Land: Edward PORTER

When I began searching for my roots many many years ago, I remember my father saying that his mother’s family had “come from farming stock”. So, I thought ‘farming stock’ then they must have been ‘of the land.’

The concentration of manufacturing moved from the country to larger towns in the late 18th century. Cottage industries producing hand made goods just could not compete, undermining the rural economy. Agricultural labourers like many of my ancestors found themselves replaced by machinery. Some might have looked on the move to the city as an opportunity to improve the lot of themselves and their families only to discover the reality of city living. Squalor and poverty, dirty air and dirty streets.

This then is a story about Edward Porter, my paternal great grandfather.

As with previous #52 stories I’ve started with the facts I thought I knew, which I now know may not be so correct. As with other people I’d researched for #52, I’m going to go back to the beginning and do the re-assessing starting with the facts that I do know to be true.

Working backwards from his death in December 1920

The 1911 England Census for Edward Porter, age 57, West Ham, Plaistow, Essex shows him at home at 77 Inniskilling Road, Plaistow. Also, there were his second wife, Harriet Little, and his youngest daughter, twelve-year-old Ethel. He had been married to his second wife Harriet for five years and his occupation was dock labourer. Edward’s first wife Mary Ann Rison died in 1900. You’ll hear more about her when I write her story. 

 It’s difficult to imagine what life might have been like for him and his family, but I’ll try. Being a dock labourer was physically hard manual work. Would he come home at the end of a long work day exhausted, his days running into each other repeating over and over, work, eat, sleep, with just one day of respite on Sunday. And Harriet, though there is no occupation for her on this census, she too may have added to the coffers by doing domestic or factory work. When daughter Ethel was 5 years old she was enrolled at Woolmore Street School, and at twelve would probably have still been at the same school.  

Here’s a modern-day picture of the houses in Inniskilling Road, looking very similar to how they were in 1911

Stepping back another ten years to the 1901 England Census for Edward Porter, West Ham, Canning Town  I find him at 17 King Street. The census shows how many rooms a family where occupying at a particular address. The   now widowed Edward and his children occupied 4 rooms in the house, and Walter and Mary Perks and their fourteen-year-old son occupying two rooms. Sub-letting your rented house was very common practice back then.

 Edward’s occupation on this census is stevedore. A word derived from the Spanish ‘estivador’, meaning to stow a cargo.

I knew that the word had something to do with ships and docks but not exactly what.

I learned that stevedores were skilled men, responsible for the way a cargo was loaded into a ship’s hold. Often working in dangerous conditions and under pressure to get the ship loaded and on its way; taking into account the way the cargo was positioned in the hold to maintain the balance of the ship, as well as the order in which the cargo was to be offloaded. Stevedores were in the employ of most major ports, but not in London. In London the role was considered to be so important that the individual shipping companies employed them. Sometimes thought of as the aristocrats of the docks not just because they were better paid than a dock labourer, but unlike a dock labourer they were not employed just on a casual basis.

 http://www.portcities.org.uk/london/server/show/conMediaFile.4773/Dock-labourers-at-the-East-India-Docks.html

Just a few months before the census was taken eighty-one-year-old Queen Victoria died in January 1901. She had remained in virtual mourning since the death of her beloved husband Prince Albert in December 1861.She was succeeded by her eldest son Edward VII, who reigned until his death in 1910. 

Queen Victoria’s son, King Edward VII, rides in Queen Victoria’s funeral procession, February 1901. (Photo by Reinhold Thiele/Thiele/Getty Images)

It’s more than possible that Edward and his family stood among the silent multitude to watch as the funeral cortege, carrying the Queen’s coffin high atop a gun carriage, progressed through London’s streets on its way from Victoria Station through Hyde Park to Paddington to go on by train to Windsor. I cannot imagine how he might have felt witnessing this demonstration of public grief at the death of the Queen when his own grief from the death of Mary Ann only a few months before in October 1900. 
In trying to catch a glimpse of life in 1901 I’ve come across some interesting pictures, like the one below. I wonder just how much meat was actually for the cat! Did you notice the flower boxes at the upper window, a little bit of beauty in what was often a very hard life

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Step back another ten years to the 1891 England Census for Edward Porter, Essex, West Ham. This time at 3 Elphick Street., another address I am familiar with.

It has really only just occurred to me to question why they lived in so many different places over the years. While we cannot know why with any certainty, proximity to Edward’s work may have been the leading factor. Dockers were not a well-paid lot and spending hard earned coins on public transport might not have been an option. Just as sharing a house with another family would have made good economic sense, as we see on the census. They are sharing the house with Frank and Elizabeth Steding who occupy just one room, squeezing Edward and Mary Ann and their six children into the other three rooms of the house. Both Frank and Edward’s occupations were ‘dock labourer. I wonder how they would have divided up those three rooms between themselves and the six children. Again, there is no occupation for the women. It was thought that at the time a women’s role at home wasn’t considered to be at work even if she was occupied in some form of paid employment.

When writing about my ancestors I like to try to see how they might have lived. Many cities of the time, London included, were dirty, unsanitary and overcrowded. With no rubbish collection as we know it today the waste would have decayed in the streets, turning into nasty smelling muck.

Between August and November 1888, the infamous serial killer who became known as Jack the Ripper murdered and mutilated five prostitutes, bringing fear to the streets of the East End. Newspapers speculated wildly about the killer’s identity adding to the fear public. The killer was never caught.

Homes for my working-class ancestors in the late 19th century would have been dark places, it cost hard earned wages to pay for gaslighting if indeed it had been available in their streets. Without conveniences like modern refrigerators, perishable food would need to be bought almost daily, especially in the summer. Food was very plain by today’s standards, bread, potatoes, bacon and butter, though margarine was a much cheaper substitute. By the end of the 19th century tinned food had become widely available, no doubt opened with a rotary can opener invented in 1870. Condensed milk was patented in 1856, evaporated milk in 1884, the first chocolate bar appeared in 1847, and the first recipe for potato crisps appeared in a cookbook by Dr W. Kitchiner in 1817

 Now let’s take a look back another ten years to the 1881 England Census, Essex, West Ham.

The entries for Edward and his family run over two pages, making it difficult to paste a copy here. They are living in Mary Street; I think they are also sharing the house with another family. George and Elizabeth Everitt and their eleven-year-old son. This census doesn’t indicate how many rooms a dwelling had, only the number of dwellings in the street. The houses may not have been that old as the page ends with a number of houses in the process of being built.

Notable events in 1881 included the birth of the Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming   who was to discover penicillin in 1928, and instant coffee, first introduced at the Pan American World Fair by Dr Satori Kato of Japan. In 1892 The first shipment of New Zealand frozen meat was shipped to Britain, and the creator of the much-loved children’s book character Winnie The Pooh, Alan Alexander Milne, was born. Also, in 1882 Pioneering English naturalist Charles Darwin died aged 73, and production began of the first bouillon cubes by Swiss flour manufacturer Julius Maggi, who developed them so the poor had a cheap method for making nutritious soup.

Edward’s occupation on this census is again ‘dock labourer’, as are many of his neighbours, though on his marriage certificate it is just labourer. Either way his work would have been hard physical labour for long and often erratic hours. 

Edward and Mary Ann married 25 December 1873 at Holy Trinity Church in Barking Road, Canningtown. As was quite usual and as not to pay for the banns to be read in two parishes they gave the same residential address that of 17 Hemsworth Street. Their witnesses were Walter Fitch and Eliza Rison and the first of their ten children, Alice Ann, was born just over a year later on February 6th 1875.  You’ll read about Mary Ann when I write her story. It was usual to choose either a Sunday or other religious day to marry so that no time need to be taken off work.

Sometime between the two census, 1881 and 1871 Edward and Mary Ann and their families moved from Chelmsford to West Ham, London. What I don’t know, and am unlikely to ever find out is, did they know each other before coming to London’s West Ham or after. The only potential Edward Porter in the right area on the 1871 census is the grandson of the head of the household, along with his brother, Oswald. Grandfather William’s occupation was gardener and Edward’s a bricklayer’s labourer

On the 1871 England Census for Edward Porter, the address is George Street Chelmsford, Essex.

Edward was living with his grandparents William and Elizabeth Porter and younger brother. William’s occupation was gardener and Edwards ‘bricklayer labourer Oswald was a ‘skin splitter’, which I have been told had something to do with the manufacturing of vellum from animal skins, and would have been a very smelly occupation. I have yet to locate the whereabouts of Edward’s parents at this time. Chelmsford which was then a fair-sized market town.

There was little leisure time for families like Edward’s, and I think we can take for granted the number of public holidays we get today. It was in 1871 that the British Government passed an act that created four annual bank holidays, and the first was held on the last Monday in May.

Back another ten years to the 1861 England Census for the Porter family in Chelmsford  at George Street the same address as the 1871 census.  No other census entry that I have so far found matched what I know about the family. 

Edward, age 7 is there with parents, Edward and Rachel (Copsey), and younger siblings Oswald, both scholars, and baby Emma. Edward’s father’s occupation was ‘journeyman blacksmith’, and his mother’s a blacksmith’s wife.

In 1843 the railway reached Chelmsford bringing with it an economic boom and the town became known for its engineering industry. Years later in 1899 ‘The Marconi Wireless Telegraph Signal Company’, the first of its kind in the world, opened in Chelmsford.

Edward was born in Moulsham on  Wednesday January 12th 1853, at Moulsham, Chelmsford, Essex to Edward Porter and Rachel Copsey. and  there is a possible baptism for him a year later at St John the Evangelist, Moulsham.