July 2004 Archives

During a panic-y trip to the local library (I've passed my first year for a change and am now terrified by how little I can recall about any of it), I stumbled across a rather odd informational poster.

Helping Kids Deal With Senile Dementia

"My grandad's great, even though he can't remember my name!"

Apparently the one non-memory reliant activity grandparent and small girl could do together was dancing.

I think I'd have found the whole thing pretty disturbing if someone had tried to use it reassure me that it didn't matter that grandad always smelled of wee and thought the second world war was still going on.

George - followed his father into bookmaking, but decided to do it in Paris where he became extremely wealthy. And then took to drink and died.

Walter - followed his brother's sterling example but managed not to take to drink and ended up training racehorses. Married a German who was "much larger than life". Had one eye after an incident with a shooting gallery at a fair due to it being the past. All his racehorses where nicked by the French government to pull guns in the first world war and he was ruined. "At the end of the war, he and Aunt Marie went to live in a little tiny flat in Paris, and your [my uncle's] grandmother and I went over there and had a splendid holiday and he showed us round Paris and took me to Longchamp where the big race was between an English horse and a French horse. We backed the English horse which won and that was absolutely splendid."

Tom - a highly respected solicitor in Hull. "He died on the golf course and I don't know anything more about that."

Alfred - Engineer Captain in the Navy. Married an actress named Sophie, remained a widower for many years after her death then married the widower of one Dr. Close, Emily. They "lived a dilettante sort of life" and he insisted on her being referred to as Emilia. My grandfather used to visit them in Scarborough for Christmas and it was "absolutely splendid".

Arthur - A doctor in Hull. Joined the medical corps in World War One and afterwards stayed on with hospital ship ferrying troops home. Went round the world and then returned to England and stayed with my great grandmother et al. Apparently, "he was very eccentric, he dressed like a tramp and then two days a week he'd put on civilised clothes and walk all the way into Hull to attend the university, second year botany." Lived somewhere called Smedley for very many years and "it was his habit to smoke in bed and he finally smoked once too often and set the bed on fire and that was the end of him. He had nobody to leave his money to and he had an estate then of forty thousand pounds and because he had been in loco parentis to us and mother had looked after him for twenty years or more we actually expected that he would leave us his money but instead he left it all to a charity- poor and needy scholars in Hull, and the education authority didn't really know what to do with the money because there were no poor and needy scholars in Hull and so that was that."

Sam - a chemist in London. Drinking himself to death, rescued by a concert pianist (who my grandfather appeared most enamored with from the descriptions on the tape) but she and their first child died in childbirth. Sam returned to drink "and that was the end of that."

Helen - married James Bremner, one of a long line of (apparently vaguely notable) Liverpudlian naval architects all called James Bremner because they were like that in the past; her daughter Mary Edith married a wealthy type named Thorsby who was supposedly once the minister for transport.

Due to the tape failing I don't know the name of the next sister, but at a guess the next two people mentioned are her children and she married a German named Wendt and had two children. Bertie Wendt was a permanent secretary at the ministry, got an OBE and was secretary of the international road congress. He later changed his name to Hart, and my grandfather seemed to think Bertie Hart of the ministry was a well known figure at one time. Cousin Alice was "more German than German and used to come and stay with us in Auckland Road and was the greediest person I've ever met in my life."

Polly - the matriarch of the Harts, apparently. Taught herself French, taught my grandfather golf, missed the Titanic by one day, and got run over by a taxi in Doncaster.

Florence - my great grandmother. Went to art school in Dresden and then married my great grandfather. Seemingly not much else worth mentioning.

Emily - "pretty and flighty". Was whisked away to Canada by an apple farmer and died of consumption shortly afterwards. Polly visited her on the boat that wasn't the Titanic.

He talks about six sisters so there may be another missing from near the start due to technical difficulties.

On return from university I dug out a tape I'd discovered at my mum's house last year and hadn't got round to listening to properly. The contents of this tape? My (late) paternal grandfather recounting the history of his and my grandmother's family. The three families of chief concern are the Jeffersons (obviously), the Harts and the Weibergs. My grandfather's mother's maiden name was Hart, and it was passed down as a middle name to my father, and then to me; the Weibergs were my paternal grandmother's family.

First, two Hull based great great grandparents:

Grandpa Jefferson [my great great grandfather] was a maker of Chronometers (?) and owned a shop on Fish Street, notable for having a roof mounted telescope for purposes of time calculation.

Grandfather Hart [also my great great grandfather, vague research indiates he was George Michael Hart. Ho.] "after throwing his carpet bag on the quayside on arrival from Australia" became a bookmaker in Hull. Bookmaking not being the most proper of activities at the time (mid 19th century, presumably), the shop was Hart's Hatters of Hull, and was near Whitefriar Gate.

[More bookmakers and drunks later...]