My rules

1. You really can have what you want, it just takes some creative thinking
2. Never walk past a skip without looking in
3. Recycle, freecycle
4. Set yourself a challenge. For example say you're going to turn £10 into £1000 in 3 months and give it a go.
5. Take a risk. Aways ask yourself "what's the worst thing that could happen?"
6. Sell your grandmother if she's available (and valuable)
7. Remember karma and never rip anybody off

Sarah Haddock: a fishy tale indeed...

A name picked almost at random. I did have an aunt whose maiden name was Haddock and it always made me laugh.
Sarah Haddock was born in Lambeth around 1850. In 1911 she's living at 36 Maxted Road East Dulwich aged 61 with two grown up daughters Lottie and Rose. Lottie is a shirt ironer and Rose is a cashier in a restaurant. Sarah has six living children and has been married for 34 years - her husband is not in or not around.
In the 1890s they were living in Edmonton (north of the river!!) in Palmers Green Road. Her husband John was born there so she must have gone north for him. First child in Lambeth, second one in Walworth third in Southgate. In 1891 John Haddock is a general labourer.
In 1881 they're at 6 William Place Walworth. That's just off the north end of Walworth Road, by Prospect Place. John works as a carman and they've two toddlers, Sarah and John junior.

Mary Box

Mary Box is a distant ancestor of mine, a good place to begin. I like her name and its basic nature: Mary is a good solid name and Box is a solid object. I know nothing about her so I've begun with the census and some light internet browsing.

Mary was born in 1846 in Midsomer Norton, Somerset. These were the Somerset coalfields and her family were miners. The seams were thin and mining was particularly difficult. They'd been based there for at least two generations and had probably originated there (I'll try and find out). Mary was the fourth child of seven. When Mary was 5 they lived at Victoria Buildings, Principal Street. Her father William aged 55 was a coal miner, as were her brothers Alfred  18 and Richard 15.


In 1861 when Mary was 16 she is listed as a domestic servant, her father still a miner at 64

23 December 1865: Arthur Dowling, a 22 year old bachelor, resident in Midsomer Norton, Somerset, employed as a labourer; son of Simon Dowling, a mason, married at the Midsomer Norton Parish Church Mary Box, a 20 year old spinster, resident in Midsomer Norton; daughter of William Box, a coal miner.

By 1871 she has married Arthur Dowling, a brewers labourer and is living in Welton. William is living with them (at 73) alongside a lodger and a 2 year old nephew. Arthur's widowed mother is next door.

In 1881 Mary, at 35, seems to have no children but Francis the nephew is 12 and still with them. Arthur has progressed to cellarman.

In 1901 Mary is listed as a pauper and is living with nephew Frank and his family in Welton. Arthur seems to have died

At time of death, Mary was resident at Cambrook House, Clutton, Somerset; buried in Midsomer Norton on 23 January 1915, aged 71. Cambrook House was the new name for the Clutton Union Workhouse.
The workhouse register records cause of death as 'Fatty degen'n of Heart. Dropsy.'

On the face of it a hard life. Born into a poor mining family, married to a labourer, unable to have children, died in the workhouse.. For all we know she could have been blissfully happy, never knew anything different. Although Mary and Arthur had no children they had little Frank, who did his best to look after her in later years. There was always work and Arthur did progress. There were lots of elderly people dying in the workhouse infirmary. They wouldn't have been able to afford the doctor (who was Evelyn Waugh's grandfather and a violent man so perhaps Mary was better off....)

 

Real and extraordinary lives

My project is to investigate ordinary lives in a random fashion and see how they can be linked to wider events and other people of their times. Using original sources I will track individuals and see what we can find, linking also to inages and words . The ultimate detective stories, satisfying the urge to pry into ordinary lives and uncover the dark sides, the scandals and the unexpected connections.

Dreaming

Last night I dreamt that I used found, anonymous photographs to make art. Such an idea, I  might actually do
it....

Kings Cross, what shall we do?

King's Cross!
What shall we do?
His Purple Robe
Is rent in two!

For me, there are areas of London that retain a tangible vibration of what has gone before: so close to the surface that you can be physically and emotionally struck by it. Some of this is from my own personal experiences, some of it inherited from my forbears, some of it just from collective emotion over the centuries.

Kings Cross is not a place I know that well but whenever I have been there it has had an air of gloom: it seems to me that however much you tart it up there is an undercurrent of darkness. Tacitus records it as a place of battle between Boudica and the Romans.




 It is bleak, drab and depressing.

Consider the misery and filth of Somers Town, where Dan Leno was born in 1860. When the Duke of Bedford was developing his Bloomsbury estate he was moved to erect a 'cordon sanitaire' to keep out the undesirables

The Polygon, shown here on the 1799 map as pretty much on the edge of London.

The Polygon was a housing estate, a Georgian building with 15 sides and three storeys that contained 32 houses.
Mary Wollstonecraft died giving birth to Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, in the Polygon.  Charles Dickens lived at No 17 in the 1820s shortly after his father, John Dickens, was released from debtors prison.

It was demolished in the 1890s, by which time Somers Town had become a cheap and run-down neighbourhood, almost entirely because of its location. Railways were loud and smelly places, and they depended upon cheap labour - and that combination was a killer for an area's aspirations.




It is still a housing estate, the Somers Town Estate was built over it  

Kings Cross has a large and active Chinese community

In the beginning of 2010 Chinese authorities announced a bold plan to link Chinese high speed national railway directly to London King's Cross international railway station. This would allow passengers to reach London from Beijing in just two days.

Grandfather

I will become a grandmother in March of next year, an alarming but very welcome development. It's prompted me to think of my own grandparents and how they must have felt when I was born. One of them I never knew; he died in 1918. I feel that I have inherited my own father's loss of his father. My fascination with that side of my family, the one that bears my name, is a very deep and emotional one. Their Dickensian existence in the slums of Bermondsey and Lambeth, how they came to be there and the tragicomic stories that I grew up with, has fostered in me a great love of London past and present.

He died 43 years before I was born. A profile photograph of him hung in my aunt's front room, good looking with a moustache. Another photo of him with his children shows him sad eyed and vulnerable. His army records show that he was only 5ft 2, blue eyes, his hair was grey at 40 and he had a tattoo.
When he was born Disraeli was Prime Minister and Queen Victoria had just been proclaimed Empress of India. Anna Karenina was published and Tchaichovsky's Swan Lake was first staged.

The booth notebook for Alice Street Bermondsey

At one point in the 1890s he and his father ran a photography business with studios in Charing Cross and Oxford Street. Family legend says they drank away the profits


His was a horrible end:




















Alexander McKenzie served with the Northumberland Fusiliers and was discharged on medical gounds in August 1917.
He died at Cane Hill little more than six months later in March 1918. Ironically a mere month after his perfunctory burial in Cane Hill, Alexander's younger brother won the Victoria Cross for his part in the Zeebruge raid in April 1918.
More than 40 poverty-stricken soldiers suffering from psychiatric problems were admitted to Cane Hill during the First World War.


Hospital records show many of the soldiers died within months.
They were buried penniless in the Cane Hill cemetery in Portnalls Road
Croydon Guardian

His death certificate gives the cause of death as: General Paralysis of the Insane

General paralysis is another name for neurosyphilis, which is the neurologic syndrome caused by tertiary syphilisGeneral paresis, also known as general paralysis of the insane or paralytic dementia, is a neuropsychiatric disorder affecting the brain and central nervous system, caused by syphilis infection. It was originally considered a psychiatric disorder when it was first scientifically identified around the nineteenth century, as the patient usually presented with psychotic symptoms of sudden and often dramatic onset.

Anthropomorphism?

I swear that even if I won the lottery or inherited a fortune from a lost aunt I would still want the thrill of the second hand find. However, it's not just the monetary frisson but the excitement of the old; the previously used and loved. I strongly believe that objects have feelings (a google search reveals me to have a mental disorder). Whether it's vestiges of the people who have used them or something more mysterious I don't really care.

Uncle Tom Cobley

I had a childhood fear of Uncle Tom Cobley and Widecombe Fair, stemming from a tea towel in a gift shop that showed the ghost horse, with passengers as skeletons. A wider anxiety was produced when confronted by the toby jug and any illustrations with people in cocked hats.

We're off to stay in Widecombe at Easter so the demons are to be faced. Interestingly (for me anyway) quite a few branches of my ancestry come from the West Country. Coincidentally, Yeovil, Wiltshire and the North Somerset coalfields were where separate parts of my family lived in the 18th and 19th centuries (on different sides). Glove makers in Yeovil, bakers in Sutton Veney, miners in Paulton and Norton Radstock. I'm sure many of them had cocked hats and resembled toby jugs!
I want to see whether I feel my roots in those areas so plan to get the family to agree to some brief visits... the other one is the west of Scotland so will do that at some point.
Tom Pearce, Tom Pearce, lend me your grey mare.
All along, down along, out along lee.
For I want for to go to Widecombe Fair,
With Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney,
Peter Davy, Dan'l Whiddon, Harry Hawke,
Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all,
Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all.

And when shall I see again my grey mare?
All along, down along, out along lee.
By Friday soon, or Saturday noon,
With Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney,
Peter Davy, Dan'l Whiddon, Harry Hawke,
Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all,
Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all.

So they harnessed and bridled the old grey mare.
All along, down along, out along lee.
And off they drove to Widecombe fair,
With Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney,
Peter Davy, Dan'l Whiddon, Harry Hawke,
Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all,
Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all.

Then Friday came, and Saturday noon.
All along, down along, out along lee.
But Tom Pearce's old mare hath not trotted home,
With Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney,
Peter Davy, Dan'l Whiddon, Harry Hawke,
Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all,
Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all.

So Tom Pearce he got up to the top o' the hill.
All along, down along, out along lee.
And he seed his old mare down a-making her will,
With Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney,
Peter Davy, Dan'l Whiddon, Harry Hawke,
Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all,
Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all.

So Tom Pearce's old mare, her took sick and died.
All along, down along, out along lee.
And Tom he sat down on a stone, and he cried
With Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney,
Peter Davy, Dan'l Whiddon, Harry Hawke,
Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all,
Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all.

But this isn't the end o' this shocking affair.
All along, down along, out along lee.
Nor, though they be dead, of the horrid career
Of Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney,
Peter Davy, Dan'l Whiddon, Harry Hawke,
Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all,
Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all.

When the wind whistles cold on the moor of the night.
All along, down along, out along lee.
Tom Pearce's old mare doth appear ghastly white,
With Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney,
Peter Davy, Dan'l Whiddon, Harry Hawke,
Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all,
Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all.

And all the long night be heard skirling and groans.
All along, down along, out along lee.
From Tom Pearce's old mare in her rattling bones,
With Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney,
Peter Davy, Dan'l Whiddon, Harry Hawke,
Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all,
Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all.

Digging

I have just begun to train as a psychotherapist. The biggest and most satisfying revelation so far is that this is a logical progression for me.
My background and passion is history. I trained and worked as an archivist, the best job in the world. I have since moved up the pole into cultural services management, earning more money but losing the ability to combine work and pleasure.
This course is my escape route to freedom and fulfilment but it seemed, at first, a bit left field. Last week, however, I had a revelatory moment when my tutor described psychotherapy as 'like archaeology'. All of a sudden it all came together: digging around on the banks of the Thames (an obsessive ambition of mine), delving into local and family history and uncovering one's own and other people's hidden thoughts and past influences are one and the same thing.

 Jung was convinced from childhood that he had two personalities — a modern Swiss citizen and a personality more at home in the eighteenth century "Personality Number 1," as he termed it, was a typical schoolboy living in the era of the time, while "Personality Number 2" was a dignified, authoritative and influential man from the past.

Cognitive archaeology is a sub-discipline of archaeology which focuses (from Wikipedia) on the ways that ancient societies thought and the symbolic structures that can be perceived in past material culture.

Cognitive archaeologists often study the role that ideology and differing organizational approaches would have had on ancient peoples. The way that these abstract ideas are manifested through the remains that these peoples have left can be investigated and debated often by drawing inferences and using approaches developed in fields such as semiotics, psychology and the wider sciences

Family history

The thrill of discovering your close ancestors in public and other records is remarkable and unique. For those of us who are fascinated by the history of the working classes (for want of a better phrase) it is about a direct link between you and your family who lived in such an harsh and alien world not so long ago. It opens up the lives of the everyday family, bypassed in history books. These are the people who shared your name, looked like you and many of whose traits you will have inherited. You can transport yourself to earlier times but you won't always be comfortable with what you find. It makes the 'masses', the 'great unwashed' into real people with real lives.

My favourite example is my great uncle Albert Mckenzie VC (1897 to 1918). He was the hero of the Battle of Zeebrugge, survived that but died of influenza shortly after. Biggest thing that has ever happened to my dad's family.

This afternoon I went for a walk along the streets I grew up in. This area is about 3-4 miles from where I live now and unhappy memories have made it difficult for me to go there. Today was a way of fronting up some ghosts and dealing with shadows. They were just like any other streets when I got there, familiar, smaller and with a few reminders of 30 years ago. I walked around and took some photos. I stopped to take a picture of a 'ghost sign' on a wall next to what used to be a bakers. At the same moment my daughter phoned to let me know her plans for the day. All of a sudden she shrieked and laughed: they were driving past me! I never go there, she never goes there and yet, on my emotional journey, I was in the past and present at the same time.

Across time and space

My Gran was born in 1878. I was five when  she died and I have sketchy memories of her. She was a white haired old lady in an armchair with a blanket on her knee. She would sing "Oh Susannah" and "Little Brown Jug" and give me pieces of sausage. She smelt a bit of wee. My auntie, who cared for her, would give her bottles of milk stout from a cupboard on the landing. When Gran died nobody told me.Her bed was stood on end on the landing and when I asked "Where's Gran?" Mum said she had gone on holiday. Various people cried, especially my auntie.

Ha ha ha you and me

Little brown jug how I love thee

Ha ha ha you and me

Little brown jug how I love thee

How different is my life to hers?

    Gran                                                     Me
Born 1878                                        Born 1961
Father a costermonger                      Father in civil service
Had nine children (2 died)                Two children
Rented a house with 2 bedrooms       Owned a house with 3 bedrooms
Learnt to read and write                    Degree and diploma
Children in workhouse                       Child at private school
Loved music hall songs                      Loves music hall songs
Liked to grow things                          Likes to grow things
Family was everything                       Family is everything
Loved a beer                                     Fond of wine

Again, we have the ‘Coster-slang’, or the language used by the costermongers, and which consists merely in pronouncing each word as if it were spelt backwards:—’I say, Curly, will you do a top of reeb (pot of beer)?’ one costermonger may say to the other. ‘It’s on doog, Whelkey, on doog (no good, no good),’ the second may reply. ‘I’ve had a reg’lar troseno (bad sort) to-day. I’ve been doing b—y dab (bad) with my tol (lot, [-6-] or stock)—ha’n’t made a yennep (penny), s’elp me.’ ‘Why, I’ve cleared a flatch-enorc (half-a-crown) a’ready,’ Master Whelkey will answer, perhaps. ‘But kool the esilop (look at the police); kool him (look at him) Curly! Vom-us! (be off). I’m going to do the tightner (have my dinner).’

Alice

Alice Mckenzie - could even be a relative of mine? She is one of the peripheral Jack the Ripper possible victims. Let's look at her as a real woman not a victim. Here's what it says on wiki with my annotations and images:


Little is known of Alice McKenzie's early years and upbringing, except that she was born sometime around 1849. (irish potato famine, assassination attempt on the Queen, cholera pandemics in London and Liverpool) So in the mortuary photo below she is only  40 and was said to have been raised in Peterborough (flat, Fens, brickmaking, lots of clay).

 She was later to move into the East End of London sometime before 1874,   aged 25 and began living sporadically with a John McCormack (also Bryant) around 9 years later in 1883. According to a press article:
M'Cormack told an interviewer on Thursday that he first knew the deceased woman in London about seven years ago. She had not a friend in this city, but he believed she had a son, probably in America.

Before he became acquainted with her she lived with a blind man who played a concertina in the streets for a living.

 M'Cormack "took up" with her because she was homeless, and appeared to be a hardworking woman. He had often heard her say she was the last of her family, and had often heard her speak of her father, who was a postman in Liverpool.

M'Cormack never saw any of her relations.
McCormack, an Irishman, was in the employ of some Jewish tailors in Hanbury Street as a porter. He shared lodgings in various doss-houses with his common-law wife for around six years

, and their last cohabitation was at Mr. Tenpenny's Lodging House, Gun Street, Spitalfields. They moved there around April of 1888.
The lodging house on Gun Street was managed by a Mrs. Elizabeth Ryder, wife of Richard John Ryder. While there, McKenzie was said to have worked for her Jewish neighbors as a washerwoman and charwoman,

 but the police considered her a common prostitute

 and she was known to have frequented the streets on occasion. At this time, Alice was around 40 years of age, described as a freckle-faced woman with a penchant for both smoke and drink, engaging more in the former than the latter.

She preferred the smoke of a pipe, which was soon to grant her the name "Clay Pipe" Alice by her friends and acquaintances. Her left thumb was also injured in what was no doubt some sort of industrial accident.
Tuesday, July 16, 1889.
4:00 P.M.: McCormack returns from his morning shift at work somewhat drunk and sets himself down in bed.

 He hands Alice 1s. 8d. to pay Mrs. Ryder for the rent, and a shilling to spend for other necessities. Alice left the room with the money, but did not pay the rent.
7:10 P.M.: According to the Pall Mall Gazette, Alice took a blind boy named George Dixon or Discon, another resident at Mr. Tenpenny's, to the Royal Cambridge Music Hall.

Dixon would later testify that he had heard Alice speaking to a strange man, asking him to buy her a drink, to which the man replied, "Yes." Alice then saw Dixon home to Gun Street.

8:30 P.M.: Elizabeth Ryder sees Alice at the house, 'more or less drunk,' and watches her leave Gun Street after having had some sort of argument with McCormack (this would negate his statement that the last time he saw Alice alive would have been 4:00 P.M.)
11:00 P.M.: McCormack emerges from the room and proceeds downstairs, passing Mrs. Ryder who informs him that Alice had indeed not paid their rent.

11:40 P.M.: A friend of Alice's named Margaret Franklin was sitting with two acquaintances (Catherine Hughes and Sarah Mahoney or Marney) on the step of either a barber's shop (Sugden) or a lodging house (Begg et alia) on Flower and Dean Street at the side connecting with Brick Lane. Alice passes the three ladies 'walking hurriedly' toward Whitechapel. Margaret asked Alice how she was doing, and she replied in the same hurried manner: "All right. I can't stop now." According to the three ladies, Alice was not wearing a bonnet, but rather a 'light-coloured shawl' around her shoulders.
12:15 A.M.: P.C. Joseph Allen (423H) takes a break under a street lamp in Castle Alley, just off Whitehapel High Street, for a bite to eat. According to Allen the alley was completely deserted. After about five minutes, Allen notices another constable entering the alley.
12:20 A.M.: Walter Andrews (PC) (272H) enters Castle Alley just as Allen is leaving. Andrews remains in the alley for about three minutes, and again he sees nothing of a suspicious nature.
12:25 A.M.: At about this time, Sarah Smith, deputy of the Whitechapel Baths and Washhouses

(which lined Castle Alley) retires to her room. She begins reading in bed, the closed window of her room overlooking the entire alley. Sarah later testifies she heard nothing suspicious until she heard the blow of Andrews' whistle.
12:45 A.M.: It begins to rain in Whitechapel.

12:50 A.M.: Andrews returns to Castle Alley on his regular beat, about twenty-seven minutes having passed since he left the area. This time, however, he discovers the body of a woman lying on the pavement, her head angled toward the curb and her feet toward the wall. Blood flowed from two stabs in the left side of her neck and her skirts had been lifted, revealing blood across her abdomen, which had been mutilated.
The pavement beneath the body of Alice McKenzie was still dry, placing her death sometime after 12:25 A.M. and before 12:45 A.M., when it began to rain. In her possession were found a clay pipe often referred to as a 'nose warmer' and a bronze farthing. She was noticed to have been wearing some 'odd stockings.'

P.C. Andrews heard someone approaching the alley soon after, and ordered the man (Lewis Jacobs) to stay with the body while he went to fetch help.
1:10 A.M.: Inspector Edmund Reid arrives only moments before Dr. George Bagster Phillips. Reid notices that blood continues to flow from the throat into the gutter (about 1:09 A.M.) but it begins to clot upon the arrival of Phillips (about 1:12 A.M.)
On a side note, a fellow prostitute and companion of McKenzie's named Margaret Cheeks, was also thought to have been killed along with Alice because she was not to be found for two days following the discovery of McKenzie's body. Actually, she had been staying with her sister at the time.
Dr. Phillips believed there was a degree of anatomical knowledge necessary to have committed the atrocities to McKenzie.
the killer probably held her down to the ground with one hand while inflicting the wounds with the other.
The mutilations committed upon McKenzie were mostly superficial in manner,  The wounds also suggested that the killer was left-handed (as opposed to the Ripper being right-handed). Phillips suggested the five marks on the left side of her body were an imprint of the killer's right hand, which left only his left hand to facilitate the injuries. Dr. Bond disagreed, claiming there was no evidence to support the theory that those marks were made through such processes (admittedly, Bond saw the body the day after the post mortem, and it had already begun to decompose).
The weapon involved was agreed upon to have been a 'sharp- pointed weapon,' although it could be smaller than the one used by the Ripper.
Phillips ultimately claimed that McKenzie's death was not attributable to the Ripper:
In fact, on the day of the murder, Monro deployed 3 sergeants and 39 constables on duty in Whitechapel, increasing the force with 22 extra men.
The inquest was held on July 17th and 19th, and later adjourned to August 14th -- the conclusion was the all too familiar 'murder by a person or persons unknown.'
The Scotland Yard Files pertaining to the McKenzie murder detail an interesting sidebar concerning an individual named William Wallace Brodie, who confessed to murdering the woman. It was earlier printed in the Kimberley Advertiser of June 29th, 1889 that Brodie had confessed to all the Whitechapel murders while in a drunken stupor. His statement was forwarded by Inspector Moore, but Inspector Arnold gave instructions to dismiss Brodie as of unsound mind. Scotland Yard gave the same prognosis: "Let him be charged as a lunatic." It was soon discovered that Brodie had a conviction for larceny, and just to be sure, enquiries were made into his character and location during the Whitechapel Murders. It was found that he was in South Africa between September 6th, 1888 and July 15th, 1889.

Ultimately, Brodie was released from custody,

Purpose of the blog

In this blog I will gather  words,images and footage to create my vision of the past and how it lives on around us. I believe in the elasticity of time and place, how it all becomes one and how feelings and senses merge across hours, days, years. I want to create art that expresses this deep empathy across time.