The impulse to check out the Kew Archives got me and so out to Kew Gardens Station I travelled (rather a long way from Whitehchapel). Kew Gardens was a grand establishment and all was free. I had to get a readers ticket, coats and bags had to be in a locker, and a specific researcher was on hand for advice (somewhat grumpy and reticient). I'd come to check out why my ancestor John Harrison ended up in an asylum, but this was the wrong place for that (Kentish Archives had those records), but I could research more about my mariner, Philip Barton, and so this was what I did. Straight away the researcher could see that the ship Philip had been on at the battle of Trafalgar was the Thunderer. Wow! Like up until now I'd simply been going on a P Barton listed as being at Trafalgar and nothing more precise than that. So this was like gold for me. I had to order upon one of the many computers the specific document. At the same time as ordering the sailors book for the Thunderer I ordered documents for one of Philips children on his admittance into the Greenwich school for sailors children. Having an hour to wait for these documents I looked up what else I could for Philip. On a link to 'Find My Past' there were certain brief records. Philip Barton was adlitted to the Greenwich Hospital at the age of 54. He was at that time an out pensioner. He had served in the Marines for 15 years and 10 months, the pension having been granted to him back in 1815, when he was 40, it being £13.12 for life. The pension was awarded due to his arm having been fractured while on service. He was also wounded in the chest and in his wrists. The records say he was born in Bermondsey, London, and that he left service because of the left arm fracture. The £13.12 was an annual payment. The musters of the Thunderer I now got to look through in a special research room, taking a while to find Philips name in a huge old book listing the sailors names. Twice I found him listed and it was clearly him, on the ship the Thunderer in 1805 during the battle of Trafalgar, listed in May and then in september and October, and for that with not made of him being paid a bounty of £2.10. This was too amazing. And I looked up for a picture of the Thunderer and there it was in a painting in wild seas. This was the stuff of legends and he was there. The Thunderer was the first boat to sight the Franco-Spanish fleet: Battle of Trafalgar 1805 21st October. And now on the Greenwich School records, which were in a box on another level of the Archives, much other information was given, like all the ships Philip had served on and when, they being the Reunion, the Bellerophon, the Renown, the Thunderer, the Mercurius, and the Mermaid. For this I was later able to work out all the campaigns and locations associated with him. Along Philips childrens school admittance documents were various other pieces of information, such as the childrens birth/baptism certificates and lists giving their ages along with current address in Greenwich at different times. For instance, there was that curiosity (for me) of how it was that Philips wife Hannah resorted to the workhouse when giving birth to one of her children, Philip George Barton (as I have seen, Philip Barton went off to live in the Greenwich Hospital in March of that year which would have been when Hannah was five months pregnant with their child): At the time of daughter Hannahs entrance into the Greenwich school for sailors children, which was in around 1830, the Bartons are written to be living at the Royal Hospital of Greenwich (rather Philip himself would have been but not the others), there being at that time five chidren in the family, and Philip himself has given a list of the ships he served on, not being by memory so accurate ahout the dates. This next paper would be from 1832, being from son James Bartons entrance into the Greenwich School. Philips family were at that time living in Rose Place in Greenwich and there were six children, listed with their ages as James, age 9; Christian, age 16; Anna, age 14; Thomas, age 6; Philip, age 4; and Joseph, age 15 months. Another paper in the school dossiers is from when Philip Barton had died and Hannah was still alive. This shows that it was in the Greenwich Hospital that Philip had died. As I know from other records this was in 1837. So it would have been just after Philip Bartons death, still in 1837, that his son carrying his name, Philip George Barton (it being he who had been born in a workhouse), was the next of the children to be admitted into the Greenwich School for sailors children. The family was now living at 3 York Place, as it is specified this being at the back of a pub called the Beehive. The children still at home were Joseph and Caroline (poor little Eleanor Caroline was about to be sent off to an orphanage in Whitechapel so her mother could work as a nurse in the very same Greenwich Hospital) and Thomas, aged 11, who remained at home (no school for him) as it is said he was 'afflicted' which would mean that he had learning diffifulties or a physical challenge, for instance he could have had downs syndrome (which was unrecognised as a medical condition back then). In 1841 it was the turn of Joseph Barton, aged 10, to be schooled at the Greenwich School for sailors children. All the children of the family who were as yet unmarried were listed with their ages, whether they lived at home with Hannah or not: Hannah, 22; James, 18; Thomas, 16; Philip, 14, and Caroline (Eleanor), age 7 (I know from the 1841 census etc that ony the sons lived with their mother now, Eleanor being in the orphanage and Hannah living out as a servant in a pub called the Portland Hotel). The family was still living at York Place. The parish of settlement for the family is mentioned as being St Anne's, Blackfriars (this being the original home of Philip Bartons ancestors). I was pretty thrilled with this research.
And I drew a line there.
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On yet another day of looking at places of the ancestors I went to Greenwich, heading straight for the church of St Alphege, as that and its surrounding lanes had long been associated with my family. Around the church, St Alphege Passage, my people had lived there, the Harrison's, right by Soames's vicarage, and there was Roan Street, which had been home to both Harrisons and Bartons. They were quiet lanes now and not at all like bustling London just over the river. I passed through Greenwich market where once my Harrison's had sold their fish. I came next to the grand white naval college buildings, this being the old sailors home where had lived Philip Barton and where his wife Hannah née Bunney had worked as a nurse, a beautiful place set among vast lawns. There I roamed, into an old chapel, and around old exhibitions in which could see, for example, a typical sailors room (cabin) in which one would have a bed, chest and seat. Even the robes there one was invited to try on. I tried on the typical tricorne hat, just as my ancestor would have worn. And I looked around the maritime museum. Jack Tarr was a statuette there, a name which the sailors always knew themselves by. I then visited another church associated with the family, Christ Church, where had been baptised some of the Seagrove children. From there I roamed more of our families addresses, where had lived our Seagroves - Lassell Street (their home there was no more standing) and Braddyl Street (still standing) and another of their homes on the Old Woolwich Road (number 57) where I happened to meet the current resident, Sharon, who I got chatting with as she was out in her front garden and who found it interesting that my people had once lived there.
![]() I was up so late with my genealogy work. The file is close to completion, temporary completion that is, as the subject goes on and on and on. There are then other branches of the tree to make files of, but this poorer London side has fascinated me lately. I even cry, because our family often suffered so much. I'd never known before what was Hannah Bunney's destiny, her life already being so full, first in London, then Greenwich, three husbands that died on her, and her career nursing at the Greenwich Hospital. But now I have found her in later life, at the Bethnal Green workhouse, and living in one of London's lowest slums, the Old Nichol Street Rookery. After 11 years of living in the Rookery slum a removal order was made, and Hannah was next seen at the Southwark workhouse, in her 70's, and there she died. Poverty and the workhouse is a big theme for my London ancestors. Life was so tough then, hard survival. How can I not weep for all they went through. File Project Ancestral Paupers completed. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. I worked on my website, trying to put together a piece on the hardships which my Greenwich ancestors had to experience, which involved having to download supporting papers and documents. There in the workhouse had gone a lineage of my women, Maria Harrison as child and grown-up, Eleanor Barton in an orphanage, Hannah Bunney in the Blackfriars workhouse, giving birth to one of her children there, which I now realise was at the time when her husband had departed central London for the care and comforts of the Greenwich Hospital. So he too had left his family, temporarily, in destitution, after which they came to live by him, living outside the hospital while he was within, as so many ex sailors families apparently did. And I do wonder, was the workhouse always such a rock bottom humiliation of the people anyway. Pregnant girls whose lovers failed to marry them would find a place there to give birth. People were clothed and fed. Sick people were given medical care. The discipline and regimes were hated, but still people in need would go there. When I see Maria's children going in there for but one hour, may she not even have designed it to get a good full meal in them for once. Who is to know what was really in the hearts and minds of all these people. The workhouse was equivalent to the modern old peoples home too, and in that manner it carries on, as too for a free medical facility, like our National Health today. We look back on it all so bleakly and fail to see what an invaluable support it was to those who were passing through hard times. Before the workhouses, the parish's gave handouts to the struggling poor and saw that they were clothed and fed, like the dole now, not even any work being required and no rules to follow. So I understand the workload and regimes were generally an irritating sacrifice one had to comply with, an exchange of sorts. One irritation would be the harsh discipline within the workhouse schools. A poor child would learn to read and write, but would get whacked about in the process. For girls it may have been easier. Eleanor Barton's orphanage taught her to read and write and how to be thoroughly and efficiently domestic, to be a good and valued servant girl, which was the path most women took before they found themselves a husband and became queens of their own household, he working tirelessly long hours, and she creating a brood of children. If he strayed for a while, if he was unable to work, there was the workhouse, the last resort. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. Back to the old genealogy research, always clues to more information here and there, always embellishments to add. I found another son for Eleanor Caroline and her husband John William Harrison, a baby boy who would quickly lose his mother, for she died while he was still tiny and I need to buy that certificate of hers to find out why. For her husband, who was for long a fishmonger, I at last found him in the 1851 census, with his parents, revealing that the fish trade had already been a family concern, with his father John fishing in Greenwich and the family selling the fish, firstly on the streets and later from a shop. The family was totally Greenwich born and bred, always living in the vicinity of the St Alfege church. And Eleanor Caroline's family, the Barton's, I found out more about them too, her parents being Philip Barton and Hannah Bunney. I had already much researched them, had known he was a London brass founder, much older than Hannah, who ended up in the Greenwich ex seaman's home, and that Hannah remained living outside the hospital with her children, and married at least twice more after his death, abandoning Eleanor who was sent upon her fathers death to an orphanage in London. I now came to understand that in all those years prior to marriage Philip Barton had sailed the stormy seas in quest for adventure. I have found a list of people admitted to the Greenwich Naval Hospital and there he was on it, with his age, and last place of residence being st Luke's in London. There was more information on the register, which I could not access, but in messaging a gentleman, one of those who had compiled the list, without too much delay he replied, sending me a photo of the original paper. How happy I was for this. And so a little more information came to light, which I may otherwise never have known. There it was written, that he served in the Navy for 16 years, in the 'Kings service' as it is noted. The last ship he served on was, attractively I must say, called The Mermaid. In action during his service, as a consequence of performing his duty, he became wounded in both wrists. No further detail about this is given. I found out also that Philip's children, of older age than Eleanor, got an education at the Greenwich Naval School. So this ship, the Mermaid, more than one boat had been given this name. But the one in service prior to Philips marriage, it was engaged in the Napoleonic Wars. It journeyed in the seas around Jamaica, Cuba, and Canada, transported troops to Portugal and to Spain, and in the Mediterranean fought against Italy. More has to be researched here, always more, but anyway this was a pretty good days work. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. |
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