Revisiting Mary Ann and John Cockram

Last July, I sketched out what I knew of George's siblings, in this post.  Since then I've uncovered more information about some of them, and although it doesn't shed any light on George himself, I find it all interesting, so I'm writing it down.

Mary Ann Cockram (1847- aft 1911)

I had thought that George's sister Mary Ann never married, but I was wrong.  I recently discovered that in 1894, about six months after her eldest sister Elizabeth died, Mary Ann married Elizabeth's widowed husband, James Taylor.  Because the gap between Elizabeth's death and James' remarriage is relatively small, the devil in me has to wonder if James and Mary Ann had struck up a relationship before Elizabeth died.  Did they, indeed, have something to do with her demise....?  Naw, I've been watching too many cop shows.

Mary Ann was 47 years old at the time of the marriage, and James was 60, so not surprisingly, they had no children.  They lived in Fremington, Devon, not far from other Cockram family members, where James was a market gardener, working for himself and employing at least one other person. I can find them there until 1911, when she was 64 and he was 77 and retired.  I still haven't found a death record for either of them.


John Cockram (1849-1932) and Grace Adams (1849-1893)

Not too long ago I happened to stumble upon the burial record for John Cockram's wife, Grace Adams, just because it was on the same page as that of Elizabeth Cockram Taylor, mentioned above.  Grace was buried at Fremington, where she grew up, although she hadn't lived there for some time.  Her residence at the time of her death in December 1893 was recorded as 'County Asylum, Exminster'.  Well naturally, that sparked my interest.

I went looking for information about the asylum, and learned that it was an ultra modern 'lunatic asylum' when it opened in 1845, and had many amenities, including a ballroom.  In its early years it developed a wonderful reputation, but by the time Grace was admitted, it had plunged into serious overcrowding and staff shortages, depriving patients of individual attention.

The Devon County Lunatic Asylum, which has now been converted to a private housing
estate known as Devington Park

The asylum's patient records are kept in the Devon Archives in Exeter, but are not online.  So I went looking for someone who could go to the Archives on my behalf, and I found Rosaleigh via http://www.familytreeforum.com. She lives in Exeter, and was happy to do some research for me.  Rosaleigh discovered that Grace was admitted to the asylum in October 1893, was described as 'manic' on admission and had been ill for more than a month before that.  She soon deteriorated into incoherence and incontinence, and developed bedsores, an abscess on her jaw and a high fever.  She lapsed into a coma, and died less than two months after she arrived.  The asylum apparently attributed her problems to 'Change of Life', which was the overall heading of her notes.  She was 44 years old, and menopausal when she died.  Rosaleigh looked at records of several other women around the same age, and found that menopause was commonly recorded as the cause of whatever problems they had.

Who knows how long she had been suffering, or what her husband John went through at that time.  They had been living in Wales up until at least two years before Grace died - did they come back to England in hopes of finding some expert help for her?  That didn't work out very well.

Several months after Grace's death, John remarried, and lived the rest of his life in England, continuing his career as a liquor retailer in Devon, near his childhood home, and in Islington, London.  He had no children by either marriage, and died at the age of 83 in 1932, leaving about £400 to his widow, Minnie Jane Hawkridge.  And by the way, when Minnie died in Devon in 1949, she left her money - more than £2500 - to someone called George Arthur Beeby, a retired post office official in Nottingham, more than 200 miles away - who the heck was he?  If only I had time to chase up every interesting little tidbit I find...

There is one more sibling I've been looking at lately, but I'll save her story for another time...

What did George Sound Like?

I've often tried to imagine the sound of George Cockram's voice.  Coming from Devon, he would have had a distinctive west country accent, and apparently, he kept it all his life.  His friend Zachary Hamilton, a journalist who wrote George's obituary, said "to the last, the accents of his native Devonshire still clung to his tongue".  And his daughter Prudence described his voice as having a "soft country burr".

If only I had a recording of George's voice - but I don't, so the best I can do is listen to other men with Devon accents - and that is easier said than done.  The BBC once had a great audio archive of various English dialects online, but all it gives me now is 'error 404'.

But I did find another source - the 'International Dialects of English Archive', which has a few examples of Devon accents.  The one that is probably most like George is a recording of a 49 year old man from Appledore in North Devon, just a little way from where George grew up.  This man spent his whole life in the same general area, unlike George - but it gives me an idea, nonetheless.  You can listen to it here:

In contrast, below is another Devon man, whose accent is nowhere near as strong.  He came from Widecombe in south Devon, and was a BBC radio presenter for 30 years - so he may have deliberately 'toned down' his accent somewhat.  Perhaps this is more like George would have sounded after many years in Canada.  Click on the photo to see the YouTube video.

By the way, Louisa, coming from Cornwall, would have had an accent very similar to George's.  Whether she kept it all her life, I don't know.

George and Louisa in Plymouth

I think I should have called this blog 'Genealogical Distractions' or some such thing, because I seem to spend most of my time climbing around in side branches of the family.  Lately I've been chasing down descendants of Clara Cockram, George's youngest sister, and continuing to pursue John and Grace Cockram.  I'm now waiting on some information about them to come from a very kind person in Devon who's going to hunt up some records for me, and from a couple of newly discovered 3rd cousins, who are looking through their late mother's papers and photos.

Now I really must get back to George!  I still don't know where he was or what he was up to when the 1871 census was taken, but I know he was living in Plymouth in 1875, so that's where we'll go.

At that time, England had been transformed by the Industrial Revolution - even by 1851, when George was born, the census showed the urban population was larger than that of the rural areas. Towns and cities not only offered jobs with higher pay, but promised a varied social life, which appealed particularly to young men and women who found life in a small community oppressive and dull.  No doubt George was one of many optimistic young Devon men drawn to Plymouth by the promise of a decent income and a more interesting life.

An 1852 government report found that the overpriced, overcrowded and unsanitary living conditions in Plymouth were the worst in Europe, except for Warsaw.  The average number of people living in each house in Britain was five, but in Plymouth it was ten. The city then undertook large scale slum clearances, substantial public housing improvements and other amenities such as proper drains and sewers, and horse-drawn trams. More improvements followed, including the Guildhall, Law Courts and Municipal Offices, which were constructed in the 1870s in a French Gothic style, reflecting Plymouth's burgeoning civic pride.

By the time George arrived (probably by train), the city had a population of about 70,000 and a great many attractions. There were theatres, tearooms, hotels, a public library, tradesmen and shops of all descriptions - including over 400 'Victuallers and Beershop-keepers' and about 50 'Brewers and Wine and Spirit Merchants' - and a large seaside park, the Hoe, which is still a popular attraction for locals and visitors.

Top left: the Guildhall (on right of picture) and St Andrews Church Tower c.1875
Top right: Plymouth High Street c.1892, with men in front of the Naval Reserve Inn on the right
Bottom: Barbican Quay c. 1890 -  George and Louisa lived not far from here.
(Images courtesy of Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery)

Advertisements from the Illustrated Handbook to Plymouth, Stonehouse & Devonport, 1879

But city life wasn't all beer and skittles. Urban unskilled and casual workers struggled with low wages, long working hours and irregular incomes, as well as fear of accidents and the dread of slipping into poverty. George may have found himself working in diabolical conditions for very low pay, and wondering if he should have stayed home.  I speculated earlier that he might have got work at the dockyards, perhaps in ship building, or cargo handling. He could as easily have been employed in brewing, soap making, sail making, glass and china making, printing, fishing or any number of other local industries. Whatever he did for a living, he certainly would have been introduced to a very different way of life.

Sometime after 1861, Jane Murphy and her daughters Jane and Louisa had moved to Plymouth from the little Cornish town of Mevagissey where they were all born.  Perhaps Jane was looking for a better life too. Her daughters would have been too young at the time to have a say in the decision.

Mevagissey, Cornwall, c.1890.
(Image courtesy of the Mevagissey Museum)

A 2014 view of Church Street, Mevagissey, where Louisa's mother grew up,
possibly in one of these very buildings.

Jane Sr found work in Plymouth as a laundress, and Jane Jr went to work as a live-in servant in a boarding school. Louisa was probably still going to school. At age 14 in the 1871 census, no occupation, not even 'scholar' was supplied for her.  At that time she and her mother lived at number 4 Notte St, which was a lodging house.  The head of the household was a newsagent, suggesting that perhaps the lodgings were above the shop.  Other residents were an interesting mix - a post office manager, a servant, a labourer, a stable man and a lawyer's clerk.  Today, it's hard to tell whether the building still stands, as the street has changed dramatically.

Buildings in Notte St c.1870, with labourers doing roadwork.
(Image courtesy of Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery)

I don't know how or when Louisa and George met, but it may have been in Notte St. For a time, George lived there too, but whether he was there at the same time as the Murphys, I don't know.   By the time he and Louisa got married, he was living in Notte St, perhaps at the same lodging house, and Louisa and Jane had moved to Lambhay Hill.

Partial map of Plymouth showing places of interest.  The Guildhall wasn't yet built when
this map was made (1856), but I've marked where it would be.  To see the complete map,
click here  (National Library of Scotland)

I wish I could tell you about George and Louisa's courtship, but it remains a mystery.  All I know is that they were married in April 1875 at Holy Trinity Church.  This church, at the corner of Southside Street and Friars Lane, was a large stone edifice, built in 1840 to seat 1000 people. It was badly damaged in an air raid in 1941 and later demolished, and I haven't been able to find any pictures of it before then, except this one of the altar, taken in 1915.

It's impossible to say when George started to entertain the idea of migrating to Canada, but at the time, Canada was actively enticing British migrants to come and open up the west.  This large, young country with a small population desperately needed people from 'the mother country', to clear the land, establish farms and businesses, and help the country grow and develop.  The Canadian government advertised the attractions of Canada all over England, emphasizing that domestic servants and anyone with basic labouring or farming skills would be most welcome.  Reading the pamphlets and posters they produced might have made any downtrodden English labourer believe that Canada was the promised land - and a great many of them got on ships and went to start a new life there.  It's quite likely that it was this opportunity to make a better life for himself  that spurred George to go too - assuming, for the time being at least, that he wasn't running away from anything.

One of many posters and pamphlets circulated in England by the Canadian government. 

Judging by their first child's birthdate, Louisa's pregnancy was probably discovered either just before or just after the wedding.  This must have put a spanner in the works regarding any emigration plans they were making.  I have to assume that the reason George went to Canada on his own in June that year was to allow Louisa to have her first child in the relative comfort of Plymouth, with her mother near, rather than in the unknown wilds of Canada.

What I'm still unable to assume with any confidence is the reason why he boarded the ship as Thomas Smith. Neither do I know if Louisa was even aware that he had done so.  She didn't change her name at that time, and when her child was born in November, she was registered as Clara Cockram, daughter of George Cockram.  But the following year, Louisa and Clara would become Smiths and head to Canada too.
 

Source for Plymouth history info:  Worth, R N, FGS, "History of Plymouth from the Earliest Period to the Present Time", Messrs William Brendon & Son, Plymouth, 1890

Bad Handwriting and No Signature

There I was, idly looking at my timeline for great-granddaddy George's brother John Cockram, when I saw that I had no proof of either of his two marriages.  So I set out to find some, which by the way, is a terribly frowned-upon way to conduct one's family research - just popping around here and there, chasing anything that happens to come to one's attention.  If I was organized and 'serious', I would have put an entry in a 'to do' list to remind myself to follow this up later, maybe never, and meanwhile stay focused on George.  But that's not how I work - genealogy is supposed to be fun, isn't it?  So why not chase up whatever interests me, wherever it may lead?

And guess where this chase led me - right back to George!  At least, I think it did.  I found the original record of John Cockram's first marriage, to Grace Adams in 1870, and it got me all excited!  Marriage records often have clues about people besides the ones getting married, and in this case, it was one of the witnesses to the marriage that rang my bell.  For that witness, ladies and gentlemen, appears to have been The Elusive George himself!  I say 'appears' because I'm not 100% convinced it's him, and that's why I need your help to decipher some really awful handwriting.

Below is the complete record - the one at the bottom of the image.  I've included the other record as well, just so there's more handwriting to draw clues from.  Note that Cockram is spelled Cockrem on this document, and for awhile I wasn't sure this was the right marriage, but I've done some checking against other documents, which I won't bore you with, and I'm very sure that this John Cockrem is in fact John Cockram, George's brother.

John Cockram's marriage in 1870 - click on the images to enlarge

And here's a close up of the most interesting part, the name of the first witness.  What is it?  I'm pretty sure the surname is Cockrem, but what's the first name?

I think the first letter is a G, as it looks very similar to the G in Grace.  If so, the only person this is likely to be is George.  John's other brothers were Thomas, William, Richard, Alfred, Herman and Frederick (gosh, I've got them all memorized!)  Of course, John also had an uncle George Cockram, but isn't it far more likely that John would have his brother as a witness (and probably best man) than his uncle?  George was just two years younger than John, and it's easy to assume they had a close relationship...

But here's the bad news - you'll see that whoever this witness was, he didn't sign his name, he made his mark instead.  Why would George, at nearly 19 years of age, not sign his name?  The last sighting of him before this event was in 1861 when he was a 10 year old 'scholar' according to the census. Surely he learned to write! And I've seen his signature and other handwriting on later documents, such as his own marriage record in 1875, so I know he wasn't illiterate.  Was he a slow learner, or did he have some nefarious reason for not wanting to sign his name?  Once again, George's name throws up a mystery!

George's signature on his 1875 marriage record, at age 24.
 Apparently he wasn't a confident writer, nor a good speller, which suggests
that when he was 18, perhaps he really couldn't write a legible signature.

The good news, if this witness is indeed The Elusive George, is that now I know where he was as a young man.  This marriage took place in Fremington, Devon where George grew up, so it appears he was still living there in 1870 and hadn't run away with the circus or the Royal Marines.  He still eludes me in the 1871 census though. 

Just one more thing - what do you think John's occupation was, according to this marriage record?  In later life, he was a beer bottler, a 'licenced victualler' and the manager of at least one public house.  When he got married he was just under 21 years old and virtually everyone in his family was a farm labourer or domestic servant.  But this word looks sort of like 'grocer' to me.  UPDATE:  On the other hand, maybe it's supposed to say 'gardener'.  I've just found John and Grace living in Wales in 1871, where John was working as a 'gardener/domestic servant'.

Any and all insights into deciphering this handwriting or thoughts on why the witness couldn't or wouldn't sign his name, will be most appreciated.

More Darned Australian Distractions

I don't know what it is about the Australian branch of the Cockram/Cockrem family, but somehow they keep distracting me.  I'm supposed to be concentrating on great-granddaddy George getting from Devon to Canada, but I keep finding myself poring through Australian records about his brothers and their descendants.  One big reason for this must be the fact that it's so easy to find intriguing things about people in Australia, via Trove, a website that brings together a whole lot of Australian newspaper archives, seachable in all kinds of ways, and is 100% free.  (If only there was a similar site for Canadian newspapers... sigh).

from the Cairns Post, 17th February 1934, page 6

This time it was the story about Louisa (Lee) Cockrem's death in 1934 that sent me off on a tangent.  The story mentions her son-in-law, F Gayton of 53 Gatton Street, Cairns.  That name didn't ring a bell, and when I checked Louisa's two daughters, Ada and Daisy, I found that neither of them married anyone called Gayton.  And taking a second look at the news item, I noticed that it said that Louisa had three grown up daughters, not two.  Uh oh, another puzzle to solve! 

I searched Trove for other stories that mention F Gayton, hoping to find out who he married, but all I discovered were lots of references to Mr and Mrs Frank Gayton, often in the same stories as various Cockrems, going off on interstate trips, winning prizes, and attending parties and funerals. No mention at all of Mrs Gayton's first name.  So I searched for Frank Gayton on Ancestry, and found his marriage, to someone called Victoria May King, in 1919.  Was this the right Frank Gayton?  I thought so, so I kept looking for more information, and soon found Frank and Victoria May Gayton in the electoral rolls, living at the address mentioned in the death notice.  But who was she before she married Frank and how did she get to be Louisa's daughter?

Eventually I found a birth record for Victoria May King Yeen, born in Queensland in 1901.  Her mother was recorded as 'Beatrice Mary King Yeen', and her father as 'King Yeen'.  But it soon became clear from other records that 19 year old Beatrice was an unmarried mother, and that she was the daughter of Albert King Yeen, a Rockhampton businessman.  So was Victoria the product of incest? Was Beatrice forced to give the baby up and keep her existence a secret?  I haven't been able to discover what went on, but at some point, Victoria seems to have been adopted, legally or otherwise, by Louisa Lee, and either Herman or Frederick Cockrem.

But where's the evidence that Victoria May King Yeen is the same Victoria May King who married Frank Gayton?  I'm coming to that....

Beatrice, Victoria King Yeen's biological mother, shows up again in 1920, getting married in Sydney.  She and her groom, Harold Chippindall were both 38 years old and neither had been married before.  I haven't bothered to search for details of their lives - but I found Beatrice's death certificate.  She died in Sydney in 1963.  Her husband had predeceased her, and her sister, Jessie King, supplied the information for the death registration. She said that Beatrice had 'no issue'.  Was Jessie, who lived with Beatrice when she died and for some years before that, really unaware of the existence of Beatrice's daughter Victoria?  I doubt it. (Reminder: Don't believe everything you read on 'official' documents.)

Once again, I went back to Louisa Cockrem - this time I had a look at a news item about her funeral, which includes a long list of names of people who sent flowers and messages.  Among those names is 'B Chippindall (Sydney)'.  So there's the evidence that Beatrice and Louisa were connected somehow, and it would be highly unlikely that the connection had nothing at all to do with Victoria May King.  Okay, that's not exactly 'proof' of anything, but in this genealogy game, we often have to make assumptions based on the evidence we find, plus common sense, and continue to look for more evidence that proves we're right, or wrong.

The only other information I've found about Victoria was that she was apparently a keen gardener, often winning prizes in local flower shows; and she was known as 'Queenie'.  With a name like Victoria King, I guess that's not surprising.  I discovered that little tidbit via Trove, in Daisy Cockrem Sullivan's death notice, which names Queenie Gayton as one of Daisy's beloved sisters.

from the Sydney Morning Herald Death Notices, 5th July 1961, page 34

I also learned a thing or two about Frank Gayton along the way, but that's for another time - the point today is this:  When you're reading newspaper accounts of marriages, parties, deaths, funerals etc, don't ignore the details!  Those names that seem unconnected may lead you along a whole new branch of the family.

Dodging the Census with George

I don't call my dear old great-grandfather The Elusive George for nothing - not only did he change his identity and keep the reason secret, he also managed to hide his whereabouts on four different censuses!  Okay, he probably didn't do that on purpose, but who knows.  I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on the first one - it was taken at the end of March 1851, and he wasn't born until two months later, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't his fault.

But seriously, the other three are really annoying me, especially the 1871 one.  He was twenty years old then, and possibly at a crossroads in his life.  Apparently he had left the family home, but where the heck did he go?  I've searched high and low for him, using every ridiculous spelling of both Cockram and Cochrane I can think of, with wildcards and crossed fingers and even a magic spell or two.  No George. (Update - I've found him! See this post.)

And the really interesting thing is that I can't find his 24 year old sister Mary Ann or his 14 year old brother Alfred, or their 22 year old cousin William Hopper, who lived nearby in Fremington, in that census either.  All of these people show up again later in several documents, so I know they were somewhere in 1871 - but where?  And were they all together?  It seems like too much of a coincidence for all of them to disappear at once if they were in four different places.

Here are some census night theories I'm working on:

• William and Mary Ann were in love, but being first cousins, they kept their relationship secret, and ran away together.  George figured it out and went after them, and Alfred came along for fun.  On the way back home, all four of them slept in somebody's barn and nobody knew they were there.
• George, Mary Ann and William were celebrating someone's birthday, and got so drunk they fell asleep in somebody's barn and nobody knew they were there.  Alfred was behind the bike shed, smoking.
• George, Mary Ann and William had all decided to leave north Devon but couldn't afford the train fare to go anywhere, so they walked, and spent the night in somebody's barn and nobody knew they were there.  Alfred had told his parents he was spending the night at a friend's house, but actually it was a girlfriend, whose parents didn't know he was there.

Or, to stop being so silly, perhaps all four of them went to Barnstaple to see their Uncle George, and stayed overnight.  Of course the census taker may not have got around to knocking on Uncle George's door for a month or more after census night, and he could easily have forgotten what night it was that four extra people were in his house.  Obviously, if something along those lines happened, I'm never going to find them.

Or another likely scenario is that wherever they were that night, the census taker was told about it, and wrote their names down, but that page of the census got badly damaged or smudged, and their names were unreadable, and may have been transcribed as anything at all, like Go#-bk Nee9lhrbn.  Believe me, I've seen a few transcriptions about as bad as that.  And sometimes, names don't get transcribed at all, for good reason.  Here's an example:

This is part of a page from the 1911 Canada census, which is the next one where George wasn't where he should have been.  You can probably make out the name Smith near the top - that's George, now known as Thomas, abbreviated to Thos on this census.  The seven names below that are Louisa and six of the children, but if I hadn't known their names I would never have found them, because the transcriber couldn't read them and just guessed, badly.  Fortunately their birthdates (not shown in this excerpt), are vaguely legible, so I used those to figure out who was who.  The names at the bottom of the page weren't transcribed at all, not surprisingly.

Ironically, finding George in this census came as a disappointment - he wasn't supposed to be in Canada in early June when the 1911 census was taken, he was supposed to have gone back to England for awhile.  I thought he had left Canada in late May that year, but if so, there's no way he was back on the first of June.  Once again, it could have been a memory thing - the census taker might have arrived several weeks after the first of June, and whoever answered the questions forgot that George wasn't home on census night.  Or, I've got his travel dates completely wrong and I need to go back to square one.

Ten years later, George disappeared again, and this time, so did Louisa and their youngest daughter Audrey.  I think they must have been travelling in the United States on census night.  But here's the twist - they lived in Regina, Saskatchewan at that time, and I know the addresses of both houses they had there, but I don't know exactly when they moved from one to the other.  So I searched the 1921 census for both of those addresses, expecting one or the other to not show up, as nobody was home.  But they're both there, each with a family in residence who I never heard of!  What the ...?!

It'll be a few years yet before I get to see the 1931 census, and I won't be at all surprised if George is missing from that one too.  He's very good at driving me crazy.

George in Bickington

Giving myself a rest from trying to figure out why George Cockram changed his name to Thomas Smith, I'll get back to wondering why he left England.  Of course the answer to those two questions could be one and the same - but for the time being, I'm going to assume that he wasn't running away from anything, he was just looking for a better life.

So what might George's life have been like in mid 19th century Devon? Let's start with his childhood.

George was born in 1851 and grew up in northern Devon, in a little village of around 300 people called Bickington.  The nearest town was Barnstaple, about two miles away, with a population of about 11,000.  This was in the Victorian age, which saw the industrial revolution radically change the landscape and the living and working conditions of English people.   Industrialisation brought with it new jobs, a consumer boom, a shift from a mainly rural to a mainly urban population and greater prosperity for most of the propertied classes.

But George and his family weren't among the propertied classes - they were rural labourers.  His father, and siblings as each of them came to their early teens, worked as farm labourers or domestic servants, and George may have done the same.  And for the first half of the 19th century the rural and urban poor had much in common: unsanitary and overcrowded housing, low wages, poor diet, insecure employment and the dreaded effects of sickness and old age. Life expectancy at birth was only around 40 when George was born.

I think the Cockrams were not exactly poor, but father William's labouring wages would have had to feed quite a few mouths before any of the children were old enough to go to work.  In the mid 1860s, he would have earned around 10 to 12 shillings a week (25 to 40 pounds a year, at a time when a man was considered a gentleman if he earned more than 150 pounds a year), and being a farm labourer, he wasn't guaranteed work all year round.  He may have supplemented his income with other forms of work in the winter.

The family home, which was a rented cottage, was probably made of cob - unbaked clay with organic material to bind it.  This form of building, often with a thatched roof, was very common up to the late Victorian period, particularly in northern Devon, where the soil was suitable.  These were durable houses if plastered over and damp proofed top and bottom, and many of them still stand.

Cob cottages on the main road through Bickington.  George's family lived
somewhere right around here - possibly in one of these houses.

Any notions that the rustic life had its attractions can be discounted by the changing conditions and great poverty in England. I've found no specific description of Bickington at the time, but I hope it wasn't as bad as another north Devon village, Halberton, which was described as follows in the 1860s:

"The general sanitary condition of the village was very bad. Picturesque as they were externally, many of the peasant's cottages were unfit for the housing of pigs. Pools of stagnant water stood in many parts of the parish....The whole village was badly drained, open sewers ran through it frequently trickling down upon the cottages into the village brook, from which cattle slaked their thirst and the villagers and their children often drank."  

Giffard, Ann, 1981: Towards Quebec: two mid-19th century emigrants' journals

The house would have had only one sink, in a tiny scullery, and there was probably a communal toilet somewhere out back, shared by several cottages. Water would have had to be fetched each day, either from a village pump or well. Right up until the end of the century, it was common for rural houses to be lit by rushlights (rush plants dipped in fat), or candles, which were expensive. Heat would come from the fireplace, which was also used for cooking.

In the early 19th century the working class lived on plain food such as bread, butter, potatoes and bacon. Butcher's meat was a luxury. However the diet of ordinary people greatly improved in the later part of the century. Railways and steamships made it possible to import cheap grain from North America so bread became cheaper. Commercial refrigeration made it possible to import cheap meat from Argentina and Australia. Consumption of sugar also increased. By the end of the century most people (not all) were eating a much better diet.  Most cottagers kept a pig or pigs, and if they were not eating ham, sausage, bacon and lard from the pig, they were eating a diet, the scraps of which would feed the pig well and fatten him up before slaughter.

"Most rural people didn't have coal-fired ranges or access to gas, so cooking was generally done in the fireplace.  A big iron boiler was slung on a hook over the fire, and everything was cooked in the one utensil; the square of bacon... cabbage or other greens in a net, potatoes in another, and the roly-poly swathed in a cloth.  The water in which the food was cooked, and the potato parings and other vegetable trimmings were the pig's share."

Broomfield, Andrea, 2007: Food and Cooking in Victorian England

Schooling was not compulsory for children until 1880, and then, only for 5 to 10 year olds - neither was it free, except for the children of the destitute.  Nevertheless, George and all of his siblings went to school, which is an indication that their father wasn't doing too badly. When George was a child, there was no purpose-built school in Bickington, so the children had their lessons in an old barn.  By 1868 there were about a hundred children attending school there - it was time that a proper school was built.  A bazaar was held to help raise funds for it, and by 1870, a fine stone school had been built. George's youngest siblings would have attended it, but George himself had all of his schooling in a barn.

This undated photo, showing the stone school on the left, is probably from the early 20th century. 
The building next to the school was, and still is a pub.  Just beyond that are the cob cottages in the photo above.

Outside of school, he would have had chores to do, which probably included foraging for mushrooms, nuts, apples, berries and whatever other wild food was in season.  He may have had to fetch water from the well, or milk from the dairy, or bread from the baker, or if his mother baked her own bread, George may have joined her and and his siblings in 'leazing' - combing the harvested fields for missed grain.  After two or three weeks of leazing, the collected grain would be thrashed at home and sent to the miller for grinding into flour.

A rural child's leisure hours were probably very few, but when there was time for play, popular pastimes included hoop-rolling, skittles, and kicking a ball around, or in the absence of a proper football, a pig's bladder would do.  On Sundays, nearly everybody went to the parish church, which was the focal point of village social life.

One effect of the industrial revolution was the drawing of a great many people from rural areas into the towns and cities, where jobs could be got in factories or dockyards.  At some point, George was drawn away from Bickington, to Plymouth in southern Devon.  Exactly when he went there and why, I don't know, but soon I'll follow him there to see what his city life might have been like.