Honorary Cumbrian - In Memoriam 14th October 1943

TOWN WELCOME DAUGHTER OF KELL’S WAR-CRASH AIRMAN

[by Margaret Crosby, Whitehaven News, Friday, 05 January 2007]

THERE was a civic welcome to Whitehaven, this week, for the daughter of a young wartime airman whose plane had crashed into Kells Brows more than 60 years ago.

It was an emotional trip back in time to an October day in 1943, when Whitehaven townspeople going about their daily business were shocked to see a bomber crash-land in their midst.

Susan Hollinshead, was just six years old, when news came through of a tragedy that was to deprive her, and her unborn brother, of their father, Cyril Johnson.

He was one of five young airmen killed on the training flight from RAF Millom, that ended in wreckage strewn over the Brows, at Kells.

On Monday, Susan, who will be 70 next month, and her husband, John, travelled to Whitehaven from their home in Kelsall, Cheshire, to study local records and documentation of the wartime event and pay an emotional visit to the crash site itself.

They were given a civic welcome by the Mayor of Copeland Willis Metherell and the chairman of Cumbria County Council, Alan Caine.

It was on October 14 that the Avro Anson R9780 aircraft was on a routine flight from the unit at RAF Millom, when tragedy struck.

The five crewmen who died were a mixed bunch. There was Susan’s father Sgt Cyril Johnson, who had been a teacher in Nantwich, before joining the RAF, Sgt T Inman, wireless operator, Flying officer H J O’Hare of Glasgow, Canadian navigator, Sgt R H Murphy and American pilot Sgt V J Dunnigan, a baseball player of note, from Buffalo, New York.

Susan’s visit to Whitehaven had been prompted by the interest of her brother, Dr Keith Johnson, who now lives in Wellington, New Zealand. He had never known his father. His mother, Mabel Johnson, was pregnant with him when Cyril died. Sadly Cyril, 33, did not even know his wife was expecting.

Said Susan: “My father had previously been in South Africa with the RAF and he and my mother had stolen a couple of weeks together before he had to go off to the Millom base. My brother was the result but my father never knew.’’

Susan’s decision to revisit the wartime events of 63 years ago had been prompted by her brother’s interest. Keith had contacted Cumbria County Council to help him research the circumstances of his father’s death.

The siblings had understood their father, Cyril, was a navigator but Glynn Griffith of Millom RAF Museum provided old inquiry records that showed he was being trained as a bomb-aimer.

He told Susan: “Because of wartime demands the training role was often undertaken by aircraft that was ‘war-weary’ and it seems this plane suffered a serious structural defect in the wing span.

As a result of this incident all Avro Ansons in use were subsequently checked out and several were found to have cracks.’’

He said the wing had cracked, the plane had begun to disintegrate in mid-air and the pilot lost effective control of the aircraft once the wing was lost. Parachutes had flared but there was insufficient height to enable the men to get out of the aircraft.

Fabric covering from the aircraft was found on Bransty and local children of the time could remember sparks coming from it as it came down and that Border Regiment soldiers had guarded the crash scene.

The Hollinsheads were given copies of Sgt Johnson’s service record from the RAF, the crash inquiry records and research details gathered by the late Gilbert Rothery, who was interested in aviation and had been a boy of 13, waiting for a bus home to St Bees when the crash occurred.

There was also a folio of documents from The Beacon, represented by Averil Dawson, who is appealing to the public for personal memories of the crash on the Brows, which could form part of an oral history collection.

Councillor Metherell said she too had been only 14 at the time but remembered the event being the talk of the area. “It is history we must not forget.’’

Councillor Caine said Sgt Johnson would be made an honorary Cumbrian and the two councils would explore ways in which to create a permanent memorial to him.

Friedrich Engels, the Cheshire Hunt, the Red Dragon & me

MY CONNECTIONS WITH THE ORIGINS OF COMMUNISM

In my post of June 10, 2010 ‘Fox Hunting and the Point to Points’, I sketched the emergence of two of the modern mainstays of life in rural Cheshire and illustrated how new and synthetic this culture really is.

I mentioned that when the original Hunt Club was founded in 1762 in Tarporley, Cheshire it started off with hare coursing (i.e. using beagle hounds) and that it was only prosperity, farm consolidation and the widespread introduction and proper maintenance of hawthorn hedges that made fox hunting viable.

I also quoted from a poem or ballad called ‘Farmer Dobbin’ written by Rowland Eyles Egerton-Warburton and published in 1853. This was almost certainly first recited to the assembled members of the Cheshire Hunt at a banquet in the Hunt Room of the Swan Inn in Tarporley.

The poem celebrates the acceptance of a new stratum of prosperous local dairy farmers into the Hunt and it mocks the brash young men of Manchester and Liverpool for moving off too early before the fox started from its cover.

Well, you may be more than a little surprised to learn that one of the world’s most important revolutionary thinkers, Friedrich Engels, may well have been one of the offenders in taking up the chase prematurely.

In 1850, Engels returned to England to assist in the management of the sewing thread mill that was part-owned by his father. The Ermen and Engel’s mill was located at Weaste in Salford and Friedrich started by keeping the accounts, while later becoming a full partner.

Fox hunting with the Cheshire Hounds was one of his weekend hobbies in the autumn.

And in my post of August 11, 2010, ‘Who Do You Think You Are – and what were they worth?’ I mentioned that my great, great grandfather Walter Shorrocks, who was a Brush Manufacturer in Salford, lived near to the Crescent Pub in Salford (formerly the Red Dragon) where Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels once drank and discussed revolution and the theory of Communism.

So, I couldn’t let these connections pass without further comment.

Quite possibly, Friedrich (born 1820) may have crossed urban alleyways then with my great great grandfather Walter (born 1824) in Salford, and country lanes with my Cheshire farming step family (Abraham Darlington the elder born 1805 and his son, another Abraham, who was my great grandfather, born 1841).

And the covert revolutionary may have shared drinks with the Shorrocks’ in the Red Dragon and the Darlingtons in the Swan Inn.

So I’ll take the opportunity to say more about Friedrich Engels and his life in North West England.

SALFORD PAYS TRIBUTE TO ITS FAMOUS ADOPTED SON

According to a colourful article in Salford Star (No 6: Winter 2007) on Friedrich Engels:

“Fred Engels is the most famous person who ever lived in Salford.

And when he settled in Salford, at the age of 22, he was on the ale every night, copping off with local girls and stirring up all sorts of trouble. He was the original angry young man, slagging off developers, the council, the capitalists and the conditions that working class people were living in.

Born in Barmen, Germany, in 1820, young Fred was a major trouble maker after he discovered politics, so his dad – a rich mill owner – packed him off to Salford when he was 22 to work for the family's joint owned Ermen and Engels' Victoria Mill in Weaste, which made sewing threads.

By this time Fred already spoke 25 languages, was a top horseman, swordsman, swimmer, skater, artist, journalist, composer and philosopher – well, there was no telly in those days. And he'd published loads of political articles, stirring it up in his home town and prompting his dad to write:

"I have a son at home who is like a scabby sheep in a flock…"

Fred copped off with a young Irish girl called Mary Burns, who probably worked at his dad's mill, and she took him out at night in disguise so that he wouldn't get his German bourgeois head kicked in.

After twenty months Fred went home and wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England 1844 (published 1845). It was"dedicated to the working classes of Great Britain" but wasn't available in English until 1892. The explosive book described in intimate detail, street after street, the total squalor that working people were living in, based on what he'd seen in Salford and Manchester.

But he didn't just write about the conditions, and his hatred for the ruling class that allowed working people to live like that. Once back in Germany he got his sword out and took part in the revolutionary uprising against the Prussian army.

It was after this, in 1848, that Fred and Karl Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto urging a worldwide socialist revolution.

With the authorities after him, Fred took refuge in Switzerland before arriving back at his dad's factory in 1850, exiled in Salford. He stayed for 19 years. This time, Fred was under surveillance from the secret police, and had `official' homes and `unofficial homes' all over inner city Manchester where he lived with Mary under false names to confuse the cops.

While Fred was in Salford and Manchester, Karl Marx used to come and visit him at least once every year. They would sit for hours researching in Chetham's Library – and then go drinking for hours in pubs all over town – possibly the Crescent and The Grapes in Salford, and the Gold Cup and Coach and Horses in Manchester”.

THE STORY CONTINUES

During the 19 years that Friedrich spent in Manchester and Salford on the management team of Ermen and Engels, he enjoyed all the perks associated with his growing wealth (he became a partner in 1864) - and as I mentioned above, he rode with the Cheshire Hounds.

And at the same time, he maintained two homes in Manchester so he could continue to enjoy the beds and domesticity offered by two Irish working class sisters Mary and Lizzie Burns.

But he also supported Karl Marx. Drawing on his salary and profits, it is estimated that Engels provided at least £35,000 a year at today’s prices until Marx’s death, to enable Marx to keep up a middle class lifestyle, especially for his three daughters.

In 1870, Engels moved to London where he and Marx lived until Marx's death in 1883. He died in England in 1895.

Fellow politicians regarded Engels as a "ruthless party tactician", "brutal ideologue", and a "master tactician" when it came to purging rivals in political organizations.

However, he was also seen as a "gregarious", "bighearted", and "jovial man of outsize appetites", who was referred to by his son-in-law as "the great beheader of champagne bottles”. At his regular Sunday parties for London’s left-wing intelligentsia it seems that "no one left before 2 or 3 in the morning."

His stated personal motto was "take it easy", while "jollity" was listed as his favorite virtue.

When Engels died in 1895 he left more than £2m in stocks and shares in today’s money. In the cellar of his grand Primrose Hill four-story house he had £20,000 pounds worth of fine wines and more stored with his merchant.

Unconcerned that this wealth compromised his communist convictions, he apparently argued that:

“the stock exchange simply adjusts the distribution of surplus value already stolen from the workers” and that it was possible to both dabble on the stock market and be a socialist”.

And he promised a “fine reception” for anyone who came to him seeking an apology for being a boss of a manufacturing firm.

SOME FURTHER QUOTES:

"To get the most out of life you must be active, you must live and you must have the courage to taste the thrill of being young”.

"I once went into Manchester with a bourgeois and spoke to him of the bad, unwholesome method of building, the frightful conditions of the working people's quarters…The man listened quietly and said when we parted `And yet there is a great deal of money to be made here; Good Morning Sir’.

"All the conditions of life are measured by money - and what brings no money is (judged) nonsense, unpractical idealistic bosh!"

"If we cross the Irwell to Salford, we find…one large working men's quarter, penetrated by a single wide avenue…All Salford is built in courts or narrow lanes, so narrow, that they remind me of the narrowest I have ever seen, the little lanes of Genoa….The working men's dwellings between Oldfield Road and Cross Lane…vie with the dwellings of the Old Town in filth and overcrowding.

In this district I found a man, apparently about 60 years old, living in a cow stable...which had neither windows and floor, nor ceiling… and lived there, though the rain dripped through his rotten roof. This man was too old and weak for regular work, and supported himself by removing manure with a hand-cart; the dung heaps lay next door to his palace.

The working people live, almost all of them, in wretched, damp, filthy cottages…the streets which surround them are usually in the most miserable and filthy condition, laid out without the slightest reference to ventilation, with reference solely to the profit secured by the contractor…"

"I forsook the company and the dinner-parties, the port-wine and champagne of the middle classes, and devoted my leisure-hours almost exclusively to the intercourse with plain working men; I am both glad and proud of having done so’

Glad, because thus I was induced to spend many a happy hour, which else would have been wasted in fashionable talk and tiresome etiquette ...."

"(I am) proud because I thus got an opportunity of doing justice to an oppressed and calumniated class of men who with all their faults and under all the disadvantages of their situation, yet command the respect of everyone but an English money-monger ..."

"A class which bears all the disadvantages of the social order without enjoying its advantages…Who can demand that such a class respect this social order?"

"Exploitation is the basic evil which the social revolution strives to abolish, by abolishing the capitalist mode of production."

"Urban authorities…almost everywhere in England are recognised centres of corruption of all kinds, nepotism and jobbery – the exploitation of public office to the private advantage of the official or his family."

"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles…”

"Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletariat have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win - Working Men of All Countries, Unite!"

1861 CENSUS

Frederick Engels

Age 40
Estimated Year of Birth 1821
Relationship to Head of Household Lodger
Occupation Merchant
Address 6, Thorncliffe Grove
District Chorlton, Chorlton-Upon-Medlock
Parish Chorlton Upon Medlock
Administrative County Lancashire
Birth Place Prussia

[Lodger with Charles Lee, wife Ann (children Sarah 16, Charles 14, William 7, Emily 5 and Bertha 4)]

Walter Shorrocks (my great, great grandfather)

Age 37
Estimated Year of Birth 1824
Relationship to Head of Household Head
Occupation Brushmaker employing 3 men and 1 boy
Address 21 Islington Street
District Greengate
Parish Salford
Administrative County Lancashire
Birth Place
Birth County Lancashire

Abraham Darlington (my step great, great grandfather)

Age 56
Estimated Year of Birth 1805
Relationship to Head of Household Head
Occupation Farmer of...acres
Address Aston Green
District Nantwich, Nantwich
Parish Aston Juxta Mondrum
Administrative County Cheshire
Birth Place
Birth County Cheshire

[Son Abraham 20 years old born 1841 – good candidate for riding with the Cheshire Hounds c1860]

FOOTNOTE

I have also (once only) hunted with the Cheshire Hounds.

When I was about 10 years old, I badgered my mother and step father to be able to join the Meet of the Hounds at Calveley Hall Gates. I rode my overweight and normally ponderous pony Jonty (see photo below) - who however became a stampeding steed in the rush of horses.

Narrowly avoiding being maimed and crushed (parents were more stoic about risks and injuries in those days), I survived being dragged through a disintegrating post and rail fence in the fields between Calveley and Wettenhall.

This prematurely and permanently ended my enthusiasm for the sport!

Balikbayan solastalgia / rekwerdo na Pilipinas

A TRIP TO BOHOL

A good friend Ian Gill writes from my old 'Second Home' the Philippines:

"The guide took me aside and talked about the “apparition.” He pointed to the wall of Bohol’s Baclayon, one of the Philippines’ oldest stone churches. There, he said, is the face of Padre Pio (the Italian mystic and priest who is said to have appeared with the stigmata of the crucified Jesus).

I could see nothing except dark weather stains on the gray wall. The guide asked me to take a photograph. When I looked at the digital image, I could make out a picture of a bearded man, said to resemble Padre Pio. Judge for yourself from the attached photo!

Bohol is a laid-back, often overlooked province in the central Visayas. Up till a few years ago, its impoverished people hunted and killed dolphins. They also snared and stuffed tarsiers – the tiny endangered primates – to sell to tourists.

Thanks to the eco movement, that’s largely changed, which made our short holiday more enjoyable. Scores of “spinner” dolphins – which leap into the air and twirl – surrounded our banca during an early morning ride with two ex-fishermen. They jump from nowhere and only for a split second, so photographing them is a challenge!

The tarsier, with its bulging eyes (bigger than its brain or stomach) and human-like fingers is easier to photograph and very photogenic.

The kids enjoyed seeing Bohol’s unique Chocolate hills – turned green by the rainy season – but were disappointed they weren’t edible.

A stay in Bohol is very reasonable. For example, a two-hour river cruise through the “jungle” costs only $10, and includes lunch plus singing and dancing (including the tinikling, where dancers hop between bamboo poles in imitation of the tikling bird).

The better homes in Bohol are built by foreigners, including many Germans, and their Filipino wives. It was a German who reportedly discovered the “apparition” of Padre Pio."

One for the Family Album

OETZI AND I

I have gone a bit quiet of late on matters of Family History but am stirred into action this morning by the appearance of a photo of one of my (distant) relatives.

Oetzi and I are related through our mothers, both of whom belong to the ‘Katrine Clan’ in terms of their mitochondrial DNA.

We seem to share some family characteristics but he looks as though he needs a good feed.

FIVE MILLENIA ON, ICEMAN OF BOLZANO GIVES UP DNA SECRETS

Oetzi's genetic code could shed light on hereditary diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and cancer.

[By Michael Day, UK Independent, Monday, 2 August 2010]

Nearly 20 years after the dead man's head was found peeping from a melting Alpine glacier, investigators have finally seen fit to contact his relatives.

This doesn't indicate sloth on the part of the Italian authorities, but instead, advances in DNA technology that may lead scientists to living descendants of the South Tyrol's 5,300-year-old mummified man.

Oetzi the iceman, who today resides in a sterile, glass box at 7C in 100 per cent humidity, is by far the oldest mummified person ever found – those of ancient Egypt are at least 1,000 years younger. He is the permanent star exhibit in a museum in the town of Bolzano.

In this grotesque but timeless state, researchers have been able to extract DNA from a bone in his pelvis. And this week it was announced they had sequenced his entire genome and that the hunt was now on to find Oetzi's descendants – and evidence of genetic changes that have occurred since Neolithic times.

With Oetzi's complete genetic map for their perusal, Dr Albert Zink, the director of the Iceman Institute in Bolzano, and his colleagues said it might also be possible to shed light on hereditary aspects of diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and cancer.

"There are key gene mutations that we know are associated with diseases such as cancer and diabetes and we want to see if Oetzi had them or whether they arose more recently," he said.

Earlier studies had decoded the iceman's mitochondrial DNA, but these tiny gene sequences, which are passed by mothers to their children, provided only limited information, although they did suggest that if Oetzi still had relatives in the Alps, there weren't that many of them.

Dr Zink, is now working with Carsten Pusch from the Institute of Human Genetics at the University of Tübingen and Andreas Keller from Febit, a bio-tech firm in Heidelberg, to share resources and knowledge, and hopefully speed the arrival of research findings in time for next year's 20th annivesary of Oetzi's discovery.

"From comparisons based on the mitochondrial DNA we weren't able to find any relatives in the region. But with the entire genome, there's a good chance we might," said Dr Zink. "We're at the start of a big and very exciting project. I think Oetzi is going to provide us with a lot of information."

Oetzi has proved a goldmine for scientists since he was discovered in the snow on 19 September 1991, over 3,000m up on the Italian-Austrian border. Anthropologists learnt from the degree and positioning of wear and tear in Oetzi's joints that some Neolithic people, contrary to previous theories, spent most if not all their lives high in the mountains.

Oetzi, who was about 5ft 5in tall, weighed about 59 kg and was probably around 45 years old when he died, had also been around the block a few times. He had three broken ribs, a nasty cut on his hand, the intestinal parasite whipworm and fleas.

Scientist were also able to piece together his attire – a goatskin loincloth, leather leggings, a goatskin coat and a cloak of grass stitched together with animal sinews.

He wore a bearskin cap and leather shoes stuffed with grass to keep his feet warm.

But Oetzi might be considered ahead of his time in the style stakes. While today's young Italians race to cover their legs, necks and elbows in ugly spider web tattoos, Oetzi had beaten them to it with, around 57, rather more tasteful, carbon tattoos consisting of dots and lines.

It was the nature of Oetzi's death, though, that has most captured the imagination. Initially, it was thought that he froze to death in a blizzard.

But CT scans have since revealed that his body contained a flint-headed arrow that entered through his shoulder stopping just short of his left lung, but rupturing the key blood vessel carrying blood from his heart to his left arm. Oetzi was murdered.

"Judging by the degree of damage to a major artery, it's almost certain that he bled to death," said Dr Zink, "and quickly, too."

Traces of blood from four different people on the Otzi's dagger suggest an earlier or ongoing skirmish might have been related to the fatal wound, perhaps with the iceman taking an arrow in the back while fleeing his adversaries -- members, possibly of a rival tribe.

The absence of an arrow shaft has led one researcher, Dr Eduard Egarter Vigl, a pathologist in Bolzano, to suggest the killer had removed it to cover his tracks, since arrows can be identified easily.

More prosaic controversies have arisen, too, following the discovery of his corpse in the Schnalstal glacier. At first, it wasn't clear in which country Oetzi had been discovered. But surveys in October 1991 showed that the body had been found 93 meters inside Italian territory, and so the Italian province grabbed Oetzi.

And the tourist board made a killing. So too did the woman who found him.

Although it wasn't until May this year that the acrimonious dispute over the finder's fee was finally decided.

Authorities announced they would meet the €175,000 (£150,000) demand of the German couple, Helmut and Erika Simon, who found the Iceman. Mrs Simon, by now a widow, argued that the mummy had earned the city of Bolzano tens of million of euros – and that she deserved more than the €5,000 she'd originally been offered for discovering the corpse.

Several others have tried to get the paws on the money. One, a Swiss woman, said she spat on the Iceman to stake her claim. Her DNA was not found on the body, however.

Another, a Slovenian actress, claimed she beat the German couple to the scene by about five minutes and had asked them to take photos of the corpse. But she could produce no one to corroborate her account.

The discovery of Oetzi has also spawned a host of exotic theories regarding the circumstances behind his violent death. One space technology professor has suggested that evidence of an asteroid landing in the area in that period might be linked to the Iceman's demise. He wondered whether Oetzi had been a powerful figure and was used as a ritual sacrifice in order to appease the gods who'd sent the terrifying extra-terrestrial object.

Another theory contested by residents of this formerly Austrian region, who see the Iceman as their forefather, claims he was cast out from his community because a low sperm count rendered him childless.

"I'm not sure whether we'll be able to say whether that's true or not with the DNA sequencing," said Dr Zink. "But there are lots of questions that we might be able to answer."

But staring at poor Oetzi's gnarled, brown corpse, you can't help wondering if the most obvious question is ethical rather than scientific: how recently does someone have to have died before they're entitled to a proper burial - instead of being left in a glass cage like a gooey prop from a horror film, for people to gawp at?

"There has been some discussion on this," says Dr Zink, "and it's a fair point. But this man is 5,300 years old. We do treat him with respect; we look after the body very, very carefully, and he provides us with lot of valuable information. And besides, even if we were to bury him we wouldn't be able to do it according to his customs because we don't know what they were."

So the Iceman will remain the star museum exhibit for the thousands of people who come each year to the Alpine town and stare at his sticky, brown corpse.

But even if they can't bury him, today's distant relatives of the Iceman, might conceivably see the medical benefits -- if, as they say, his captors manage to unlock the secret of his genes.

Island Bay School - Te Kura o Tapu te Ranga

ABOUT ISLAND BAY SCHOOL

Island Bay School has a roll of over 400 pupils aged 5 to 11 years, in classes Years 1 to 6 (Standard 4) distributed over about 17 class rooms. Class sizes average around 20 in the junior school to 30 pupils in the senior.

The school is divided into two sections separated by a side street. The main part contains the junior and middle schools, administration, library, hall and dental clinic. The other part is known as Victory Park and contains six classrooms plus a grassed area and fantastic adventure playground.

The school is managed by the Principal Perry Rush and governed by the Board Of Trustees. The Home and School Association co-ordinates the fundraising activities to enhance the services supplied by Ministry of Education funding.

THE 'SCHOOL METAPHOR' (shown above)

The visual metaphor captures the school's learning ethic. The puzzle represents the challenge of constructing a successful life. The child does not build a predetermined puzzle but rather, shapes each puzzle piece in a unique way to build coherent pathways into the local community and ultimately the world.

Each puzzle piece represents the ideas, attitudes and tools necessary to successfully contribute in the world.

In practice, the school aims to produce children that:

1. are resilient, resourceful and self aware
2. have been exposed to a wide range of experiences
3. have imagination and are creative
4. are effective communicators
5. hold strong values and know how to act on them
6. are internally motivated by curiosity
7. have a civic sense of responsibility
8. can challenge, take risks and are prepared to participate
9. are happy and have fun.

Island Bay / Southern Ward - It's just So Beautiful !!

PHOTOS FROM 2010 'PAUL WADE-BROWN MEMORIAL PHOTO COMPETITION'