John CAVE (1819-1871) & Elizabeth nee WOODFORD (1816-1896) Pride and Prejudice in the megalopolis (1849-1871) Following their last adventures in Sherborne, here are some new episodes in our CAVE's saga. In the precedent issue, we had learnt that, having trained for the job in Oxford-street, London, no. 61, at Williams and Sowerby's about 1841, John rented Victoria House, Parade, Sherborne, Dorset to establish in 1843 a very successful trade of linen Draper retailer as well as his wife Elizabeth established herself as a Milliner in the same place. We found no less than 30 advertising papers in the Sherborne Mercury along five years, mainly on the first page and in big letters. Moreover he was robbed by a Sarah Coffin in January 1847 and at least the whole stock was sold between April and June 1847. This late successful retailer in Sherborne ─ and formerly married by license in 1841 Dorchester ─ is now living in London on the 6th of August 1849, 10 Devonshire street, Queen Square, now Boswell Street, London W. C. 1, likely Bevan House which includes the no. 10. It so appears in the birth certificate of my 2nd great grandmother Rosa Elizabeth Cave, born on the 1st of July, who was likely baptised in the very close church of St. George the Martyr Holborn. The father is now given as a Warehouseman. We may guess that, knowing very well the linen and Millinery trades, and actually, like in 1845, having bought his goods in the Aldermanbury area, London ─ “the well-known nucleus of Manchester warehousemen in the city of London” according to the Morning Post ─, he found a job in this spot thanks to his former acquaintances. After all, there is only 1.5 mile between those two points. Some of those warehouses were deceiving buildings in those days of appalling poverty just a bit further in the east end of London, as we can read it in The English Town: A History of Urban Life by Mark Girouard Yale University Press, 1995 p. 243: “In the late nineteen century a number of London warehouses, in Smithfields and elsewhere, worked out a formula for an eye-catching front that also admitted plenty of daylight; the greater part of the front was given over to a single great arch, filled with more or less continuous glazing. Bradbury and Greatorex's warehouse in Aldermanbury (Pl. 326), built in about 1850, had devised an alternative formula, which for some reason failed to catch on, although it was well adapted to the language of classical architecture. The frontage was divided up by pilasters and entablatures, on a post-andbeam system, and the intervening spaces entirely filled with glass.” A few years later in The Civil Engineer & Architect’s Journal, Dec. 8, 1860, we may be gobsmacked to discover how magnificently those warehouses could have been done: “A noble example of warehouse architecture has been erected in Aldermanbury with a considerable degree of ornate splendour externally. It is Italian in style and its constructive arrangements are excellent. The area on which it stands is 98 feet by 69 feet. The basement is exceedingly spacious and is floored with Seyssel asphalt. The walls of the ground floor are lined throughout with match boarding in order to keep the goods perfectly dry. At the rear is a large show room 65 feet by 40 feet with a gallery around it for the display of goods 10 feet in projection lighted from the north which is advisable in the display of certain fabrics. The ceiling of this show room is embellished in decorative plaster work under the direction of Mr Manning. The front of the gallery is protected by iron railing divided by oaken moulded pedestals 10 feet apart and an oak hand rail [...] The principal front of the building is of brick and stone its lower portion containing a rich frieze of foliage in its cornice. Mr Edmund Woodthorpe is the architect. Messrs Brass and Co the contractors. The carvings have been well executed by Mr Daymond.” (Archiseek online magazine at http://archiseek.com/2009/1860-warehouses-inaldermanbury-london/) Two years after her daughter's birth, the 30th of March 1851, in the census, John Cave, spelled Case (that's why I wondered years before finding him out!), is recorded as a clerk to an Accountant, in the parish of St. Alkmond Shrewsbury, Shropshire, living 16 Pride Hill, at Mrs Elizabeth A. Farnall, 29, a Mercer's wife, while his family ─ his wife, still a Milliner, with two boys and a girl ─ is remaining in the suburban London, 9 Brighton terrace Lambeth, Surrey. But why so far from home? And what odd kind of job was he actually doing, given he was previously a Draper? Mind that a Draper and a Mercer, even slightly different skills are demanded, are acting in the same activity sector. Luckily, the answer is to be found in the London Daily News, Wed 17 Sep 1851, p. 1: “NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN, that by an Indenture, bearing date the 6th day of September, 1851, CHARLES HARDY, of Shiffnal, in the county of Salop, linen and woollen Draper, ASSIGNED all his PERSONAL ESTATES and EFFECTS whatsoever and wheresoever as therein mentioned unto Henry Ledgard, of No. 39, Wood-street, in the City of London, Warehouseman, in trust for the BENEFIT of his CREDITORS; and that the said Indenture was executed and attended as follows, that is to say, by the said Charles Hardy, on the day of the

date thereof, in the presence of John Cave, clerk to William Edwards, of No. 5, Gresham-street in the said City, Accountant, by the said Henry Ledgard, in the presence of William Charles Sole, of No. 68, Aldermanbury, in the said City, Solicitor; and that the said Indenture now lies for execution by the rest of the creditors of the said Charles Hardy, at the office of SOLE, TURNER, and TURNER, 68, Aldermanbury, London, Solicitors to the trustee.—Dated Sept, 15, 1851.” (source of all the newspapers quoted: http://www.Britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/) And at once, at the first glance, you see appearing a lot of the pieces of this tricky jigsaw: the debtor is living in Shropshire (Salop), a Warehouseman is warrant of his goods, John Cave is acting as a clerk to a Londoner Accountant, and even the Solicitors are established in Aldermanbury! So, in this kind of snakes and ladders game, passing by the square Warehouseman, John is still exercising his skills in the same sector: the fashion. He was probably acting as a specialist at Mr William Edwards, able to appreciate clearly and quickly the value of the goods involved in various trading problems. But it would be nice to learn a bit more about John Cave's patron. No problem at all, Robert Henry Parker, in his British Accountants: a biographical sourcebook, Ayer Publishing, 1980, gives us a lot of informations, involving our John Cave in the beginnings of the story of a big Accountant firm: “William Edwards had commenced practice as an Accountant and Valuer at 35 King Street in 1843 or 1844 having, in part, succeeded to the business of Mr. Threlkeld, his brother-in-law, and he continued so in practice from the same address until 1848 […] Some time in 1848, Samuel Lowell Price, then about 27 Years old was taken into partnership by William Edwards and they carried on a practice as Accountants from 5 Gresham Street in the City of London under the name of Edwards & Price […] The partnership was dissolved as from 24th December, 1849 and both Edwards and Price carried on separate practices as Accountants in their own names from the same address […] In 1854 William Edwards left 5 Gresham Street [...]”. We learnt afterwards that William Edwards office actually moved to 18, King-street, Cheapside, in the City of London, and that he was working there on the 6th December 1859. But how long did John Cave remain at William Edwards? He likely remained as long as he established himself later as an Accountant. But the last two children of five appeared to be born in Wellington, Somerset: Frederick William James on the 9th of December 1854, and Alice Eleonor on the 23rd of December 1857. Mind that we told in the precedent episode that Ann Elizabeth, John's sister, had married a grocer, tea dealer and linen draper, Charles James HADDON, a widower, in this very town in December 1848. Nevertheless in the next census, on the 7th of April 1861 (still misspelled Case!), he is given as an Accountant, visitor at Thomas Rolls, a 57 Draper living at 52 Bank, Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, with his wife and his three children as well as all his board, 4 females between 21 and 28, 2 apprentices, both aged 19, and one more visitor, another Draper, of Frome, Somerset. This Thomas Rolls appears to be a fluent merchant, as we are told by Sheila R Weston in her website (Copyright © 2007 – 2011) at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~sheilaweston/openuniversity.htm: “Many of the higherstatus citizens, like Thomas ROLLS, mayor of Chipping Norton and Draper, employing 4 men, live in the central part of the town, around the Market Place.” In the same 1861 census, the Cave family seems back in London, living 13 Bywater street, Chelsea, Middlesex, very close to the rich West End, and his wife is now given as an Accountant's wife. It might prove that the trade was sufficient to pay both of them (or so they thought...), for she was no longer exercising her Millinery skills. But, once more, the self-enterprise turned to be a dark hole, even worse than previously in Sherborne, and following a sort of identical pattern, good lodgings, lot of journeys hither and thither in England, high expectations, and the final descent into hell, as we learn from the London Gazette, 19th May 1863, No. 22737 p. 2662: “John Cave, formerly of No. 182, Great Dover-street, in the county of Surrey, then of No. 62, Hanover-street, Pimlico, in the county, of Middlesex, and now of No. 3, Worcester-street, Pimlico, in the said county of Middlesex, Accountant, having been adjudged bankrupt, under a Petition for adjudication of Bankruptcy, filed in Her Majesty's Court of Bankruptcy, in London on the 15th day of May, 1863, is hereby required to surrender himself to John Fisher Miller, Esq., a Registrar of the said Court, at the first meeting of creditors to be held before the said Registrar, on the 1st day of June next, at three o'clock in the afternoon precisely, at the said Court. Mr. Edward Watkin Edwards, of No. 22, Basinghall-street, London, is the Official Assignee, and Mr. R. Bramwell, of No. 17, Southampton-buildings, Holborn, is the Solicitors acting in the bankruptcy.” And then in the London Gazette, 5th June 1863, No. 22742 p. 2953: "[...] a public sitting, for the said bankrupt to pass his Last Examination, and make application for his Discharge, will be held before Edward Holroyd, Esq., a Commissioner of the said Court, on the 29th day of June instant, at the said Court, at Basinghall-street, in the city of London, at three o'clock in the afternoon precisely, the day last aforesaid,

being the day limited for the said bankrupt to surrender […]". Bankruptcy also advertised in the Leeds Mercury Thursday 21st May 1863, the Chelmsford Chronicle Friday 22nd May 1863, the Northampton Mercury, the Hereford Times, the Herts Guardian, Agricultural Journal, and General Advertiser, Sat 23rd May 1863, and the Blackburn Standard (Lancashire), Wed 27th May 1863: very tough they were with the bankrupts, in those harsh Victorian days... Mind that the Cave family, possibly fleeing away from her creditors, moved twice at least in that very year 1863! Both the addresses in Pimlico are all gone, the first ─ Hanover st. ─ faced Cumberland st. on the south side of Lupus st., Pimlico, and the second ─ Worcester st. ─ close to St. Saviour's church, Pimlico, one of the three which existed in the square spot between Lupus st., Claverton st., Chichester st. and St. George's square, till the hideous buildings of the Pimlico Academy were built in 1967-70 and finally demolished in 2010. Bankrupt as an Accountant, what to do to decently feed one's family? Becoming a cab driver! Here is now this spicy event, occurring one year later, in 1864, in which all is truly true, including the surname of the cab inspector, Holmes! Shame that the paper doesn't tell the name of the inspector's son... Here it comes from the London Standard, Wed 07 Sep 1864, p. 7: “POLICE. William Poole, cab inspector, and William Cartwright, a police constable, both in the employ of the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway, at the Victoria Station, were summoned before Mr. Selfe to answer the charge of assaulting James Steward, a cab proprietor and driver, on the 25th of August. It appeared from the evidence of the complainant, which was corroborated by Mr. John Leman, of 32, Tachbrook-street, Pimlico, and also by John Cave, a cab-driver, that at about four o'clock on the afternoon of the day in question, the complainant drove to the Crystal Palace platform at Victoria with a fare, which he sat down and was about to leave the station, when Mr. Leman hailed him, and he was going to take him and his party, when an inspector named Holmes came and caught the horse by the head, and the defendants at the same time seized the complainant and dragged him violently to the ground. His cab was then taken out of the station, and the party who hailed him were put into a privileged cab, the complainant's being an unprivileged one. Complainant was shaken severely while on the ground, and his ankle was so hurt that he was incapacitated from his duties for some days. For the defence it was stated and proved in evidence by the defendants and four other witnesses, that the complainant, as an unprivileged cabman, should have left the station as soon as he had set down his fare, instead of which he loitered about, which caused a great obstruction ; that he backed his cab into another and damaged it, and that he was repeatedly requested to leave the station, upon refusing to do which Holmes caught hold of the horse to remove the cab. The complainant then pulled the horse back, and as the defendant, Cartwright, getting on the wheel of the cab caught hold of the complainant's hand to loose the reins, the complainant then jumped off the cab, and attempted to strike Cartwright; upon which the defendant Poole seized his hand in the act of striking, and prevented him. He was not shaken, and his language was very bad. As he was going out of the station he swore that he would have Holmes and Poole up, and have them fined 40s. each, as a man named Ward had served them some months ago. The case occupied nearly three hours. Mr. Selfe said that, no doubt, at a station like Victoria the officers met with some obstruction in their duty, and if they were obstructed, as had been set up for the defence in this case, they should have proceeded against the offender by their act of parliament, and not act as they had done. It had been sworn distinctly by two disinterested witnesses, entire strangers to one another and the complainant, that this case had been very improperly treated : the officers of the company were allowed to use a certain amount of force in removing persons obstructing thorn, but in this instance he certainly considered they had used more than was necessary. The witnesses for the defence were all connected with each other, being officers of the company, and, therefore, there would be a sort of bias on their part in giving evidence. He did not wish to impute any improper motives to them in having so given their evidence, and, as in their examination in chief some of them had not spoken one word about the actual assault, he should feel it his duty to rely upon and believe the evidence for the complainant. It was perfectly clear to him that Yeider, a cabman— one of the witnesses for the defence— had caused this disturbance by getting behind the complainant, to take up the fare spoken of; and, taking all the circumstances of the case into consideration, he felt it his duty to inflict a substantial fine, that of 40s., upon each of the defendants with no costs, as great provocation had been given by the complainant mentioning the case of Ward. The fines were paid.” No further comments are to be done: the anecdote is self-sufficient in itself, very picturesque indeed with all those chaps, cabs and horses jamming the traffic in front of the station. What a mess it might have been: a good opportunity lost by the Punch cartoonists? John Cave probably lived not far from Victoria station (the other witness living in Tachbrook st.), for we should remark that in the 1860's, even moving several times (and more are to be found, I guess!), the family

rather settled between Chelsea and Pimlico, in the middle of the spot going from the luxurious West End in the North to the Thames in the South. But in 1868 occurred the first dramatic event: Francis Woodford Cave, second son of the family, engaged himself on the Lucibelle, a 914 tons clipper ship, on the 30 Jan., as an able seaman (AB). The ship was to sail to Australia. But the boy never arrived: he was drowned at sea on the 27th of April, aged only 21, five days after the Cape of Good Hope was passed. Did Francis slipped from the deck being on duty? We shall never know. The ship arrived in Melbourne on the 30th of May. Then she experienced a Tsunami in Sidney next August, and finally is reported to have been wrecked at Starbuck Islands on the 23rd May 1871, fortunately without any damage for the crew who was rescued. The 3rd of April 1869, John's elder daughter, my 2nd great grandmother, Rosa Elizabeth, married without license, aged nearly 20, at the British consulate in Paris her first cousin, Henry Davis, of Dorchester, principal clerk of the London Chatham Dover Railway Company in Paris. Guess what? She was a Milliner, like her mother, and her father back an Accountant; but unfortunately the marriage certificate, signed by Mr Falconer Atlee the British consul, doesn't give any clue regarding John's address in London. On the 14th of April 1870, his older son, John, given as a Draper (like his father) of West Brompton, Middlesex, married Catherine Susannah MARSHALL, at the parish church, Boston, Lincolnshire. His father is still given as an Accountant. The young couple sailed nearly immediately and arrived September 1870 in Victoria, Australia on the ship Essex. They are the great grandparents of my Australian cousin Glenys Tumney. On the 2nd of April 1871, as we are told by the census, still an Accountant, John Cave is living with his wife at 319 Fulham Road, a kind of houseshare, with a lot of people within. It seems they were experiencing bad days, with little money and poor environment. But the worst was to come hardly two months later: back down as an Accountant clerk, he died of phthisis pulmonalis ─ tuberculosis ─ at 73 Ifield road, West Brompton, Middlesex, on the 28th of May 1871. According to the memorial card hold by my cousin Glenys Tumney, he was buried in the Brompton cemetery the following 3rd of June, in a grave number 64227, letter O, by a Mr G. Hayward, Undertaker, 23-25 Pimlico road, for £1 16s., in the form of a “common interment in grave”, as specified on the bill, signed by John Henry Ruddick, manager of the cemetery. But visiting last year this huge Victorian cemetery, and glad to find the plot O with all its graves thanks to the map shown close to the North entrance, I was absolutely unable to find neither John Cave's grave (or its precise location for it's obvious reading the bill that no stone was carved) nor other ones dating back to the same period. All those graves I saw were done far later. But where are gone all those brave chaps who might not be allowed to rest in peace in those consecrated grounds in which their mourning family buried them? After her husband's death, Elizabeth Cave payed a visit in Bordeaux at her sister's with her younger son Frederick William James Cave, shipping agent though only nearly 18, as we are told by the French census of 1872. Frederick William James Cave is given by the 1891 British census as a Cargo clerk in the Customs, but living in the St Thomas Lunatic Asylum, Kenton (Exeter), Devon. The explanation came from my Australian cousin: he was deaf and dumb. Terrible to think there was no help with people born alike in those days, condemned to live until the end with all the other poor mad people! Elizabeth Cave went back to live with her second daughter, Alice Eleonor, at Wellington, Somerset, at a distant relative's. She died on the 15th December 1896, finally at Woodgate Culmstock, Devon, aged 80, of senile decay of heart syncope. And Alice Eleonor, the only surviving child remaining in England, Draper's shop Assistant (of course!) in Exeter, Devon in the 1901 census, passed away in the beginning of 1946, as a spinster, at Taunton, Somerset, aged nearly 89. Alice Eleonor Cave (1857-1946) So ended the saga of the seven members of a Victorian Dorset Draper's family, through Worcestershire, Dorset, Somerset, London, Surrey, Middlesex, Shropshire, Oxfordshire, Lincolnshire, France, Australia, and Devon. What journeys and how many joys and sorrows, aren't they? Arnaud C. Aurejac-Davis - [email protected] – 1776 route de Cayrac - 82800 Bioule - France