John Rose and his tithe offering at St Marys church

Many of you will know that my favourite ancestor is my 3 x great grandfather John Rose 1804-1884 of Southampton.  I recently researched and wrote a 19 page booklet about him.

My quest started when I made contact with Moira, my fourth cousin in Cornwall, who I met in Dorchester for the first time last Saturday.  Moira had sent me a news clipping from the 1930s, celebrating an event which took place in 1839 at St Marys Church, Southampton.

My ancestors would have walked through this door

In 1836 England introduced the Tithe Commutation Act which replaced the ancient system of payment of tithes in kind (for example, produce) with monetary payments.  So the issue of the fairness or otherwise of tithes was a significant issue in 1839 when this incident took place.

By 1839, John Rose had sired ten sons by his wife Isabella, and no daughters.  Only one had died in early childhood.  He named his 10th son, baptised on 9th September 1838 at St Marys Church: Guilford North Rose, after the church rector, Francis North, 6th Earl of Guilford.

The rector, Francis North was the formal rector of a number of churches in Hampshire, and was in the habit of giving an annual sermon once a year, where he collected the tithes due to him.  For the rest of the year, the church was left in the hands of a curate who was paid a lowly salary.

On the appointed day, John Rose approached the rector with his tenth son in his arms, handed him to the Earl and suggested he take the child as John Rose's tithe.  The Earl had been fussing over the babe, but upon hearing John Rose's request, promptly handed him back.

John Rose later wrote a poem, which he sold very successfully as a pamphlet.  Here it is:










A letter to the Hon. And Rev. the Earl of Guil(d)ford (sic), Wiltshire Park, Dover

I’m certain your Lordship would hardly suppose
You’d receive an Epistle in verse from JOHN ROSE
Well-known in Southampton, whiled courting the muse,
As Father of Children and Vendor of News.

Ah, hinc illoe Lachrymoe! One thing is sure.
Though in young ones I’m rich, in the pocket I’m poor.

Sad drawback it is on connubial joys
Ten bantlings to rear – and the whole of them boys,
Everyone of them hearty, my Lord, and no question
With appetites keen and unfailing digestion;
And who, as to eating, though not over-nice,
Would make a sirloin disappear in a trice.
Your feelings, my Lord, I had no wish to shock
When I offered you lately a TITHE OF MY FLOCK –
A fine chubby lad which, as flower of the crew.
Guildford North I have christened him, in honour of you.

And I fervently hope, though the last of the race,
That – much honoured name he will never disgrace.
Now, My Lord, it would make my paternal heart glad
If you’d kindly consent to provide for the lad,
And to the rich bower, where your lordship reposes,
Would transplant this fair sample, the Flower of the ROSES.

But your Lordship may say: “Now my feelings you touch,
And truly John Rose, you are asking too much.
Were I to provide for each brat that is born,
Every ROSE in the lot would be turned to a thorn,
And the whole of the wealth of the County of Hants,
Would be quite insufficient to cover their wants.

This poem and a covering story was provided to the Southern Daily Echo by Mrs Frederick (Amy) Walbridge, a daughter of Guil(d)ford North Rose 1838-1900 in the 1930s.  She well remembers her grandfather John Rose and her father having a chuckle about this story, especially when discussion of tithes arose.

When Ange and I went to look at the church yesterday and try and find the graveyard and parish workhouse, we were yet again astonished that this church was not destroyed in the 1940 blitz of Southampton.  It is surrounded by buildings dated from the 1960s, a sure sign of the extensive bombing in that area.

John Rose's father Simon Rose was buried in the churchyard in 1820, but there is no sign of any graves.

SeaCity at Southampton

Linda and Peter, Ange and Paul - dear friends and cousins

This morning, Linda and Peter drove me down to Totton near the New Forest, where I am once again staying with Ange and Paul.

After a welcome cup of coffee, it was time to say goodbye till who knows when to Linda and Peter.  They'd love to come out to see me and Australia, but it's a bit of a worry in Europe right now.  But we'll definitely see each other again.  I love them heaps.

The old court house converted

As soon as they left to drive back to Sussex, Ange, Paul and I drove into Southampton to visit the SeaCity Museum.  This is a brand new museum which has replaced two older museums - the Maritime Museum and the God's House Museum.  This year is the anniversary - as if we didn't know - of the Titanic Disaster, and this museum is dedicated to just that, but is much more as well.  It has a history of the different groups of people who moved through Southampton on their way to somewhere else - soldiers off to war, Basque children coming temporarily in 1937, Russian emigrants arriving overland to travel to far off places, ten pound Poms on their way to Australia....

Replica of a 2nd class cabin on the Titanic

We had a very happy three hours wandering through the museum and all agreed that it would take two or three visits to see it all and maybe more to absorb it.

The vast majority of the crew of the Titanic - employees of the White Star Line - were residents of Southampton, and less than a third survived.  The dots show where these crew members who lost their lives lived.

As we came away, it started sprinkling, and now the rain is once more setting in, and the forecast is for it to keep up until at least I leave England - less than a week now.

In eight days time I will be home.

In just a couple of hours, Parramatta Computer Pals for Seniors will be holding their June monthly meeting, the second that I have missed.  I will be thinking of you all!

Exploring Southampton Old Town

Yesterday (Monday) the rain held off ALL DAY, which was lucky since we planned to explore the Old Town of Southampton, mostly but not all of it inside the ancient walls, which still stand in many places.

Southampton was badly bombed during World War II, particularly in 1940.  My Tucker great grand-father owned a musical instrument dealership in Upper Canal Walk, and although he had died in 1924 (predeceased by my grandfather in 1919), his much younger second wife was still running it when the war broke out.  It was completely destroyed in 1940, together with all the other shops in Canal Walk.

Additionally, most of East Street, a major commercial area adjacent to Canal Walk was badly bombed.  This is where my other great grandfather Robert Henry Reed had one of his bakeries prior to his death in 1915.  During the war, his widow and three of his daughters were running the tea room, which may have been in the East Street shop.  Yet to sort that one out.

But even worse, for the people of Southampton, many of the important buildings were badly damaged or completely destroyed.  These included the churches of Holyrood, St Johns and St Lawrence.  Many sections of the ancient walls were destroyed.  Overall 600 civilians and 900 buildings were destroyed in Southampton.

So even the old city is full of sixties style apartment blocks both Council built and owned and private, with many of the older ruins scattered in between, and luckily some of the ancient buildings which survived the bombing.  For instance, St Michael's Church seemed to have escaped entirely, unlike its sister churches.

My ancestors lived in Vyse Lane off French Street for over 20 years between 1849 and 1871, and the Lane is still there, but most of it is unrecognisable.

Wellington Hotel and Vyse Lane

The Duke of Wellington pub is still there, but all the cottages have disappeared, maybe well before 1940, because by the 1880s, the area was pitiful, with many houses overcrowded, unhygenic and almost falling down.




Most respectable families had moved Above Bar to the north of the town.  This included my Reed family - my grandmother was one of six daughters of the master baker who had three bakeries and a tea room by the 1890s.

Even John Rose moved a few streets away to Westgate, but still within the old town and nearer to the Town Pier.


He would have felt very comfortable there.  Unlike his sons, most of whom seemed to want to better themselves, John Rose preferred to remain anti-establishment, and seemed far more at home amongst the poor town labourers and in the beer houses.

We also visited the Tudor House Museum in Bugle Street.  This was built during the Tudor times in the 1500s, but has had many uses.  It has been a museum since 1911, but has recently been extensively renovated and brought into the 21st century with a great sound and light show in the banquet room.

Unfortunately the lift to the upper floors stuck, with Paul upstairs, and so we were given our entry fee back.  Almost worth it.  Anyway, they were very good at resolving the problem, and explaining to the staff how the lift worked.

Yes, that's me in the stocks.

And wearing a silly outfit.

Old and the new, with Paul.

Considering the damage, Southampton City Council has done a good job of redesigning the Old Town and minimising the traffic to mostly residents.  New buildings these days must be sympathetic to the remaining buildings.

Diamond Jubilee celebrations at Totton

Pity about the weather, but the Poms are used to having lots of it, and it certainly didn't dampen our spirits down here at Totton where Ange and Paul and I started with a huge English breakfast.  Here it is!

This included black pudding, which I did not like, and refused to eat any more of after Ange told me what was in it.... Answer at the bottom of this post.

I couldn't finish my plate, and neither could Paul.  We noted that Ange gave herself a smaller helping but was most insistent we finish ours!

Ange's high tea

Understandably we had no lunch.  The mothers (Paul's mother Bette and Ange's mother Enid) were invited for the high tea which was to follow the watching of the Queen's parade of boats on the Thames.  Here are a couple of photos from the BBC, which I photographed on the TV.

You can see the Queen in white on the barge

Tower Bridge opening

Ange's son Robert and his girlfriend Soozy joined us for the party.

Those English strawberries were simply delicious.

The sandwiches included Coronation Chicken, and salmon and cucumber.

I did the Royal wave and high-fived Robert.

That's Bette at the end of the table.  She was born in the same year as the queen.

We had a great day, as you can see in this photo.

Later, Ange's older son Christopher, a train driver and his wife Sarah, a photographer came over for coffee and cake.






Answer: Oats and pig's blood.

Southampton with Ange and Paul

My cousin Linda has met Ange at last!  They've been hearing about each other for the past four years, since John and I met them and their husbands Peter and Paul in 2008.  And in 2009 I stayed with both cousins.  Both offered to make them my base, which was lovely.

Linda and Peter drove me down to Ange and Paul's place yesterday morning on their way to Brixham in Devon where they have booked a week's holiday.  They like exploring new places.

The photo of Ange and me was taken three years ago during my last visit.  This is the resting place of my great great grandfather George Henry Rose who died in 1901.  His sister in law Hannah Moody was Ange's great great grandmother.  So we are 4th cousins, but also very best friends.  We have a great deal in common, even though Ange is 10 years younger.

Yesterday afternoon, after the obligatory visit to the tea shop for coffee and cake, Ange introduced me to the local library which is very small, but I stayed to look at their local history collection and found quite a few useful books.  Trouble is with the libraries and archives, they will be closed on Monday and Tuesday next week for the Queen's Jubilee long weekend.  Fortunately the local museums and historic houses are open on the public holidays, so we will save visiting them until next week.  Ange likes being a tourist so she will come too.

Later I wrote to the Southern Evening Echo since they have a section called Your Hampshire Heritage.  I don't know how many of you know that before I left home, I researched and wrote a 19 page story called John Rose 1805-1884: opposition town crier.  I found most of the information online on Ancestry (births deaths and marriages, baptisms) and even more important, a great deal of  information in the Hampshire Advertiser between the 1830s and 1880s.  This publication is now on line in The British Newspaper Archives .  I found information about two tragedies in the family (one a man-slaughter indictment, although resolved as a tragic accident; the other a drowning), as well as plenty of fines and at least two periods of imprisonment, one for libel.

John Rose

And would you believe?  I had a phone call this morning from the journalist who writes the Your Hampshire Heritage section, and he is most interested in my story.  I'd said to him that I was prepared to write a shorter version suitable for the paper, and he asked for a photo of John Rose, and he will send a photographer out to take a photo of me!  That may not happen until I come back down here about 15th June.

I hope the graphic designers at the Echo can improve this photo better than I could.  A very distant cousin told me the portrait was hanging on the wall at her parent's place, and kindly took a photo of it for me, the next time she went to visit the "olds".

So I'll be busy tonight crafting a shorter story, with a suitable angle.

This morning (it's still Tuesday here), Ange drove me into the Civic Centre, and we had another obligatory coffee at the SeaCity Museum, a new museum about Southampton's maritime history and in particular this year, the centenary of the Titanic disaster.  We didn't visit the museum since it is open on the weekend and the public holidays next week.

After visiting Tourist Information within the Library to find maps and a bus timetable, we found our way to the Southampton Archives.  This contains parish records and much besides.  I was disappointed to find that the reports of the Southampton Quarter Sessions - where John Rose appeared often to answer charges of assault and selling "unstamped" newspapers - were not available.  I shall have to check the newspapers in the library around the dates I want.  I could well have missed some of the reports.  I especially want to find a report of his libel case in 1839.

I did have some unexpected success though.  Whilst checking the card index of births and burials, I found that my ancestor did not have 15 natural children by his two wives.  He had 17!!!!  I and others thought that Isabella (c1807-1850) had 12 children by him.  But I found two extras - Robert and Caroline.  Both had been born and died between the 1841 and 1851 census, so there was no record of them without trawling through every Rose birth to in Southampton to check their parentage.  

John Rose had three more children by his second wife Hannah Rawlence Rose, whom he married in 1855. And she had brought a five year old son to the marriage.  Hannah died in 1871 aged just 40, even younger than her predecessor.  Both are buried with John Rose at the Southampton Old Cemetery.

I stayed at the Archives until it closed at 4.00pm and found my way home by bus, quite easy really.  

Ange is a great cook.  We had lamb shanks for dinner tonight.  My favourite!

Paul has been sunbaking for the past few days and is quite brown - he doesn't care about cancer it seems - obviously it's not as prevalent in Britain as it is in Oz.  He has a wheelchair that tilts right back like a bed (John would be jealous) and goes to sleep in the sun.

I thought you'd like to see a poem that was on an original flyer that is also on my Facebook friend and distant cousin's parents wall.  It is a flyer about a "benefit" night for John Rose at Southampton's Theatre Royal in 1860, and includes a ditty written by him.  I am still attempting to find out why he would have been given a benefit night.  Here it is:

My ancestors, my cousins and me

My great grandfather, Robert Henry Reed of Southampton.

I have an exceedingly close relationship with many of my ancestors, having spent so much time on the Internet finding out as much about their lives as I can.  I know a lot about some, and frustratingly little about others.  The more notorious they were, the more I know.  Others - especially the women - stayed well out of view, their education limited by their status in the family or their community or lack of ambition, their opportunity to hold office, to own property, pay taxes or to vote.  With few exceptions they were the working poor, surviving well enough to avoid entry to the workhouse.  If they were unfortunate enough to be born prior to 1837, they may or may not have been baptised and thus had a record of their existence.

I wonder too whether I would have liked them.  Which one of my ancestors or distant cousins would I have enjoyed spending time with? What did they look like?  It is so frustrating not to know. But at least I know where many of them lived, hence my recent visits to England.

The people I have befriended are the other drawcard.  Mostly these are cousins, although it starts to get ridiculous when your common ancestor was born in the mid-seventeen hundreds.  My dear friend Ange and I share an ancestor born in 1780.  Ange's folks have never moved from Southampton, unlike mine who moved to the other side of the world.  She and I clicked on Genes Reunited well before we met in 2008.

And then there is Linda.  Her father and mine were first cousins, and our maiden names were the same.  She is now more like a second sister.  We've spent some wonderful times together.

There is Ray, and his wife Trish - I've known about Ray since my childhood, since my dad and his father lived together when they were 10 and 12, and corresponded all their lives.  But I didn't meet him until 2003 when they visited us in Australia.  We've since met them twice.

And Olivia - she too is my second cousin.  I spent a lovely few days with Olivia, following the tracks of my errant grandfather at the family home at Godden Green near Sevenoaks in Kent, and at his place of work at Oxford University.

I hope to meet at least two more second cousins in England on this trip, one in London and another in Kent.