Post-War Boys, 1948

The picture shows Keith with his cousins Christopher and David Clarke. Keith is on the left, being held in check by sister Sue aged 11. The photograph was taken at 'Linwood', Wistaston, near Nantwich - the suburban house occupied by Meg after she left Loughton, Essex in early 1944.

I have a sense of resistant and diffident boys, adrift from missing or aloof fathers - the generation of young men that later cut loose in the 1960s as they discovered their own (in the case of these cousins, very different) paths.

P.S. A tinge of envy still at David's Bus Conductor's ticket-clipper - toys were in very short supply!

Public Policy and the 'Trolley Problem'

Well – for starters - What the hell is the Trolley Problem?

The Trolley Problem is a post-medieval ‘Angels on a Pinhead’ conundrum posed by modern philosophers and public policy analysts. Introduced some decades ago by Philippa Foot, it exemplifies ‘experimental philosophy’.

As Professor Simon Blackburn of the Department of Moral Science at the University of Cambridge explains: ‘Here a railway trolley is careering down a track, certain to kill five workers, unless you pull a lever deflecting onto a sidetrack – on which, unfortunately there is one worker who will then be killed. Is it permissible, or obligatory, to pull the lever? Would you say the same about pushing an innocent but fat bystander off a bridge into the path of the trolley, stopping it – but only by killing him?’

Experimental philosophers poll people on issues like this to probe the influence of responsibility, intention, proximity and outcomes, under various scenarios.

Peter Singer’s book set me thinking about this again.

He describes how his grandmother Amalie survived Theresienstadt and possible transportation to Auschwitz by making herself indispensable to the German authorities. Among her task was the compilation of lists for the transports - in response to demands from the Germans to the Camp Elders to organize quotas of Jews who were to be transported. As time passed, she was all too well aware that the transport dockets were death tickets and not passports to a new settlement.

Peter singer quotes Norbert Teller who was faced with similar dilemmas: ‘Self-doubts arise in all of us about our ethics, our humanity, fairness, justice, and decency’... and in ‘life threatening circumstances we relinquish hesitantly, slowly, unhappily all the rules, laws and principles of decency’... ‘Who can say today whether all of this was excusable? Whoever has not lived for a few weeks, months or even years in such a situation can hardly comprehend the indescribably immense power of self-preservation’.

Better I think that philosophers and public policy advisors consult biographies and family histories on ethics and morality, than that they postulate abstract problems that allow them and their guinea pig subjects to pretend to play God.

One possible test of good public policy formulation could be that both the process and its outcomes exhibit and extend the best of common humanity - in the circumstances.

Meg at Haus Rheinland, Wiesbaden 1933

Well, looking for ‘Keith’s Connections’ are there any more personal links to Peter Singer’s history of the Oppenheim Family and the collapse of morality in the Third Reich?

The answer, perhaps surprisingly, is ‘Yes’. The lattice of life connects Nantwich, Cheshire in the 1930s to Theresienstadt through Vienna and Wiesbaden.

In 1933, Keith’s future mother, 18 year old Mabel Kenyon Clarke, travelled to Germany to take up a position as a guest pupil at the House Rhineland, 34 Parkstrasse, Wiesbaden – a Finishing School for girls. It is a reasonable supposition that the placement resulted from the work of a foundation that sought to mend fences between the British and the Germans in the aftermath of World War I.

The brochure for House Rhineland begins by stating that ‘House Rhineland is a nice delightful house standing just in front of the very healthy Kurpark of Wiesbaden known all over the world on account of its beauty – a lovely source takes its murmuring way through bright paths. The rooms are bright, airy and homelike and the internal arrangements are thoroughly modern including central heating, electric light etc.’

It goes on to claim that it ‘receives young girls of good families and gives individual teaching on modern lines and calculated to develop individual gifts and to inculcate habits of self-reliance and duty. At the same time emphasis is laid upon the importance of good manners’.

Continuing (with the English gradually becoming more ragged), ‘The Kurhaus Concerts as well as the wellknown Opera have always been an attraction for Wiesbaden, Excursions to the famous Goethe-town of Francfort, to Darmstadt and Heidelberg, the dream of young students, as well as to the Castles and mountains of the Rhine are made’.

Finally it notes soberly that ‘As individual attention is given to each girl and as there will be only a limited number of girls there will be no allowance to leave the house without a chaperon’.

The fees were 35 Guineas per term, with extra charges of 4 shillings per course for special lessons. ‘Entrance fee 2 Guineas for use of plate and knives. Use of piano – half a Guinea per term etc.’

Meg had mixed feelings about the experience. She became warm friends with some of the girls (including having something of a crush it seems on ‘Erica’). They were young and fun-loving. When she first arrived, she was desperately homesick and she spoke no German. Seeing her hanging around the gate in the morning waiting for a letter from England, they advised her to inquire of the postman ‘Haben sie ein kuss fur mich’.

She also had a playful romance with a well-connected young German named Dieter – apparently he was a nephew of Goering. The story was that he used to yodel to her as he left their assignations. Extraordinarily, they kept in touch and he wrote after World War II telling her that fortunately he had fought on the Eastern Front (which meant for him that he did not have to face English enemies directly).

But there were also shadows. Meg attended a Nazi Rally that was addressed by Hitler. She came away shocked and fearful at the ranting of the speakers and the obsequious roaring of the crowd. She also recounted how the Head Mistress had recounted to her some comments from the townsfolk about the girls following a walk through the town. It was obvious it was said that one of the girls was not a pure German.

I will leave the reader to sketch in the relevance of the school’s emphasis on modernity, duty and good manners to the developments that took place in the Reich between the Wiesbaden of 1933 and Theresienstadt in 1943.

'Pushing Time Away' & the 'Commemoration of a Name'

I called into our Central Library in Wellington on Tuesday and saw that a stock of old and worn books had been put out for sale. Browsing the material, I spent the sum of $6 on three.

Among them a treasure. A wonderful if thought-provoking read for anyone who is caught up in the fascination of Family History - 'Pushing Time Away: My Grandfather and the Tragedy of Jewish Vienna' by Peter Singer (2003).

Pushing Time Away is partly a family memoire - in search of lost years and broken futures. The book starts by providing a Family Tree for the Oppenheim family which illustrates the links back from Peter himself to Moravian rabbi Simon Wolf Oppenheim (1580 - 1664). The 1931 photograph (above) shows the extended Oppenheim family on summer vacation by the lake at Velden am Worthersee, Austria.

Peter's grandfather David Ernst Oppenheim - a secular Jew - was a World War I war hero from the Austro-Hungarian army (fighting in Galicia and the Isonzo Pass Italian front). Despite his heroism and patriotism, he was denied 'war invalid' status in the sham settlement that the Nazis constructed at Theresenstadt and fell victim to famine and neglect there in 1943.

But it is also about the nature of culture, and the birth and evolution of psychology. Peter carefully reviews David's life, work and philosophy. David was a classical scholar, and sometime friend and collaborator of Sigmund Freud. His knowledge of classical Greek mythology appears to have contributed substantially to the linking of myths and dreams, and the characterisation of conditions like the Oedipus Complex.

However, David left Freud's circle in support of Alfred Adler - partly out of personal affinity but also because he believed that Freud placed too much stress on sexual conditioning, at the expense of assessing other influences on character and neurosis like a perceived / re-inforced sense of inferiority - and external social forces.

Peter also has much of value to say from his own personal viewpoint on the skein of life - and the ways in which it constantly throws up challenges to our understanding, compassion and ethical assumptions.

In a final chapter, he quotes from one of his grandfather's unpublished essays 'Views of Life from Early Greece'. The quotation concerns Solon's clash with Croesus on the definition of a 'good life'. Croesus like so many of our modern economists and fellow citizens viewed a good life as one that had maximised acquistion through competition.

In contrast, Solon quotes the life of Tellus - an obscure Athenian - who enjoyed:

1. a period of peaceful prosperity in his own country
2. a life long enough to see one's children and grandchildren
3. death before one 'loses the complete vigour of a valiant man'
4. a comfortable income
5. well-brought up children
6. assurance of one's line through numerous thriving offspring
7. a quick death
8. victorious confirmation at some points in life of one's own strength
9. the highest funeral honours
10.the preservation of one's name.

Interesting to check these off for our ancestors (and for ourselves, insofar as the scorecard is already available).

Peter also muses on the tenth point that it raises deep philosophical issues about whether a positive review of a person's life, after their death, can make a difference as to how well that life has gone. He states that he felt that, in writing the book, he could do something for his grandfather to mitigate the wrongs that had been done to him by the Nazis.

Peter says that 'I cannot entirely dismiss the feeling that by allowing David's writings to reach across the years to me, I am doing something (personal) for him'.

This is a thought that is fairly widely shared by those involved in Family History, I suggest. We work partly to 'preserve their names', within a celebration of the (non-material) good in their lives.


BACKGROUND TO THE AUTHOR

Australian-born philosopher Peter Singer is frequently acknowledged as a major force in modern bio-ethics. The publication of his book Animal Liberation in 1975 is credited with launching the animal rights movement.

He is currently a professor of bio-ethics at Princeton University and has taught at, among other schools, Oxford University, The University of Colorado, University of California and New York University.

His Practical Ethics is one of the most widely used texts in applied ethics, and Rethinking Life and Death received the 1995 National Book Council's Banjo Award for non-fiction.

Peter Singer is also the co-editor of the journal Bioethics and a founding father of The International Association of Bioethics. His most recent book is Pushing Time Away. He currently lives in New York City and Princeton, New Jersey.

Yummy Mummies & 'Doing it all Again'

Rosemary McLeod, one of the columnists in our local Wellington newspaper (the Dominion Post) misses no opportunity and minces no words in lampooning older men with younger wives and second-time-around children.

Rosemary recently commented as follows on one of our politicians:

'There's nothing as daft as a middle-aged man sucking his tummy in to run about with a woman young enough to be his daughter, and no good can come of protein shakes and egg white omelettes when you're over 50.

There's an age gap of 21 years between Mr Hide and girlfriend Louise Crome, who was first toddling into the infant room with her juice bottle the year he married his first wife.

Watching telly, while nibbling her teddy's ear, she wouldn't have seen much difference at that time between Mr Hide and Barney the purple dinosaur, and she'd have had a point'.


Ouch! Is it inevitably a matter of folie a deux and delayed reckoning?

Actually, for starters - its pretty good that Rodney Hide has got himself back into shape - at the very least, he is likely to save the state money on his geriatric medical care.

But what is the problem with 'mixed-age relationships'?

Well, I have to report that Jane's peers (my Supa Cafe 'Yummy Mummies') are much more relaxed about this issue than Rosemary.

Pressed by one of them for a comparison between rearing Matt & Pete (now 29 & 26) and Sam & Theo (7 & 5), I suggested that:

a. things were now much better for men because they were no longer expected to be the family mainstay and breadwinner

b. as I had aged, I had become much more considerate and patient - and much more interested in positive parenting

c. as the mother of Sam & Theo, Jane loved becoming a mum the more so because it had been delayed - she had had plenty of time to travel and lay the foundations of her career - and finding a man who had 'done it all before' made it that bit easier.

My listener smiled and called me a 'sweetheart'.

Postcard from the past: Fanny Shorrocks' Wedding

On 5th November 1910, Fanny Eliza Shorrocks, aged 19, married George Davies, aged 27 in the Parish Church of St Ambrose, Pendleton, Salford. George was living at 23 Osborne Street and Fanny at 27 Duchy Street, Salford.

John describes his father as a 'Gentleman' (actually from the Censuses, he appears to have spent most of his life as a Warehouseman). Fanny's father Robert Edwin Shorrocks, 'Brush Manufacturer', was deceased. The witnesses were Robert Mallinson Shorrocks (Fanny's brother) and Louisa Dixon.

I purchased a copy of the certificate on the off-chance that one of the witnesses might have been Harry Johnson (formerly Shorrocks) - Fanny's elder brother and my grandfather. It would have been nice to have seen him re-united with his family for his sister's wedding.

However, Harry was again conspicuous by his absence. As he was at the death of his father Robert Edwin Shorrocks (54) on 13th September 1909, at 7 Spring Gardens, Pendleton. On his death certificate, my great grandfather was described as a Brush Manufacturer Traveller. He died of 'apoplexy coma' (presumably a stroke). Harry's long suffering younger brother Robert Mallinson Shorrocks was present.

I have no doubt that at some point, I will re-establish contact with descendants of Harry's siblings - including those of Robert M. and Fanny Eliza. Will any memory of the family rupture survive? I'll keep you posted.

Shorrocks Family in 1881 (photos Islington Mill & Islington Road, Salford)

1881 Census:

THE SHORROCKS FAMILY

Salford, Lancashire, England - extract: 1881 British Census


KEITH’S GREAT GREAT GRANDFATHER

Dwelling: 23 Islington St

Walter SHORROCKS

Marr Age Sex Birthplace
M 57 Male Salford
Rel: Head Occupation: Brush Manufacturer

Ann SHORROCKS
M 57 Female Salford
Rel: Wife

William W. SHORROCKS
U 22 Male Salford
Rel: Son Occupation: Brush Maker

Louisa SHORROCKS
U 19 Female Salford
Rel: Daughter

Florence SHORROCKS
U 14 Female Salford
Rel: Daughter

KEITH’S GREAT GRANDFATHER

Dwelling: 309 Eccles New Rd
Census Place: Pendlebury, Lancashire, England
Household:

Robert. E. SHORROCKS
Marr Age Sex Birthplace
M 27 Male Salford, Lancashire, England
Rel: Head Occupation: Warehouseman

Fanny E. SHORROCKS
M 25 Female Salford, Lancashire, England
Rel: Wife

Harry SHORROCKS
2 Male Salford, Lancashire, England
Rel: Son

Louisa SHORROCKS
5 m Female Salford, Lancashire, England
Rel: Daughter

My. Ann BORROWDALE
U 16 Female Newcastle On Tyne, Northumberland, England
Rel: Servant Occupation: General Domestic Servant


BACKGROUD

1881 - As Recalled by Eric Midwinter

Just a few months before the start of the year, Captain Boycott was 'isolated from his kind as if he were a leper of old'. This was the Irish land agent, Captain Boycott and, in January 1881, Charles Parnell (his is the 'leper' quote) was acquitted of conspiracy, in respect of the 'boycott' - of those taking over the land of an evicted tenant - campaign in Ireland.

The Irish Coercion Act of 1881 followed and there were many outrages and correspondingly harsh responses. On the mainland a Fenian bomb in Salford injured three, whilst another bomb was found in London's Mansion House. In October, Parnell, the Irish political leader, was imprisoned in Kilmainham Jail, something he welcomed, for, allegedly, he wished to be out of circulation whilst his mistress, Kitty O'Shea (disclosure of their togetherness was to lead to his political disgrace in 1890), had his child.

Sleaze in parliament and troubles in Ireland: yes, it really is 1881 and not today. Just to underline the point that it was ye oldyne dayes, Lancashire won the non-official county championship. 'Monkey' Hornby's side, which included the likes of Richard Barlow, A.G.Steel, Richard Pilling, Johnny Briggs and Alec Watson, won ten and drew three of its thirteen games. This was one of the first teams to concentrate on strong, collective fielding. Other cricket news: C.J.Logan became the first bowler to take a hundred wickets in Canada and cricket was played for the first time in what is now Lesotho.

Football now: in the FA Cup Final the Old Carthusians beat the Old Etonians 3-0, the last time two southern amateur clubs were in the final - Blackburn Rovers were to be beaten by Old Etonians in 1882, and then Blackburn Olympic won the cup in 1883. Captain E.G.Wynyard led the winners' forwards. Indian born, he was the forcing Hampshire bat who played three times for England. The final was played at the Oval before a crowd of 4,000. There were 7,000 at Old Trafford for the opening day of the Lancashire/Middlesex match.

Gladstone - the People's William' - was Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer and his cabinet included such names as Joseph Chamberlain and John Bright. Abroad there were problems with the Boers in South Africa, where British troops were worsted at the battle of Majuba Hill, which led, at the Pretoria Convention, to some recognition of the rights of the Transvaal. In the Sudan the Mahdi led his revolt against Egyptian rule, the prelude to the incidents leading to the death of General Gordon in Khartoum in 1885.

But what was life like at home? Here are some statistics for the statisticians. In 1881 the British population was 35m, of whom 22m lived in towns and 13m in the country, and of whom only 3m had the vote. During 1881 884,000 were born; 492,000 died; 256,000 emigrated, the great majority - 172,000 - to the United States; and about this time the term (if more rarely the methods of) 'contraception' began timidly to be used.

The number of the labour force working in agriculture and allied crafts was down to 12%, while those in the manufacturing and mining industries was up to 44%, with 21% in transport and trading and 7% in public and professional careers. The remaining 16%, including 1.3m women, were in domestic service. In 1881, according to Mrs Beeton's revised 'Book of Household Management', a man on £1,000 a year could afford five servants. Mind you, it was possible to hire a cook for as little as £15 and a maid for as little as £9 a year. The 'General Report' of the 1881 Census commented on 'the increasing difficulty of finding suitable servants'. You can't get the staff, you know.

Agricultural labourers, in 1881, earned on average 13s 9d a week, while there were 180,000 'indoor' (i.e. in the workhouse) and 627,000 'outdoor' (i.e. in receipt of cash relief) paupers, which rather nails the myth that all impoverished people ended up in the workhouse. It is of interest to glance at the median family's weekly budget in 1881. It was 26s 6d (£1 32.5p for the younger brethren), of which 16s went on food - 5s of which was for bread and 2s 4d for meat - 3s 6d for rent and the same for fuel and clothing.

In 1881 the glittering Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera, 'Patience', which laughed at aesthetes in particular and affected posers in general, and which smirked sideways at Oscar Wilde ('As I walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily in my medieval hand...') opened to all-round approbation. Thomas Hardy wrote his little known novel 'A Laodicean' and Anthony Trollope wrote his little known novel 'Ayala's Angel'. The 'Daily Telegraph' was only a penny, but, at least, it was a Liberal newspaper. 'The Times' was threepence. Among the 884,000 new arrivals were P.G.Wodehouse and Ernie Bevin.

What about Test cricket, did you ask? Compared with the wall-to-wall Test cricket of 2002, there was exactly ONE DAY of Test cricket in 1881, and that only just made it. 31 December 1881 marked the first day of the First Test against Australia in Melbourne. It was drawn, with our old friend, Tom Horan, making the only century of the match. W.E.Midwinter, having played the first two Tests ever in Australian colours, made his English debut. It's a wonder they didn't boycott him.

AND IN THE OLD WEST:

April 28 – Billy the Kid escapes from his 2 jailers at the Lincoln County Jail in Mesilla, New Mexico, killing James Bell and Robert Ollinger before stealing a horse and riding out of town

July 14 – Billy the Kid is shot and killed by Pat Garrett outside Fort Sumner

July 20 – Indian Wars: Sioux chief Sitting Bull leads the last of his fugitive people in surrender to United States troops at Fort Buford in Montana

October 26 – The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral occurs in Tombstone, Cochise County, Arizona, USA

December 28 – Virgil Earp is ambushed in Tombstone and loses the use of his left arm.

AND

Butch Cassidy (April 13, 1866 – November 7, 1908) was 15 years old in 1881. He was born Robert LeRoy Parker and became a notorious American train robber, bank robber and leader of the Hole in the Wall Gang.

‘Butch’ was born in Beaver, Utah in Beaver County, to Maximillian Parker and Ann Campbell Gillies. His parents were English and Scottish Mormon immigrants, respectively, who came to the Utah Territory in the late 1850s. They had formerly been residents of Victoria Road, Preston, Lancashire.

AND

Five years before 1881 (in 1876), the Oglala Sioux had overwhelmed General George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Later they were defeated - and subsequently recruited into circus depictions of their battles. In the winter of 1887-88 hundreds of these Oglala Sioux Indians (depicted in the 1990 film 'Dances with Wolves') settled in Salford for six months, in their teepees on the cold and damp banks of the River Irwell!

They were all members of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Circus, within which they recreated classic gun-slinging scenes from the Old West with their ‘cowboy' counterparts. The show was so popular in Salford that it took a break from its world tour to stay longer in the city (or reputedly was grounded there when bankrupted).

One small Sioux girl was baptised at St Clement's Church before slipping out of the history books - and descendants of the Salford Sioux still live in Greater Manchester.