If I've done this correctly, there should be some links in the grey bar under the spreadsheet which enables you to download or view full-screen. If anyone does have a go at this please leave a comment to let me know if it works!
Monday, April 29, 2013
Holy Trinity Industrial School Census Returns 1901, 1911
Hopefully, I've learnt how to do something very useful, and this post will contain an embedded excel file. The file is a transcription of the 1901 and 1911 census returns for Holy Trinity Industrial School, Toxteth. I'm a bit impatient so I'm putting it up before I've investigated the names that were hard to make out (the handwriting on the 1901 is poor)
Friday, April 26, 2013
The research commences
I have started researching the names on this memorial following my usual practice of exhausting online sources before tackling the archives (besides, the Liverpool archive is closed for another month) and a few interesting details have come up.
I already knew that a lot of the names were men who had attended the Industrial School, and Capt. Chavasse's name is there due to his link with the school. It would appear that several of the other names are of men whose work in some way connected them with the school. I am hoping that the records of the industrial school will show whether they were patrons, volunteers or worked there etc. At the moment I have one man who worked as an Assistant Medical Inspector (Health) for Liverpool, a doctor with the RNVR Birkenhead who was himself orphaned at a young age - he didn't attend this school but I can imagine he would have been interested in helping such a charitable institution, also a school master who in the 1911 census was working in a similar type of school for disadvantaged boys. Did he work at Holy Trinity Industrial School also? I hope that further research will clarify their connections to the school (or the church)
The connection with the school means that many of the names I have identified so far came from very disadvantaged backgrounds. Court housing was common in the streets around Upper Parliament Street and the appalling conditions in these places were well documented. Quite a few of them were orphaned at an early age or lost one parent leaving the remaining parent with several children to look after. The census returns for the school show that not all the boys were from Liverpool. There are one or two from other parts of Lancashire, and a few from Derbyshire but, to my surprise, I found that quite a few of the "inmates" were from London. This is another puzzle that I hope the records will solve - why were boys from London attending a charitable church school in Liverpool?
I am pleased to say that despite my early misgivings about being able to identify these men without their first-names, the first routes of enquiry have shown a good number of them to be identifiable, either through unusual surnames or service papers surviving showing them living within a few streets of the church. I plan to finish this first stage myself then open up the other names to the local family history society forum for help. When I get to the archives I have a long list of things to look up but I will get around to the Holy Trinity records as soon as I can.
I already knew that a lot of the names were men who had attended the Industrial School, and Capt. Chavasse's name is there due to his link with the school. It would appear that several of the other names are of men whose work in some way connected them with the school. I am hoping that the records of the industrial school will show whether they were patrons, volunteers or worked there etc. At the moment I have one man who worked as an Assistant Medical Inspector (Health) for Liverpool, a doctor with the RNVR Birkenhead who was himself orphaned at a young age - he didn't attend this school but I can imagine he would have been interested in helping such a charitable institution, also a school master who in the 1911 census was working in a similar type of school for disadvantaged boys. Did he work at Holy Trinity Industrial School also? I hope that further research will clarify their connections to the school (or the church)
The connection with the school means that many of the names I have identified so far came from very disadvantaged backgrounds. Court housing was common in the streets around Upper Parliament Street and the appalling conditions in these places were well documented. Quite a few of them were orphaned at an early age or lost one parent leaving the remaining parent with several children to look after. The census returns for the school show that not all the boys were from Liverpool. There are one or two from other parts of Lancashire, and a few from Derbyshire but, to my surprise, I found that quite a few of the "inmates" were from London. This is another puzzle that I hope the records will solve - why were boys from London attending a charitable church school in Liverpool?
I am pleased to say that despite my early misgivings about being able to identify these men without their first-names, the first routes of enquiry have shown a good number of them to be identifiable, either through unusual surnames or service papers surviving showing them living within a few streets of the church. I plan to finish this first stage myself then open up the other names to the local family history society forum for help. When I get to the archives I have a long list of things to look up but I will get around to the Holy Trinity records as soon as I can.
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Tracking the journey of the memorial
The Churches Conservation Trust files for St James Church have been extremely helpful in tracing the journey of this memorial from Holy Trinity to the Slaughterhouse Pub. I can now say for sure that the memorial was in St James.
In 1978 a group of people visited the church and one of them noticed a wooden war memorial board laying on the stairs. They took a closer look and saw that it bore the name of Capt. Noel Chavasse, MC & Bar. They contacted the CCT and the Liverpool Echo. Co-incidentally, the Echo had recently run some stories about Noel Chavasse.
Once their attention had been drawn to the memorial, the CCT arranged for it to be cleaned and returned to the church, they didn't know where it had been sited (It may never have been affixed to the wall) so they chose a spot for it and by Feb 1979 it was on the wall of the organ loft, facing the aisle.
There is no other mention of the memorial until a report from the architect in 1992 that whilst inspecting the damage from a break-in and arson attack, they noticed that the war memorial board had been stolen.
There were no photographs of the board but the fact that it had Capt. Chavasse's name on it, and the description of it as 'a framed wooden board' seem conclusive.
I assume that after being stolen the board was sold or dumped and made it's way to the wall of the Slaughterhouse Pub. Where did go after that? Is it in another pub somewhere, or in a private collection of war memorabilia?
In 1978 a group of people visited the church and one of them noticed a wooden war memorial board laying on the stairs. They took a closer look and saw that it bore the name of Capt. Noel Chavasse, MC & Bar. They contacted the CCT and the Liverpool Echo. Co-incidentally, the Echo had recently run some stories about Noel Chavasse.
Once their attention had been drawn to the memorial, the CCT arranged for it to be cleaned and returned to the church, they didn't know where it had been sited (It may never have been affixed to the wall) so they chose a spot for it and by Feb 1979 it was on the wall of the organ loft, facing the aisle.
There is no other mention of the memorial until a report from the architect in 1992 that whilst inspecting the damage from a break-in and arson attack, they noticed that the war memorial board had been stolen.
There were no photographs of the board but the fact that it had Capt. Chavasse's name on it, and the description of it as 'a framed wooden board' seem conclusive.
I assume that after being stolen the board was sold or dumped and made it's way to the wall of the Slaughterhouse Pub. Where did go after that? Is it in another pub somewhere, or in a private collection of war memorabilia?
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