Genealogy, so time consuming, much to look at, and often nothing to find. and then hurray, a little treasure of information presents itself. In my case it was discovering that my Irish Greenwich based Bartholomew Sugrue was godfather to another families child. Bartholomew the Godfather. Godparents are never, as yet, included in transcriptions, for which this was really quite a find. Getting to such a find involves a whole lot of detective work which could lead nowhere. Here, it was from looking at the lives of those who had been godparents to Bartholomew's own children and looking up their own family records. The Graney family, also from Ireland and settled in Greenwich, had been godparents in 1860 to Bartholomew's daughter, Catherine, registered in the baptisms of the Roman Catholic records of Our Lady Star Of The Sea, at Greenwich, when she was just over a year in age. And then, such joy for me, like really, to find that the very next year, in 1861, our Bartholomew was in turn a godparent to the Graney's son, William Joseph Graney. Of this Graney family, friends to the Sugrues, the head of the household, John Graney, worked with Bartholomew in the building trade, and his wife, Mary Graney, née Kane, I saw that by 1881 she was a widow, just about surviving as a hawker on the streets, and interestingly her place of origin was listed, maybe being another clue to the Sugrue families own origins, all being from County Kerry, her hometown being Castleisland at the beginning of the Vale of Tralee, a town surrounded by hills and boglands, atop a vast cave system known as Crag Cave, within which were the underground waters of the Green Lake. Ah, I have tried and tried, and yet have never found a baptism in Ireland for Bartholomew Sugrue, for which I wonder if his family were travellers, not bothering with the system and its obligations; like it's so that Bartholomew never bothered legally registering his children births when living in Greenwich, even though by law one had to do so. And then again, some of the Irish settlers appear to have used alternative names, such as Garrett London, who was a godfather for Bartholomew's son Daniel in 1857 and yet called himself Garrett Barry in the 1851 census. And at the time of the marriage of Bartholomew's grown up son, Thomas (my ancestor), instead of giving his fathers name as Bartholomew Sugrue, Thomas said he was James Seagrove, although we can surmise that by then Thomas wished to disassociate from his fathers scandals. This family continues to fascinate me, and the next day I happily found out more about the Sugrues. I'd not realised it before, but Bartholomew's close friend, Patrick Reardon, who had been best man at his wedding to his first wife Ellen Sullivan, was actually his brother in law, Ellen being none other than Bartholomew's sister, Ellen Sugrue. This and more I was finding out by grace of the Roman Catholic records of our Lady Star of the Sea on FindMyPast, which I had paid a lot to join for a year, but which was yielding anyway these delightful finds for me. Bartholomew's sister, Ellen, was a few years older than him, and this sibling connection explains how it is that these two families were so entwined. It was in looking at a baptism of Patrick and Ellens daughter Mary Ann Reardon, that I saw a side note saying sub-conditional, which at first I though meant handicapped in some way, but actually it referred to a child that may or may not have been previously baptised. Well, it was on that baptism, that I saw Ellen Reardon's surname prior to marriage revealed: she was a Sugrue. I next found that Bartholomew Sugrues first wife, Ellen Sullivan, was a godmother to Patrick and Ellen Reardon's first child, Helen (Ellen) in 1846. It was three months after that baptism that she and Bartholomew married, and then, as I know, having had one child together, Ann, Ellen became very ill in the summer of 1849 with cholera and died. And as for another of Patrick and Ellen Reardon's children, Catherine, Bartholomew's second wife, Catherine Sheehan, was the baby girls godmother in 1855. I happened now to find the Roman Catholic version of Bartholomew Sugrue's marriage to his first wife, Ellen Sullivan, which had more detail than the official certificate, on account of it giving the names and locations of the couples parents. Ellen Sullivans parents were John and Ellen Sullivan of County Kerry. Bartholomew's parents were Thomas Sugrue (I'd already known he had Thomas as a father) and Joanna, which I had not known, they being of County Kerry. So for all of this I could add two new people to my tree, Joanna as Bartholomew's mother and Ellen as his sister. Sad it was to see that his sister, Ellen, died in 1865 aged 45. Interestingly, in one of the census's Ellen gave her place of birth as Church Hill in County Kerry, at last the best clue yet as to where Bartholomew himself may have been born. The Roman Catholic residents of that village, at the time when they would have been there, attended an old and dilapidated chapel, in nearby Chapeltown.. This was due to the original medieval Roman Catholic Church of their own village, on its splendid old hill, with its fine views of the sea, having been long been supplanted by a protestant church. Back in the 1700's, this whole area had been a place of smuggling and the village itself was a protected archeological site. Eventually Church Hill would have a Roman Catholic Church again , but not till after the Sugrue's would had left for England, the church to be St Marys, Star of the Sea (like the church in Greenwich). Tralee, from where was the lovely folk song I used to sing on the piano, was the nearest sizeable town, 10 klms away. Patrick Reardon himself was from Waterville in County Kerry, and we see now another of the family friends, Mary Kane was from Castleisland. And it's fine enough to piece together information once these folk were in England, but Irish records are still as vague and untraceable as ever.
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My Irish people, I so wish I knew something of their world. I did find reference to a Thomas Sugrue in the old newspapers, Thomas being the name of Bartholomew's father, who with one of his sons, also called Thomas, was part of a mass of rioting villagers, up in arms against an unwanted new priest who was replacing the villagers much beloved priest. The villagers therefore forcefully threw the new priest out from their chapel, which although locked up, he had broken into to perform mass there for the first time. That was back in the spring of 1845, the year before Bartholomew was first to be seen in Greenwich, marrying there an older woman Ellen Sullivan. John Sullivan was one of the other rioters, the name of Ellen's father, so one does wonder could these be the actual fathers involved in this rioting. The other men who were majorly involved were three MacCarthy brothers, Denis Barton, Joseph Kennington and John Murphy. John McCarthy, one of the brothers, happens to have later been the name of one of Barthomew's lodgers, as revealed in the census of 1861. The hated new priest, Thomas Carmody, was from Ballinamona and the rural chapel, which was at Tonereigh, alias Toneragh, was one built and maintained by the villagers themselves, who wished still for their long serving priest David O'Connor, whom the Bishop had deemed no longer capable of doing his duty. The villagers would not allow the new priest to enter, keeping the chapel doors and windows nailed up, but on that particular Sunday morning the priests men came and broke open the doors with sledges and hammers. Once the priest had got up to the altar and was beginning his mass, Michael MacCarthy, followed by others, leapt over the rails, and struck his fist on the altar and announced "Where is the person who will say mass" while cursing with the 'most violent and blasphemous language'. A woman had to then interfere to stop this fellow from beating the priest with his stick. Thomas Sugrue was further back in the church with a crook in his hand, with which he tried to strike the back of one of the priests men, although missing him, and he was blocking the door to prevent the priests clerk from coming in. The priest, in fear for his life, ran away, there being more than a hundred people assembled against him. The only people accepting of the priest, who had come to the mass, numbered around 7 or 8 persons. Once the priest had fled the men nailed the chapel up again. One of the women present, Ellen Callaghan, it was her father who the new priest resided with and the hatchet to break down the doors was her fathers. The villagers were in court declared to be a lawless mob. The new priest declared that if they would now regret their 'senseless and foolish conduct' he would forgive them. And that they should permit him to perform his duties for the next six months and if at the end of that time they still did not approve he would give up the parish. I do so try to envisage the rural Irish ways my people would have known prior to the famine. It was in the year that the people rioted against the priest that the famine began, which would continue for seven years. Traditionally the rural men of Ireland would twice yearly voyage to England and there work in the fields, like as I have seen with the hop picking, and Bartholomew may well have done likewise, and for sure some women of the families would have accompanied them too. In this way they would save some money from their English wages to bring back to Ireland. The women, along with their children, had their own habit of seasonal roaming and begging. I don't imagine this to have been borne of destitution as it was later, but that they would have profited from gathering blackberries, crab apples, seaweeds, whatsoever of natures wild harvest, this being a way that was still semi-nomadic, born of an old hunter-gatherer culture. But all becomes more dire when the untamed lands get snatched up by landowners who seek to profit by this, by which the old ways are thwarted. When nature provides less, then begging from those of better means becomes relevant, and ultimately a means of survival in times of need. The loss of cultural ways breaks the vibrant spirit, hence the turning to alcohol and dysfunctionalism. Bartholomew didn't remain in Ireland to try and survive through that famine, being early on seen in Greenwich. Even in his hardest times to come, in and out of the workhouse, he never sought to return to his homeland. Maybe, as with the rioters, he had got into trouble there. I imagine that while in England doing seasonal work he was attracted to the employment opportunties in the booming building trade, while also falling in love. The Irish had been settling in Greenwich in small numbers long before such times, as for instance, as I've seen reference in one old newspaper, in 1841, in regard to an Irish woman, Mrs Moriarty, who was a brothel madam in Greenwich, keeper of a 'house of ill fame' on Roan Street. As I have seen, Roan Street looks so tame, quiet and inconsequential now. Quite wild in those days though.
It's a very interesting story, that of my great great aunt Catherine Sugrue, for her husband Joseph Read proclaiming to be Jack the Ripper, and not only that, and so I made a tikok about her. The story: my great great grandfather, Thomas Seagrove, had a sister, Catherine Sugrue. They were of a very dysfunctional family, totally, in the newspapers for thefts, in prison and in the workhouse. Their father Bartholowe was in and out of the workhouse and died there, coughing up blood from tuberculosis. Catherine got in trouble as a girl, when she saw coal by the riverside and took some, because it was cold and she wanted her family to be warm, they being very poor. Because of this she was taken for the rest of her childhood to a Roman Catholic school for wayward girls run by Saint Francis nuns, a place where destitute children could be guided to a better future. She's a beautiful lady and hers is the only photograph I have of my family from that time. Catherine's life was tragic. She worked in a lead factory and died from the lead poisoning. She herself had described it as 'killing work' and that was what it was indeed. Catherine's husband, Joseph, said there was white powder in his food, which could well have been the lead powder that Catherine would have brought home on her clothes. Joseph went completley crazy and believed himself to be Jack the Ripper. Maybe Catherine believed it too and that's why the white lead was in his food. Joseph was obsessed that he was Jack the Ripper, and that was in 1888, when all those girls were being killed by him, and when Joseph went into the asylum that was the end of it, so who knows. I'm contemplating resuming book writing now and that Bartholomew's Garden should not be about him after all, but about his children and specifically the friendship between brother and sister, Thomas and Catherine, and all their struggles, and yes this Jack the Ripper theme. Well, my astrology hints that I can write books. But can I really?! Even I made a tiktok briefly putting my writing ideas out there, hopefully by this to find motivation, encouragement, guidance, anything by which inspiration may come. For this idea about writing a book, I've had it for a long time now, having the ideas but now knowing how to solidify them into something that would really work as a complete story. As I share on tiktok, I am a genealogist, and I'm finding social history so fascinating, and of how my family had really been in it with their poverty and all the consequences of that, which were quite dramatic. Like I do think this could be an interesting book. I've got two families who became connected in Greenwich. Grandfather Barton was a war hero, from the battle of Trafalgar to Egyptian sea battles, and he ended up his life at the Greenwich hospital and his wife Hannah was a nurse there. It was their daughter Eleanor who was put into an orphanage in Whitechapel in London. She would die of tuberculosis as a young mother, and it was her daughter, Maria, who would make friends with another family, the Sugrue's, who were Irish settlers and who were very scandalous. they had come to England during the potato blight that just was tragic for Ireland. So they'd come to find a new life in London. But their life was full of scandal, really big scandal, one of the littlest children dying when their mother was in prison for theft, and the father being blamed for that, for neglecting his family, the children then being put into the workhouse. The children of these two families, Thomas Sugrue and Maria Harrison, ended up in love and making a life together. Thomas's sister, Catherine, as we have seen, died from lead poisoning in the factory she worked at and as I have also said, her husband was talking of being Jack the Ripper. Despite my inspiration to write a book, it is yet again genealogy work that I deeply immerse in, whereas the book writing I postpone. The fascination for genealogy that I have needs to envelop this book project too and to be non-different from it. On researching a little about Jack the Ripper, looking through old newspapers of the time, one theory proposed for the identity of the killer is that he was a Russian, who before the London killings began, had been doing much the same in Paris, for which he'd been put into an asylum, and upon his release moved to London, which is when the killings began there. His belief was that prostitutes could only atone for their sins by being killed. This theory had been presented in a Russian newspaper, the Novosti, and the man they'd named as Nicolai Vassilyeff. He was born in Tiraspol, it is said. Well I see there were two Tiraspol's, one in Belarus and one in Moldova, but the Moldova is more likely as that is nearer to where he studied in university, at Odessa, in Ukraine. It is said that he was a 'fanatical anarchist'. In the 1870's he had moved to Paris, where he'd become crazy and was placed under restraint. But before being lodged in an asylum, Nicolai murdered several unfortunates in Paris under conditions somewhat similar to those of the Whitehchapel crimes, for which he was arrested and thereby ended up in the asylum. This had happened 16 years previous to the Whitechapel killings. Nicolai, known as the 'Mad Russian', had been dismissed from the asylum as cured, after which he moved to London, moving in with the lower classes of his fellow countrymen. After the first Whitechapel murder Nicolai was lost sight of. This subject I made a popular tiktok about. I was on a roll with this tiktok creativity, making another one talking of Jack the Ripper, again in relation to newspaper articles I was seeing. Jack the Rippers identity is an unsolved mystery that has captivated the imagination up to the current day and in it's own time too. So many crazy stories I was discovering from way back then. One article was about four Spanish sailors being out and about with knives and attacking a woman, who in response was calling out 'Murder', for which four other men came to her rescue, who also got attacked. I read of a Whitechapel gang apprehending one woman, who on coming out of a concert had the company of a man walking along with her for a while, who then grabbed her by the throat and pulled her to a place where there was a gang of both women and ruffian men, the first man holding a knife up against her throat and they all stealing her things. In regard to the article about the Russian possible Jack the Ripper, it is believed by researchers that maybe the story was fabricated or elaborated upon. It's actually difficult to know what information shared at the time was authentic and which was put out by journalists to keep the interest of the public and which was sensationalised.
I made another long journey from central London out to the Kew Archives. Not that I made such grand discoveries as last time. Seeking my ancestral Maxteds in a big book of Nine Elms railway employees yielded nothing. But I did find a few things which had so far eluded me. And that was just by accessing Find My Past, information I'd not been able to find on the Ancestry website. I had already sussed out, by deduction, that my ancestor Robert Bunney (Senior) had married an Ann Aylward, but had never found a marriage record confirming this till now (my deduction had been due to Alyward being used down generations as a middle name for various children). It was at the church of Mary Magdalene (of course lol) that they had married one another on 26th February 1764 in Bermondsey. And I found my Welsh ancestor John Harrisons school admissions for the hamlet of Pwlldu, , in both 1876 and 1877, recording that the familys adress was at 'Lower Bank' and that his father worked as (yes I knew) an ostler. What I was really pleased with was at last finding Thomas Sugrues baptism, which was in Greenwich in 1854 at the Roman Catholic church of Our Lady of the Sea. Thomas's birthday was here recorded (a good find) as being on 24th Febfuary (making him an Aries), the baptism having been on 26th March. His godparents were Michael and Maria MacDonnell. I found Roman Catholic baptisms for Thomas's siblings too, for Joanna, Catherine, Jacobus, Edmund and the twins Daniel and Bartholomew. Interestingly I discovered also that the childrens father, Bartholomew Sugrue, had also had a child with his first wife, Ellen, who had died of Asiatic cholera. I'd never seen anything to prove before that they'd had a baby together, but there she was, a daughter, Anna, born in 1847, her godparents being Corey Malvina and Margaret Gallachan.
I am perusing more the story of my ancestor Bartholomew Sugrue, a life that never stops fascinating me, regardless that it was so tragic. I am so near to completing a great write-up on him, and yet there is always more here and there to discover. When all is full and done then I can begin the book writing. But the Sugrue genealogical presentation naturally takes for ever, so it seems, as such things do. In gathering together workhouse records, I found one I'd not accessed before. This shows how important it is that we go back again and again, looking for any relevant records, and revising and updating accordingly. My Sugrue's had much association with the slum boarding houses of Deptford during their time of destitution. I had seen reference to them as being at 'Pesters', a boarding house run by William Pester, and now by this new record I saw that earlier on they were at 'Freaks', a lodging house run by Charles Freak, all being on Mill Lane. In between these two addresses they were at the Mitre, not the pub of Greenwich I realise, but another Mill Lane boarding house which doubled up as a place selling beer. The total poverty and destitute situation is what led Bartholomew Sugrue to spend most of the rest of his life, from the age of 57 upwards, in workhouses. He and his wife Catherine no longer rented their own home, but were in effect homeless, moving from one boarding house to another. Only the poorest of the poor would ever frequent such places. Despite working so much on expanding Bartholomew Sugrue's write-up, when I print it out, it still seems so lacking. More is needed. I see on Bartholomew's marriage certificates, and who he took in as as lodger, who were his friends, fellow Irish labourers, as is often the way with ex-pats, mixing with their own kind and not integrating with the traditional people. Those surnames of his friends, Reardon and McCarthy, there was much trouble in the community incited by men of such names. Maybe they were brothers of the friends, or cousins. Maybe they were Bartholomew's cousins, all related. These men were often in the papers for their drunken antics, when fights would break out and mobs of hundreds would surround them. This was the company Bartholomew kept, of the wild untamed Irish. He may not even always have been one to drink, but the people around him did that. And, even, with all the deaths from cholera abounding, alcohol was believed to offer protection against this, for which Bartholomew may have encouraged his wife, Catherine, to drink too. There are maybe three other sons they had, who had died when little, which needs checking out: Bartholomew junior and his twin Daniel, and maybe a Michael, being a twin of Edmund. When I feel the grief of losing my sister and how deep that is, then how must it have been for the ancestors who tended to lose at least one child. As such, grief is a normal human experience. For all such troubles, with the ancestors being so poor and but subsistence living, they had not the time nor space to contemplate and self heal from such pain and grief. Their quick solutions were, one, the church, and two, alcohol. Rents needed paying and hungry mouths feeding, for which one had to work, work, work. Parish relief could sometimes be called upon, maybe a medicine for ones ailments or shoes for children's bare feet. I find myself understanding more Bartholomew's years in the Poplar workhouse, as times were changing. When it is illegal to beg for ones needs, and naturally stealing is not an option, and yet there is no work available, one has to turn to parish aid. There were indeed times of sickness and lack of work when the Sugrue's resorted to asking for help, and not least when son Edmund was dying from pleuritis, in which instance the workhouse officials took a full day to get to the lad, despite it being an emergency, as I have now seen. And Edmund was in the care of the workhouse for the last four days of his life and still died. I wonder if there was that old equivalent to our concern that if you send vulnerable souls into a hospital or old peoples home they'll likely not come out again. Bartholomew was certainly quick to get his other children out of the workhouse, despite the struggles facing him as a lone father, as if they were safer with him than under such a regime. Well, fast forward, and the time had come when Bartholomew was so in need of parish relief, but no longer was there any out-help on offer, for there had arisen the Poplar experiment. Any money to help out the family now had to be earned at Poplar workhouse in a prison like situation, with hard labour, and a fare of only bread and water. However strong a constitution Bartholomew may have had, years of this wore him down, and close association with the sickest of society contaminated his health with tuberculosis. The Poplar experiment was a terrible one, a destroyer of families, a punishment for being poor. The new way was a response to greater and greater numbers of people needing assistance, for which those in need were not now individuals, but one mass of unruly poor. To weed out those taking advantage of potential freebies, the real destitute had to pay the consequences. I sense the unheard frustrations of my ancestors, due to their being misunderstood, accused and judged. Beneath all struggle and external perception, there was the heart of a family, who loved and cared about one another, their genuine humanity, their joy and playfulness, their innocence. I guess that's what I'd like to portray in a book, though I don't know if I am able. Maybe I should first try writing short stories or children's books, to kind of warm up to the big task. A compendium of ancestral tales could inspire children to find an interest in genealogy. AuthorAuthor Susie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. I researched old newspapers for details about the Poplar workhouse which my ancestor Bartholomew Sugrue had so often been passed onto for hard labour and strict discipline and a diet of merely bread and water, all designed to discourage the able bodied from seeking parish relief. Some people in those days were saying that prison was preferable to landing up in that workhouse. There were two hard labour tasks at Poplar, indeed just as prisoners in jails were made to do, which was the breaking of rocks and the unpicking of oakum rope. Those who could not fulfill their daily quotas were not to clock off at five like the others, but had to carry on with even extra work added till eight, or else would be hauled before a magistrate to be punished with a short spell in prison. One magistrate, who refused to imprison one lady who had not fulfilled her oakum quota, but rather was feeling pity for her, declared that such punitive degrading work was not right to be given to one who simply by misfortune had come seeking aid. The papers after shamed that very magistrate for his weakness in sympathising with unruly paupers, for those who were part of the 'Poplar Test', which a board of guardians had decreed as an experiment to cut the numbers and costs for those formerly given extra out assistance in their own homes. Of oakum unravelling, Oscar Wilde had written, 'We tore the tarry rope to shreds, with blunt and bleeding nails', his experience being in a prison, not a workhouse but ultimately not so different. AuthorAuthor Susie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. I have it in mind to write a book, nothing new for me really as ideas have often come and yet don't practically manifest. Bartholome Sugrue's tragic life as an Irish immigrant in Greenwich, with all his dysfunctionalism, is inspiring me now. This would be a historical novel. Although, with their not having been a happy ending I'd need to explore the jollity and love and depth of positive life experience inbetween all the sufferings. And do I tie in the parallel Harrison and Barton families, also of Greenwich, who had their own tragedies. Between these two families have been a bucket load of difficulties. There was Eleanor Caroline Barton growing up in a London orphanage, away from her mother, and dying so young of tuberculosis; her mother Hannah taking care of the old and wounded seamen in the Greenwich hospital where once Eleanors own father had lived; and Eleanors partner John William Harrison's brushes with the law, his imprisonment and then joining his daughter Maria in the workhouse, his temporary insanities and ultimately dying from cancer of the tongue; Bartholomew Sugrue's first wife dying from asiatic cholera, and his second wife Catherine going to prison for trying to conceal her daughters theft of a purse; exposure in all Britains newspapers when he is prosecuted for the manslaughter of his own child, revealing their poor standards of life and his drunknness, the child really having wasted away in a refusal to eat out of upset for losing his mother; later, their squatting with other Irish in tumbledown cottages with the authorities trying to throw them out; their residing at Pesters boarding house for the poor in which Catherine worked as a servant in return for lodgings, where also lived for a while one of the prostitutes murdered by Jack the Ripper; Bartholomew eternally in and out of the workhouse, being sent onwards to Poplar for hard labour and severity, and his demise from tuberculosis, dying while coughing up blood; Catherines stroke which paralysed her down one side; young Maria Harrison in and out of the workhouse and into the arms of their son Thomas, himself all too familiar with the workhouse and for a fresh new start they changing the surname from Sugrue to Seagrove, and then their own exposure in newspapers for their dirty home and scruffy children running wild. So, how does one weave a story through all that? And of happier times, hop picking adventures in the Kent countryside, romantic strolls in Greenwich park, for 'there is always the garden', the gaiety of the Greenwich fair and arrival by boat (sailed by my ancestors) of grand functionaries and aristocrats who would feast in the Greenwich inns on whiting (fished by my ancestors) and champagne, rich benefactors joining the workhouse poor at xmas for seasonal celebrations, the songs my ancestors may have sung and the music they danced to. AuthorAuthor Susie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. I got back into some serious genealogy, not for the Jehovah's Witnesses, but for myself. One thing I sometimes do is to go back and look at my research and see if there is anything more I have missed there. So I go back to my impoverished Greenwich ancestors and indeed I discover more. The Kentish Mercury newspaper is a great revelation here, as I at last suss that's where many Greenwich stories, scandals and crimes are posted. The traumatic life of my Sugrue's gets embellished all the more, via a report I'd not seen before, of the inquest upon little Edmund Sugrue's death. In this I find out at last that his father Bartholomew's line of work was assistant to a bricklayer, and even who he worked for, a Mr Pound. Because Edmund was so small Bartholomew pretended at the inquest that his son was much younger, but on producing vaccination certificates it was realised he'd been lying. He admitted that he was one to drink and that since his wife was imprisoned this had escalated. And I found out more, from five years later, when the Sugrue family were living in a cottage by the Ship and Billet pub. The cottages there, six in total, were dilapidated, burnt out and vandalised, and were considered dangerous structures, and the people living in them were considered squatters for they paid no rent. Bartholomew Sugrue was specifically referred to as a 'squatter'. These squatters, which included a lone old Irish family, were all ordered to do up their cottages, described as having black walls, broken stairways and smashed in closets, or to vacate their homes, and naturally they were too poor to pay for such things, but still they dug their heels in and refused to be moved. As for Bartholomew's son, Thomas, my ancestor, I have seen that two of his own sons married two sisters, who were daughters of Robert Choat, a night-shift gas worker, who died in his 40's when returning home in a train from the Epsom races, having had a quarrel in his carriage with a well known boxer, Pedlar Palmer, being knocked unconscious by two punches to the side of the face. He died at Purley station, having been removed from the train onto its platform. So, there was a newspaper article all about that. And there were a couple of articles about my ancestor, John William Harrison's boat being stolen, taken for a ride by drunks who afterwards smashed it up. Also I saw that towards the end of his life Bartholomew Sugrue fell over a low fence along the Thames river and very nearly died from the fall. So plenty of family embellishment was there. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. Along the 'lanes' of Dovercourt, glimpsing the football match, my mum showed us the old door where she used to sneak for free into the football. The Harwich and Parkeston football team was known as the Shrimpers, and when my mum was young they got to the final of the FA amateur cup. They played Pegasus at Wembley and the family went along, two trains and coaches having been put on, so that almost the whole town went, all knitting scarves and hats in black and white stripes, and losing 6-0. Back home my mum talked of her memories of her grandparents for my genealogy projects. Rosina sent me info from some certificates that had arrived in France, like Bartholomew Sugrue having died in Greenwich of tuberculosis, and his first wife having died from Asiatic cholera. Bartholomew's fathers name was Thomas, also a labourer, back in Ireland. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. So I have ancestral places to visit, Greenwich in London, as well as County Kerry in Ireland. It was the infamous potato famine which drove my Irish ancestors, Bartholomew and Catherine Sugrue, away from their homeland, there where the poor people were starving, diseased, thrown out of their tenancies, for which they'd paid far too much rent anyway to their blood sucking Anglo Irish landlords. The Irish lived in hovels, with no beds, no blankets, and only potatoes to eat. Of course we do love potatoes, but the blight came from America and the potato crops were ruined. The older people stuck it out through such famines, whereas younger family members fled. These masses of famine fleeing Roman Catholic Irish, arriving in England, had never a birth registration system, and were illiterate and so poor, and even in England they didn't get their children's births registered, although they would have been baptised into their own faith, hence why there are no birth records for any of Bartholomew's children, including for my Thomas, which explains the never ever findable birth certificate. Learning of the Sugrue's permits me to aknowledge more, and accept, a greater part of myself. I feel it, understand, how in my own life I have made friends with 'lost souls', have accepted handouts, and been so 'laid back' and undisciplined. The living conditions of my ancestor Bartholomew Sugrue did shock, but what of mine? I am the eternal student, unconcerned with societies normal neurotic rules, natural I would say. And sleeping on a floor with a cover, what's really so wrong with that. Illnesses come, fevers, and one trusts the body to get through it. I feel Bartholomew was harshly judged by busy-bodies. Yes, he drank alcohol, and so does most of my village. His wife had been dragged off to prison for something her daughter had done, and anyway children do go through phases of stealing, some of them. I did. She likely did not know the purse was stolen till Hannah handed it to her, then just had to try and protect her child from the consequences. Another daughter, young Catherine, she saw coal and took it for the cold. Young James mucked about with some rope another boy had lifted. The Irish way was far more natural and earthy and unfussy. In England life was different. I shall make excuses for my ancestors. I know well how hurtful it is to be judged and condemned, like them. In taking a mother away from her children the powers that be also created this tragedy of Edmund's loss of life. And this at a time when disease was more rife and children died so much more easily. So though I have found shocking write-ups in the papers I shall not look on it with the same eyes, I shall be more understanding. These people had already been through so much, with their extreme poverty and famine in Ireland. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. |
AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. Categories
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