In the post there arrived some death certificates for my genealogy research, in regard to my ancestress Elizabeth Maxted of Lambeth, who died at a good old age, and her son David, who tragically died just aged 19 from smallpox. This got me realising how it was then that our Elizabeth had gone blind, as indicated in the later census's. Moving from the countryside to the big city, with its crowded unsanitary lanes, was sure going to have some consequences. And we never have the theat of smallpox anymore, as it had been eradicated, but for all those who once contracted it there was a 30% risk of death, and David was the one among our family who perished from this. The family was all living together in one house on New Street, and so likely all contracted it; and poor Elizabeth, blindness was a well known complication, a third of cases resulting in this. There would also have been a recognisable scarring of the skin. With smallpox, pus filled blisters covered the skin, along with mouth sores, fever and vomiting. The blisters would scab over, leaving scars. Vaccination against smallpox had already been discovered, but did not become common practice until the end of the 1800's. The first Russian child to recieve such vaccination was bestowed the name 'Vaccinov' by Catherine the Great and was educated at the expense of the nation. The British introduced compulsory smallpox vaccination by an Act of Parliament in 1853. David had died in 1849. This disease had even been found in Egyptian mummies. It is thought to have developed from an African rodent virus thousands of years ago. Deities exist in Asia and Africa for people to pray for healing from this disease. Nicasius of Reims was the patron saint of smallpox victims. The pustules of Chinese smallpox sufferers were referred to as beautiful flowers, so as not to offend the smallpox goddess T'ou Shen Niang Niang. The Indian smallpox goddess, Sitala Ma, was known to both inflict the disease, and also to calm and heal it. Some cultures simply had smallpox demons. These demons were afraid of the colour red, so this colour would be used both to prevent and heal the pox. Elizabeth 1st had smallpox and would disguise her pockmarks with heavy make-up.
Smallpox was distinguished from syphillis, this contrarily being known as the 'great pox' rather than the small. In general, smallpox was simply known as the 'pox' or red plague.
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I worked on my genealogy website, looking at my nanny Eileen's quite vague Irish origins from Westmeath, and at her half Irish mother Florence whose school, which she'd attended in the poor streets of Lambeth, was so bad for bullying that one girl even died as a consequence, her head bashed on stone steps and upon a desk. Before that, and only briefly, Florences schooling was at the convent of the Sisters of Mercy in Sunderland, those same nuns infamous for their Magdalene laundries and rough treatment of single mothers. 1901 Florence started school at Lambeth in the Springfield School on her birthday 18th March. Information given: Florence Maxted, daughter of Willilam Maxted, boiler maker, address of 18 Springfield Place. Former school marked as none, then changed later to The Convent, Sunderland Violent School Children
While at Springfield School, South Lambeth, one day last August, Grace Smith, aged 8 years, was pushed down the steps at the school. She complained of pains in her head; but the mother did not find any mark of violence. On 20th October, however, she again complained, saying another child had struck her head on a desk. In more detail, another schoolgirl had 'pulled her hair until her head struck the desk'. Eventually she died in St Thomas's hospital, from pressure on the brain set up by an abscess, 'of delirium and hemorrhage', the abscess having formed behind her ear. At the inquest, the class teacher and one of the school managers, a curate of All Saints, South Lambeth, was called. The teacher said she did not hear anything about the pushing downstairs. The curate said he had been unable to obtain any trace of the children who pushed Grace or struck her head on the desk. He quite understood the possibility of pushing taking place on the stone steps, as there was only one exit for 500 children, and much crushing was inevitable. The jury found a verdict of death from misadventure. I got back into my genealogy, recieving a reply from my son George's distant cousin, of the De Bella family, Leonora De Bella; well the email was from her husband, Edward Yarrows, they being in America, and he had no family tree for his wife, but he did give me tidbits of information, which at first seemed of little use, but then became clues by which to make up Leonora's tree, her potential parents and their many siblings, by which I found her Italian born grandparents, Francesco Paolo De Bella and Angelarosa Boracca.
This Francesco De Bella was indeed from the village of Turi where George's dad was from and his original surname, well, in America he being a 'De Bella' was originally 'Di Bello', the surname of George's dad, totally the correct surname. And the great grandparents in Italy, as far as I could see, were another Francesco Di Bello and Anna Laporte, again of the village of Turi, born back in the 1840's or 1850's and quite possibly these being ancestors of my own Georgie. I also worked out the expanded tree of some appointed distant cousins for me, who were descended from some of my Londoners, from Henry Green the tailor and his wife Elizabeth Harding. What was fab about this was that it authenticated certain lineages, in this case my Maxted line, which therefore was not of adoptions or infidelities for which they would be only assumed lineages. And likewise, another distant cousin authenticated my Norfolk Bane line. Long time arriving in the post, and something that for years I had wanted enlightening on: the death certificate details of my great great great grandmother Sarah Green (Sarah Maxted as her married name). And so I learn that she had died from childbirth complications. She'd already had a good brood of children and being 43 was quite likely on her last. Sarah got septic infection from a clotted vein in her leg, phlebitis, dying 12 days after giving birth. Neither does the baby seem to have survived, there being no records at all in this regard.
On looking up about phlebitis from childbirth I see that it is nore common for women over 35, who have already had three or more babies. And you would think such women would have got childbirth down to a tee. So far in my genealogy research the women of the family had been very robust, churning out babies and very competently so. Dear Sarah, I now see, was an exception. Sarah Maxted, age 43, of 54 Riverhall Street, Wandsworth Road, Lambeth Parturition, 12 days, phlebitis, certified wife of Charles Maxted, an engine fitter, present at the death deceased 14th October 1873, registered 15th October I got into looking at my aunty Lolly's ethnic DNA, which after all I had paid to get done on the Family Tree site. Apart from that which I had expected, British and Viking and some near European, there was a smaller amount of Greek which I do now know must come to me through my father. And, what was totally interesting, other than that, was a 3% Middle Eastern, 1% of this being from the east of the Middle East, that is from the Persian shores of the Caspian sea down to Mesopotamia, and the other 2% being from the west middle east, that is from Anatolia down through Lebanon and the Holy Land to the shores of the Red Sea. I was so excited by this that I couldn't sleep for ages that night, for I have long felt an emotional kind of connection to the Middle East, this being pre-Islamic, or at least non-Islamic, some connection to all the minority groups under threat in this fascinating part of the world. The next step for me is the free transferal of these results to other DNA platforms, Myheritage and Gedmatch. It was in then looking at my own DNA matches, that I spotted a new close one, quickly working out this was a third cousin descending from my Maxted line. And the tree he'd put online was so minimal that there was not even any mention of Maxteds, but as usual I had applied my detective skills. This cousin, Dominic, was just 20 years old, a scout volunteer working at the Holiday Inn and raised in Eastleigh. His mother, Jillian, then would be my second cousin, she being granddaughter to Lilian Norah Maxted, who was sister to my great grandmother, Florence Maxted. Chatting online with Aunty Lolly, about her ethnic DNA results, and sharing research I have done on the family, she talked of her grandmother (my great grandmother) Florence Maxted and of how she always took in lodgers, and had run a fruit and veg shop in Eastleigh on Desborough Road. It was far to visit, from Dovercourt in Essex to Eastleigh in Hampshire, but still the families would reunite twice a year. Lolly remembered Florence's sister, Lilian Norah, as being blind. As Jill, new found second cousin, would tell me later, Lilian Norah, who was her granny had suffered a stroke, due to an accident, at around the age of 40, hence why she was blind, for which she was also unable to talk properly. Aunty Lolly said even Florence's sight wasn't so good, for which she had as a child read aloud the horse listings for her, the family having been quite partial to a flutter. Florence always made a big bowl of soup every Saturday and everyone came round to make their bets and partake of her soup, always such times being such fun. Sometimes they would win, though the bets made were only ever small. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees ![]() A genealogy discovery gives a great sense of achievement, even if for a sad revelation, this latest being for my great great grandfather, William Maxted of Nine Elms, who while a teenager had begun his career as a boiler maker on the railways. At a young age he was in a dreadful accident, from the exploding of a barrel of tar in his workshop, back in 1879, when he was 15 years old. William and another were burnt all over, legs, arms and bodies, for which they were conveyed to London's St Thomas Hospital, their condition described as 'dreadfully burned'. And how could such an accident be recovered from, but certainly my ancestor survived this and went on to have a family and children and always a career on the railway. Likely, then, he always would have had scars from that time. His mother had died but couple of years before, I don't know from what as yet. I'd already come across that newspaper article before, but had not been able to link it with certainty to my ancestor, despite this being his name and profession, not only because it sounded fatal, but because his age was given as a couple of years older and I didn't know if he's lived at the address given, Riverhall Street off the Wandsworth Road. But, anyway, it was looking at the marriage certificate of his older sister Sarah that I saw the family was indeed living at that time in Riverhall Street. How remarkable, and I don't know what became of the other fellow, but William made a miraculous recovery. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. I can't resist it, to get stuck into some genealogy researching. I'm curious to see if I can find any more clues to some gypsy heritage. There are hints, but no certainties. I did a read up about gypsies, both Irish and swarthy easterners, but I'm none the wiser. Maxteds were many in Kent, and one I can see was a farmer, very much a settled profession. One Maxted stole from a Kingsnorth in Pluckley, the Kingsnorth's being the family of my friends Jeremy and Ian, for which he was sentenced to transportation to Australia. One of my great Aunts, Selina Maxted, eloped to America with a cousin, being pregnant by him and having two daughters out there before returning. She never married. I want to find out more on this story, but fail to find records so far. Selina's brother was my ancestor George, the one who died falling off a haybale, being pierced by a stick into his entrails. If I was a superstar on Who Do You Think You Are, they'd whip out the whole story, no problem, and for sure tell me if there was or was not gypsy blood. It's interesting that I do have Mediterranean DNA, for so do gypsy descendants, their Indian traces being oft watered down and out. It's also interesting that I can feel so at home in these warmer foreign lands. I am not such a stranger to these places after all. Back to researching, I found out more about my many times great Aunt Selina. Her cousin Edward was a bricklayer who died when they were back in London, after their few years in New York, maybe after a bankruptcy, after which Selina put an advert in the papers looking for a position caring in homes or offices. As revealed by the next census, she and her remaining daughter, the first also having died in London, both found work as family nurses. So, Selina, yes, she does sound interesting somehow, a single mother who had a stint in New York. And I was looking at my ancestress, Elizabeth Mugway of Stalisfield, who got into the papers as an old widow. By marriage she was Elizabeth Roberts. It was her husband, Charles Roberts, who is said to have been of a gypsy family, the Otterden gypsy Roberts. Elizabeth was in the papers for having been neighbour to a murder victim, Hannah Giles, killed by a man, Samuel Seager, who obsessively stalked Hannah while her husband was out rat catching with his dogs and ferrets. Elizabeth was well acquainted with both Hannah and her killer Samuel. Rumour was that this fellows obsession was borne from an affair which she had no wish to continue. That very morning Samuel had visited Elizabeth and she'd told him he was a 'queer fellow'. He warmed himself by her fire, while spying through the window on Hannah's house to be sure the husband had gone out. He then called on Hannah with the excuse he wanted her to stitch him some trousers. He was a shoemaker and sometimes she would bind his shoes for him. Having heard the rumours, Hannah's husband, Stephen Giles, had confronted Samuel and told him he was no longer welcome in the family home. Hannah made her sons stay by her whenever Samuel was around, but he got her alone when that evening she was off along the country road to babysit the children of a nearby farmer. He mercilessly slit her throat with a razor, shot her in the thighs and set her on fire. Such are the potential deeds of a stalker who who finds himself attracted yet thwarted by a lone vulnerable woman. Elizabeth and other neighbouring women sobbed their eyes swollen from distress at the killing of their friend and they robed themselves in black. The bakehouse they shared was where Hannah's body was lain, naked and burnt, all the locals and even strangers coming to view her. In one paper a map was drawn showing who lived in what cottage and the spot where Hannah had been found dead. Elizabeths cottage is marked, being the first homestead through a shared gate and across the gardens of the families. Hannahs house was the end one of a row of three, the bakehouse they shared being on the other end. As Elizabeth had been a frequent caller to Hannah's, she must have been party to Hannah's fears. And yet all else in the village had thought Samuel such a harmless man. After the killing Samuel went on the run, later to be found in another county, hungry and looking for work on the railroad, using another name, saying that he was of the Roberts family. He was recognised by a description in the papers, confessed, and was sentenced to execution. They'd 'had words' was the reason he gave for her death. Looking again at Maxteds, I found that Charles Maxteds marriage to Sarah Green, and I'd never noticed this before, though one just had to switch to the next page to see, a double marriage, the same time as his sister Sarah married her own amour. Sarah, the sister of Charles, had already had two illegitimate children, one while she herself was but a young teenager, and for respect of the second child, she had been in church about to marry, the record having begun to be written, only for it not to go ahead, not till these years later with another child now on the way. It sounds Eastenderish, dumped at the altar! Oh, the stories of the past, if we but knew them. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. ![]() My mothers ethnic DNA results were in. And, well, I have to say that they quite took me by surprise, because despite already having discovered that my own matriarchal DNA is exotic, the small exotic ethnic DNA percentages I have are not actually through her, but rather they are given to me by my father. She does not have them. The Middle Eastern, Anatolian and African are not at all from her. Our ancestresses leaving the matriarchal homelands, then, was in no way a recent event. What also surprises me is not only does she have less British DNA than me, but also less Viking. This means some of my Viking DNA has to come from my father. Her own Shetland blood must not have been pure Viking after all, but mixed with Pictish types/original island dwellers. The Spanish DNA is not from her, so is of my father. The French DNA, which overlaps into Northern Italy, is from her and she has a huge amount of it, 46%, almost half, which is certainly confusing to me. I only inherited 13% of the French-Italian from her, rather than 23%, sure proof there that what one inherits can be uneven and random and even differ among siblings. So it is that I can now make more sense, or maybe not much sense, of the origin of my own DNA. Oh, and I almost omitted it, that Eastern European I myself have at 1%, well, it comes through her, she having it at 2%. Her British is 35%, and her Scandinavian-Viking is 17%; really, with her inbred Shetlanders I would have expected more like 50% but not so. Having made assumptions about the family origins in light of DNA before, I am lax to go making any more assumptions. But I have to attempt to do so anyway. The huge amount of French-Italian she has, though seemingly equivalent to one of her parents, could rather come through two grandparents, for instance, Mary Ann Seagrove's black haired mother Maria Harrison, could have been Italian, and this would leave D'Auvergne Bane potentially bringing in some French. Even he has the name of a French department! Now, unless his Bane's and Bean's were from an interbreeding of French Huguenot settlers, not much watered down at all, then he could, as I have speculated before, have been adopted or an illegitimacy of his 'big sister' Alma's, and if this was connected after all with the D'Auvergne Barnards, all could make sense, as these colonials of India had, possibly, originated from France and the Channel Islands. By deduction I can speculate the origins more of my own father. Eileen Spencer's, his mother's own paternity, has always been a question mark, and with his British imput being more than my mothers, this would account for my pop George Harrison's Welsh and Forest of Dean, combined with my fathers mothers part Irish. This leaves a bundle of Spanish with rarer exotica and his Scandinavian. I am going to suppose here, with nanny Eileen Spencer having been so freckly fair, that her mystery father was a Scandinavian seaman, her mother having worked in the port; entirely guess work, of course. And I have even more guesswork. The London Maxted-Green-Roberts who I have contemplated previously to have gypsy heritage, well, it seems even more likely now, which would be why Iberian DNA is showing up. Gypsies are associated with a distant Indian tribe, and yet in all their travels did they not mix with locals of the lands they inhabited, did not runaways and people expelled from their own communities join them? Spanish, Anatolian, Middle Eastern, and somehow that bit of African added too... And if not the Maxteds, who may have been Old English mixture with Viking rather than gypsy, at least the Greens and Roberts are surnames associated with gypsy people. And, again, who knows where other illegitimacies have been? So, these are all my first thoughts anyway in trying to make sense of the matter. Certainly these latest results so amaze and give me much food for thought. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. Myheritage online is taking for no cost ethnic DNA from other sites and doing their own analysis. Similar results I have got, in doing this with them, and yet different. NO DNA from outside Europe has been picked up by their system, no African, or Middle Eastern, nor Anatolian. What they find of my British is that it is of Celtic type and is 64.3%, being of Ireland, Wales and Scotland; not the Shetland which would be accounted for by the Scandinavian DNA at 24.5%. And, most strangely, according to Myheritage, I have the addition of 1% Finnish. Moi, part Finlander! The Irish and Welsh part then, with my not having Scottish mainland ancestors, is a large amount. Where, I ask myself, is the Norfolk, Essex or even Kent DNA, which would be of the English type, as no English is detected. This puts a question mark not only on the Essex lot, which I had suspected to be illicit anyway, but also the Norfolk Bane's and Bean's and the Kent Maxteds. Although, if the Maxteds and Greens were of gypsy derivation, as I have considered, then that may be what is showing up as Iberian. The Spanish type is given for me, by Myheritage, as 3.5%, alongside which there is not French at all, but 2.7% Italian, and more than either of those, 4% Greek. The is interesting and yet when each company comes up with some vastly differing zones this throws one naturally into confusion. I do actually like to hear I have connections to Greece and Italy, and yet this had never come up with the Familytree system of testing. I now can take nothing as fact. I don't know if I waste my time with this far too immature science. DNA ethnic results become as uncertain as the reliance of a family tree study, where really, assumed parentage's can never be taken for granted. I don't know if this is a subject, despite my love and infatuation for it, that I can keep pursuing. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. The British newspaper archives have opened up a whole new world. I keep on seeking articles relating to any of my family, and its not so easy, but I did find a story, this time on my Maxted line. It regarded the death of my ancestor George Maxted of Kent, whose native villages of Pluckley and Hothfield I have been to see (I have to see Westwell too). It was in Hothfield that George died, apparently falling from a haystack, which he was thatching, landing onto a big stick which pierced through his leg and into his bowels. I kept on looking through newspaper articles. Both my Irish Bartholomew Sugrue and his wife Catherine were partial to the bottle, I now read. Oh dear, this gets worse. I mean, here I am seeing drunkard Irish expats in my village, mirroring my own ancestors. It's a shock indeed. And yet another of their children had been caught stealing, James Sugrue, during the case of which it was mentioned that another of his brothers was already in prison. It's impossible to gloss any of this over, I have very dysfunctional family roots, part of a vast melange, from royal privilege to utter desolation. I had a browse for my friends genealogies too. For Akila I found family divorces, for Trebha, his grandfather being caught with stolen fish, Jeremy's drunkards, and Liz's posh side. To find all was so compelling. This is time consuming too, as genealogy is anyway. I sought more old family newspaper articles. So long one looks, coming up with nothing, and then a gem flashes up. I found the death inquest for one of my ancestresses, Maria Ann Harrison of Greenwich, already a widow, who had dropped dead after complaining of a bilious attack. Every organ in her body was said to be diseased. This, it was claimed, was in consequence of her intemperance. Oh dear, another one. A heart attack caused her death, such was the verdict. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. |
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