1911 infirmities

Happy 2013, everyone! I hope 2012 was a successful year for you with more to come in 2013.

When the 1911 census was initially released the information in the infirmity column was redacted (suppressed). In 2012, when the 1911 information was officially allowed to be released, this infirmity column became available. I've now got copies of all 387 household schedules for Wing and was keen to see what if anything was lurking in this column.

Below is a list of all Wing's infirmities. Note that some of these are unofficial - only "totally deaf", "deaf and dumb" "totally blind", "lunatic", "imbecile" or "feeble-minded" were supposed to be entered here along with age afflicted, but several of Wing's heads of household added extra information (crossed out by the census enumerator, of course, but never-the-less accessible). As always, we give a round of thanks to those that didn't follow instructions and gave us more snippets about their lives than we might expect!


Mary PAGE, age 85 - totally deaf was written but then crossed out. Mary's son D (David) Page filled out her schedule on her behalf, so I do have visions of 85-year-old Mary giving him what-for on discovering he had dared to claim she was deaf!

Sophia LATHWELL (nee THORNE), age 52 - feeble-minded. This wasn't mentioned in the 1901 census so perhaps this was degenerative, or perhaps her husband wasn't prepared to put this on record in 1901 but the head of household she was visiting in 1911 had no such compunctions.

Arthur FOUNTAINE, age 31 - fits since 16 years.

Daniel WHITE, age 69, and  daughter Sarah WHITE, age 41 - there appears to be some congenital defect at work here as Daniel is noted as deaf at 20, while Sarah was deaf at 16.

Emily STAPLES, age 60 - deaf and dumb from birth

Mary FINCHAM, age 71 - deaf 20 years. Mary wasn't a local pe se, she was the Suffolk-born mother of Essex-born James who was a domestic chauffeur. I can't imagine anyone other than the Rothschilds had vehicles to chauffeur at this point in time.

George LOVELL, age 60 - rheumatism. Thanks for sharing, George! He was a pensioned mechanical engineer, so I would think he found his complaint pretty frustrating.

Emma Jane TUTT, age 40 - totally blind at 30 yrs old. Emma's an import to Wing as well, her father George is a London & North-Western Railway pensioner from Sussex.

Benjamin PEASE jnr, age 28 - lame since 6. He works from home as a boot repairer.


Yes, I will be transcribing the 1911 census for Wing in full at some stage (the enumerator summary book is already on the website), however it's not a priority as this information is widely available from the major online genealogy websites. I'd rather focus on bringing you records that are more unusual - and in particular finishing the items on that Moving Target 2012 list which I shall now have to rename the 2013 list!

Guilty conscience

Haven't blogged for a bit. *hangs head in shame*

Forgot the Winging It blogiversary AGAIN this year (it was 3 Nov). *shuffles feet*

Don't even mention that Moving Target 2012 list over there on the right that was supposed to be keeping me focused this year.

And it's the beginning of the month as well, which means an update is due for one of my other websites, the One Place Studies website.

I have been knitting up a storm though. I imagine that my Nana and Grandma and a long line of female ancestors are nodding with approval and wanting to fondle all those pretty yarns we have to knit with these days.

But in the back of my mind I know that the end of the year is approaching, and I need to come up with a genealogy research plan for my Christmas holidays before it's too late. I really should actually use that Find My Past international subscription that I picked up super-cheap before it runs out! The only genealogy thing I've done lately is try to work out how to print out from Family Historian a COLES family tree showing just the boys. My brother's giving me a nephew in 2013!

Coronation fever

The celebrations for the Diamond Jubilee seem to be ramping up in the UK. This weekend is the Queen's Birthday holiday weekend here in NZ, and in honour of both events I'll be cooking Jamie Oliver's "ER's Diamond Jubilee Chicken". This is an update on Coronation Chicken created for Her Majesty's coronation in 1953.

I do have a family treasure with a coronation theme to share. The photo below is one from my great-grandfather George White's "black book", a small notebook of photographs taken in the early 1900s. This particular photo is recorded as "Hackney Coronation Carnival, Japanese Party, July 3rd 1902". Googling this tells me that the carnival had a series of floats depicting the crown and the empire, and was one of a flurry of carnivals, pageants and general celebrations for the coronation of Edward VII. This particular carnival in Hackney should have taken place after Edward VII's coronation on 26 June that year but the coronation was delayed until 9 August - I must check the newspapers and see if the carnival itself was always scheduled for 3 July or if it too was delayed until everyone was sure the new King would survive his bout of appendicitis!

Hackney Coronation Carnival 1902

Russian immigrants

I've had an email regarding Ivan Vassilevitch Arjenovsky, 1900-1963, who has a gravestone in Wing. Does anyone know anything more about the Arjenovsky family, or any other Russian immigrants to Wing for that matter?

World famous (in UK genealogy circles)

Progress report on the Moving Target list: nothing to report. Must try harder!

However I have looked at the BAILEY, INWARDS, and GOSS families in Wing over the last week, and I’m about to look at the PEASE family. If you are connected to any of these and haven’t previously been in touch, please email me.

It’s also been exciting times for one-place studies generally. Roy Stockdill’s article on one-place studies is in the current (May) issue of Family Tree magazine, so do grab a copy if you haven’t already seen it - as well as the physical mag you can also buy a digital copy at PocketMags, via iTunes app, Android, whatever! The article mentions me, and more importantly lots of others working hard on their one-place studies as well as the One Place Study website over at  http://one-place-studies.org/.

April update #2

It seems I'm the April fool - I've found some updates to the website that I prepared in January but never actually uploaded, so here they are! Two updates for the price of one!
 
Interested in the churches and chapels of Wing? There's some additional information from the 1851 Ecclesiastical Census that has been added to the non-conformist pages.

In particular, it's now clear that there were (at least) two dedicated Wesleyan Methodist chapel buildings - one was erected in 1813 and another in 1864. I'm hoping to find some newspaper reports to find out about this process - where exactly was the old chapel? Was it torn down, or converted?

It also now looks as if, although the Burcott Baptist Chapel was formed in 1840, it didn't have a dedicated building until 1845. The Crafton Independent Chapel also wasn't a separate building with regular services, it was an offshoot of Wingrave.

April update

There has been an update to the site this month - the marriages from 1 July 1837 to the end of that year have been added. As you know from my Moving Target 2012 list, I hope to have all the marriages from 1837 to 1851 transcribed and uploaded by the end of the year, along with all those other projects of course!