By Ian Doucet — Mar 7, 2024

Survivors, Early Deaths & Mysteries

Orphaned at 7, a widow at 29, 6 children. Born in 19th century poverty, she moved from Glasgow to London as a young girl, fell in love and made a life there, fled a drunken second husband back to Scotland. Christina was a survivor, deserves to be remembered, and the times she lived in.

19th century Oxford Street

Untold stories of forgotten people who lived interesting lives, survived hardships in different times, long lives or lives cut short. A mother and a beloved husband who died too young, a bad father who lived too long, two sisters who were survivors. One was my great grandmother Christina, living from the mid 1800s until the 1950s. She died when I was 11, I could have met her, but no-one mentioned her.

Chapter 1

Christina Potter

Christina had a long life, orphaned at age seven, a widow at 29, six children. Born in 19th century poverty, she travelled from Glasgow to London as a young girl, fell in love and made a life there, had children, was widowed, fled from a drunken second husband back to Scotland. She was a survivor, my great grandmother; she deserves to be remembered, and the times she lived in and survived.

Christina was born in 1863 in Glasgow, the youngest of four children in a working class family. Her parents were Edward and Christina Potter who had married in Eccles in Lancashire in 1850. Edward was a watchmaker, then unemployed, then a street hawker selling anything he could on the streets, then a dealer, salesman, boiler maker, engine maker - any manual job he could find as the family moved around the industrial towns of Lancashire and the Midlands, always seeking work and taking cheap rented accommodation.

There were 'lodging houses' in Manchester and other industrial towns, providing the most basic shelter (one room per family, no sanitation or clean water) at a few pennies per day for the many near-destitute people swelling the urban population far beyond the number of houses available (or affordable). During the 1800s cities attracted people from the countryside where many farmers were tenants unable to provide a living for their children. Disease was rife in the overcrowded and unsanitary cities, living conditions were awful. This was part of Britain's industrial revolution and empire-building; people were its fuel, it chewed them up and spat them out.

Lancashire and the Midlands were suffering economically from the sudden closure of cotton-spinning mills in the early 1860s, when civil war in the United States stopped the supply of raw cotton from the southern states. Lancashire and Manchester had developed major textile industries and become reliant on them; cotton workers were the highest paid of the working class, and their sudden mass unemployment had severe effects on the wider community.

Edward and Christina had three children there, Ann Marie born in Salford in 1851, Edward Robert Simpson Potter born in Chorlton in 1853 and George Thomas Potter born in Manchester in 1856. In 1861 they were living in Everton. The first son was named after his father and also given his mother's maiden name Simpson; Christina Simpson was born about 1825, the daughter of Joseph Simpson and Harriet Tipler. The name Christina is important - this forename was passed down through five generations to the present day.

In the early 1860s the Potter family travelled to Glasgow, perhaps by coach but there were trains from London via Manchester to Glasgow by then. The early trains generally charged 1 penny per mile, half-price for children, so the journey cost them about £8 (equivalent of over £1,000 today); this fare was set as being similar to the cheapest horse-drawn coaches but with the advantage of trains being faster. To spend this much, things must have seemed pretty hopeless for them in Lancashire, but somehow, Edward often out of work, children to feed, they scraped together the fares.

The attraction of Glasgow was that it was expanding and flourishing, with more work opportunities than recession-struck Lancashire offered. That may be how it looked to Edward from afar, but Glasgow had an overpopulation and housing crisis even worse than the Lancashire towns. Not only had Glasgow attracted working families, it had become home to thousands of destitute people fleeing Ireland's recurrent famines and impoverished Scots from the Highland Clearances (clearance of crofters by landlords preferring more profitable sheep farming). Many properties had become lodging houses, more houses were built on gardens for the same purpose; central Glasgow around the river Clyde was a warren of dark, narrow passage ways. Floor space in the lodging houses was crowded with beds, palletts, straw to cram in as many paying bodies as possible; a 'midden' outside was the only sanitation, and there was no clean drinking water until late in the 1800s. In these conditions, disease proliferated; typhus, cholera, smallpox were endemic in Glasgow, with severe outbreaks every few years. Many contemporaneous reports lamented the living conditions in Glasgow, and new hospitals were built towards the end of the century but improvement in housing was slower.

When German philosopher Friedrich Engels visited the slums of Glasgow in 1844, he said, "I did not believe... that so large an amount of filth, crime, misery and disease existed in one spot in any civilized country."

Gorbals old house by side of new tenement

In one inner city area, the Gorbals, many of the previous small terraced houses had been torn down in the 1840s to build five and six storey tenements capable of housing many more people. But this did not improve living conditions; the Gorbals became synonomous with squalor, lack of hygiene and overcrowding. Close to the Gorbals and either side of the Cyde were 'unimproved' and similarly crowded districts full of lodging houses where the Potter family came to live and their fourth child, Christina, my great grandmother, was born, at 69 Carrick Street, on 6 January 1863. A few years later they moved to 11 Main Street in the Gorbals.

Main St, Gorbals, high tenements in distance

The first early death in this true story was of young Christina's mother, who contracted typhus and died, aged 45, on 10 February 1870 in the Fever Hospital. There had been a severe typhus epidemic in the winter of 1864-5 leading to the opening of the Parliamentary Road Fever Hospital; the next typhus outbreak in Glasgow started in 1869. Typhus occurs mainly in overcrowded, unsanitary living conditions and with under-nourishment; it develops rapidly, with fever, chills, prostration, nausea, and in some cases coma and delirium; pneumonia, kidney failure and cardiac failure can result. Typhus is passed person to person; rapidly moving Christina's mother to the Fever Hospital may have saved the children from getting typhus, as well as sparing them living in the same room with their mother's illness and delirium.

Losing your mother is bad enough, but what made this worse for Christina (aged 7), Edward and Robert was that their elder sister Ann Marie had married the previous year and moved out. And their father Edward Potter had abandoned the family, moving back to Lancashire. So upset (or ashamed?) were they all by this, that when Ann Marie notified the registrar of births, marriages and deaths she declared their mother was the "widow of Edward Potter, engine fitter". In fact, he was not dead, but alive, elsewhere.

So after moving home many times during their childhood, Christina, Edward and Robert had to leave the latest family home and become lodgers with another Glasgow family. The 1871 census shows them living at 92 Wellington Lane, in the McInnes household: Christina aged 8, Robert 17 and George 15; Robert had dropped his father's first name and was working as a founder, George was working as a brassfounder, their wages paying the rent and leaving precious little for essentials. By this time, April 1871, Ann Marie and her husband had left Glasgow and moved to London.

Moving out of the McInnes lodgings, Robert Potter got married five years later, to Annie Millar (they named their daughter, born 1880, Christina - there seems to be a lot of fond remembering of their dead mother). Brother George lived with the couple, still in Glasgow. On his 1876 marriage certificate Robert stated his father Edward to be deceased, as had Ann Marie previously. Christina, by then 13 or 14, soon followed her older sister Ann Marie to London; by 1881 at age 18 she had a live-in job as a general servant at 52 Isledon Road, Islington, in the Tooley household which ran a small dairy business. By this time Ann Marie and husband and young children had moved back to Scotland, continuing the family pattern of moving about to find work - or of un-rootedness, nowhere that is really 'home'.

So Christina was a young woman on her own in London. The city was growing in population and expanding outwards in the mid-1800s; this continued, with new terraced housing densely packed on what had recently been fields. Areas of formerly middle-class housing were becoming what we call today 'houses of multiple occupation' for working class families on short-term rentals, who moved often if they were in and out of work or rents increased. Christina was fortunate and/or smart to find a job which gave her more secure accommodation than might have been the case, and in a dairy which with its surrounding customers was likely to remain in business. It would have provided her with a small room, possibly shared, some meals and a very little cash in hand.

Raymond James lived at 13 Monsell Road, which was close to Isledon Road. Raymond was working as a ‘carman', driving a horse and cart for a living. Christina and Raymond may have met on the nearby streets, or perhaps he was delivering to the Tooley dairy, but they did meet and fell in love. They married on 3 August 1884 at Islington parish church; he was 29, she was 22 and still at the Isledon Road dairy. On the marriage register Christina gave her father's name as Robert, not Edward; it may be that she misremembered her older brother Robert as her father, or did not want to remember the abandoning father Edward (although that name is passed down the generations). Both Christina and Raymond signed the marriage register, indicating they were literate; their generation was the first to have mandatory primary-age schooling (introduced in several statutes from the 1860s) - previous generations often signed their name with an X, as did Edward on Christina's 1963 birth certificate.

Three years later their first child, Mary Christina James, was born, on 23 June 1887; they were living at 43 Chalfont Road, off St James' Road in the Holloway area, but the child was born at the City of London Lying In Hospital in the Holborn area. Does this suggest it was a difficult birth? And three years seems a long time for a first child to be born, so Christina may have had miscarriages previously.

Florence Maggie James was the second child, in 1889, born at 122 Georges Road, Holloway. Their first son, Raymond, was born in 1890, at 57 Eden Grove, Islington. All these addresses are close, within walking distance.

Six years later the family were living in better, more modern accommodation, at 281 Farringdon Buildings, Farringdon Road. This was one of several model dwellings schemes in the late 1800s aimed at providing better housing for the 'working poor'; the street numbers were 68-86, so no. 281 may refer to a flat in one of these multi-storey buildings, which were demolished in the 1970s.

But Raymond James was another early death in Christina's young life. He died, age 35, on 25 September 1892 at St Bartholomews Hospital, of “pneumonia and delirium tremens”, and the 'informant' of his death was not Christina but the hospital superintendant. Driving a horse and cart in all weathers, on the filthy and coal-smoke-filled streets of London could well lead to pneumonia. Suffering from this and delirium tremens sound like a slow and painful death, awful for his wife and three small children to witness, to the extent that he could not die at home. Reminiscent for Christina of her mother's painful death when she was a child.

Christina may not have known she was pregnant when Raymond died. On 4 May 1893 May Frances James was born, at 73 Eden Grove, Islington; on her birth certificate her father was stated to be "Raymond James (deceased)." In the few weeks before he died, ill and delirious, could he have become her father? A mystery.

Christina's story continues - she lived for over 60 more years - in Chapter 3 as Christina James, her dead husband's surname by which she was known for the rest of her long life, except for two occasions, as were her six children (some by other fathers). She also remembered him by naming her first son Raymond, and this name also carries on down the generations.

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Another mystery is Ann Marie's husband Daniel Connal. That was his first name when they married in 1859 and in the 1871 census, but on the baptism records of two of their sons in 1875 he is named as Donald Connell. The baptism mis-spelling of Connal is understandable, but he continued to be known as Donald (Donald B. Connal in 1901 census, though he had given his name as Daniel in 1881 census) and he died as Donald Brookes Connal in 1918, with Ann Marie still alive.

Like her younger sister Christina, Ann Marie was another survivor, also living a long life, moving between Glasgow and London and back; she had nine children and out-lived her husband. When she married Daniel Connal she was 18, her occupation described as a book folder. They gave the marriage registrar the same address, 54 Commerce St, Tradeston, Glasgow, so they had probably set up home together first, but they did things properly - the marriage certificate states it was a ‘regular’ marriage with the banns (public declarations for three weeks of the intention to marry) being called “according to Church of Scotland". In Scotland at the time there was another form of marriage, 'by declaration', whereby a couple could declare themselves married in front of two witnesses (anywhere, usually in a private house) and from this get a sheriff's warrant to obtain a marriage certificate, on which their marriage was stated to be 'irregular'; this was to save a couple, possibly needing to get married in a hurry, from living 'in sin' and to legitimise children.

Perhaps influenced by her father's frequent joblessness, she married a man already established in a skilled trade - Daniel, age 25, was a compositor journeyman, later a printer. Both his parents had died, and witnesses at the wedding were Peter Wilson and Janet Wilson, siblings of Daniel’s mother, so his uncle and aunt, which indicates the family's approval of the marriage.

They had moved to 21 Balmanno St, another slum area of Glasgow (since redeveloped) by February 1870 when Ann Marie's mother died. With Ann Marie's two brothers and sister Christina parentless (Edward had disappeared) and suddenly homeless, they were put into lodgings. In late 1870 Ann Marie and Daniel had a child, John Edward Connal, and soon after they moved to London, living at 22 Waxwell Terrace, Lambeth. By 1875 they had two more children, Donald Wallace Connell and Robert Simpson Connell, and were at 56 Gloucester Street, in the Bloomsbury area of London. Two other children were born, George Thomas (circa 1877) and Maggie May (circa 1879), before they moved back to Glasgow with four of their five children, to 35 Raglan Street; their first-born, John Edward, either stayed in London or lived separately back in Scotland (but, at age 11?) or had died. A sixth child, James Edward, was born in Glasgow in 1880. Again, so many of the same names being repeated in later generations, a kind of kinship and family remembering.

In 1901 they were living at 22 Garscadden Street in Glasgow, with three more children, Christina H. S. Connal (circa 1884), Agnes M. Connal (circa 1887) and Mary T. Connal (circa 1894). Ann Marie lived on after her husband's death in 1918, dying aged 84 on 23 April 1935 at 48 Dumbarton Rd, Clydebank, the informant of her death being Robert F. Angus, son in law; at death she was named Mary Ann Connal, but her age, mother and father named on the death certificate confirm this was Ann Marie Connal.

Edward Potter was a survivor too, of a sort. After leaving his wife and children, he next appeared in Liverpool in 1871, in the Royal Infirmary, listed as a 44 years old widower and boiler maker. By April 1881 he was in the Brownlow Hill Workhouse, Liverpool, described as married (not widowed), a boilermaker born in Manchester. In the next census, 1891, he was living at 18 Truman St, Liverpool, with the widow Isabella Jones, stated to be a housekeeper. They married the following year; his father was described on the marriage certificate as Robert Potter, a smith. Edward died on 2 November 1895, age 68, back in Brownlow Hill Workhouse.

We'll never know how Christina met Raymond, the love of her life, seemingly, who she lost after a few years but kept his name for the rest of her long life and gave to her children born later to other fathers. For children, how their two parents met and fell in love can be the most heart-warming of family stories, regardless of how that relationship turned out later. But the 'how we met' story has to be told, and often isn't. I catch a glimpse of the start of such a story in this photograph of a Victorian girl and boy, younger than Christina and Raymond were, an unknown pair, just possibly the spark at the start of another long family line.

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See also Wikitree (free, dates & biography), MyHeritage (subscription, dates)
Christina Potter was my great grandmother on the maternal side of the family. There is no photograph of the young Christina, probably none taken. The first image in this chapter is of an unknown Victorian girl.

Chapter 2

Raymond James

Raymond's was one of the early deaths in these stories. He and his origins are also a mystery, in several respects.

When Raymond's birth in 1854 was registered, his mother X'd the register rather than signing it, and gave her address as 32 Tavistock Square, London; but she gave birth to him at "Race Hill, Launceston" in Cornwall. The Tavistock Square address is a grand, 5-storey house overlooking one of London's much-prized gardens, created in 1806 and open to the public but seen mainly as a privilege of monied owners of the fine Georgian houses facing it.

No father is listed on Raymond's birth certificate, so he was given his mother Sarah James' surname. His birth on 28 December 1854 was not registered in Launceston until 7 February 1855, close to the maximum delay of 42 days for registering a birth; does this suggest a long recovery from giving birth, or could she have given birth in London and travelled home to Cornwall to register it?

At 32 Tavistock Square Sarah was likely a servant; when her pregnancy became known she would not have been allowed to remain, so was made homeless in London in mid-1854. St Pancras Workhouse, which is close to Tavistock Square, admitted an 18 year old Sarah James on 5 August of that year, her (former) occupation listed as "service". Two days later she was discharged, said to be at her own request; if the workhouse guardians learned she was from Cornwall, they may have paid for the journey back there to avoid her and her child becoming an ongoing burden on local taxpayers.

Raymond and his mother Sarah returned to London some time after February 1855 and well before 15 March 1860 when Sarah gave birth to William, again with no father listed on the birth records. She returned well before that date, because the 1861 census records Sarah having had another child, Anne, before William. Information on censuses can be inaccurate, because it is given verbally by the occupants of the house when the census enumerator happens to knock on the door, and no documentary checks are made at the time or after. But several later censuses give consistent information regarding these two of Sarah James' children.

The 1861 census lists Sarah as aged 27 (indicating born circa 1834), with two children Anne James 2, William James 1, both born in London, and a cousin Susan Smith, 14, a general servant, born in Launceston. There is no mention of Raymond, who would have been age 6, so surely not working on a live-in basis anywhere else. Mystery.

William was born at 27 Goldington Street, Pancras Road, in 1860, and that was the same address in the 1861 census. Sarah was noted as head of the family, but the property was also occupied by seven members of the Harrow family; it was (and is) a 3-storey, 2-bay terraced house, so not a small, low-rent type of house. Sarah was described as an 'annuitant'; who or why she was being paid an annuity or on what conditions is unknown, but it explains how she could live with her children in London without the earnings of a husband or other relative, in a decent middle-class type of house.

Raymond does not appear in the 1861 or 1871 censuses at this or any other address, for which I can find no explanation. In 1881 he was recorded as a carman and single, age 26, born circa 1855 in Launceston, Cornwall, living at 4 Scholefield Road, Islington, as a lodger, with his sister Annie (not Anne) James 22, brother William James 21 and sister Sarah James 17, all three of them born in St Pancras (these sibling relationships are identified on the census). William was also working as a carman, Sarah was a dyer and Annie was described as an ironer. It seems Raymond was looking after his younger siblings, and lodging them in what was a good quality newly built house near Archway, shared with or sublet from the Brooks family (4 persons). This was further north from the inner St Pancras area where his mother and siblings had lived previously. Around the Archway area new streets and housing were being developed at that time, and 4 Scholefield Rd exists today.

It would have been easy for Raymond to get work as a carman or carter, driving one of the many types of passenger carriage or a goods-carrying cart; there was much demand, and these were the only modes of transport, apart from walking, for many years. People routinely walked much longer distances, functionally, not just for recreation as nowadays.

But London was a horse-drawn society in the 1800s, pre-combustion engine, and remained so even as railways developed more inner city stations. Horses were functional tools of a trade, seldom (and then only in rich households) regarded creatures of beauty and pleasure, sentiment, as today. Veterinary care seems to have been minimal.

From 1830 the horse-drawn omnibus met the need for large numbers of people to cross London to and from work, where previously they had had to rely to much smaller hackney carriages; omnibuses met the need to commute, and increased it - by 1850 there were 1,300 omnibuses. Ambulances, fire engines, dust carts were horse-drawn.

Businesses large and small needed transportation on a regular basis; goods and materials had to be collected from and delivered to the London docks, factories, railway stations, nearby towns and farms. Many businesses would own the horses and carts they used (Raymond was recorded as a "corn merchants' carman" on one document). Drivers might start by hiring a horse and cart, and building up a casual trade with local shopkeepers etc, freelancing, as Raymond and William may have done. 'Owner-operator' cart and coach drivers had nowhere to keep the their horse and cart overnight in the crowded streets and dense, mostly terraced housing, so there were ‘Livery & Bait’ businesses to store the cart and stable and feed the horse. All these arrangements were negotiable, with ever-present competition from other drivers; earnings for drivers were probably low and variable, encouraging them to work long hours in all weathers as, it may be, Raymond did, contracting pneumonia in his 30s.

With so many horses on the streets - an estimated 300,000 in London - there were problems other than congestion. Health and pollution problems: streets became covered in dung (10kg per day per horse estimated) which produced a foul and slippery slurry in wet weather and a dusty mat in summer; wet or dry, this was scattered by passing vehicles across houses, shopfronts and pedestrians; the dung attracted clouds of flies, both unpleasant and spreading disease. Crossing-sweepers made a living clearing paths for people to cross streets. As the population grew, and London grew, so did the number of horses and carts, roads becoming gridlocked and the clatter of horses and carriage wheels became so deafening that straw was laid outside homes and hospitals to muffle the noise. It become so bad that it was called ‘Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894’ and The Times predicted “In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure.”

Electric hackneys and trams were introduced towards the end of the 19th century, but horsepower continued to be in everyday use, as this 1905 photograph shows.

Holloway Road, 1905

There seem to be no birth or baptism records for Annie and Sarah; there is a birth certificate for Wiliam but no baptism record. It is possible that the girls' births were registered under another surname (a father's?) but their mother chose to call them by her surname when answering census questions (however, William's birth, between the births of the two girls, was recorded as James). Where their mother Sarah was in 1881 is unknown, or when/if she died. No workhouse or similar instutional records have been found for her or them. The only later reference to her is in Raymond's 1884 marriage certificate, where he does not state either his mother or father were deceased, and he states his father was "Raymond James, mariner"; this may be a fiction to hide illegitimacy, there is no such marriage record, and an unmarried Sarah James liaising with a Raymond James seems unlikely for the concidence of surnames; also, if this man was the father of the Sarah's two daughters as well as her sons they would have the James surname and birth records could be found.

But someone was paying Sarah James an annuity, for some reason, and she was either conceiving children with this person, or others. The annuity allowed her to live with her children in a fairly decent house, albet shared with another family. The sense of deliberate obscurity and absence of normal records such as birth certificates for Annie and Sarah (daughter), suggests to me that the always-unidentified man was a member of one of the posh houses the mother Sarah had worked in as a young woman. That Raymond, the oldest child, seems to have distanced himself from his mother at a young age could also suggest there was something untoward going on. But, those are guesses, it's another mystery.

Between April 1881 and August 1884 Raymond had moved to 13 Monsell Rd, Islington - he gave that as his address when marrying Christina Potter on 3 August at Islington parish church. Their marriage certificate names him as Raymond Jones; that, combined with Christina naming her father as Robert Potter instead of Edward Potter made this look like a misidentification. But no other marriage record was found. And the actual marriage register - which the two parties sign - showed him signing as Raymond James; it is clear from the different handwriting on the register that a clerk misread his signature as Jones when completing the register and writing the certificate. His other details - age 29, bachelor, carman - are consistent with other records.

By June 1887 Raymond and Christina were living at 43 Chalfont Road, off St James' Road, Holloway, when their first child, Mary Christina James, was born. Two years later they were at 122 Georges Road, Holloway, when Florence Maggie James was born and at 57 Eden Grove, Islington, in 1890 when their first son, Raymond, was born. That is their address in the April 1891 census too, where the children are named as Christina James (omitting 'Mary', as she did later in life) aged 6, Florence M. James 1, and Raymond J. James, 9 months, with a cousin James Underwood 18. The Underwood family connection is a mystery; there was also a Thomas Underwood, age 14, living at the Tooley dairy in 1871 at the same time as Christina pre-marriage.

These addresses they moved between are close together, and they were surely short-term rentals; with Raymond's uncertain earnings the frequent moves may have been prompted by difficulty paying the rents. The houses were small, terraced, crowded into new streets built on fields off the main roads leading northwards out of London, as shown by maps of the time. The indications are that they were struggling financially, as were so many; Georges Road was the grimmest, most poverty-struck of the streets in this area, where rents were lowest. Someone born there in the 1940s has written that, even then, the lavatory was a shed in the back yard.

Islington early in the 1800s was a village separate from urban London; the parish boundaries extended northwards with the main northern route out of London ('the Holloway') crossing between fields with only a few small clusters of houses at several points; there was Paradise Row, Paradise Terrace and House near where Eden Grove was built later. Londoners used to journey to this countryside at weekends, and it must have seemed like a rural paradise to them coming from dark and overcrowded city streets. A local historian has written of: "rural Islington... the considerable number of hills... now disguised by the street landscape... With its open country and pleasant streams Islington was regarded as a place for city people to go for a day out... within walking distance."

Comparing an early 1800s map with a mid-50s map of Islington parish shows an astonishingly rapid and near-complete building over of what had been wide, open spaces. As the population of London and its business and manufacuring activity increased, middle-class and well-to-do families were attracted to new housing in this Islington countryside; Eden Grove, Cornwall Place (later to become part of Eden Grove), Georges Place (later Road) and a few other unpaved roads off Holloway Road were made; an 1844 map shows detached houses with open spaces betweeen, gardens behind and then fields, and open ground surrounding this small area. The contrast with an 1871 map is great: more and more people have moved into the area, and building to house them has changed, where once were detached villas or open ground are dense terraces of small houses. By 1871 the appeal of the area had declined. It had become far less like paradise.

"It is difficult to visualise the genteel suburban retreat that Islington had been... lost in the near ten-fold increase in population from [1831 to 1901]. This gave Islington more people than any other borough in southern England - and more than Belfast, or Newcastle, or Edinburgh... "

This densification process continued into the last decades of the century, until remaining open spaces had been built over with small terraced houses, railway sidings, goods yards, and the expanding cattle market at nearby, so-called Belle Isle (see Chapter 3). This was the rapidly changing, rapidly densifying area that Raymond and Christina were living in.

Such was the relentless pace of house-building that at the end of the 19th century there was a seemingly sudden realisation that all London's undeveloped green spaces were fast disappearing and a movement was started to preserve those that remained. Green spaces were termed 'the lungs of the city'. This new concern about healthy living conditions and places for recreation was led not by the working people suffering overcrowding, but by a few wealthy and philanthropic individuals - as a result, it was an effective movement and many green spaces were protected from development.

War-time destruction and post-war development has since changed the 19th century character of Islington. Post-war it was regarded as a seedy and run-down part of London, grimy terraces and squares having suffered many years of building neglect; some were replaced in slum clearance by the concrete block-type of mass housing of the 1950s and '60s, a dubious improvement. The relative prosperity of the middle-classes needing to live close to inner London has since rescued the area from further decay and brought about usually sympathetic restoration of old houses, creating 'desirable' Islington.

Eden Grove, St James Street, Chalfont Street and Georges Street where Raymond and Christina lived are shown at the top of the juxtaposed 1871 and 1894 maps (small section of), which show the density of terraced housing and its continued increase over this period.

When the family moved to Eden Grove in 1890, the next road parallel to Georges Road, they were moving to a slightly better street, in terms of housing, living conditions and neighbours. In the late 1800s, the philanthropist Charles Booth carried out a uniquly comprehensive and scientific social survey of London life, walking each street and using police reports to literally map, in different colours, the wide variations in wealth, living conditions and social class across London. His mapping included Islington; here, as almost everywhere in London, gradations from extreme poverty to relative affluence lived side by side, with big differences a few streets apart. Georges Road where Raymond and Christina lived in 1889 was coloured black, indicating "Lowest class. Vicious, semi-criminal" or dark blue "Very poor, casual. Chronic want."; cross-streets and courts (most of which no longer exist) between Georges Road and Eden Grove were dark blue, or light blue meaning "Poor. 18s. to 21s. a week for a moderate family". Eden Grove was purple: "Mixed. Some comfortable others poor."

Isledon Road where Christina had lived before marrying, and Monsell Road likewise for Raymond, were shown in red - "Middle class. Well-to-do" and pink - "Fairly comfortable. Good ordinary earnings". In marrying and having children, with only Raymond's earnings to live on, they had really come down in the world. Their move from Georges Road to Eden Grove in 1890 was a small step up.

What Raymond was doing was gradually improving his new family's living conditions, as he had done for his siblings previously. After their son Raymond was born, they moved to more modern accommodation at 281 Farringdon Buildings, Farringdon Road. This was one of several model dwellings schemes in the late 1800s charitably aimed at providing better housing for the 'working poor'; the street numbers were 68-86, so no. 281 may refer to a flat in one of these multi-storey buildings, demolished in the 1970s. That was the address on Raymond's death certificate when he died on 25 September 1892, aged 35, although it states he actually died in St Bartholomews Hospital, London, of “pneumonia and delirium tremens”.

It is unclear what happened to his siblings when Raymond left 4 Scholefield Road. By the next census in 1891 they were not there, another two families had moved in, and the Brooks family they had been sharing with at no. 4 had moved to 22 Scholefield Road to share with a different family. His siblings cannot be identified elsewhere from census records; they were adults, in work, and may have married and/or moved away. But it seems odd that they were not witnesses at Raymond's wedding in 1884, as might have been expected; were they there at Islington parish church? (the banns had been called for three weeks prior - it was not a secret event). Did they know when he was hospitalised? Did they know when he died, attend the funeral, support his widow Christina? And where was his mother, Sarah? I think it is interesting that none of their forenames were given to any of Christina's children before or after Raymond's death, and yet that passing on of first names is so common in this extended family.

What is clear is that the widowed Christina and her children moved back to an area she knew, to Eden Grove, no. 73 this time, where on 4 May 1893 May Frances James was born; on her birth certificate her father was stated to be "Raymond James (deceased)."

How Christina continued is in Chapter 3 following, but she remained as Christina James, surely in fond memory of Raymond, and gave all her children the James surname, including those he could not possibly have been the father of, even if he did father May Frances in the last weeks of his painful, distressing, early death.

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Some of the streets where Raymond and Christina lived have been re-named, in what is now the N7 area of London; St James Road has become MacKenzie Road; where Chalfont Road ran north-south crossing MacKenzie Road just a spur remains into Paradise Park (created in the 1970s where a German V2 rocket devastated the terraced housing). Eden Grove remains, as does Georges Road in shortened form. Monsell Road and Isledon Road remain, but unchanged? - hard to imagine a dairy business there now in these traffic bottlenecks, traffic fumes replacing horse dung.

It was not only horses polluting Britain's cities in the 1800s, human waste was a persistent health problem too. In Britain few houses had indoor bathrooms, instead just an outdoor 'privy' in the back yard or garden; these outdoor cesspools were undrained, relying on natural soakage into the soil and liable to overflow. For an isolated cottage in the countryside this would be less of a threat to health (if the water supply was elsewhere) but in cities and towns with crowded housing the risks were much greater. Few houses had an indoor water supply, instead relying on communal water pumps, which might become polluted by leakage from overflowing cesspools. Consuming contaminated water led to recurring epidemics of cholera and other diseases. Chamberpots were used at night in bedrooms, with the contents tipped into the outhouse privy during the day - or just dumped anywhere convenient, as awareness of hygiene was often lacking. By the late 1800s newly built middle-class houses might have flushing toilets, but even grand houses would have had just one bathroom installed near the bedrooms, with servants in the attic or basement still relying on chamberpots. There were exceptions - Liverpool had near-complete provision of water closets in homes by the 1890s. But by as late as 1967 the House Conditions Survey found that 25 percent of homes in England and Wales still lacked a bath or shower, an indoor WC, a sink and hot and cold water taps. One researcher wrote that "I toured a section of terrace-houses in Manchester once that had an interesting layout: there was a square block, and around the perimeter each side had a row of terrace-houses that faced the street. Each house had its own small backyard that backed onto an alley. In the middle of the block - behind all the houses - was a large wash-house, with several (flushing) toilets as well as large laundry sinks and so on. At the time they were built, none of these small 'two up, two down' houses had their own toilets."

Sarah James remains a mystery. If Sarah was 18 in 1854 (as the workhouse records state), she was born before birth registration became mandatory for parents, but there are two relevant baptism records, one for Sarah James, daughter of Catherine James, baptised 20 September 1832 at Launceston St Mary Magdalene, and the other for Sarah Ann James, daughter of William and Grace James, baptised 20 October 1833 at St Germans (which is about 20 miles from Launceston). The fact that the Sarah who was Raymond's mother later had another son she named William (with no father identified) may suggest that his mother was the second of the children above, baptised in 1833.

But either of these Sarahs may have been Raymond's mother, and may have been one of the two Cornwall-born Sarah James included in the 1851 census. This census shows a teenaged Sarah James working for wealthy families with Cornwall connections:

17 year old Sarah James (born St Germans, Cornwall) was the still room maid for Edward Granville Eliot, Earl of St Germans, at 36 Dover Street in Mayfair, London; he had a country seat in Cornwall.
18 year-old Sarah James was a housemaid for the Cornwall-born widow Grace Williams at 36 Lansdowne Place, Hove, Sussex, which was a fashionable place for retirement. She had three Cornish servants, her cook Saran [sic] James (54 yrs), parlour maid Mary Parsons, and Sarah; their birthplaces are listed simply as Cornwall. After working for Mrs Williams, Sarah could probably have got a job in a well-to-do part of London.

Whichever Sarah was Raymond's mother, it is striking that quite young women were travelling far and wide in search of employment, for menial and junior positions but with the advantage of accommodation and being fed, as part of a large and monied household. This travelling far and wide seems to have been common despite the costs and risks; in the 1871 census when Christina was working at the Tooley dairy in Islington, a visitor is recorded there on the census day, Julia Ann Bridgman, from Barnstable in Devon. They got about, these 19th century girls. It's not the tale of unemancipated females, especially young ones, cloistered at home until safely married, that I had expected to find. They may not have had the vote, but they voted with their feet and made their lives as much as - more than - any of the men in these stories. More to come.

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See also Wikitree (free, dates & biography), MyHeritage (subscription, dates)
There is no photograph of Raymond that I'm aware of, probably none taken.

Chapter 3

Christina James

How Christina survived, paid rent, fed her children, is largely unknown and hard to imagine. She had had an impoverished, disrupted childhood, and she did not have a straightforward, settled life after Raymond's early death.

With her three children, Raymond only two but five year old (Mary) Christina and three year old Florence helping perhaps, Christina moved and set up home in the area they knew, Eden Grove, now no longer with a husband and bread-winner. Widows received no pension or other state support. She went back to the street where she had lived with Raymond, where life had seemed to be getting better, before disaster struck.

As Christina's circumstances had fallen, so had this area in the late 1880s and '90s. The numbers of people moving into the area increased year on year, and these were generally poor people, moving out of London 0r migrants from elsewhere (including many from Ireland, so it became a strongly Roman Catholic area) looking for anywhere to live near the employment offered by London and the abbattoir/animal market close to Eden Grove and other industries springing up on the edges of the city. Speculative builders had responded by constructing the mass housing of the time; terraces of small houses were cheaper to build, and many could be built on what would have been the plot of one villa. They were cheap housing to rent, builders' and financiers' investments which could fund more terraces on the next bit of open space.

Much of the local employment came from the extensive slaughter houses and animal pens nearby, into which farm animals were driven and ‘fallen’ horses, of which there must have been many as all transport at the time was horse-drawn. There were trades in using every part of a slaughtered animal, right down to hammering the bones apart; pen pictures of this area of Victorian London are ghastly. The abattoirs and cattle market extended to 30 acres; they were on a small hill under which the railway tunnelled, named Belle Isle, perhaps with grim humour. The proximity of Belle Isle adversely affected the character of the Eden Grove/Georges Road area. The phrase “It stinks like Belle Isle” was used locally, and "the toxic presence of Belle Isle has been cited as a major reason for the decline in the area." From one Victorian account:

"The spot that holds the horse slaughter houses is modestly called 'The Vale;' the first turning beyond is, with goblin like humour, designated 'Pleasant Grove.' It is hardly too much to say, that almost every trade banished from the haunts of men, on account of the villanous smells and the dangerous atmosphere which it engenders is represented in Pleasant Grove. There are bone boilers, fat-melters, chemical works, firework makers, lucifer-match factories, and several most extensive and flourishing dust yards, where - at this delightful season so excellent for ripening corn - scores of women and young girls find employment in sifting the refuse of dust-bins, standing knee-high in what they sift.”

The streetscapes in this area have gone on changing in the many decades since the late 1800s. It is not just the traffic congestion that makes it near-impossible to imagine the original semi-rural attractions of Eden Grove and where once was Paradise Row, House and Terrace, or to see the later densified, terraced street that Christina first lived in at no. 57 and returned to after Raymond's death, at no. 73. There she gave birth to May Frances James on 4 May 1893, who may or may not have been Raymond's daughter.

Then Christina started a new relationship, with Charles Waller. He was not a local man - he worked as a live-in footman in Mayfair in central London in 1891 - so how they met is not obvious. Later he had a better, live-in job as a 'domestic coachman' at a posh north-west London household in Hendon, as noted in the 1901 census; he may have had this job by the time he had met Christina, or another in one of the big houses on Tollington Park Road.

He was four years younger than Christina; whatever degree of attraction there was on her part, she needed financial support. No marriage record has been found but she may have hoped to marry him, as she presented herself as "Christina Waller late James formerly Potter” when registering her fourth child’s birth in October 1896, and named their baby Charles Edward after the father. He was born at 39 Lennox Road, near Finsbury Park, so while Christina and Charles were in this relationship she had moved to a better house in a better, although mixed, area.

But, Charles Waller already had a partner, Isabella Waller (no marriage record can be found despite her surname), who he continued to live with for many years after knowing Christina. At what point did Christina know he was already in a relationship which was, or was presented as, marriage? As a footman then coachman in large private houses, he would have had the perfect excuse for not moving in with Christina (nor with Isabella at the time, who he did not share an address with until much later). Conveniently for him, a local train would have quickly got him from where he lived and worked to Finsbury Park station, which may be the reason Christina went to live at 39 Lennox Road nearby, i.e. he arranged this. However, that did provide her and the children with better housing in a rather better area, and how else could she have achieved that? It may be that his relationship with her was fairly serious on his part and lasting several years.

His son, Charles Edward, was only known by the Waller surname on his birth certificate, and probably never himself knew that his surname was any different to his siblings. The oldest daughter - referred to here as '(Mary) Christina' to avoid confusion - and Florence would have known and remembered, aged nine and seven respectively. But perhaps knowledge of the Waller episode was lost in what followed, and the further desperation, deception and escaping that went on.

By March 1899 when her last son Robert was born (and registered with the long-deceased Raymond James stated to be his father) Charles Waller was off the scene; this is likely, because by then Christina and her children were no longer in the fairly decent house in Lennox Road but had sunk to much lower housing.

On Booth's poverty maps Lennox Road is purple - "Mixed. Some comfortable others poor". But it crosses Campbell Road, all of which is solid black, on both sides: "Lowest class. Vicious, semi-criminal". So when Charles Waller left, Christina had only to turn a corner to fall into one of the worst slums in London, that's how mixed up and side-by-side misery and comfort were in London in the 1890s.

Christina and the children were living at 90 Campbell Road when Robert James was born. This was a slum of the direst poverty, rife with criminality and prostitution. House-building there started in the 1860s but paused often, meanwhile the street remained unpaved and unlighted, used as rubbish dump, with the result that social decline set in from early on, the six-room houses intended for clerks being taken over poorer tenants. Campbell Road had a reputation as the worst street in North London. "Doing a Campbell Bunk" was local slang for for 'getting-away-with-it' - some crime or misdemeanour.

"Its social decline.... was hastened from the early 1880s, when a large building intended as a public house was registered as a common lodging house for 90 men. Many houses were sold because of difficulties in repaying mortgages and several also became lodging houses, which drew a rough and shifting population, whereupon most respectable residents left... Residents in the 1890s did casual work or were thieves or prostitutes, and roughness was increased by London slum clearances from the 1870s... After the Second World War Campbell Road (renamed Whadcoat Road in the 1930s) was one of the first streets to be demolished... it was removed entirely to provide the site for flats..."

"By 1890, Campbell Road had the highest number of doss house beds on any Islington street. The residents, facing extreme poverty and overcrowded conditions, often spilled onto the streets. The area gained notoriety for its dire conditions, with inhabitants resorting to selling window glass and the police avoiding the neighbourhood due to its lawlessness. It became a hub for career criminals, marked by insularity and territorial rivalries... Campbell Road residents hesitated to disclose their address, fearing job discrimination, especially for positions in the numerous small factories in Islington..."

Who was Robert’s biological father is unclear, as is when Joseph Hicks appeared on the scene. He and Christina married on 22 October 1899, both giving 301 Bethnal Green Road, London, as their address (so cohabiting? an escape from Campbell Rd). She is listed as Christina James, widow, aged 34, her new husband as Joseph Hickie, mason, aged 36, his father as George Hickie, deceased, mason; Christina signed the register, Joseph X'd it. The marriage certificate misreads Hicks, on the signed register, as Hickie. Joseph Hicks' birth certificate confirms these details.

The 1901 census lists the new Hicks family at 4A St Loys Rd, Tottenham, London, with almost all details matching the James birth certificates, except that Christina James gave her name as Christina Hicks aged 38 (so born circa 1863, as she was) in Glasgow, and all the James children's surnames are given as Hicks: Florence Hicks 11, Raymond Hicks 10, Mary Hicks 7, Charles Hicks 5, Robert Hicks 2; the children's ages match their birth certificates, except for the eldest Mary (Mary Christina) who would have been 13. Husband Joseph Hicks was listed as a stonemason age 42 (so born circa 1859, in Hoxton).

This may have been an escape from the clutches of the Campbell Road slum for Christina, but 4A Loys Road was a small, very basic add-on to the house next door. Was Joseph a loving and supportive new husband? My uncle George (born 1907, one of Christina's grandsons) told me, after I traced him just before he died, that Hicks was a workshy drunkard (and violent?), so not providing the support Christina needed and probably awful for her and the six children to live with. Eventually she decided she had flee from him with the children.

Uncle George said that when the three sons came to be married much later, in Scotland, they worried that they might be illegitimate, but their mother reassured them that - "oh no, I did marry him". So although the boys were very young while all these changes of homes and partners were going on, with emotional disturbance that can only be imagined, they retained some memory of those disrupted times.

However, Christina kept it together. Somehow, she squirelled together the train fares and packed what was carry-able by her and the older children, bearing in mind the two youngest boys probably had to be carried, all of which preparation must have been difficult with new husband Joseph in the house and not working. Just getting them all away from the house and to Euston or Kings Cross mainline stations must have been difficult. Finding out train times and booking tickets may have involved a prior (and secret) visit to the station, or did they all arrive there to wait for the next outgoing train to Glasgow?

Having lived near the main railway lines close to Eden Grove, escaping by train would have easily occurred to her. But why to Scotland? - a long distance therefore expensive and a trial with the six children, and surely she had to overcome bad memories of her childhood in Scotland - after all she left for London as soon as she could as a young teenager; she must have been hoping for family support there.

At the time adult fares were 1 penny per mile, so about £2 London to Glasgow per adult; half-fares for children under 12 years, so the three oldest children would have needed adult tickets. I have not compared these fares with average wages of the time, because Christina’s family seems to have had no regular income, average or otherwise. After she had made the decision to leave Joseph, surely there was quite a long time for her to save up the rail fares from what were very meagre resources, if Joseph was not working but was getting drunk.

They travelled some time between the 31 March 1901 census and May 1905 when Christina was recorded as a millworker at Deanston cotton mill in Scotland. They must have arrived in Glasgow before this, staying with her brothers or sister Ann Marie (themselves with children and small houses), while looking for work and housing. She spent the rest of her long life in Scotland, but not in Glasgow with her relatives. Her 'adventure' continues in Chapter 4.

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Widows received no pension or other support in the 1800s; they were expected to re-marry, and many did, even if there were supportive relatives with resources beyond their own needs; most widows with children had no real choice - find a husband, or what? prositution?. The early death of a husband was a common occurrence, through work-accident or ill-health often related to working conditions (in which modern notions of safety were absent) or chronic malnutrition. Women worked as well (earning much less than men) and were also at risk, and from the complications of childbirth. As a result, marriages were seldom lengthy, and the vow 'til death do us part' had a reality and present-ness we may have forgotten today. Marriage was functional and necessary for survival for most people; it was not a love story, not primarily the emotionally intimate relationship expected of it today; it was a practical and economic partnership above all, and without it working in that way the slide into poverty was rapid.

Charles Booth was a successful business man and philanthropist, who became interested in the wide disparities of wealth and poverty in Britain's cities in the late 1880s. His Inquiry into the Life and Labour of the People in London (1886-1903) included Maps Descriptive of London Poverty, in which each street is coloured to indicate the income and social class of its inhabitants. In most areas, streets of poverty were found close to comfortable middle-class affluence; the social and economic gradations were very mixed geographically. The seven classes are described on the legend to the maps as:

Lowest class. Vicious, semi-criminal. BLACK
Very poor, casual. Chronic want. DARK BLUE
Poor. 18s. to 21s. a week for a moderate family. LIGHT BLUE
Mixed. Some comfortable others poor. PURPLE
Fairly comfortable. Good ordinary earnings. PINK
Middle class. Well-to-do. RED
Upper-middle and upper classes. Wealthy. YELLOW

See https://booth.lse.ac.uk/

In Islington, Georges Street where Raymond and Christina lived in 1889 was coloured black; cross-streets between Georges Road and Eden Grove were dark blue, or light blue; Eden Grove was purple. Bethnall Green Road was mostly coloured to indicate mixed, some comfortable others poor, streets behind the main road were dark blue or black - lowest class/very poor/chronic want. Farringdon Road was similar. Tottenham and St Loys Road were outside the area Booth surveyed, as was the eastern end of Lennox Road.

The Metropolitan Cattle Market closed in 1939 and was sold off, most of the site becoming multi-storey blocks of flats, public gardens and sports grounds; only the original clock tower remains. In fact, Belle Isle had a (non-ironic) French origin. By 1842 Peter Henry Joseph Baume had established 'Experimental Gardens' on part of the land, also known as the Frenchman's colony or Island, on the communitarian principles of Robert Owen. Baume let small plots on which poor people could build, and he built cottages for sale or letting. In 1851 it was inhabited by 48 families of craftsmen and labourers; the buildings had disappeared by 1853. In 1848 sanitary inspectors found that both Belle Isle and Experimental Gardens had filthy cottages with open drains.

A detailed account of the development of Islington is at https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/middx/vol8/pp29-37.

It was a shock to discover eventually, after not finding any birth record for a Charles Edward James, whose date of birth I had from his death certificate, that when born he was named as Charles Edward Waller. In all that followed, I have found no later reference to the Waller surname. I think I would not have written about it here if any of that generation or the next were still alive.

The mystery of the disappearing May Frances James may have been solved belatedly. She is nowhere in the Scottish 1911 census, but she does appear in the 31 March 1911 census of England & Wales, thus:

"May Frances James, age 17, born circa 1894 in Holloway, London, single" - all of which is correct, and it is very unlikely there was another young woman with identical identifiers. But, where was she living/working? - at 14 Buckingham Palace Gardens, with a German governess, a German visitor on the day of the census who was a masseuse, and ten servants of which she was the youngest, a woman who was in charge and listed as if head of this household, which surely was a royal household. Mystery solved, but in an astonishing way. Did May Frances remain in London when her mother and the other children left for Scotland? - but at the age of eight (if they left in 1902) that seems unlikely and where would she have lived meanwhile? None of the other names in this household have been noted previously in relation to the James/Hicks family, so it doesn't seem that a friend got her a job there. To take up this junior servant job she must have gone back to London within a short time of arriving in Scotland, travelling alone, aged between 12 and 16 years, with the rail fare afforded somehow. For what purpose? If it was to train as a nurse or midwife (her occupation was given later as maternity nurse) in her spare time, it might have been at Guys Hospital, about four miles away across the Thames.

Chapter 4

Stirling

Christina James soon obtained a job and accommodation for her family outside Glasgow, continuing to make her way in life independently of her relatives there. She and the children made another journey, a shorter one, to Doune in Perthshire and then to the nearby milltown of Deanston; there was a Glasgow-Stirling rail link, with an intervening station several miles from Doune. In mid-1905, aged 42, she was living and working there, recorded on Scotland’s valuation roll of that year. This is a local property tax assessed every year, recording the owners and occupiers of almost all buildings in Scotland and the rents paid by tenants.

Mrs Christina James is listed as a millworker, and a tenant of First Division at The Cotton Mill, proprietor James Finlay & Company, manufacturers, at Deanston, Kilmadock (parish), Perth (county). This was company housing for its workers (there was also East Cottage, West Cottage, Second Division, each with many tenants listed). Christina was paying £5/4 (shillings) per year. Valuation rolls list only the head of household, unlike censuses which list all occupants, therefore all the children were probably living there with her in May 1905. Christina’s oldest daughter (Mary) Christina also obtained work there; in December 1907 when she gave birth to George Edward James, (Mary) Christina was noted on the birth certificate as a cotton weaver (the Mary forename was omitted) with her address as Deanston; present at the birth was "Christina James grandmother”.

Deanston looked grim to me when I visited, a small village dominated by the mill buildings and workers' housing, at the end of a side road from Doune, and not somewhere you'd stay and make your life if you could think of alternatives.

Florence Maggie and some of other children probably also worked at the Deanston cotton mill; child labour was common and in poor families everyone who could work did so. The legal minimum working age (often disregarded) was only 12 years; Florence would have been 18 in 1907, Charles Edward just turning 12, and only Robert, 8, legally too young to do paid work.

Christina's eldest daughter (named then as Christina Mary James) married George Ross on 8 October 1910; as a witness to the marriage Christina gave her name as “Christina Hicks previously James m.s. Potter”, the only time apart from the 1901 census in England that she gave the Hicks surname. The marriage took place in Glasgow.

It's probably no mystery why Christina chose not to spend the rest of her life in Glasgow, where she had been born. Living conditions in Glasgow remained poor, overcrowding and inadequate housing had little improved since she was born there. So bad were conditions in many of Britain's industrial cities that from the late 1860s there had been a migration scheme for children orphaned, abandoned or just from impoverished families, to be shipped en masse, as cheap labour, to the dominions - Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and other parts of the Empire; over 100,000 children had been sent away by the time this scheme (there were others) ended in 1940.

This is a group of 'surplus' children from Glasgow gathered at a farm preparatory to being shipped to New Brunswick in Canada where the farm-owner had another land-holding.

Christina chose to set up home, for the rest of her life as it turned out, in the much smaller city of Stirling; this was about eight miles from Deanston. Stirling had a population of about 18,000 in 1900, compared with Glasgow's 750,000. Following a cholera epidemic, sewers had been dug under the streets of Stirling in the 1850s; it was far less overcrowded and unsanitary than Glasgow. As well as being a port city, on the river Forth which runs eastwards, it was surrounded by rich farmland and relatively prosperous. Stirling was probably a more pleasant, less pressured place to live her new life for Christina, and without reminders of bad memories.

By April 1911 Christina was living at 10 Viewfield Street, Stirling, age 47,with three of her children (Raymond, Charles Edward, Robert) and her four year old grandson George Edward. The oldest child, (Mary) Christina, George Edward's mother, had moved to Helensburgh without him after marrying; Florence Maggie had gone there with her older sister. It is unclear where May Frances was at this time. In the census Christina was described as a "monthly nurse". In the 1921 census, she no longer had an occupation listed; she was 58 years old, and was noted as "H.D." as were other older women, perhaps signifying 'home domestic'.

Christina James (born Potter 1863)

She continued to live there through the First and Second World Wars. Over the next 45 years it became her permanent family home, perhaps the first security in that sense that she had had in her life. Son Raymond was there with her except during the First World War. After marrying, Raymond still lived there with his wife and children, and the other sons stayed there much of their adult lives, as did May Frances James.

No. 10 Viewfield Street is a three-storey inner-city house on a narrow street, with side access. It is multi-occupancy; there were eight tenants in 1915, around 20 tenants in later years, mostly men listed as joiner, clerk, engine driver, mechanic, painter, bootmaker etc, women simply listed as Mrs... Tenants paid rents rising from £8 per year in 1914 to £14 in 1940. Each tenant and dependents occupied one or at most two rooms; there would have been one lavatory/bathroom for the building. Today it has eight flats, and now has 2 windows in the roofspace which may be recent providing additional space.

Florence Maggie James moved around, as had her mother. She is noted in the 1911 census as age 22 living at Dungoyne House, Colquhoun Streeet, Helensburgh, as a "table maid domestic". She married on 30 December 1915, age 26, a table maid, of Tillicoults House, Tillicoults, Clackmannanshire, to Robert Henderson, a chauffeur and private in the Royal Highlanders, at 2 Wolfcraig, Stirling, in an 'irregular' marriage in the presence of May Frances James, domestic servant, and Robert James, rubberworker, both of 10 Viewfield Street. In 1921, Robert Henderson was employed as a gardener at Graymount, a mansion in Bendochy, Perthshire, living in Graymount Lodge with his family; they had a daughter, Christina (again!) born the previous year. Florence Maggie Henderson lived until she was 94, dying in 1983 at Bowerswell Memorial Home in Perth; she was described as the widow of Robert whose occupation had been insurance clerk; her son Robert was the informant of her death, and gave her parents as Raymond James, stonemason, and Christina James m.s. Potter.

May Frances James's life after arriving in Scotland is a mystery. She is missing from the 1911 census altogether. In 1921 she was at 10 Viewfield Street, age 28, her occupation being "maternity nurse". She does not appear at any address as a tenant or owner/occupier in the five-yearly valuation rolls and later census records are not available, so it may well be she continued living under her mother's tenancy at 10 Viewfield Street. That she is named on her mother's gravestone with the James surname suggests that she did not marry. May Frances James lived until 28 August 1977 when she was aged 84. She died in the Royal Infirmary in Stirling, of "hypothermia, cerebro-vascular accident and bronchopneumonia", which leads me to wonder if she had been living alone in her last years; her address is given on the death certificate as 14 Newhouse (Road), Stirling; this address is now a relatively modern block of flats. May's brother Charles Edward informed the registrar of her death.

When her death was registered her occupation was given as "certified midwife (retired)". Her parents were stated to have been Christina James m.s. Potter deceased and Raymond James, coachman, deceased - this was the only later occasion when Raymond's occupation was stated correctly, rather than incorrectly as stonemason as on other death certificates; presumably Charles Edward provided this information; he died seven years later.

This photograph, passed to me years ago by a cousin, Uncle George's youngest daughter Anne, is of Christina's daughters, (Mary) Christina who I do recognise, she was my grandmother, and probably May Frances and Florence Maggie - which is which I am unsure; the photo is not labelled. They seem to be middle-aged so it was probably taken in the 1930s, when I know they were not living near each other but for some occasion got together and were photographed. I see a definite family resemblance between them and Christina in this photograph, date unknown to me.

Unlike her two eldest daughters, Christina's sons stayed living with her or nearby in Stirling most of their lives. They may well have contributed to her rent and living expenses after she stopped working, but from their modest jobs, as noted on census records, family finances were surely tight.

Christina would have started to receive the new state pension only in 1933 when she turned 70; this was introduced in 19o9, a great innovation, albeit a paltry amount (between 10p and 25p per week) compared with today's (also inadequate) state pension. Widows received no support until 1925; war-widows, of which there many, started to receive support during the First World War.

Christina lived her the second half of her life through a time of much change; before she qualified for the new pension she would have been given the vote, previously denied to women. This right was introduced in 1918 for women over 30 years who were also property-owners or married to one, and changed in 1928 to the same as for men: over 21 years with no property requirement. Much good it did her. In Britain, following the slaughter of so many young men in the First World War, the 1920s and '30s were times of economic depression, strikes, mass unemployment and hunger marches. Inflation increased prices of everyday goods just at a time when earnings sank for many; the pound was devalued by 40 per cent in 1921. As of that year, Raymond and his brothers still had jobs - the same as previously, suggesting no promotion or progession in earnings - but whether they continued to be among the fortunate few hanging onto employment is unclear, as the 1931 census records were destroyed.

Charles Edward James is in the 1911 census (with Edward omitted) at 10 Viewfield Street as age 15 and his occupation recorded as"Brushworks." In 1921 he is at the same address, age 25, as a motor driver. On 27 June 1923, still a motor driver living at 10 Viewfield Street, he married Mary Chalander Samson, a bakers saleswoman, of 14 Well Green, Stirling; he was 27, she was 31. It was a 'regular' marriage, with banns called. A witness was Robert James, still living at 10 Viewfield Street. In 1925 he was a tenant at 8 Shiphaugh Place in Stirling, presumably with his wife; he or they were still there in 1940, "no. 8, house and garden, Shiphaugh Place". Did Charles and Mary have any children? The photograph below suggests they had one son, but...

This is the only photograph I have of Charles as a youngish man (or of any of his siblings before they were elderly), and it is yet another mystery. On the back was pencilled, by Charles' nephew who was my Uncle George (born 1907), "Helen & boy & uncle Charles only son & mum". They look happy, good. To my Uncle George, "mum" on the left was (Mary) Christina Ross. However, who was Helen? From the hands resting on shoulders, this could look like father-mother-son but Uncle Charles married Mary Chalander Samson. The only Helens were in the next generation, and Helen King James, daughter of Charles' brother Raymond, was born 1916, making the date of this photo late 1930s. Were women then wearing dresses of that length then? Nice photo, but a mystery.

Charles Edward James lived until 26 March 1984 when he was 87 . Described then as a retired van driver, he died at Bellsdyke (a psychiatric hospital), Larbert; he had been living at Batterflatts, Stirling. The informant was R. G. (initials unclear) James, son, of 2 Forrest Road, Stirling.

Raymond James, Christina's oldest son, when living at 10 Viewfield Street with Christina in 1911 had an occupation shown on the census as "India Rubber Work". On 12 October 1915, named as Donald Raymond James, age 25, rubber worker, lance corporal 6th Battalion Middlesex Regiment, of 10 Viewfield Street, he married Jemima Catherine Fraser, a typist, age 24, of 16 Guys (?) Road, at 2 Randolph Terrace, Stirling, in a 'regular' marriage, after banns were called; Charles Edward was a witness. The couple went to live at 10 Viewfield Street and were there in the 1920-21 valuation roll, with Raymond listed as a separate tenant paying a different rent from his mother; he is listed as still being a soldier. In the June 1921 census Raymond is at the same address, giving his name as Donald R. James, a "machine hand (tyre & hose)" with wife Jemima and their three children Helen King James 5 years, Christina Potter James 3, and May F. (Frances or Florence?!) 2 months, all born in Stirling; King was Jemima's mother's maiden name, and Potter was, of course, Donald Raymond's mother's maiden name, so care was being taken to make and respect generational links. In 1926 they had a son, Donald Raymond James, and in 1928 another, Edward Charles James, both born in Stirling; more family-linking by names (but it gets so confusing).

Over the years Raymond had decided to be known as Donald Raymond James, with the middle name sometimes just an initial. And passed on boith names to his first son. His birth certificate named him Raymond, the birth register as Donald Raymond. Who on earth was this Donald? Added to this mystery, is another, stranger: Christina's older sister had married Daniel Connal who part way through his life, in London, also started calling himself Donald Connal, and gave that forename to his son. Coincidence? But we don't know where that Donald came from either. This Donald Raymond and that Donald Connal were related as in-laws, obviously, but did they ever meet? Is there a shared Donald ancestor?

In the 1925, 1930 and 1940 valuation rolls Raymond, still a rubberworker, and presumably his family were still at 10 Viewfield Street, and lived there until he was 73. He died, named as Donald Raymond James, on 3 July 1963. As the oldest boy, he took on the dutiful role of 'man of the family', living with his widowed mother or when married in the next flat, all his life. Here he is, an elderly man with an even older mother. The writing on the back says: "Brother Raymond, his sister and Mother xxx"; the sister is probably May Frances James; the photograph may have been taken at 14 Shiphaugh Place, which had a garden, and Raymond's brother Charles lived there until at least 1940. The second photo probably includes Raymond's wife Jemima and daughter Helen, so about mid-1920s.

Was Christina also "hard on her boys", as (Mary) Christina her oldest daughter was later said to have been (see Chapter 5), possibly a female family pattern? After all, she had not had much luck with the men in her life previously. But in these photographs she is surely taking pride in having her children and their children around her.

Raymond, Charles Edward and Robert James

These are her three boys. To this photograph of Charles Edward and Robert in a pub, I have added a more elderly Raymond on the left. They all look to me as if they've come through a hard life, the disrupted childhoods in London, scraping together a living in difficult times in Scotland, living with or close to their mother, looking after her. They have been dutiful, and there's a dignity to Raymond. Interpretation, of course. They certainly haven't wandered far and wide, and maybe not felt free to do that, as two of their sisters did. They are a few years apart in age, had different fathers, but similar experiences have brought them to the same place in old age (and I don't mean Stirling). Near the end of ther lives they are together, which counts for a lot.

Robert James, Christina's youngest in 1911 was age 13 and shown as still at school on the census at 10 Viewfield Street, and was there in 1921 age 22 as a motor driver like his brother Charles; in 1923 he was still there with his mother. In 1914 he would have been too young to be involved in the First World War, and by its end in November 1918 he'd have been just old enough (many boys lied that they were old enough to join up); in the last year of war, men and boys were still being conscripted and thrown into the slaughter. Many families lost a fathers, brothers or husbands; towns and villages have memorials listing name after name from the same local families. In trench warfare there were many days when thousands died in a single day; the heaviest loss of life for a single day was on 1 July 1 1916, when the British Army suffered 57,470 casualties in the Battle of the Somme. All three of Christina's sons were fortunate to have survived the First World War.

Robert and Charles Edward James

On 16 November 1928 Robert married Isabella Frances Barnes Robertson at St Ninians; he was 28, she was 38, a "clerkess" of Dowan Place, Cambusbarron; both places are villages near Stirling. It was a 'regular' marriage with banns called. None of Robert's family were witnesses. Robert and Isabella then lived at 38 Scott Street in Stirling in 1930 and 1935 (the valuation rolls give no more identifying information). In 1940 Robert (and Isabella?) was at 38 Scott Street, Kincardine (about 12 miles from Stirling), where he stayed for the rest of his life. He lived until he was 81, dying on 3 Novmber 1980, described as a retired storeman, at the Royal Infirmary in Falkirk. The informant of his death was Andrew Guthrie, son in law, of 23 Lansdowne Crescent, Kincardine, so it seems that in his last years he was living close to family.

All Christina's children lived long lives, the three boys survived the First World War which tore apart so many families, all of them survived the post-war influenza epidemic, two of the girls found husbands, had children and made their lives independently elsewhere, Perth and Yorkshire. May Frances James's long life remains a mystery.

They were alive when I was in my 30s and 40s; had I known of them, had there not been such family silences, I could have met them, I would have memories of them now.

They all outlived by many years their long-lived mother. Christina died aged 93 on 1 May 1956, at The Lane, 24 Clarendon Place, Stirling. My Uncle George, one of her grandsons, who she had cared for as a little boy, told me they (his siblings) called this place “the hole in the wall” (so, a squat?), and said that it no longer exists. She intended this photograph to go to George Edward Ross; it came to via his daughter Anne.

She is described on the death certificate as widow of Raymond James, mason journeyman (no mention of Joseph Hicks, or of Raymond’s real occupation as carter or carman). In what was for years a final mystery, she was named as Christina Harriet James on her death certificate. I discovered eventually that her maternal grandmother was Harriet Simpson, born Tipler, living from about 1800 to the 1870s. This is the only later use of 'Harriet' that I have found - unusual in a family which carried many forenames forward through the generations. Christina must have told her son Charles Edward James, who notified the registrar of her death, that she wanted to be so named. But why? It may just be that when Christina's mother died suddenly in 1870, the seven year-old Christina met the elderly Harriet, and remembered her fondly (and those painful times) as she was dying 90 years later. Did she explain this to Charles? - maybe not, because that was the only occasion Harriet-grandmother was brought out of memory and into life. On her gravestone Christina is named as Christina Potter James, and in the newspaper obituary just Christina James.

Her gravestone in St Thomas Cemetary, Cambusbarron, Stirling, reads:
In loving memory of
our dear mother
Christina Potter James
died 1st May 1956 aged 93
Also her daughter
May Frances James
died 28th August 1977 aged 84

As in much of this story, Christina may well have added bits of make-believe to her obituary; these would be things she had told her children over the years and they believed to be true. There seems little likelihood that she trained as a midwife at Guys Hopital in south London (and more likely that it was her daughter May who did this). Her live-in servant role at the Tooley dairy in Islington, north London, from 1881 until she married in 1884 would surely not have provided the opportunity. The only time-possibility would have been between marrying and having her first child in 1887. But on none of the censuses, in London or Stirling, nor in the 1939 Register (the 1931 census records were destroyed in bombing), did she state her profession as midwife; why not, if she was? My guess is she may have used her experience of having six children to work informally helping women giving birth as an unofficial sort-of midwife, as happened pretty routinely in poor neighbourhoods in those pre-NHS times.

(Mary) Christina Ross, Christina James's oldest daughter, had moved away from the James family after marrying in 1910, and lived until she was 90, dying in Harrogate, Yorkshire, in 1977. Her life and times are the subject of Chapter 5.

__________________________________________

Long lives, interesting lives in very different times, no more early deaths, but mysteries remaining. My mother never mentioned her grandmother Christina James (born Potter), and I could have met her as a boy, had I known. Her children lived into the 1970s and '80s, when I was in my 30s; I could have met them; on a last family holiday we drove around Scotland, later I visited for work and pleasure several times, probably passing by where they were. Why such secrecy, or not-existing of blood relatives? That seems a kind of murder to me.

In all the censuses, Christina's place of birth is shown correctly as "Lanark, Glasgow" and her children's as "London, Islington". In the marriages of Christina's children, their father is always recorded as Raymond James or Donald Raymond James, mason journeyman deceased, and their mother as Christina James m.s. Potter, similarly on death certificates.

Scotland’s valuation rolls have not been digitised for every year, but for every tenth year from 1855, and every fifth year from 1915 to 1940.

The British Home Children migration scheme was promoted across Britain in church halls and meeting rooms in villages, towns and cities, often with the backing of local officials and dignatories. It provided a convenient and deceptively charitable way for local authorities to avoid the cost of keeping orphaned and abandoned in workhouses or providing support for the children of destitute parents. It promised to provide a better future abroad for these children, but for many - put to unpaid manual work in British colonies and dominions - it provided abuse and neglect. "Britain is the only country in the world with a sustained history of child migration. Only Britain has used child migration as a key part of its child care strategy over four centuries rather than as a last resort during times of war or civil unrest." https://www.childmigrantstrust.com/our-work/child-migration-history

There were several such schemes, lasting well into the second half of the 20th century: "Her Majesty’s Government (HMG) played a central role in child migration. Initially, children sent abroad by the Poor Law institutions had been funded by local ratepayers, and the voluntary societies that also migrated children were entirely dependent on donations from charitable appeals. The latter advertised the benefits of migration and variously obtained the endorsement of high-status clerical, political and other prominent figures, including members of the Royal Family... The Empire Settlement Act 1922 (ESA) provided for HMG financial support for the programmes... The ESA was renewed in 1937, 1952, 1957, 1962 and 1967, and then expired in 1972."
https://www.iicsa.org.uk/reports-recommendations/publications/investigation/child-migration/part-b-child-sexual-abuse-child-migration-programmes/1-brief-history-child-migration.html

British Home Children is such an Orwellian name to have given that child-migration scheme; homeless or un-homed was the truth. The photograph of destitute Glasgow children about to be sent away is from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67809153

When I write about Ryamond and Charles Edward and Robert and see their photographs, I have a fellow-feeling for them. Not so for the sisters, or not in that one photo of them, that does not move me; that may be unfair, it was one monent in their lives. I am struck by the fact that I have already lived more years than Raymond did; that seems odd. They lived lives of hardship and uncertainty but escaped the fate of other poor children taken from their homes and sent far away. And I was not strangled a birth as my mother said she should have, little bastard.

The mystery of the disappearing May Frances James may have been solved belatedly. She is nowhere in the Scottish 1911 census, but she does appear in the 31 March 1911 census of England & Wales, thus: "May Frances James, age 17, born circa 1894 in Holloway, London, single" - all of which is correct, and it is very unlikely there was another young woman with identical identifiers. But, where was she living/working? - at 14 Buckingham Palace Gardens, with a German governess, a German visitor on the day of the census who was a masseuse, and ten servants of which she was the youngest, a woman who was in charge and listed as if head of this household, which surely was a royal household. Mystery solved, but in an astonishing way. Did May Frances remain in London when her mother and the other children left for Scotland? - but at the age of eight (if they left in 1902) that seems unlikely and where would she have lived meanwhile? None of the other names in this household have been noted previously in relation to the James/Hicks family, so it doesn't seem that a friend got her a job there. To take up this junior servant job she must have gone back to London within a short time of arriving in Scotland, travelling alone, aged between 12 and 16 years, with the rail fare afforded somehow. For what purpose? If it was to train as a nurse or midwife (her occupation was given later as maternity nurse and on her 1977 death certificate as certified midwife) in her spare time, it might have been at Guys Hospital, about four miles away across the Thames.

Chapter 5

Yorkshire

My maternal grandmother, Christina Mary Ross, was a lovely old lady. I knew her for the last thirty or so years of her long life, and all that time she was bedridden in a Harrogate nursing home. But always with a smile to greet us when we came to visit, my mother and I; later with my dad and my brother. She saved a penny a week for me, perhaps to set me up for life after the difficult start, perhaps just kindness because she knew that 'these things happened'.

The interesting things in Grandma's long life had happened before this, of course. She was a survivor and independent-minded, like her mother and aunt Ann Marie, and a wanderer; they all lived long lives. The James family, widow and six children, had arrived at the small milltown of Deanston by 1905, from London and Glasgow, to work at the cotton mill with housing provided. She was the oldest child, born Mary Christina James in 1887 in London, and always reversed her forenames or dropped the 'Mary' altogether. When she gave birth to her first son, George Edward James in December 1907 at Deanston Cotton Mill, she was aged 20, a cotton weaver. Her mother Christina James was present. With this confusion of Christinas, the daughter-and-new-mother Christina was familiarly known as Chrissie (but not by me, her grandson).

Three years later Christina Mary James married George Ross; whether new husband George was the father of little George Edward is unknown, but the names suggest that was the case. But the mystery is how, when and where did Chrissie and George meet, with her in Deanston and George in Helensburgh, opposite sides of Glasgow and 30 miles apart? George Ross was in Helensburgh working as a postman in 1901 when his future wife was still in London, being called Mary Hicks, living with a drunkard new father, in the census of that year. But after giving birth in Deanston in 1907, Christina moved to Helensburgh, to Dungoyne House, Colquhoun Street there - that is the address she gave when marrying George Ross on 8 October 1910. George was quite a lot older, 38, living at 26 George Street, Helensburgh.

In the next year's census, her sister Florence Maggie was at Dungoyne House too, working as a servant. Chrissie and Florence may well have left the James family in Deanston together, going their separate ways; their mother Christina James and the other children were also moving from Deanston, to Stirling.

Or, before Deanston, did Chrissie, arriving in Glasgow from London with the family, decide to visit nearby Helensburgh - a pleasant, river-side town, a relief from crowded Glasgow, and on a train-line so easy to visit - when the rest of them travelled to Deanston to work at the cotton mill? And, 16 or 17 years old, get pregnant by George, then re-join her mother in Deanston where she gave birth? That would fit with how they got married later, which was in Glasgow, at 35 Hutcheson Street, “by declaration”. In Scotland marriage was a very public matter, with banns being read on three Sundays at the parish church, then marriage in the church, but a simpler form was allowed, until 1940, where the two parties made a declaration in front of two witnesses, in a private house; they could then get a sheriff's warrant to have the marriage registered. The Church of Scotland accepted these marriages by declaration for fear that couples would otherwise 'live in sin'. On marriage and the children's birth certificates these were termed 'irregular' marriages.

Witnesses to the marriage were Christina’s sister Florence Margaret James and George's sister Margaret Ross. I visited 35 Hutcheson Street many years ago; it was a large, drab, unoccupied, multistorey inner-city building; had they been living together there, or was it a friend's house? Getting married in Glasgow there rather than in Helensburgh may indicate a hasty marriage (as this was), and/or disagreement in the Ross family, sparing them local disapproval.

Once married, George and Chrissie moved to 19 Lomond Street in Helensburgh, which they shared with two other families; this is a stone corner house, stairs to the three floors/flats in a circular stair-well at the back of the house. When I visited and was allowed to look around, I saw large light rooms; it was a pretty good place to live, in a quiet town. Where the Ross family had lived for many years and continued, in George Street, was nearby.

Christina Helen Ross (always known as Helen) was born there on 22 March 1911, and my mother Agnes Florence Ross (always Florence or Flo) on 11 January 1913. But Chrissie’s son George Edward was not living with his mother and George Ross at Lomond Street; the April 1911 census shows him, named as George Edward Ross, aged 4, living at 10 Viewfield Street in Stirling with his grandmother Christina James and her children Raymond, Charles Edward and Robert.

George and Chrissie's fourth child John Raymond Ross was born in November 1916; they had moved to Catter Bog, Kilmaronock, which is north of Helensburgh and near Loch Lomond. On the birth certificates of Helen, Florence and John (always known as Jack), their father's occupation is given as gardener and the mother is named as “Christina Mary Ross m.s. James.” The first-born, George Edward Ross, was with them by then. He was my uncle; I met him just before he died, and he remembered those times. He recalled going to the primary school in nearby Croftamie (below), and playing with the vicar’s daughter there, and an old ruined tower they made up stories about. They seemed like fond memories, and a sadness perhaps that the family did not stay there. There was more movement and disruption to come for this Ross family.

By late 1918 the family had moved south to England. In July 1919 they were in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, where the local education committee offered Uncle George a free scholarship; the 11 July letter was addressed to Mrs Ross, re “your son George”, which suggests husband George Ross was elsewhere (working or looking for it?). George Edward must have been a bright boy, but the scholarship was not taken up as they moved around several more Yorkshire towns, and Uncle George later found work all his life in manual jobs, such as bricklayer, steelworker, settling in the Liverpool/Manchester area and marrying there in 1935.

The George and Chrissie Ross family was in Wetherby in 1921, at Hall Orchard, both working and living there; George Edward age 13 was described as an apprentice motor engineer (despite being below school-leaving age, which had changed to 14 in 1918). The family settled eventually in Harrogate, which Uncle George told me had been his mother’s ambition since a lodger during the First World War sang the praises of that spa town.

Uncle George remembered having to visit the local library, wherever they were in their travels, I think he said Hull in this case, to scan the local newspaper for jobs for his father. To save them having to buy a newspaper. George left home and moved to Liverpool; he was working there when he met Marie Casson. George told me his mother disliked Marie, and that it was because she already had a daughter, Gladys, when they married in 1936?; they had two more children, Christine and Anne. Aunt Marie told me his mother (Chrissie) was "hard on her boys", implying that's why he left home and moved away, but that George always sent his mother 10 shillings from his wages each week. They both said that Jack also left home due to a similar not-getting-on with his mother, but then decided he would return home (and he was living in the same house in Harrogate with his mother and sister Florence in late September 1939). They also said Jack loved horses (fellow-feeling there!).

When they first arrived in Harrogate, George looked for outdoor work, as gardener or stonemason, for example, with tied accommodation for the family; one place was the lodge-house on Humphrey Bank on the Leeds road out of Harrogate; the big house there later became a nursing home, then neglected. Later they moved into town, to a series of rented house along Mornington Crescent, a pleasant tree-lined row of large terraced houses. In 1931 and '32 George Ross was listed as householder at 18 Grove Park Terrace. In December 1932 George and Chrissie’s first daughter Helen married Leonard Shackleton at Bilton near Knaresborough, and in 1934 gave birth to Diane and in 1936 to June in Harrogate. Continuing the family names tradition, one was given May as a middle name and the other Christina.

An early death occured in 1936. As happened with her mother's first husband Raymond, Chrissie's husband George died suddenly, on 14 December 1936, a heart attack, with his wife present. Although George and Chrissie had settled in Harrogate, it was in Hull at 18 Oldfield Avenue that George died; what were they doing there? I never met George, my maternal grandfather; the very little my mother said was affectionate, such as him telling her that late at night when they’d all gone to bed the mice came out to play at his feet by the fire; little girl memories; I have placed this at the ‘but ’n ben’ they lived in at Catter Bog around 1916 (a but 'n ben is a simple two-room cottage; mum said in the summer the children had to sleep in the roofspace). This is the only photograph I have of George; they look a happy couple, and I can see them as happy-go-lucky wanderers, taking life as it comes, but who knows...

Christina (Chrissie) and George Ross

My older cousins Diane and June told me that our grandmother Christina/Chrissie Ross took in lodgers and there had been even more changes of Harrogate addresses during the 1930s. After George died, my impression is that she was making a success of supporting herself, moving between rented properties and taking in lodgers; at 45 Mornington Crescent she had a telephone installed, number 3932, a rarity in those days.

The September 1939 Registry (a simplified census taken at the outbreak of the Second World War - a good move, since the 1931 census records were later destroyed in bombing) recorded Christina M. Ross, my mother Florence A. Ross, hairdresser, John R. Ross, wood machinist, and two others (lodgers) living at 43 Mornington Crescent. Harrogate town directories had Mrs C. M. Ross at the same address in 1940, at 45 Mornington Crescent in 1941 until 1945; on my April 1945 birth certificate my mother’s address is 29 Mornington Crescent, as it is on my mother and stepfather’s marriage certificate in 1947.

Christina Ross, when widowed, in Mornington Crescent Harrogate

Grandma Christina Ross and her daughter Florence, my mother. Mornington Crescent.

No. 19 Kings Road was a step up, a larger, better house, now part of an hotel. On my stepbrother’s birth certificate in December 1948, this Ross family was living at 19 Kings Road.

19 Kings Road, Harrogate

I know very little about my mother’s early life, which is why these photographs mean a lot to me. They all moved from place to place, poor, in search of work and housing, until Harrogate had become home by at least 1930. My mother and her sister Helen look like a couple of girls about town, confident young women enjoying life, glamorous, maybe with the boys queueing up. But she was 32 when she had me, so there was a young-adult life already lived. But she said very little; “before the war” was unspoken territory.

(Christina) Helen and (Agnes) Florence Ross

Another early death had occured during the war years, that of John Raymond Ross, named after his grandfather Raymond whose sad early death in 1892 in London set in train a whole series of events in Christina James' life, and her children's. Her grandson, known in the family as Jack rather than John, joined the Royal Scots Greys soon after the start of the Second World War. Uncle George told me that his brother liked horses and had always wanted to work with them, so joined a cavalry regiment. It may be that the Royal Scots Greys, home-based, were still a cavalry regiment, but for fighting in North Africa they had been mechanised, equipped with British and American tanks. A cousin discovered recently that Uncle Jack was in a group of British tanks, which were vulnerable to German 88mm guns. This was in December 1942, after the worst of the tank battles, in which for much of the time Allied forces were on the losing side, outgunned, outmanouevred and out-general'd by German forces. But after the battle of El Alamein in which General Montgomery, latest in a series of Allied generals, had got the upper hand, German forces became short of supplies and equipment and were staging a fighting retreat. There were a series of relatively minor skirmishes. In one, Jack's unit, the 2nd Dragoons, were supporting New Zealand troops in fighting around El Agheila, when seven British tanks were put out of action, one officer and two men killed, one of whom was Jack, aged 25.

Uncle Jack (John Raymond) Ross

Mum often mentioned Uncle Jack, in an in-passing sort of way, nothing factual, but as if he was on her mind often. His death obviously affected the family very badly. His love of horses but being killed in the (inadequate) tank of a mechanised cavalry regiment, and after the fighting in North Africa was coming to an end, seem to make this one of many war-deaths all the more bitter in retrospect. His grave is in Tripoli War Cemetary, and there is a memorial to Trooper John Raymond Ross on Harrogate Stray. The Harrogate Advertiser of 16 January 1943 carried this announcement, under the heading 'On Active Service':

"Ross: Killed in action in December John Raymond Ross aged 24 years (Royal Scots Greys) youngest son on Mrs Ross and the late G Ross of 29 Mornington Crescent, Harrogate"

And in December of that year, two in memoriam notices appeared:

“Ross: In memory of a dear son and brother, Jack, killed in action December 17th 1942. Many a silent heartache, Many a silent tear, But always a beautiful memory, Of one we loved so dear. Mother and Flo”.

“Ross: In proud and loving memory of Jack, a dear brother and uncle, killed in action December 17 1942. Never will we forget him, Never will his memory fade, Always our love will linger, Round the grave where he is laid. Helen, Len, Diane and June”.

However it was that Chrissie treated "her boys", Jack's death apparently devastated her. One of the few things Mum said was that her mother developed arthritis and rheumatism from the shock of her youngest son being killed; another time she said it was due to hours standing in cold basements doing other people's washing. Both things can be true.

Neither my grandmother nor my mother ever mentioned that Chrissie had siblings (and a mother, Christina James) living in Scotland, that Mum had uncles, aunts and a grandmother alive, not far away. Perhaps there was some family rift. But recently I have discovered an old (and very small) photo of my grandmother in a wheelchair in the Harrogate Valley Gardens besides which stands an elderly man may be her brother Raymond. After the earlier parting of the ways, there could have been some late-in-life reconciliation, or there had been no earlier rift and it was just an urge to re-connect with family in their last years, which is a common-enough feeling and I have now. This photo must be late 1950s or early '60s, if it is Raymond, as he died in 1963. The Valley Gardens is where we used to take Grandma Ross on our bi-annual family visits in those years; we might have coincided with Raymond's visit, but we didn't, and I did not know of him. But it's good to see these family connections being made in this photograph, as with the family photographs great grandmother Christina James had taken very late in her life (Chapter 4).

Raymond James (?) and Christina (Chrissie) Ross in Valley Gardens, Harrogate

I do not know if Uncle George and Aunt Marie visited Grandma Ross (Chrissie) in Harrogate; I never met them on our visits there. But they seem to have kept in touch with the James family remaining in Stirling. He spoke fondly of "Uncle Raymie" - that was the first time I heard him mentioned, shortly before Uncle George died. He will surely have remembered Raymond from when he was a little boy living with his grandma in Stirling, but that was not for long - within a few years George had re-joined his mother Chrissie at Catter Bog, then they'd all left for England. Perhaps when the grown-up George left Harrogate he went to visit them all in Stirling, and then kept in touch; no-one had much money then, and holidays from work were one week annually.

Christina/Chrissie Ross became incapacitated, bedridden and moved to a nursing home in Harrogate. I think she was set up in a nursing home shortly before 1950 when we moved from Harrogate to Maidenhead. The first nursing home proved unsatisfactory and she soon moved to The Yorkshire Home for Chronic and Incurable Diseases, off Cornwall Rd, next to the Valley Gardens, where she remained for the rest of her life. She had her bed by a window, overlooking trees.

Holidays were a once-a-year event then, and like others my parents used these to re-connect with relatives we’d moved away from to make a fresh start post-war. Alternate summers to Plymouth in Devon for Dad’s mother, and to Harrogate for Grandma Christina Ross, Aunt Helen and her two daughters. We took Grandma out in a wheelchair around the Valley Gardens, and sometimes in the old Vauxhall to Knaresborough, her crammed in the back with me, Rick and the dog.

Grandma Christina Ross in the Valley Gardens, Harrogate

In the mid-1960s, when I could drive, I visited my grandmother several times, taking her shrimps which were a favourite treat of hers. I remember visiting her with a girlfriend I later married, Tina (i.e. Christina - another one, just happenstance). Though long bedridden, with a metal cage over her legs to take the weight of blankets (pre-duvet, in the UK), her bed by a south-facing window, she always seemed happy and contented; we chatted about nothing much, me having no curiosity about her life, regrettably. Then young adult life, jobs, marriage, a daughter took my time, and I saw her no more. When my mother died suddenly in 1975 while I was living and working abroad, it must have been my stepfather who wrote to inform her, and she died two years later, 15 July 1977. I regret that I did not think to visit and comfort her in those last years.

Uncle George lived until he was 89, passing away in 1996, not long after I had found his address and met him, for the first time in my life. Marie (I always heard her name pronounced Maarie) lived on for a few more years; she told me he'd met her in a shop, where she said she had a little girl and no husband (something bad had happened to her) and he said, "well you'd better come home with me", and she did and they fell in love.

Uncle George (Edward Ross) and Aunt Marie

For my mother, the new husband who I believed was my father worked out well in the 195os and onward, unlike Christina James' new husband Joseph Hicks back in 1899, and that is good. Their move to Maidenhead for his new job managing a hardware shop was a very welcome putting the past behind them, setting forth to make a new and better future as so many couples did postwar. They did well, worked hard, saved, bought a house (the first, I think, in this family through the generations), gave us a good life, and kept their secrets, the unspoken part of me.

My mother's was another early death, age 62, so much unsaid, and before her mother Christina Ross, Chrissie, died age 90. Seems unnatural.

All the lives survived into old age seem complete, interesting in the different times they lived through, challenges they faced and what they had to do to survive. But all the early deaths in these true family stories are tragedies and they are unfinished stories, Raymond's, George's, Jack's and also my mother's; she deserved better, they all did, a pointless thing to say that's worth remembering.

My mother Florence Lee (born Ross), Maidenhead, late 1950s/60s

In her face, as my mother reaches her middle years, I see strength, and something else, an awful lot going on beneath the waterline.

Only Dad lived long enough for me to have the sense to let him understand my appreciation and love; he said I wasn't his son but he'd always loved me. True. We hugged. The first acknowledgement of what I'd come to suspect as a boy, been denied, and then long known. After Mum died, he must have written to tell Grandma who lived another two years - wish I'd thought to help and comfort. Dad, stepfather Dad, then lived another 12 years alone, dying aged 77 in 1987, quite a long life, another dutiful man, and not happy last years; he was lost without her. There was love, despite their differences of character.

Ronald Richard Spry Lee, Dad, stepfather, in old age

My grandmother Christina Ross saved a penny a week for me, in a post office savings account, perhaps to set me up for life after the difficult start, which is in Chapter 6, or perhaps just out of kindness because she knew 'these things happened', had happened before, to her, and to her mother Christina James.

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George Ross was born in 1872, the third son of a large family living in Helensburgh on the Firth of Clyde; what I have discovered about the Ross family is in Chapter 6. They were poor, work was scarce; two of his brothers emigrated, as did many hard-up Scots, to South Africa and New Zealand. He married Christina/Chrissie James, and was my grandfather.

Chapter 6

Names

These are stories of surviving and not surviving, of lives re-membered, and mysteries which are stories yet to be discovered, such as the unknown Donald that Raymond James added to his name late in life, and that Daniel Connal started giving as his forename.

Names are the best survivors, threads we can pull to pull out more. Names are family-bonds: here are generation after generation of Christinas (carefully never Christine or Christiana), Raymonds, Edwards, Roberts, Florences, Mays, Helens. This is commonplace in families but it is also remarkable: the naming of a newborn life being the remembering of an old life, an ancestor, the future in the name of the past.

Naming is giving someone an identity, names are who we are. So un-naming someone is a serious business. The half of me that was my father, his DNA, and the past that had formed him, his family-line (a very rich and distinctive one - see the Acadia story) were taken away from me.

Like most bad things, it started with a hurt.

At the start of the Second World War my mother was a hairdresser, age 26, living in her mother's house in Harrogate, with her younger brother Jack who had returned home, and with lodgers, but without her older brother (adored, George was clever and "bookish") who had left and married, and without older sister Helen. She and Helen were good-looking young women, surely with a queue of admirers, but by 1939 Helen had married and had two children.

Florence Agnes Ross

She met my father who was serving nearby in the Royal Canadian Air Force which had many bomber bases in the Vale of York. Off-duty, aircrew and groundcrew frequented nearby York and Harrogate to 'live it up' in breaks during the air war against Germany, the many deaths, the noise of night flights taking off and (some) returning almost every night resounding through the Yorkshire countryside year after year. They met (somehow, the mystery attaching to every couple in these stories) and fell in love (family story); there were many such relationships in the long uncertainty and death-is-close of war. She became pregnant. In November 1944 she changed her surname by deed poll (a legal document) to Doucet, and signed my April 1945 birth certificate as Florence Agnes Doucet, so we all, mother, father and me, had the same surname.

She also changed her entry in the 1939 Register from the original Florence A. Ross to "Florence A. Doucet (Ross)"; the 1939 Register, conducted on 29 September at the outbreak of war, was used later as the population basis for the National Health Service launched by the post-war Labour government in 1948. In preparation, women who had been married after 1939 were allowed to update their surnames, and my mother must have taken advantage of this. However, after the war she met and married (as Florence A. Doucet, on the marriage register) my stepfather Ronald Richard Spry Lee in 1947; I knew nothing of this, a few months old when a daddy appeared in my life, as was happening for many children as men returned home from war. I was brought up to believe that he was my father, called him Dad, and was always known by the Lee surname.

So she then tried to unpick the Doucet identity she'd created (for respectability, and pride, anger? - in fact, had it been love, had they fallen in love? - my older cousin June, about nine then and would have picked up the adults' understandings around her, said my mother was "heartboken").

In unpicking the fiction she had created, my mother was helped by our move from Harrogate to Maidenhead in early 1950, where I had a new national ID card in the name Ian Louis Ross Lee, at the new Maidenhead address (so Doucet had gone, but Louis my Acadian grandfather, never known, remained as a middle name for me). Nothing was ever said or explained, it was all adults-only in hushed tones, typical of the times. Later, when I needed a passport for a school foreign exchange trip while I was at grammar school, she obtained a 'short-form' birth certificate for me with the surname Lee, probably using as evidence my national ID card in that name. My original birth certificate, in surname Doucet with my biological father's name, signature and RCAF number remained hidden; I obtained it much later, and only changed from using the Lee surname a few years after my stepfather died, out of respect for him; he was a good man, I came to love him, but we were and looked nothing alike, akin.

The missing link here, is that my father could not marry my mother. He was four years younger than her, but already married, had married in Montreal months before enlisting. Plus, in war-time England with 'foreign' servicemen stationed in their thousands all over Britain, and immediately post-war, only officers had any chance of marrying a British woman or of her following her foreign partner back to his home country post-war, and even officer's applications might well not be approved. My father told me much later that he'd enlisted because he had no work, living in the francophone part of Montreal where poverty and unemployment were rife, near the bottom of the Canadian socio-economic class structure. In 1940s Harrogate, in my grandmother's house with Mum and her family around, he must have felt shamed. After my birth had been registered, with him there signing and adding his father's name to mine, he was repatriated with all the other Canadian forces in September of that year. 'Repatriation' is a charged word - so was I, repatriated.

I met him much, much later, after years of searching. I have no photo of him as a young man, a young father, only a photo of him as an old man, same age as me now. That's all another story.

What surely made matters worse, was that my mother had a very difficult birth with me, a breech birth; this shows in the traditional mother and baby photograph, despite the red colouring added to her lips and mine as was the way then with monochrome photographs. The birth, on 6 April, was not registered until the end of the month; recovery time. The one fragment of all this that I recall, was my mother and her sister Helen occasionally saying quietly to each other in a knowing way, "sansfairyann"; years later the penny dropped for me, "ça ne faire rien" - resonating through the years surely from the rows between my father and my mother, probably grandmother too, when it came to light that yes she was pregnant, but no he couldn't marry her.

My mother moved on, had to somehow. At a time when men absent for five years or more were returning home, re-connecting with families and friends, resuming romances or finding new ones, she met Ron Lee. There was an sense of haste in the air, of catching up on lost time, getting on with things, for the young men and women whose lives had been in suspension (and danger) for six or more years since 1938 when war was seen coming. He was lodging on Dragon Parade just around the corner from Mornington Crescent; maybe they did actually bump into each other on the corner. How new future-Dad came to be living in Harrogate I do not know; perhaps from Plymouth where he surely went back to his parents when demob'd he was sent by his pre-war employers to work in their Harrogate branch. But they did meet and started to make a new life together, surely with all the expected questions in her mind - was this Ron reliable? could he accept her toddler-me, really accept and be a good father? could she love him, trust to love again? No longer was excitement the main thing, perhaps. Many walks and outings together, the three of us, I imagine, and some evenings alone when Grandma was looking after me.

In Dad's handwriting on reverse: Ian and Self walk in snow, Harrogate Stray

They married on 14 May 1947, and later (December 1948) still in Harrogate Mum gave birth to my brother; after her experience with me, what did it take for her to become pregnant and give birth again? But it was part of the new going-forward, new lives being made, in all senses, a zeitgeist though never such a painfully-evocative word would have been used then. I see that collective going-forward on the bright and brave faces of the few photos I have of that time. Here is one, from an early visit back to Harrogate to see Grandma, when Mum and Dad met up with old friends who were similarly about to move away, put the past behind them, make their future. My mother is on the right, my new father on the left; I'm in the middle, shooting my gun. Rick is there, at front on the right.

Rick, my brother, but really my half- or step-brother, was also affected by the unreality of this un-naming and re-naming, the secrecy, denied-ness of it. He and I looked nothing alike, had quite different natures, and though we played together, shared a bedroom, went to the same schools, we never really bonded; for a long time I put this down to the age gap between us, three and a half years. But there was this other reason for our apartness. He felt a resentment, that I was being treated as special in some way, all unexplained; I didn't feel special, just a bit odd, detached.

He was named Richard Thomas Lee, the middle name being from Dad's father. As a young man, first when marrying, he added 'Ross' so he became Richard Ross-Lee. I think he resented not having been given his mother's family name, and can understand it. How Mum and Dad named him was clumsy, was aways likely to make him feel more outside the family than me.

Rick died on 5 April 2020, suddenly and unexpectedly, in York; he had worked hard, often rode roughshod over people and made money, was fit; he rode horses in endurance events (irony). I'd often said to him that when retired we'd meet up and spend some time together, maybe go riding on Maidenhead Thicket as we'd done as boys. He was just 72; I count this as an early death.

In fact we didn't share much, Rick and I; really what we did share was an incompleteness. And I didn't know to listen to the silences.

As she got on with creating our new life in Maidenhead, did Mum go back and forth in her mind, as I have been doing here, about what had happened and just say nothing, kept it below the waterline? Or had she really left it all behind, the feelings, cut and dried, so I am doing it now. Inheritance.

Were the circumstances of my birth, of my being, the reason my mother said so little about her young life, pulling the veil of secrecy over everything pre-1945. She said just a few things in passing, which gave me a glimpse; I wanted to know her. Although she spent only the first five years of her life in Scotland, she had a romanticised affection for Scotland, speaking fondly of Loch Lomond (near their likely last housing where her younger brother Jack was born in 1916), and of Rob Roy, and Bonnie Prince Charlie hiding in a cave watching a spider spin its web, Scottish mythology and history. Though she never mentioned Lomond Street, it will have pleased her that she lived in Lomond Street as a little girl. But she never referred to the wider family they had left behind in Scotland, which I have had to discover since; did she think about them, wonder about the lives they were living? Surely. But not a word. Not only did she say nothing, there were no Christmas cards, we never visited, it was as if they did not exist. What had happened, long before I was born? A mystery.

Mum had a romantic imagination. On the lounge wall of the Maidehead house was a picture by Estella Canziani, titled Piper of Dreams when it was published and prints made; the original title tells you everything about this picture: Where the little things of the wood live unseen. It was a part of the trend for fanciful/ ephemeral/ other-worldly pictures and poems in the early 1900s, continuing a Victorian artistic trend and surely one of the many later imaginative reactions to/escapes from the horrors of the First World War. This is one of the few very personal belongings she left behind, and I am so pleased that I kept it and preserved it. Similarly, at the time of school foreign exchange trips, I knew she'd had to save hard to pay for that, and I bought her a picture I'd seen her fascinated by in a shop window, what we'd think of now as a fairly kitsch picture of seahorses - white horses crashing ashore through the waves; she loved it, also hung in the lounge.

My mother died suddenly of cancer (another secret she kept) when I was living and working in Greece, in 1975, so I missed the opportunity for an adult conversation with her about family and relatives, origins, a sharing of secrets and past hurts, the half of me they un-named and hid away. I bitterly regret that.

My grandmother Christina Ross saved a penny a week for me, out of kindness because she knew 'these things happened', had happened before, to her, and to her mother Christina James, to previous generations of women in the Potte, James and Ross families and many others; a child without a husband was a hardship and sometimes an injustice but it was no great shame, nothing so great or bad that it should distort future happiness.

As in Philip Larkin's poem, "They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do." That's the point, it was with the best of intentions that they kept secrets and deceived and created a pretend-me. But unnecessary, a waste. So much easier if there were a simply-bad person to blame, like Joseph Hicks. Probably if we looked, we'd find he had his hurts and his small honourable acts.

But with work and time, some of the secrets can be uncovered, what was lost recovered, to an extent, necessary connections made through the porous walls of history, completeness of a kind. Re-membering, putting together again. I feel I know Raymond on his horse-drawn cart in the rain and shit of London, his son Raymond standing by his mother throughout his life, the lines of duty and satisfaction on his face, happy-go-lucky George who died the best way, quickly, his clever son George who couldn't continue at school, Jack who loved horses, Dad who did everything he could in his different nature to be my dad, and I feel I know the women in the family surviving everything to live long lives, the final smile of achievement on Great Grandma Christina James' very old face, family around her in a garden and her remembering Harriet, her grandmother, so she too is not lost to memory.

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I carry my paternal grandfather Louis Doucet's name; they didn't take that away from me, and after a long time of searching it helped me find my father. Louis Doucet died in 1954. As with Christina James passing away in 1956, I could have known them both, had boyish memories, had I known. Louis and my father are another story for another time. I also carry my maternal grandfather George Ross' family name; he died in 1936 before I was born. But I know of him enough to feel a connection, that one photo, a few words from my mother, and more I have discovered about him and the Ross family over the years.

George Ross, who later married Christina/ Chrissie James, was born in 1872, the third son of a large family living in what were surely cramped conditions in Helensburgh on the Firth of Clyde. They were poor, work was scarce; two of his brothers emigrated, as did many hard-up Scots.

George's father John Ross was born on 2 March 1843, at Newmore, Rosskeen, Ross & Cromartie. He passed away on 7 July 1895. From his marriage certificate: John Ross, mason, aged 23, married Helen Hamilton, domestic servant, 22, on 25 May 1868 in Helensburgh; their addresses are not given, and his age does not match his birth date. John’s parents are noted as Alexander Ross, mason, and Jessie Ross m.s. Polson, Helen’s parents as Thomas Hamilton, ploughman (deceased) and Hannah Hamilton m.s. Boyd (deceased). Witnesses at the marriage were Wm A Ross (John’s brother?) and Margaret Edward.

How John came to be in Helensburgh, hundreds of miles south of where he was born, is unknown, or where Helen came from.

Between John and Helen Ross’s 1868 marriage and 1931, possibly until later, the Ross family moved between several, probably rented houses in one small area of Helensburgh: 65 West Princes Street, 12, 22 and 26 George Street; those who continued living in the Ross family home were at no. 26 from about 1901 to at least 1931. George was there in the 1901 census, age 29, unmarried, a postman. In George Street the original houses nos. 22 and 26 have been replaced by a block of flats beside the railway line which cuts the street in two; the railway dates from 1858, so the street would have been divided as it is now when the Ross family was there. Where there was a row of houses including no. 12 George Street has been cleared and is now a Tesco's and petrol station; opposite, the uneven numbers, are good-looking two-storey terraced stone houses. This is the lower part of George Street, near the Clyde; it seems a pleasant, uncrowded place to live and bring up children.

John and Helen Ross had eight children, all born in Helensburgh. They were:

Alexander Ross, the oldest son, presumably named after his father’s father, born circa 1869 at 65 West Princes Stree. By the 1891 census he is not listed in this Ross household, so had either left home or died.
John Ross, also born 1869, at 65 West Princes Street; after his father died in 1895 (already a widower), John took over as head of the family as it moved between several addresses in Helensburgh. More on John (junior) below.
George Ross, my grandfather, was born 22 March 1872, 65 West Princes Street.
Thomas Ross was born c. 1876 at 65 West Princes Street, appears in the 1881 census but not in the 1991 census, so perhaps he had died; it seems unlikely he would have left home before age 15.
Robert Mackay Ross, born 11 November 1878 at 65 West Princes Street appears in this household in the 1891 census but not the 1901 census; the middle name is a mystery.
Roderick Ross, born 18 January 1881 at 12 George Street, appears in the 1891 and 1901 censuses, then emigrated to New Zealand, married Rachel Beaton, and died there in 1956.
Margaret Ross, born c. 1885, is included in the 1891 census. The 1901 census has no Margaret Ross but FamilySearch has a Margaret Pattison Rankin (Ross) listed with these Ross siblings. Maggie Dowine is listed in the 1901 census, as a neice of George Ross, and born 1879 - unless this is a mistake, it is very unlikely she is daughter of any of George’s older siblings; perhaps neice is a respectable fiction for the illegitimate child of a neighbour or friend; Dowine may be a typo for Downie, but neither surname figures in Ross history I have found, nor any Maggie or Margaret Dowine or Downie born in Helensburgh around 1879.
Nellie Ross was born 6 November 1886 at 22 George Street. Later known as Helen.

My uncle George, born 1907 to Christina James who married George Ross in 1910, told me shortly before he died that two of George Ross’s siblings had emigrated to New Zealand and South Africa, and one of them died early in an industrial accident in S. Africa; I know it was Roderick who went to NZ. To S. Africa it could have been Alexander or Robert. Social and economic conditions in Scotland were dire during these years; a son made his adult life staying in the family home if there were relatives needing support or until sisters married, but if sons moved away or even emigrated it was to seek work and a future livelihood unavailable where they were born. In these years, orphaned and abandoned children from destitute families all over Britain were shipped en masse to ‘dominions’ of the British Empire - Canada, Australia, New Zealand, as explained in Chapter 4.

Their mother, Helen Ross, died on 17 July 1892 at 22 George Street, age 46 (indicating birth circa 1846, as does the marriage certificate); on the death certificate her parents are noted as - (no forename given) Hamilton, farmer (deceased) and Hannah Hamilton m.s. Boyd (deceased); the informant was John Ross, widower.

Their father, John Ross (senior), died on 7 July 1895, aged 52, named as widower of Helen Hamilton, at 22 George Street; on the death certificate his parents are noted as Alexander Ross, mason contractor (deceased) and Jessie Ross m.s. Polson (she is not stated to be deceased but was); the informant was John Ross, son. Birth certification did not start in Scotland until 1855; John Ross’s birth date came from parish archives at the Registry in Edinburgh.

My grandfather George’s older brother John, born 1869, took over as head of the Ross household after his father died in 1895, with his siblings still living there (except for Alexander who had left by 1891, or died). He worked as a plumber, and married Agnes Watson born c. 1870, of Caddie Lenzie (parish east of Glasgow), remaining at 26 George Street apparently throughout his life, unlike his wandering siblings. John and Agnes were still there in the 1921 census aged 52 and 51 respectively, with no sons or daughters listed but the household included a “sister” Helen aged 34 (so born c. 1887) plus “neice” Helen aged two and “nephew” William McAdam aged nine. Because on censuses relationships are stated with reference to the head of household, it is clear that Helen is John’s sister, surely the four-year-old Nellie of the 1891 census. The neice and nephew in 1921 are presumably her children; no husband/father is present, but William may have been given his (deceased? disappeared?) father’s surname McAdam, and he was born in Renfrew/ Greenock indicating the mother Helen had been living there, possibly in a relationship. The two-year-old Helen in 1921 was born in Glasgow; her descendent, one of my newly discovered cousins, remembers her mother telling of an Uncle John Ross in Helensburgh and of her mother’s mother being born at Barnhill Poor House in Glasgow, and this being spoken about with an air of shame or disgrace – so the 1921 census’s Helen sister of John may have been left husband-less and destitute before her second child Helen was born in 1919, and after the Glasgow birth moved in with (much) older brother John’s household in Helensburgh. According to this cousin, the daughter Helen later married William Vivian Potter in Helensburgh, then he and both Helens moved to south Wales.

The older Helen, born Nellie in 1886, a year before Christina/Chrissie James was born, had kept in touch; after she died, her address book was found to have this entry: "Mrs G Ross, 43 Mornington Crescent, Harrogate" and "Trooper J R Ross, 327880, A Squadron, 4th Horse Cavalry, Royal Scots Greys, Middle East Force, Palestine".

The initial G is incorrect, but no. 43 is where Christina Ross was in the late 1930s; by 1941 she'd moved to no. 45; Uncle Jack was not recorded as a serviceman in the September 1939 Register so probably enlisted and was sent to Palestine after that, which dates this entry in Helen Ross' address book as about 1940. The interesting point is that Nellie/Helen and Christina/Chrissie had met previously, surely in Helensburgh living a few streets apart around 1911-13, and kept in touch over the years despite Christina and George's many moves.

John Ross, plumber (and seemingly yet another dutiful family man) died at 26 George Street on 6 January 1931, age 62, described as intestate, his estate valued as £164.18.7; his widow is named as "Agnes Watson Crerar or Ross" (where does Crerar come from?) of the same address.

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Names again. It is a pity that the carrying-forward of ancestors' names over so many generations seems to have died out now, at least in the branch of the family tree I am familiar with; but if we don't know our family history we cannot honour it in that way.

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The compulsory issue of identity cards came about from the National Registration Act 1939, a piece of wartime emergency legislation; every person, including new-borns, had to have an identity card, until 1952. During the war and after they were essential for the issuing of rations.

Short birth certificates gave date and place of birth, but ommitted the parents' names and other details; they were issued primarily to adoptees, to prevent them knowing that they were adopted and knowing their birth parents' identities. Great. At least we've moved on for the better in some ways.

Parental lie, concealment, pretense is a subject in its own right, deep and far-ranging; it often involves fathers, absent or absented. It's there in literature, fertile ground where biography/fact and imagination/fiction meet. In Michael Frayn's Spies, in Nina Bawden's Circles of Deceit.

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See also Wikitree (free, dates & biography), MyHeritage (subscription, dates)
For the background to Louis Doucet and my father, see Acadia