I've learnt how to do cropped screenshots on my new MacBook, which is so cool for newspaper excerpts on my current projects, which right now were about witchcraft and the slave girls of the Caucasus, in the same manner as I had done for the gypsies. Basically I was making a presentation on my genealogy website, looking deeply into these matters, in accordance with surviving newspaper articles which I'd earlier made note of, while adding more of current research. This began with a paper from back in 1679 relating to the witches of Bo'ness, or Barrowstones as it was written back then. They were a bunch of widows, in the main, who were accused of consorting with the devil. As it was written on the official paper, the crime of witchcraft is declared to be a horrid abomination, capital crime, punishable with the pains of death. Annabel Thomson, one of the witches, was said to have encountered a black man on more than one occasion while out and about, and it was he who was said to be the devil. The first time she'd met him, he'd expressed empathy for her struggles in life, promising her that if she followed him her life would be so much better. She didn't take him up on his proposal, not until coming across him again five weeks later. I do wonder if this romance she then found herself in was indeed with a man of colour, and maybe even a man of the gypsy travelling community, who were indeed known for their magical powers. At the time of their second encounter she'd been on her way to the coal hill, early in the morning, and upon her accepting that this time she would follow him he threw her to the ground and they had 'carnal copulation'. From then on, he and another man friend, William Craw, would meet her in the nights, with other ladies too, to party and dance and drink ale, the 'black man' playing a pipe to provide the music. It was in her final meeting with him, when she was on her way to the Grange coal hill, that he invited her to drink ale with him in the salt pans. Another woman, Margaret Pringle, also had carnal copulation with this black man. They'd held hands together, after which for eight days her hand was in pain. Another widow, Margaret Hamilton, had been lovers with this man for 8 or 9 years. They'd first met at the town well, where they had got into conversation. She took him back to her home where they drank ale and got intimate, for which in gratitude he'd given her a gift of gold. Another woman, also with the name Margaret Hamilton, had known this man for the longest. She recalled experiencing him as a black man in copulation, and yet upon his leaving he having the appearance of a black dog. Although the sentence for such consorting was to be burnt at the stake, the witches were first to be 'wirried', that is they were estranged by wire, their bodies thereafter being burnt to ashes. Some of the newspaper articles after that time referenced the Auto de Fé's of Spain and Portugal, in which the monks of the inquisition regularly made victims of not only witches, but also polygamists and converso's, who had in the past converted from Judaism to christianity, but who were observed to be lapsing back into their old ways. I'd seen of this before in regard to Goa in India, where Portuguese settlers who were too much familiarising themselves with the ways of Hinduism themselves became victims to the Inquisitors. Sometimes those accused of being witches were simply healers who had cured people of that considered to be incurable. This included a man who was a surgeon and had merely been too good at his job. In 1726, at the village of Burnt Pelham (now known as Brent Pelham), near St Albans, an old lady was brought to trial as a suspected witch, only for the judge to on but a glance dismiss her, as he could not take seriously that such a homely old woman would be involved in witchcraft. And this was even though it had always been the old women who were more largely the ones being prosecuted. In consequence of the judges words it was after reported that by current opinion of the learned, none but the young and beautiful were truly the witches. This created a panic among the beautiful young ladies of the area, serval of whom absconded for fear of being targeted as witches, for all the men about who were charmed by them. In Hungary, at Segedin, witches continued to be burnt alive, as was recorded in the British newspapers in 1728. One of the victims there was an 82 year old man, who'd been a former judge of the town, said to have practised the dark arts for 50 years. Another was a midwife who'd baptised 200 children in the name of the devil. Meanwhile in England attitudes to witchcraft were changing, the intellectual classes generally dropping such superstitions, while country folk themselves clung longer onto such beliefs. This meant that although the authorities no longer took such accusations seriously, the general poor were still blaming local calamities upon old widows, and sometimes without any authority would take such matters into their own hands. One example, in 1731, occurred at Frome in Somerset. A child of the Wheeler family, who live in the forest, had taken ill with 'extraordinary fits', for which it was assumed that she had been bewitched. The culprit was assumed to be an old lady known as Goody Richards, who lived at nearby Witham Friary. And so this old lady was dragged out of her home by a mob, and was taken two miles on horseback to a millpond where she was stripped of her upper clothes, her legs tied together and a rope around her waist, and she was thrown into the water. 200 spectators were there making noise and abetting the riot. She swam like a cork, even though they plunged her several times. Whenever dunked she consumed plenty of water, for which she was pulled out almost dead. Brandy was poured into her mouth to revive her, she was dragged into a horse stable and there thrown into the sewage, still in her wet clothes. In but an hour she was dead. 40 people had directly taken part in plunging her, and masses of witnesses had been there, but all remained silent when the authorities did their utmost afterwards to find out who had been the ringleaders of this affair. The locals remained satisfied that the old witch, as they called her, had been destroyed, and for the 'fine sport' they'd had in 'swimming her'. By 1735 the statute against witchcraft was repealed and those who continued to duck witches would now themselves be guilty of crime. And yet still the lynchings continued. In that same year, at Nantby, a poor shoemaker, John Kinsman, was suspected to be a wizard who had conspired with the devil, and all because the 'lazy' dairymaid seemed no more able to make good butter and cheese. John was taken by the mob to be ducked at a pond in Kelmarsh, whereon another younger and stronger man, named Barwick, intent on saving his life, offered to be ducked in his place. He survived those waters, whereas the shoemaker likely would have not. And so these stories continued. And the question arises, why were suspected witches dunked in water and if floating considered guilty, and the answer is that the witch would have renounced her baptism by water, for which the water now would not receive her. At another ducking, at Oakley, in Bedfordshire, a visiting gentleman who was a bystander to such an event ultimately stepped in to save the life of the targeted woman. In Bedfordshire, in that area, so prevalent was the belief in witches that, as the gentleman said, 'One would think oneself in Lapland were you to hear their ridiculous stories'. It was a 50 years old lady at that time being ducked, which she was in agreement to, to save hers and her children's reputations. What is more the parish authorities had offered her a guinea if she should sink. The appointed place was at the river Ouse, by a mill, and there were 500 spectators. At eleven in the morning she arrived and was tied into a sheet, but for her face and hands showing, her thumbs tied together, and likewise her big toes, and her hands being tied to the small of her legs. A rope was fastened around her waist and into the water she was thrown. Unhappily for her she didn't sink, even though for as long as a minute and a half her head was under water. She was taken out, half dead, and when she'd managed to take a breath the experiment was repeated. Each time she floated, for which the crowd were shouting 'A witch, a witch, drown her'. The poor lady was lain once more down upon the grass, unable to speak and almost dead, as people threw insults at her, not any pity nor compassion, but for the visiting gentleman who now took it upon himself to protect her. He cut the strings which bound her and carried her to safety in the mill, and he reasoned with the people, at risk to himself, near to being mobbed by the crowd. He appealed to them that this was an unreliable experiment, as any woman of her age tied up in a sheet would float. In Portugal, the Auto de Fé's continued, there always being Jews in trouble for not being authentic converted christians, all of whom were burnt, and there even being a nun accused of being a sorceress. It's so that Joan of Arc had been regarded by the English to be a witch, an article in 1748 looking back on this. The English soldiers so believed her to have been sent by the devil that her very presence terrified them. At length, she was convicted of witchcraft and burnt, that it may be fulfilled, which was spoken of by the prophet, 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live'. In 1749, a ship off the Capes of Virginia, being blown far off course by a rough storm, led to an elderly woman on board, suspected of being a witch causing all of this, being thrown overboard. All such perpetrators would in turn be punished, and yet people kept upholding the need for such actions to be taken against witches, supported by the mobs around them. I still see this in people today, just as deluded, ignorant and aggressive, lacking in intellectual reason, those who make up part of our democratic evolved lands, who get included in all our devision making, so that as with friends I know even, sickness is not something natural, but is to be blamed on chemtrails, evil plots and the depopulation agenda of those who govern us, and rogue tyrants who gain power and create havoc are portrayed as saviours, and even terrorists gain worldwide support from those whom they would in turn destroy. Such low consciousness in people is potentially brutal and dangerous, as can be seen with the witch hunts of the past, but such people never seem to have the ability to see all this themselves. This has always been one of humanities struggles, with at least some of the elements within society pursuing ignorant causes, whether those in leadership, or the general people, or both. Witchcraft persecutions are the craziest example of this. All our ancestors lived in such a climate, whether victims themselves, astounded bystanders, or perpetrators and their collaborators. Until there came the Age of Enlightenment, looking to scientific and logical explanations for what happens in the world, rather than aligning with sinister and harmful superstitions. I always said it, that the people of my own village would have had me done for a witch years ago. there's a reason why scapegoating others is still called making a witch hunt. To survive in those olden times one needed to be humdrum and the same as most others, and in no way exceptional, unless one had the privilege of wealth and nobility, and even then at times one may have become a victim. The freedom we now have, to be as we are by nature, so long as it harms no other, is as precious as a jewel and should never be taken for granted. Again, in 1751, there was a mob action against suspected witches, for which the ringleader of the attack, Thomas Colley, was later executed. The victims that time were an elderly couple, the Osborne's of Tring. It was announced in three separate markets that they were to be ducked, for which 10,000 people came to witness and take part in their demise. The mob pulled down a portion of the workhouse where the couple stayed, and set fire to the rest, only to discover the couple were actually taking shelter in the church vestry. The mob broke in there, tied the old couple together by their thumbs and big toes, and carried them to the water for their ducking, during which the old lady, Ruth Osborne, perished, and Thomas Colley had to take account before the law for what he had done. Even into the 1800's such incidents continued, so stubborn that the people were about not giving up their old ways. In a Biblical context these actions were sanctioned by Scripture, touted confidently by the witch hunters, for the line 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live'. Therefore in seizing and burning witches these people were carrying out the word and command of God. In such a way the Bible was turned from being a helper of humanity to a hinderer of progress, which should serve as a warning to people that just because a church or any religion teaches something or other does not mean that thing is true. It was back in 1848 that the Pope had first ordered the inquisitors to hunt out and put to death all practisers of the diabolic art, after which the Reformation changed little in this regard, protestants being just as eager to condemn any woman suspected of selling her soul to the devil. The old Biblical reaction against witches is still believed in by born again Christian types, like one ex new ager lady I know, who online sensationalises the witchery issue and goes on and on about it, gaining fame in such circles for herself for being an 'ex witch', now repentant and exposing all, although she was never truly an old style sorceress but merely someone who'd been exploring the divine feminine, now sharing regularly former stunning photos of herself when she'd been doing the devils work, along with artful videos, aesthetic and compelling to see, but still damning, the modern PR of demonising those who explore their spirituality in any way other than evangelical Christianity. She's a beauty and content in her world, but does no favour to women and their natural explorations into the world of goddesses and the divine feminine. Even herbal healing she dismisses and demeans as demonic, like the inquisitors of old who had turned on healers and midwives. In this she never relents, feeding unnecessary ignorance into her small minded American based community. In olden times the witch would not have been suffered to live. She is an enabler and a driving force for where all this is at in current times, within that very specific sect of western christianity. It's bizarre. Like one wanders here who really got into the clutches of the demonic, the free spirited one or the accuser whose weapon as always is their favourite scripture.
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I researched in old newspapers again, for anything extra of my ancestors and I did find a couple of possibilities. For instance, totally the correct age of my George Maxted when he was a teenager, in the summer of 1804 a notice was put out that he was a runaway from his service as a ploughboy at the grand Preston Court, near Canterbury. Interestingly, a description is given of him, being 17 years of age, about five feet high, with light hair and marked with smallpox. His employer, William Harrison, was determined to hunt him down, offering a guinea reward for whosoever may find him and even going so far as to write 'Whoever harbours or employs him will be prosecuted as the Law directs.' It sounds not so far from slavery really, such as it had been for the poor people of our lands. The other article is potentially a reference to George's father, Edward Maxted, being of Westwell, his village. He was charged with stealing some fence posts, the property of Thomas Back, but of this he was acquitted. Always interesting stories are to be found in these old newspapers. In the same paper, the Kentish Weekly Post, it is written of how one dockside labourer in Woolwich undertook, for a wager of five shillings, to eat a rat, skin, bone and all, 'which the monster performed in a few minutes'. In consequence of this he lost his job, for being 'deemed a disgrace to his fellow servants'.
I have been researching old newspapers online, mostly the history of gypsies, in a social regard, adding to other likewise articles I have found. I have chronologically referenced some of these stories, to be seen in a fuller blog on my website, beginning in the early 1700's with the main issue having been the habitual fortune telling of the gypsy women and a wish to suppress this. For all the ethusiasm among women to know their fortunes and to have insights into love, it can be seen that along with this there was some intentional fraudulence going on. It's not that this was a reflection on the gypsies at large, but it was surely there for some elements among them. Gypsies of the New Forest appear to have had a good reputation, and Queen Victoria herself had a fondness for these peoples, but this fine picture was not to be experienced everywhere, as will be seen. 1725 - Gypsies are put into prison for the pretense of telling peoples fortunes. Six of their women and three of their men are said to have been 'pilfering about the country'. 1733 - A 'country wench', aged 18, who was journeying alone to a village, was on the way attacked by a 'travelling tinker and his whore'. They stripped her naked and took away all she had. On then tying her to a tree with a strong cord, they set their dog on her, in such a manner that he almost tore off one of her breasts. A gentleman, happening to be passing at a distance, heard the dog barking and for curiosity rode up, hby which time the couple had disappeared, although the dog was still there with his hold upon the girl. The man made the dog let go, untied the girl, wrapped her up in his great coat, and followed the dog, who soon went to his master at an alehouse in the town, where he was there seized and sent to Nottingham jail. On going back to the poor girl, the man found that she was dead. 1736 - A years imprisonment and four stands in the pillory, it is announced by parliament, will be given to all those who tell fortunes or who employ 'crafty science' to find stolen goods. This was resorted to in response to 'ignorant people being frequently deluded and defrauded'. 1739 - A false prophetess, from among the idle strollers in summer times who 'pretend to tell fortunes' and who pose to have the 'gifts of prophecy', has bewitched a gentlemans money away from him in Essex. Sitting under a hedge listening to the gypsy talking, she persuaded him to give her all the money he had in his pockets, to go to his friends house and in the orchard to dig under a certain walnut tree where he would find 15 lottery tickets, all of which would win a prize, and in each ticket would be a diamond of considerable value. Before digging he was instructed to scrape all the bark off the tree and this instruction the infatuated gentleman followed and he dug deeply, before realising he had lost out and so had his friend. Warrants were now out to apprehend the false prophetess. 1758 - Susannah Fleming is imprisoned for a year for telling fortunes and is to be pilloried every quarter of a year for one hour during market day. 1758 - Of a gang of near 20 gypsies in different parts of Norfolk, the men have been robbing houses and the women have been telling fortunes. Two of them, Lomas Smith and James Lacey, have been committed to the castle jail for burgling the house of a widow in the night time. Lomas Smith is a gypsy, a tinker by trade. James Lacey sells buckles and knives. Theyr women tell fortunes. Ten of the gypsies are in the neighbourhood of Southrepps, Bacton, Trunch and about the sea coast. One of those gypsies, who is their captain, wears a laced hat and rides a good horse. 1768 - A fortune telling woman, accused of stealing near Banff in Scotland, has been ill treated by a mob. She had been going around the country telling fortunes, only to then be suspected of stealing some clothes, for which she was taken by a mob and dragged along the streets to the shore, where they ducked her, tying her hands to a cart and hoisting her up and down into the water. This barbarous exercise they carried on for so long that she would have died at their hands, but for someone more humane than the others freeing her. She then crawled about the streets, begging for shelter from the inclement weather, until at four in the morning a woman showed her to an outhouse. She was almost frozen to death by now and she soon after expired. The principal men behind this horrid affair, being sailors, were found and now lie in prison. 1808 - Gypsies sell a pony, then pick pocket the buyer. This happened at the Marlborough fair. 1811 - An 86 year old leader of a gypsy gang has married a 22 year old. The man, Lawrence Winsor, was a celebrated fiddler and travelling brazier, his young bride being Joanna Skelton. 1811 - A farmers servant girl named Elizabeth Collier was robbed and attacked by gypsies, whom she came upon while travelling by foot. Elizabeth had been sent on a misson by her mistress to purchase a bottle of wine for a sick cottager and was on her return, it being ten in the morning, when a gypsy woman came to her and insisted on telling her her fortune. Elizabeth was endeavouring to get away when two men rushed out from a park, grabbed her and dragged her some way from the road, where they took from her a pound and some silver, a shawl and the port wine. Not content with having already robbed and ill treated her, they most inhumanely stabbed her with a penknife under her right breast. The poor girl made it back home and reported what had happened, for which the farmer, procuring the assistance of a soldier, went in pursuit and found them. One did escape, but on some gypsies being rounded up, and Elizabeth being present to identify the culprits, he was captured, he being Adam Lee. 1812 - The two gypsies, Thomas and Adam Lee, who had robbed and stabbed the servant girl Elizabeth Collier, were executed for highway robbery. They were part of the gypsy gangs that travelled Hampshire, Sussex, Surrey and Kent, and for years had been accomplices in various depredations. Thomas's wife, having been part of the robbery, was sentenced to be transported for life. A most affecting scene took place after their sentences were given, just previous to their being taken to separate cells, where on taking final leave of one another, the 'wretched criminal' Thomas, in a passionate manner, alternately embraced his wife and their little infant which she held in her arms. Thomas and Adam were taken to the scaffold with halters around their necks and their arms pinioned, the while of which Thomas Lee presented a most melancholy scene, being obliged to be carried and weeping in a most lamentable tone. Upon the scaffold, they had a few moments of prayer, then were launched off, and their bodies, after being suspended the usual time, were cut down and delivered to their relatives and several of their fraternity, who were more in number than had ever been remembered on such an occasion. 1813 - A gang of gypsies pitched their tent on waste ground in Herefordshire and an old gypsy woman from among them called at the house of a man named Gritton, saying she would tell him his fortune. She persuaded him that a large amount of gold lay concealed in his home and that he should put a large sum of money into a parcel, which she would endow with a charm, and then sew into the side pocket of his coat. The more money the parcel contained, the more considerable would be the treasure he should find, for which he put together £70 in gold, silver and bills. Nine days this was to remain in his coat, at the end of which she promised to return and that a coffer of guineas was to arise from the ground, to at once enrich her 'credulous dupe'. She never returned though and when he opened up the parcel he saw to his utter confusion that the 'witch' had turned that gold and silver into halfpence, stones and waste paper. Much of that money the man had borrowed from his neighbours and if he had been able to procure more he would have. As for the gypsy woman, she had escaped with her 'booty'. 1815 - New laws against vagrancy are affecting gypsies. By strict application of the law, magistrates are to apprehend and bring to punishment common beggars, gypsies, and other persons wondering about, who refuse or unable to give good account of themselves. 1820 - Two gypsies, Thomas Smith and William Lee, stole two horses from a field and were caught up with in Romford where they were offering the horses for sale. 1823 - Constables are fined 20 shillings if gypsies or other vagrants camp on the waste lands in their parishes , in accordance with the Vagrancy Act. 1832 - The death in a tent on a race ground has occurred of the 'King of the gypsies' alias Charles Lee, the 'monarch' of a 'murky tribe', maybe aged 74, but maybe much older. He has left about 50 children and grandchildren behind him. At his funeral, ten of his relatives attended, the rest of his family being absent at different fairs and races. A thousand spectators came to the church yard, curious to witness the funeral of 'so exalted a character'. 1833 - On entering certain countries the gypsies passed themselves off as Christians of Egypt who had been expelled from their land by the Saracens. In this article the dates are given for their arrival in Europe, in Hungary in 1417, as likewise in Bohemia, the German states and France. It was in France, as recorded by Pasquier, that they gave out the story about being Egyptians, saying they had come via Bohemia. In 1418 they arrived in Switzerland. In 1422 they came to Italy. From France they passed into Spain and Portugal. It was later, in the reign of Henry VIII that they came to England. The whole of this 'outcaste race' now amounted to five million, there being a million in Europe, 400,000 in Africa, a million and a half in India, and two million in the rest of Asia. 1836 - The gypsies have been overunning the Basque lands and turning to violent crime. Innumerable bands of gypsies there no longer confine themselves to their old system of begging, frauding the credulous, and taking hens from roosts and rabbits from hutches and occasionally sheep too, but have taken to violent robberies, sometimes even mudering, watching the farmers on their return from market, to steal from them their moneys for the sales of cattle and all else. When pursued in France they escape to Spain and vice versa. Orders have been given to arrest all the gypsies, 30 of these 'dark complexioned marauders' having already been captured. It is despaired of though that never will these vagabonds acquire fixed habits of industry, but that they will return to their evil courses once released. It has been observed that there are at least 2,000 of this wandering tribe, who have no means of subsistence but fraud, robbery and murder. Therefore, the only way to rid the country people of this scourge is to seize 'the whole of these wretches' and to 'transport them en masse beyond sea'. Such gypsies are not to be considered as Frenchmen, as they are outcastes to all society and are alien from the laws. They are altogether strangers in the land to which they are a burden. 1838 - A girl caring for children repelled gypsy burglars with a gun. Her master, of Woodford Hall, had gone to church with all the other servants, leaving her with his three children, all under the age of ten, her name being Eliza Whitmel. Two gypsy men came demanding admittance, which upon her denying them, they tried to batter in the door. Eliza told them from the first floor window to go away, and that she would rather die than let them rob the house. Disregarding her, they continued to batter the door, upon which she got her masters gun and fired it at them four times. The oldest daughter, who was nine, was supplying her with powder and shot so that she could keep reloading. The thieves, finding her to be determined, and having small wounds already from the shots, they gave up and left. 1841 - Talk of the early persecution of gypsies, their hiding in caves and holes, and their habits since then. So it begins, that shortly after their first arrival in England, which is upwards of three centuries since, a dreadful persecution was raised against them, the aim of which was their utter extermination. Being a gypsy was esteemed a crime worthy of death and the gibbets of England groaned beneath the weight of gypsy carcasses, and the miserable survivors were literally obliged to creep into the earth in order to preserve their lives. These days passed by, their persecutors became weary of pursuing them, and so they showed their heads from the holes and caves where they had hidden themselves. Venturing forth, they increased in numbers, each tribe of family choosing a particular curcuit, they fairly dividing the land among them. In England the male gypsies were all horse dealers, who sometimes would mend the tin and copper utensils of the peasantry. The gypsy women were fortune tellers. They would pitch their tents in the vicinity of a village or small town, by the roadside, under the shelter of the hedges and the trees. Their complexion is dark, but not disagreeably so. Their faces are oval, their features regular, their foreheads low, and their hands and feet small. The men are taller than the English peasantry and are far more active. They all speak the English language fluently. In their gate and demeanour they are easy and graceful, whereas the peasantry are slower, uncouth and in manner dogged and brutal. This report is gleaned from Borrows 'Gypsies of Spain'. 1842 - A remarkable circumstance is noted to have been the ceremonial expulsion of one of the gypsies of the New Forest, by the name of Lee. Between 300 and 400 gypsies, both men and women, belonging to different tribes, including the Lees, Stanleys and Coopers, assembled at Boltons Bench near Lyndhurst. The offender, a handsome looking man, in his 30's, was placed in the middle of a ring, comprised of the king of the gypsies and the patriarchs of the different tribes. A second ring was made up of the rest of the men and an exterior ring to that was made up of the women. The King, who was one of the Lees, a 'venerable old man', looking to be in his 90's, addressed the culprit for nearly an hour in a tongue that was strange to any bystanders, spoken impressively with vehement gesticulations. Only the gypsies themselves knew what was this mans crime, but it must have been very obnoxious, as the act of expulsion among them is exceedingly rare. When the king finished his speech he spoke to all present, saying in English that Jacob Lee was expelled from among them and was no longer of their fraternity and must leave the camp of the gypsies forever. The king then went and spat on him and the circles opened to allow the mans departure, they hitting him with branches as he did so. The meeting then broke up, all going their different ways, some having come to witness this from a considerable distance. The whole ceremony took place under an imposing ancient oak tree. 1848 - Sophia Locke, the daughter of a gypsy traveller, was born in a cave near Crocker Wood, and was one to always roam the land in male attire. She posed as a man, calling herself John Smith, working either as a tinker or a scissor grinder. For 14 years she even had a woman lover, with whom she travelled all over England. In 1847 it is to be seen that the two of them were picking hops in Worcestershire. They lived very happily together and would earn around a guinea a day. Upon her death, Sophia was buried as John Smith and a great many people came to witness her funeral. 1851 - Two gypsy men, David Yelding and Joseph Barton, assaulted a French man named Jacques Ponsonque who travels with his bear named Bruin. On meeting them on the Canterbury road, the gypsies began taunting the bear, playing tricks, and when Jacques tried to stop them they beat him up. 1887 - A description is given in the Thanet Advertiser of the gypsy woman, she being not always handsome in later life, but as a maiden is always attractive. Even when older though, she never loses her glowing eyes, nor is she ever feeble. As a rule they outlive their gypsy men. She has an apparently wondrous power of sorcery and divination. Her spirit is exhaustless. She has a certain personal charm and an untrained intuitive intellect, for which she may even be considered to be the brightest of women.
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 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. 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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