Category: Guest Writers

Guest Post: The Home Child’s Secret

On By kristendenhartogIn 1914-1920: The Noise of War, 1919-1930s: The Forest City, Guest Writers6 Comments

A son finds out about his father’s past

A little while ago I was scrolling the Facebook page for my hometown high school in Deep River, Ontario, where I often see great old pictures of the town where I grew up or catch up on news from people I knew long ago. This time, to my surprise, I noticed a post about “British Home Child Day.” After I read the story, I wrote to its author, Ron Baker, and asked if he’d allow me to publish it here. So thanks to Ron for this touching piece about his dad Edwin Matthew Baker, a home child who came to Canada in the 1920s.

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Edwin Baker when he was first put into care. Ron received the picture from the Church of England Children’s Society years after his dad’s death.

For decades, I and my brothers and sister believed that our father Edwin was an American born in Boston, USA; in fact, in 1970, I actually wrote letters to the City of Boston archives and to the Boston State House seeking information on my father. They replied that they had no records of him or his mother, Rachel Rebecca. I chalked it up to possibly poor record keeping back in 1913, the year my father was born.
 
That all changed on August 15, 2008, when I came across an old torn envelope addressed to my late father at the Gibbs Home in Sherbrooke, Quebec, sent from India. I googled ‘Gibbs Home’ and a couple of emails later, I discovered a whole new chapter of my father’s life that was previously unknown to me and the rest of my family.
 
Yes, my father was born in Boston, but it was actually the Boston in Lincolnshire, on the east coast of England. What I discovered was the quintessential story of the British home child.
 
At the age of ten his mother Rachel Rebecca died in a workhouse, probably of tuberculosis, according to a file sent to me from the Church of England Children’s Society, formerly Waifs and Strays. My father was placed into care by his grandfather Charles, age 60. (See Leicester Home for Boys.)

This clipping was among the items sent from the Church of England Children’s Society when Ron inquired about his father Edwin. Edwin is pictured lower right.
Another image sent to Ron from Edwin’s file. Edwin is at left in the back row.

Later, at almost 15, my father was given the choice of coming to Canada or going to Australia. He chose Canada because some of his friends were going there. After farming training at Stoneygate Farm School, he was sent to Canada on the SS DORIC along with 32 other boys. He arrived at Quebec City on July 7, 1928, and went from there to the Gibbs Home in Sherbrooke, under the watchful eye of Thomas Keeley. He worked at several Quebec farms in Bulwer, Eaton, Ayer’s Cliff, Bromptonville and Lennoxville.
 
My father was like many of the home children, who did everything they could to distance themselves from their past to eliminate the bullying. They disposed of their trunks and their English accents. My father’s trunk was found at the first farm he worked at, the Gallup Farm in Bulwer. The trunk was returned to me by Sarge and Pauline Bampton (Bampton Home Children Collection), original members of Home Children Canada, Quebec Branch.

Edwin’s trunk, which traveled with him to Canada back in the 1920s and eventually made its way to his son Ron decades later

After marrying and serving in the military, my father worked at a munitions factory in Valleyfield, Quebec, before moving to Deep River, Ontario, to work at the newly established Atomic Energy plant, where he worked in the Chemical Extraction Division.
 
He successfully shed his English accent and never spoke of his native country, even in spite of the fact that we had English neighbours in Deep River. It amazes me to this day that there were no slip-ups when speaking with the neighbours.
 
This discovery doesn’t really change anything about the relationship my siblings and I had with our father, but it does give us a whole new appreciation for his ability to keep a secret. I am sure that sometimes he probably really wanted to tell us his story.

The Church of England Children’s Society did send me details of my father’s stay with them, which included details of his mother’s struggles, where he was born and baptised, his level of education, the names of aunts and uncles, and the fact they maintained some contact with him at the Gibbs Home, however briefly.  More recently, I have discovered one of my father’s first cousins and his family in and around Boston, England. We have exchanged messages and pictures and visited.
 
 —Ron Baker

“Sudden mental derangement” at East India House

On By kristendenhartogIn Guest Writers6 Comments

Tracy and I would never call ourselves genealogists, and there are many extremely skilled people out there who know research tricks we’ve never even thought of. We’re just a couple of curious and tenacious writers who love history and putting our family story in context. When we came upon the anecdote of our ancestors, Benjamin Jones and Margaret Davies, walking from Wales to London with their cows in search of a better life, it seemed the natural start for our story. And we were a bit relieved not to have to peer yet further into these distant branches of the Welsh part of our tree, where suddenly everyone was named Jones and Davies and Evans. There was even a John Jones and a David Davies and an Evan Evans! Instead, we went forward, following the path of our family over the next hundred years or so, where luckily they mixed with others who had more easily searchable names. For all we’ve discovered, I’m still intrigued by what came before, and a little in awe of people who’ve traced their families back much further than we have. Sisters Alison Botterill and Fiona Duxbury, whose grandmother we wrote about a while back in An Unknown Soldier and an Unconventional Woman, have done extensive research on many different branches of their family, and find themselves most curious about a line that was wealthy in the 18th and 19th centuries, but whose station declined over time. Much as we did in preparation for The Cowkeeper’s Wish, the sisters have written short pieces about members of their family in order to put the bigger story in perspective, and have generously agreed to share one here.

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East India House, Leadenhall
East India House, Leadenhall Street, shortly after its reconstruction in the late 1790s. Courtesy the British Library.

A Sad Tale

A very melancholy circumstance happened yesterday forenoon. Mr John Burford, Clerk to the Committee of East India Directors for Buying threw himself out of a one-pair-of-stairs window, under the new portico of the India House, Leadenhall Street. His head was broken to atoms and he only survived a few minutes. He was taken into the House where his body will lie till the Coroner’s Jury give their verdict this day. The cause of this fatal accident can only be attributed to sudden mental derangement as Mr Burford had regularly transacted his business in the office, tho’ he had for some time appeared rather dejected. He had been only two minutes in the room, where there were other Clerks, when he opened the window, and suddenly sprang out of it, in the sight of a number of people.

8 May, 1800, The Times

India_House wiki
This image shows the portico, the site of John’s suicide, more clearly. The “one-pair-of-stairs window” simply means the upper floor. A search through the British Newspaper Archive reveals all sorts of people throwing themselves from one, two, and three pair-of-stairs windows. See also the poem, “From a Fourth-Pair Window.”

John was born in 1748, one of three sons of Richard Burford, a distiller of Wapping, whose family had been in that business for at least four generations. His elder brother Richard was a Blackwell Hall factor and the largest supplier of broadcloth to the East India Company, and his younger brother, Jonathan Sommers Burford, worked in the Pay Office at that company.

John married Lucy Elsden of Kings Lynn in 1786 and they had 8 children, at least two of them dying in childhood. Lucy’s mother was Elizabeth Rolfe, of that Norfolk family made famous by an ancestor, John Rolfe, who married Pocahontas in the early 17th century in America (and not John Smith as per the Disney film, although he was the man she saved from death). Her father, Edmund Elsden, was a very wealthy Norfolk merchant who left a fortune at his death in 1793. At the time of Lucy and John’s marriage it must be assumed John was on a sound financial footing – her sisters also made very good marriages to rich men – as it is unlikely her father would have otherwise allowed the marriage.

John had been appointed to the role of Assistant Clerk to the Committee of Buying in 1772 and ten years later was promoted to the position of Clerk.   At the time of his marriage he was living in Lothbury, in the City of London, with his brother Richard, but then moved with his new wife to a house at no. 2 Artillery Place, just off Finsbury Square where Richard had relocated to. Jonathan Sommers Burford and his family were living in Great  James Street, Bedford Row, its smart Georgian terraces still surviving.

Screen Shot 2018-11-19 at 11.14.20 AM
An excerpt from the Old Bailey trial two years before John’s death. The full account can be seen at the wonderful Old Bailey site, including the fate of those convicted of the crime.

In December 1798 John and Lucy were burgled at home of a large number of items, mainly clothes, and both of them appeared as witnesses at the Old Bailey. Of the four accused, two were found guilty and sentenced to death.

A few months after John’s death, Richard was issued with a notice for bankruptcy and he was summoned to appear before the bankruptcy court in September 1800. Having looked at various registers at the East India Library, it is apparent just how fortunes were made and lost, given that in the later part of the 18th century Richard was turning over around £90,000 each year.

John wrote his will in 1796 naming his wife and brother Richard as executors. Curiously, he requested that he be buried in the vault with his “dear sister-in-law,” Mrs Richard Burford, in Finchley.  The burial records for St Mary’s, Finchley, show that this is indeed what happened despite his death being by his own hand. His brother Jonathan Sommers Burford appeared as witness to the will on John’s death.

To date I have found no reference to John’s suicide in the East India Company records held at the British Library. Perhaps he had secretly been giving his brother Richard preference over other suppliers to the company and this had been discovered? Perhaps the burglary had affected him badly? Perhaps, given his father-in-law’s successful business ventures and those of his sister-in-laws’ husbands, he felt a great deal of shame about Richard’s  impending bankruptcy? (Later his other brother, Jonathan Sommers Burford, would face financial difficulties too.) Perhaps he felt the loss of his baby son Edward in the February of 1800, aged only 2 months, very deeply? (Lucy was to lose their eldest son John the following year, aged only 8). Or perhaps the request in his will to be buried with Richard’s wife hints at some darker family scandal? Sadly, we will probably never discover the reasons why he should have felt the need to end it all.

© Alison Botterill & Fiona Duxbury

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War, PTSD, and “the Golden Rule Exchange”

On By kristendenhartogIn 1914-1920: The Noise of War, Guest Writers9 Comments

cfa poster.jpg
Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1983-28-927

I was in London, Ontario, recently, giving a workshop about the many wonderful resources we used to research The Cowkeeper’s Wish, and afterwards I was approached by Gord Wainman, one of the participants, who told me a bit about his father, “a very troubled soul” who’d served in the First World War.

I was moved by the story and asked Gord to share it here, and am posting it the day after Remembrance Day to underscore the idea that war wounds, both mental and physical, continue long after war has ended. Here, in Gord’s words, is the story of Stanley Holmes Wainman and his family.

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A year before he died, my father made a final request. He wanted to be buried in a simple pine coffin with his body wrapped in an old wool army blanket. He made me promise I would respect this wish. His reason for this spartan request — to honour the many friends and comrades who had died on the World War 1 battlefield.

He fought at Vimy Ridge and was part of the final advance to Passchendaele only to become a casualty two weeks before the war ended. He was a bombardier, overseeing the firing of artillery and accompanying the horses and Limber wagons into battle. At least twice, he was sent to “gas” school where soldiers were trained on how to respond to mustard gas attacks. Not the best military “occupation” for such a gentle man who worked as an accountant before joining the army.

SHWainman
Stanley Holmes Wainman appears far right

My father was 21 when he joined the 40th Battery, CFA in Hamilton on Sept. 17, 1915. Six months later he was in England but was hospitalized shortly after he arrived because he had German measles. He landed in France on July 14, 1916, and except for an 18-day leave and a brief hospital stay for impetigo, he was in the field for over two years.

He never spoke of his war experiences. Until I found his records, I did not know he was a bombardier. I did not know about the “gas” schools. I did not know that his right foot was partially crushed by a Limber wagon near Valenciennes 20 days before the war ended. He was evacuated but his return to Canada was delayed by several months until he could walk again.

If the luggage he brought home was sparse, his emotional baggage was huge and its weight affected us all – my mother, my brother and myself. We lived with his depression. We all bore his pain.

Several family friends described my father as someone who always seemed to have a “permanent cloud” over his head. In the 32 years I knew him, I never remember hearing him laugh. Even his smiles were forced.

After the war, he spent most of his life devising a financial solution to the world’s ills which he believed would end all wars. He wrote a book, convinced it would change the world.  He expected my brother and I to continue his mission.

While he never talked about his war experiences, he did say that he and his fallen friends had been “duped”. A genius with figures and a self-taught thinker, he was going to correct that. He was obsessed, spending little time with wife or sons.

He and my mother were what I’d call “progressives” today, meeting during the founding convention of the United Church of Canada. He was a Methodist, my mother an Anglican. They paid a price as they were initially shunned by both families.

In 1929, ten years after he returned to Canada, my father lost his job when the Depression hit. He rode the rails to harvest in the West and tried to make money painting barns in Northern Ontario. My mom and brother suffered. Several years ago, I read a heartbreaking letter my father wrote to my mother while he was up north begging her to help their son David understand why they lived in such desperate conditions, above a store on St. Clair West in Toronto.

By the mid 1930s, my father ended up in Windsor, Ontario, where he stayed. That’s when his obsession about ending war and human misery became all-consuming. He developed a financial system he called “The Golden Rule Exchange.”

Living with constant supper-time lectures on the evils of greed and the golden rule solution, my brother Dave fled home at the age of 17. I was two and idolized my big brother.

A few years before Dave died in 1997 at age 69, he told my wife, in tears, that he was racked with guilt for leaving “that poor little fucker” — me — to fend for myself in that toxic environment. “There was no laughter or joy in that house”, he said.

Considering all the conversations involving PTSD, we now know that’s what my father suffered from. Back then, if there were physical signs, it was called “shell shock”. But he showed no outward signs.

The Anxiety and Depression Association of America outlines seven symptoms. If a person has two or more, they likely suffer PTSD. My father scored on six of the seven: exaggerated expectations of self, other or the world; persistent anger; diminished interest in participation; detachment from others; inability to experience positive emotions; nightmares.

When I was eight or so, Canada entered the Korean War. To make his point about the horrors of war, my father took me to see the silent 1930 movie All Quiet on the Western Front, based on a book by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of World War I. Looking back, I know my father wanted the movie to speak for him.

The impact on me has been periods of depression. My wife sometimes says… “It’s time to leave now Stanley”, not out of disrespect for my father, but to shake me out of my mood.

Stanley Holmes Wainman died in 1974 in the old “Parkwood” military wing of Victoria Hospital in London, Ontario. My brother and I knew it was the end of a long painful life. My mother Leota May died 14 years earlier when I was 17. I was a late comer. My father was nearly 50 when I was born in 1942. I was named after Major Gordon H. Southam, a unit commander with the 40th who was killed in action in 1916.

Laid to rest in a pine coffin and wrapped in the wool army blanket he requested, Stanley Holmes Wainman was buried beside his wife Leota May. A small family group attended, my brother Dave and his family and me with my wife and daughter.

Before he died, I told my father I found a blanket and that seemed to comfort him. Then he said something that stunned me considering he lived his life convinced he could solve the world’s problems.

“I always thought I knew the answers, but now I’m not so sure.”

I didn’t cry at his funeral. Four years later, out of the blue, I began to sob uncontrollably, with no idea what triggered it.

Despite our bad times, he was always there for me when I got in trouble. Despite it all, I still miss him.

Gord Wainman

lone man passchendaele
A lone Canadian soldier navigates the mud-soaked battlefield at Passchendaele, Belgium, in November 1917. William Rider-Rider / Department of National Defence / Library and Archives Canada / PA-002165