From Chesham to Eastbourne

Researching a postcard sent to someone who wasn't at their usual address (on holiday or working away from home) can create a problem. With this card, I began by looking for a family in Chesham with daughters named Alice and Mabel. Fortunately there was only one and I was soon able to research the Arnold family.

Mabel was born in 1900 and in 1911 she was still living at home with her parents, Joseph and Annie. Joseph was a postman. The couple had five children, but by 1911 one had died.

Alice wasn't with her family in 1911, she was working as a servant for Hannah Hawkins, who was a widow.

The girls' brother, Frank, was killed in the First World War in 1917. He was only 19. Their younger brother, Ralph, became a wood turner.

Of course, given the message on the postcard – The Peace Celebrations went off A1 – has extra meaning, once we know of Frank's loss.

In May 2022 I gave a talk to Chesham's U3A group and was able to include the brief story of the Arnold family at the end. Afterwards, a member of the group said they would walk home via the war memorial and look for Frank's name. The next morning I received a lovely email thanking me for the talk and with this:

One of our members contacted me later about the Arnolds on the war memorial in Chesham.  Apparently, they were mentioned in a book on local history produced in 2018.

That member, along with others, looked at the memorial on their way home and found Frank's details – and the entry in the book that they owned. It's always very satisfying to know that my research (brief though it was for this postcard) has led to renewed interest in the family and, of course, the losses of the First World War.

Lucy Whitehead's Daughters

 

Lucy Turvey married George Whitehead in 1892. The couple had three children: William, Lucy and Florence. In 1911, Lucy and Florence were away from home and working as servants for a farmer, Corbett Roper, and his wife in Lenborough. Lucy was 18 and Florence was only 13. 

George Whitehead was a cowman in Lenborough and perhaps he also worked for Corbett. The addresses were certainly near to each other according to the census reports.

It's not unusual to find children working in service at a young age. One of the first cards I ever researched traced to a 10-year-old girl working for a laundress in Bath. Let's hope Florence had an easier life than that young girl who was born a generation earlier.

Brushes and Boots

Leonard Stephenson was born in March 1909. His father, Roy, was a brush borer. In 1901, Roy lived with his own parents at the address on the card. Arthur Stephenson was a rivetter in a shoe factory. Several of the other workers on this page of the census return worked in either shoe or brush factories. One of the few exceptions was Cecil Young who was boarding with the family – he worked in a cycle factory. Leonard, who received the card, would become a mechanic.