19th Century
Mr Atkinson’s Rum Contract – A review
From 2006 to 2018, Richard Atkinson worked as an editor at Bloomsbury publishers, rising to senior commissioning editor and responsible for some of the most successful illustrated cookbooks of the last two decades, including Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage series. From 2010, he was increasingly occupied with researching and writing his own first book, a … Continue reading
… a story of slate and more . . .
Last year, I became the published author of a family history: The Cassons in North Wales: A Story of Slate and More (Gwasg Carreg Gwalch, 2019). The culmination of 8 years of research and writing, it tells the story of my maternal grandfather’s family. Since childhood, I had heard how, at the beginning of … Continue reading
A Meeting with Gentleman Jack
It seems unlikely that the forthcoming adaption of Anne Lister’s diaries by the BBC will focus on either of the elements that I found most interesting. In The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister as edited by Helena Whitbread ‘Gentleman Jack’ devotes an impressive amount of time to mending her own clothing, particularly her underwear … Continue reading
Great-great grandpa gets a parking ticket
If you thought parking tickets were a relatively new invention, think again, the ever interesting Huddersfield Chronicle has turned up a story about John Arthur Liversedge, my great-great grandfather that would be familiar to many a tradesman today. When my great-grandfather Alfred John Liversedge was born in 1854 his family lived in Huddersfield where his … Continue reading
William’s ‘other’ family
During the early 1980s, my mother saw an advertisement in the Times requesting any descendants of William Capel Slaughter to contact a box number. This my mother duly did, and through subsequent enquiries discovered that her grandfather had had an affair with a governess after the death of his first wife and that a son … Continue reading
Mr Slaughter and Mr May
William May’s background was very different from William Slaughter’s. Born in 1863, May was from a professional, landowning family in Berkshire. His father was a surgeon in Reading, as had been his grandfather. William was born in the family home at Caversham, a mansion set in large grounds by the Thames. He was educated at … Continue reading
William Slaughter and The Home and Colonial Stores
In November 1882, William Slaughter’s sister Elizabeth married Reginald Drew ,older brother of Julius Drew,the co-founder of The Home and Colonial Stores which was later to become one of the most flourishing food retailing companies of that era. My mother remembers her great aunt Lizzie and her husband [known as Reggie]. Though described in the … Continue reading
William Capel Slaughter -his early career
Records of William’s schooling are scarce. In the 1871 census he was a pupil at a boys’ school run by James Ward at 116 Clapham Common where,aged 13, he headed the list of pupils aged 7 – 14. After that it is assumed he was tutored at home. He never went to university, but decided to … Continue reading
William Capel Slaughter – family origins and early life
My great-grandfather was a significant figure in the city of London as one of the founder members of the law firm, Slaughter and May. It still bears his name, though no family members have been associated with the running of it since William died in 1917. Born on May 11th 1857, William was the youngest … Continue reading
Another family bible, another distraction
When I visit my uncle I usually bring back something intended to help me with my family history; sometimes an old document or a 1920s guide book to London but recently an old, very large, family bible. Whether this is our family bible is a moot point, certainly it’s someone’s family bible. It records births … Continue reading