Gotts Blog Introduction

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This blog is part of the GOTTS Surname Family History, which contains: News and incidental articles in this Newsblog Main Gotts website with 360 pages describing where the surname occurs, Gotts Hall of Fame, War, Crime, etc (Click on ‘Gotts … Continue reading →

Edwardian life in London – 45

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Alfred Gotts commentary continued:

I was still living at home when I joined the army. I passed in the services as an army shoemaker, I was given a discharge as a satisfactory shoemaker. And I was used to army boots you see, they were heavy boots that time, and I became a bit of an expert in repairing ‘em. ‘Cos they got used to having them big scotch tips on the heels, like they do on the horses. And it was good practice for me. But when I came home out of the services I started more or less working for myself.

When I first got pay for working I got the pay from the organist of a night, I used to get about two shillings a day that time, about five nights a week. Well, I had ten shillings stock money, didn’t I? Well I could use that and earn a few more shillings after I done the organist, on Saturday and Sunday, all like that, we wasn’t fussy which days we went to work. It was all to earn money. And my brothers never use to treat me any different once I was earning.

I had household pets in the garden you know, like the pigeons was our favourite. Pigeons was nearly everybody’s favourite. And chickens, anything like that, rabbits – tame ones, we had some lovely pets.

After I left school they didn’t get much church out of me, I retired from that. You see most boys joined the Boys Brigade, then from there they went into the Scouts and then other activities. I was never interested in politics. I’d vote, but that was it.

‘Course later life came along: bioscope, and pictures, that interested the boys on a Saturday and Sunday more than anything. We’d go to the pictures on a Saturday or Sunday, there was hundreds of little places you could go for a penny or a ha’penny to see the pictures.

Sometimes we’d go up a show. You see, ‘cos the theatres when I was a boy wasn’t very dear. You could go in for threepence – the music hall here, it was only threepence to get in. In the gallery. It was fourpence in the pit, and some places were tuppence.

We didn’t go into central London much, but some went up the West End music halls, up to the Alhambra or up there. That was an outing. Oh I’ve been in Lyon’s Corner House up Hyde Park there. Trafalgar Square and all that area. Hyde Park was their favourite – right to a place called the Lyons Corner House they called it. It wasn’t a long way, only two or three coppers to ride there. People didn’t like wasting money years ago. ‘Course you could ride about a mile and a half for a penny, easy. Mile and a half, two mile up from Aldgate to Burdett Road.

c/o British Library C707/366/1-8(p138-139) Click here for the beginning

Joseph, Elizabeth and Richard Gotts removed to Fakenham in 1741

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Joseph Gotts removal 1741
Image c/o Norfolk Record Office

This removal order is for the family of Joseph Gotts, his wife Elizabeth and son Richard in 1741, from the parish of Sculthorpe to the parish of Fakenham, both in North Norfolk. The parishes are next to each other, and there are records of the marriage of Joseph Gotts to Elizabeth Horsley in Sculthorpe in 1738, and two daughters baptised called Mary, one in Sculthorpe in 1744/5 and another in 1748, after the first Mary who died in 1745 in Lt Snoring.

There is also a John bapt Feb 22 1745 son of Geo Gotts & Eliz in Lt Snoring, so are George and Joseph brothers? We are yet to work out where they were born, or whether they are related to a know family.

Gotts Emigration to Canada and USA

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Many Gottses emigrated to USA and Canada. In this Story 2, we see the effect seen in East Ruston village school: East Ruston families

This is the Ocean Queen on which several Gottses travelled in 1851

Having got there, how did they get to where all the jobs were? This map shows one of the routes:

This is the route from New York using the Erie Canal. Read more about it here:

Edwardian life in London – 44

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Alfred Gotts commentary continued:

I left that school in Dempsey Street when I was about fourteen, and when I was about fifteen to sixteen I got working in the City selling odds and ends and then I got recommended to go up to that place in Clerkenwell and learn to be a shoemaker.

I never did any more schooling, I learnt in school what I had to learn and then you learn yourself then. It comes automatically everything to me. You see, I learnt my trade, and I worked with a lot of foreign element Jews, and I learnt more or less to speak a bit of Yiddish from it. ‘Course they never spoke any English back to you, if they wanted anything they required they called out in Yiddish to you. So I used to say ‘what does that mean?’ and ninety percent of the words I asked for I never forgot. They told me bread was ‘broits’ and that’s like when I was working as a kid in the Welsh dairy they used to speak Welsh to you and say with welsh words. I was about fourteen then, and used to get up early then, four o’clock in the mornings to wash the cans and that. Get them ready for the first round. I earned a couple of bob a week, that’s all. I suppose I was about twelve to fourteen when I did that job.

I started selling newspapers after school, and went up the City – that was a sideline. If you had as a start a quire of papers, you see, they was ha’penny each paper, and you paid for three a penny. I think it was ninepence a quire, and twenty-seven papers in the quire, and you got back a ha’penny profit for every three you sold. And if someone give you a penny for a paper, which happened you see.

I sold The Star, Evening News, that was the most sold round that time, it was the Evening News and the Star. They were ha’penny papers. The Standard, they were penny papers like. The Evening Standard or the Daily Mirror was a ha’penny paper when I was a boy. The Standard was a posh paper. The Star and the Evening Standard were at different offices, so you’d go to the one you wanted to sell. ‘Cos you were the run boys, run through picking up customers. But those people that had regular stands, they stopped on ‘em you see.

We used to call out the headlines and used to get rid of most of our papers. We didn’t buy lots, and then there were these newspaper men on these stands after they’d sold their main lot they’d say ‘ stand here and sell these for us.’ Near Fenchurch Street the man had a big stand there on the corner, he’d say ‘stand here and sell them’. He’d give you half the profits, every three you sold you had a ha’penny profit see. On his stand. Well, we didn’t mind that, that would start us off. There were lots of stands in the City. After their main trade had gone, so they were satisfied. Or perhaps it might be a dirty wet day, they’d say here you are, stand here and get wet for a ha’penny for a time. I did that for a while after I left school as well.

It might have been worth while to do that for a full time job, plenty of opportunity in the City to sell things. The chief thing was having stock money to buy the stock with. If you went to buy something in Houndsditch, if you had a few shillings you was lords. See, instead of buying a small quantity then run back and increasing each time, which we have done, that was how it is. If you could buy a gross of picture postcards, for instance, instead of buying two or three dozen.

You could take some of the newspapers back, when you bought fresh supplies, one in every three you were allowed to change. What they called returns, see. Bumps. Then if we picked up any spare papers and they were clean and tidy, we put them in as well and got them exchanged.

Mostly we worked on our own. Each boy run himself. If I had to run up to Fleet Street for a quire of papers, the quicker I sold ‘em out the quicker I earned that there fourpence ha’penny didn’t I?

We used to walk right up there, or get on the back of a cart or a bus or anything for anywhere. That time you wasn’t afraid to get on the back of a van or a bus or jump off, because the traffic was only horse traffic. And those paper vans used to travel pretty quickly. And get behind a cab, the back of an old four wheel cab. Threw his whip at you and stung your ears.

c/o British Library C707/366/1-8(p134-137) Click here for the beginning

Edwardian life in London – 43

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Alfred Gotts commentary continued:

Girls didn’t have many opportunities to get jobs, maybe they got jobs, mind a baby for somebody, or something like that. Girls were looked after different. Mother wouldn’t let the girls go off like we did. But I tell you what the girls did in the East End – a lot of girls’d be – the Jewish people’d let them go in and tidy their homes for ‘em, and help ‘em that way, in the house for a few coppers a week. They didn’t get much of it. It wasn’t easy to get a job then. Less the shopkeepers knew you. See, I was a boy, shopkeeper would say – help ‘em with a milk round, a dairyman, something like that. Or a catsmeat man, he’d ask you to go help him, go round delivering the cats meat. ‘Cos everybody had cats that time, now nobody’s got cats.

My sisters would never be allowed to go up round the City and stay out late. If we took them up say, Leadenhall Market in the summertime ‘cos the shops used to be open late that time, we’d take ‘em home before darkness. We wouldn’t take ‘em wintertime, ‘course there was some variations but they wouldn’t be allowed out, my sisters. ‘Course you see years ago people had more feeling towards a child, they wouldn’t allow no one to take advantage of a child. They’d soon stop ‘em, like I would meself. Yes, children were respected more I think then. You dare not interfere with a girl years ago, you’d have all the family after you. And they’d give you what for. You wouldn’t do it again, you see, it was the natural upbringing of you.

You know I saw a boy doing something once to a girl, and I was walking along, and somebody reported me – like to me that this little boy was a devil. Well, he lives say next door to this boy, that’s right. And he had three sisters and two brothers. And my sister went back to work say about quarter to two, in the dinner hour, he stood at the door and he had a stick in his hand like that. Now as my sister went by he walked behind her, and just raised her skirt with the stick. And of course that encouraged me to treat him. And I raised my foot into the seat of his pants. And can assure you he never did anything like that again. I lifted him right off the ground. And then I knocked at his door and told his parents. I said if ever your son stands on that door when my sister goes back from work I’ll put a hammer on his head. My sister knew what happened, but she didn’t say nothing, she was a church girl, see. It was a girl opposite what told me. See, she wasn’t a brave girl, and she always went to church more or less every night she was there. Anyhow, that boy always remembers me. He became a barber the last time I saw him. Oh yes, I gave him the curing treat for that. I just lifted the seat of his trousers, he must have been about fourteen then. I didn’t stand for that. And he’d learned his lesson.

All the kids knew one another. You see, some people are what they call mock, and some are rough. See, we was brought up tough. To rough it you see. I mean, we never knew what hardship was in that way. We went without food we never complained. But some boys I went to school with as I’m telling you, their fathers was police inspectors, the head man in the district, Inspector Wensley. I went to school with his two sons. Well one was a lot younger but the older one, Fred, he got killed in the ’14 war. Most of my schoolmates were cut down in the ’14 war.

Everywhere you remember was say where’s so and so. He’s gone off. That was what happened. The ‘14 war cleared away everybody. Little children, you know, kids that went away. Honest, never done harm to anybody. They were mown down in the ’14 war. That wasn’t a war, that was a murder. You take for instance all those places like the Dardanelles and the Somme, they were absolutely slaughtered. Well, there was five of us brothers we was all soldiers during ’14 war. And some mothers had worse than that. I knew families – all gone you know, all disappeared.

People regarded them as heroes then, it was only natural. If the man wasn’t in the war they used to shout after him. Yellow belly and all that see. White feather, that was the fashion then, put a white feather in their coat. I remember a boy – he was wounded in the war, and he had a blue uniform and he had it at home, took it off and stood on the street corner, and a woman put a white feather on him. And that boy was wounded in the war. And that woman’s husband got killed. After, that boy was proper wounded, and he stood there with ordinary clothes on. But that woman she put that white feather on him and says to him some low, disparaging remark you see, about not being a soldier. Her own husband got killed. I thought to myself, well that’s retaliated.

As the war dragged on, more and more men were disappearing and never coming back from the front, and everybody lost somebody more or less. Cor, I know whole families was wiped out wasn’t they?

c/o British Library C707/366/1-8(p131-133) Click here for the beginning

Edwardian life in London – 42

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Alfred Gotts commentary continued:

Your parents never showed any interest in your schoolwork, I don’t ever remember that. When I was taken to the school at that time, I must have been about 8 and that was the only time they took me. After that I went backwards and forward to school on me own. And now I see little children round here, their parents take them in a car to school, and they’re not two ticks away. And there’s one child, he’s taken to school by car and brought back. Another, in a pram, about six. Cor, fancy my mother wheeling us in a pram. Never had a pram for a start. We used to have a soap box or a sugar box, buy it for about threepence and that and put a couple of wheels on it. We had a Rolls Royce, didn’t we, for threepence. Yes, we had a little motor car. Go all the way to Leadenhall Market, bring home a bag of fish heads or giblets for the weekend.

Women used to carry babies about in a shawl. On their arm or over their shoulder like that. No pram, they was rich people that had a little pram. If they’re comfortable they got a pram. You see, that’s how it went like.

The teachers were more a different breed, weren’t they. You see that time, years ago, a teacher, his parents were what they call middle class you see. Middle class, children of middle class people. They weren’t children of poor people. Now any child can go to be a teacher. And don’t matter what class he’s in. You see they never had the opportunities that time. There were quite a lot of middle class children in the school, there were lots in the area was all business people, their children, children of policemen. See, that was more or less a bit of a select school where I was a boy, Dempsey Street. It wasn’t a poor school. The teachers didn’t treat poor children any differently, but they’d be kind to you.

There were a few boys that lined up and want to quarrel with the Jewish children in another school, see, the christens against the jews, – Ashfield Street School there, they call it that now. They used to say, let’s go and have a war with the jews, see, that’s what they said years ago. They’d be either in Stepney Green – well of course they weren’t all like that, it was only what I call the lower type of boys as I call ‘em, the board boys. And that was only done from ignorance. They’d throw stones at one another and all like that, and belts and hit one another if they could.

Sometimes you was walking along you’d get someone run up the side and give you a clout then run away see. And there’d be three or four of them together you see. Give you a clout. I remember me and a brother of mine, we was pushing a little motor what we’d made with four pram wheels and a sugar box, and one boy said ‘where’s Great Garden Street?’ And my brother turned round and looked across, ‘over there’, he said. And this boy hit him straight in the eye. And he had a lovely black eye. And he did that because he was a Christian and the other he was a Jewish boy see. I suppose someone had hit him and he hit them. Poor old Sid was holding the string driving the little four wheeled cart running our motor along and he got a lovely black eye. ’Course after that it was red rag to a bull, every Jewish boy he see he wanted to give them one, and he did. He was a year older than me. He was a little tough fellow. He finished up a full Corporal in the Royal Fusiliers, Sid. He’d done seven years, he joined the Army for – what was it they used to join – six months in the specials – they used to call it, six months, then they used to do about three years on and off – five years on the reserve, used to get a couple of coppers a week that time. Didn’t get much.

We were all resourceful as a young boy. I had a younger brother, he sold rabbits, wild rabbits. He started off with greengrocery. I remember him – we was going hop picking and he caught a little rabbit. He skinned it and washed it, and he boiled it in a beer can what you bought at that time a pot of ale, fourpence it used to be, a quart, quart beer cans they were. And the publicans used to have their name marked on the side of these tin cans. And he boiled that with some vegetables and he made himself a little stew. He wasn’t very old then.

c/o British Library C707/366/1-8(p129-131) Click here for the beginning

Edwardian life in London – 41

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Alfred Gotts commentary continued:

We used to have some days off school. The best event of my life was always the Lord Mayor’s Show day ‘cos then it was run in the week. Today it’s run on Saturdays, when the school’s closed. So we used to play truant that day. That’s how we saw it – by playing truant if we wanted to see it. It had all sorts of things we saw. You’d get in a certain place in the City and you stop there ‘till it’s gone by you. And if you knew the City you could work your way back into the side turnings and meet it coming back. See it went right round the City, Aldgate, Moorgate, Folgate, Cripplegate, Norton Folgate, all like that. Up Tower, Ludgate Hill and Tower Hill you know, that way. Up the main route, circle of the City, round all the gates.

We looked forward to summer holidays, when we went fruit picking or hop picking. Then we had a holiday, a nice few weeks holiday in the course of a year see. That’s why a lot of the poor people were backward in school, the time they had off. Some used to go fruit picking, then they’d go hop picking. Well now, that’s all done by mass machinery. We never had that see. When one farm finished they’d say ‘some farm up there got another week’s work, do you want to go down there’, and they used to say yes. Then they’d take them down there. We never thought about whether our schooling suffered.

At school, if you weren’t punctual you’d get a red mark, see, a late mark, if you was late in school you had a mark on the register that you was late, a little stroke like that. They could tell whether you come in early or late. Every child would have things to do at home, not like now. Nine out of ten when I was a boy. Ninety out of a hundred women of the house never went to work. I can honestly say that when I married my wife, she never went out to work in her life. And we were married nearly fifty years. She never went to work. I kept her, that was a man’s role. She’d do work for other people for nothing but not to get paid for it. She’d go and help a woman in confinement and do her shopping and her washing and her cleaning, and no pay, no idea of pay. Of course touch wood I was earning a fair living. Everybody seems to go out to work today. That time they didn’t. Soon as a woman got married they’d say they’re not going to work no more, that was the idea of it. Especially if the husband had a good job. Look at some of the dockers here in the East End there, earning fifty pound a week they are. Now on top of that their wife’s earning thirty pound. You realise the income some of ‘em got coming in. The world’s all haywire. You take these porters in the building. They’ve got cars, a thousand pound cars. When I was a young man the man on the five shilling bicycle, he was big. He was comfortable. Now they’ve got thousand pound car. It’s different trend today, it’s all different.

When you was at school teachers would check you and correct you if you didn’t do right. Swearing, or anything like that they didn’t hold with it and that time you see. And they were more frightening and strict you see, they say things to you that frightened you, see if you was a ruffian as I call it, when I was a boy you got sent to an industrial school. And you were treated harshly and everybody knew it at school.

If you did something the teachers disapproved of they used to give you the cane then. They had a long cane and you had to hold your hands out, and they struck you on the inside of the hand, or on the seat of your pants. And they’d give it to you for anything you did wrong. You’d be ashamed of telling your parents, ‘cos the type of boy that done something wilful like to have been caned wasn’t a tender hearted boy. He was a ruffian mostly. And if a boy done anything, ill-treated an animal or anything like that – they were dead against anything like that when I was a boy. You was an animal. Then not only you’d be treated wrong by the school people you’d be treated badly by all the boys in the class. Bullying is one thing they’d punish you for, they wouldn’t allow that. See, if anyone wanted to bully you, and you was tender-hearted, other boys wouldn’t let ‘em bully you. See, they wouldn’t let anyone bully what you called a quiet type of boy, but if you was a ruffian and you wanted to have a fight, well, you had it. Not in the playground, but after school hours, they’d go somewhere in a side street and have a fight.

c/o British Library C707/366/1-8(p126-8) Click here for the beginning.

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Putting US Gottses into families

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During covid lockdown, I have been busy using the free access we have had to Ancestry through the library. I decided to download the 200 or so US WW1 & WW2 military Draft cards for all the Gottses listed and started to work back in time looking at the US records to build their families.

This is Harry Gotts from Oklahoma. The Draft cards are useful because they show dates of birth, location and Next of Kin, all of which help in tracing their relatives.

Harry’s tree has already been written up here in tree 131

This one is for Howard F Gotts, signing up for WW2, though it did not go well for him. His story is told in the military section:

:

There are more stories and additions to come. They are partly written up, but not yet on the website.

Edwardian life in London – 40

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Alfred Gotts commentary continued:

When I was at school, the teachers used to learn you manners. I once went to school with my shoes a bit dirty, they’d tell you of it and send you home till you cleaned them up and come back, and that was a great insult to you. If you went to school with a dirty pair of shoes on, teacher sent you home, go along, clean your shoes.

There were some children never had any shoes or boots on. When the war broke out I was driving a van here in the East End by a school playground on a winter’s morning. And all the children stood out there in the playground in the snow with no boots and stockings on. Nine out of ten of ‘em had no boots or stockings on. And they stood in the snow, lined up to go into school, with the snow squeezing between their feet. This is true, that’s the year the beginning of the war.

That was a very poor district, Stepney here, opposite the gasworks in Ben Johnson Road. Haggis Street School they called it, and there the playground there, the last couple of years they’ve pulled it down. You can see where they lined up and I used to go in the playground with this girl when she was Guide Captain. They used to do it of an evening as a Guide Centre and I told her all there where the children stood and I’ve driven by there, of course if you’re on a van you can look over down on the playground. Yes, there were dozens and dozens of children there – right cold weather, had no boots and shoes on, all lined up there – that was the beginning of the 1914 war. The school couldn’t do anything about it. Doctor Barnardo’s charity was around, but they had their own inmates didn’t they?

They had a mission here, what they call Edinburgh Castle in Ben Johnson Road, just by that school, and they had a place in Stepney Causeway. They had a boot factory there to make boots and mend boots for inmates I suppose, of his institutions. And of course the boys learnt the trade and when they become of a certain age they send ‘em out to Canada and all like that they did. Emigrated them. They didn’t have no parents, and while they were there they were fed and clothed. They wouldn’t be if they were outside.

They didn’t have a uniform, but they had a substantial suit on, and they used to use a cloth years ago called Derby Tweed. It was a pattern of cloth, very sturdy made. Most of the children wore ‘em, or cord trousers. It’s like in the workhouses, they all had cord suits or Derby tweed suits. They were all in the mental hospitals, they had the same. You could always tell they was inmates of some institution by the Derby tweed they wore. It was very good strong material, it was a working man’s material, it lasted. You bought a pair of Derby Tweed trousers when I was a young man and paid around seven and six, eight and six for a pair of trousers. They were good solid trouser, made to measure.

Doctor Barnardo’s had their headquarters in Stepney Causeway, they’re just recently pulling it down. And then they used to have a lot of ex-policemen working for ‘em, you see when a policeman finished up he got a job at Doctor Barnardo’s, they was to see to all the contributions coming in and they’re booking it in.

That’s the sort of person they had, to stop any villainy. They employed ‘em, they gave ‘em good jobs after they’d done their twenty-five years. Years ago policemen used to do twenty-five years, now they do thirty. I knew a lot of ex-policemen went to work at Dr Barnardo’s ‘cos they’d got to work till they’re sixty-five. The contributions, health and insurance. They’d go as clerks and all like that. They had all sorts of jobs.

There were hundreds of people there. Whole lot worked there and they had that big boot factory there in Bower Street, backed onto Stepney Causeway, see. It was a big concern. And they got their homes in different places now. It’s run on a business scale now, you see, they have people paying regular, and these flag days what they have and all the income comes in, and then as people die they leave them money, and all like that, charities, people’s got feeling in there.

Earlier it was all voluntary contributions from the rich and people that could afford it. That was all they kept them going, it was the same as Booth who started here in Whitechapel. General Booth, they used to have their flag days when they used to collect annually, like Queen Alexandra’s Day. They collect all over the country, these contributions, and they all counted. And then them Booths are millionaires: they didn’t start like that did they? See what I mean?

40 c/o British Library C707/366/1-8(p123-125) Click here for the beginning

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