family vault. The vault as not survived, but a copy of the headstone is in a garden of remembrance near the site of the old church.

In May 2019 I visited Claude and Marie’s gravestone in the Garden of Rest, Marylebone.

from Rocque’s 1746 map of London. The orange arrow shows the Savoy Church. In the north west the pink arrow shows the church of St Mary le bone. The green arrow shows Wardour Street, the home of Marie and her daughter Renee and also Marie’s son Pierre. The blue arrow to the east shows Doctor’s Commons near St Paul’s Cathedral. John Rocque’s 1746 map of London can be explored at https://www.locatinglondon.org

Sources

• Minet, William, and Susan Minet, Livre des conversions et reconnaisances faites à l’église françoise de la Savoye 1684-1702, transcribed and edited, Huguenot Society of London Publications XXII, 1914 [archive.org]
• Shaw, William A, Letters of Denization and Acts of Naturalization for Aliens in England and Ireland 1603-1700, Huguenot Society of London Publications XVIII, 1911 [archive.org]
• Shaw, William A, Letters of Denization and Acts of Naturalization for Aliens in England and Ireland 1701-1800, Huguenot Society of London Publications XXVII, 1923 [archive.org]
• de Crespigny, Rafe Champions from Normandy : an essay on the early history of the Champion de Crespigny family 1350-1800 AD. Lilli Pilli, New South Wales Richard Rafe Champion de Crespigny, 2017. Can be viewed at Champions from Normandy

Related posts

• F is for fleeing from France
• Z is for Zacharie
• Gabriel Crespigny and Thomas Caulfeild
• M is for Marylebone
• N is for new churches by Wren

Q is for Queen

Changing the guard at Buckingham Palace. Photo by CEphoto, Uwe Aranas and retrieved from Wikimedia Commons

Many of the books I read as a girl were set in London. One of the earliest, a children’s book of verse by A.A. Milne called ‘When We Were Very Young‘, had ‘Buckingham Palace’, which begins:

They’re changing guard at Buckingham Palace –
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
Alice is marrying one of the guard.
“A soldier’s life is terrible hard,”
Says Alice.

Milne published this in 1924, when George V was King. The video below has changed ‘King’ to ‘Queen’.

Buckingham Palace is marked with an x