Essex Society for Family History
RECENT MEETINGS AT SOUTHEND
June 2008 - Ninety came to the June meeting where our guest was the ever popular Jeanne Bunting, with her talk “Where There’s a Will – You’re Away.”
Jeanne began by reminding everyone present of the importance of making a will and then asked just how many of us have bothered. The majority raised their hands, which I think, impressed Jeanne, who herself has “made arrangements.” Imagine the complications of trying to sort through the personal effects of someone with a fairly large family who dies intestate.
Everyone wants their slice of the cake, but it then becomes a shouting match as to who gets what. The only one who walks away smiling is the lawyer. Wills are indispensable to family historians and can often lead to a whole new line of research.
For Jeanne, it was discovering that her Atterleys (Jeanne’s former surname), who had settled in the East End, had links with a family called Martin from Cornwall. That research has proved extremely rewarding.
Do not dismiss that ancestor because they were an ag. lab. A will may exist. If it does, the information it contains will probably be very basic. But what it says could be so important. Even tramps left wills.
May 2008
- The May meeting “Granny’s Attic” was another open house where several of our
members spoke about their own research.
There were some really fascinating stories, which showed that family history is
about people and not about gathering thousands of names, most of whom have no
identity.
April 2008 - Just under a hundred came to the April meeting to hear our speaker, Ann Hardy. The title of her talk was For richer or poorer.
We are all familiar with these words, which of course are part of the wedding vows. Ann delved into some of the rituals and customs that are associated with this ancient ceremony. Let us take the wedding back to medieval times, to Lancelot and Guinevere and men with Royal blood in their veins. These were the aristocracy, society’s runners and riders, and marriage was the ideal because it maintained one’s position. Then came the rich merchants, many of whom married their sons and daughters into the aristocracy.
You should see some of the contracts that were drawn up. We are talking serious money. Girls as young as five (usually heiresses) were often chosen to become brides. They would then marry when they were between 12 and 14. It was a way for two powerful families to increase their wealth and status. The bride and groom were simply the means to achieve this. They rarely married for love. How could they when their future was already arranged?
Fast forward to the late 18th century. The ‘system’ now offered less restrictions and couples were actually free to marry for love. The wearing of the ring represents ‘keeping away the evil eye,’ which strongly suggests pagan origins. It is also another kind of symbol – to show that the bride and groom were ‘off limits.’
Marriage was always very child-centred, much as it is today, but with no birth control; fertile women kept on producing or died young, sons took precedence over daughters and husbands often blamed their wives for failing to produce male offspring. The poet John Milton did so when his wife gave birth to a daughter. We know that many cultures throughout the world still think like this.
The white wedding is a 19th-century invention. Queen Victoria was the first to wear white and the custom has continued ever since. Her dress was of silk. It was made by the Spitalfields weavers who were really suffering at this time. The Illustrated London News for 20th February, 1847, featured distress among Spitalfields weavers and they sent a memorial to Her Majesty imploring some remedial means to render them independent of public charity.
There were couples who never married. “What has religion ever done for us?” was the attitude of most living in London’s East End in the 19th century. And there is some truth in that. The cleric, William Walsham How, remarked that East Enders thought of religion as “belonging to a wholly different class from themselves,” associated “with a prosperity they envy and a luxury which they resent.” But many still had their kids baptised and in the normal way with the father’s surname.
Some of us will have ancestors who were bigamists. It happened a lot during Victoria’s reign, especially in London, where it was easy to live the double life. But how do we find out who was and who was not? Usually by accident: Avoid London and all major cities if you can and you will probably only end up with cousins marrying cousins. Bigamy was not something one got up to in the countryside. Well, not quite so much.
DECEMBER 2007 – "Seeing it through their songs". Michael Gandy was looking at the world of music hall and the ones who were its greatest fans.
Music hall was entertainment for the working classes. A rich gumbo of singers, conjurers, strong men, acrobats, illusionists, monologue reciters, the good, the bad, the ugly – just about every act imaginable was treading the boards. And London was the centre of all this; where many a young fledging expected to find fame and fortune and become perhaps another Dan Leno or a Marie Lloyd.
Michael sang songs from the 1890s through to World War One and in between touched on the lives of those who went to see the various acts. For the average Londoner life was tough during this time, but one would not know this from reading the lyrics of many popular pieces. Songs about falling in love, getting married, stealing another man’s wife, laughing at other people’s problems and misfortunes. This was what audiences craved (one could say demanded). “Don’t give us none of that doom and gloom stuff, Mate!” Among the most popular entertainers were Albert Chevalier, Harry Champion, Florrie Forde, Harry Lauder and Vesta Tilley. They all had successful recording careers. But there was no secret formula. They just knew what their audiences wanted. Michael with his usual machine-gun style delivery was brilliant.
Martin Haydn Roberts
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