roots1937

Eulogy in Leeds

There is a fantastic exhibition on display at Leeds Central Library at the moment but do hurry if you want to see it as it is due to close on 8 September 2019.

Eulogy is based around the lives of 76 first generation Jamaicans who settled in Leeds between the 1940s and 1960s. These 76 pioneers spent a combined total of 3,469 years living in Leeds, contributing to the ongoing success of the city and paving the way for their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

There is an element of sadness that all 76 have passed away but the overriding feeling is one of inspiration and celebration for all that they achieved.

There are stories of nurses, transport workers, RAF personnel and increasing recognition in the local community. The exhibition is well constructed, spacious and welcoming. It is based around funeral programmes, other keepsakes, photographs and short accompanying narratives.

The Jamaica Society Leeds is responsible for the exhibition and they have certainly done a great job.

A very professionally produced newspaper called Eulogy has been produced and can be collected at the exhibition. It provides an excellent souvenir of a truly inspiring event.

The exhibition is possibly best summed up by this entry taken from the newspaper:

“Eulogy goes beyond media narratives of the Windrush generation as victims. Trailblazing community stalwarts and RAF servicemen sit alongside stories of triumph and heartbreak, and imagery of young couples in love, families and people making a living. These are human stories that everyone can relate to.”

It would be nice to think Eulogy will be so successful that its run will be extended but don’t take that chance, do visit it at Leeds Central Library before it closes on 8 September. You will not regret it!

300 Years of Migrating to Leeds

Bill Hern, our northern correspondent, has this to say about a current exhibition in Leeds:

On 9 August I had the pleasure of visiting Leeds City Museum to listen to a fascinating presentation called “300 Years of Migrating to Leeds.”

It was virtually standing room only as an enthralled audience heard curators Adam Jaffer and Ruth Martin describe Leeds’ proud history in welcoming migrants and refugees over the centuries. There is evidence of migrants coming to Leeds tens of thousands of years ago, but the first large waves of migrants came over in the 19th century from Ireland and also Jewish refugees mainly from Russia and Poland.

Leeds has benefited greatly from migration particularly through the Jewish community, Montague Burton (originally Meshe Osinsky) founded Burton Menswear and of course Michael Marks of Marks and Spencer fame was another famous Jewish migrant to Leeds.

Ruth and Adam also covered the migration of Belgians during World War 1, Ukrainians immediately after World War 2, West Indians and South Asians.

The reasons for people moving to Leeds often involve escape from War or persecution but Adam stressed the impact the building of the Mangla Dam in Mirpur, Pakistan in the 1960s had on immigration from that country. Over 100,000 people were left permanently displaced after 280 villages were flooded in order to create the Dam. Many used their compensation payments to move to Yorkshire.

More recently Leeds has maintained its reputation as a city which welcomes migrants receiving people from East European EU countries. It is the 6th most popular British city for Polish immigrants.

Migrants have also been received from Iraq, China and Syria with Leeds being named one of the most welcoming cities for Syrian refugees. Leeds is currently a City of Sanctuary, part of a national movement to build a culture of welcome for people seeking sanctuary in the UK.

It is impossible to do justice to the information-packed hour long presentation in only a few paragraphs but the good news is that the Museum has a free exhibition called ‘A city & its welcome – Three centuries of migrating to Leeds.’ The Museum’s publicity material sums up the exhibition perfectly – “A city and its welcome’ tells the stories and experiences of those who have made a home in Leeds over the past three centuries, and how they have helped shape the city that we recognise today. Come on a journey with us to see the differences between their hopes and expectations and the realities of life in a new place, plus treasured objects brought from afar.”

The exhibition is open until 5 January 2020 and really is not to be missed. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Searchable Passenger List for the Empire Windrush

The original passenger list for the journey of the MV Empire Windrush from the Caribbean to Tilbury in May/June 1948 is held at the National Archives at Kew in south west London. You might think that would make it pretty easy to get the basic facts about who was on board right. Sadly, you would be wrong. Many untruths persist – at various times it has been said that the passengers were all male, all Jamaican and all black. None of these statements is correct but they still crop up regularly on the internet. Even the number of passengers has been widely misquoted – the number 492 is constantly repeated, even by reputable historians, even though the official list records the names of 1027.

One of the challenges we set ourselves in 2018 was to transcribe the list into a searchable database. This sounded like a relatively straightforward task, albeit a tedious one. However there were various problems. The original list is typed rather than handwritten as some were, so far so good, but unfortunately the entries are very unclear in places, so much so that some of the names are very difficult to decipher. On some pages the typist failed to put a new ribbon in their typewriter when it was clearly needed! Even after very careful scrutiny, some of the names can only be guessed at.

While doing our own transcription we identified another problem, anyone relying on the details transcribed from that list onto sites like Ancestry.co.uk may be disappointed as, in many cases, where a name was hard to read, whoever did the transcription work for Ancestry simply gave up and moved onto the next legible entry. This matters if someone is trying to trace the history of a particular individual, an ancestor may have been on the Windrush but the fact is not easily found because their record was one of those that was not transcribed.

As with any typed list there will be cases where the typist simply made a mistake. Mona Baptiste is number seven on the list and her entry is beautifully clear, clear enough to see that her name was typed up as ‘Baptisite’. That extra ‘i’ is enough to throw search engines looking for ‘Baptiste’ off the scent. Our own transcription will inevitably contain typing errors no matter how careful we were.

The transcription work took us three months but we have been able to use the database to check ‘at the touch of a button’ whether someone was on board. Interestingly, we know of at least a dozen men who claim to have been on the voyage whose names do not appear on the passenger list. Our view, one that for obvious reasons we cannot prove, is that these men were among the many stowaways known to have been on the ship.

It was always our intention to make the database available to anyone who wanted to use it but, recently, we discovered that we don’t need to. Unknown to us, at much the same time we were transcribing the list, Goldsmiths University in south London had set up a project to do exactly the same thing. They have made their work freely available and you can access it here: https://www.gold.ac.uk/windrush/passenger-list/. This is a brilliant resource for anyone with an interest in the Windrush, well done to Goldsmiths for making it available free of charge.

No excuse now for getting basic facts about the Windrush passengers wrong!

The university put on an exhibition about the project. We visited before it finished in February and it was an impressive display.

Entirely by chance we bumped into Margaret Collins the daughter of passenger number 589, Rudolph Collins, she was visiting at the same time as us. Margaret was thrilled when she found her father’s card.

She mentioned that she thought her uncle had also been on the Windrush and we used our own database to confirm that there were only two other men called Collins on the ship, passenger number 588, Claud, and 608, Melvin. Margaret was puzzled by this as she had never known her uncle by either of those names. But her father is sometimes referred to as ‘Nick’ and that was not a name he ever used to her knowledge so names can be a bit flexible! Neither Claud or Rudolph had an address to go to so they both spent their first nights in England at the Clapham South Deep Shelter. The fact that the two young men had consecutive numbers and both went to Clapham can’t be entirely accidental surely? However, the case for Claud and Rudolph being brothers is weakened somewhat when we discover that the younger of the two, Rudolph, who was seventeen according to the passenger list, left the shelter after only a few days and moved to West London, leaving Claud, 23, behind. Surely if they were brothers they might have stuck together? For now, the jury is out.

If you think you may have had a relative on the Windrush, why not use the Goldsmiths’ database to check?

Lionel Turpin Remembered

One of the first projects we got involved in was to do with the commemoration of black servicemen (and women) in World War One and one of the first soldiers we researched was Lionel Fitzherbert Turpin. You can read about him in our ‘Forgotten History – World War One and beyond’ section.

Our research identified the location of his grave in Leamington cemetery, something we had been told was ‘unknown’. We visited Leamington with high hopes, only to find that his grave was unmarked:

We found out subsequently that this photo shows slightly the wrong patch of grass but that doesn’t alter the fact that there was no marker for Lionel’s final resting place.

That was in April 2015 and we decided then that something should be done to mark where Lionel lay. Not so easy! It soon became apparent that not any Tom, Dick or Harry can plonk a memorial down in a cemetery. So we had to wait.

Our patience was rewarded when, last year, we were contacted by a descendent of Lionel who told us that the family intended to place a marker in the cemetery. Recently they sent us this photo to show that their efforts have been successful:

We are pleased there has been a happy conclusion to a story that started over 4 years ago and that the final resting place of a young man who travelled to the UK from British Guiana (now Guyana) and served (and was seriously wounded) in World War One is properly marked. Well done to the family for making it happen.

Tilbury 1948 to 2019

We have been promising ourselves a visit to Tilbury, where the Empire Windrush docked on 22nd June 1948, for at least three years. We finally made it on 20th July and are so glad we did.

It was the day of the Thurrock Carnival. Thurrock Council had secured a little over £20,000 from the fund the government established for Windrush celebrations this year. The money had been used to support a series of community events culminating in the carnival.

It was money well spent, there was a good turn out from the local community and there was a variety of Windrush themed displays for them to enjoy.

The view that greeted the new arrivals probably hasn’t changed much in the intervening 71 years:

The view across the river hasn’t changed much either. The unnamed passenger who, looking out across the water, was quoted as saying ‘if this is England, I like it’ perhaps had better eyesight than me!

To disembark they would have gone up a gangplank like the one pictured below and into the baggage hall. On the 22nd June 1948 the hall would have looked very different, in the words of our guide, it would have been ‘mayhem’ as people looked through the piles of luggage for their grip:

One of the displays featured what various people might have had in their grip. There was a display for Mona Baptiste which gave a few hints about the success she was to have as a recording artist but probably bore little resemblance to what she actually brought with her (nevertheless it was good to see that she featured):

There were a number of very informative displays about the Windrush and we were very pleased to meet Mike Oslter who, along with his team, had put the displays together. Mike was our informative guide, he was very much in demand and we were very grateful for the time he devoted to showing us round.

Another display had been produced by the Essex Cultural Diversity Project who actually interviewed Mrs Historycal Roots as part of their record of the event:

Mike told us that there were hopes the event would be an annual affair and, if it is repeated next year, we can thoroughly recommend a visit.

Finally, we know there is talk of raising the anchor of the Windrush from the seabed where she sank, what better place to display it than Tilbury?

Celebrating Equiano’s manumission day

11th July 1766 was an important day in the life of Olaudah Equiano. In the morning he went to see his ‘owner’, Robert King, on the island of Montserrat. Equiano was feeling nervous, as he put it, he had ‘many fears in my heart.’ The reason for his trepidation was that he was approaching King with a view to buying his freedom. Through hard work and much enterprise, Equiano had saved the £40 that King had told him would be the price of freedom.

If there was such a thing as a ‘good’ slave owner then King was probably such a man, he had treated Equiano well and placed him in positions of trust. But Equiano was used to being cheated by white men and King hesitated, Equiano had been extremely useful to him and he was reluctant to part with such a valuable asset. King complained that Equiano had ‘got the money much faster [than expected] and said he would not have made me the promise he did if he had thought I should have got money so soon.’ Fortunately another white man present, who knew Equiano well, Captain Farmer, spoke up for him and persuaded King to honour his agreement. The sum of £40 was handed over and Equiano went directly to the Register Office on the island to get the legal document freeing him drawn up. It’s worth mentioning that £40 in 1766 is equivalent to almost £7,000 today.

Equiano’s manumission day was celebrated at the Black Cultural Archives with poetry by Nat Nye and a talk from Hakim Adi, Professor of the History of Africa and the African Diaspora at the University of Chichester.

In addition to talking about Equiano’s manumission, Hakim spoke passionately about why history matters and to deplore its decline as a subject of choice among students.

Here is an example (unrelated to Equiano) of Hakim talking about migration. ‘Britain’ he says ‘is a country of migrants’. He makes a point I have made many times, that the Angles and Saxons (whose values are so often held up by so called ‘nationalists’) were migrants.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJGb8hTnndM

As luck would have it, the day after the event at the BCA I started reading ‘Untold Histories: Black people in England and Wales during the period of the British slave trade c160 – 1807’ by Kathleen Chater. She included a quote from historian, John Tosh, in her introduction ‘history is a political battleground. The sanction of the past is sought by those committed to upholding authority and by those intent on subverting it.’ If historians can be said to take sides in that battle of ideas then there is no doubt that Hakim Adi would be among the subversives. His talk was stimulating, challenging and, yes, a little subversive (and all the better for that). I came away wondering why this wasn’t how history was taught to me at school and with a strong desire to enroll on a history course at the University of Chichester!

Three Windrush Women at the Black Cultural Archives

Responding to an invitation, the Historycal Roots team recently gave a presentation at the Black Cultural Archives in Brixton as part of the Archives’ ‘Looking Back, Moving Forward’ season: https://blackculturalarchives.org/exhibitionsandevents

Our presentation focused on ‘three Windrush Women’.

First up was David Gleave who posed the question ‘What became of the Windrush stowaway, Evelyn Wauchope?’.

Evelyn’s story attracted the attention of reporters when the Empire Windrush passengers disembarked at Tilbury on 22nd June 1948, they were intrigued by her presence as the only female to stowaway on the ship. But no one knew what became of her after she boarded the train for London – until now that is! You will find her story in the ‘Windrush Generation’ section of this site where there is a page dedicated to her story.

Next, Bill Hern spoke about Mona Baptiste who travelled in ‘A’ Class on the Windrush from Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, to Tilbury.

Mona celebrated her 22nd birthday as the Windrush steamed up the English Channel on its final approach to Tilbury. She went on to have a successful career on the radio, TV and in films. The presentation was attended by Mona’s great niece, Sharisse Hossein and also by calypsonian Alexander D’Great (Sharisse and Alexander are distant cousins who had never previously met!). Here, courtesy of Lennox Salmon Photography, they are pictured with a rather startled looking Bill Hern whose research brought them together:

Mona also has her own page in the Windrush Generation section of this site.

Last but very much not least, Roxanne Gleave interviewed Edna Chavannes. Edna, rapidly approaching her 90th birthday, came to England in 1951 and worked as a nurse in the NHS for 44 years. She held the audience in rapt attention as she described her early life in Jamaica, the journey to England (seasickness – ‘I was not a sailor, I prefer to fly’), her experiences as a nurse (losing three patients in one night during ‘the great smog’ of 1952), finding happiness with a husband (who made a gift of a pineapple as part of their courtship at a time when such fruits were very exotic and hard to come by in London – we presented Edna with a pineapple as a reminder of that moment from long ago) and bringing up a family of two children (who were both in the audience). Here, again thanks to Lennox Salmon, we see Edna with daughter, Veronica, and son, Leonce:

Edna’s story is also in our ‘Windrush Generation’ section.

We were delighted to see a number of special guests in an audience that included visitors from the USA and France, a barrister, a writer, an academic, a group from a local school and a respected historian from Liverpool. It was a very good day with very positive feedback from those who attended.

‘Mixing It’

We don’t often do book reviews on here, there are simply too many good books and the ones we like may not appeal to anyone else! We’ll make an exception for ‘Mixing It’ by Wendy Webster. The subtitle ‘Diversity In World War Two Britain’ probably gives a clue as to why we were initially attracted to it.

We saw Wendy do a presentation at a ‘What’s Happening In Black British History’ event and some of the things she said were a little startling and certainly caught our attention. She made the point that, even while the war was going on, while black servicemen were fighting for and in some cases dying in the service of Britain, the government was exploring ways of getting rid of them when the war ended. She backed this up with quotes from official documents held in the National Archives at Kew. This quote comes from a 1942 Cabinet paper: ‘service departments should do all they possibly can by administrative action to reduce to a minimum the opportunities these men [black servicemen] might have of being demobilised in this country.’ The ‘problem’ of course was that people from the colonies whether black or white all enjoyed the same rights of citizenship as those born in the UK. The whole chapter ‘The Empire Comes To Britain’ contains many examples of how the British authorities struggled with this issue.

However ‘Mixing It’ goes far wider in its consideration of diversity. Wendy makes the point that Britain had never seen such diversity with people coming from all parts of the globe to help in the fight against fascism. How, for instance, should Britain treat German Jews fleeing persecution, even those eager to take up arms against Germany? Why, incarcerate them of course! Similar issues were raised by people coming to the UK, from Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc. Wendy’s book is generally very readable but even she struggles to make a coherent narrative of the tortuous twists and turns in government policy which seemed to change, sometimes literally, on a daily basis.

What is interesting, and depressing, about Wendy’s book is that it reveals that many British people have long felt a deep distrust and dislike for any ‘foreigners’ and that seems to have changed less than some of us would like. The way some Polish people were treated following the EU referendum made our blood boil and demonstrated an appalling level of ignorance of our own history. The sacrifices of Polish airmen during the war are well documented by Wendy – Polish airmen were the second largest nationality among ‘the few’ who defended British skies. Unable to return to their native country which was now part of the Soviet block when the war ended, many had little choice but to remain in Britain and put down roots. The Polish Resettlement Act of 1948 recognised the debt they were owed and people often overlook that there were 65 Polish refugees, mostly women and children, on board the Empire Windrush when it docked at Tilbury in 1948. Their descendents deserve better.

We get particularly exercised about the failure to commemorate the service to Britain of black people in all walks of life but Wendy’s book paints a broader picture of collective memory failure and lack of respect for the many ‘foreigners’ who have made this country what it is. We sometimes hear people demanding a return to ‘Anglo-Saxon values’ – let’s not forget that the original Angles and Saxons were in fact invading Germanic tribes!

Wendy’s book is an academic work (there are 50 pages of footnotes!) but it is generally very readable and raises important issues that are still relevant today.

Randolph Turpin

We’ve been contacted at Historycal Roots by David Claydon who has commented on our Lionel Turpin page. David raises two points, one concerning the absence of a blue plaque for Lionel and the other to express the view that our article downplayed the significance of Lionel’s son, Randolph. Here is what David had to say:

‘I’ve often read the articles you’ve posted on your website and recently came across the page on Lionel Fitzherbert Turpin and the comments about his son, Randolph. As I have an interest in both the First World War and boxing, I may be able to offer a more balanced view.

I had to take issue with the comment about skewed priorities being reflected in the fact that Lionel Turpin lies in an unmarked grave while his son’s grave is marked and the house where he was born is commemorated with a blue plaque.

It is incorrect and a massive understatement to say that Randolph Turpin ‘achieved a degree of fame’. At one point he was the most famous and celebrated man in the country when he became the first black world boxing champion from England and the first British boxer in 60 years to win the World Middleweight Title, beating the man widely regarded even now as the greatest boxer who ever lived and was thought to be invincible. Turpin’s victory gave the country’s morale a huge lift in the difficult years that followed World War Two. There has not been an achievement in British boxing before or since that comes close to this and therefore Randolph Turpin richly earned the recognition of a blue plaque and referring to him as ‘a boxer (albeit a good one)’ is giving him nothing like the respect he deserves.

As the British Empire suffered over 900,000 fatalities and 2,000,000 wounded during the First World War, the sheer and tragic volume of numbers indicates how impractical it would be to argue for a blue plaque commemoration for each British soldier on either of those lists.

However, I fully agree that there is something very wrong when a man who fought, suffered and ultimately died for his country continues to lie in an unmarked grave but it could be argued that the fault, in this particular case, lies with Randolph Turpin himself rather than society’s priorities as, at one stage, he could easily have afforded to have the most lavish headstone in Warwickshire placed over his father’s grave.

It undoubtedly does a great disservice for Lionel Turpin and many others to lie in unmarked graves, but I also feel that you are doing his son, who certainly does not lie in a grand grave but a relatively modest one, a disservice too.

He was, in his own way, a hero as well.’

David makes some fair points, the focus of our piece was on Lionel and, because of that, we may have downplayed Randolph. There is, of course, a great deal of information about Randolph available on the pages of the internet, Wikipedia is one obvious place to start, but to continue the process of redressing the balance here is a complete (as far as we know) record of his career:

http://boxrec.com/en/boxer/13106

There is also an interesting film about Randolph, ’64 Day Hero’, on You Tube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSS3oLP3YlY&fbclid=IwAR0H91HzBSErcSdOTCz1O3nUWea25wU7nuSZw12RG-Eipn4ni3MOFwuaQFo

One final point, we are very pleased to report that descendants of Lionel Turpin have taken steps to get his grave in Leamington cemetery marked. This has involved quite a lengthy bureaucratic process but we understand their persistence has paid off and the grave will very soon be marked. A good ending for a story that we first explored over two years ago.

Edna Chavannes – Windrush Champion

Recently We had the pleasure of handing a copy of ‘Windrush Pioneers and Champions’ to Edna Chavannes. Edna features in the book alongside many household names. It has been a privilege to make her story (45 years of service to the NHS following her arrival in the UK from Jamaica in 1951) more widely known. Without Edna and the thousands like her there would be no NHS. You can find out more about Edna on our Windrush Generation’ pages.