Today it’s easy to trace a family through the birth, marriage and death records available online by subscription or for free from various sites. In just a few minutes I can find the records proving that my great grandfather Alfred Nice died in 1952, married in 1899 and was born in 1873. His father, Arthur Nice died in 1899, married in 1863 and was born in 1842. His father, Edward - well, you understand my point.
But to know a birthday or a wedding date is not to know the person - our ancestors weren’t just names and dates. What did they do? How did they feel? What were their personalities? How were they like me, and how were they not? To answer these questions we have to interpret the information in the the birth, marriage and death records and to search for other records to find some insight, however small, into each personality.
Searching for these records is still not easy, despite the power of the internet. Not everything is on line and not everything can be trusted. It can be a tedious job searching for that one name or that one reference that fills in another gap in the jigsaw puzzle.
But now the British Library has began placing its archive of newspapers on line (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk), in partnership with brightsolid, the company that owns findmypast.co.uk. Their plan is to scan, index and publish 40 million newspaper pages, with over five million available now. This is a wonderful source of background information for anyone tracing ancestors in the UK. I believe it will soon become one of the most important sites for genealogical research. It’s already on my top ten list.
Let me show you just how significant this source can be by focusing on one branch of my family for the sixty years they lived in one rural Essex village.
Toppesfield sits in an area of gently rolling hills in the northeast of Essex. The church is on a high point where it can be seen from all directions. The only industry in the village and surrounding parish is agriculture, as it has been for hundreds of years. Toppesfield suffered heavily in the agricultural depression of the late 19th century. Its population drifted down from some 1,000 persons in the 1840s to perhaps 600 at the turn of the 20th century. It's been stable since then: the population in 2001 was 533.
The Nice family arrived in Toppesfield in the 1840s, when Edward Nice, a wheelwright, moved here from the nearby village of Belchamp Walter.
Edward had seven children by two wives: Susan Smee and after she died, her sister Rachel. Miraculously for the time, all seven children survived into their adult years.
Edward’s oldest, Arthur, had ten children of his own, one of them my great grandfather Alfred Nice. Arthur’s brother Harry and his sister Clara both married and had children of their own, but the other four siblings, Susan, Alma, Clara and Jessie, remained single all their lives.
All of Edward’s children, except one, and all his grandchildren eventually moved away from Toppesfield. By the 1890s his son Alma was the last of Edward’s family still in the village. The link was broken when Alma died in 1924.
The newspaper coverage of 19th century Toppesfield is remarkably similar to the coverage I see from our local community newspaper here in the small town where I live now: fund raising events, garden parties and the occasional crime. This makes me think we’re not seeing a balanced picture. Certainly the local papers weren’t covering the impact of the agricultural depression and Toppesfield’s resulting slow decline into poverty, or the vast social upheavals that came with the railway, compulsory education and other 19th century changes.
But we still have a rich picture of life in Toppesfield: a farmer fined for allowing two cows to wander on a public roadway; youngsters caught setting hay alight with matches; a farm workers’ union rally controversially aided by the rector of the church; arson, probably caused by agricultural labourers protesting low wages and high unemployment; farm labourers wandering drunk on the highway; and petty theft of all kinds.
And there’s a surprising amount about my family.
The family enters the newspaper archives with an entry from March 10th 1843. The Essex Standard commented on the uncertainty of life, citing the example of Edward’s father, Richard Nice, who suddenly “fell down in a fit and expired shortly after.” Richard had enjoyed remarkably good health and always maintained an excellent character for honesty, sobriety, and industry. He was just 64.
Edward and Rachel must have instilled a love of learning in their children. Three of their four girls became teachers, all rising to be head mistresses. Emily was the only one of the girls to marry, which meant she had to resign her teaching position, but she passed her passion on to her own children: three of her four girls also went on to be teachers, one remaining unmarried and rising to be a head mistress too.
The first of the children to begin teaching was Emily. Her career was meteoric. In 1871 she was a student at the Whitelands Training School in Chelsea, London (one of the most respected teacher colleges in England then and still today) but according to the Essex Newsman, by the time she married in 1876 at the age of 24, she was already headmistress of St. John’s School in Moulsham, Essex.
Clara was next to take up the profession. In November 1882 the Chelmsford Chronicle was pleased to notice Clara’s name in the list of successful candidates for scholarships. She was second on the list in order of merit amongst those who graduated from the two year program at Hockerill Teaching College.
By then she was already teaching. The National School in Toppesfield had been examined on April 5th, 1882. According to the resulting report, “Reading is somewhat weak in the first standard, but elsewhere, and especially in the second and third standards, it is fluent, distinct, and expressive. Handwriting is fairly good. Spelling is fairly accurate. Arithmetic is weak in the fourth standard, but very fair elsewhere. Discipline is good. Singing and needlework the same. The infants are a fairly good class.” The article reporting these results also mentioned that Clara Nice had finished her apprenticeship as pupil teacher and had been engaged as assistant mistress. She would eventually become Head Teacher at the Effra Street School for Girls and Infants in Wimbledon, Surrey. Toppesfield’s National School would continue to set high standards: in 2011 its successor would be recognized as the primary school achieving the highest academic standards on standardized tests in all of England.
A third sister Jessie successfully passed her entrance examination for Hockerill College in July 1886, winning a first-class scholarship for the two-year teaching diploma program. She figures prominently in the press for more than just her teaching. When she came home for the holidays at Christmas 1887 she took on the challenge of decorating the altar rails in the village church, a job she executed very “tastefully”, according to the Essex Standard. In 1909 and again in 1912 she judged the needlework and drawing at the annual show of the Toppesfield Cottage Garden Society, which was held on the grounds of Toppesfield Hall. By then Jessie was a spinster and the head teacher at the National School in the nearby village of Great Yeldham, so no doubt she was a respected member of the village community.
How ironic then that the sisters’ older brother Arthur, my great great grandfather, appeared before the Heddingham Petty Sessions in November 1885, to be fined 1 shilling, with 4 shillings costs, for neglecting to send his children regularly to school (At the same session young Kate and Arthur Twitchett, niece and nephew of my mother’s grand aunt Ellen Hickford living in the nearby village of Ashen, were each fined two shillings and sixpence for stealing beans and beanstalks with a value of one shilling and sixpence. They were 13 and 12 at the time). Arthur was called before the court again in August 1888 and fined another 1 shilling, with 4 shillings costs, for failing to keep his 12-year-old daughter Lottie in school.
These weren’t Arthur’s first court appearances. He was first called before the Heddingham Petty Sessions on February 13th, 1872, two days after the birth of his fourth child, where he was convicted of stealing three bushels of chaff and two bushels of mangel wurzel (a kind of root beet) from a farmer. He was sentenced to serve 21 days’ imprisonment.
Arthur was caught in another noteworthy event when in 1883 the house where he and his family were living was destroyed by fire. It was owned by his wife Rosavena Hardy’s stepfather James Butcher. According to the Wyyenhoe and Colchester Regatta, the fire was “supposed” to have been caused by a spark from the chimney, which ignited the thatch roof.
James Butcher appears not to have been a very sympathetic figure. He ran the village grocery shop and was also called a higler by some people - a somewhat derogatory term to describe an untrustworthy pedlar - and often came to the attention of the local newspapers.
The first time was in March 1854, when he appeared before the bench to answer to a charge of theft. Then 27-years-old, James was accused of partnering with a 14-year-old farm hand named Jeremiah Hardy to steal half a bushel of beans from a local farmer, James Nunn.
Two weeks before the trial James stopped at Nunn’s farmyard to pick up some fowl he’d purchased. The farm bailiff saw James talking with Jeremiah, who worked for Nunn, and who should have been feeding pigs. He then saw the two disappear into the granary. After James left on his pony and cart the bailiff went into the granary and immediately noticed that some beans were missing.
Nunn found Police Constable Cook and together they went to James’ cottage. James had no objections to PC Cook entering to search the premises, but protested when Cook went to climb into the attic. Upstairs, Cook found a box with various beans mixed together.
James claimed the beans were the remainder of four bushels purchased the previous November from another farmer. When that farmer was called as a witness he confirmed that he had sold the beans to James, but when the prosecutor showed the farmer the beans found in James’ cottage the farmer expressed surprise: “These aren’t my beans; my beans were black, these are white!” which brought laughter to the court.
James then testified that Jeremiah Hardy had indeed given him some beans but only a few - certainly not enough to be considered “theft” - and only to be feed for the birds he'd purchased. His lawyer also argued there was no evidence the beans presented in court were the identical beans taken or received, despite sworn testimony from Nunn to that effect.
James’ lawyer then called up a shop-keeper as a character witness. He would have called another, he explained, but the second one had missed his train and wasn’t in the court.
The Judge summed up by saying that the quantity taken was immaterial - even half an ounce of beans would have been an equal crime, “and with regard to his view of the transaction, how could a man like the prisoner suppose that a boy of 14 had any right to dispose of his master’s property?
“Verdict: Guilty.”
Nunn then recommended mercy for Jeremiah, believing James Butcher had drawn him into the crime.
The Judge responded by saying “the offence of Butcher in teaching a little boy like the other prisoner to steal, was a very serious one. He almost doubted if he satisfied the justice of the case by a sentence of 8 months’ hard labour. With respect to the boy, he should attend with the geatest pleasure to [Nunn’s] recommendation; and hoped a sentence of one month’s imprisonment would deter him from being guilty of similar practises in future.”
James' eight months of hard labour didn’t deter him from all crime. He was back in court in September 1856, charged with “using a pair of unjust scales, 1 ounce deficient against the purchaser.” He was fined 2s. 6d and costs of 9s. 6d., which he paid on the spot.
Fifteen years passed before James again came to the attention of the law. He made history of a sort when he was prosecuted under the Public Health (Water) Act of 1878. This was the first prosecution under the new act in the area, and, according to the clerk of the Halstead Union Rural Sanitary Authority, possibly in all the country.
James owned three cottages in the nearby village of Little Yeldham. The Sanitary Authority twice issued notices to him ordering the provision to the cottages of “wholesome water sufficient for the consumption and domestic use of the inmates.” When he failed to respond to either of these the Authority itself provided this access and passed the cost on to James. Then, in 1881 James was summoned for failing to pay £13 12s., his portion of the Authority’s costs.
In his defence James claimed that one of the cottages was now vacant: the tenant had left without paying him any rent. The clerk of the Authority responded “That is one of the unfortunate results of having cottage property, but it does not affect the question.” James then argued that the cost he was being assessed was too high for the work that had been done. The clerk answered back “Unfortunately for you it has been proved to the contrary.”
The Chairman of the bench asked James if he could read, as “he appeared to have taken no notice whatever of the notices sent to him.” James claimed that he had been advised to take no notice of them.
The bench found James guilty, ordering him to pay the amount owing plus 12s 6d. for costs. James paid the full amount before leaving the court.
By 1884 James’ son James the younger held an “off” beer license. That year he applied to move it from a cottage on one side of the road to a cottage on the other. There was some question about whether James had complied with the Standing Orders because he hadn’t submitted the license application in writing, but had instead brought it that morning in person. He argued that he only wanted to transfer the license because he needed more room for his growing family, his father owned both properties, and his wife had already moved there. The Committee granted the application.
James passed away in 1892, apparently passing his businesses on to his son. By then the family was well on its way to respectability with only positive stories appearing in the newspapers. For example, in July 1892 James the younger was noted as a major buyer of Shropshire lambs at the annual Haverhill lamb sale and in 1896 the newspapers wrote of James’ support for Toppesfield’s May Day celebrations by providing a wagon decorated to be the May Queen’s carriage for her parade through the village. James’ daughter Daisy appeared in the parade as one of the Queen’s maids.
Other members of the extended family gained some notoriety too. At a meeting of the Halstead District Board of Governors in October 1881 the Board found that a cousin of Arthur’s, George Allen, was guilty of overcrowding, housing eight adults and three children in a cottage with three bedrooms together amounting to just 2,000 cubic feet in area (if the ceilings were seven feet high, this would mean the three bedrooms would total some 285 sq ft in total, or perhaps just nine feet by ten feet each).
The Medical Officer made a report to the same meeting, noting that “there is still not a proper water supply for the cottages in the Chase-lane below Toppesfield church.” He reported that Scarlett Fever had broken out in Toppesfield in October 1880. Twenty eight cases occured, resulting in three deaths. All the effected cottages were disinfected. He went on to remind the Governors that bylaws are still needed to control drainage and the building of privies and pig styes and then reported that there had been four illegitimate births in Toppesfield in the previous year.
William Allen, another of Arthur’s cousins, was charged in 1871 with the odd crime of stealing a sack of guano, which William denied. The allegedly stolen bag of guano was produced for the magistrate to see. Apparently the magistrate decided that the evidence was strong enough (no pun intended) to justify committing William for trial. There is no newspaper record of William’s trial, but the Criminal Registers for England and Wales, available on ancestry.co.uk, record a sentence of four months.
Arthur’s brother Alma Nice was the only one of Edward’s children to remain in Toppesfield all his life. Born in 1856, he witnessed the transformation of his village and the Essex countryside before passing away in 1924. Alma is an intriguing character. He never married, yet we get a sense that he was surrounded by friends. Although a wheelwright, he filled his life with the kind of cultural pursuits we unfairly attribute to the middle class alone.
It seems that Alma was a man well respected in the village: when in 1884 a ceremony was held to bid farewell to the curate of the parish, the Essex Standard specifically noted that Alma had attended.
He enjoyed singing, acting and dancing. The Chelmsford Chronicle records in 1883 that he sang at a “magic lantern entertainment” organised by Reverend Payne in the village’s National Schoolroom. At the 1886 Boxing Day concert Alma had to sing an encore of his first song and then was called up for a rendition of “The Roast Beef of Old England.” He was a leading member of the church choir, nominated to present a gift on behalf of the choir to the schoolmaster on his retirement in 1893.
Alma appeared at the National Schoolroom in a “capital entertainment” in December 1886. He sang the comic song ‘I can’t make up my mind.’ His sister Clara played the opening piece, a pianoforte solo, which the Chelmsford Chronicle recorded as being “well executed.” Others from the village sang and acted, the Band of Hope Drum and Fife Band played a selection of music and Reverend Payne exhibited a “transformation picture,” showing “first the effects of drink and afterwards of water.”
One year Alma helped organise an especially well remembered concert. The highlight was an operetta entitled “The artful dodgers” staring Alma in one of the title roles. The Essex Newsman records that “Mr. Lansdown and Mr. Nice kept things going right merrily, and the audience was convulsed with laughter from beginning to end. The climax came when the policeman (Mr. C. Hardy) endeavoured to take one of the dodgers into custody, the other in the meantime robbing the policeman.”
There are many other references to concerts and other entertainments that Alma organised and starred in. Clearly he enjoyed the performing arts as much or more as his work in the Wheelwright shop, but he was also a sportsman, a member of the illustrious Toppesfield Cricket Club. The Chelmsford Chronicle records many glorious games. Clearly Toppesfield was the team other villages strived to defeat.
Alma was named in a couple of newspaper stories for other reasons too.
In 1878 he was called as a witness in a court case resulting from the death of a farmhand. George Barker, a beer house-keeper, had been charged with permitting drunkenness on his premises. Now the magistrates at Heddingham Petty Session had to decide if the fatal injuries Robert Turbin suffered when his wagon rolled over and crushed him resulted from drunken driving or from hitching an ungelded “entire horse” to the same shaft as a mare in heat.
A number of witnesses testified that they saw Turbin enter Alma’s wheelwright shop and then leave and enter the beer house. Alma testified that Turbin enquired in the morning about some shafts he was repairing. The shafts weren’t ready so Turbin decided he would wait for them in the village. Turbin returned to the wheelwright shop with his friend Charles Barker, son of the beer house-keeper, at 3.00 PM, but the shafts were still not ready and wouldn’t be ready until the next day.
Robert Hardy testified that he met Turbin at the wheelwright shop on Turbin’s second visit. He, Turbin and Barker left together at 3.20 PM to return to the beer-house to share a pot of beer. Turbin only stayed ten minutes, leaving before the pot was finished. “He was not exactly drunk, but he was under the influence of drink”, so Robert told him to take care of himself, believing he wasn’t capable of handling the horses.
A witness testified that Turbin was definitely drunk - he couldn’t sit steady in the wagon - and another witness saw Turbin driving the horses and wagon, claiming he seemed to be “the worse for beer.”
Alma’s brother Harry Nice testified that at about 4.00 PM he heard someone call out “Whoa!” and heard a noise of chains rattling. Harry rushed out to the road to see Turbin crawling out from under the wagon. The horses had escaped their harnesses and were standing there watching him. Harry helped Turbin home. Turbin died later that evening.
The magistrates took some time to deliberate before finding George Barker guilty, fining him £5 plus costs.
Ten years later, in 1888, Alma was recognised as a hero when he rescued a boy who had fallen into the pond near the blacksmith’s shop. The boy had sunk three times before Alma reached him. Luckily a doctor was on the spot and was able to resuscitate the lad.
Through all these years Edward Nice, the patriarch of the family, quietly raised his children and saw them go on to have children of their own, and then watched them leave Toppesfield one by one for Chelmsford, London and destinations beyond.
Edward only came to the attention of the newspapers once, when the Chelmsford Chronicle recorded his passing in July 1897: “The Late Mr. E. Nice - On Saturday the remains of the late Mr. Edward Nice, wheelwright, were laid to rest in the churchyard. The deceased, who was 74 years of age, had been almost bedridden for two years. The service was impressively conducted by the Rector, the Rev. J.J. Baddeley, and many of the houses in the parish were represented at the graveside. The coffin was literally covered with magnificent wreaths.”
There’s a sad and ironic postscript to the story of the Nice family in local newspapers. I wrote above about Edward’s son Harry discovering the farmhand Robert Turbin in the wreckage of his overturned wagon and helping Turbin to his home, where he died. The Essex newspapers of July 27th 1907 all reported Harry’s death in Chelmsford when he was returning from delivering bread on his baker’s cart and lost control of the horse’s reins. When the horse bolted, the cart hit a kerb and overturned. Harry was thrown from the cart and pinned beneath it. A doctor pronounced him dead on the spot. He was just 46.
