The Cousins - or were they?

 

The Cousins – or were they?

 

This story has to start in the middle and work backwards, following the route Peabee had to take to solve a problem. Then came all sorts of revelations which has meant there will be second blog about a fairly gruesome murder! The original problem arose after the following marriage announcement was discovered in The Western Gazette of 21 September 1945:

GALE–BATHE – On Saturday, September 8th, at Chirton Parish Church Ft/Sgt Ambrose James Gale of Aldbourne, to Ivy Bathe, of Corner House, Chirton

There was evidence that Ambrose and Ivy were first cousins – a rather close blood relationship for a marriage. However, in the Civil Registration Marriage Index for the third quarter of 1945, Ambrose J Gale is stated as having married someone called “Bathe or Pennock”. Cross-referencing the entries in the index for these two names, Ambrose’s wife was either Ivy L Bathe or Ivy L Pennock.

To cap it all, there were no records of either Ivy L Bathe or Ivy L Pennock having been born in England or Wales…The plot thickened.

 The first port of call for Peabee was the 1939 England and Wales Register, taken at the onset of war with the purpose of producing National Identity Cards, and, from 1948, as the basis for the National Health Service Register. In its role for the NHS, the surnames of women who had married since the original register was taken have been deleted and their married names inserted.

The Register revealed the residents of Corner House, Chirton, as:

·        Edward James Bathe, born 31 July 1888, married, a poultry keeper, temporarily employed by the Government Building Contractor as a Camp Policeman

·        Florence Maud Bathe, born 31 January 1889, married, unpaid domestic duties

·        Ivy Lilian Bathe Gale, born 23 September 1920, single, poultry assistant to father

·        Sarah Ann Bathe, born 13 February 1850, widow, Old Age Pensioner (retired)

·        Isaac James Gale, born 8 April 1871, widower, Old Age Pensioner (retired)

Clearly Ivy was a Bathe, the daughter of Edward and Florence, so where did the name Pennock come in? And why wasn’t Ivy’s birth registered in 1920?

Going back further, Edward James Bathe was the son of Jesse Bathe and Sarah Ann (nee New), born in Winterbourne Monkton, Wiltshire. Jesse Bathe died in 1923 but Edward’s mother, Sarah Ann, was one of the two old age pensioners living in Corner House in 1939. She died at the start of 1941 and The North Wilts Herald published the following obituary in its edition of 24 January 1941:

CHIRTON’S “GRAND OLD WOMAN”

Death of Mrs. J. Bathe at age of 90

By the death of Mrs. J. Bathe, at the age of 90 – she would have been 91 had she lived until 13 February – Chirton has lost one of its best known and well beloved figures. “Granny” Bathe, as she was known to old and young, was out walking on Tuesday of last week, paying calls (she dearly loved to chat), and when asked how she liked the cold replied “I don't feel it, I am quite warm”. On the following day she was in her usual good health when she retired to bed. On Thursday morning, at 8.30, her grand-daughter, Miss Ivy Bathe, called her as usual with her breakfast tray, and was shocked to find that she had passed away in her sleep. Not an article of bed clothing was disarranged, so she had “just slept to wake no more.” Mrs. Bathe had not made any complaint of feeling ill lately, but her son and daughter-in-law with whom she lived, had noticed how sleepy she had appeared recently. Beyond deafness and failing eyesight, “Granny” retained her faculties perfectly, and her memory was amazing.

Mrs. Bathe as Sarah Ann New, was born at Winterbourne Monkton in 1850, and there she lived until 1926. She married Mr. Jesse Bathe, who was seven years her junior, and became the mother of six children – four daughters and two sons – all of whom are living except one daughter. Mrs. Bathe became a widow in 1923, and in 1926 she went to live with her son, Mr. C. Bathe, and his wife, at Tidcombe. In 1932 she moved to Chirton to live with Mr. and Mrs. E. Bathe (her son and daughter-in-law), and there, except for short visits to her other children, she made her last home and was very happy. She was no stranger to hard work, and in her young days lots of it was in the fields. She lived to recount how she once won a wager with a man as to who could cut more corn in a day with a sickle. With a chuckle and a twinkling eye she would tell: “I put the six little ones to bed and just after 12 midnight I got up, and as it was bright moonlight I could see quite well, and started cutting.” When her opponent arrived soon after dawn she had got well away with the job and easily won the bet. It can with truth be said of Mrs. Bathe that she had not an enemy in the world, and the world is the poorer for the passing of such a grand old personality.

The funeral took place at Chirton on Monday, the Rev. C. R. Cottell (Vicar) assisted by Rev. P. R. Ormsby, officiating, with Miss Jones at the organ. The hymn “Jesus lover of my soul” was sung. The mourners were: Mr. E. Bathe and Mr. C. Bathe (sons), Mr. C. Brown (grandson), Mr. Brown, Beechingstoke (son-in-law), Mrs. E. Bathe and Mrs. C. Bathe (daughters-in-law). Mrs. Bathe’s daughters, all of whom live at a great distance from Chirton, were prevented from attending. Among those who attended the service were Mrs Child, Mrs. Hule, Mrs. Rowles, and Mrs B. Smith.

The Father of the Bride?

Edward James Bathe had married Florence Maud Elizabeth Gale on 28 March 1910. Florence was the daughter of Ambrose Gale and his wife Elizabeth (nee Marsh). Florence had two older brothers – Isaac James Gale (the other pensioner in Corner House in 1939) and Gilbert Edward Gale, who happened to be the father of Ambrose James Gale. This is the link that showed Ambrose and Ivy were first cousins.

The Wiltshire Times of 6 February 1943 had the brief announcement of a death:

Bathe – Jan 30, at Devizes Hospital, Edward James (Ted) Bathe, aged 54 years

The following week, the same newspaper printed a more detailed obituary:

EX.-R.S.M. E.J.BATHE

Death of Wiltshire Regiment Veteran

Mr. Edward James Bathe, who served for 26 years in the Wiltshire Regiment and retired in 1931 with the rank of Regimental-Sergeant-Major, died last week at Devizes Hospital and was buried at Chirton, near Devizes, in which village he had resided since his retirement. He was 54 years of age.

Mr. Bathe joined the Wiltshire Regiment in 1905. When war broke out in 1914 he was at Gibraltar, and in September was in action in France. He was taken prisoner, and was not released until after the Armistice, arriving back in England in December of 1918. From April until October of 1919 he served in Russia, and was then appointed R.S.M of the 4th (Territorial) Battalion, which position he retained until his retirement. During these eleven years he resided in Trowbridge, where he made many friends who remember him with affection. At Chirton he built up a successful poultry farm. Since the outbreak of the present war he had been a Sergeant of the Home Guard and had also done duty at the Recruiting Depot at Devizes until recently.

Mr. Bathe leaves a widow, two sons and one daughter. One son is serving in the Middle East with the Royal Engineers.

This confirms that Edward and Florence had just one daughter and that must have been Ivy. And Edward’s term as a PoW would explain why there was a gap between the birth of his two sons – Andrew Edward Keen Bathe (1911) and Jesse Claude Bathe (1914) – and that of Ivy in 1920. 

New clues

The puzzle was still not solved, and Peabee had to wait for an answer to the Pennock conundrum until this year, when the 1921 census was published. It was here that he found this entry for a household in Avebury:

·        Elizabeth Gale; head; age 72 years 11 months; widow; born Avebury, Wilts; home duties

·        Florence M. E. Bathe; daughter visitor; age 32 years 5 months; born Avebury, Wilts; home duties

·        Ambrose E. K. Bathe; grandson visitor; age 9 years 10 months; both parents alive; born Avebury, Wilts; whole time at school

·        Jesse C. Bathe; grandson visitor; age 7 years 5 months; both parents alive; born Colony of Gibraltar; whole time at school

·        Ivy Lillian Pennock; visitor; age 9 months; mother dead; born Dublin, Ireland

So Ivy wasn’t Edward and Florence’s daughter after all – and the name Pennock appears linked to her.

The next step was to look at Irish records and sure enough the Irish Civil Registration of Births Index shows the birth of an Ivy Pennock in Dublin South registered in the last quarter of 1920. In the same quarter, the death of a Lilian Pennock, born about 1891, was also registered in Dublin South.

Peabee then tried to find the marriage of anyone called Pennock to anyone with the first name Lilian and what he found was the marriage in the last quarter of 1918 of a Charles Pennock to a Lilian Emily Maslin (or Maslen) in Devizes, Wiltshire. The coincidence of a Wiltshire marriage with Ivy’s residence in the same county was too good to ignore and further research showed much more.

Charles Pennock

To say that Charles Pennock had a fairly traumatic life might be considered an understatement.

He was born near Pickering, North Yorkshire, on 19 March 1885, the seventh of eight children born to James and Hannah Pennock. But when he was just over three years old, his father took an axe and murdered his wife in her bed while the children slept in neighbouring rooms. Soon afterwards, before the police could catch the murderer, James drowned himself.

The newspaper reports of the time will be included in a later Peabee History Blog.

After a period in the local workhouse with two of his siblings, Charles was sent far away from his Yorkshire relatives and in his teens he was apprenticed to Henry Seamall, a tailor in Great Wishford, not far from Salisbury.

He was living in Seamall’s house in 1901, but a few years later he joined the army and was serving with the 1st Battalion, Wiltshire Regiment, in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, in 1911. His service records have not survived but he was with the regiment when they sailed for the Western Front in August 1914. However, during the First Battle of Ypres in October 1914, he was among a number of soldiers from the 1st Wiltshires who were captured and held in prisoner of war camps until after the Armistice in 1918.

After his repatriation and marriage, Charles took his wife to Dublin when he was posted there in 1919 as part of the British forces trying to put down the Irish rebellion. When Lilian died soon after giving birth to Ivy, Charles was in no position to look after the child and so Ivy was given to another military family – the Bathes – to care for her.

It is not known how Charles got to know Edward Bathe, if indeed he did. Although their histories were similar – both regular soldiers who had joined the Wiltshire Regiment long before the First World War; both spending most of the war as PoWs – they were in different battalions: Charles was in the 1st Battalion and Edward the 2nd; they were captured on different days and after different engagements in October 1914 and – as far as can be ascertained – were never held in the same PoW camp. It is possible that Ivy’s transfer to the care of Edward and Florence was arranged by someone within the Wiltshire Regiment’s English depot, without Charles and Edward ever meeting.

On returning to England, Charles married for a second time but his new wife also died when she was relatively young, after just 13 years of marriage. She did give Charles three more children, but the eldest of these died when he was 14 years old.

The Maslens

Lilian Emily Maslen was born in the summer of 1891, and baptised at Southbroom, Devizes, on 23 August that year. She was the daughter of a former soldier, Joseph Pyke Maslen, who was born in Devies in 1842. Originally a volunteer in the Royal Wiltshire Militia, when he joined the regular army in August 1864, it was as a private in the 5th Regiment of Foot, known as Northumberland Fusiliers. Joseph Maslen was with the regiment for over 16 years and spent most his service – more than 13 years – in India. He was, however, invalided out of the army in January 1881 and the following April married a woman 20 years his junior, Emily Edwards.

Lilian, the youngest of five children of this marriage, was only two years old when her father died. Although her mother remarried, that was not unlike 1906, when Lilian was 15 years old.