By Audrey Dewjee
In May 2020, when I wrote the previous article about Bertie,[1] I could not have anticipated that just one year later so much more would be known about his life, or that an exhibition about him would be on display in the house where he lived and worked for almost 30 years.
Bertie Robinson: The Footman from St. Vincent is now on view on the State Floor at Harewood, where it will be seen by all visitors who tour the house. The display starts in the Cinnamon Drawing Room and spreads through the Yellow Drawing Room, which has been set out to imitate the late Victorian/Edwardian style interiors of the House during Bertie’s time. It continues into the Main Library and ends in the Spanish Library.
After my original article was posted online on the Historycal Roots website, I decided to send a copy of it to David Lascelles, the present Earl of Harewood, for his information. Our Diasporian Stories Research Group had worked with him in 2015 on events marking the centenary of the death of Thomas Rutling, a member of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, who settled and died in Harrogate.[2] I thought the article may be of interest to him, but I did not anticipate that DSRG would promptly be invited to help research an exhibition on Bertie’s life. Three members of our Group have contributed to this display – Allison Edwards, David Hamilton MBE, and myself.
The forthcoming exhibition initiated a burst of new research by staff of the Harewood House Trust, and Rebecca Burton and Paula Martin have made some fantastic discoveries. The first was a bundle of 15 letters sent by Amelia Robinson, Bertie’s mother, to Lady Harewood over a period of 15 years from 1893 to 1908. These letters reveal that Bertie’s date of birth was 8 November, 1879, and that he started work at Harewood in 1893 when he was only 13 years old. How on earth did he get to Harewood at that young age?
The next discovery was an extract from A Memoir written by Mary Lascelles which was published in 1989.[3] Mary Lascelles was born in Grenada in 1900 and lived there until she was four. Mary brought fond memories of her life on the island with her when she migrated to Britain. From time to time she and her family visited Harewood, where “Black Bertie’s welcome was a happy reminder of the West Indies.” In her book, she gave an explanation of how Bertie was recruited:
“That story, as we were told it, ran something like this: when my Uncle Henry and Aunt Florence visited the West Indian estate in the early years of their marriage, an old negro woman ran after them and presented them with a very young child. Despite their remonstrances, she left the child with them and disappeared; so Bertie was brought up as a page in the household.”[4]
As a result of this, we checked ships’ passenger lists to see if we could find evidence of a George Robinson travelling back with the Earl and Countess. Oddly his name doesn’t appear. The Lascelles party on the SS Medway which arrived at Plymouth in mid April, 1893, included four people, the Earl and Countess, Rita Manley aged 25, (Lady’s Maid), and Henry Barton aged 15 (Servant). As “Henry Barton” didn’t travel out to the West Indies with the family, we can only presume that this was “Bertie” under another pseudonym. The age discrepancy is perhaps more easily explained: it is likely that Bertie didn’t know his date of birth. In her first letter to the Countess, Amelia states, “in the last letter that I wrote him I told him that the 8th November last was his birthday, at which time he was 14 years old.”
Amelia’s letters raise the important question of her son’s name. In some of her letters she refers to him as “Bertie”, and in the majority as “George”. It is clear that George was his birth name as that is what appears on census records and later ships’ passenger lists. Why was this changed to “Bertie”? Was it just a whim of his employers, or was there a different reason?
In her letters, Bertie’s mother mentions other family members, his father William, his brothers and sisters, including Ormond who died as a child, Mabel who was intending to get married in June 1900, and another brother who was living in New York in July 1908. She often complains that Bertie hasn’t written home – once for as long a time as six months. In one letter she asks for his photograph. In 1903, she asks the Earl and Countess to give Bertie permission to visit his family in St. Vincent as she and her husband haven’t seen him for years. She asks for financial aid when disasters hit the family, such as on the death of her husband and after they had lost all their clothes and possessions in the devastating hurricane of 1898.
In 1906, Bertie was taken back home when the Earl and Countess sailed on their yacht Dolores for a holiday in the West Indies. The Dolores had a crew of 14, including 2 chefs, and Bertie would no doubt also have carried out his normal duties during the voyage. Mary Lascelles continues Bertie’s story:
When he came to a man’s estate, a decision was reached: he must return to his native island. (He was, I suppose, the only black man then in Yorkshire.)[Mary Lascelles was quite wrong about that!] A voyage in the family yacht planned solely to take Bertie home is doubtless an embellishment; but it is certain that he was taken to Barbados, and there was a sad parting, for he was very likeable.”[5]
Lady Lascelles was a keen amateur photographer and there is a photograph in her album of pictures taken on this holiday entitled, “Bertie landing.” Bertie is seen being rowed ashore in a small boat with what looks like an enormous trunk beside him. If it was the plan that he should return permanently to St. Vincent, this may have contained all his possessions as well as presents for his family.
However, if the family were intent on returning him home, Bertie had other ideas. Mary Lascelles continues the story:
But Bertie was resourceful: left to himself, he went to missionary headquarters and explained that, by some inexplicable oversight, the yacht had sailed without him. He was, of course, supplied with his passage money on the comparatively swift Royal Mail vessel, and was on the doorstep to greet my uncle and aunt on their return.
Clearly Bertie was not lacking in initiative. Online passenger lists show he sailed from Trinidad on the SS Atrato which arrived in Britain in December 1906. Interestingly, another of Lady Florence’s photographs taken on this holiday is of the Atrato docked at Port of Spain in Trinidad. I wonder if Bertie was on board at the time, unbeknownst to her.
As evidenced by his wish to return, it appears Bertie enjoyed his life in Yorkshire and wanted to continue living here. Who knows, perhaps he had a lady friend he wanted to return to. Given the fact that he was now aged 27, part of the reason the family decided to take Bertie back to the West Indies may have been – as Constance, Lady Wenlock, indelicately put it – so that he could find “a wife of his own species”.[6] Although mixed marriages did take place in Britain at the time, they were frowned on by many people at all levels of society.
Bertie continued working at Harewood and in the Lascelles’s London town house until 1922. So far, neither Harewood House Trust staff, nor DSRG, have been able to discover what Bertie did during the First World War. No evidence that he served in the army or navy has been found. As there was supposed to be a colour bar at the time, perhaps his volunteering, or later on being conscripted, was not even considered.[7] An Auxiliary Hospital was set up at Harewood during the war, so it may be possible that Bertie served as a hospital orderly, although that is considered unlikely as the hospital was run as a separate entity. Another possibility could be that he helped out on the estate farm in addition to his normal duties. So many men were required for the army that farms could be left understaffed. Those men whose work on farms was deemed essential were not conscripted as they were considered to be in “reserved occupations”.
By the end of 2020, we thought we had discovered as much as we possibly could about Bertie’s life. No further information had come to light about our most intriguing questions – what became of him and his child (the child mentioned in my previous story on Historycal Roots)?
All that changed when, on 9 January this year, Historycal Roots received an email from Linda Gale, saying she was Bertie’s granddaughter. Until she read my original article about Bertie, Linda knew nothing about her father’s origins. Since 2004 she had had a strong suspicion that he was the son of Bertie Robinson, whose photo she had seen on TV, in publicity for the Below Stairs exhibition which took place at Harewood in that year. At the time she contacted Harewood House and was invited to visit. She and her brothers took some of their father’s photos with them to show to members of Harewood staff who, in turn, showed them the original photograph of Bertie. Both parties thought that the two were likely to be father and son, but there was no concrete proof.
As evidenced by his photographs, Bertie was a handsome man and a stylish dresser. No doubt many a young lady found him attractive. But one young lady may have regretted falling for him, given what ensued. On 11 July, 1921, a baby boy was born at Ribston Hall, near Wetherby, to Elizabeth Wray, a domestic servant employed there by the Dent family. Elizabeth named her baby Bertie Robinson Wray. Ribston Hall is another very large country house which is situated only a few miles away from Harewood. The Dent and Lascelles families were friends, so it is likely that Elizabeth and Bertie met when he accompanied his employers on their visits to Ribston Hall.
Bertie Robinson Wray’s birth certificate
It is almost certain that Elizabeth would have been made to leave the Dent’s employment on the birth of her baby. In those days, there was no welfare state. Without a husband and father in a family, a baby and its mother had no financial support. If her parents were unable or unwilling to help, Elizabeth would have been in a desperate position, and Bertie would have been under great pressure to try to support her. As a footman, Bertie’s food and accommodation would have been provided for him. Although adequate for his personal needs, his actual wages would have been quite small and they would not have been sufficient to pay for the support of Elizabeth and their baby.
Desperation drove Bertie to steal a £50 note from his employer’s desk drawer. Incredibly, although very few of the 5th Earl’s diaries survive, the one for 1922 – the year Bertie stole the money – has survived. We can therefore see what the Earl noted about the affair.
On Tuesday 18 July, he recorded, “Police came for Bertie. He, after denying, confessed to having stolen the £50. I gave him 48 hours to clear out of the country, and told him if he was found after that in England, he would be taken up” [i.e. arrested]. Had the 5th Earl decided to press charges, Bertie would have faced a long prison sentence.
Unfortunately we have no record of Bertie’s side of the story or what he did next. All that was previously known was that he disappeared. However, former Harewood House Trust Director, Terry Suthers, helped us out again by finding the passenger record for Bertie’s return to the West Indies. He sailed on the SS Van Rensslaer from Dover on 29 July, 1922, bound for Trinidad and he named Trinidad as his “country of intended future permanent residence.” As yet we have no idea whether he did settle in Trinidad, whether he returned to St. Vincent, or whether he went on elsewhere. Presumably his most pressing need would be to find suitable work, where he could utilise the skills he had acquired as a footman at Harewood and earn as much as possible.
Meanwhile, back in Britain, Bertie Robinson Wray was informally adopted and brought up by Mary Mason and her sister, Alice Green. In the Second World War he enlisted in the RAF. He served for a time in Italy where he met a young lady who was in the WAAF.[8] They were married in the English Church in Naples. After the war, they settled and raised their family in Yorkshire.
With so much more being known about the elder Bertie’s life and with the date of Bertie junior’s birth fitting in with the story of the theft, there is now no doubt that Linda and her brothers have confirmed their relationship to George “Bertie” Robinson, footman at Harewood House. Not only that but, at last, they have access to some information about their more distant African Caribbean ancestors. They now know the names of their great grandparents and realise that they probably have many more relatives in St. Vincent, the USA and, possibly, even here in the UK.
Yet again we can hope that more information will come to light in the coming days.
Researching for this exhibition has been very rewarding – especially when we consider that it has been the means of giving Linda and her brothers access to their family history. It feels as though we have been involved in a cross between Downton Abbey, Long Lost Family and Who Do You Think You Are?
[1] See http://historycalroots.com/bertie-robinson-a-black-footman-at-harewood-house/
[2] Sweet Chariot: Thomas Rutling and the Road to Freedom, Harrogate Festival, 24 July, 2015, was produced by David Lascelles for the Geraldine Connor Foundation.
[3] Mary Lascelles (1900-1995) was a former Vice-Principal of Somerville College and Reader in English at Oxford University. In 1900, her father (who was the 8th son of the 4th Earl of Harewood) owned an estate in Grenada on which he grew cocoa, limes and sugar.
[4] Mary Lascelles, A Memoir, privately printed for the author by Smith Settle, 1989, p.7.
[5] Bertie was returned to St. Vincent. There was an assumption at Harewood that Bertie had been born in Barbados where the family’s plantations were located.
[6] Letter from Constance, Lady Wenlock (nee Lascelles) to her daughter, in the papers of the Forbes Adam/Thompson/Lawley (Barons Wenlock) Family of Escrick – Hull University Archives, Hull History Centre, U DDFA3/6/1/14.
[7] Despite the fact that there was supposed to be a “colour bar”, there are many instances of people of colour serving in the army and even in the Royal Navy during WW1. The stories of several of them are told on the Historycal Roots website.
[8] WAAF – Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.