My focus was once more on genealogy research, and oh gosh, I found a newspaper article speaking bad once more of my Greenwich family, and not this time for the elder Sugrue's or Harrison's, but for their grown up children, my great great grandparents, the Seagrove's, Thomas and Maria. I'd been told memories by family about their home life together, of Thomas often being away working on rivers and at sea, and of how he would give his wife and children all they asked for, in return for which the house was to be kept spic and span. Well, as I now discovered, this was not always the situation. Before the days when their oldest child, Mary Ann, had it put on her to do household chores, and to keep her younger siblings smart and clean, their home life had been by contrast untidy and the children unclean, and this had got them into big trouble. Just as the state of Thomas's own childhood Irish immigrant family had been damned in the local community, and all around the country too, so was his adult family life now coming under the spotlight. Not only was there mention that Thomas Seagrove was frequently in trouble for not sending his children to school, but the NSPCC were investigating the children for being dirty and in rags and for living in a smelly unclean home, and for this our Maria was put in prison. And that, even though it was pointed out that she didn't have a drink problem, unlike some local mothers, and that her children were fairly well nourished. Now I know that unconsciously I have tuned into these ancestors and their plight in my own life all the more, twice having had authorities set on me and checking me out. My situation seeded from malicious people around about, as likely it did with my ancestors too. Everyone is expected to be scrubbed clean and to have museum like homes. This was a new Victorian imposed standard, at a time when society was becoming more regulated and more uniform. Officials were butting in, and by doing so, making their own havoc. At that time, a whole bunch of mothers were being outed as neglectful, with all their children's names and ages listed in the papers and their domestic problems revealed and judged. Some of the mothers were alcoholics whose husbands beat them, but not all. For my family, the children, not being paraded off into school lessons, were out playing and getting dirty, because that's natural, that's what children do when left to their own devices, not shoved into institutions. I get that. The children were happy, healthy and free. But they were poor and wore rags. And no fuss was made of the housework, and I get that too. They were from struggling, maybe gypsy backgrounds, making some token adjustments to society, but not entirely. Society, though, had it's own agenda, that all shall be made ship-shape, and if that involves putting a pregnant mother into prison, subjecting her to hard labour, and carting her children off to the workhouse, then so be it. And so families are disturbed all the more, traumatised, the beloved mother taken away, and the children stolen. I totally sympathise with my ancestors. If a child is not being beaten up and sexually abused then f*ck off. And yet still this goes on. On the same day as Maria Seagrove was judged and sent to prison, so was another local lady, Mary Baker of Deptford, on account of one of her neighbours, Fanny Miller, having complained about her children's clothes being torn and ragged, and for them being dirty, as if they had not been washed in a long time. For this Mary got three months hard labour, one month more than our Maria, her worse circumstance being that, on account of her husbands violence, she had taken to drink. As for my own family, a Dr Cable said he hadn't seen such a dirty family in years. For Thomas, changing his name from Sugrue to Seagove, specifically to disconnect from past scandal and public damnation, errors of the parents had been repeated, and embarrassingly all eyes were upon them. For which it is understandable that he would afterwards insist that clean home and family had to be the way, even down to his sons shoes being daily polished. As for now, things were bad enough that the smell of the house was unbearable, and for such things a prison sentence was in order. Öh dear, such skeletons in the closets are what our families consign to be hidden and never revealed. And although my mother is so uppity about standards and putting on a good show for the neighbours, her own mother, my granny Isabelle, more resembled her own grandmother Maria, sitting around eating and getting chubby while the house fell down around her. My mother has the industrious energy of her Shetland grandmother, Helen Inkster, but as for me, really I am more akin to the Greenwich bunch, like, be happy and stop fussing, and if the neighbours aren't going to love you then f*ck 'em, they're not worth the trouble. So, this seeming dysfunctional ancestry comes closer to home, and potentially uncomfortably so, these Seagrove's being ancestors remembered and spoken of by the elders of my family. 'Dysfunctional' really does end up being a key word for my Greenwich bunch and such is one strand of my inheritance. Being like that still, in some ways, I understand. But it certainly doesn't look good. Family secrets unraveled. Mary Ann being the eldest daughter, I know it from her reminiscences to her grandchildren, that at some point while still young she was labouring hard for the family, and now see this was in effect to keep her mother out of prison. At least once after that event Maria was sentenced to another stint in prison, this having been written of on her children's workhouse records. So now I know the reason, because her children were scruffy and so was her house. Ah, the ancestors; more and more I see that my own challenges are not due to personal trauma, but that this is something inherited. My own granny Isabelle was just about a hermit, unwilling to face the critical world, and I myself had social anxiety to deal with from a young age, along with my own unconcerned scruffiness and unwillingness to adhere to the great taken for granted standards. I weave my own philosophies and moral consciousness through it all, finding my solace in nature, in being natural. After all, others strictly imposed world views are not only unforgiving but also potentially dangerous. AuthorAuthor Susie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees.
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![]() Luke Owens art gallery up at Rennes le Chateau was open and so I went to say Hi, and when Luke asked me how I am I couldn't be totally positive about that, well, I'd thought I was OK, but really my status as a village reject was sensitively exposed and paining me, and then tears were in my eyes and I jolly well told Luke of many things and he tolerantly and kindly listened to all. The conversation with Luke became very interesting. I was tying into my explanation that I am an outcaste that theory I have about one reliving and feeling so deeply what was also the way for the ancestors. I told Luke why, even without any proof, there are clues to my having a gypsy heritage, such as my Mediterranean DNA, the outcaste lives of my ancestors in Greenwich, the distinctive appearance of my ancestress Maria, and such talk got two responses from Luke. Firstly, he confesses that like me he is only ever on the peripheries of society, for he is shy of such worlds, and is content to avoid so called civilised places in which there is yet so much judgement and hypocrisy. Secondly he reveals that he himself is a gypsy. He totally identifies with my dilemma, while with emphasis telling me I should not conclude that by this treatment I am a 'reject', but rather that the outskirts of society in which he dwells, as do the gypsies in general, is the best place to be. When one has no need to conform then can arise the arts and more natural ways which do then end up improving the society which itself had easily rejected us. And does one ever really want to be in such judgemental spaces. He necer accepts a word such as 'reject' and neither should I. Although my own family, somewhere along the way, covered up their gypsy past, so it may never be rediscovered, his own is recent and he totally knows it. His father was an out and out gypsy. He'd not told me this before, leaving his fathers side a mystery. But that exceptional appearance of my ancestress Maria Harrison, which had so long both fascinated and puzzled me, his aunts had totally that same look, exactly the black hair and alabaster skin, and it is one of the known appearance of some of the Irish gypsies. The gypsy folk have not only that look, they vary a lot, one of his aunts having a darker olive complexion. And it makes sense now, how it is that I'd previously thought him to have some middle eastern influence on his fathers side, it being the gypsy influence, those brown eyes and his eastern look. It just fascinates me to know he is a gypsy, and if I'd not been babbling on about my own theories he wouldn't even have told me that. His fathers side still travelled in caravans and even his mothers side was of gypsy heritage, though further back, being people who had tried to settle and conform into society. And of course they wanted to hide their origins in order to avoid societies prejudices, which is what my own family has done. This so aligns with Maria's appearance, so Luke confidently asserts, that she was a gypsy. Even her daughter Mary Ann's chestnut hair, blue eyes, high cheek bones and sucked in face is another look of the gypsies, this Luke tells me. In conversation with Luke I do feel I have found one of my lost tribe. Totally calm, content and radiant he insists I should embrace this separateness and non-belonging, this being our great ancestral heritage. Luke is total gypsy, whereas my own gypsyness if of undefined amount, mixed with Shetland Viking and some Welsh. It is quite something to reflect on this more. Elder family members had told me my Greenwich ancestry was 'rough and ready', which was maybe a way of saying 'gypsy' without totally giving it away. Somehow 'gypsy' is a secret never to be mentioned to younger generations. Just how much had they known but not been able to say. Like my nanny Eileen who had summed up her mother Florence's family as 'Irish', when really it was only Florence's mother, and not her father, who had been born in Ireland. Maybe what my nanny meant to say, and yet could not, was 'gypsy'. I so wish I had known more when my elders were still alive. I could have talked with more depth and unearthed so much more. So many clues are there too that my fathers side was gypsy, but never anything within records to confirm this as fact. The Irish-Mediterranean DNA I have from both my mother and father, and such a weak English element that wasn't even passed onto me, cries out gypsy all the more. Florence was not at all accepted by her husband Percy's Dovercourt and Harwich based family, and when my nanny Eileen had talked to me of this she stopped short of saying, while maybe part of her wanted to say it but did not dare, that the reason she really was ostracised was because she was gypsy. Only on this day do I understand what has been between the words which no one else would tell me. "There are many gypsies all around us" Luke told me. "One just has to know what questions to ask." AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. |
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