William Swainston: a tale of a juvenile wanderer

Hannah Salisbury, Engagement and Events Manager

Archives are packed with thousands upon thousands of life stories. And individual life stories are not only interesting in themselves, but can tell us about the society that individual lived in, and even human nature itself.

You will not, however, find someone’s life story all in one place. Records of our lives are scattered piecemeal through innumerable different records; the fragments that can be gleaned from various records can pinpoint people in time – when and where they were born, married and died, where they lived, what job they did. Sometimes, we are lucky enough to find records which give us more detail of what somebody looked like, or of their particular life experiences, which help us to imagine the world from their point-of-view.

When we run training courses on archival research, one of the things we say is that you will likely have to use several different sources to piece together the jigsaw. This work is, of course, immeasurably aided by the availability of key source material online, much of it accompanied by searchable indexes. A piece of research which would have once taken months or years or even been impossible can now sometimes be accomplished in a matter of hours.

The detective work which goes in to piecing together someone’s life story from archival records can be addictive. So it has been the case with William Swainston, a Victorian orphan who was admitted to the Essex Industrial School in 1876, aged 11, having been found sleeping rough in an outhouse at Parson’s Heath near Colchester. We have written previously about the Essex Industrial School, and its records have proved too tempting to resist further investigation.

William Swainston, who joined the school in 1876, aged 11, having run been orphaned and run away from his half-brother. Photo by Edouard Nickels (D/Q 40/153)

William is one of the school’s pupils of whom we have a named picture. This picture can then be tied up with his school records, so we can put a face to the boy described in the written records, and discover the story of the small boy looking out at us from this 140-year-old photograph. It has then been possible to pick up his story in other records, including newspapers, which have provided incredible detail of William’s turbulent life story.

William had had a difficult start in life. He was born in 1865 in Leicestershire, to parents Henry Thrussell Swainston and his wife Mary (his birth was tricky to track down, having been registered as William Thrussell). Henry’s occupation was described variously as a ‘chemist’, a ‘druggist’, and a ‘medical practitioner’. Henry was over 35 years older than Mary, and had had children from two previous relationships. Before William was born, the couple had had two other sons who both died in infancy. In 1871, when William was 6, his mother died. His father committed suicide 12 months later.

When William was orphaned, he went to live with his much older half-brother Charles Swainston in Colchester. Charles had himself had a difficult start in life; his mother had died young and his father seems to have disappeared.He was a former military man (indeed, it was the army which brought him to Colchester), and then became a Police Constable. Judging by newspaper articles, Charles seems to have been a respected figure in Colchester. When he died in 1906, a short article in the Essex Newsman noted:

The funeral has taken place at Colchester of Mr. Swainston, for many years caretaker of Colchester Castle. The deceased served as a soldier both in the Crimea and Indian Mutiny, and was greatly esteemed by all who knew him.

Yet William’s life with Charles’s family was not a happy one. In March 1876, William was arrested under the Vagrancy Act for sleeping rough in a cart on Parson’s Green near Colchester. The officer who arrested him said that William was ‘in a filthy condition’. According to a newspaper article affixed to his school records, William said that ‘he had nowhere else to sleep, being afraid to go home’ because of his half-brother.

The newspaper article affixed to William’s school records. The uncle mentioned was really William’s half-brother. (D/Q 40/1)

A hearing was held in Colchester Town Hall in front of the Mayor, at which William’s half-brother Charles also appeared. The Essex Standard of 31 Marcy 1876 reported that Charles denied William’s claims of ill treatment, and said that the boy ‘had been a source of great trouble and anxiety to his foster parents’. The Mayor admonished William for his unfeeling treatment of his benefactors, and suggested he be detained in an Industrial School as he was ‘evidently just entering on the path of crime’.

The next place where we pick up William’s story is in his school records. He arrived at the Essex Industrial School in Chelmsford on 6 April 1876. He was 4’2” tall, his figure ‘slight’, complexion ‘fair’, his hair ‘light brown’, his eyes ‘grey’ and his nose ‘straight’. Unusually among the boys, he could read and write ‘pretty well’. He had attended school regularly for five years, but received no schooling for the previous four. His report on 1 July said that he ‘seems to be a quick boy’ and described him as intelligent.

William Swainston’s record page in the Essex Industrial School admission register (D/Q 40/1)

William’s school records are not as detailed as some of the others, but they do tell us that in April 1881 he set out for Canada, aged 16. In 1881 it was noted that they had heard from him ‘several times he seems doing well’.

William also appears in the school’s discharge registers (D/Q 40/12), which gives more detail of the contact the school had with him after he left. The notes include in 1884 that ‘his brother’ in the school said that his mother had received a letter from William – this must be Francis Bulwer Swainston, who was actually William’s nephew, of whom more below.

Seven years later, in 1888, William was back in England with a consignment of cattle, and during this trip visited his old school to give a talk about his life farming in Canada. A short report on the talk appeared in the Essex Standard of 16 June:

Essex Industrial School – On the evening of the 7th inst. an interesting address was delivered at this Institution by Mr. Wm. Swainston, of Lowville, Canada, who was at one time an inmate of the School, and has been for seven years in Canada. – Mr. Frederick Wells presided, and was supported by Mr. J. Brittain Pash [the founder of the school], the Rev. R.E. Bartlett, and the Rev. D. Green. There was a crowded attendance of friends of the school, many of whom previously made an inspection of the buildings. – Mr. Swainston, who was most cordially received, began by describing his life on a Canadian farm, after which he spoke generally of the way in which agriculture was carried on there. In answer to questions, which were invited, Mr. Swainston stated that an industrious young man could save a hundred dollars a-year; he himself had saved that amount in a single summer. He mentioned that the knowledge he had acquired of various trades at the School had been most useful to him. He had come over to England with a consignment of cattle… A charge of 3d. was made for admission to the lecture, and the sum obtained will go towards sending a boy to Canada.

William seems to have made a good go of life in Canada. In March 1892 in Peel, Ontario, he married Helen or Ellen Quinn, who originated from Ireland. Both were aged 24, and William was described as a farmer. The last record it has been possible to trace so far for William is the 1901 Canadian census, in which he is recorded in Toronto along with Ellen, and three children – E. Mary, Annie, and William.

As a footnote, William was not the only member of his family to end up in the Essex Industrial School. Somewhat embarassingly for William’s half-brother Charles Swainston, one of his own sons, Francis, was in trouble throughout his childhood for a series of petty crimes, and in 1884, being deemed ‘uncontrollable’, was sentenced to be detained at the Essex Industrial School until he was 16. In the week before he was sent there he was kept at the Colchester workhouse, and three times escaped, once with no clothes on. His time at the school doesn’t seem to have deterred Francis from a life of crime, and as a young man there are further reports of him getting in trouble with the law for running confidence tricks. His crimes seem to have petered out, however, and he went on to work as a painter/decorator and as a tailor, and married and had 10 children.

If there are any living descendants of William’s out there, then I hope this post finds them.


If you would like to research further life stories of the boys in the Essex Industrial School admission books, you can find and order the books through our online catalogue (search for ‘Essex Industrial School admission register’, and use sources such as the census (available online for free in our Searchroom) and newspapers (again, available in our Searchroom) to find out more.

International Nurses Day 2018: Celebrating an Essex nurse

Lawrence Barker, Archivist

To celebrate International Nurses Day (marked each year on 12th May, Florence Nightingale’s birthday), we thought we’d take a look at the career of an eminent Essex nurse, Mary Ellen Ruck RRC, who served as the Matron of Black Notley Hospital near Braintree from 1929 to 1952.

Among the records relating to her (A14768 box 3), which were deposited with Essex Record Office alongside other records of Black Notley Hospital last year, is a book which was presented to her at the time of her leaving listing all her colleagues and associates, including the former County Medical Officer of Health, W. A. Bullough, who described her in a testimonial in 1930 after only one year in office, as ‘a splendid organiser and administrator’ who had ‘rendered me able assistance’ in connection with a scheme for recruiting secondary school girls into the County’s nursing service.

The new Essex County Council Sanatorium at Black Notley for the treatment of Tuberculosis in women and children was opened on 26th April 1930, and the photograph below was probably taken at the time showing Nurse Ruck standing with the Minister of Health, Arthur Greenwood, the Bishop of Barking, W. A. Bullough and councillors and staff associated with the hospital.

The Ambulant Children’s Pavilion at Black Notley Sanitorium

Former staff who worked with her described her supervision as “firm but fair”.  A nurse who joined the staff in 1950, described how Mary Ruck would work at night in the kitchen, how strict she was about cleanliness and in particular about the provision of good food.  Apparently, she was also a great entertainer, famous for her summer strawberry and raspberry teas.  She even concerned herself with the grounds of the hospital making certain that the gardeners looked after them properly so that they should look nice for the patients.[1]  Her attention to cleanliness possibly accounts for the nick-name ‘Mops’ given to her by a friend and associate signing his photograph ‘John’, a Christmas greeting in 1938.

She continued, however, to be involved with nursing in Essex after leaving the sanatorium and was eventually appointed County Nursing Superintendent of the Essex branch of the British Red Cross Society on 1st November 1954.

But perhaps the most impressive part of Mary’s story dates back to before her arrival in Essex.

She originally came from Lincolnshire.  According to her entry in the 1939 Register taken at Wanstead Hospital, she was born at Grantham on 22nd December 1886.  In 1891, the family were living at Louth, her father working for the railway as a ticket collector.  By 1901, he had become the Station Master of Dog Dyke on the Lincolnshire fens, memorably recalled in Flanders and Swann’s well-known song ‘The Slow Train’:

On the Main Line and the Goods Siding
The grass grows high
At Dog Dyke, Tumby Woodside
And Trouble House Halt

By 1911, she was a nurse at the Leeds General Infirmary where she completed her training in 1913. On the outbreak of the First World War, she joined the Territorial Force Nursing Service and was posted to France in January 1915.  And from then she seems to have covered herself with glory. After the Battle of Ypres in 1915, she was mentioned in a despatch by Field Marshall Sir John French on 30 November, which was reported in a local Lincolnshire newspaper.

Among her records are a collection of negatives of photographs taken at Ypres showing the bombed city and Mary Ruck at her station in what looks like a field hospital hut presumably located by the battlefield.

In 1916, after the Battle of the Somme, she was decorated on the field with the Royal Red Cross 1st Class.  The photograph below, thought to have been taken after the battle, shows her at the right-hand end of the back row of nurses.

Finally, after the war, she received a personal letter dated 1st March 1919 signed by Winston Churchill acknowledging her mention in despatches by Sir John French and conveying His Majesty the King’s ‘high appreciation’ of her gallant and distinguished service in the field.

During her long career in nursing Mary must have helped thousands and thousands of people, from soldiers wounded on the battlefields of the First World War to children suffering from tuberculosis. She lived to the age of 85, and died in 1969.


[1] Black Notley Hospital: a century of service, Black Notley Parish Council, 1998

Surveying Stuart Essex

New accessions arrive at ERO in a steady stream, and sometimes a very special survivor from the past comes into our care.

One such item that recently came into us is this map of Grays dating from 1631, made by a surveyor named Samuel Parsons (A14738 box 1).

The map in our Conservation Studio after being cleaned. East is at the top of the map. The area shown is the west side of Grays. London Road, shown running along the south side of the map, is today’s A126, and Hogg Lane, shown running along the east side of the map, is today the A1012. The salt marshes shown along the banks of the Thames are today housing. Part of the area shown in the middle of the map is today Grays Chalk Quarry Nature Reserve, part of it is Badgers Dene housing estate,  part of it is Askews Farm Industrial Estate, and part of it is a NuStar oil and gas terminal.

The map was made for George Whitmore, Lord Mayor of London, and shows land that he owned in Grays called Notts (alias Ripleys), Wrightes and Lords Land. Whitmore was a merchant and member of the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers. During the Civil War, not long after this map was made for him, he supported the king and was imprisoned by the Parliamentarians.

The map was made for George Whitmore, Lord Mayor of the City of London

Traditionally, surveys of estates were written documents, and the practice of making maps to either supplement or replace a written survey only started to take off in the 1570s. This type of map served two purposes: firstly, they were useful tools for ensuring efficient and profitable use of land; and secondly, they were status symbols for land owners.

At the centre of the map is Notts Farm, alias ‘Rippleyes’, surrounded by cherry orchards.

The names and acreages of the individual fields are listed along the left-hand side of the map, including ‘the eleauen [eleven] acres’, ‘Wallnutt tree feilde’ and ‘Pearetree feilde’.

Grays church is shown in the top right corner of the map.

And ‘The River of Thames’ flows along the right hand side of the map, with salt marshes along its edge.

Parsons shows wooded areas using tiny, individually drawn trees. Each one is coloured in green and yellow, adding detail and dimension.

The map joins two other documents made by Samuel Parsons already looked after at ERO. One is a map of land around Coggeshall Grange made in 1639 (D/DOp P1 – view a digital image of it here), and the other is a written survey of land in Little Bentley (D/DQs 4).

The Coggeshall map shares several stylistic similarities with the newly arrived Grays one. Both share the same patterned border, and decorative scale giving Parsons’s name as the maker.

The scale on the Grays map, bearing Samuel Parsons’s name

The scale from Parsons’s 1639 map of Coggesall, again decorated with compasses showing his name

The Coggeshall map shows Coggeshall Grange, including the barn which is today a National Trust property, shown here in ‘the Graunge yarde’.

 

The first surviving work of Parsons’ in Essex is his survey of land in Little Bentley in Tendring (D/DQs 4), made for Sir Paul Bayning, who was from a family of wealthy London merchants. This written survey book refers to a map made by Parsons at the same time, but this sadly seems not to have survived. Parsons signed this survey as ‘Samuell Parsones Practitioner in the Mathematicks’.

Parsons also made maps and surveys in Middlesex, Berkshire, Shropshire and Yorkshire. His map of Dringhouses in York (1624-29) is the earliest surviving large-scale plan of any part of York and its neighbourhoods, and even shows the names of the local people who farmed the land. York archivist Victoria Hoyle says that Parsons’s map ‘is so accurate, it perfectly matches the 1853 Ordnance Survey map’. (You can read more about the Dringhouses map here.)

The three documents made by Samuel Parsons which are now all part of the collections at ERO

Most of Parsons’s surviving maps were made in Shropshire (you can view an image of his 1635 map of Rudge Heath on Shropshire Archives’ catalogue here). Indeed, there is a connection between some of Parsons’s Shropshire maps and his map of Grays; some of his Shropshire work was for the Whitmore family of Apley Hall, of which George Whitmore (the commissioner of the Grays map) was a member.

In his study of 17th century mapmakers in Essex ‘An upstart art. Early mapping in Essex’ (T/Z 438/2/1) A. Stuart Mason, an expert on early map making suggests that Parsons may have been based in London, meeting his wealthy clients there, and being despatched to the countryside to survey their estates. His signature as a ‘Practitioner in the Mathematicks’ could suggest, according to Mason, that Parsons may well have taught mathematics in London alongside his surveying work.

Parsons made maps of extraordinary quality for their time, and we are very happy to welcome this new addition into our collection.

Document of the Month, May 2018: Down and out in Victorian Essex

Hannah Salisbury, Engagement and Events Manager

Our Document of the Month for May 2018 is an admissions register from the Essex Industrial School for Neglected and Destitute Boys (D/Q 40/1). The volume contains records of boys admitted to the school between 1872 and 1883, giving the reason for their admission and following their school career. For some boys it also records what happened to them after they left the school. Each page reads like a miniature Dickens novel, and the book is full of stories of boys who have been wandering the streets or arrested for petty crimes before being sent to the school.

Established in 1872 by local businessman Joseph Brittain Pash, the school started life in two converted houses in Great Baddow, supported entirely by donations. It provided accommodation, clothing, education and practical training for destitute boys, especially orphans or those at risk of falling into crime.

Buildings in Great Baddow used by the school in its early days

The school obviously met a social need, and by 1876 had grown to fill three houses and four cottages. In 1877 it was granted £5,000 by the Essex county authorities and £2,000 by the West Ham School board for a new building. Land was purchased in Rainsford End, Chelmsford, and a new building with space for up to 150 pupils was opened in 1879.

The new school building which opened in Rainsford End, Chelmsford, in 1879

The Essex Industrial School, in the north west quadrant of this map, was built in what was at the time open countryside outside Chelmsford town centre. The building survived until the 1980s when it was demolished and replaced with housing.

Alongside a basic education the boys received training in shoemaking, tailoring, gardening, building, carpentry, painting and decorating, and engineering. The school also had a theatre, a swimming pool, and a fife and drum band. When boys left, attempts were made to find them employment, sometimes in Australia, New Zealand, or Canada.

View more photographs from the school on our Historypin page

The school admission register and photographs of the school’s buildings, classrooms and workshops are wonderful enough, but we also have some further photographs which make the whole collection even more special.

The school sometimes commissioned individual portrait photographs of their pupils, and a little bundle of these survived today at ERO, most of which are named. These names can then be looked up in the admissions registers, and the photographs of the boys can be tied up with their stories told in the school records. Some of the photographs were taken after the boys had been at the school for a while, but others were taken when the boys first arrived. Often they were unshod and wearing rags, and had clearly suffered extreme deprivation.

Photograph of 11-year-old Charles Tungate, who was admitted to the school in 1873, along with his page in the admission register.

Charles Tungate was admitted to the school in October 1873, aged 11. His attendance at the school had been ordered by Greenwich Police Court, following his arrest for stealing a bolt, nails and screws which belonged to his father (his mother had reported this crime). He was sentenced to be detained at the school until he was 16 years of age.

The admission register gives a remarkable amount of detail about Charles’s situation. His parents were Robert and Emma Tungate of Deptford. Robert was a carpenter, but is also described as a drunkard. Charles was one of their eight children; three older children were out at work, but four children younger than Charles were at home. Clearly the family was struggling. Charles had been ‘wandering the streets’, and when admitted, his hair was ‘matted together & full of vermin’ and his body was ‘pale & thin, and almost naked’, and he had sores on his ankles and feet. He had never been to school, but his sister had managed to teach him to read a little.

After 11 months at the school, Charles was described as ‘Rather inattentive, somewhat disobedient, but much improved since admission’. Charles’s school reports are something of a mixed bag – he is described as being ‘deceitful’ and ‘untidy’, but also as ‘persevering’ and ‘diligent’. He left the school in 1878 and was apprenticed to a Chelmsford baker, Mr Hicks, ‘to be taught the trade of a Fancy Bread & Biscuit Baker’. Charles lasted two of his three years as an apprentice, before absconding in August 1880. In 1881, however, he had found another position in London as a baker. Baking seems ultimately to have proved not to be for Charles, and in 1884 he joined the army. He served in India and in South Africa, where he suffered a gunshot wound to both legs during the Boer War. By the time of the 1911 census, Charles was living in Warley, and was an army pensioner and grocer. He was married with four children. He died in 1940, aged 75.

There are two photographs which are labelled ‘G Newman’; the jury is out on whether they are before and after photographs of the same boy or if more than one G Newman attended the school.

George Newman was admitted in 1874 aged 10, having been ‘wandering around with his mother until she became insane’. His father was dead, and his mother was placed in the Essex Lunatic Asylum in May 1874. He stayed at the school until 1880, and wrote in December that year that he had got a job at one of the very first Sainsbury’s shops in London. Sadly when he visited the school in August 1881 he was out of work, and nothing further is reported of him.

William Swainston, who joined the school in 1876, aged 11, having run been orphaned and run away from his uncle. Photo by Edouard Nickels (D/Q 40/153)

William Swainston was admitted in 1876, aged 11, having been found sleeping rough in an outhouse at Parson’s Heath near Colchester. He was an orphan, and had been living with his uncle, but stated he had run away from his uncle because he was afraid of him. A newspaper article fixed to his school record says that ‘He had been wondering about the locality for a fortnight previously, and witness [a local policeman] had received several complaints respecting him… The witness added that when found the boy was in a filthy condition, and Mr. Charles Harvey, the gaoler, said he had never before in his life had a boy in such a dirty state in custody’. He was described on arrival at the school as ‘a quick boy’ and ‘intelligent’, and unusually he could read and write. In 1881 a position was found for him in Canada, and he wrote to the school to tell them he was doing well. Canadian records show that he married an Irishwoman, and settled in Toronto.

The school was later known as the Essex Home School, and continued in various forms until 1980. The buildings have since been demolished and the site redeveloped.

The admission register, along with photographs of some of the pupils of the school, will be on display in the ERO Searchroom throughout May 2018.