A Rumney Romance

In September 2013, we received a donation of papers found in a chest of drawers bought at an auction. Among them were eight letters. They were sent between June 1886 and May 1887 from Miss Jessie Rowland aged 16 of Grimsditch Hall, Lower Whitley to her 27 year-old cousin, Charlie Rumney. They begin in a friendly way, thanking him for his letter after the death of Jessie’s father, Samuel. But by April 1887, ‘Dear Charlie’ is ‘My dear Charlie’ and by May of 1887, ‘My Dearest Charlie’. 

Clearly, Jessie’s affections were reciprocated as in the last of the letters (17 May 1887) she ‘cannot understand you loving such a little insignificant thing like myself … but I can understand anyone loving such a darling as you’ and signing it with ‘Hundreds of kisses’. Though she thinks his letters could be longer!

A glance at the census return for 1891 reveals that all ended well and Jessie and Charlie are married and living with her mother at Grimsditch with a one year old daughter, Nora and eight month old Samuel. They had married at Lower Whitley church on 26 July 1888. Jessie and Charles continued to live at Grimsditch Hall until their deaths and the Hall remained in the family until the death of their third child, Kathleen Joyce Rumney who died there in 2004.

Our reference for the collection is D 8474.

Explore Your Archive - our box and its travels!

We first made our box available at our regular Saturday opening on 16th November. A sample of the contents were also made available online. There is often excitement as researchers handle and investigate original historic documents – but this was a different kind of enthusiasm as visitors could pick what caught there eye, quickly switch between documents, pass documents to other visitors and not have to know what to request.

We had discovered early on a wonderful coincidence. The Haygarth Lecture, an annual Public Health event at the University of Chester, was taking place on the Monday evening of campaign week. How could we not make a special appearance, this time with an original patient register on display to welcome the 100 or so delegates? Ben Page CEO of Ipsos MORI spoke of the power of public opinion and data in influencing health behaviour change. Caryn Cox, Director of Public Health for Cheshire West and Chester Council introduced him, remarking on her experience of archives, that you cannot move forward without understanding the past.

Tuesday found us in Ellesmere Port Civic Centre at a ‘Self Care Day’ organised by West Cheshire Clinical Commissioning Group with Chester Voluntary Action who told us about their upcoming centenary. We arranged a meeting about using the collection we hold to celebrate their long history of community support. We met the Snow Angels and rifling through the medicine chest gave them the idea of using replica documents to help their volunteers engage vulnerable older people with modern health messages. The same day a box was delivered to the Countess of Chester Hospital where it was left to its own devices for a week, moving between the staff canteen and the main foyer.

An archivist was on duty in Warrington Library on the Thursday, and box came too. With the help of the local studies staff, the archivist the week before had set up an exhibition of material we had selected from Warrington’s collections – including public health notices and records of payments in rum to William Boon to transport typhus fever patients and whitewash infectious dwellings!

Friday and back to the Countess for a lunchtime session at the Oasis Café. Archives with food and drink! Not to mention a kind and interested audience from contractors to canteen staff, clinicians and their patients to a Chief Executive!

Sheena Cumiskey, Chief Executive, Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust

Friday evening, and one last drop off at Halton Lea Library – from where the box would journey to Widnes and back over the following week.

Its travels did not end with the November campaign. Still in demand it has recently been visiting the Riverside Museum. It is hard to tell how many people have taken a look inside, but we have had to fit one set of replacement doors, which has to be a good sign!

Our thanks to staff at Warrington Livewire and Halton libraries, the Countess of Chester Hospital, Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Chester. 

And for our talented, resourceful and creative staff, we are the Archives and Local Studies service, so the only appropriate thanks was cake.

Explore Your Archive - a box takes shape

Work had begun to identify and digitise the records that would tell our story. We wanted to produce authentic copies to get as close as you can to exploring archives without the need for supervision. It had become obvious that our box should be a medicine chest, so we set out to find a portable (and cheap) storage solution.

Before 

After, fitted with custom-made cabinet doors to add to the excitement! 

The five drawers gave us the structure to develop key themes around John Haygarth’s work, Chester Infirmary, vaccination and fever, with a drawer left over to add leaflets and badges. We also needed a variety of formats and items so that there would be something for everyone, wherever the box might be. As the plans, photographs, pamphlets, patient register pages, hospital management minutes came together the joy of unpacking a ‘Jackdaw’ file came back to me – it might have been 40 years ago but I could remember the hands-on documents experience of primary school history. A potential 'just me then'. What would our audiences make of it?

Explore Your Archive - an idea takes shape

Our plans for joining the new national Explore Your Archive campaign took shape in an archivists’ meeting. We could certainly aim to create a story box, recruit archive ambassadors and join in the national campaign week in November, but at the same time staff and outreach resources had been committed to our key summer events ‘Helping Cheshire Remember the First World War’. With this in mind our story box would need to be self-contained, self-explanatory and closely targeted to a new audience.

We quickly found our local hero, Dr John Haygarth, who not only innovated isolation wards for fever patients at the Chester Infirmary in 1784 but carried out statistical analysis of the health of Chester’s population. His work had been of regional and national significance. We knew that the infirmary’s patient registers had been used within the past year in talks to introduce the new Clinical Outcomes unit at the Christie hospital in Manchester (Haygarth and his colleagues had been collecting state of the art patient outcome data in the 18th century!). One of our parent council’s new Public Health director had visited our searchroom to consult Medical Officers of Health reports from when public health had last been the responsibility of local government. So we had prospective ambassadors to champion our archives. A chance encounter at a staff meeting gave us a contact with Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust who could perhaps help us with the kind of venues we were after. But they needed to know more about the format of the box …

'I like this beautiful land better than the old country'

Commonwealth Day 2013 celebrates 'opportunity through enterprise' and we have the evidence of journeys to and from Cheshire that young people have made in search of opportunity. In 2011-2012 we supported the Journeys to Cheshire project but our collections also witness journeys from Cheshire ...

Our Wright family of Bollington collection includes correspondence home to Cheshire as members of the same family set out to build new lives in New Zealand and Canada. The 1871 census records joiner and carpenter Alfred with his wife and young family at home in Bollington.

On 30th August 1883 Alfred and two of his sons, Charles and Phillip boarded the ‘Lady Jocelyn’ in Portsmouth. After she was damaged, put back to Portsmouth for repair for two and a half weeks, she faced bouts of atrocious weather until she arrived in New Zealand on 1st January 1884. When 18 year old Charles writes to his Aunt Mary, he comments: 

‘... do not expect to hear anything about our passage out, for my hair turns white every time I think of it. I assure you I was as thin as the shadow of a match when I landed instead of being fat’.

 In the same letter, we begin to understand more about what has motivated the men to take such risks: 

‘... all I can say is that I don’t regret coming in the least, because a working man has a chance here, while in the old country if he must live at all respectable he can’t save much.’ 

It is Charles who seems particularly taken with New Zealand. In a letter to his sister, Martha Ann, he remarks that he doesn’t want to go home. He tells her that he ‘... likes this beautiful land better then the old country’ and goes on to make a case for Martha Ann to travel to New Zealand and take advantage of the ‘... benefits of this glorious land’.

Alfred writes affectionately to his family back home, with letters dedicated to each family member individually. In a letter written to his sons, John and Samuel, back in England, Alfred describes his journey aboard the Lady Jocelyn. He writes extensively about flying fish, dolphins, porpoises, whales and even sharks - ‘... it bit a thick rope in two as easily as Martha Ann snaps her thread with her teeth’. Compared to his letters to his wife and daughter, the letter to his sons is rather more grisly in its descriptions!

The men also relate their experiences of the native population. In one instance, Charles describes a Maori work colleague as ‘... a full blooded Maori, but so well educated, he speaks the best English I ever heard...’. Alfred describes in detail what he has learned of Maori culture in a letter to his wife Ann.

But later in 1884, in a letter to his sister Mary, Alfred states that although he likes New Zealand very much, he has decided to return home to be with his family. He affectionately refers to his wife as ‘... the best of wives’. It would appear that the distance between the couple proved too much for him to bear. He returned to England with Phillip, but without Charles on 4th January 1885.

In 1886, New Zealand suffered a major volcanic eruption. The eruption of Mount Tarawera was documented by Charles in a letter to his mother and father in July 1886. He describes how the fearful eruptions at Tarawera and the Hot Lake district had resulted in ‘... great loss of life’. He goes on to say that it is believed that the worst is over and he is comparatively safe from harm. 

Charles frequently discusses national and cultural events at length, and of course continues to relay personal news to his family back home. One particularly notable event was his marriage to Leah in 1886, where he describes the event as ‘...something now worse than earthquakes, volcanoes and almost everything in the history of New Zealand’!

Although later letters home begin to suggest that unemployment was becoming an issue, not only for Charles, but for the country as a whole, and his family ‘back home in the old country’ were sorely missed, Charles Wright appeared to be settled, contented and happy with his decision to stay in New Zealand.

1485 - the record keeper's dilemma!

In a week of remarkable revelations about the life and death of Richard III comes evidence from Chester's medieval records of how local government responded to regime change - with understandable caution!

One of our regular researchers using the Sheriffs Pentice Court Rolls was stunned to find a piece of political commentary. The Pentice Court in Chester, named after the building it was held in, dealt largely with cases of debt and trespass and the records of its proceedings are dry and factual. Dates are recorded using regnal years, the format refers to the year of the monarch's reign. But in bringing a case against one man after the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 the clerk needed to refer back to events when Richard III was king. He notes the offence in the year 3 Richard III, and presumably so that there can be no question as to the court's loyalties by the end of August, after 3 Richard III appears a note 'de facto non de iure' - expressing the opinion that Richard had reigned in practice but not in law!

The use of regnal years also appears to have posed similar problems for clerks compiling the Mayor's Books around the time of Henry VII's invasion up to the events at Bosworth Field on 22nd August.

One matter before the Mayor is dated by the feast of St Peter ad Vincula 3 Richard III so, 1st August, 1485. By the time of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, the 15th August, the regnal year is ignored completely and the clerk chooses to use roman numerals instead. By the end of August and the 'Beheading of John the Baptist' on the 29th, 1 Henry VII appears along with a numeric 1485 for the last time, and the system reverts to regnal years once more.

Records of a month's routine administration in Chester, the fascinating evidence of people trying to keep pace with fast-moving national events!

The Dew Family of Chester

Whilst checking a baptism entry in the Chester St Mary parish register, an unusual name stood out from all others on the page. ‘Evening Dew’ was baptised on 24th February 1884 to parents Henry and Ellen Dew of 36 Pyecroft Street in Chester. Such an unusual name prompted the question...’what if they have a family member called Morning Dew?’ This was too interesting to ignore! So follows the story of the Dew family of Chester...

Henry, a stone mason by trade, and Rose Ellen King were married in Clerkenwell, Middlesex in 1868. They went on to have six children, five of which survived into adulthood. The first child to be born was named Rosina Dew in 1869, born in Farnham, Essex, followed by Henry Dew born in Lymm, Warrington in 1873. These two children were baptised in Chester St Mary in 1874, prompting the conclusion that Henry senior and Rose Ellen moved from Clerkenwell to Lymm and then Chester, all within in the years 1868 and 1874.


Along with Rosina and Henry junior, their younger brother ‘Morning Dew’ was baptised in Chester St Mary on 25th May 1874. We did a few double takes, but the name is definitely right and the question which prompted this search was answered. Evening Dew did indeed have a sibling called Morning Dew!

This was not the end of the discovery of unique names in the Dew family legacy. Henry and Rose Ellen went on to have another daughter, Rose Ellen King Dew baptised at Chester St Mary in 1879. This was however, after the birth of the couple’s third son, Mynott King Hercules Dew! Mynott was baptised in Chester St Mary on 5th June 1876.

All of the Dew children bar one went on to marry in Chester. Unfortunately Evening Dew died aged 8 months in 1884. Even more unfortunate was the discovery of the death of Henry senior in 1883 aged just 39 years. Both father and child are buried together in Overleigh cemetery, although the evidence suggests that neither met in life and were only united after their deaths. Rose Ellen Dew (nee King) was still alive aged 60 in the 1911 census living with her daughter Rose Ellen King Turner and her family. She is listed as a widow, so it appears Rose Ellen never re married after Henry’s death.

Although an abrupt and sad end to Henry senior and his young child Evening’s lives, he did leave a family whose names definitely do not go unnoticed! I wonder whether they started a family tradition and continued using such curious names?