General Chat

My great great grandmother had nine children and on each of their birth certificates it said: wife of George Cothill, whom she declares is not the father of this child. !! Not a hero or a villain, but a cheeky fast cat - Oh the things I have to live up to! Abigail

come on everyone - blow your ancestors' trumpets/dish the dirt. nell

Thanks David and Nell for adding to this thread! One interesting thing about Cornelius's family is that various members were known, shall we say, to be either "gamekeepers or poachers". Cornelius and his brother Will both became policemen. However, their grandfather William Goodwin was believed to be a smuggler. Obviously a good one because I haven't yet found any reference to him being caught!

David Thank you for starting what I hope will be an interesting thread. I have Norfolk ancestors who were fishermen/ag labs. To better themselves, my grandfather and all his 8 brothers moved to London, where one joined the City of London police and 7 the Metropolitan Police. My grandfather was too small, though he was the strongest. I don't think they did anything particularly heroic, though my Gt Uncle Sam wrote a poem for the Police newspaper! However, I do have a villain (of sorts) in my tree to balance out the law and order mob. My great-great-grandmother's elder brother killed someone. He was a simple chap and lived in Rendcomb, Gloucestershire, which in 1862 had about 257 inhabitants. WILLIAM MEALING was his name. He was 26 and living with a 30-year-old woman called Sarah Moss as her lodger. Sarah had a 3-year-old child by another man, who paid maintenance and also in the house was her father, an old man in his 80s. A few years before, Sarah's mother had been burned to death. In October 1862 William and Sarah were engaged to be married and she was heavily pregnant with his child. They had quarrelled and he had returned to his parents' house, but he and Sarah had made up. He had complained to his mother that he was losing his mind and some reports say he was suicidal. He returned to Sarah's house with his mother, who then left. At about 1'o'clock in the morning, William woke the parish constable, Timothy Tarrant, who was also the village blacksmith and William's godfather, to say that he had murdered someone and he had come to be hanged. Mr Tarrant took William to his parents' and went up to Sarah's house with a neighbour. They discovered her with her throat cut, blood everywhere. William was tried and found insane. He spent the rest of his life in Broadmoor (which had only opened to male patients in 1863) and he died in 1908. I was touched to find that the villagers had clubbed together to pay for William's defence, so they must have known that he wasn't responsible for his actions. nell

bump!

My great-grandfather, Cornelius Fisk Goodwin, was born on the 8th of September 1880 in Blythburgh, Suffolk. As a young man, and like his uncle James and elder brother Will, he worked on the fishing boats out of Lowestoft. It is also likely that worked as a farm labourer to help bring in money for his parents and their fairly large family. For one reason or another, he decided to seek the bright lights of London and he joined the Metropolitan Police on 10th April 1905. In the early hours of Friday 24th January 1913, he was on duty in Stepney East London. A draft copy of his report takes up the story... "At 2.50 am Friday 24th inst I was Acting Sergeant on the 1st Section of the Arbour Square Sub-Division and at the junction of Commercial Road and Jubilee Street. I heard a police whistle being blown, and on running in the direction of Philpot Street I saw smoke issuing from the windows of 254 Commercial Road a tobacconists and news agents shop. I went to the shop and then to the side door in Winterton Street. I saw two male persons standing there. I am certain that one of them was Morris Loufer. He had his trousers, boots, and what I believe to be a grey (army) shirt on. They were standing in the road not far from the side door. They were shouting, the side door was open. I entered the house and went partly upstairs it was full of smoke. PC166 Jones was coming downstairs with Annie and Rosie Loufer in his arms. I took them from him and carried them into No 3 Winterton Street. I then returned to the house and took the baby from someones arms on the stairs and conveyed it to the same address. I returned to the house and assisted in the removal of two women I cannot say who they were but I think one of them was Kate Ruebenstein." As a result of this act of bravery, Cornelius and PC (Noah) Jones were awarded a Silver Medal by the Society for the Protection of Life for Fire plus the sum of £3.3s.od each from the Bow Street Fund. More was to follow. On 1st January 1914, following the publication of the New Years Honours List, Cornelius received a telegram from the Superintendant Inspector at Arbour Square. It simply read: "You have been granted the Kings Medal". The medal in question - the Kings Police Medal - was instituted by Edward VII as a means to recognise "acts of exceptional courage and skill" or "conspicuous devotion to duty". Cornelius and Noah attended Buckingham Palace on Thursday 12th February 1914 and were presented with their medals by George V. Their official citation reveals that Cornelius had been unduly modest in his own report. It mentions that "the stairs were by this time in flames, and it was only with Goodwin’s assistance that Jones, - who was overcome by the intense heat and smoke, - and the women were able to reach the street. Goodwin himself nearly lost consciousness. Other lodgers, two of whom subsequently died, were afterwards rescued by the Fire Brigade". Their citation goes on to say that "the two Constables by their persistent bravery saved the lives of 7 persons at imminent risk to their own" and that "they were highly praised by the Coroner and his Jury". I never knew Cornelius - he died six months before I was born. However, I would like to think that this brief account will in some way commemorate his life and his act of bravery in 1913. Over to you!

Many of our ancestors were rural or urban labourers and we often know very little about their lives except when they were born, who they married and when they died. Every now and then, however, we discover something about an ancestor that makes them particularly noteworthy. Perhaps your great-grandmother was a nurse who tended to the wounded and dying in WW1. Or perhaps your great-great-grandfather's brother narrowly avoided the hangman's noose and was transported for some foul crime. My point is this: we all have heroes and villains in our family histories and their stories deserve to be shared. Why else do we go to such great lengths and expense to find out who they were? I suspect that there has been a similar thread to this before. In any event, I would like to tell you about my great-grandfather, Cornelius Fisk Goodwin, and I hope that others will contribute similar stories.