Liverpool
27th Oct. 1855.
My Dear Father,
It is now only a week since you went away & consequently you may be sure that we I have not a very great deal to say. In the first place for I know you wish to hear how we all are firstly I am very sorry to say that mother is not very well, having caught a severe cold on Thursday while going to the grocers & she will have to lie up for a day or two, when I have no doubt she will have quite recovered. As for the rest of us we are all in prime condition, as I hope this letter will find you.
After leaving you we got on board a steamtug & it took poor Parry & myself some time to get round in fact Parry did not recover until he got on terra firma. William stood it manfully, not having been sick only very very squeamish all the time.
I am afraid that your position did not improve after we left you, as we heard from Leopold that the steamer was obliged to leave about an hour & a half after us leaving the friends of the Coopers on board. What a fit they would be in. I don't know when they got home but Leopold said you put them on board a schooner off Holyhead at 8 o'clock on Monday morning. I am not at all sorry that we left when we did for we should have been sick all the time.
We shall be waiting anxiously for a letter to know how you got on after leaving Holyhead. It has been very stormy here almost all the week.
Mother told me to say that you had forgotten the flat irons which she did not find out for two or three days after you were gone. I hope you have another set.
We send this letter & also a lot of newspapers by the Sarah Horne (Captain Thompson) which sails at 12 today. The Elizabeth (Captain Todd) will be going in about a week when we will write again.
There has been no particular war news lately except as you will see by the paper that the allies have taken Kinburn at the mouth of the Dneiper & that Ochakoff has capitulated. There seemed to be great preparations for something or other & Mr Purdie tells us they have an order for 10 gun boats & a mortar battery & another firm, Richardson I think, has an order for 100 gun boats, & whether they fight or not they seem to be spending plenty of money in preparations.
In a month on Monday next, I shall have completed my 7 years when I suppose I shall have to make fresh arrangements with the "powers that be." It is not the pleasantest thing to do, but I have no doubt I shall be able to manage pretty well.
Grandmother, Aunt, James & Ann are all quite well but do not know I am writing so there are no messages from them. James was at French last night but I forgot to tell him.
Mother was at James's on Thursday & does not think Baby is so well, she thinks she has gone thinner already.
You must please excuse this letter of nothing as you know a week does not afford much scope for anything new. Please do not forget the little curiosities if any come in your way.
Hoping that you have had a good passage & beaten the Garland which was not far ahead, she being off Tusker when you were off Holyhead. With joining to the love of mother & all the others that of your affectionate son
Capt Goffey
Thos Goffey
| The Sacrificial Egg, from Girls at War, Chinua Achebe. "Some of the beautiful young women you see squeezing through the crowds [at Umuru Market] are not people like you or me but mammy-wota who have their town in the depths of the river, " she said. "You can always tell them, because they are beautiful with a beauty that is too perfect and too cold. You catch a glimpse of them with the tail of your eye, then you blink and look properly, but she has already vanished in the crowd." |
Captain James's blotting paper from the Tapley. It was his final voyage. He died on the voyage and was buried on Snake Island in the Calabar River. His possessions, sold at auction to the rest of the crew, and
listed right, raised £36 /15s/9d. James's death was, according to the ship's surgeon, "the result of long continued intemperance." Family loyalty, however, obliges me to point out that ship's surgeons were not always overburdened with qualifications at this time, nor did they have any particular reputation for sobriety.  |
| "
... most seamen lead, if one may so express it, a sedentary life.
Their minds are of the stay-at-home order, and their home is always
with them - the ship; and so is their country - the sea." Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness. |
1 Table Cloth
1 Pilot Cloth Vest
9 Singlets
4 Flannel Drawers
2 " Shirts
4 Jackets (2 White)
2 Vests
17 Prs Worsted Stockings (7) & Socks (10)
15 Prs Linen Trousers
1 " Drill Trousers
5 " Cloth "
2 " Duck "
2 Linen Blouses
2 Cloth Coat
1 Black Alpaca Coat
1 Brown Alpaca Coat
4 Prs Blankets
1 Counterpane
4 Vests
4 Pillow Cases
7 Prs Braces
2 Comforters
1 Hair Mattress & Pillow
24 Shirts
3 Black Silk Handkerchiefs
11 Cotton Packet "
7 Towels
3 Clothes Bags
1 Trunk
4 Old Hats + One Black Hat & 2 Rain Hats
1 Blue Cloth Top Coat
1 Black Frock "
3 Monkey Jacket
6 Prs Boots
3 Pr New Shoes
2 Prs Cavalry Slippers
3 Shoes Brushes
4 Bars of Soap
2 Palms
A Quantity of Fish Hooks & Sail Needles
A Bag Containing a Quantity of Needles. Thread Buttons & Sail Needles
| Journal of a Voyage to
Bonny River, R.M. Jackson [a ship's surgeon from Birkenhead, on his first voyage to Africa] Bonny River 1st Feb. 1826 My dear H. Three weeks residence here, have not tended much to give me a more favourable idea of Bonny. Our ship is moored, & appropriately fitted out for the Season of her stay in this river. She has a house over her, built of sticks and mats to protect us from the heat of the Sun, & the Men & Officers have so little intercourse with the other vessels in the Harbour (which are similarly situated) that she may very properly be styled a floating Prison. |
2 Razors - Sharp - Shaving Box & Brush
Small Tooth Comb
Hair Brush & Comb
1 Sea Chest
Brace of Pistols
1 Raincoat & Pair of W-Proof Leggings
1 Sextant
1 Quadrant
Charts N. Atlantic
W. Coast Africa
Sth Geo Channel
2 Coast Charts
English Channel
Canaries & Azores
N Atlantic
Lighthouse/and Another
Parallel Ruler & Pair of Compasses
NORIES EPITOME & THOMPSONS TABLES
Ships Masters Assistant
Channel Sailing Directories
LAW OF STORMS
CHRONOMETER GUIDE
Lee's Manual & Another
Walker's Dictionary & Chamber's journal
£36 /15s/9d.
I don't actually know whether J & W Goffey did the grain run, but I do know that one of their ship's - the Austrasia - did, at least it did after they had sold it. In fact she was on a grain run (renamed the Melbourne and flying a Finnish flag) when she collided with an oil tanker and sank in about three minutes 25 miles off Fastnet in July, 1932.
In the 1901 Report from the Select Committee on Steamship Subsidies (I read it so you don't have to) Colonel Goffey provides an insight into the firm's day to day business:
"2865. What sort of material goes by sailing vessel rather than by steamer, say round the Cape of Good hope to Australia. I want to know what the sailing vessel trade consists of largely which is not taken by steamers?-
Salt, coal, bricks, iron of all sorts, earthenware and common cheap articles. The fine goods principally go by steamers. It is a very general trade. I cannot enumerate all the articles, but the rough, common, and cheap goods go by sailing vessels."
Links
Goffey Bibliography
Arthur Conan Doyle
The Captain of the "Pole Star"
and Other Tales at Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library
Memories and Adventures (Google Book Search)
Julian Treuherz on Herkomer's 'The Last Muster' (mp3/transcript/links).
(National Museums Liverpool)
Bushey Museum
Alice Oswald: Dart at Poetry Society.org
London Metropolitan Archives LMA H.M. Prison Wandsworth ACC/3444
"The Case of Warder Martin: Some Cruelties of Prison Life"
(Transcript of Oscar Wilde's letter to The Daily Chronicle newspaper after his release from Reading prison in 1897 at National Archives Learning Curve)
Liverpool : William Gilling, 1875.
IN MEMORIAM OF MRS. G.
[Widow of Capt. James]
Aged 66. Died, March 12, 1870.
In vain they gaze on the vacant chair,
Her rev’rend form is no longer there,
Those scanty tresses of silver grey,
Which marked the flight of each year away,
Those eyes late bright with affections glow,
Are now in the silent tomb laid low,
And sorrowing friends, with a saddened mien,
Think of her now as a friend that’s been.
[And so on. If you really must, you can read the rest here.]
SCHOOL DAYS
In an earlier chapter I mentioned the great friendship which had existed between my father and a Liverpool lawyer, Mr Thomas Goffey. His name was a much revered one in our house. What precisely Mr Goffey had done to kindle such feelings of gratitude we were never told, but my brother and I felt it must have been something very great to justify the reverence in which he was held, and to deserve the Christmas turkey sent him every year. And what a business this annual offering entailed! In the first place, Mr Goffey's turkey had to be of the very best and full enquiry had to be made round the neighbouring farms beforehand in order to get satisfaction on this point. A satisfactory choice was finally made and the precious prize bird duly delivered at 'Highgate' at the appointed time; then came the packing and despatch, followed in due course by a warm letter of thanks from Mr Goffey. None of us children ever met him, although we were on one occasion told that Mr Goffey might be calling round to pay us a visit. We were dressed up for the occasion and loitered about uneasily to see him drive up in his carriage and pair, but he never turned up nor do I remember hearing why not. Even so, Mr Goffey remained on his pedestal just the same and this little disappointment did not shake our belief that a person who could evoke such feelings as he did must be a very good man indeed. Incidentally, we also gathered that he was earning £300 a year, which we regarded in those days as a very substantial income, and additionally that he was paid 3s 6d for every professional letter he wrote. We all agreed that a career producing such fine results was the very one for Dafydd.
Harry Goffey, by Oliver Pemsel. (Detail)
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Dictionary of British Artists 1880-1940
portrait and landscape painter, etcher,GOFFEY, Harry; oil and watercolour mezzotint artist; formerly sec. Bushey School of Painting; b Liverpool, 31 May 1871; s of Alfred Goffey. Wholesale Grocer; m Elinor Semple; six s one d. Educ Liverpool Inst., Merchant Taylors’ School. Studied art Liverpool School of Art, Herkomer’s, Chelsea Polytechnic. Exhbd at R.A., Liverpool, Manchester. Work published etchings and colour mezzotints (Alfred Bell and J. F. E. Grundy). Principal works A Lady With Chrysanthemums (oil), Pinkie, Warren Hastings (Lawrence), Laughing Cavalier (Hals), (mezzotints). Recreations read- ing, walking, change of work. Address 95 Cross Oak Rd, Berkhamstead, Herts. Signs work "H, Goffey"’ (written for engravings, block letters for paintings). |
The Studio, February, 1912
Elinor Goffey, by Oliver Pemsel. (Detail)
| Liverpool 15th September 1839. " ... Sarah is writing by the same ship I shall send this by
so you will hear from her of the children they are all well and so is
my Mother and she sends her best love to you and hopes you are well.
Sarah says she forgot to send you word that Polly is quite well and
says so many fresh words and the day after you sailed she began to say
"Scratch Poll's head" and continues to say it very plain ... " Extract from letter to James Goffey on his first voyage as Captain, from his sister, Martha. The letter reached James on the Brig Gannet in the Bonny River, Africa on 19th Jan 1840. |
| Extract
from statement by Geo. Harcourt submitted to Parlt. in 1897 in protest
against the proposed Watf. Edgware and Lond. Railway. [Quoted in The Herkomer Art School 1883-1900, Grant Longman.] 1897 was the year Jock was born (pictured below, bottom right) at 7 Rudolph Terrace on a site now occupied by Bushey Museum. “… The Herkomer School for Artists is the only school of the description in the United Kingdom. There are of course numerous schools of Art in London & various provincial towns but this is the only school of importance established in a rural district. From an Artist’s point of view Bushey is peculiarly attractive. The school of course is the principal feature but, apart from this the rural character of the District, the uninterrupted landscape, the quiet & other surrounding charms of the country are everything that can be desired. It is owing to these advantages that the well known artistic colony has sprung up in Bushey during the last few years. Bushey is now for the most part populated by Artists or Art Students, not only are they householders to a considerable extent but they are distributed all over the village & neighbourhood wherein lodgings are to be found, & it is estimated that nearly 200 people are permanently engaged in this profession in & around Bushey. This number is considerably increased in the summer months by Artists & Students coming to the school for the Summer Term of instruction. The advantages for sketching provided by the surrounding country causes them to settle in the village where they take rooms and remain, even after the course of instruction, often for months pursuing their work, & there is not the slightest doubt that the shopkeepers & tradespeople & small householders generally in Bushey are mainly dependent upon the Artists for their livelihood …” Extract from letter from Mary Pemsel (nee Goffey) in Bushey Museum archive . Harrogate Jan. 9. '77 Dear Mr White I was most interested to receive your letter which sparked off a whole train of nostalgic reminiscences of early childhood, spent in and around the studios used by Herkomer's pupils and followers. My mother (nee Semple) was also a student and the godmothers of most of our large family seemed to be drawn from the ranks of student friends.   | Bushey, 2003 I’ll spare you the complete diary entry for 15 October 2003. But it was apparently a “quietly inspirational afternoon of travel card tourism.” I noted that it took 17 minutes to get to Bushey from Euston (no thanks to the art school who campaigned vociferously against railway expansion at the end of the nineteenth century). I also noted that it wasn't technically travel card tourism as it had cost me £3.20 to get to Bushey Station from the outskirts of Zone 6 and that we were overtaken by a Virgin train called - ominously - Mission Impossible. I had come in search of Harry's studio and for some clue as to why he had swapped Liverpool for London's north western hinterland and the majestic Mersey for an unpredictable Chiltern chalk stream, once rumoured to have harboured a trout, but now with barely enough current to feed a watercress bed. (I'm jumping ahead here, to Berkhamsted, where, after vacillating between Bushey and Liverpool, the family finally settled in 1910; though Harry continued to commute to his studio in Bushey on a 1903 Quadrant motorcycle.) But even before I reached Bushey high street I had begun to find the answer to my question. My walk, from Merry Lundow's excellent Shire book Discovering Country Walks in North London, took me through St. James’s church yard before emerging in the high street next to something not at all unlike a village pond. In the church yard I came across a quietly imposing tomb. A brass plaque had leached turquoise in to the surrounding stone which was decorated with carved classical pillars above steps covered in lichen and moss, like blobs of powdery colour on an artist's palette. It was the last earthly resting place of Hubert Herkomer, Painter and Teacher, his second wife, Lulu and his father, Lorenz, Wood Carver. I would later find out that the churchyard is fairly stuffed with artists.  As soon as I got home, I searched the web. Why not search it before and save myself a travelcard (and £3.20) you may ask? The truth of the matter is you can't beat good old fashioned detective work. That usually involves pavements. I like to sniff a place out, follow my nose, climb some contours: the last being not something easily avoided in Bushey. Its long high street gains 100m in altitude over the 4km trudge from the River Colne to Bushey Heath, the highest point in Middlesex. Anyway, you can't intuit at a desk. Daydreams are constricted. You have the world's knowledge at your fingertips, you can study digital copies of every painting in the major galleries - and many that don't even have wall space. You can get software to read you this and that biography whilst you groom the dog or pick fluff out of your navel. You can study the street plan from space; view the topography in 3d, print out census returns for every single house over five decades, but it wouldn't teach you as much as a momentary glance from the top deck of the 142 as it descends from the clouds with the valley flood plane spread in the distance like an inland sea viewed from a chalk cliff. As soon as I found the Bushey Museum web page, the penny dropped. My great grandfather was not alone. He was part of a community of artists who thrived in and around Bushey at the turn of the twentieth century. In fact, Bushey had been an artist magnet even before a charismatic and talented Bavarian-born artist arrived on the scene in the 1880s and set about spreading the name of an unassuming Hertfordshire village, strange as it may seem today, right around the world.  |
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| Notes from The Bracket Clock, Dennis Goffey"Father
had a studio down a hollow sounding passage from Clay Hill -- a
delightful place with a lot of work in clay, a lay figure, easels, huge
paintings, charcoal and pastel drawings and a smell of poppy oil and
turpentine (which was real in those days)." * "Father's artwork never appealed to me as a child, except that I liked the smell, but it was often hung in the Royal Academy, where its serious merits were appreciated. His real gift was for watercolour, which never sold. He was quick, with a marvelous eye for colour and a vigorous, first time technique. I was often with him when he went out sketching ... In 1913 he took me on a four-day excursion to Bruges, to visit the Great Ghent Exhibition, which included work by all the foremost modern artists. He admired Monet and Seurat, but expressed contempt for Futurists. His favourite painters were Turner, Constable and Corot and he had a weakness for Whistler." * "In 1915, father took an office job in London for the duration of the war ... [After the war] Uncle Alfie [Alfred Goffey] came south and helped father start a copperplate printing business. The dining room was taken up by a press, tables, and a large polished stone for grinding inks."
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James & Caroline Shepherd
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James
Shepherd's Metropolitan Police pension record is perhaps not especially
interesting. Much of the information can be gleaned elsewhere. But it
does add colour, and indeed scale, to our b&w photo. On his
retirement from the police on 30 November 1908 he was 54 years old and
had served as a Constable in V Corps, Wandsworth Division, for twenty
five years with unblemished record. He stood 5 ft 9 inches tall, had "dark brown by grey" hair, hazel eyes and a fresh complexion. He had joined the police at Great Scotland Yard on 26 November 1888. In December that year the new police station at the bottom of West Hill opened. James was one of its original occupants, although I doubt he spent very much time in doors. This was the olden days, remember? He'll have been out catching wronguns, cuffing young offenders round the ear, and bawling out cab drivers taking the hill too fast.  |
William Bartlett
hammock, from the Carib hamorca, a type of native bed, and the bed of the naval seaman for hundreds of years, but not any longer, as the modern seaman sleeps in a bunk. The hammock was invented, it is said, by Alcibiades, but its introduction in ships dates from the time of Christopher Columbus who noted that the natives of the Carib islands used them slung between trees. The maritime version is made of canvas with a row of small eyelet holes at each end through which are rove nettles which spread from a ring. When used on board, hammocks were slung from hooks in the deck beams. When not in use they were lashed up, with the blankets inside them, by nine turns of a rope. In the days of sailing warships, hammock nettings, protected by quarter-cloths, were placed along the sides of the upper deck and along the break of the poop so that the hammocks in them could act as a protection from musket fire from an enemy ship during battle. They were also stowed like this so that they would float free in the event of being sunk in battle, as a properly lashed hammock could support the weight of a man in the water for a considerable time. "hammock" The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea. Ed. I. C. B. Dear and Peter Kemp. Oxford University Press, 2007.Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Camden Libraries. 12 February 2009 <http://www.oxfordreference.com/views /ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t225.e1203>    |
| Alice Oswald, Dart. [Excerpt] "all the way from Iceland, from the Faroes, a three-sea-winter fish coming up on the spate, on the full moon, when the river spreads out a thousand feet between Holne and Dartmeet and he climbs it, up the trickiest line, maybe maybe down-flowing water has an upcurrent nobody knows" Whilst I’d picked up a few facts about William Bartlett, I still had nothing resembling a narrative. I had found out that he had been orphaned before the age of thirteen and sent to work as a farm servant leaving his younger siblings in the Union Workhouse at Newton Abbot. I’d also been able to piece together some dates for his career as a prison warder at Wandsworth: 1882 to 1920 (a double-life sentence). But he doggedly refused to present himself to me as anything other than a most spectral presence. Somehow, between Alice Oswald’s poem, “Dart” and Andrew Motion’s “Fresh Water,” which he wrote for a friend who drowned when the Marchioness sank, I could only really visualize my great grandfather as a kind of spectral salmon, swimming from the Wandle via the estuarine Thames, passing Beachy Head lighthouse at dawn, resting at Portland Bill (he had married a Purbeck girl from a quarrying family…or to be more precise two of them: sisters, though he wasn't a bigamist) and finally ascending the Dart on the full moon, November 1920: a wiry sixty-two-winter fish and the river in full spate. He had witnessed the incarceration of Oscar Wilde, the execution of a German spy, and the imprisonment of conscientious objectors, to name just the most lurid events that occurred at HMP Wandsworth during his long career. But nothing seemed to tell his story. Or to be strictly accurate, nothing made me want to tell his story. That is until I came across Colvin. |
"Confidential Letter Book" For Governor’s use only Wandsworth 18th Dec [19]16 Principal Warder Michael Brown
On the morning of Sunday, the 17th instant, at 6:30 am a prisoner in the cell adjoining that of Convict Watson rang his bell and reported to the night patrol that there was something wrong in the cell next to him. It was there found that Watson was wedged in a hole that he had made in his cell wall, so that he could move neither backward nor forward. His legs were suspended outside and after a little while he was extricated. The prisoner had made a cap and jacket from material issued to him for Admiralty Hammocks, and broken up his bed board and had thrown them all. It seems that he intended to lash the pieces of bed board together after getting out of his cell [and using] them to assist him getting over the boundary wall. It is hardly likely that his escape would have been so effected. The only tools in his cell were a pair of scissors and a marlin spike which are necessary in the making of Admiralty Hammocks. I enclose statements from other officers concerned. In view of the difficulty of ascertaining when the articles were made I am unable to bring home to this officer the charge of neglect. It will be seen he went off duty at 12:15 pm on Saturday, the 16th instant, and I cannot ascertain when the articles were made. Prin_Wdr_Brown's general character is good and I have found him trustworthy and efficient in the performance of his duties. Captain P. Green |
P.Y. Betts People Who Say Goodbye Memories of Childhood pp. 26-27 Souvenir Press, 1989 "The domain of crime was the prison which, with its ancillary buildings, was as big as a village, whole streets of warders' houses and big houses with gardens for the Governor, chaplain, doctor. There was a cordon sanitaire of open ground around it, leased off to bowls and tennis clubs. Opposite our house was a rough field with a footpath leading away into the prison hinterland, whence sallied forth at times a hooligan family of red-haired boys, warders' children, to terrorise clean little prep school boys in their grey flannels. Neighbours tut-tutted about these boys, who seemed ripe for imprisonment themselves. Occasionally an active prep school father would catch and beat one of the redheads, as could be lightly undertaken in those days without fear of a suit for assault. Bad boys were not easy to catch, but once taught, they could be beaten-that was the way of it then." |
"Confidential Letter Book" For Governor’s use only Wandsworth 18th Dec [19]16 [Warder] Grade 1 Wm Bartlett not discovering that a convict had a cap and jacket in his posession contrary to regulations as explained in the letter forwarding report against Prin Wdr Brown, a convict was found at 6.30 am on Sunday morning, the 17th instant, wedged in a hole which he had made in his cell wall, and from which he was unable to free himself. Warder Bartlett was in charge of the landing up to 12.15pm on Saturday 16th instant and states that all was correct when he went off duty. I am unable to ascertain when the cap and coat were made, but it is quite possible that they were completed after Warder Bartlett left at 12.15pm. The officer's general character is good and I regard him as trustworthy and efficient. Captain P. Green |
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| The Western Front, 1916 Sir Sidney Colvin (1845-1927)'s post bag reads like a veritable Who's Who of Arts and Letters in late Victorian England. John Ruskin had been a family friend when Colvin was growing up in Suffolk and London, and, as an adult, Colvin counted Thomas Hardy, George Eliot, Joseph Conrad and (most closely) Robert Louis Stevenson among his friends; as well as the artists Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. When Stevenson set off for the South Seas, Colvin accompanied him as far as Tilbury docks. Stevenson's letters to Colvin, a journal of his time in the Pacific, were edited by Colvin, and published as Valima Letters: Being Correspondence Addressed by Robert Louis Stevenson to Sidney Colvin, 1890-1894. On 7th September 1916, whilst Harry Goffey was still frantically trying to piece together news of his son, missing in action on the Western Front since 3rd September, William Watson, a "carpenter", from Paddington, London, aged 32, five foot six with brown hair, was convicted on two counts of housebreaking, and sentenced to five years penal servitude on each indictment to run concurrently. Watson was, as the saying goes, a career criminal and had form dating back nearly two decades. He had a string of convictions for theft as well as for pimping and assault. His manor stretched from Paddington out to Kensington with a strong preference for the icing sugar villas around Kensington Gardens; the sort of properties now occupied by high commissions, d-list royals, and Russian entrepreneurs. When the September sessions opened at the Old Bailey in 1916, one potential juror was excused "on the ground that he was busily engaged in a war office contract for the supply of 64 million cigarettes." I suspect it didn't have any bearing on the outcome of the trial. Judge Atherley-Jones had been Liberal MP for NW Durham and was the son of the Chartist, Ernest Jones, who had spent time in prison, sentenced at the very same court in 1848 to two years for sedition. In fact, Atherley-Jones's earliest memory was visiting his father in gaol at Tothill Fields. Childhood visitors to his house included Marx and Engels, Mazzini and Feargus O'Connor. And in another neat literary twist, Atherley-Jones lends his name, albeit in a slightly disguised form, to Conan Doyle's bumbling detective - Athelney Jones of Scotland Yard - in The Sign of Four. Watson was found guilty of "breaking and entering the dwelling house of Sir Sydney Colvin knight (sic) and stealing therein a rose bowl and other articles, his property." We can perhaps infer that Colvin was absent at the time, as Watson's MO was not incompatible with violent persuasion when interrupted in the course of his professional engagements. One of the other victims was not so lucky. A fact reflected in the harsh sentence handed down by Judge Atherley-Jones. Watson was led away to begin his sentence at Wandsworth Prison where he was admitted between a soldier given six months hard labour for bigamy and a shoemaker given 25 days or £2 for assaulting a Police Constable. The shoemaker eventually stumped up a portion of the fine and was released 5 days early. Watson had no such escape route but he didn't intend it to stop him planning the earliest possible exit at his own pleasure. In the event, as the documents show, the only thing Watson succeeded in doing was putting my great grandfather in a less than charitable mood at the start of the festive season. Given the unutterable sadness of Christmas 1916 for many households (including the Goffeys, of course) such an event is small beer. In any case, William Bartlett was not found to have neglected his duty. But could Watson really have manufactured a cap and jacket and made a large (though not large enough) hole in the wall of his cell from scratch in an afternoon? There are many ironies in this story, not least of which is that Watson's punishment for the escape attempt was a transfer to Dartmoor, the wild landscape of my great grandfather's childhood, from which poverty had uprooted him like a storm spout and hurled him in to twentieth century suburban Wandsworth. Of course I've no idea whether my great grandfather ever felt sentimental about Dartmoor. But this much I do know. William Watson most certainly didn't. |
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