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John being slightly older than his brother was taken by the Goulborn brothers into the Gas Lamp Lighter’s trade. The Lamplighter’s was a respectable trade; gas lighting was widespread throughout London having been around since 1807 making a big change to the feel of the City. The old oil lamps were gone, replaced by thousands of bright gas lamps; London sparkled like a diamond, it shone like no other city in the world. The lamplighters would be out at dusk with a short ladder over their shoulder and a lamp in their hand. You can picture John Kray, twenty one years old, walking his rounds, between lamp posts in Bethnal Green at dusk, the ladder would go up against the lamppost, up he would go with his lamp to turn on the fishtail gas burner, apply his lamp to light it, close the glass, then down and off to the next one till his round was done, the faster he got round, the sooner he could leave work for the evening. A fairly straight forward job if you were careful not to blow yourself off the ladder by allowing too much gas to build up before applying the lamp, but a miserable one in the wind and rain. The next morning he would be up at “Sparrow’s fart” before dawn to do the same round again, this time up the ladder to turn off the gas, the skin on his fingers and thumbs being hard and calloused through contact with the hot metal and glass of the street lamps.

The Lamplighters were a close knit, and hereditary group, this was enabled by the growth of Gas Lights across London in the early 1800s which meant that as their families grew so did the demand for their labours, and the numbers of beats (as they called their routes) and it was a male only profession in Britain, passed from Father to Son, or to other members of the family as in the Krays’ case from their in-laws the Goulbourns.

They would congregate in groups, men working for the same Gas Company keeping company with each other in a local tavern that would be their “headquarters” at the end of their rounds. Here they would smoke their clay pipes, “wet their whistles” with beer, and swap stories of the rounds, and past and present Lamp Lighters, the most experienced, older men leading the group. They formed a “London Tribe” but unlike many they had a reputation for honesty, and acted almost as unofficial night watchmen, lighting up the dark corners and alleyways, banishing the darkness, and those who would skulk in it, by the act of light brining, and indeed their mere presence in the dark out of the way places, they also managed to do away with Link Boys, or “Glym Jacks” who carried lighted lanterns or torches for pedestrians in towns at night for a farthing a trip, however these were not always what they seemed, and could turn out to be “Moon Cursers” who would lead travellers to an ambush by their accomplices on nights when there was no Moon, and therefore when the Glym Jack’s services were much in demand. They died out with the coming of the Lamplighters as a trade.

The various families of Lamplighters would intermarry, according to Dickens betrothing their children in infancy to each other, form precessions at old Lamplighters’ funerals speaking slightly drunken orations, and upheld ceremonies and customs that went back through the generations. The older Lamplighters would have known the oil lamps, whose cotton wicks needed trimming and refilling with Whale Oil by day, then the round in the evening to light them again. They considered it a more skilled trade before the coming of Gas Lamps to Pall Mall and the London Bridges, as the old skills of maintaining the lamps were no longer required, and you couldn’t blow yourself off your ladder with an oil lamp!

Despite the changes in technology, the Lamplighters kept up their traditions and appearances, taking to the streets in white top hats, brown Holland jackets and trousers, the button hole of the jacket stuffed with wall flowers, and blue neckerchiefs. On a new beat they would whistle or sing from the tops of their ladders as they lit the lamps in the evening, so that the residents on the round would take notice and “stand them something to drink” as acknowledgement of their essential role as light bringer in the neighbourhood, the lamplighter’s shadow profiling them each night as familiar and comforting sights looming on bedroom walls.

At Christmas they would don their Sunday best and travel their rounds regaling the inhabitants with Lamplighters songs outlining the trials and tribulations of a Lamplighter’s life in the hope of receiving a “Christmas Box” (the price of a drink) in return.

It must have been a life that suited John Kray as he stayed in it for nearly thirty years, steady work, not highly paid, but with plenty of free time, the downside was that it was a job without prospects for the ordinary man, as long as you were prepared to do the same thing everyday, and proved reliable, you would have employment, but there was little or no chance of bettering yourself within the trade, as the job was owned by the gas companies, you could never build it up as your own business, the age of the wage slave had truly arrived. To John, having seen the effects of his father’s early death on the family only saved from destitution by the charity of the Goulborns, and the fate of his mother, condemned to Charity Shelters, the street and finally the workhouse, the certainty of a regular wage, even if only enough to keep a roof over your head and bread on the table, would have brought its own contentment.

In 1851 John Kray married Elizabeth Nurton, and went on to have nine children. They stayed in Bethnal Green with John going about his business as a Lamplighter, and lived for many years at 3 Providence Place Bethnal Green, the area in which they lived was almost exclusively inhabited by English Cockneys, (as opposed to other ethnic Cockney tribes such as the Irish, Scots, and Jews) virtually everyone in the streets in which they lived were born and bred in Bethnal Green, Shoreditch and Whitechapel. At this time Bethnal Green had been heavily settled by people who had moved out of from the shadow of the Tower like the Krays, it was a less harsh environment, still working class, still poor, but with a less claustrophobic crowding of people, and without the rampant casual crime that stalked the alleyways nearer to the city centre.

Pubs and music halls started to replace the Gin shops and penny dives, where players on stage would dress in caricature of the moneyed classes, the “Swells”, where caricature Policemen would fight with caricatures of the starving poor of Whitechapel, and poor but honest street girls would be placed in moral, and sometimes mortal peril by the lustful and greedy Swells, to be rescued at the last minute by their burly Costermonger or Soldier sweethearts to the roars of approval from the audience. This was the fantasy world that the working class could escape to, where the poor and “honest” would triumph over the rich and wicked, in complete denial of the truth that they saw around them everyday in the streets.

Murder in Goodman’s Yard

The year was 1832, and the place was Regency Whitechapel. The children from Goodman’s Yard in the shadow of the Tower of London were lucky to have a charity school to attend. Mary Ann was eleven years old and the eldest daughter of John and Maria Kray. She had witnessed Ned Cook’s arrest, and this would lead to the unfolding a macabre story of murder, body snatching, and a public hanging.

To understand how a family evolves over time it is necessary to understand the environment in which they evolved; the attitudes, risks, and dreams of the people and their neighbours. With the Kray family there is no better place to start than Regency London and the desperation, temptation, and punishments that the played out with the working classes; this was the fire that would forge the Kray family.

Earlier that year, Ann Buton, the Granddaughter of an old Irish street seller, Caroline Walsh, had turned up at the garret room of 7 Goodmans Yard to look for her missing Grandmother. This was the home of Edward (Ned) Cook, his common law wife Elizabeth Ross (sometimes going by the name of her partner as Mrs Cook), and their son, Mary Ann’s school friend, young Ned Cook. Elizabeth Ross had a reputation for being a highly inquisitive person, and liked a drink, and it was not long before she had persuaded Ann Buton to buy her a drink, or as it turned out, a quartern of Gin, and two pints of beer. As they drank, Ann Buton questioned Elizabeth Ross closely, Ross said that the old lady had stayed the night but had gone out for some errands and would no doubt be back soon, but as the drink took hold, and the questions continued, Ross said:

“You seem to think from what you say, that we have murdered the woman.”

“I hope not Mrs Cook.”

Replied Buton.

Elizabeth Ross continued;

“From what you seem to say, you think we have destroyed her at our place.”

Buton, obviously alarmed retorted;

“Mrs Cook, you put the words into my mouth, but what I think I don’t speak now, but you will know of it hereafter.”

After this strange exchange, Elizabeth Ross tried her hardest to persuade Ann Buton to come back to her garret with her to have something to eat, but Buton refused, instead giving her some money to buy some food that they would eat in Brown’s Pub. Taking the money Elizabeth Ross went off and did not return.

Not to be put off the trail Ann continued to search the workhouses and hospitals for her Grandmother for some days, returning to the Garret where she saw bruises on Elizabeth Ross which she said she received at the hands of her partner Ned Cook, administered she said in punishment for her having gone drinking with Ann Buton and discussing the old lady’s disappearance. Ross’s story became stranger, with talk of rumours of an old Irish women dieing in the local workhouse, and that no doubt Ann would hear if her grandmother was alive or dead in a month or two. Having lost hope of any progress and sure that Ross knew more than she was saying, Ann Buton went to the local Police to make a complaint. The case was not followed up by the Police until the Granddaughters went to a magistrate in October, and it was then that Officer Lea was dispatched to arrest Ross and Ned Cook on suspicion of involvement in the old lady’s disappearance, and because he was required to keep them in custody, he was compelled to take young Ned Cook as well.

This was the turning point in the case, as young Ned, after a visit from his school master, no doubt raked with guilt and fear confessed to Lea that he had returned from school one evening to see old Mrs Walsh in their Garret, where she had drunk some coffee with his mother and father. The old lady had felt tired after this, and had lain down on the bed. He had then said that he had watched his mother approach the bed, put one hand over Mrs Walsh’s face, and the other on her chest, whilst leaning forward with her weight on the old woman. Frightened and looking to his father for help, Ned went over and stood at his side, but his father ignored him, standing with his back to the grim scene leaning out of the garret window. The terrified boy looked back to see Mrs Walsh’s eyes roll back, as his mother smothered the life out of her.
His mother carried the old woman’s body down stairs. He considered running away, but had nowhere to go, and so he curled up in bed hoping to wipe the horror from his mind.

The next morning he went to the basement privy, which was seldom frequented as it was infested with rats, but he had heard that one of the other families in the house had some ducks down there, and he wanted to see them. Feeling his way around in the dark he felt a large sack in the corner, and protruding out of it the top of the black hair of Caroline Walsh! He fled the basement. That night near to midnight he saw his mother carrying the body in the sack along Goodmans Yard, the next day she told him she had taken it to the hospital.

This was the grim tale that unfolded for the Jury at the Old Bailey trial, and the case was sensationalised in the press, with tales of the body not being found because Ross had sold it to surgeons for dissection, hot on the heels of the Burke and Hare grave robbing in Scotland, the press and public were craving more sensational stories of Irish murderers and body snatchers, and the Ross case had all the ingredients; Elizabeth Ross was Irish, a murder had most likely taken place, the old ladies possessions had been sold off for a few shillings after her disappearance by Ross, the body was missing, perhaps she had disposed of the evidence to some anatomists, and she was condemned out of the mouth of her own son!

Elizabeth Ross was found guilty of murder ad condemned to be hanged. Her partner Ned Cook was found not guilty. She was publicly hanged at Newgate, in front of a howling crowd, and her body was given over for dissection to the college of surgeons. Her life had been taken and her body dissected in a grim parody of the crimes she was accused of. To add insult to injury, her partially clothed corpse was sketched for a book of famous murders.

We can only speculate on what this outcome did to the mind of young Ned who had sent her to the gallows, without his evidence, she may have been convicted of handling stolen goods, but of little else. But Regency London was a harsh place, working class people were considered as criminals as a matter of course by many in society, and a child’s testimony would be all that was needed to send you to the gallows to swing for public entertainment, and then to the surgeons, this amounted to being hanged, drawn, and quartered. There was no balance of justice for the working class in Whitechapel and Bethnal Green, there was no reasonable doubt. Conversely a neighbour may have been willing to kill you for the clothes you stood up in, dispose of your body to the anatomists and very likely get away with it if nobody “talked”. Either way, the lessons learned by the Krays would have been that life could end suddenly through the law or against it, violent crime was an everyday occurrence, violent justice would be meted out if you were caught, and you could be caught and hanged by the voice of your own children. The other lesson was that the poor could not expect to be helped by the Police unless, like Ann Buton, you fought hard for it.

Given the cramped conditions the children would have spent as much of their time as possible outside, playing with the six Pattison children from the first floor. No doubt under the watchful eyes of the elderly house owner, a shop keeper, Mrs Hamilton who had the room on the ground floor. Time had moved on from when old Mrs Walsh had gone missing in Goodmans Yard, but parents still frightened their children saying that Mrs Cook the body snatcher would come and put them in a sack to sell to a surgeon if they didn’t behave.

Early Victorian Whitechapel

Whitechapel at this time had a hugely growing populace, mainly from other parts of the home counties, with people desperate to get into “The Smoke” as London became known to country dwellers, businesses were booming, and young people were attracted to the excitement of living in a place packed with people, but where nobody knew you, the village could be claustrophobic because of the familiarity of everything and everyone around you in the square mile of your village Parish, each of London’s square miles teemed with hundreds of thousands of people everyone invisible to the great mass around them. If you had money you were served with every vice imaginable, sex, drink, drugs (in the form of opium dens), in the minds of the fresh faced newcomer foreseen as romance and adventure.

The grim reality was somewhat different. The Alleyways were too cramped to get a carriage through, feral children roamed in packs picking pockets and stealing from market stalls, they grew into surly teenagers who frequented the Penny Dives in the Gin Palaces, the forerunners of the more respectable Music Halls. Here on small raised stages, accompanied by a rickety piano, popular stage acts would belt out bawdy double-entendres to the cheers and cat calls of their audience, nudges and winks going from boy to girl and back again. These were the Whitechapel Loafers, and this is where they would spend their light fingered spoils on Gin, by the pint. They would grow into the local hard man or “bully”, each of whom held sway over a court of ancient houses, rats in the cellars, and sparrows in the eves, sandwiching rooms filled with families, the houses themselves were being gradually shaken to pieces by the new railway engines thundering by them night and day. Whitechapel was a world apart, the Bullies and their Dolls blocking the roads in broad daylight and robbing any who looked prosperous enough and weak enough to provide both little resistance and high reward.

A strong hard working family would rise above all of this, but during the Kray childrens’ teenage years, their father John Kray’s drinking got steadily heavier. Much of his wages would have gone to the Gin Shop and the Beer House, and although he seemed to have a prodigious capacity for drink it was slowly poisoning his central nervous system. Eventually, especially when the money was low and drink hard to get John Kray would become restless during the day and sleepless at night, falling into depression. He started talking incessantly but incoherently, would say that he was going out to deal with some imaginary business, this would develop into visual hallucinations and he would believe that any object or person that was mentioned was physically in front of him. The symptoms got worse with or without a drink, and a fever set in. John was suffering Delirium Tremens, which gave him about a 30% chance of dieing in the 19th century, however if pneumonia set in then it invariably became fatal. He ranted and raved, and was given to violent delusions, capable of hurting himself or those around him, the family tried to help him, but his situation was becoming unmanageable. Eventually the fever laid him low, and his teenaged sons and Maria his wife were forced to carry him to the doors of the London Hospital to seek treatment for him.

For the family this would have been the last resort, as Hospital were viewed with suspicion, and up until the 1840s quite rightly so. The problem was that before the 1840s the qualifications for becoming a nurse were lax to say the least, from the 1820s the severe lack of nurses meant that women who could not read or write were allowed in, Hospital Governors and Doctors at the time said:

“The only points to be settled when engaging a nurse were that she was not Irish and not a confirmed drunkard. We always engage them without a character, as no respectable person would undertake so disagreeable an office. Every vice was rampant among these women, and their aid to the dieing was to remove pillows and bedclothes, and so hasten the end.”

With this in mind the Family handed to feverish and hallucinating John Kray over to the hospital porters. The worst of the offenders among the nurses had gone by now, and were replaced by semi-trained well meaning women, most of whom could read and write, and John was fortunate to be cared for by one such woman, Emma Davies, who may have been an older nurse as the young nurses were not allowed to enter the Mens’ wards, she would also have received an extra £2 per year for looking after the Men’s wards. The nurses were dreadfully overworked having to work both night and day shifts with only a very limited period of rest in between, and it is unlikely that a Doctor would have wasted much time on a middle aged man suffering from the effects of a lifetime of excessive drinking, so when on a hot day in August 1844 John Kray’s fever finally got the better of him, it was Nurse Emma Davies who witnessed the cause of death simply as a “Diseased Brain”.

Faced with this, Maria had stark choices to contend with. She had a house full of kids to look after, with no breadwinner, and not just through the obvious grief of separation of a mother and children from a husband and father, despite his terrible rages towards the end of his life, but now with the prospect of not being able to pay the rent and being cast out on the streets. Whatever happened life would now be grim, and Maria would need to make the most heartbreaking decisions in order to keep her children from harm.

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The Family Falls Apart

The decision Maria made was to sacrifice herself to save the children. Her eldest daughter Mary Ann had married William Golbourn in 1843, the Golbourns had lived amongst the Huguenot Silk Weavers in Bethnal Green for generations. They were probably descendants of Huguenots themselves, but had moved with the times, the men now working as Gas Lamp Lighters, while the women worked on lighter trades such as shoe and Straw Bonnet making. They survived and multiplied, and had the charity of heart to take in the Kray boys after John Kray’s death. As always in times of trouble the Kray Family came to the rescue of their kin, saving them from the streets or workhouse. No matter how poor and cramped the conditions, it would always be better than that.

However there was only so much charity that was available, and conditions were cramped for the Golbourns although they did what they could. Maria took up work as a Charlady getting up at four in the morning to clean the offices, pubs, and public buildings of the area before the populace turned up to use them, hard, cold, poorly paid work, but it fed her gave enough to afford the tuppence a night in the lowest lodging houses, people separated from each other by simple wood boards stopping just above head height, in spaces just big enough for a bed, and that was when the work was coming in. In the times when it wasn’t Maria was forced first into the Charity Refuges, these were an alternative to the dreaded Workhouses. They were run by charities, and did their best for the local poor, but the demand was overwhelming,

Maria wandered into the courtyard of the refuge, fear of refusal, and a night on the streets in her heart, hands clasped, begging, pleading, trying to hide her Bronchial coughs from the overseers for fear of being turned away through fear of infection. Hemmed in on all sides by waifs and strays, men too old to work, young boys too frail to survive by crime, girls with babes in their arms thrown out of home for giving in to natures instincts, a dejected mass of humanity too fearful of rejection to do more of beg for a place within the refuge, too weak through lack of food to worry about pride. A firm, but not unkind superintendent lets her in, she gives her name, age, occupation, and place of birth, she could cry with relief, but lacks the strength. A hunk of bread is placed in her hand, and after sitting with the other women and girls to eat it, she joins three of them in a room for a bath, and then to bed, and the sweet oblivion of sleep, to the lullaby of the preacher walking up and down the long room reading from the bible.

There came a point where the risk of not being able to get in to the night shelters were no good, she couldn’t take the risk, as her Bronchitis was getting worse and another night on the cold streets would kill her. So with a heavy heart she knocked on the door of the Whitechapel Poor House, and committed herself to a safe, harsh, and unsympathetic regime that would keep her fed, and alive, but completely controlled by the authorities, her only happiness being her monthly opportunity to leave the walls and visit her family, but failure to return as directed would mean a life on the streets, but that one visit would allow her to get through the next month of grey austerity. The minimum food, and hard regime, kept her weak, and although it gave her several years of life, it did nothing to get rid of her Bronchial state or her weak heart, and on 23rd February 1878, she passed away in the Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary in Bakers Row.

Her sons fared better. Mary Ann and William Goulborn had taken in her brother James to live with them at 30 Birdcage Walk Bethnal Green, which with would have been cramped with their own three children, but at least it would have brought an extra income into the house when he was old enough to work as a Cigar Maker.

When John Kray was sixteen he heard the news that Napoleon had finally been defeated at Waterloo by the mighty Wellington, it was the dawn of a new age. Great Britain had been fighting France for the whole of John’s life, and for the whole life of his father and his father’s father. Now war was over, and the boom protectionist economy that it had driven was about to descend into the bust economy of peace and competition. No one on the streets of London could see this, and the feeling on the streets was one of elation, chests thrown out, and heads held high. But as high prices, no votes and unemployment in town and country took hold, the countryside started to rise in disorder, and in 1816 this spilled over into London.

On a cold and clear day 2nd December 1816 John Kray laid his file and hammer down to stand at the door of his master’s Brass workshop with the other apprentices to stare on in astonishment at a mass of people surging through the narrow streets. With banners flying, the mob marched on for the Tower of London. These were the “Spenceans” a radical group of what we would probably call communists, the Spenceans were ultra-radical, calling for the destruction of all machinery and the sharing of all property. Many of the unemployed and dispossessed poor had rallied to their assembly, and the hot heads amongst their leaders were leading them to the Tower to win over the garrison, seize the armoury, and light the fire of revolution in the capital.

They surged through the streets around the Tower, calling to the people to join them, one grabbed John Kray by the shoulder:

“Come on boy, join us and live free as a cat!”

“What party do you follow?” John asked.

The man laughed “Whatever the parties you may call, they’re all alike so damn them all!” he laughed louder and sprinted back up the street to join the throng.

John Kray and his fellow apprentices followed “for a laugh” seeing these wild eyed revolutionaries and angry ragged men following them would have been the most exciting thing he had ever seen. They reached the Tower and call upon the garrison to join them. To their dismay and anger, the hardnosed guardsmen, fresh back from fighting the French just laughed in their faces. This was turning into a huge anti-climax, the battle hardened garrison, were easily capable of sweeping the Spenceans away with one bayonet charge, but commonsense prevailed, and the worst the would-be revolutionaries were hit with was derision.

Faced with this one of the younger revolutionary leaders lead a group of them into the City ransacked a gun shop, and shot a customer who remonstrated with him. At this point John and his friends would have decided that they would get back to work before things got completely out of hand, and the numbers of Spenceans started to dwindle, and their resolve to waver, until they were demoralised enough for the Lord Mayor and Militia to disperse them, capturing a number of their ringleaders. Despite the civil unrest they had orchestrated, the four ringleaders walked free because of a problem with the charges brought against them, James Watson, a surgeon and a leader of the more violent faction who had shot the man in the Gunsmith’s shop eluded capture whereas a sailor who had been with him was captured and hanged. The irony would not have been lost on the Krays; if you were a big enough fish, and had the right lawyer you could walk away on a technicality, if you were a foot soldier you would go to the gallows even if you didn’t pull the trigger.

Two years later in1818, at St James Church Clerkenwell, the nineteen year old John Kray married twenty year old Maria Etteridge. They had six children over the next twenty years, three boys and three girls. John the Brass Finisher, although not a highly skilled job, would at least provide a regular income that would keep a family together with a roof over their heads, and food on the table.

They lived in Goodmans Yard within sight of the Tower. Living conditions weren’t great, one room in the roof of the house thirteen feet by eleven feet, with a fire place, and a window. In this space lived John and Maria plus five of their children. Their only furniture was a bed, a couple of chairs and a table, with washing hanging up across the room when it was too wet to dry outside. With no running water, their room lit by candles, and a rat infested privy in the darkened basement without any other form of sanitation, they would have considered themselves lucky compared to the homeless and starving families they could see on the streets. They even had a Charity School around the corner so at least the children would be able to read, write, and do sums.

The Spenceans had one last throw of the dice two years later in 1820, George III died leaving a constitutional crisis concerning the succession of his dissolute sons, and the Government was forced to call an election.  A plot was hatched by a group of Spenceans to riad a Cabinet Dinner with pistols and grenades, kill the entire cabinet, cut off their heads and stick them on spikes on Westminster Bridge, and proclaim a “People’s Parliament”.  Unknown to them the conspirator who thought up the plot was actually a government secret service agent, and led them into a trap.

The conspirators were surprised in a loft in Cato Street prior to the attack by a group of Bow Street Runners, who rather than wait for a detachment of Coldstream Guards to arrive to support them, decided to attack and take all the glory for themselves.  Although unprepared, the Spenceans fought with pistol and sword, and although over powered killed one of the Runners with a sword thrust.

Justice was swift and decisive, and it is most likely that John Kray would have taken half an hour out of his day to watch as four of the conspirators were publicly hanged in front of a large crowd, before their bodies were cut down from the gibbet and beheaded, the grisly heads held up to the crowd, with the old shout of “behold the head of a traitor!” Another example to John Kray and the crowd of working men and women of the futility of fighting the government when their spies were everywhere, and their vengeance swift and final.

frederickkrayfamily Click to see tree

The first Kray we come across in the direct line is Frederick Kray born around 1773 in the City of London or nearby. Frederick is the Kray twins’ Great Great Great Grandgather. He worked as a Goldsmith, Jeweller , Dealer and Chapman, the first two occupations indicate an upmarket trade, but Dealer and Chapman indicate a trader of a lower level, working in the markets and Dealers Shops. A Chapman, indicates someone who barters and strikes deals (Ceap in old English being the root of “cheap” meanng a bargain or a deal). It seems likely that Frederick served his apprenticeship as a Goldsmith, then went into business on his own selling the goods rather than making them for sale. He is never described as a Journeyman or Master of his craft, so he may never have finished his apprenticeship.

In any case he makes some risky decisions in his life, getting young Mary, pregnant at fourteen in 1795 when he was twenty two; not a crime at the time, but showing a lack of judgement. The pair stay together and have three sons between 1796 and 1800; Fredeerick Joseph, John (the Kray twins’ Great Great Great Grandfather), and Richard.

For a while Frederick gets by, managing to bring in enough money to take out a lease on a house, in Stanhope Street, Clare Market. This was an area wdeged in between theatres and divided into “Ladyships” owing to the Madams who ran the brothels and lorded over the area. The rest of the streets and lanes were mainly inhabited by Butchers who ran herds of animals through the narrow lanes for slaughter in the shambles, cheap grocery shops, and stalls selling other goods.

Frederick most likely bought and sold jewellry, a precarious living and by 1806 Fredeick finds that he can’t sustain his business, and is taken into Bankruptcy by his creditors. His debts are eventually discharged by the sale of all his worldly goods at a public auction from his home, strangers, and neighbours, picking through the Krray’s belongings, and buying them amidst cat-calls and jears from the people routing through their belongings, whilst Frederick, Mary and the children can just look on in despair.

Frederick never recovers from the blow, and the family struggles to survive, until in 1815 at the age of fortytwo he dies. What caused his financial ruin and early death is not certain, but relations had not been all they could be between Fredericka nd Mary for some years as no children are born after 1800, despite them both being in their prime. Perhaps the proximity of the whore houses and drinking dens of the Clare Market had proved to be too much of a temptation for Frederick, a man with ready cash in his pocket.

Fortunately for the family the boys had managed to get trades, the eldest Frederick and youngest Richard following their father’s trade as Goldsmiths, the middle son John becoming a less glamourous Brass Founder. This indicates that Frederick may still had had friends amonget the Goldsmiths, getting two of his boys into apprenticeships with them, perhaps John the middle son was less well disposed and therefore went into an allied metal working trade as a Brass founder, requiring less skill but more brawn. Mary and her eldest son Frederick crossed the Thames back to the Surrey side where she was born, and no doubt where her family still lived.

The two elder sons married at the end of their apprenticeships both in 1818, Frederick staying on the Surrey side of the river, and John staying in the City and Whitechapel. The youngest son Richard stayed north of the river and married in 1822.

The origin of the Kray Family name is by no means clear, there are several possibilities, including the Old English word “Cray” for a stream, common still in place names in Kent, as in Crayford, St Paul’s Cray, St Mary’s Cray etc (and of course in “Cray-fish”), if this is the name’s derivation then the family would have been initially from Kent before moving to the more industrialised areas surrounding the south eastern flanks of London, or across the river Thames to Essex and from there into London. However is rare for the name to be spelled with a K rather than a C, so the proof that it originated as a Kentish name is not conclusive.

There are two other possibilities for the name. One is that the name could be contraction of McCrae or McKray, dropping the “Mc” and keeping the phonetic sounding “Kray”, as was popular amongst Scots immigrants who wished their names to sound less Scottish in London, especially during the 18th century wars between Scotland and England under Bonnie Prince Charlie. This probably accounts for the instances of the name cropping up around Yorkshire, Durham, and Lancashire, thanks to their sea connections and industrial growth which brought in many Scots and Irish Sailors and industrial workers.

The last possibility is a German origin, as the name Kray is found amongst German immigrants to the UK and USA, and during the 18th century many German immigrants came to London on the back of the Hanoverian Georges becoming Kings of England, and Germans arrived both as craftsmen and as mercenaries to fight in the wars in America and Europe.

Whatever their origins we do know that by the beginning of the end of the 18th century the Kray family were established in the City of London and Middlesex by the Thames, in what would now be called Central London.

Not Sudanese, but did help stop the Slave Trade in the Sudan

We first hear of the Olivers living in Madron, a village about 2 miles North West of the coast of Penzance, the Village grew up around a fresh water spring, which, during the time of these early generations of Olivers was the only source of fresh water for both Madron and Penzance, Penzance being at this time the port area for Madron. There are standing stones in the area which were claimed to be able to cure rickets if the afflicted were passed through them, this pagan legend also extended to the Well at Madron, and as with all pagan superstitions, this was taken over by the Dark Age Christians and turned into a Christian superstition attached to St Madern which gradually changed in pronunciation over time to St Madron.

When the Normans came, their local lord of the manor had the church built near the now “Holy” Well of St Madron, and gave it to the Knights Hospitaller in return for them praying for his soul. It is most likely that the spelling of the “Oliver” surname happened during this time and may have come from the English name Alward (pronounced Alvard), as represented in Alverton just a couple of miles from Madron, the French speaking Normans priests and overseers Normanising the local name of Alver to Oliver.

The Olivers would have seen both the growth of Penzance, and it’s ravages at the hands of the Barbary Corsairs raiding the coasts for slaves to sell in the markets of North Africa, followed by plague in the 1570s, and the Spanish who landed in 1595, ravaged the town, held a Holy Mass, and set off to sea again before local forces could muster to confront them. The town’s woes continued during the English Civil War in the 1640s when the Roundhead General Thomas Faifax ravaged the town as a punishment for its Royalist sympathies, and a group of Roundheads destroyed the small chapel at Madron as a pagan remnant, plague returned in 1647 raising the death rate by 10 times the normal.

By the time of the earliest recorded Olivers in the 1660s Madron had started to take second place to its port of Penzance which had steadily grown in importance. After the ravages of the 17th century, things improved during the 18th century, at least judging from the number of children born to Henry Oliver and Jane Vinicomb between 1735 and 1750, seven in total, but times could still be hard, with two sons died in infancy. The Penzance and Madron area boomed during these times thanks to the Tin mining and good corn harvests, and its export via Penzance along with barrels of local Pilchards. By the mid 1700s when the Oliver children were growing up a battery of guns were put in place to deter Spanish attacks, wealthy traders and landowners began building houses in Penzance and enough local taxes were raised to have the streets paved.

By the time that James Oliver had married Jane Hoskin and started to raise his family in Madron in the 1770s, Madron had dwindled to an outlying village supplying the town of Penzance. Penzance itself now boasted a cosmopolitan air that would have been unimaginable a few generations back, trade with the Mediterranean had brought a synagogue, along with a theatre, and assembly rooms used by the gentry for balls and gambling. The Olivers would have been outsiders to all of this, the nearest they came to it was through Edward Hoskin Oliver who worked in the Gentry’s fine gardens, seeing the preparations for balls, and gossiping with the other servants about the scandals of the moneyed classes. To help make ends meet for the family Edward would have grown vegetables on his own plot to sell to the grocers in Penzance.

Richard Hoskin Oliver married Clarinda Davies in February 1806 in Gulval, her home village a couple of miles North East of Madron, where two of their sons Richard Davies Oliver and John Oliver were born. In the late Regency and early Victorian era the gentry of Penzance had started to build houses on the outskirts of the town to avoid the hustle and bustle of the life of the ever growing port and the comings and goings of those taking advantage of the new craze of seaside holidays for the racier classes. Gulval grew around the Village Square, with new stone houses replacing the older wattle and daub cottages, with a pleasant view over Mounts Bay. Most of this granite housing speculation was carried out by the Bolitho Family who the Olivers may have worked for and definitely would have doffed their hats to as they passed them in the village. Meanwhile Penzance grew with Gas lighting in the streets, and houses there had piped water negating the need to travel to Madron to collect water from the ancient well. A newspaper and promenade were opened to service the growing population and the increasing numbers of well to do Regency holiday makers frequenting the area.

So the opportunities in Penzance for local people grew as well, and Richard Hoskin Oliver made sure that his children would not be tied to manual labour as he was; all three of his sons were schooled and could read and write, a rare accomplishment at this time. Richard finds work as a Grocer, possibly selling some of the produce of his father’s gardening work on the family plot, James becomes a Hatter, and John goes into tailoring. Indeed John makes such a good living that he takes a house with spare rooms to run as a lodging house, before using his commercial acumen to move more upmarket to run the Anchor Inn in Barbican Lane Penzance. But the family would not hold together for long, Clarinda died in 1832 at the age of 53, followed by Richard nine years later in 1841 at 66, and this matched the gradual decline of the family.

The eldest son Richard Davies Oliver married and left the Penzance area, drawn by the opening of the Hayle Railway in North Cornwall in the 1830s, this was built alongside the main London to Penzance Coaching Road, originally to help with the transport of the foundry and Copper products from the area, but gradually growing to include passenger traffic from London to Penzance. Seeing this boom, Richard cleverly set up as a Grocer at Hayle Foundry living among the blacksmiths and foundry workers in the town, selling them his produce. The Oliver brothers’ entrepreneurial skill did not stop with Richard, as James and his brother John lived together and worked together in business, John as a Tailor and James as a Hatter. Between them they would have managed to corner the small market for the gentry and other locals in Madron.

After the death of his parents and his elder brother Richard moving to Hayle, James continued to live with his brother John and family, but in the same year as his Father’s death 1841, James married a local girl, Lydia Gray, and soon after passenger services were opened on the Railway in 1843 at Hayle where his brother Richard lived, James took his part of the profits from the hat and clothing business and moves his young family in 1846 to try his luck in London; the Railway had cut the travel time from a week or more to a day or two. James’s move would cut the family off from Cornwall for the rest of their history; London would now be the focus of their future, for better or worse.

Their adventurous move took them to Lambeth on the Surrey bank of the Thames, living in Duke Street, a side street in the triangle formed by Blackfriars Road on the East, Waterloo Road on the West, and the Thames to the North. The population of Lambeth doubled between 1831 and 1861, sanitation was basic; toilets either being emptied by the Night Soil men from the backs of the buildings and shipped out to provide fertiliser for the fields of Essex, or seeped through the ground from dry privies into the the underground streams and creeks that riddled the former marsh that most of North Lambeth was built on, running down into the Thames. Drinking water came straight back out of the Thames to hand pumps in the courtyards and street corners of the working class neighbourhoods, leading to a major outbreak of Cholera killing thousands in 1848/9, the Olivers witnessed its effects, but fortunately for them they escaped the disease itself.

The crowding of the area was reflected in the Olivers’ accommodation, eleven people lived in the three story terraced house at no. 10 Duke Street. The Olivers took the top floor. The rest of the street were mainly Middlesex and Surrey Cockneys, and the Olivers would have stood out dramatically with their Cornish accents, although James’s Hatter’s trade, was on a par with his Warehouseman, and Foreman Labourer, and print worker neighbours. So their immediate surroundings were respectable working class, with a veneer of the elderly living on charity of one form or another. But further afield away from the quiet backstreets in the hustle and bustle of the Waterloo Road and especially around the New Cut market five minutes walk to the south of Duke Street that the complexion of the area changed. Working men toiled for a six day week being paid on Saturday and Lydia Oliver would have gone shopping on a Saturday evening when James would have brought his pay packet home. During the day the New Cut market had a tranquil air, but at dusk on a Saturday night, when the gaslights were being lit and the market was busiest, she would have felt far from the rustic gentility of seaside Penzance and quiet Madron and Gulval.

Out from the slums of the Blackfriars Road scampered the dark shadow of the “Street Arabs”, hoards of children aged from 6 to 10 years old, mainly boys, the children of Irish smallholders driven from their fields by the potato blight and the cruelty of their landlords, to congregate in London and survive at the bottom of the social heap, wracked with poverty, and subject to prejudice for their origins and Catholic religion, the adults must have despaired, while their Irish Cockney children knew no better and flourished, not just surviving but revelling in a culture of their own filling the social niche left by Dickens’ Artful Dodger and his friends a generation before. They congregated in noisy groups on the street corners, out for a laugh at others expense. Pushing in between the crowds of shoppers, music hall goers, loose women with wide hoped skirts ankles provocatively showing, the girls arm in arm with the local bully boys avoiding the “Coppers” on their rounds, the Street Arabs would split into small groups to look for their opportunities, avoiding the stalls of the heavy fisted Costermongers, preferring to raid the stalls managed by older women, grabbing handfuls of produce and running in all directions to the cries of “stop thief”. If this was more mischief than anything else, then there was also a harder more feral set of children who would push the old women over to snatch the meagre takings from their stalls before taking to their heels. This must have filled the Olivers with horror, especially young James Oliver, the same age as the street Arabs, possibly physically a bit bigger than them given his rural upbringing amongst the sea air and market gardens of Cornwall, but he was probably no match for them in terms of their aggression, he may have held close and tight to his mother’s skirts when the Arabs were on the prowl. But he was schooled, and had a chance of rising above them by education.

The Olivers had moved from Cornwall to improve their lot in London, but the streets of London were not paved with gold, James’ work as a Hatter kept a roof over the heads of the family, and they were getting by, although by the early 1860s their roof had moved further south in the Borough to another three story house at no. 9 Green Street, again taking the top floor of the building. They shared the house with a pair of market porters the Bailey brothers and their families. By now the Oliver’s teenage daughter Clarinda had left home, to go into Domestic Service, but the family now had the addition of three more sons, Richard, John, and Alfred at regular intervals between 1852 and 1856. The Oliver children now had six Bailey children to play with, all in all, between the Baileys and the Olivers, there were sixteen adults and children crammed into the three floors of 9 Green Street.

The family stayed together through much of the 1860s, although Clarinda never returned home, marrying Thomas Taylor a local locksmith in 1866, however the family were to face hardships, as James’s trade as a Hatter brought dangers of its own. The Hatters had earned a reputation, epitomised by Lewis Carol, as “Mad Hatters” this was a result of breathing in the poisonous vapours of the Mercury they worked with, the results of this mercury poisoning were a bright pink face and hands, peeling skin, nervous fidgeting, and extreme mood swings, the longer term symptoms were madness, and various heart and liver disorders often leading to death. By the yime safety legislation was brought in in 1864, James had been working in this poisonous environment for more than 30 years, and at the age of 58 in 1868 James died, and the family fell apart.

With the main wage earner gone, the Olivers are forced to give up their lodgings, James the eldest son got a job as a porter at the Guildhall Hotel (a large upmarket Pub) in Gresham Street in the City, where he now boarded, Clarinda was living with her husband, leaving the youngest boys, John and Alfred, and Richard, to be apprenticed by their mother to a Butcher. Lydia their mother takes work at the bottom of the social heap as a Charwoman, cleaning in the early hours of the morning for just enough money to survive on. She moves into a room of a house owned by an elderly widow in Prices Road Southwark, the premises rattled day and night by the trains travelling above their heads on the line to Charing Cross. She survives through to 1896, and ends her days at the mercy of the workhouse.

Things go downhill for the younger boys; it seems that life as Butcher’s apprentices prove to be less than pleasant, the Butcher would have had total control over the boys’ lives, they would have received bed and board, little if any spending money, and would have been expected to spend up to seven years in this servitude before having the opportunity to qualify as a Journeyman Butcher. Some Masters were good to their apprentices, some were very cruel, especially if the boys in question had no father to look out for them. It seems likely that the boys had a very hard time of it, so much so that Richard disappears, leaving no trace in any records, the youngest boy Alfred ends up in the local Workhouse before he also drops out of the records completely, whereas John shows some fighting spirit, runs away to Kent, where he seems to have got into some form of trouble as we next see him in St Augustine’s Prison Canterbury, at the tender age of fifteen. It is possible that he ends up in prison for either a petty crime, or vagrancy if he was “on the Tramp”.

Whatever the reasons for his brush with the law, John Oliver is rescued by his elder sister Clarinda, taking the boy in with her and her husband and putting him to school, although he still may have been a little uncontrollable as witnessed by the scar he bore on his right wrist which was remarked upon when she marched him by the scruff of his neck to the Naval Recruiting Office in Woolwich. As Clarinda was illiterate she called in help from John’s School Master, Mr Fowler, who acted as a professional witness to the relevant papers, signing him up to the Navy as a Boy 2nd class to be followed by ten years in the ranks. She swore that he had not spent time in a reformatory, which although technically true ignored the fact that he had been in Prison at Canterbury! She also swore that he was not apprenticed at the time, which given that he may have just run away from a Butcher’s shop was also a bending of the facts.

But the Navy life was obviously one that suited John, far from the trouble and bad influences of the Lambeth slums, he served his two years with good character, training on HMS Topaz and Boscawen, at Portland and along the South Coast. After a year of “Very Good” Service he rose from a Boy 2nd Class to a Boy 1st Class, and the combination of good diet, hard work, and sea air had seen John grow five inches in height from five foot two to five foot seven, a decent height for a working class boy in the 1870s. In 1872 he moved into the Navy proper as an Ordinary Seaman 2nd Class, spent eight months in Barracks qualifying as an Ordinary Seaman 1st Class, before getting his first posting aboard HMS Philomel on 22nd August 1873, and promptly set sail for Africa and the Indian Ocean.

The Philomel cruised the waters along the East African Coast, including the Sudan (which is probably where the family legend of a Sudanese ancestor may have come from) intercepting slaving ships at sea, armed sailors and marines overrunning them with boarding parties, arresting the crews, and freeing the slaves. It must have made a nineteen year old from Lambeth grow up very quickly.

Having seen the warlike tribes of the mainland and chased the slavers and Pirates off the coast, as well as getting to know the dubious pleasures of the coaling ports of British controlled East and South Africa. But his adventures weren’t over, in 1875 the British resident diplomat in Perak in Malaysia was ambushed while washing in a river and murdered. A force of colonial Police and Indian Sepoys were sent to capture the aggressors, but became badly mauled by the Malays and were forced to withdraw. In the 19th century Britain would not tolerate such an insult, and an expeditionary force was shipped in in 1876 and sent flying columns of soldiers and artillery after the rebels, backed up by amphibious assaults by Royal Marines and Sailors from the Philomel and other ships. Although outclassed by the British Military, the Malays mounted savage ambushes in the thickly forested Jungle terrain, and fought from heavily defended villages, killing a number of the British troops until overpowered, their warriors killed and their leaders captured and hanged. By 1877 the war was over. Quite an adventure for John Oliver.

After this John steamed back to England and spent his time between 1877 and 1879 on the Thames in Barracks at Woolwich and on HMS Fisgard a training ship on the Thames, his service at this time was described as Exemplary, but as he was a Seaman with experience at sea, he was too valuable to be left on the Thames, and by October 1879 he was sailing again for the South China Seas on board HMS Albatross.

We next find him in 1881 moored in the harbour of Yokohama in Japan, this was only thirty years after Japan had opened itself up to the rest of the world, and there was an intense interest in British Naval ships there, and John as an experienced Able Bodied Seaman would have been highly regarded in such a place. John spent more than three years aboard the Albatross patrolling the China Seas, before coming home again in 1883.

When he did return his high standing was reflected in the fact that he served out the rest of his days in the Navy aboard the Admiral’s Flagship, HMS Duke of Wellington at Portsmouth, so his days of action on the high seas were over, to be replaced with days of pomp and ceremony serving the Admiral and Commander in Chief at Portsmouth.

On leaving the Navy John took a wife, Alice Mary Coombes, a nursemaid from Clapham, thirteen years his junior. He also took on a new career, and was fortunate in that Captain Sir Eyre Massey Shaw was the Head of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade and manned it exclusively with ex-Sailors, who he considered disciplined, strong, and hardy, and of course they could be called upon to man river borne Fire Engines on the Thames, an important part of the Brigade’s duties, without needing further training. John was lucky that he joined in 1888, as a year later Captain Shaw was relieved of his command when the London County Council was formed and their bureaucrats took the Brigade over, opening up its recruitment to anyone, not just ex-sailors. John served as a Fireman throughout the late 1880s and through the 1890s, but his fortunes were mixed, as he turns up in 1891 working a what appears to be a private Fireman looking after an unoccupied building for its owners, although he does go back to the regular fire service later in the 1890s. During this period of stability the family settles down to a quiet and regular existence in Gloucester Road, near the Surrey Canal in North Camberwell, or Peckham as it is better known, in fairly comfortable two story home. Their neighbours were also respectable working class no one was well off, but all of them were keeping their heads above water, if anything the area could be described as quiet and slightly boring, as most of the men worked out of the area, commuting by foot or on the horse drawn buses and trams, leaving the streets to the housewives and pre-school children. The only major event that interrupted their lives during this time was the loss of John Alfred their eldest son who died within a year of his birth in 1895, children dieing in infancy in the area was not unusual, but this would not have softened their pain.

From the late 1890s Walthamstow, an East London Suburb had started to grow rapidly, its population doubling to nearly 100,000 by the turn of the 1900s. This rapid growth was matched by the local council’s attempts to keep pace with the population growth by a programme of civic investment, which included the setting up of a professional local Fire Brigade to replace the voluntary force that had been in place before, and the volunteers were gradually replaced by professional experienced Firemen, which proved to be the perfect opportunity for John Oliver and family to up sticks from Peckham, and move north of the river to 9 Selbourne Avenue, Walthamstow, with John joining the Professional Fire Service. Settled in Walthamstow with regular employment, the family grows with the additions of Edward Albert, and Violet Maud Oliver in 1902 and 1904. But John Oliver was not getting any younger, and by 1911, in his late 50s he was no longer working as a Fireman, but fortunately the local council looked after him and found him employment as a road sweeper.

Normally this fact on its own would be interesting but not mysterious, the difference here is that the McGiffins when we first find them living in the slums of Lambeth are on the breadline, not where you would expect to find the family of a well to do Workhouse Master.

The Masters of Irish Workhouses were often ex-Army or ex-Constabulary NCOs. It was a very good solid middle class position to hold in an area, providing a good wage, lodgings, food, employment for members of their family, a place on the Parish Council, local power and respect, and ample opportunity to make money on the side from embezzlement of the pauper’s allowances (by cutting the quality/quantity of their rations), the hiring out of paupers as “free” (effectively slave) labour to your friends on the Parish Committee, and of course the opportunity to take advantage of any young women unfortunate enough to be an inmate.

Not all Masters of Workhouses were this vile, but you only have to read Oliver Twist to see how they were viewed by the public at the time. So it seems that he was a Master of a Workhouse before the Great Famine in Ireland (as the three McGiffin boys were born between 1834 and 1840) Margaret was probably not legally his wife, for if she was it is very unlikely that she would have ended up in a slum in Lambeth with three children in the 1850s.

It is much more likely that she was an inmate of the Workhouse in the 1830s who became pregnant by the Master of the Workhouse bearing him three sons at a time when the workhouses were not overloaded, and a girl would be prepared to be quiet about the situation in return for better treatment for her and her children. However, at the end of the 1840s the Potato Famine hit Ireland, and the workhouses were flooded with several times the number of starving inmates that they were built to hold, the system broke down, and it seems that it was in this period that Margaret came to London with her three boys. Perhaps the Workhouse Master was worried that his indiscretions would be exposed, perhaps Margaret forced his hand?

London as a destination is odd for people from Northern Ireland during the famine, as by far the majority of refugees from the famine who fled to the mainland UK from Northern Ireland went either to Liverpool, Glasgow, or Bristol (in that order), London was just about the farthest part of England that someone from NI could travel to (for example, the McGiffin name is not uncommon in NI, but during the whole of the 19th century there were only one or two families with the name in London who weren’t direct relatives). This implies that Carol’s ancestors were sent as far away as was possible, reinforcing the idea that the Workhouse Master may have paid for a passage to London, rather than one of the nearer UK ports. London was far enough away to ensure that an inconvenient woman and three children would not be coming back in a hurry, but was far cheaper than the fare to Canada or the USA.

So a small family mystery from the early 19th century was revealed by a diligent piece of research. Carol seemed thrilled by the revelation as it brings yet another piece of the jigsaw of her family history past into place. Thanks to www.timedetectives.co.uk.

 ”You’ve shattered my illusions!  I thought I was a Brummie, but now you say I’m a Man of Kent, and a Man of Sussex!”

All I could say was that, he was also a descended from a Soldier who served at the Woolwich Arsenal, so he was also a Gooner, and he cameraman chipped in with the worst accusation of all, calling him a Southampton Scummer, what could be worse for a man who had been a director of Portsmouth Football Club, Pompey fans would be shocked and horrified.  I was tempted to use some cockney rhyming slang as one of his ancestors was born in Bristol City, but thought that he had probably suffered enough by then.

So how did we happen to be sitting in my dinning room insulting the good name of ITV’s Meridian Tonight anchorman Fred Dinenage?  The story starts with Fred appearing in my living room every evening covering stories across the South of England for Meridian,  as all regular viewers do I felt like I knew him without really knowing him at all, and whereas some men just can’t resist a pretty face, I just can’t resist the challenge of an unusual name. 

Out came the etymological dictionaries, the surname records, and Victorian encyclopedias, and I tracked the name back to its early roots, which lay in the word Dunnage, meaning the contents and covering of a boat’s hold.  This word doesn’t appear in English before 1620, so was of foreign origin, and low and behold, as with many nautical words, it has its roots in Dutch and Low German from the North sea coastline.  The term was variously written Dunnage, Donnage, and most tellingly Dinnage, probably from the Dutch word “Denne” for the deck of a boat via  “Dennen” to load a boat.  The word was taken into English by the sailors from the Southern and Eastern ports that traded with the North Sea ports of the Low Countries and Germany, and given that it appears in writing in the 16oos, it had probably existed in colloquial speech for at least a few hundred years before, back to Mediaeval times, when sea trade boomed via the innovations of the North Sea Cogge Boats, which were sturdy enough to survive the North Sea, broad enough to take large cargoes, and flat-bottomed to allow access to the shallow coastal waters and river estuaries from France to Denmark, taking their cargoes of English broad cloth from the downlands of Southern and Eastern England.

This fitted well, as the most common form of the Dinenage name “Dinnage” was almost entirely found in Sussex, which after the Black Death had reduced the population turned to less labour intensive sheep rearing and broadcloth weaving on the downs, which was then exported via the local ports.  A man who was skilled in loading a Cogge Boat to its maximum capacity without endangering the stability of the boat, or causing it to sit badly on the sea and lose speed by a bad distribution of weight in the hold, was a very valuable and sought after commodity.  So the name, and the Family, will have originated from Boat Hands, and Dock Labourers in Mediaeval Sussex, where most of the “Dinnages” stayed until the present day.

But Fred’s branch of the family was more adventurous than that.  They had moved up from the Sussex coast to Canterbury in Kent, and were living there in the Georgian period during the 1700s.  And whilst  Fred’s Great Great Grandfather Samuel was a boy the Napoleonic wars were raging across Europe and the rest of the world, and a new innovation in the British Army was developed; The 95th Rifle Regiment.  So successful had early experiments with these Green Coated troops proved on the battlefield, that a second Battalion was raised at Canterbury in 1805,  and local men flocked to join this elite unit and were duly shipped to Spain and Portugal under Lord Wellington to liberate those countries from the tyranny of Napoleon.  These were the originals brought to life in fiction as Sharpe’s Rifles.

Once Samuel “Dinnage” (this was how the army spelled his name) was old enough he enlisted in the 2nd Battalion 95th Rifle Regiment,  and we next see him taking part in the last battle of the Peninsular War, the storming of Toulouse in 1814, which was to finally destroy Napoleon’s armies in Southern France , guarantee the freedom of Spain and Portugal, and force Napoleon to step down as Emperor of France, and allow himself to be deported to Elba.  The battle  of Toulouse was a bloody one with over 8,000 men dieing in the taking of the city.

Samuel was shipped back to Canterbury once Napoleon was gone, and the Royalist Bourbons reinstated in France, but the peace was short lived.  In 1815 Napoleon broke his parole, returned to France, and aided by the public hatred for the excesses of the “White Terror” carried out by the Royalists in revenge for their years of subjugation under Napoleon (more French citizens died during this than in the “Red Terror” of the French revolution) the country rose up in support of him.  So the 2nd Battalion of the 95th Rifles were embarked again, this time for Belgium.  They would face their last battle of the Napoleonic Wars, and it would be the ultimate battle of that conflict:  Waterloo!

Napoleon had managed to split the allied forces, separating Blucher and his Prussians, from Wellington and his Allied British, Germans, Dutch and Belgians.  After forcing Blucher and the Prussians to retreat, Napoleon faced Wellington, but on ground of Wellington’s choosing near the village of Waterloo.  The battle would, in Wellington’s words, be “A damned near run thing.”  The British units were spread across the field to bolster the morale of the rather skittish Dutch and Belgian troops, and much tooing and throwing took place over the two fortified positions which dominated key positions on the field, the French Heavy Cavalry dominated the field breaking like a wave against the solid allied squares, who holding their nerve, cut them down in swathes, as Wellington said when asked if he thought that the French Cavalry came up well, he dryly replied “..and they went down well also.” during this time Samuel Dinenage and the 2nd 95th Rifles were held in reserve, being finally moved up to support the crucial left flank of the Allied lines alongside the Foot Guards and the 52nd rgt.  This was to prove crucial, as the French overran the strongpoint on the allied left centre, and Napoleon then ordered his never beaten elite Imperial Guard to advance in column and break the allied Foot Guards on the left flank.  With drums beating and flags flying, the Battle hardened Imperial Guard surged forward muskets at the ready.  But Napoleon had not reckoned on Wellington’s cunning, he had ordered the Foot Guards to lay down in the corn field they occupied to conceal their position and protect them from French artillery fire, now he gave the order, “Up Guards and at ‘em!” the British Guards sprang up in a perfect line, just 50 yards from the advancing Imperial Guard and unleashed a withering fire that stopped them in their tracks.  Surprised, shocked and bloodied, the Guard hesitated, and in this pause the Commander of the 52nd regiment wheeled his troops and the 2nd 95th with Corporal Samuel Dinenage, round the flank of the Imperial Guard column, unleashed a massive volley to their open flank, and then charged them as the British Guards hit them in the front, putting them to flight.  This had never happened before, the whole French army gasped in amazement, to see their finest troops in full rout from the shouting red coats and the green jacketed rifleman with Corporal Dinenage amongst them.  This was the beginning of the end, as the French wavered, Blucher and his Prussians arrived riding full pelt bare-headed at the French, pursuing them across country and wrecking havoc.  The Battle was over, the carnage had been massive, one in three of the Rifle regiment had fallen, the rest were exhausted.

The war was over, Napoleon was sent to St Helena  in the South Atlantic to while away the rest of his days, and Samuel Dinenage’s Rifle Battalion settled down to occupy France and make sure there was no further chance of Napoleon or his followers rising again to throw Europe into chaos.  The life for the occupying army was good, billeted with French Families friendly relations and fraternisation was common, especially as British soldiers, unlike those of most other nations, including the French, had been subject to heavy penalties including the death penalty, under Lord Wellington not to pillage, rape, or rob the local populace, so British Gold paid for food and lodgings, making them quite welcome guests, and any household containing British Soldiers was sure to be safe from any vigilantes looking for revenge at the end of the War.  It was in this situation that Samuel Dinenage, now Sergeant Dinenage met his wife to be Felicite Amable Pinnin from Versailles.  Samuel was tall, literate, brave, and earning a reasonable living, a good catch for a young woman prepared to travel, and on 9th December 1815 the pair were married by The Reverend Charles Dayman, the occupying force’s Chaplain at Versailles.

Life for an army wife was an itinerant one, and their progress can be traced by the births of their children, Florence in Rosult France (between Versailles and Waterloo) in 1816, followed by Hannagh, Sophia, and Samuel between 1819 and 1824, all born in Ireland, where Samuel had been transferred with the Rifle Brigade.  Samuel was now a Recruiting Sergeant, travelling in a small team signing up young men to serve the colours, and earning a very lucrative income with the bounties for each man recruited.

However Samuel was posted back to England in 1829 and living there until about 1834 when he was discharged from the army after about 20 years of service.  He received a pension from the army, moved back to his home town of Canterbury, and being able to read and write, rare among working men at the time. found employment as a Merchant’s Clerk.  This move spelled the break up of the family, the children going their own ways; Samuel the eldest son had died in infancy, the older girls married Butchers and a Fisherman settling initially in the East of London before they all moved to Gravesend where they raised their families. 

By the 1850s Samuel and Felicite had moved to Woolwich Barracks where Samuel had been re-employed by the Army as a Barracks “Serjeant”, a Chelsea Pensioner in a more or less administrative and training role, where he may help with the new recruits, but would not see any combat in the field, given that he was in his 50s this was a good position to hold.  By 1855 he had died of the dreaded “White Plague” (TB) leaving Felicite to be taken care of as a seamstress living with her daughters and their families.

Present at Samuel death was his remaining son William Henry Dinenage.  He had left home at the tender age of 17 to join the newly formed Ordnance Survey in Southampton.  Impetuous and adventurous as his father had been, William Henry married a young girl from Liverpool, Jane Breeze.  he was employed as a “Computer” by the Ordnance Survey, calculating distances and heights of landscape features, and was paid 6 shillings a day, a very good wage, even if he wasn’t needed every day, by comparision a labourer received about 9 shillings a weekat this time.  He had obviously inherited his Father’s charm and persuasiveness, as he joined the Ancient Order of Forresters, and took to selling their life Assurance policies to the mariners’ families who lived in Southampton, rising to be secretary of the local branch, where he made his name after being sued by the wife of dead mariner, to whom he had refused assurance payments because of irregularities in the membership of her husband, this case lead to a change in law regarding Assurance Societies, bringing in better arbitration for dependants of the deceased.  William and Jane also had tradgedies of their own to deal with as both a son and a daughter died in infancy in the 1860s.

But overall William Henry was  sucessful, and well connected, making his living between the Ordnance Survey, Accountancy, and the Order of Forresters, in the early 1870s he decided to take over an Inn in Southampton which would prove his undoing; the business failed, and he was declared bankrupt.  This was the beginning of a difficult period for the family, the family broke apart, William Henry moving to the Industrial Midlands in the mid 1870s to become a Clerk at a Colliery, they struggled, and a son born in 1876 died shortly after birth, but they survived.  The younger children went with them, most of the elder children married and stayed in Southampton except for one of the boys who moved to Lincoln.  The other boys were a mixture of charm, brawn, and brains, like their father and grandfather; he two sons who stayed in Southampton went to sea working as 1st Class Stewards, the boys who went to the Midlands with their parents went into accountancy and Electrical Engineering, a New Technology, that offered great opportunities to the talented, whilst one son became a Railway Goods Guard.  The girls married men in good solid working class jobs, such as house painters and Railway guards.  But the stigma and shame of their Father’s Bankruptcy still haunted the family, the children commenting on their background in Southampton.

William Henry Dinenage and his wife Jane’s story ends in Walsall.  Both lived well into their 80s, Jane bore William 14 children the eldest William Edward being 30 years old when the youngest, Edgar Breeze Dinenage (Fred Dinenage’s Grandfather)  was born in 1881.  Their life had been eventful and full of ups and downs, but what we can say is that William Henry never gave up, he pursued any opportunity that life through onto his path, and despite failure and tragedy he always pushed on and did the best for his children.

Meanwhile back in Southampton as the new century came in, James Richard Dinenage (Fred Dinenage’s Grand or as we would say Great Uncle) had a stroke of luck, so well regarded as a Ship’s Steward, he managed to get a place on the ultimate Passenger Liner; The Titanic.  His family must have been overjoyed when they got the news, this was a major achievement, how tragic then, when news reached the family that the ship had gone down after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic.  They would have waited anxiously for news, but after several days when all the survivors had been accounted for, and the recovered bodies had been identified, there was still no news of James.  Eventually there was no possibility of his having survived, despite the lack of a body, and he was declared dead, lost at sea.  He left a young son and a widow who had already seen one child die in infancy, their plight was made worse by the ship’s owners, who immediately stopped the wages of their crew from the point that the ship went down, leaving the family destitute.  No doubt some help came from the Forresters and the family in Walsall, as James’s young son Richard John survived until the ripe old age of 83 living in Romsey Hampshire.

Back in Walsall Fred’s Grandfather Edgar Breeze Dinenage married Emma Louisa Smith, and rose from an Electrical Apprentice, through a qualified Journeyman Electrical Engineer and Armature Winder, to end up as a Company Director of an Electrical Engineering Company.

His son (Fred’s Father) Aubrey Dennis Dinenage) lived in Erdington in the Midlands, before eventually retiring to the Portsmouth area, which is how Fred Dinenage came to be back in Hampshire 100 years after his Great Grandfather had left under a cloud of Bankruptcy for the Midlands, and nearly 150 years after his Great Great Grandfather fought at Waterloo.