ISABELLE BANE----------MARY ANN SEAGROVE----------THOMAS SEAGROVE & MARIA HARRISON
Mary Ann Maria Seagrove
(1880-1961)
Mary was the firstborn child of Maria and Thomas Seagrove, raised in Greenwich in humble circumstance, and who as a young lady attracted the attentions and love of a gentleman. Her father was a red headed Irishman who at that time fished, on the river Thames, and who later became a waterman and lighterman. He was at home on the river, travelling along it near and far, sometimes being away for days.
Mary had brown hair, blue eyes, one with a cast in, and thin high cheekbones, in the last regard I would say taking after her father as I have seen old pictures of such high cheekbones in the County Kerry people, the part of Ireland which Thomas Seagrove was from. From birth Thomas had been a Sugrue by surname, but Maria didn't like that and and wouldn't marry him until he'd changed it to something more English sounding. Maria, Mary's mother, was curiously exotic looking, as were her other daughters, with jet black hair, white alabaster skin, twinkling eyes and fine features. |
Mary's mother, Maria, was from a long time waterside family, of fishermen and mariners, her grandfather having fought at the battle of Trafalgar and having ended his days at the Greenwich Seaman's Hospital. Of Mary's fathers family, Thomas's parents were Irish immigrants who had come to England to escape the potato famine. As it is said by the elders of my own family, Mary came from a rough and ready background. They knew poverty, hardship, illness and despair. Mary's mother had from a young age known what is the workhouse, and so had Mary's father. Both came from families which had got on the wrong side of the law and whose misdemeanours had made it into the local newspapers. Two of Mary's grandparents had died from tuberculosis. One of these grandparents had been raised in an orphanage. Under all such raw circumstances they were, as can be expected, dysfunctional. The Irish particularly were hard drinkers.
Mary Ann Maria Seagrove was born on October 30th 1880 and was baptised nearly a month later at Christ Church, in Greenwich, London. The Seagrove family lived at numbers 2 and 3 Chester Street, Greenwich, not that they stayed in one address so long, always finding new places to rent. At the time of the 1881 census Mary was but five months of age recorded as being with her parents, a fisherman Thomas Seagrove and his wife Maria and a visiting cousin of her mothers, 13 year old Alice Jaffray. Many children would come, as was the way with people of that time.
While a girl, observing the consequences of drink amongst the poor around her, Mary made a pledge to be teetotal. She was hard working even from a young age, and not that she had any choice in this, as being the oldest child of the family she was the one to bear most responsibility. Her father demanded high standards, his own reaction to the poor conditions he himself had experienced as a boy, which he wanted to totally divorce himself from, abandoning the Roman Catholic religion, living afresh. It was on Mary to care for all the younger siblings most of whom were boys, standing on a stool washing their shirts and every night before bedtime cleaning their shoes. With all her home duties Mary never got much education at all but still is recalled as having had a good brain.
At the end of every summer Mary and her family would take time out from the big city and go down to Kent to take part in the hop harvesting, as did thousands of other Londoners. They would stay in the healthy country air for four to six weeks, picking lots of hops for British beers, and this was the equivalent of a holiday for them.
By the age of 13 Mary decided that if hard work was really her lot in life then she might as well get paid for it, so she put her hair up in a bun to look older, and found work as a maid in a big terraced house.
During the Boer War, fought by the British in far away South Africa, she worked in a munitions factory making bullets for the war. It was a long way to walk there every day. She wore boots right up to her knees. 'I've trudged many a mile to work through the snow' she has reminisced.
During the Boer War, fought by the British in far away South Africa, she worked in a munitions factory making bullets for the war. It was a long way to walk there every day. She wore boots right up to her knees. 'I've trudged many a mile to work through the snow' she has reminisced.
By the age of 27, Mary had become the cook of a central London hotel, and it was there that she found love with a younger and rather cultured man who had taken up work running the hotel bar. His name was D'Auvergne Bane, the son of a Royal Artillery sergeant, and somewhat on the rebound from losing his beautiful classy fianceé, Gladys, to another man, he had the eye for someone to heal him and Mary was the one. D'auvergne totally charmed her, appreciated her and treated her like a princess, showing her the good life, posh restaurant meals where full orchestra's played, where he would make musical requests, rides around London in hansom cabs (horse drawn carriages), trips to the races and to old fashioned music halls.
D'Auvergne Bane, who courted Mary, was a lovely man, well brought up, and an enjoyer of art and culture. He was himself a keen artist, played the piano and sang beautifully. His favourite classical music piece was the Cavalleria Rusticana. He was 23 when he met Mary and began romancing her. D'Auvergne would have done very well in life career wise if not for his wanderer spirit and love of pleasure. He liked to go to the races and flash his money about. He abandoned a law career and the chance to study at Cambridge. Though he was a good man, philanthropic and kind to others, a true gentleman. |
The hansom cabs Mary and D'Auvergne travelled about in enjoyed immense popularity as they were light enough to be pulled by a single horse, making the journey cheaper than the larger four wheel coaches, and they were agile enough to steer around bigger horse drawn vehicles in the notorious London traffic jams.
The hansom cab comfortably fitted two passengers and a driver who sat on a seat up behind the vehicle. |
Mary and D'Auvergne adored one another. They moved in an apartment together. They were lovers and when Mary got pregnant D'Auvergne showed he was serious and dedicated by marrying her. Mary had found herself a gentleman, one who would defy his own family to be with her, regardless of her rougher background. They married in the autumn of 1908, October 26th, in the lovely Old St Pancras church in central London, D'Auvergne's occupation being listed as that of a publican. They then set off for a new tranquil life at the seaside, at the beach resort of Dovercourt, and there Mary would run her own holiday boarding home for summer tourists.
Both D'Auvergne and Mary were from big families which naturally provided plenty of aunts, uncles and cousins for their children.
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D'Auvergne was from a London middle class ex colonial military family and we well know him in our family for the romantic tale of his 'eloping with a maid'.
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Maria Harrison and Thomas Sugrue, as was his Irish surname before he changed it to Seagrove, were from troubled families of some infamy in Greenwich.
Wartime mothers, like Isabelle, were effectively single mothers, raising children without a husband around and little Joanna got such a surprise the first time she saw her father, a man who was a stranger to her.
1865 was a tragic year, for around the time of their latest baby's birth, in the heart of winter, Eleanor became very ill. A doctor diagnosed Eleanor as having 'phthisis', which was the medical name at that time for tuberculosis.
Bartholomew Sugrue, his older sister Ellen and her husband Patrick Reardon, and Catherine Sheehan, emigrated to London to escape the potato blight which had begun ravaging Ireland.
Philip Barton was one to sail the high seas and to take part in the heroic battle of Trafalgar. Quite the adventurer, Philip fell in love with Hannah Bunney, who was 18 years younger than him, settling down with her in central London.