Pracy family history from Tudor times to the 1920s

This is the third published version of The Pracy Family History. As a result of my own additional research and several valuable contacts made through the first two versions, published in September 2005 and May 2006, it has increased by 60%.

I’ve slightly revamped the layout in a way that I hope will make the text easier to follow.

· The children of the Pracy men featured in chapter headings 8, 12, 13, 15-17 and 19-21 are shown in 14-point bold.

· In those chapters, third and subsequent generations are in 12-point bold.

The following are the other significant additions and changes since the 2nd edition:

· Chapter 5 - complete rewrite, based on information from Mrs G I Parker of Bishopstone.

· Chapter 7 – more about the marriage of Edmund in 1729 and the terrible mortality of the 1730s, which very nearly led to the extinction of our family.

· Chapter 9 – link to new 10,000-word biography of Rosey/Rosetta Pracey/Marsh/Terry, written for the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies Biography of an Ancestor competition.

· Chapter 14 – a new chapter with much more about the mysterious George T Pracy of San Francisco and his descendants, from research by Mike Schmeer and others.

· Chapter 16 (previously 15) – three grandchildren of Joseph William and Jane who qualified as teachers.

· Chapter 21 (previously 20) – an Edwardian tragicomedy and why my grandfather went to prison.

Again I have made other minor additions and changes throughout, so previous readers may like to look just at those sections that most interest them.

Part 1: Wiltshire

Three hundred years ago, on 16 October 1705, a boy was born at Bishopstone near Swindon in Wiltshire. On 1 November the parish register of St Mary’s church recorded his name as Edmund PRESSEY. In 1722 Edmund was apprenticed in London as a baker and in 1744 he had a son, also Edmund, born in the parish of St Luke’s Old Street, Finsbury.

Contemporary documents spelt the older Edmund’s surname in at least six different ways, but the parish register recording his son’s baptism gave his surname as PRACEY. That, with or without the E, is how our branch of the family has spelt it ever since. Most other branches have stayed with the Pressey spelling. Therefore, if you or one of your ancestors born in the 19th or 20th century has the name Pracy or Pracey, you are probably related - directly or by marriage - to the two Edmunds.

This brief history deals only with the Prac(e)y family. I should make four points about it:

It mostly follows the male line – not because women were less important, but because they are far more difficult to trace once married.
It has far less detail about some people than others, simply because I know less about them. If you have more information about those who are just names, I will be happy to add it.
It is mostly based on deductions from written sources, so if any of my conclusions are wrong I will welcome corrections.

· It usually finishes around the end of the First World War to avoid any possible danger of causing offence to the living, and because after that the family spread out so far that it became difficult to keep track of all the branches.

Only in Parts 3 and 4 of this history are you likely to encounter any relative that you have heard of. In order to get into it, therefore, you may like to try the helpful approach suggested by Mike JENNER, grandson of Horace Edward Pracy (1881-1954):

I started trying to read it straight through from the beginning, but as soon as I started to hit names and dates (chapter 3 on) I found that in order to make it interesting I needed to establish where I was going to fit in. I hope I've expressed that clearly; there's nowt so boring as someone else's family history. I had to make your history mine in order to enjoy it.

So I stopped reading and started moving back and forward using your index of contents and the tree from the website to find where I fitted in (under Horace Edward) and work back from that. Having roughly established my line I went back and read it straight through. Generally this went smoothly, though I found I had to keep on cross-referring, using your index of contents and the website tree to keep myself oriented and on the right track.

1. Presseys, Precys and Pracys

If you type ‘pracy’ into an internet search engine, you will come up with millions of hits because it happens to be the Polish word for work, but that is rather a red herring.

Most people think that the name PRACY sounds French. Précy is a small village in the Loire Valley, and there are indeed people in France with the surname Précy. Nearby in Lenoncourt, Meurthe-et-Moselle there was in the 17th century a family that spelt its surname Pracy. Because our family first arrived in London early in the 18th century, the obvious thought was that they were Huguenots – Protestants fleeing the persecution of Louis XIV. The Huguenot Society, however, insist that if you’re not in their records you’re not one of them, and in our case at least they were proved right.

My pet theory was that we came from France a generation later than the Huguenots, but my own researches have in fact confirmed the more generally accepted explanation. Pracy is a variant of the West Country name more usually spelt PRESSEY, which means dweller by the priest’s enclosure.

Until the late 18th century spelling of surnames tended to be rather random. It depended partly whether the person involved could read and write, but more often on what was heard by the clergyman or recorder of the name. In 1707 two of our family were given as Susanna Preice and Edward Presey in the same marriage document. Generally, consonants were much less likely to change than vowels.

In 17th-century Wiltshire our name was usually spelt PRECY or PRESSEY. However Anne PRAYSEY (1578), Morries PRASEY (1708) and Edward PRACY (1734) were all married in London. Although I have not linked these three to one another or to our family, I thought that perhaps when they and the first Edmund came to London, something about their West Country burr caused those who recorded their surname to change the middle short E to a longer AY sound. History is seldom as simple as that, however, and so it proved in this case.

The earliest example of the Pracy spelling I have found anywhere was a baptism in 1691 at Cirencester in Gloucestershire, and there are other West Country examples in the 18th century. Edmund’s father, William, was baptised Precy in 1665 and buried Pracy in 1746 (I have not yet traced his marriage). Phineas of Downton near Salisbury was baptised Pressey in 1762, married Precy in 1786 and died Pracey in 1841. The Prac(e)y spelling nevertheless died out in the West Country in the 1840s.

In 1881 the commoner Pressey spelling was still mostly to be found in a band across southern England – Wiltshire, Hampshire, Berkshire, Surrey, Kent and London. As late as the 1960s my near namesake David Leslie Pracy carefully spelt out his surname to a military officer, only to see him write it as Pressey.

Three families who migrated from Wiltshire to the USA and Canada are recorded as using it later in the 19th century, one of them as a conscious decision to distinguish them from other Presseys. I haven’t found any record of their using the Prac(e)y spelling in the 20th century but am open to correction on that point.

Some censuses show Prac(e)ys not listed as such in the General Registry Office (GRO) birth, marriages and deaths indexes. In 1901, for example, there are 22 Praceys in eight families from six counties. I’ve checked a few of the originals which quite clearly say Prac(e)y, but none of them has any known links with our family. One of them was 23-year-old Aaron Pracey of Plymtree in Devon, who was born at Broadhembury in the same county. Aaron being a comparatively rare forename, I checked the FreeBMD website. There I found Aaron PEARCEY, registered in 1878 in the Honiton district which includes Broadhembury. It’s a strange phenomenon that I don’t fully understand but clearly there has been some kind of error. I have therefore ignored these other Prac(e)ys and assumed that all current ones are descended from the two Edmunds.

2. Bishopstone

Confusingly, there are two villages called Bishopstone in the not particularly large county of Wiltshire. The larger is in the south, near Salisbury, but ours is in the far north-east, on the boundary with Oxfordshire (until 1974, with Berkshire). It is set in an attractive area of chalk uplands called the Vale of the White Horse, so named from the sinuously beautiful prehistoric feature at Uffington.

Bishopstone simply means the settlement (tun) of the bishops. It was apparently formed as late as the 13th century, to provide an income for one of the prebendaries of Salisbury cathedral. Measuring roughly 7km by 2km, Bishopstone is the most easterly of four long, narrow parishes whose boundaries seem to have been defined with a geometric, rather artificial shape designed to give them ‘settlement and meadow in the valley bottom, arable on the valley sides and part of the higher ground, and pasture beyond’[1]. It was for many years part of Ramsbury Hundred.

The heart of Bishopstone lies in a triangle north of the Swindon-Wantage road, where two coombs [wooded valleys] converge. There St Mary’s church, the manor house, the demesne farmstead and the mill were built. The village developed north of that nucleus as an arc of some 50 small farmsteads. Each had its own pasture with the uplands used for common pasture, where in 1647 the tenants had the right to graze a total of 1260 sheep. The most striking features of the landscape are the strip-lynchets, a series of steep terraced surfaces reminiscent of a Mediterranean hillside and popularly called ‘shepherd’s steps’.

The old saying ‘as different as chalk and cheese’ originated in Wiltshire, where the chalky uplands in the east encouraged sheep farming while the low-lying western parts of the county were suitable for dairy production. A typical upland village was based on a clearly defined centre rather than a scatter of isolated farmhouses, and this certainly applied to Bishopstone. Its people would probably have supported the Royalists in the Civil War, and tended to attend church rather than chapel. Traditional common methods of agriculture would have persisted and there would have a greater emphasis on communal rather than individualistic activity.

Taxation returns suggest that Bishopstone was fairly prosperous until the 16th century, but then it apparently fell into decline. The village website comments:

Bishopstone, despite recent development, is one of the most attractive villages in Wiltshire. Many of the original cottages still stand and are much sought after. However, this was not always so because in 1659, John Aubrey writing in his Topographical Collections describes them thus: ‘A more wretched lot could not be found in the whole country’.

During the 18th century the village began to spread south of the road and the number of farms fell, while those that remained grew bigger. In 1784 the parish measured 3,520 acres, of which 1,725 were arable, 700 meadow and lowland pasture, and 800 upland pasture and downland. By the 19th century most of the land had become concentrated into a few large farms, of which since the Second World War there have been only three - Manor, Prebendal and Eastbrook.

Bishopstone lies east of Swindon, which is now the dominant force in the area. It is rather an anomaly that this quintessentially rural English village is administered by Swindon Borough Council. The parish council has a constant struggle to maintain Bishopstone’s identity and independence. Many in Bishopstone feel that Swindon caters mainly for the needs of its own urban population, and that the village might fare better under the more rural Vale of the White Horse District Council. Sadly the only shop in Bishopstone has been forced to close but the village maintains a vigorous social life.

3. The early Precys

The Victoria County History of Wiltshire vol. 12, from which much of the above summary is taken, states:

In the early 16th century the bishops leased their demesne lands to members of the Precy family and in 1542 Bishop Salcot granted a lease of them until 1605 to John Precy. In 1548 the bishop leased the whole manor, subject to the Precys’ interests, to John Knight for 99 years. Knight was possibly a trustee of the Precys. Charles Precy held the manor from 1600 or earlier until his death in 1626. It passed to Thomas Precy and Henry Shelley, possibly his executors. In 1626-7 they sold the lease to Thomas Keate…

Until the late 19th century the land in Bishopstone was entirely owned by the church authorities, so it was held on leasehold or copyhold and it reverted to the church when those agreements ended. Thus there were no resident lords of the manor but, amazingly, our forebears were the nearest thing to it. They were apparently the leading landholders in this fairly prosperous village for at least a century.

Note: Even though our family was literate, spelling in those days was largely a matter of taste and the spelling of our name varied even more wildly than latterly. I, like the VCH, have referred to the Bishopstone family in general as the Precys, which was the commonest spelling in the parish records. It differentiates them from the broader Pressey family and from the 19th- and 20th-century London and other Pracys. I have also produced a separate Timeline of the Precy family in Bishopstone, in which I have transcribed the versions of the name given in the original sources.

The earliest definite reference to a Precy in Bishopstone was Thomas, who left a will in 1500. The next was Harry, who died in 1523. John Aubrey wrote[2]:

In the nave of the [Bishopstone] church beneath his picture on a brasse plate affixed to a marble this following inscription:

Of your charite pray for ye sowle of Harry Preci, which Harry decesid on the ix day of July in the year of our Lord God Mdxxiii on whose sowle Jhu [Jesu] have merci. Amen.

By the 1860s the memorial had entirely disappeared from the church, as indeed had the family from the village.

In 1545 a ‘benevolence’ [Tudor Newspeak for tax] was raised to help King Henry VIII fight yet another war against France. It was calculated on the ability to pay and Bishopstone was the most heavily taxed village in the Ramsbury Hundred, suggesting a considerable degree of prosperity. Heading the list, dated 1 April 1545, was John Precy, who had leased the village from Bishop Salcot in 1542. John and one other resident paid 20s. In the whole hundred only Sir Edward Darrell and his widowed mother, distant relatives of the king’s late wife Jane Seymour, paid more.

On 1 July 1576 a similar benevolence was raised, for Queen Elizabeth. Already things for the village and for our family seem to have been on the slide. Other places paid more than Bishopstone, and Henry Precy was only third on the list. The income from his land was nevertheless a healthy £7 a year, on which he paid a standard penny in the shilling, or 11s 8d.

At the Quarter Sessions of Easter 1583 Thomas Whitway of Ramsbury gentleman was ‘bound in £20’, presumably because he had been accused of some misdemeanour. Henry Precy of Bishopstone gentleman and another each stood surety of £10 for Whitway’s next appearance in court.

Later in 1583, at the Michaelmas session, Henry himself was on the wrong side of the law. Along with Ellen, Samuel and Charles Precy and others, he was indicted of ‘rout, riot etc’. They pleaded not guilty but were fined 2s each. At the Easter 1584 session each had to pay a further 1s, although it is not clear whether they were found guilty. If they were, they escaped fairly lightly with a total fine of 12s, about the same as Henry paid in tax a few years earlier. If not, the fine seems very harsh.

Henry died in 1599 and left a will, which I haven’t yet managed to decipher.

Note: I haven’t yet been to the Wiltshire & Swindon Record Office to check the original parish registers, but the birth and burial transcriptions done by the Wiltshire Family History Society seem to have been done with great care. They have for example picked up peculiar spellings such as Sammull for Samuel, and differences of spelling between parish registers and bishop’s transcripts. I have therefore been content to use their transcriptions for the time being.

One peculiarity, however, is that many Precys were baptised and buried in Bishopstone, but very few married. Several of them do not show up on Wiltshire marriage indexes either. I’ve yet to find an explanation for this.

All the evidence is that babies were baptised within a few weeks of birth, and certainly people were buried very soon after death. I have therefore usually referred to births and deaths in this narrative, but I’ve given exact dates of baptisms and burials in the Timeline. Infant mortality was so high that it would slow down the narrative to mention them all here, but I think it important that these children should not entirely be forgotten so I have put all the details in the Timeline.

Parish registers survive from 1573, among the earliest in the area. The first records of Precys were the burials of Edward (1575), ‘Elinor w. of Henry gent’ (1586) and Samuel (1587). Elinor [Ellen?] and Samuel could well be the people mentioned in the 1583-4 quarter session records.

Then came a little clutch of five baptisms. It is likely that the five were siblings or cousins, but the information provided is too sparse for certainty. Three of the infants probably died young. Henry, who was born in 1589, was possibly ‘Hairie Precy’ buried in 1620. The most significant from our point of view was Samuel (baptised 29 July 1593), the earliest Precy who was indisputably our ancestor.

There may have been other Precy entries, but unfortunately the next ten years have been cut out of the register. The burial of Henry, who died in 1599 and left a will, could well have been recorded in the missing pages. The entries for 1600-3 were recovered from the bishop’s transcripts. They give the baptism of Mary and the burial of ‘Elizabeth Precye gent’ [sic] in 1600.

In December 1603 the vicar of Bishopstone, Christopher Hare Poole, died. His successor gave considerably more information about the individuals on the register, including fathers’ and husbands’ names. If only Poole had done the same and the pages had not been cut from the register, we could probably have taken our knowledge of the family back another generation or two. It may still be possible to do so from other sources.

In the next 26 years there were no Precy baptisms but five burials: ‘Richard son of Mr Henry’ and Thomas in 1604, Joan wife of Thomas in 1606, ‘Hairie’ [sic – possibly Henry born 1589] in 1620 and ‘Charles Precy Esq’ in 1626.

Of some 600 baptisms and burials recorded between 1573 and 1626, Precy burials were four of only six entries to note ‘gent’, ‘Mr’ or ‘Esq’ – in those days a mark of high status. The other two were the baptisms in 1623 and 1626 of the children of ‘Henry Shelley gent’. It is significant that in 1626-7 Shelley and Thomas Precy, members of the two leading gentry families in Bishopstone, were the men who sold off the lease of the manor. The VCH says that they were possibly Charles’s executors, although no will or administration for him has survived.

Beginning in 1529, the College of Arms undertook Visitations throughout the country, to establish whether coats of arms were being used correctly and investigate claims for new ones. Those for Wiltshire were carried out in 1565 and 1623 but the Precys were not mentioned in either of them, perhaps because they were only principal tenants rather than landowners in their own right. At least they were not among those dismissed as ‘ignobiles omnes’, in a ‘Note of all such as have Usurpet the Name and Title of Gentlemen without Authoritie and were Disclaimed at Salisburie in the County of Wiltsheire in Sept ao 1623’.

* * * * *

I’m not sure how all these early Precys were related. The following chronology fit all the known facts, but can only be very tentative:

Thomas who died in 1500 was the father of Harry who died in 1523.
Harry was the father or grandfather of John who in the 1540s held the lease of Bishopstone from Bishop Salcot.
John was the father or grandfather of Henry, who died in 1599 and left a will.
Henry married Elinor, who died in 1586. Henry and Elinor were the parents of Charles (died 1626) and Thomas, who were therefore brothers. Possibly also of Edward (died 1575), Samuel (died 1587) and Richard (died 1604). All five could have been baptised in Bishopstone before 1573.
Charles married ‘Elizabeth Precye gent’, who died in 1600 giving birth to Mary.
The Thomas who was mentioned in Henry’s will (1599), was married to Joan (died 1606) and sold the lease (1627) were all the same man. He is nevertheless a bit of a mystery: the Bishopstone parish registers do not mention him anywhere else, the Nimrod and Wiltshire FHS indexes have no marriage for a Thomas & Joan, and the National Burial Index does not list him.
The children baptised 1588-92 – and possibly others baptised 1594-9 – could have been born to Charles & Elizabeth or to Thomas & Joan.
Our earliest certain ancestor, Samuel who was born in 1593, can’t have been Charles’s son because, if he had been, he would have been his heir. He was probably Thomas’s son.

· Because Charles had no surviving children, his brother Thomas was his heir. From our point of view Thomas seems to have been the villain of the piece, because as soon as Charles died he sold off the lease and the family’s influence in Bishopstone was never as great again.

4. The two Samuels

Samuel I (1593-1678)

Samuel is the earliest in our direct line that I have traced with any degree of certainty. He was described as a yeoman, a prosperous farmer with some influence in the village who would have employed agricultural labourers.

Around 1626 Samuel must have married Edith, although I have found no record of a marriage. Their three daughters all died before they were four years old, but their two sons survived to adulthood.

Their elder son Charles was baptised in 1628. He married Mary BUTLER of Stratton St Margaret in 1654, when he was described as a ‘gent’. They had three children but none outlived them. Charles died in 1672 and left a will in which he was described as a husbandman, a farmer below the rank of yeoman. That apparently represented something of a decline from the status of ‘gent’, although he did leave some £25. The widowed Mary died in 1680, having made a will which shows that she was living in a substantial house. She made various individual bequests, and even so an inventory valued her remaining possessions at nearly £50. She left everything to her Butler relatives, which did nothing for the long-term prosperity of the Precys.

Edith died in 1635, probably in childbirth, for she was buried two days after the baptism of her daughter. It must have been a bitter-sweet experience for Samuel to go to church twice in three days for such opposite reasons. He suffered a further double tragedy in the spring of 1637, when his daughters Elizabeth and Sarah died within six weeks of one another. At some unknown point he was remarried to Ann, who died in 1667.

Samuel was buried on 12 December 1678 aged 85. He died intestate so his only surviving child, Samuel II, had to produce an inventory in order to obtain administration. Samuel’s ‘Goods, Chattels and Credit’ were valued at only £11, which contrasts considerably with the estate left by his daughter-in-law Mary two years later. It may suggest things were already in decline, and certainly they were when Samuel II died almost 40 years later.

* * * * *

Because the prebendaries of Salisbury Cathedral seldom lived on their properties, they usually appointed a vicar who was granted land of his own and received the tithes from the Prebend copyholders[3]. In 1672 the vicar of Bishopstone commissioned a glebe terrier, a survey intended to establish his income from the village[4]. Although the terrier covered only a small part of Bishopstone, it helps give a picture of the village at the time. Landholdings were scattered in fairly small parcels throughout Bishopstone – presumably so that each owner had a mixture of meadow, arable and pasture, and none could hog all the best portions.

The vicar had six major tenants. One of them was Samuel Precy, by then nearly 80 years old. He had a dwelling house (which would have been timber-framed with a thatched roof), barn, stable, cowhouse, ‘backside’ (back yard), orchard and close. He could well have stored grain in the barn, obtained meat and dairy products such as milk and cheese from the cattle, and grown his own fruit in the orchard. This suggests that he was a mixed farmer who would at least been self-sufficient, and probably able to sell his surplus at a profit.

The terrier gives a detailed account of all Samuel’s holdings. Although the art of map-making was well advanced, the churchwardens chose to produce the information in the form of a listing of individual pieces of land, described by reference to local place names and adjacent land holders. Details of the neighbours are not of general interest but I have quoted the place names, even though they mean little to those of us who don’t know Bishopstone well. They reveal an intimate knowledge of the patchwork that made up the 17th-century countryside, scarcely possible for a modern farmer roaring up and down a hedgeless prairie on a tractor. I find them deeply evocative of their place and time:

3 acres of arable above Ickleton way; a head acre in the east field; two 3yards at Ladder way; one acre at Marwell; ½ acre at Combe foot; ½ acre in the Upper Hitchings; ½ acre in the Combes; two butts [small irregularly shaped pieces of arable land] in the Combes; ½ acre below Ridgeway; ½ acre on Ridgeway; headland ½ acre above Ridgeway; ½ acre at Elcombe; ½ acre at Broad Gap; ½ acre in Flint furlong; ½ acre at Short hedges; a 3yard in the same furlong; one acre at Upper Short hedge; ½ acre on the Downs; ½ acre in the Downs; one acre at the Downs [I don’t know whether there is a subtle difference between on, in and at the Downs]; ½ acre at the two short hedges; 1 yard in Chested; a headland acre at White pitts; 1½ acres in Crannell; ½ acre at Sanders hedge; ½ acre at Water Slad; ½ acre on Ridgeway; ½ acre at Ridgeway; ½ acre at Helman’s hedge; ½ acre in Shillands; ½ acre in Nill; 2 acres at Marwell; ½ acre at Padpit; 1yd in Helands; 1 acre in Ull furlong; ½ acre in Black Lands hedge; ½ acre in Sheephouse furlong; ½ acre in Long Breach; 1yd in Old Craft; 1½ yds at Ladder; ½ acre at Horton’s bush.

Samuel also had a few small unnamed pieces of land defined only by neighbouring landholders, and his sons Charles and Samuel occupied some land. Overall the family held some 50 acres scattered throughout the village.

Samuel II (1629-1716)

Samuel, the younger son of Samuel I and Edith, was baptised on 27 December 1629. On 17 September 1655 he married Priscilla TAYLOR (1636-1724), daughter of William. Samuel and Priscilla had ten children, and at least seven survived to adulthood.

Thomas was born in 1656. I’ve found no marriage for him, but he was a bondsman at the wedding of his sister Sarah. This entailed swearing that the details of the marriage allegation [statement made on oath to obtain a marriage licence] were true, and that there was no impediment to the marriage. His status was given as ‘gent’, the last time for two centuries that I can trace any such appellation for one of our family. He died in 1723.

Sarah was born in 1659. In 1690 she married John DORMER of Highworth, a nearby market town that was then as important as Swindon.

Charles was born in 1663. He married Hannah CLUTTERBUCK in 1688, when he was described as a yeoman of Bishopstone. That may have reflected his status as the son of a yeoman rather than because he held sufficient land in his own right. There is no further trace of him in Wiltshire, but he may be the Charles Pracy who in 1693-4 paid ‘Four Shillings In The Pound Aid’ to help fund King William III’s European wars. His property in the Whitefriars Precinct of Farringdon Ward Without in the City of London was assessed as worth £30, on which he paid £6, and his stock as £50, on which he paid 12s[5].

William, our ancestor, was born in 1665 (see next chapter).

Edward was born in 1668. He became a carrier in the Berkshire market town of Hungerford. In 1703 at Ramsbury he married Jane THORNBOURGH of Bishopstone, and in 1704 they had Elizabeth. In 1720 Edward was living in Highworth and had a policy with the Sun Fire Insurance company of London.

Elizabeth was born in 1671. She married Henry DICKESON of ‘the parish of St Andrew in the City of London’. This is the first known occasion on which the family had contacts outside Bishopstone and the surrounding area.

Susanna was born in 1674 and married Henry GREENE in 1707. Although both came from Bishopstone, the marriage took place at Highworth. Susanna’s brother, Edward the carrier, was a bondsman.

* * * * *

Note: Before calendar reform in 1752, the New Year began on 25 March. For events between 1 January and 24 March I have therefore used the standard convention of giving the year according to contemporary and modern reckoning. For example, the parish register gave the year of Samuel’s death mentioned in the next paragraph as 1715 but we would think of it as 1716 so I have put 1715/6.

Samuel II died on 2 February 1715/6, aged 86. Priscilla was buried on 15 January 1723/4, aged 87. Until the 20th century the greatest risk to life came in the first five years so for people to live into their eighties was not as unusual as might be thought, but it still was quite rare for a couple to have their 60th wedding anniversary.

Whether they enjoyed the occasion is another matter, for it seems that Samuel was in a state of mental confusion. He died a few months later ‘intending but not effecting… a will’. He apparently wanted his son-in-law Henry Dickeson to be the executor but Dickeson refused, as did Samuel’s eldest son, Thomas.

Another son-in-law, Henry Greene, was one of Samuel’s creditors and undertook the administration of the intended will. The law would provide an inventory and Greene was to use the proceeds to pay off the debts ‘of the said Samuel as far as his goods shall extend’. At the time of his marriage Henry was described as a yeoman but the 1716 documents referred to him as a butcher, as did Priscilla’s will in 1724.

The inventory gives a glimpse of what must once have been quite a prosperous household, shortly before it fell into terminal decline:

		£ s d
	Imprimis [First] His wearing apparel and money in purse	2 – 0 – 0
	Item [Next] One feather bed and all things belonging to itt, One Trunk, and a presse in the Inner Chamber	2 – 10 – 0
	Item One feather bed and all things belonging to itt and one Coffer in the Hal Chamber	1 – 10 – 0
	Item In the Kitchen Chamber one >>> at	0 – 5 – 0
	Item In the Hall one Tableboard and frame, two >>> stools one spitt	0 – 10 – 0
	Item one Hogshead two Barrells & two Flitches of Bacon in the Buttery	1 – 10 – 0
	Item one Chair one warming pan two pewter platters in the Inner room	0 – 12 – 0
	Item The brasse in the Kitchen	0 – 15 – 0
	Item the Executors >>>	14 – 0 – 0
		23 – 12 – 0
	John Spaniswick Robert Rowse

It seems that ‘the law’, through the executors, contributed the bulk of the money, and that Samuel’s possessions were worth less than £10.

On 3 January 1723/4 Priscilla made a will. She declared herself ‘weak of body but sound and perfect in mind and memory (thanks be given unto Almighty God)’. It was a standard formula, but perhaps also recognition of the contrast between her mental state and that of her late husband. Probably to express her gratitude and to help pay off the debts, she left everything to Henry Greene.

Again an inventory was taken:

	Imprimis Her Wearing Apparell	00 : 10 : 00
	Item her old Feather bedd and three beddsteedds with bedding and materials thereto belonging	02 : 15 : 00
	Item Three old Coffers one Box and two old Trunks	00 : 10 : 00
	Item Brass and pewter	00 : 10 : 00
	Item two table boards with all other Lumber	00 : 10 : 00
		04 : 15 : 00

Priscilla’s decision to make a will, the brevity of the inventory and the references to several things being old all suggest a further descent into shabby gentility.

5. The decline of the Precys in Bishopstone

Despite their problems, the Precys were influential in Bishopstone at least until the 1750s, but by 1800 none of the family was still there. This chapter describes and attempts to explain that disappearance.

William (1665-1746)

William was baptised on 28 December 1665. He married Mary around 1695, although I have not traced the marriage. They had 13 children, ten of whom survived to adulthood. He must have found some way of reversing the family’s slide into debt, because he was able to afford the fees to apprentice three of his younger sons in London. This decision proved crucial to the survival of our family (see next chapter).

Henry was born in 1696 and died in 1770. He is probably ‘Henry Pracy’ who in 1727 married Mary PACKER just across the Berkshire boundary at Lambourn, now best known for its association with the breeding and training of fine racehorses.

William was born in 1698 and died in 1738, apparently unmarried.

Thomas was born in 1700. He was probably apprenticed as a wheelwright in London around 1717(see next chapter). He cannot have been the Thomas who died in 1723, because he would have been described as ‘son of William’.

Mary was born in 1702 and married George CURTIS in 1731. The International Genealogical Index (IGI) lists a George Curtis baptised on 9 May 1703 at Lambourn, which would tie in nicely with Henry’s marriage there later. Unfortunately, however, this is a typically flawed IGI record, for it also has a George Curtis baptised at Lambourne in Essex on the same day! Clearly original documents need to be checked before we reach any firm conclusions about George’s origins.

There is no record that George’s family had any previous connection with Bishopstone, but after their marriage he and Mary settled there. It would have been more normal for the newly-weds to move to the groom’s village, which may confirm my suggestion that William improved the family fortunes so the Precys were better off than the Curtises. George and Mary had seven children, as did their son Henry. Henry’s son Edward Curtis was still in Bishopstone in the early 19th century, working as a blacksmith.

In the 18th century there was something of a fashion for giving children their mothers’ maiden name. On 24 May 1747 George and Mary Curtis’s youngest child was baptised Charles Pracy Curtis, and on 1 January 1783 Charles’s brother Henry had his son baptised Henry Precy Curtis. There were very few such instances in Bishopstone and the first was the daughter of a ‘gent’, so the naming of the boys may represent a memory of the Precys’ former prestige or an attempt to perpetuate the family name. If so, it was unsuccessful: in 1817 ‘Henry Preacy Curtis’ and Ann SAYER were married in Highworth, but I have found no later mention of our family in the Bishopstone area.

EDMUND (born 16 October 1705) was our ancestor.

Charles was born in 1707 and apprenticed dyer in London in 1726 (see next chapter).

Elizabeth (1708-1741), Jane (1713-1736) and Edith (1715-1736) all died unmarried and relatively young.

Samuel was born in 1716. In 1738 at Liddington, the most westerly of the four long narrow upland parishes mentioned above, he married Mary STOURS of Farmborough, Berkshire. Nothing more is known of him.

Four Precys who died between 1736 and 1741 were described as the children of William and Mary, suggesting that she was still alive, although I have not traced her burial. Infant mortality in the 18th century was an all too familiar reality, but to see their children grow to adulthood and then lose all but two or three must have been particularly painful for the old couple. In one awful week in December 1741 they buried their grandsons Charles and George Curtis and their daughter Elizabeth. William himself was buried on 3 January 1745/6 aged 80.

* * * * *

According to the custom of Bishopstone village, copyholders and leaseholders would have been obliged to house two or three other people, known as ‘lives’. Presumably Samuel II could have had his son William as one of his ‘lives’, and as Samuel got older William would have taken over the running of the farm. William could in turn have had his two eldest sons, Henry and William II, as ‘lives’, and packed the younger ones off to London.

William seems to have been more resourceful than his father and grandfather. It must have been a blow to his plans when young William died, apparently unmarried and childless, and Henry didn’t produce an heir. My original suggestion that William failed to make a will because there was little to leave was perhaps unfair. It may just have been that everything went to Henry because, sadly, most of his siblings were dead.

A survey of 1758 shows that ‘Henry Presey’ was the only Precy copyholder or leaseholder in Bishopstone. On 2 February 1754 he had taken up the copyhold of a fairly substantial property overlooking the millpond, in an area known as Hockerbench. Henry’s ‘lives’ were Henry and William CURTIS, perhaps relatives of his brother-in-law George, who was the copyholder of a property some 200 yards to the north. Further north still was another property under the name of ‘Mary Presey’, who could conceivably have been William’s widow although she would have been over 80. These three properties were perhaps all that was left of the much larger landholding that our family apparently had earlier. By a remarkable coincidence Henry Precy’s property is now part of the home of Rob Clark, Chair of Bishopstone Parish Council, who gave much valuable advice in the preparation of this part of the history. That part of the village became known as Rotten Row, because until recent improvements the houses were regarded as being of poor quality.

After 1760 there are just four further mentions of Precys in Bishopstone, only one of whom was certainly from our family. ‘Jane Pracy’, who died in 1762, may have been the widow of Edward the carrier, although there is no reason to suppose that she returned to Bishopstone. Henry died in 1770, the last male Precy known to have been in Bishopstone. ‘Mary Preasy’, who died in September 1791, could have been the widow of Henry or of his younger brother Samuel. ‘Sarah Presey’, who married William NORRIS in March 1791, apparently died in 1824 aged 70; there is no obvious way she could fit into our family and she was perhaps Sarah Pressey, baptised at Salisbury in 1753.

* * * * *

Though no longer gentry, the Precys had remained in the middling ranks of Bishopstone society, and three of them made wills. The rapid decline of the Precys is rather surprising, but there seem to have been three main reasons:

The failure of the two Samuels to make wills generated considerable paperwork, and may suggest a somewhat unbusinesslike attitude that could have contributed to the family’s financial problems.
After the death of the copyholder, the ‘lives’ mentioned above were entitled to take up part of the holding, so copyholds became more numerous but smaller in size. This constant sub-division of their property may have left the Precys without enough land to run a working farm.

Infant mortality was fairly high and few of the Precy boys who did survive to adulthood are recorded as having male children: in five consecutive generations the male line carried on through just one man – the two Samuels and William in Bishopstone, and the two Edmunds in Finsbury.

There was also a nationwide change in agricultural conditions, to which these difficulties made the Precys ill-equipped to respond. Bill Wheeler describes how nearby in Hampshire the Munday family of Appleshaw suffered a similar decline[6]. He quotes GE Mingay, one of the finest historians of rural England:

Small occupiers were especially vulnerable to market forces, and it is now apparent that the era of low prices, 1650-1750, had seen a tendency for land to accumulate in the hands of larger proprietors.

The patchwork of small scattered fields described in the 1672 terrier cannot have been very efficient. Despite the custom of ‘lives’, farms in Bishopstone, as elsewhere, were aggregated into fewer, larger holdings. The Precys had been fairly substantial proprietors and might have been expected to take advantage of this change, but circumstances conspired against them. The death of Henry in 1770 probably marked the end of any significant Precy landholding in the village.

In 1600 our family was the most powerful in Bishopstone, and in 1700 they were still influential there. By 1800 they had left the village completely and were living in one of the poorer parts of London. To my knowledge no branch of our family preserved any memory of our Wiltshire origins. Yet my father used at least ten words and phrases claimed by the Wiltshire Family History Society as local dialect. Whether they somehow passed down through seven generations, or are in fact not peculiar to the county, I don’t know.

* * * * *

I began my family history research in 1973, but it was not until 2002 that I discovered the baptism of the younger Edmund and his father’s origins in Bishopstone. The story of how I did it may be of interest to other family historians, and can be found in a separate document, From north Wiltshire to north London.

Part 2: The move to London

The victory of Protestant William III over Catholic James II in 1688 ensured that the social and religious upheavals of the Civil War gave way to a moderate, relatively stable period. Between 1640 and 1750 the population, which had doubled in the previous hundred years, remained almost static.

Only London grew to any extent, doubling in numbers to become the biggest city in Europe. That increase was almost entirely due to migration from the countryside rather than to natural population growth. The forces which pushed Edmund and his brothers away from Bishopstone drew them to a capital described as ‘…a magnet for great numbers of people hoping to better themselves; too often it killed them. Yet thousands of these optimistic immigrants survived and created a city whose prosperity and vitality astonished all who came there.’[7]

6. Three London apprentices and their families

Most of William and Mary Precy’s six sons and seven daughters survived to adulthood. There was no way all could be supported on a farm that was possibly in decline anyway, and in a village where wages were probably low and alternative employment opportunities rare. It therefore fell to Thomas, Edmund and Charles to move to London and seek their fortune. William did not leave them to their own devices, but paid for them to be apprenticed to masters of City of London Livery Companies.

The three brothers followed trades broadly related to agriculture, the rudiments of which they would have learnt by helping out on the Bishopstone farm. Probably each in turn walked up the hill out of their native village, passing the familiar strip lynchets, and set off along the Ridgeway towards London. Thomas, as the pioneer, was perhaps filled with a mixture of excitement and apprehension as he ventured into this new world. At least Edmund and Charles knew their older brother would be there to greet them.

Thomas was probably a wheelwright, Edmund was definitely a baker and Charles was a dyer. For information about the three companies I have used their websites, which are well worth a visit. It was not unknown in this period for apprentices to be badly treated and drift into a life of crime without completing their period of service, but this wasn’t the case with the Pracy brothers. All three finished their apprenticeships, married, and set up in business on their own account.

On 15 July 1728 ‘William Praccey son of Thomas wheelwright & Elizabeth’ was born, and on 4 August he was baptised at St Giles Cripplegate. I had hoped that the parents were Thomas Presy and Elizabeth GIBBS, who married at Enfield on 1 January 1722/3, but a check of other Enfield records showed that this Thomas was usually called Presley. I haven’t traced the marriage of Thomas and Elizabeth elsewhere.

Unfortunately the Wheelwrights’ Company records for that period have not survived, but Thomas was probably apprenticed when aged about 16. His trade would have required ‘great skill…a powerful physique and brawny arms’ but ‘never provided a lavish lifestyle’[8]. Victor Hugo in Les Misérables gives a vivid portrait of a wheelwright’s life in a large city[9]:

It is a hard life to be a wheelwright, you always work out-doors, in yards, under sheds…In the winter, it is so cold that you thresh your arms to warm them…It is tough work to handle iron when there is ice on the pavements. It wears a man out quick. You get old when you are young at this trade. A man is used up by forty…

Sadly the infant ‘William s. Thomas Pracey wheelwright’ died of smallpox, and was buried on Christmas Day 1729. Thomas may have been ‘used up’ by thirty, for no further record of the family has been traced.

On 2 March 1725/6 Charles ‘son of William Pracy, yeoman, Bishopstone, Wiltshire’ was apprenticed to a dyer named William HERBERT. This, the first London record of the Pracy spelling, was the vital clue that led to my discovering where the family came from. He was almost certainly ‘Charles Prasey’ who married Sarah EALES in London on 12 November 1733, although unfortunately this is one of those infuriating records on the IGI that gives no further information. ‘Hannah Praysey daughter of Charles dier & Sarah’ was born on 1 March 1733/4 and baptised at St Giles Cripplegate on 23 March.

The Dyer’s Company received its charter in 1482 and is 13th in order of precedence of the Livery Companies. Along with the Vintners’ Company, the Dyers take part in the well-known annual ceremony of swan-upping on the River Thames. Having rented various premises, the company moved to its present site at Dowgate Hill in 1731, towards the end of Charles’s apprenticeship. That building fell down and its successor was in poor condition when in 1831 a surveyor – the appropriately named Charles Dyer – found that it had been built on rotten foundations. The present building dates from 1840.

As with Thomas, Charles and his family seem to have disappeared from the record. Sadly, they were probably among the many people that London killed. The late Bill Firth kindly trawled through several likely parish registers looking for their burials, but without success. There may be a record of them elsewhere, but it would be a long and possibly fruitless search, which I have not attempted.

I should add that I don’t have absolute proof that Thomas and Edmund were the brothers of Charles. I had hoped, for example, that I would find a will for their father William and that it would name them. Sometimes, however, historians can only go for the balance of probability, particularly for sketchily recorded events that took place nearly 300 years ago. I think my suggestion that the three were brothers is plausible because:

None of them appears in later Bishopstone records, whereas eight of their ten siblings do.
Later migrants from a family tend to settle close to the pioneers, and all three had their children baptised at St Giles Cripplegate.
The baptism dates of their eldest children fit pretty well with their ages (Thomas would have been 28, Edmund 24, Charles 26).
Edmund was 16 when he was apprenticed, and Charles 18. Thomas was probably about the same age but the loss of the Wheelwrights’ records makes the point impossible to prove either way.

The St Giles Cripplegate register also recorded the burial on 2 May 1731 of ‘James Pracy, age’. In those days anybody who reached 60 was considered aged, so I thought that perhaps James could have been a brother of William and the first to come from Bishopstone to London. It seems, however, to be a coincidence, for no James is recorded in our family and a James Pressey was baptised at St Giles on 13 April 1639.

7. Edmund the baker (b. 1705)

If I could be whisked back in a time machine to meet just one of my ancestors, I would unhesitatingly choose Edmund. He formed the vital bridge between Bishopstone and London. I would love just to hear his accent, and his reminiscences about the change and what he thought of it. As it is, I can only piece his life together as best I can.

Edmund probably arrived in London in 1721, the year in which Sir Robert Walpole was appointed Britain’s first prime minister to restore confidence after the scandal of the South Sea Bubble. On 15 January 1721/2 ‘Edmund Presie’ was apprenticed to Master Baker Stephen CROSS. He would have served under him for seven years, and probably lived on the premises or nearby.

The Worshipful Company of Bakers was believed in Edmund’s time to have been given its charter by Edward II in 1307, although the first definite record of a charter was in 1486. The company now traces its origins to a Pipe Roll of 1155 and claims to be the second oldest of the City Companies, of which it is 19th in order of precedence. A Baker’s Hall has stood on its present site in Harp Lane since 1506 – half a millennium. The first two halls were burnt down and the third was completed in 1722, the year that Edmund entered on his apprenticeship. It in turn was destroyed during the Blitz and the present hall was opened in 1963.

On 6 October 1729, soon after completing his apprenticeship, Edmund Precey married Elizabeth EALES at St Margaret’s Westminster. Elizabeth was probably the sister of Charles’s wife Sarah[10]. There are at least 30 eligible Elizabeth Eales on the IGI, three of whom had sisters called Sarah. One pair of sisters was baptised at Moreton Hampstead in Devon, another at Sapscote in Leicestershire and the third at St Mary’s Nottingham. There is no knowing which, if any, were ours, but there is a fair chance that the Eales sisters, like the Pracy brothers, were migrants into London. Presumably Elizabeth lived in the parish or had some other connection with it, although Charles and Sarah weren’t married there.

Standing in the shadow of Westminster Abbey, St Margaret’s was founded in 1120 and rebuilt around 1500[11]. It is the parish church of the houses of Parliament and of the local area. Stained glass windows commemorate William Caxton and John Milton who worshipped there, while Sir Walter Raleigh is buried under the altar. St Margaret’s is now much sought after for weddings, and others married there included Samuel Pepys (1655), John Milton (1656) and Winston Churchill (1908).

Edmund and Elizabeth had two daughters baptised at St Giles Cripplegate. ‘Mary Pracey’ was born on 30 July 1730 but no further mention of her has been traced. ‘Rachel Preacy’ was born on 22 January 1731/2 but on 4 March 1732/3 the St Giles register noted the burial of ‘Rachel Preacy a child teeth’.

Later in 1733 most of the huge parish of St Giles Cripplegate was carved off to become a new parish, St Luke’s Old Street. It comprised those parts of St Giles that lay outside the City of London, and there were already some 3,000 houses in the area. Built by George Dance to a design of John James and Nicholas Hawksmoor, the church was known as ‘Lousy St Luke’s’ because some thought that the dragon design of its weather vane looked like a louse. For the next 55 years all but one of our London family events were recorded at St Luke’s.

In the 20th century both churches suffered major damage. St Giles was severely bombed in the Second World War, and extensively rebuilt afterwards. St Luke’s was built on marshy ground and from the start had problems with subsidence. The very dry summer of 1959 aggravated this, so the roof was removed and the building declared unsafe. The area had become greatly depopulated, so the two parishes were reunited at St Giles.

St Luke’s lay derelict until 1996, when the London Symphony Orchestra took it on and, over the next seven years, converted it into a splendid education centre. The opportunity was taken to carry out an archaeological survey of burials at St Luke’s. It lists 336 individuals but none of our family was among them, probably because they were not wealthy enough to afford a lasting memorial[12].

Although apprenticed to a Master Baker in the City of London, Edmund never became one himself. This may have been for shrewd business reasons. In 1710 the government had given local magistrates the power of fixing bread prices, which was not always done fairly. Sometimes bakers were not allowed to raise prices even when the cost of grain had increased. This problem was particularly bad in London, but Edmund’s business was probably at St Luke’s which was in Middlesex, where freedom of trade was greater and the magistrates brought no prosecutions against bakers. In 1735 the Bakers’ Company petitioned the House of Commons, which agreed to introduce a Bill allowing prices to be fixed according to the type of grain used. True to form, Parliament only implemented its promise 23 years later, when it feared the consequences of a bread shortage caused by harvest failure and war with France.

Evidently Elizabeth died and Edmund was remarried to Alice, although Bill Firth could find no trace of the marriage. We therefore do not know her surname, or when or where they were married. They could have had a clandestine marriage at the Fleet prison or somewhere similar, which would have been disreputable but not actually illegal. They are, however, not mentioned in an index of such marriages at the Society of Genealogists, and I have looked no further.

By a remarkable coincidence Edmund Presse of Bishopstone married Alice RABBESON of Coombe Bissett, but the date was exactly 100 years too early – 1 July 1633. I have found no other mention of this Edmund and he was probably from the other Bishopstone near Swindon, so I think it unlikely that ours was named after him.

The St Luke’s register recorded the baptism on 4 March 1735/6 of ‘Martha Bracey, daughter of Edmund baker & Alice’. That combination of parents’ names is extremely unusual and Edmund was a baker. In Wiltshire dialect B and P were interchangeable, and 270 years later I have occasionally had my name misheard as Bracey. Martha was therefore almost certainly our Edmund’s daughter but she too probably died young.

By 1741 most of the Bishopstone family had died, and Edmund and Alice were apparently the only Pracys left in London. If indeed they were the only survivors, Edmund would perhaps have thought back to the year 1729, when the family in Bishopstone was still thriving and those in London must have had high hopes of making good lives for themselves. Edmund completed his apprenticeship and married Elizabeth, who immediately fell pregnant. His elder brother was established in his trade with a wife and young son. His younger brother was well into his apprenticeship, and perhaps planning to marry Sarah as soon as he completed it. Instead, within twelve years Edmund lost at least four siblings in Bishopstone, and probably a wife and three daughters, and two brothers and their families in London. Even allowing for the high mortality of the time, the loss of twelve or more close relatives in as many years must have been heartbreaking for Edmund and his parents. It was the most tragic period in our family’s history.

That most of the St Luke’s Pracys apparently died is not surprising, for death rates in the parish were appalling. Far more people were buried than baptised, and many of them were infants. I have done no systematic count, but I get the impression that the majority of children must have died. When Edmund was born on 19 July 1744, therefore, his parents cannot have been greatly confident that he would survive to perpetuate the family name, but survive he did.

The older Edmund could easily have died young too, for his trade was a risky one. Lumping heavy bags of flour could cause hernias, and the heat from ovens created thirst that often led to alcoholism. Perhaps the most serious hazard was flour dust, which was still dangerous in the 20th century:

If a baker was exposed over a period of time to airborne flour dust and/or dust by skin contact, he/she could develop dermatitis (an inflammation of the skin), conjunctivitis (inflammation of the eyes), rhinitis (information of the nose) and even asthma - an inflammatory disease of the lungs which can cause a great deal of distress and may even be life threatening[13].

To survive at least into middle age, Edmund must have been pretty tough.

I trawled through the St Luke’s ratebooks for 1744 but disappointingly Edmund was not listed, which suggests that he was a sub-tenant. Thus I don’t know his address but tradesmen usually lived literally ‘over the shop’, and I think his premises must have been fairly reputable. He had probably had his own business for at least 15 years when, at the time of young Edmund’s baptism, he gave his trade as ‘baker’. The Bakers’ Company exercised considerable inspection powers over London and the surrounding area, and they would have closed down his operation if it had not been up to scratch.

I’ve now finished checking the St Luke’s burial registers but still not found Edmund. The most likely explanation is that his burial was recorded there but the entry has been made illegible by water damage. Alice lived for another 40 years, when she must have been about 70. On 2 January 1785 the St Luke’s register recorded the burial of ‘Alice Pracy a woman age’.

8. Edmund the carman (b. 1744) and his daughters

Young Edmund grew up in St Luke’s and may well have delivered bread to his father’s customers. This experience could have led to his becoming a carman, the first of several in our family (see Chapter 10).

On 9 June 1767 at St Leonard’s Shoreditch ‘Edman Preacy’ married Lucy CARLTON. Both marked the register with a cross so were presumably illiterate. His name was also spelt ‘Edman’ on the baptismal entries for most of their children. That must have been how he pronounced it, and presumably standardisation of spelling was not quite sufficiently advanced for the clergyman to ‘correct’ it.

I have found no mention of Lucy anywhere else, and all I know about her is that one of the witnesses was William Carlton, presumably her father or brother. Carlton is mostly a North Country name but a William Henry Carleton, son of William and ‘Rebeckah’, was baptised at St Andrew by the Wardrobe church on 6 May 1744. If William Henry was then a baby he would have been almost exactly the same age as Edmund, although there can be no certainty that he or his father was the William who witnessed the wedding.

Edmund and Lucy both described themselves as being ‘of this parish’. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Edmund was living there, because it was a popular church for weddings, often used by outsiders. I am still searching for a record of Edmund’s death or burial, but the St Luke’s burial register for 1787 noted of his wife: ‘1 July Lucy Pracy a woman fever’.

The St Luke’s ratebooks record that, from 1771 to 1794 at least, ‘Edward Prasey’ lived on the eastern side of New Street, which was off Old Street east of Ironmonger Row. This was a long time to be at one address, and suggests that Edmund was a respectable citizen. The relevant volume for 1795 is missing, but in 1796 he was not listed. Unfortunately the Land Tax records for New Street in this period state only that the surname of the landlord was Berry. He may well have been Thomas Berry, a Kent farmer who built nearby Berry Street. New Street was later renamed Caslon Street, after William Caslon who revolutionised the design and manufacture of type-faces, and was buried at St Luke’s. It and other properties were demolished, I believe in the 1960s, to make way for the Redbrick Estate.

Horwood’s 1799 London map suggest that, by contrast with many of the squalid courtyards and alleyways in the area, the house was in a pleasant terrace which apparently had access to a communal courtyard or garden at the rear. It is amazing to think that the family could have found themselves in the countryside by walking up Ironmonger Row to City Road, which was opened in 1761, when Edmund was a youth of 17. City Road was an extension of the New Road, which had been built in 1756 through the open fields from Marylebone to Islington.

New Street is very close to the premises of the Honourable Artillery Company in City Road. Edmund and his family could therefore have witnessed the first unmanned balloon flight in England, which was launched from the HAC’s grounds on 25 November 1783. Similarly, he and/or his father could have attended some of the major cricket matches that were played at the HAC from 1730 to 1778.

The City of London Lying In Hospital moved to the corner of Old Street and City Road c1771. It and similar maternity hospitals founded in the 18th century were principally intended for the wives of poor industrious tradesmen. The mothers were either admitted to hospital for childbirth, or attended in their own homes by medical students and staff from the hospitals. Lucy’s babies may well have been delivered in the hospital or with its staff present at home, but unfortunately that can’t be confirmed because the hospital records for that period haven’t survived.

Hospitals and other improvements meant that London was gradually becoming a rather less hazardous place to live, and seven of Edmund and Lucy’s nine children lived to adulthood. Their relatively healthy housing and nearness to the countryside may have contributed to this good fortune. The births were spaced out at fairly regular intervals of two years or slightly more, indicating that Lucy like most mothers breast-fed them: it was the nearest most people could get to a form of birth control.

Ann was born on 26 March 1768. At St Luke’s on 13 April 1789 she married ‘William HARDCASTLE of this parish’. She would not have had to travel very far, because New Street was just round the corner from the church. William evidently died, for later she had four daughters with a coachman called Isaac FOX, although no marriage has been traced. An Isaac Fox was baptised on 11 November 1765 at Holy Trinity in the Minories, but he may not have been the same person.

Isaac had apparently died by the time of the 1841 census, when Ann was living with her daughter Susan at Crown Street, Newington. The two women were still there in 1851 when they were somewhat creative with their ages, Ann adding one year and Susan subtracting four. Ann was described as deaf. She probably died in the Lambeth Registration District in 1856, when she would have been 88.

Isaac and Ann Fox’s first three daughters were baptised at St George the Martyr, Southwark. Lucy was born on 22 February 1804 and Rebecca on 5 August 1806, but nothing more is known of them and they probably died as infants. Susan was born on 12 September 1808 and became a dressmaker. A second Rebecca was baptised on 9 May 1813 at St Mary Newington, now Southwark Cathedral. She later joined her aunt Rosey (Rosetta Terry) in Australia.

Rosey (29 July 1770 – 5 September 1858) emigrated to Australia, where she was known as Rosetta and married Samuel Terry (see next chapter).

Edmund was born on 25 August 1772, but the St Luke’s register noted the burial on 27 July 1774 of ‘Edward Pricy a child smallpox’. Edmund was often erroneously replaced by the commoner name Edward, but the Pricy spelling was only used on that one occasion. Although I don’t have a strong Cockney accent, I do tend to pronounce race as though it were rice and occasionally get post addressed to David Pricy. This may indicate that, not surprisingly, Edmund spoke with a London accent.

‘Edman Pracy son of Edman carman & Lucy’ was born on 28 August 1774, a month after his namesake brother was buried. Sadly he too died of a notorious scourge of infancy, measles, aged only five. Parents often recycled the name of a dead child, but when another son was born a year later Edmund and Lucy called him Thomas. It is a modern misconception that high mortality rates hardened 18th-century parents to the loss of their children, and it may be that the memories associated with their two boys made it too painful for them to use the name again.

Elizabeth was born on 11 January 1777.

On 1 November 1799 Elizabeth stole goods worth about £6 10s from her employer Mrs Mary Camroux, milliner of 9 Brinsley Place Islington[14]. No home address is given for Elizabeth, so she may well have been a shop assistant living in. The Camroux were a family of Huguenot origin, who enjoyed mixed fortunes. Mary’s husband John Lewis (b. 1748) came from one of the wealthier branches of the family, which included bankers and prosperous shopkeepers. Mary herself was born West but nothing more is known of her[15].

On 4 December at the Old Bailey quarter sessions Elizabeth was convicted of simple grand larceny. Her sister Rosey had only just travelled out to Australia as a free passenger and Elizabeth must have come close to joining her involuntarily. She could even have been hung but by then capital punishment for thefts not involving violence was unusual. On the day of her conviction, four people were sentenced to be hanged and 16 transported. Elizabeth was one of five people who escaped with the next most serious punishment – two years in the Middlesex House of Correction and, rather inconsequential by comparison, a fine of one shilling. Perhaps Elizabeth owed her relatively light punishment to a Mrs Newbank, who was called as a witness and ‘gave her a good character’.

The recently built prison was situated at Coldbath Fields, on the site of the present-day Mount Pleasant Post Office. Modelled on the ideas of the reformer John Howard, it was intended to replace physical with psychological punishment, but the venality of governor Thomas Aris meant that the new prison differed little from older ones. The poets Southey and Coleridge wrote in The Devil’s Thoughts[16]:

As he walked through Coldbath Fields he saw

A solitary cell

And the Devil was pleased, for it gave him an idea

For improving his prisons in hell.

Men, women and children were indiscriminately herded together, and had to work ten hours a day. Elizabeth would have done hard labour such as beating hemp, and been put into solitary confinement so that she might reflect on the error of her ways.

Elizabeth survived her deprivations and in 1805 married James KERSHAW at Christ Church Greyfriars Newgate Street, in the City of London. Kershaw is chiefly a Lancashire name, unusual in London, so this may have been the James baptised in the neighbouring parish of St Sepulchre’s Holborn on 23 February 1777. Elizabeth, daughter of James and Elizabeth Kershaw, was born on 29 March 1805 and baptised at St George the Martyr Southwark on 5 October 1806, the same day as Ann Fox’s daughter Rebecca. The parents were therefore almost certainly our James and Elizabeth but nothing further is known of the family. From 1834 onwards Elizabeth’s sisters Ann and Rebecca were mentioned in several wills but she was not. Elizabeth had therefore probably died, perhaps weakened by her prison experience.

With a rather sad symmetry, Christ Church Newgate Street was built by Wren after the Great Fire and gutted as a result of enemy action during the Second World War. The church tower and part of the walls survive. An information board gives details about the church and a garden that has been laid out on the site of the nave. The parish was united to St Sepulchre’s in 1954.

The parish registers were lost too, but fortunately some bishops’ transcripts survive from the early 1800s, and a complete run from 1809. Some information of brides and grooms, and their years of marriage, was also preserved in Pallot’s marriage index.

John William (1779-1831) and Thomas (1781-1846) were the ancestors of all later Pracys. They are dealt with in Parts 3 and 4.

Lucy was born on 8 September 1783 and died on 7 January 1849 at 3 Sidney Street, which was later renamed Wakley Street after the social reformer and MP for Finsbury, who founded The Lancet medical journal. Lucy had previously lived round the corner at 16 Dalby Terrace, now 366 City Road. It is an ‘imposing terrace … built in 1803 on a common formerly used for executions and prize fights’[17], and now seems to be used mostly for offices.

Lucy never married. On the 1841 census she was living at Upper Islington Terrace, now Cloudsley Road. She was listed as the female servant of a 14-year-old of independent means called Harriet Dyer, but I rather think it was the other way round and Harriet was Lucy’s servant. Later in the decade Lucy became the first of the London family known to have made a will, which she wrote on 5 July 1848. Of independent means, Lucy left a variety of possessions and £170 in cash. Evidently she was closest to her Fox relatives: she left £10 to her younger sister Rebecca Fox and 19 guineas each to her sister Ann Fox, her niece Rebecca and her niece Susan, who was present at the death.

Rebecca was born on 27 October 1785. On 29 August 1822 she married John FOX, a widower, at Christ Church Newgate Street. John was perhaps the brother of Isaac Fox, in which case they probably came from south of the river, for Ann and Rebecca both settled there. In 1841 the widowed Rebecca was living in Clapham and in 1861 she was in Walworth. She was then aged 75 and her two eldest sisters lived well into their eighties, so clearly the longevity genes evident in Bishopstone persisted well into the 19th century.

9. Rosetta Terry, née Rosey Pracey (1770-1858)

Rosey, who was born on 29 July 1770, was later known as Rosetta. In 1810 she married Samuel TERRY, calculated by the economic historian William D Rubinstein to have been the wealthiest Australian ever. She was, however, a woman of great achievements in her own right, with an independent spirit quite exceptional in her time. She was by some way the most remarkable person our family has produced, and if my time machine allowed me to meet a second Pracy not in my direct line, she would undoubtedly be my choice. This section is only a brief summary of her life and career. For a longer version you can read my entry for the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies Biography of an Ancestor competition.

The Australian Dictionary of Biography includes an article by Gwyneth M Dow, a descendant of Rosetta’s son John Terry. She summarised Sam and Rosetta as ‘two able, single-minded early colonists who resolved to reverse their unfavourable, brutalizing early fortunes – and succeeded’. She also wrote a well-researched biography of Sam, on which this chapter is based[18]. In it she suggested that perhaps ‘in this great-grandmother of mine we have an unwritten story to show that the female of the species is more deadly than the male’.

My biography is the first attempt to meet that challenge, but it would have been impossible without my distant Australian cousins who contacted me via this website and gave invaluable information and support. They are: Janice Eastment, great-great-granddaughter of Rosetta’s nephew Thomas Richard, and her partner Kevin Shaw; Marilyn Mason, widow of Rosetta’s 4 x great-grandson; Graham Smith, Rosetta’s 3 x great-grandson.

1770-1798: Rosey Pracey

Sources for Rosetta’s early life in England are very sparse, and she seems at times deliberately to have obscured details of her past. The following suggestions are therefore almost entirely speculative, although the guesswork is as educated as I can make it.

The first mystery is her name. Whereas all her siblings had solid old-fashioned names, Rosey by contrast seems rather flighty and fanciful. It certainly isn’t known among the Pracys, so perhaps it came from her mother’s side of the family. We also don’t know when she came to be known as Rosetta rather than Rosey, so I have referred to her as Rosey in England and Rosetta in Australia.

The second puzzle is that, when Rosetta died, her mother’s maiden name was recorded as NEWBORK. The informant was Rosetta’s niece Rebecca Fox and it was over 90 years after the marriage of ‘Edman Preacy’ and Lucy Carlton. It is therefore hardly surprising that Rebecca was misinformed, but it seems more than coincidence that this was similar to Newbank, the surname of Elizabeth Pracey’s character witness at her Old Bailey trial in 1799. I can find no record anywhere of the surname Newbork, so a misreading of Newbank could have crept in somewhere. Perhaps a Mrs Newbank became almost a surrogate mother who helped bring up the young family, and Rosetta told Rebecca about her. The IGI has several men called Newbank married in London around the right time but none of the brides is recorded as Lucy, so the exact nature of the Newbank/Newbork connection is unlikely to be established.

Third is the rather curious fact, discussed in more detail below, that Rosetta has links to three Lancashire criminals sent to New South Wales as convicts. Edward MADDEN and Samuel TERRY were convicted at Salford, Henry MARSH alias MARTIN at Liverpool. This could be sheer coincidence, particularly as Rosey is not known to have met Samuel in England. However if, as suggested in the next chapter, there was some sort of family disaster, she may well have left London and gone to Lancashire. She may have married Edward Madden and/or Henry Marsh/Martin in England, but no marriage record has been traced.

Finally, I can suggest four influences that could have helped young Rosey Pracey of St Luke’s develop into the formidable Rosetta Terry of Sydney.

She was nearly 17 when her mother died. Even allowing for the influence of her older sister Ann and perhaps Mrs Newbank, Rosey must have helped the upbringing of her younger siblings and thus learned mothering skills.
In 1794, the 24-year-old Rosey was probably the eldest child still in the household and the next eldest, Elizabeth, was only 17. If some misfortune did overtake our family around that time, she may well have influenced events and been influenced by them. They probably helped form her strong character.
Rosey could, like Elizabeth, have had a job in trade, which would have given her the experience to develop her formidable business abilities.

· Mary Wollstoncraft’s influential Vindication of the Rights of Women was published in 1792. Rosey could read and clearly had strong feminist views, which were perhaps influenced by this book.

1798-1810: Rosetta Marsh

Rosetta first emerged into the light of history late in 1798, when she went to Australia as a free traveller on a convict ship called the Hillsborough. The convicts were picked up from various prison hulks, one of which was infected with jail fever (typhus). Soon after the Hillsborough left Langstone Harbour near Portsmouth, disease broke out and one third of the 300 convicts died on the voyage. Their plight was not helped by the brutal master of the ship, William Hingston. He starved prisoners and shackled them so heavily that they could barely move. The resultant scandal led to the Hillsborough being called ‘the Death Ship’. Governor John Hunter described the survivors as ‘the most Miserable and Wretched … I ever beheld’.

One of those who died was Edward Madden, who was buried at sea off Cape Town on 1 April 1799. When in 1810 Rosetta married Samuel Terry she described herself as ‘Rosater Madden Widow’, but people were often economical with the truth in ways that were unlikely to be detected half a world away. Rosetta’s track record suggests that she was no exception.

In July 1799 Rosetta disembarked in Sydney, where she found herself in a new and precarious world. There was little in the way of infrastructure, food sources or farms, and support was several months away. At first administration was fully in the Governor’s hands and the settlement was a combination of military outpost and open prison, but once free persons began to settle and acquire land or goods, there was a different and constantly evolving situation. The government granted land with the intention of creating a colony, but this raised questions about the application of British laws and the form of government, particularly as they related to the rights of freed (emancipated) convicts.

Accompanying Rosetta on the voyage had been a son called Henry Marsh, although when and where he was born is not known. Another child, Esther Marsh, must have been conceived as soon as Rosetta arrived, for she was born in Sydney on 28 April 1800. Their father was probably Henry Marsh or Martin, a labourer or bricklayer who had travelled as a convict on the Hillsborough. Henry junior worked on ships sailing out of Sydney and rose to the rank of captain. At the time of his death in 1825 he was employed by the East India Company. He died unmarried in Rangoon, aged about 28.

Rosetta was always known in Sydney as Rosetta Marsh so was less likely to have been married to Madden than to Marsh, who certainly gave his name to her two eldest children and was probably their father. Rosetta would have known that Madden died off Cape Town, so she could have claimed that she had married him. If Rosetta had been married to Marsh and he was still alive, she could not legally have married Terry. Whatever the precise truth, Rosetta’s claim to be Madden’s widow left her free to marry a man who was to become the richest in Australia.

Rosetta’s third child, John, was probably born in 1806. John’s surname was Terry although Samuel and Rosetta were not married at the time of his birth. This would indicate that Rosetta’s relationship with Marsh had already broken down. Family legend suggested that his father was John HARRIS, Surgeon in the New South Wales Corps and a wealthy landowner. This may however, at a time when nobody wanted to be descended from convict stock, have been an attempt to bring a gloss of respectability to the family. We may never know whether Samuel was in fact John’s biological father, but certainly in his will he mentions ‘my son John Terry’, whereas he refers to Esther and Henry Marsh as ‘the daughter/son of my said wife by a former husband’. These somewhat irregular arrangements were typical of a colony in which men greatly outnumbered women.

* * * * *

After her arrival in Sydney, Rosetta gradually began to build her fortune. She probably used methods similar to those of Sarah Bird, who in 1798 became the colony’s first licensee of a public house[19]:

I did a little trade in the passage here in a number of small articles, such as sugar, tea, tobacco, thread, snuff, needles, and everything that I could get anything by ... I have sold my petticoats at two guineas each, and my long black cloak at ten guineas, which shews that black silk sells well here; the edging that I gave 1s 8d per yard for in England, I got 5s for it here. I have sold all the worst of my cloaths, as wearing apparel brings a good price.

As early as 1803 Rosetta in her own name bought a small farm, details of which were listed on the muster of 12 Aug 1806:

Rosetta Marsh. Came free Hillsborough 1799. Lives self. By Lease. Potatoes ½ acre. Orchard ½ acre. Hogs One. In hand, wheat 2 bushels, maize one bushel. Proprietor and three children not victualled. 1 Convict not victualled. 1 free man employed.

In 1808 she was among the traders who bought wine, spirits and dried fruit in a cargo that arrived from Edinburgh. She paid £133 and Surgeon Harris £115, which shows that she was not just a front woman for Harris’s business interests. Her future husband Sam Terry spent just £3.

Rosetta soon became a person of influence in the colony. In 1808 she was one of the few women among 800 ‘Free and Principal Proprietors of Landed Property’ who signed a petition to Governor William Bligh, asking him to make representations to the King for trade privileges and trial by jury. The petition was also signed by Terry and Harris. Soon afterwards Bligh, not for the first time in his eventful life, was deposed from office – this time in the ‘Rum Rebellion’, in which officers of the New South Wales Corps led by George Johnston and John Macarthur mutinied against Bligh’s attempts to suppress their commercial activities and especially their trade in rum. Rosetta subscribed £20 to a proposed fund to provide expenses to Macarthur and a presentation sword to Johnston.

In 1809 Rosetta received grants of 150 and 50 acres from Col William Paterson, one of three men who administered the colony after the military overthrew Bligh. She rather grandly called this land Islington, perhaps in recollection of the area close to her childhood home that was a centre of the livestock trade.

When in January 1810 Governor Lachlan Macquarie arrived to replace Bligh, he expressed ‘the high displeasure of His Majesty on account of the late tumultuous and mutinous proceedings’, and reversed most of the actions taken in the previous year. Rosetta was therefore one of the settlers who addressed a memorial (petition) to the Governor appealing for their grants to be continued and legalised. She declared that ‘she has three children Fatherless and Unprotected which she has hitherto maintained and Educated by the most persevering Industry and by an equal share of Industry is now possessed of a Considerable number of Head Cattle Breeding Mares and Other Stock’. Her appeal was successful, for Macquarie granted her request, backdated to 1 January 1810.

It seems clear that Rosetta built up her fortune largely by her own efforts, but precisely how she did it can only be a matter of speculation. I doubt whether the family had much capital to give her when she left England, but she may have accumulated a little of her own. When in 1809 44 wine and spirits licences were granted in Sydney, she was one of only four women to receive one. She perhaps accumulated her wealth as a trader, acting like other women of the time as a sort of banker.

Early in 1810 Rosetta went to law four times, to recover money owed to her for goods and services or as compensation. In the most remarkable case, Rosetta took on one of the leading families in the colony – that of George Johnston, who less than two years earlier had deposed the unpopular Governor Bligh. Johnston was in England attempting to vindicate his actions, so left his property at Annandale in the charge of his mistress, the beautiful Jewish woman Esther Julian who later married him. Rosetta prosecuted Esther ‘for the negligence of her servant James Hooper, in improperly putting a mare to horse, by which the mare died’. In September 1809 Rosetta had ordered her servant, John Winch, to deliver a dark bay mare to Annandale, for mating with one of Mrs Julian’s stallions. The stallion immediately leaped on the mare and Hooper tried to assist him, but Winch saw something was going wrong, so took the mare back to her stable but she died at about midnight. The court found that the penis of the horse had burst the rectum of the unfortunate mare and caused her death. Esther pleaded not guilty but a verdict was given for Rosetta of damages of £80 + costs.

1810-1838: Rosetta Terry, wife

Rosetta was thus an effective businesswoman and landowner in her own right, so when she and Samuel combined their resources they became the wealthiest people in Australia. Theirs may well have been a love match as well as a shrewd financial arrangement, but even so she ensured that they signed an agreement ‘securing to her all her stock previous to their marriage’.

Samuel Terry had been convicted on 7 November 1799 at Lancaster Quarter Sessions of stealing 400 pairs of stockings, and other goods. In June 1801 Samuel arrived at the convict settlement where he was placed in a gang of stonemasons that built Parramatta jail, but soon he developed a reputation for respectability.

Samuel began to build up his fortune. It was alleged that he got people drunk so they signed away their possessions, but others disputed this. He was highly regarded by Governor Macquarie, who in 1817 described him as a ‘wealthy trader’, dealing in the provision of fresh meat and flour to the government. He always drove a hard bargain, as is indicated by his readiness to prosecute his debtors, but was regarded as a fair and well-respected employer.

A month after Rosetta married Samuel their son Edward was born, and in 1811 their daughter Martha. The populist historian Frank Clune described Rosetta as ‘a mother in a million, co-founder of a dynasty that has prospered for generations’. Judging by the number of men in her life, I would think that she must also have been a very attractive woman.

After their marriage, Sam and Rosetta continue to acquire property, by grant and purchase. In 1819 they set themselves up on a country estate outside Sydney called Box Hill Farm. On the census of November 1828 Samuel and Rosetta declared that they owned 21,580 acres with 189 horses, 3700 horned cattle and 7400 sheep. True to form, she subtracted seven years from her age.

Samuel was the largest shareholder in the Bank of New South Wales, founded in 1817 as Australia’s first bank, and Rosetta was among the 31% of woman shareholders. Female votes could only be exercised as proxies by male shareholders, but the couple apparently had a good relationship and conflict over his exercise of her vote seems unlikely. Samuel was also associated with many benevolent and religious movements in Sydney. Respected as honest and capable in money matters, he often became treasurer.

Samuel died in 1838 after a stroke, aged about 62. A rumour swept Sydney that he owned a trunk full of gold and money but it was never found. His estate was nevertheless valued at £200,000, which made the scale of his fortune unique in Australian history. In 1825 he had made an elaborate will which gives an idea of just how extensive the Terry assets were. To ‘my dear wife Rosetta’ went Box Hill itself, along with ‘the household furniture plate linen and china that I shall have in use in the house in which I shall usually reside at the time of my decease’. Initially the chief beneficiary was to be their son Edward but he proved a great disappointment, so Samuel tied up Edward’s property in trust and divided the other properties, money and assets among all the children. Edward died childless and intestate a few months after his father, in an influenza epidemic.

Ironically, therefore, the Terry name was perpetuated by the boy who probably was not Samuel’s son. In 1831 John married Eleanor, daughter of Richard Rouse who had been Samuel’s supervisor when he worked as a convict in the stonemasons’ gang. When John died in 1842, following a fall from his horse, his estate was valued at £30,000. His three sons, who all built themselves large houses, played significant roles in Australian history and had many descendants.

Immediately after Samuel’s death there was published in London a pamphlet snappily entitled The History of Samuel Terry, in Botany Bay, who died lately, leaving a princely fortune of nearly one million sterling. It was described on the title page as being By A.L.F.––– LATE OF NEW SOUTH WALES. It is not surprising that the author chose to conceal his identity and wait until after Sam’s death, for otherwise he would surely have been sued for libel. According to A.L.F., who dubbed him ‘the Botany Bay Rothschild’, Sam left property that ‘amounted to almost a million sterling’, and ‘bequeathed his wife an annuity of almost ten thousand pounds’. Sam bought up ‘acres…in and near Sydney, hitherto covered with filth and rubbish’, and made his fortune when his land became valuable for building. He was also said to have been responsible for the death by hanging of a family servant found guilty of theft, and for the madness of a friend whose farm Sam sold when he was unable to repay a loan of £800. Rosetta was presented as dressing in ‘a simple, nay, coarse manner’, being too mean to employ a servant and having a ‘niggardly, fearful and narrow mind’. Since the author was wrong about such basic details as Sam’s age and Rosetta’s background, there is little reason to suppose that he was any more accurate in some of his more lurid accusations. Much of the pamphlet was proved to be false, but it illustrates the great passions aroused by the idea that people could in effect benefit from their crimes in England by accumulating great wealth in Australia.

1838-1858: Rosetta Terry, widow

Much of Sam’s money passed to his nephew John Terry HUGHES, who in 1825 married Rosetta’s daughter Esther Marsh. The Sydney Gazette reported that ‘after the ceremony the happy couple set off in their chariot to Mr Terry’s country seat at Box Hill’. They ‘took the world easy and lived in fine style’, and went on to have six daughters and a son. Hughes went into partnership with John HOSKING, who had married Sam and Rosetta’s daughter Martha. John Hosking and Martha Terry were married in 1829 but it was not until the late 1840s that they presented Rosetta with three granddaughters. The second of them rejoiced in the name Ada Australia Pracey Hosking.

Hughes went into partnership with John Hosking, who had married Samuel and Rosetta’s daughter Martha. When their Albion Mills burnt down in 1841, it was underinsured and in an attempt to save themselves they borrowed large sums against the assets of the Bank of Australia. Their company finally collapsed in 1843 and they brought the bank and themselves down to spectacular bankruptcy. Rosetta’s shrewdness in keeping her assets separate enabled her to buy some of Hosking’s property before it was sequestrated, and she even petitioned the court for money that he owed her. Thus she was able to preserve the family’s fortunes for the next generation.

The Terrys did not entirely forget Rosetta’s Pracy sisters. In a codicil of 1834 Sam directed payment of annuities to various people including ‘Mrs. [Ann] Fox of London twenty pounds and after the death of the said Mrs Fox the like sum to her sister Rebecca Fox for her life’. On the 1841 English census Ann Fox, Rebecca Fox and Lucy Pracy are all listed as being of independent means and living in comfortable suburban houses, so after Samuel’s death Rosetta probably gave each of her sisters a regular allowance. Following the Australian pattern, however, she apparently made no similar provision for her brothers or their children.

Rosetta died from ‘decay of nature’ on 5 September 1858, aged 88. Her personal wealth (excluding her land) was valued at £27,000. Like her sister Ann and niece Susan, she was no stickler for accuracy about her age: at the time of the 1828 census she subtracted six years, but her death certificate rounded her up two years to a nice neat 90.

Two years earlier Rosetta had made a will which shows that her shrewd brain was by no means in decay. In the light of half a century’s business experience, not least with her bankrupt sons-in-law, she took a decidedly feminist line. She made provision that the men in the family should only have annual income rather than property. The women were to have their estates ‘free from the debts or control of any husband’.

The will of Rosetta’s sister Lucy shows that by 1848 their niece Rebecca Fox was living at Box Hill, apparently as a sort of companion to her aunt. In what was evidently a fairly standard clause Rosetta left all her household goods to Rebecca, as Sam had to her. Rebecca was also given some 500 acres and a house in Crown Street, Surry Hills.

Rebecca was appointed an executor and trustee of the will, along with Rosetta’s widowed daughter Esther Hughes and William Manners Clark, the family lawyer. Under the original will of November 1856, Esther’s daughter Priscilla was pointedly excluded from receiving any property, but a codicil of February 1858 was written specifically to readmit her to the fold. Perhaps Priscilla had shown signs of being as feckless as the men in the family, but proved to her grandmother that she was trustworthy after all.

Rebecca Fox seems to have been almost as adept as her aunt at sleight of hand. When she registered Rosetta’s death she gave Edmund’s profession as merchant rather than carman, although that may have been what her aunt told her. After Rosetta’s death Rebecca married Alexander Maclean HENDERSON on 11 December 1860 at the Church of Scotland in Paddington, New South Wales. Her father’s Christian name was given as Richard and he was described as a gentleman, whereas in fact he was a coachman called Isaac. Rebecca was also the most creative of all our family in the matter of her age, which she gave as 34 when she was actually 47. Rebecca died in 1879 and was buried at Rookwood Cemetery.

* * * * *

There can be little doubt that Rosetta Terry deliberately cast a smokescreen over some of the more dubious aspects of her past. With a sister and possibly three husbands convicted of theft, she may well have had good reason to. Even without such concealments the histories of ordinary people in those times are difficult to recover, so all of us who are researching her would welcome any assistance, however small, in unravelling some of these mysteries. Yet the most important thing about Rosetta Terry is that she overcame all her difficulties, to become a truly great pioneer Australian.

10. The Pracy heartland

When I first started researching our family, I soon got back to the Victorian period. Most of the men seemed to have respectable but fairly menial jobs, and they could broadly be described as lower-middle or working class. I assumed that their forebears came from a similar background, and it was a considerable surprise when I traced the Bishopstone connection with its gentry and yeoman farmers. Even so, I supposed from the apparently rapid deaths of all but the two Edmunds and Alice that the family were living in an unsavoury part of St Luke’s and drifted fairly rapidly down the social scale.

Then I began to revise my opinion. In 1794, the last year that the younger Edmund was listed at New Street, the Pracys had lived in the Finsbury area for over 60 years. Edmund, like his father, followed a respectable trade and was probably self-employed, apparently fairly well off and occupying a middling place in society. He was renting what seems to have been a comfortable end-of-terrace house close to the church and the countryside. Five of his seven children could at least sign their names and, if the marriage certificates of the other two had survived the Blitz, we would probably know that they could too. All in all, it seems that they were a respectable, comfortably-off lower-middle-class family.

I now think that between 1795 and 1805 all this began to change, and so it was one of the most crucial periods in our family’s history. Many of the wealthier Finsbury residents moved out to then more rural suburbs such as Islington and Hackney, but Edmund and his family were left behind. I don’t yet know what happened to him, but that decade certainly saw quite an upheaval for the family. We know a fair amount about it but there are also some tantalising gaps.

Not all of it fitted in with the respectable family image. This may suggest that Edmund died or encountered financial difficulties, possibly related to the economic disruption and social unrest caused by the war with revolutionary France. Perhaps his three eldest daughters were affected by the problems or took the opportunity to kick over the traces. In 1798 or earlier Rosey was probably involved with one or more convicts, and in 1799 Elizabeth became one. In 1804 Ann had the first of her children with Isaac Fox, to whom she may not have been married.

In 1805 Elizabeth was married at Christ Church Newgate Street. I wondered whether it might be more than coincidence that this was just up the road from the scene of her trial, and may represent some sort of pastoral relationship between the church and the prison. On the other hand, her younger brothers and sister were also married there, in 1806, 1809 and 1822 respectively.

The parish is on the northern fringe of the City, less than a mile south of St Luke’s, so the family could easily have moved there some time between 1795 and 1805. I checked Land Tax records for the ward of Farringdon Within, in which Christ Church was situated, but no Pracy was listed. The records aren’t a comprehensive listing of all households but people who lived outside the parish sometimes used the church for marriages, so it’s unclear whether the family lived in the area or not.

The sum total of all this is that I have no idea where the family was between 1795, when Edmund disappeared from New Street, and 1805-9 when his children married and/or set up separate households of their own. Even though three of Edmund’s daughters moved to south London and one to Australia, the family made the effort to stay in touch. The sisters in particular seem to have been close and affectionate. I think those links must have been forged or strengthened in this crucial, difficult decade so would like to find out more, but I have probably exhausted the somewhat limited sources.

After 1805 the family seem to have overcome their problems and settled down again. Ann, Rosetta and Elizabeth all had children. Elizabeth probably died fairly young but Lucy lived to the age of 65, Rebecca to at least 75, Rosetta and probably Ann to 88. The 1841 census shows that Ann, Lucy and Rebecca were all living on their own means, although that may well have been courtesy of annuities from their wealthy sister, Rosetta Terry. Rosetta took a dim view of the financial abilities of men, so seems not to have given similar support to her brothers or their children, some of whom lived in considerable poverty.

The brothers John William and Thomas, like their father and grandfather, had their own well-established small businesses. John William was a watchmaker, while Thomas and his wife ran a milk business. Both men married and produced large families and it was this next generation that led me to suppose that we were essentially a working-class family, for most of them had relatively unskilled jobs and insalubrious housing, often dying young. Rather it seems that the most successful of the younger generation – John William’s two youngest sons – followed more closely in the family tradition.

* * * * *

With an unusual surname like Pracy, it is possible to combine registration and census material to get a very full picture of who was related to whom and what happened to them.

We seem on the whole to have been a pretty stay-at-home bunch. John William’s sister Rosetta and son Thomas Richard emigrated to Australia, and both had descendants. Three of the younger Edmund’s daughters married men from south of the river where they settled, and in the 1880s and 1890s a few more brave souls ventured there. Apart from them, we were rooted in east London for well over a hundred years. What sort of area was it, and what was our family’s place in it?

In the 16th century the capital began to expand beyond the Cities of London and Westminster into neighbouring parishes such as Finsbury and Shoreditch. In 1598 John Stow deplored the development of Goswell Street and the loss of the fields which were ‘commodious for citizens to walk about’. Initially some wealthier people lived there and as late as the 1790s Edmund and his family were occupying what was apparently a pleasant suburban terrace in the north of Finsbury, close to the countryside. Already, however, those parts closest to the City were heavily built up, mostly with small businesses and cheap rented housing for working-class people. The first national census in 1801 recorded that 26,000 people were living in St. Luke’s. Since distrust of the census is nothing new, that may have been an underestimate.

What happened next was well summarised by Felix Barker and Peter Jackson[20]:

In the fifty years leading to the middle of the century London’s population more than doubled. In 1801 London was still a leafy city of under a million people: by 1851 two million were living and working in a metropolis whose rooftops were blackened by smoke from factory chimneys. Fine new terraces and overcrowded tenements were both the outcome of mid-Victorian commercial prosperity…

The pace of change was brilliantly illustrated by George Cruikshank in his cartoon London going out of Town; or, the March of Bricks and Mortar.

I suspect that the Pracy brothers and their families may have had aspirations to move out but had to live at or near their places of work, and lacked the resources to break free. For another half-century the Pracys remained in the older parts of Shoreditch, with a few nearby in the City and Finsbury. The population of Shoreditch grew from 34,766 in 1801 to a maximum of almost 130,000 in 1861, before the coming of the railways enabled people to move out and numbers began to decline.

In the late 1820s the Church of England recognised the rapid growth of Shoreditch and created two new parishes north of Old Street – St John the Baptist Hoxton west of Kingsland Road, and St Mary Haggerston east. By 1903 no fewer than 21 parishes had been carved out of the ancient parish of St Leonard’s, but then as population moved away most of these new churches were closed. The whole area continued to be called Shoreditch but the threefold division into Shoreditch, Hoxton and Haggerston remained, so wherever possible I have referred to them specifically. Only after 1850, and increasingly in the 1860s, did the Pracys begin to venture out of their heartland. They went initially to Hoxton and Haggerston and to Bethnal Green, which is immediately east of Shoreditch although it never formed part of it.

Only when I started to chart their addresses on contemporary and modern maps did I realise just how limited this territory was. Starting from Liverpool Street station, you can comfortably do a round walk of all their known Shoreditch addresses in two hours. I have prepared similar linear walks covering the City and Finsbury, and Hoxton and Haggerston. You can find these walks in a separate document, Pracy walks omnibus. Another document, Pracy gazetteer, gives in date order all known Pracy addresses from 1771 to 1901.

The overcrowded, unsanitary conditions would have been horrifying to 21st-century eyes, but gradually improved. Parents in the 18th century had produced large numbers of children in the hopes that one or two would survive to support them in old age. By the mid-19th century those who died in infancy were the exception and some Pracy families had six or more children grow to adulthood. Even so, some 15% of our children died in infancy, significantly above the London average of 11%: between 1866 (when the GRO first gave ages at death) and 1914, 124 Pracy children were born and 19 died before the age of five. Breast-feeding continued to be the most effective form of birth control, at least for a year or so after a child’s birth.

Shoreditch and the surrounding areas had pockets of great poverty and some criminality, but our family seem to have been fairly respectable working people who perhaps weren’t drawn into the worst of it. Elizabeth found herself in the dock of the Old Bailey in 1799, as did my grandfather in 1904 (although I consider him more sinned against than sinning – see below, chapter 21). Apart from them, I have traced no record of our family committing any significant crimes.

It is generally accepted that 19th-century censuses returns under-recorded women’s occupations, but some Pracy women’s jobs were noted. They mostly worked in the clothing trade, presumably at home or in the small factories and workshops that were a feature of the Shoreditch area.

For much of the 19th century most of the Pracy men worked in what could broadly be called transport services. The main motive power would have been the horse. It could have been housed in one of the many stables in the area, but men often had to take their horses home with them. It would not have been easy for horses to co-exist with large families in a typical two-up/two-down Shoreditch terraced house, so the animals would presumably have been stabled in the back yard.

Several like the younger Edmund were carmen, what we would probably call a carrier or carter of goods. It was often a casual, rather insecure occupation, although it was also sufficiently prestigious to have its own City livery company. The only Pracy admitted as a Master Carman was Edmund James (1808-1890), who was also the only one to be listed in Kelly’s directory. I suspect therefore that the rest either had their own small one-man businesses or were employed by other people.

Some men were coachmen or cab-drivers, jobs which were similar but not synonymous. Both might have driven a horse-drawn carriage for hire, but only a coachman could have had a wealthy private employer. They would probably have worked mostly in the West End and the City, and gone home to the East End after their often very long working day. Nineteenth-century novels such as Black Beauty give an idea of the hardships to which wealthy but thoughtless hirers could subject cabbies. In the 1870s a temperance organisation began to build cosy little huts where cabbies could find warmth and shelter, but before that they all too often found comfort in the pub. It is therefore not surprising that some of the Pracys who did that work died prematurely.

Other men worked in the catering trade as cellarmen or porters. They often lived on the premises, which were usually pubs. The temptation to sample the goods may have contributed to the fact that they too tended not to be long-lived.

One of the most significant events in the history of the East End was the coming of the railway, to Bishopsgate in 1847 and on to Liverpool Street in 1874. For the first time large numbers of people were able to live well beyond walking distance of their work. The railway network expanded, so after 1870 the Pracys were scattered and it became impossible for their often large families to keep in touch with one another. They drifted apart so, a century and more later, only diligent family history research has reestablished the links.

John William’s two youngest sons followed the family tradition of running their own small business. Indeed, they became employers in their own right. In the 1860s and 1870s they and other members of our family moved out to the then appropriately respectable middle-class suburbs of Hackney, Islington and Leyton. Their sons in turn found new opportunities as commercial clerks rather than in traditional manual jobs. Other branches of the family did not catch up with these advances until the 1890s.

Expansion of businesses in Shoreditch meant a gradual decline of population, and by 1901 only one Pracy family and one individual were living there. By then most families had settled in the rapidly expanding London suburbs. Some younger people without family commitments, including several women, found employment outside the capital, although mostly still in the Home Counties.

* * * * *

In July 2005, to mark the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, the Museum of London undertook an archaeological dig at Shoreditch Park in the area formerly known as Hoxton New Town[21]. There on the site of a former market garden an estate of high-density housing was built in the 1820s, when New North Road and the Regent’s Canal were built. The poorly-constructed two-storey terraced houses were described by contemporaries as ‘fourth-rate’, which was officially the lowest category. They give an idea of the type of house many of the Pracys would have lived in.

The dig was on the site of the former Dorchester Street, immediately south of Poole Street. It gave a good idea of what the houses had been like. The foundations apparently consisted of rough and ready rubble dumping. Each building had the same basic arrangement, consisting of a front parlour and rear dining room. Beyond this was the kitchen, with clear signs of drainage and support for a range or hearth. Next to the kitchen, the solid yard surface led to the external washroom and outside toilet. The tenants disposed of their rubbish and sewage through a complex of culverts to cesspits in the back yard, which was also used for the disposal of ash from coal fires. Around 1900 the homes were extended to increase the size of the kitchen and to add a washroom and toilet.

During the war many of the houses were destroyed in bombing raids and by V2 rockets, and much of what remained was damaged beyond repair. Eventually it was all swept away and the park was laid out in the 1980s.

Some of our family were in Hoxton New Town in the 19th century, and others occupied similar houses nearby. By the start of the Second World War none of the Pracys was still there and few were in the surrounding areas, showing the extent to which we had moved away from our Shoreditch roots.

Part 3: John William Pracy (1779-1831) and his descendants

John was born on 2 March 1779 and baptised at St Luke’s on 6 April. He became a watchmaker, a skilled trade that occupied an estimated one-third of the population in the nearby Clerkenwell area.

John was buried at 3.30pm on 9 January 1831 at Bunhill Fields, the leading nonconformist burial ground. The cost was £1 18s, suggesting that the family was fairly well off. The three most famous people buried at Bunhill are John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe and William Blake. John’s children were baptised at St Giles Cripplegate, however, so it is unclear whether or not he had strong religious views. John Wesley had used the Finsbury area as a base since the 1740s and opened his chapel there in 1778, so some family members could well have been Methodists.

In 1806 at Christ Church Newgate Street John married Elizabeth Jane PALMER (1787-1871). Little is known of her. She stated on census returns that she was born at St George in the East but no record of her baptism has been found, there or anywhere else. It is possible therefore that the nonconformist influence was on her side of the family. Evidently Elizabeth Jane was a woman of some education, for on the 1851 census she was described as a schoolteacher.

Baptismal registers show that, until 1813 at least, John and Elizabeth lived at Rodney Court in Chapel Street. This was just inside the City, on the site of the present-day Barbican Arts and Conference Centre. The next five baptisms, from 1815 to 1826, recorded them as living at John Street and the last in 1828 at St John Street, which was also known as John Street. This isn’t in St Giles but it is well-known as the main road from the City through Clerkenwell, immediately to the west. It seems likely that the family lived there, although it was a very long road and we have no idea where.

Another possibility is that the family were in Shoreditch at one of two John Streets that were, confusingly, only about 200 yards apart. Both were, like St John Street, just over a mile from St Giles, so it would have been easy enough for John and Elizabeth to get there. Certainly in 1841 the widowed Elizabeth Jane and her family were at 1 Curtain Road on the corner of Old Street and close to the more northerly John Street, which is now the western part of Rivington Street. And in 1851 she was living at Motley Street (now Christina Street), literally round the corner from the other John Street, now the northern part of Phipp Street. Both John Streets were in the heart of Pracy territory and most of their children settled in various parts of Shoreditch, which would perhaps have been more likely to happen if the family already lived there.

A curious fact is that, according to his will proved in 1909, Elizabeth Jane’s son Henry Charles owned a freehold property at 151/3 (formerly 1) Curtain Road. It’s very unlikely that the family owned this or any other building as early as 1841, when almost everybody rented. Furthermore, they were no longer there ten years later, but it is nevertheless quite a coincidence.

In 1854 Henry was married from 12 Brunswick Place, Hoxton. By another strange coincidence, Elizabeth later retired and moved into 12 Brunswick Street, Haggerston. It was in a block of almshouses and a few months before her death, in 1871 aged 84, she was described as an almshouse annuitant. Also there was Emma CRISPIN, ‘almshouse nurse’, aged 63.

Like Edmund and Lucy, John and Elizabeth had nine baptised children, spaced out at intervals of two years or so. The slow improvement in sanitary conditions continued and only one of them, Ellen Lucy, died in infancy.

An infant called Jane Pracy of Lamb’s Passage, next to Bunhill Fields, was buried there on 12 August 1807, aged two months. We know of no other Pracys in the area at that time so she may well have been the eldest child of John William and Elizabeth Jane. There is, however, no record that they lived at that address, and unlike all their known children she was not baptised at St Giles. There is therefore no proof either way.

11. Edmund James, Elizabeth Jane, Mary Ann, Ellen Lucy

Five of John William and Elizabeth Jane’s sons had children. They are covered in separate sections, not because they were more important but because it is easier and clearer to do it that way. The remaining four children are dealt with here.

Edmund James (1808-1890) married Jane ALLEN (1809-1864) at St Leonard’s Shoreditch in 1829, but they had no children. She died on 2 January 1864 and on 23 June he married a widow, Charlotte OSBORN nee UNDERWOOD (c1802-1868). Evidently Edmund was a bit of a health hazard, for after her death he again remarried within six months. This time his bride was Charlotte Mary JOSLIN, 25 years his junior. Both marriages were in Hoxton at St Mark’s Old Street, where Edmund’s younger siblings Henry Charles and Mary Ann had married in the mid-1850s, but no other family events took place there.

Like his grandfather and namesake, Edmund was a carman. Early in the 1860s he was admitted as a Master to the Worshipful Company of Carmen, as far as I know the only member of our family to have been involved with one of the City livery companies since the three brothers moved up from Bishopstone in the early 18th century. Mid-19th century censuses show him living close to the river at various addresses in the City. In 1841 he was at 3 St Andrew’s Hill, in 1851 at 158 Upper Thames Street, in 1861 at 23 Dowgate Hill, and he probably moved around in between. It therefore seems likely that for much of his working life he carted goods from ships docked in the Thames.

The coming of steamships meant that the old ragbag of wharves, docks and inlets in the City were used less and less. Between 1864 and 1870 they were swept away and replaced by the Embankment. With them probably went the livelihood of Edmund James, by then in his late 50s, but if so he was resilient enough to start again. In 1871 he was living in the heart of Pracy territory at 26 Clifton Street Shoreditch, and in 1875-6 his business was at 9 Gloucester Street (now Hewett Street), Curtain Road. By 1881 he had probably semi-retired, and he and Charlotte had moved out to 111 Glenarm Road Hackney, where they had a live-in servant.

On the 1891 census for 111 Glenarm Road, ‘Mary Pricey’ was listed as a widowed laundress with four lodgers. More surprisingly, she was said to have two daughters - Louisa Jennett Pricey, a 24-year-old dressmaker born in the City, and Mary Pricey, 20, a servant born in Bow. Why these two suddenly appeared a few months after Edmund’s death, where they had been and where they went, I have no idea.

Three years later 60-year-old Charlotte took a leaf out of Edmund’s book and remarried, to Thomas CARTER or William SMITH.

[Note: These are two alternative husbands given on the FreeBMD website. Subsequent ‘alternative’ husbands in this history are similarly taken from FreeBMD, which shows spouses with the same GRO reference. It is a wonderful finding aid for family historians but unfortunately the originals had two marriages to the page. There are therefore usually two possible spouses and only other sources such as censuses can get round the need to buy a certificate. In this case I couldn’t identify anybody on the 1901 census or on FreeBMD marriages and deaths who fitted Charlotte’s description.]

Elizabeth Jane (b. 1815) became a dressmaker. In 1852 she married Edward BROWNE, a widowed upholsterer, at the church used by her father and his siblings half a century earlier – Christ Church Newgate Street. This was probably just coincidence, for her address was given as Warwick Lane, very close to the church.

Mary Ann (b. 1823) was a servant, who in 1841 was working in Bishopsgate for a family called Fickling. In 1851, at Clapton Passage Hackney, she was housemaid to Robert Wakefield, retired secretary to a life assurance company. In 1855 at St Mark’s Old Street, very close to where her mother was living, she married William Benjamin LAMBERT, described as a servant.

Ellen Lucy (1825-7) died aged 1 year 4 months. She was buried as Helen Lucy at Bunhill Fields on 15 March 1827, a few months before William Blake.

12. John William Pracy (1810-1868) and his descendants

John William II married Sarah READ (1813-1876) at St Dunstan’s Stepney on 9 November 1834. John at first was a labourer and then a porter, but around 1847 became a carman.

John and Sarah were typical of the Pracys in that they moved fairly frequently within a limited area, mostly in Shoreditch. From 1837 to 1846 at least they lived at Three Colts Court, off Worship Street near Paul Street. After venturing a quarter of a mile south to Whitecross Place, they returned to 5 New Court Hill Street (now Bonhill Street) – just round the corner from Three Colts Court but across the parish boundary in Finsbury. From 1858 to 1861 at least they lived at 2a King’s Head Court, at the junction of Earl Street and Long Alley (redeveloped and renamed Appold Street in 1879). Their furthest move was to 10 Bowling Green Walk Hoxton, where John died of chronic asthma in 1868.

Whereas his parents and grandparents had had all their children baptised before they were a year old, John had his first three done at St Leonard’s Shoreditch as a job lot when they were 8, 6 and 3 respectively. This may perhaps suggest a change in social customs, a decline in religious observance, or the arrival of a zealous new clergyman. His fourth child was baptised at St Paul’s Bunhill Row when she was 8 but, strangely, he missed the opportunity to have nos. 5 and 6 done at the same time, even though they were aged 6 and 3.

John William III (1835-1903) was a cab driver. In 1857 he married Sarah Maria MEADWELL at St James Curtain Road Shoreditch, a parish that had been formed out of St Leonard’s in 1848. It was in the heart of Pracy territory, and over the next 15 years ten of our marriages were held there.

John William lived in Bethnal Green for most of his life but from 1879-84 he had a chandler’s shop at 8 New Inn Street, close to the soap factory of his uncle Joseph William and his cousin Thomas Richard (see below, chapter 14). On the 1881 census he was at the same address but described as a coachman, so he perhaps accumulated an income by doing both jobs part-time. That would not have been unusual in the somewhat precarious economic climate of the 19th-century East End.

John and Sarah had two daughters.

Elizabeth Sarah was born in 1861 and became a machinist. She married Alfred Charles DAVIS at St Thomas’s Bethnal Green in 1884. Alfred and his father were described as general dealers, as was Elizabeth’s father who presumably was still combining cabbying with trading. That may well have been how Alfred and Elizabeth met. According to the 1891 census they had two children and a live-in servant, and Alfred described himself as a marine general dealer.

Alice Minnie was born in 1871 and in 1891 was a boot fitter. She was married at Shoreditch in 1897, probably to John William CRAIB, a postman.

George Philip (1837-1866) was also a cab driver. He married Sarah’s sister Angelina MEADWELL at St James Curtain Road in 1861, and for a while the two couples shared a house at 6 Hereford Street, Bethnal Green.

Their happiness must have seemed complete when later in 1861 each couple had a daughter, and they called them both Elizabeth Sarah. This is one of several cases where Pracy brothers had children within a few months of one another and gave the cousins the same names. This seems to have happened when they were very close – understandable and rather touching, but not helpful to the family historian. Without buying certificates, it is often impossible to distinguish between them.

George and Angelina soon had four children, but in 1865-7 tragedy struck in a manner that had already become unusual, and was more reminiscent of London life a century earlier. Within the space of 18 months Angelina lost her daughter Angelina Alice, her husband and her son William John. Angelina, Elizabeth Sarah and George Philip junior all survived.

The 1881 census shows that they were still just about in Bethnal Green, near the border with Hackney at 30 Marian Square, off Pritchard’s Row. Angelina’s first name was given as Ann and she was a boot machinist. Elizabeth was a ‘filter paste’ and another girl in the same house was a ‘paste filter’, so presumably they worked in a nearby factory. George was an ‘apprentice pianoforte trade’, who in 1883 sailed to New York on board the Egyptian Monarch and probably settled in America.

In 1887 Elizabeth married Henry HARROW, a coachman, at the parish church of South Hackney. By 1891 Elizabeth and Angelina (who was wrongly shown on the census as Elizabeth) had moved to 3 Marian Square. Henry was listed on his own in Paddington, although that may just have been because his work happened to take him away on census night. In 1901 Angelina was described as a charwoman and living with Henry and Elizabeth in Notting Hill. Angelina’s death has not been traced, possibly because of a GRO indexing error similar to those on the censuses.

Ann (b. 1840) married Edward James DELAFORCE at St James Curtain Road in 1864. He came from a family of Huguenot silk weavers that has been extensively researched by descendant Patrick Delaforce[22]. Ann was a ‘shoe binder’ in 1861 and a ‘boot fitter’ in 1871. Edward, like Ann’s sister-in-law Angelina, was a boot machinist. It seems likely therefore that often the family helped one another find jobs, and found spouses through work.

Edward and Ann apparently had no children, but as the eldest daughter Ann took on an important role in the Pracy family. She was a witness at the second marriage of her sister Sarah. After her father’s death, her mother went to stay with Ann at 46 Huntingdon Street (now Falkirk Street) Hoxton, where she died in March 1876.

Nothing certain is known of Edward and Ann after that. The deaths of Edward James Delaforce and ‘Hannah’ Delaforce were registered in Hackney later in 1876, but their ages were given as 52 and 51. It is therefore unclear whether they were our couple, who would have been some 15 years younger.

Sarah (b. 1846) had left home by 1861, when she was a servant to a retired butcher and his family. They lived at the Jews’ Alms Houses, Devonshire Street (now Cephas Street), in Mile End Old Town. She married William Durley MEACHEAM, a cabinet maker, at St James Curtain Road in 1864. William’s family lived at New Inn Yard, near where Sarah’s uncle Joseph William Pracy had his soap factory, so that may be how Sarah and William met. What became of him is unknown, but certainly the marriage did not last long.

In 1868 at Plumstead Sarah registered the birth of a daughter, also Sarah. She gave the father as William DAY and described herself as ‘Sarah Day formerly Pracy’. Perhaps Meacheam was then alive but later died, for in 1872 – back in Pracy territory at Bethnal Green – Sarah married Day at the church of St James the Great. She was pregnant with her fourth child and went on to have five more with Day.

But for Sarah Day you would not be reading this, for one of her descendants was the compiler of this website, Martin HAGGER.

Elizabeth Jane (1848-1915) married Charles SAGROTT in 1870, and had six children with him. Charles was variously described as a leather cutter and as a clicker [one who cuts up leather for boots]. They lived for many years at 52 Huntingdon Street, a few doors from where Edward and Ann Delaforce had been. On the 1891 census Elizabeth and her children George and Elizabeth were listed as box makers.

Thomas George (1852-1874) became a compositor. The records show how small the world of the Pracys still was. In 1871 Thomas was lodging at 14 Gloucester Street (now Hewett Street) with a different Charles Sagrott, also a clicker and apparently a cousin of Elizabeth Jane’s husband. Sadly Thomas died aged only 22 of Bright’s Disease in Bart’s Hospital, the first of our family known to have died in hospital rather than at home.

In 1875-6, just after Thomas’s death, his uncle Edmund James had his carman’s business a few doors away at no. 9. The street then had some attractive Georgian houses but they were perhaps destroyed by bombing, for it is now a rather undistinguished industrial estate. It does, however, boast a plaque to Shakespeare’s Curtain Theatre, which was nearby.

Henry (b. 1858) was a coachman/cab driver. In 1880 he married Mary Jane HUNT and they had a daughter, Elizabeth Jane. The 1881 census shows them sharing a house at 22 Essex Street Hoxton (now Shenfield Street), where there was a total of seven families and 19 people. Even by the standards of the time it sounds a wretched existence, so it is no surprise that the marriage seems not to have prospered. In 1891 Henry and Mary Jane were nearby at Crondall Street with her nephew Alfred Hunt, but their daughter was not with them so perhaps she had died.

On the 1901 census Henry was living with his sister Elizabeth Jane Sagrott and her family at 52 Huntingdon Street. Henry and Mary Jane were apparently separated, even though both were said to be married. She was described as a servant but living as a pauper at the Shoreditch Workhouse in Kingsland Road, later St Leonard’s Hospital[23]. She probably died in 1929, but no more is known of him.

13. George Thomas Pracy (1812-1853) and his descendants

George married Frances Julia BOOTH (1818-1895) at St Giles Cripplegate on 11 January 1836. Like his brother John, he had a relatively unskilled job, that of cellarman. This perhaps represents something of a drift down the social and economic scale compared with their father, a skilled craftsman.

On the 1841 census George was living at Acorn Street, a short road off Bishopsgate where the Exchange Arcade is now situated. Frances Pracy was listed with her mother Susan Booth and her daughter Frances at a different house in Acorn Street. When in November 1841 Frances and George’s son George was born, the address of the birth and of the informant, George senior, was given as 18 Acorn Street.

In the first published version of this history, I said there were two entries at different houses in Acorn Street for George Pracey. Having had the opportunity to check a clearer version of the census online, I now think I was wrong. George was indeed a wine porter born in Middlesex, but the general labourer born in Ireland seems to have been George PEACEY – a strange coincidence, but no duplication. In the course of my research I have found Pracey misread as Peacey at least twice, so it isn’t entirely surprising that I made the opposite mistake.

On the 1851 census Susannah Booth and her grandchildren Frances and George were listed at 14 Sadler's Place, Allhallows, London Wall. Frances and her younger son Charles haven’t been traced anywhere. George was at 25 Holywell Lane Shoreditch, where on 30 November 1853 he died of phthisis, a wasting disease of the lungs, aged only 40. His wife Frances was present at the death, but I don’t know whether there is any significance in her not being with George when the two censuses were taken.

Unusually, Frances’s job of bonnet-maker was listed on the 1841 census, even though she was then a young married woman. The 1881 census shows that 40 years later she was still pursuing the same trade. Evidently she had some degree of success, for by 1891 she was ‘living on own means’. She lived in Blossom Street and then White Lion Street (now 32 Folgate Street), just across Bishopsgate from Acorn Street. A few doors along at 18 Folgate Street is the atmospheric Dennis Severs House, which gives a wonderful idea of what life might have been like for our 18th-century ancestors.

Frances Emma (1836-1880) married Robert James WRIGHT, a harness maker, in 1860. Their daughter Florence (1861-1888) married Henry HOLMES in 1882 and had two sons, Henry Victor (1883-1970) and Herbert Gordon (1886-1961). On 13 February 1888 she gave birth to Florence May, but sadly mother and daughter died on the same day. On the 1871 census Robert is listed as having two other children, 14-year-old Louise and 7-year-old Francis, but Henry Victor’s granddaughter Mandy Adams has been unable to trace their births.

George Joseph Thomas (1841-1904) married Emma Herbert VINCENT (1844-1915) in 1872. They were both box makers, as were Elizabeth Jane Sagrott and two of her children. The two families may therefore have been in touch, even though they were fairly distant cousins. In 1879 George and Emma were at 2 Whitmore Cottages in Hoxton but by 1881 they had moved across the boundary into Hackney. They were still living there in 1891 but may later have separated, for in 1901 they were boarders in different households. George was still in Hackney but Emma was in East Ham where a fellow-lodger was her sister Anne Vincent.

George and Emma had four children. Their daughter Emma Vincent (b. 1872) became a bookkeeper in the Civil Service and married Captain Francis Blakeman HAMMOND in 1902. Florence Ellen (b. 1879) was married in 1899, probably to Alfred COBB, a draper’s assistant in Hastings.

George Henry (1874-1951) was shown on the 1891 census as a live-in barman in Islington. He served with the King’s Own Royal Lancaster Regiment in the South African (Boer) War, and with the Royal Army Service Corps in the First World War. Other than Rosetta and Thomas Richard who settled in Australia, he was the first Pracy in almost 200 years to move permanently out of London. He went to Chester where in 1906 he married Martha Jane BODDY (1876-1931) and had four children. Evelyn Vincent was born in 1909. Frederick C was born in 1913, but like three other Pracy children he died in the September quarter of 1918. This was the worst infant mortality in the family since the 1840s, and they were probably victims of the great influenza pandemic that accompanied the end of the First World War. Others of George Henry’s family were even more adventurous than he: his son Sydney Herbert (1907-1992), daughter Hilda Hayden (1912-1984) and brother Frederick Charles (1881-1969) all emigrated to New Zealand. Sydney travelled from Southampton to Wellington in 1925.

Charles (1849-1922) was listed on the 1881 census as a gunner in the Royal Marine Artillery Barracks at Portsea, Hampshire. By 1886 he had returned to the Shoreditch area. From 1889-91 at least he was living at 68 Mansell Street Whitechapel, and described himself as an employer builder-bricklayer. By 1901 his attempt to build up his own business had evidently collapsed and he was working as a builder’s labourer, living back in Shoreditch at 22 Paul Street.

While in the Portsmouth area Charles met Charlotte CAWTE (1858-1938), who was born in Southampton. In 1881 she was living in Winchester with her widowed mother, Eliza. Charles would have had to get his commanding officer’s permission to marry but didn’t do so, although he gave her surname as ‘Pracy formerly Cawte’ on their son James’s birth certificate. It was not until 1921, when Charles was 71 and Charlotte was 60, that they officially married.

Charles and Charlotte had three surviving children. Frances Florrie was born at Portsea in 1882 and married Thomas George WEBSTER or James Thomas WHITE in the Shoreditch area in 1904. George Charles (1886-1909) was working as a carman in 1901 but died young. James William (1889-1958) married Caroline NICHOLSON in 1912, and they had five children. During the First World War James was a private in the 17th London Regiment of the Royal Engineers.

Julia Sugden (1852-1911?) was shown on the 1861 census as living with her widowed mother. A record on the 1881 census shows how family historians should not jump to unproven conclusions. A gold dealer named Joseph NIALL and his 29-year-old wife Julia were listed as a separate household at 3 Blossom Street Spitalfields, where Frances Julia Pracy lived. I thought it highly likely that she was Julia née Pracy, because she would have been 28 and Julia was then an unusual forename. Correctly, however, I didn’t make a firm statement and in fact the 1874 birth certificate of their daughter shows that Julia’s maiden name was Whittaker. Julia Pracy did not show up on the censuses for 1871, 1881 and 1891. Then in 1896 - a year after Frances’s death – she married Charles John CROSSLEY in Southwark but he died within a year. In 1901 Julia was living in Islington and following a trade similar to her mother’s, that of fancy hat maker. She may well have been Julia Crossley who died in Islington in 1911, although her given age of 54 would have been four years too young

William Henry (b. 1854) was also listed in 1861 but there is no definite trace of him after that. He may have been ‘Henry Pracey’, recorded on the 1871 census as a 19-year-old apprentice on the Gateshead, a vessel moored in the Liverpool Docks.

14. George T Pracy of San Francisco and his descendants

The story of George Thomas and Frances Julia has a bizarre postscript that would not have been out of place in the pages of their contemporary, Wilkie Collins. At least two of his novels turned on questions of identity theft, and it seems that we have a case of this in our family.

Suzanne Girot is an American video producer and freelance writer. In 2002 she published a short article in the Noe Valley Voice, which serves the area of San Francisco where she lives. It included the following extract:

As part of my family history project, I'm filming my 85-year-old dad in front of all the San Francisco houses that were built and inhabited by our ancestors… Most people document their genealogy in writing; my medium is video…

Back at the family farm on 23rd Street, my dad continues his living history. ‘This house was built by my great-grandfather, George Pracy. He acquired the property and several more acres in the Noe Valley in the 1860s.’

He holds up an old photo to the camera.

‘You can see that this part of San Francisco was completely undeveloped. In this photo from 1869, the house is standing alone in open fields. It was a farm with a stable for horses. Pracy was quite a horseman. He retired at 40 from his job as a machinist and lived another 40 years riding horses with his old cronies.’

My camera scans the photograph -- the barn, silo, water tank, windmill, the big house.

‘George Pracy’s daughter, my grandmother [Mary Ann Scheider], was widowed with five small children, one of whom was my mother. They moved into this house and my mother grew up here. She went to Mission High School in the late 1890s. When she married my father, they settled here. I was born up in that room.’ He points to another upstairs bedroom...

…‘There's the parlor where Aunt Meila called the family together during the 1906 earthquake.’ He points to a downstairs room that faces on 23rd Street. In a sweeping gesture with his arms, Dad puts on his falsetto voice: “Come, everyone, we'll all die together. It's the end of the world.” Of course, that was before my time. The house wasn't damaged; it didn't even lose a fireplace. Old Man Pracy built it right.’

To complement their father’s reminiscences, Suzanne’s brother looked into the written records. Soon he found on the 1880 census George T Pracy who was described as a retired machinist, which fitted in with George Girot’s account. Pracy was aged 66 and, ‘keeping house’, his wife Francis [sic] J was aged 60. Both were said to have been born in England.

A quick search of the IGI revealed George Thomas Pracy, baptised in 1813 and married to Frances Julia Booth in 1836, both at St Giles Cripplegate. They should have been a year older than indicated on the census, but it is not unusual for people to knock a year or two off their ages and there was no reason to doubt that this was the right couple. According to a Pracy/Scheider family Bible in the possession of the Girots, ‘GT Pracy & JF [sic] Pracy emigrated to America 13 April 1842’. An unnamed son was born on 30 July, only to die two weeks later, and daughter Elizabeth was born in Montreal in 1844.

The family then moved to New York. There Suzanne’s great-grandmother Mary Ann was born in 1847 and another daughter, Emily, in 1848. On 29 January 1849 in the New York Court of Common Pleas, George T Pracy signed a Declaration of Intent to become a U.S. Citizen. Six weeks he sailed aboard the ship Salem for San Francisco, where gold had been discovered. This was a hazardous journey round Cape Horn, taking a minimum of 100 days and occasionally up to 200. The census shows that on 22 July 1850 Frances J Pracy with daughters Elizabeth, Mary Ann, and Emily were in the 10th Ward of New York City. George wasn’t with them and hasn’t been traced elsewhere on the census, but by 21 October 1851, when he became a naturalized American citizen, he was back in New York.

By 1855 the family had settled in San Francisco. Joseph T Pracy was born there in 1854 or 1855[24], Ella Olivia in 1857 and Charles Alfred in 1865. Sadly, Emily died in 1859 aged 11 and Charles in 1878 aged 12.

City directories suggest that George Pracy retired later than his great-grandson George Girot thought, perhaps around 1870 when he built the big house. Mike Schmeer has worked diligently on what he calls ‘the Great Pracy Caper’ but the earliest entry he found was in the Colville 1856/57 Directory, in which George is apparently in business with one Nelson R. Herrick. The entry reads ‘Herrick & Pracey, machinists, Fountain Head Water Works, Market; established Oct. 1855’. The entry for George himself reads ‘Pracey, George T. of Herrick & Pracey, res[idence] Rich cor[ner] of Folsom’. After this Herrick drops off and George appears by himself. An advertisement in the 1864 San Francisco city directory for ‘George T. Pracy, Machinist & Blacksmith 109 & 111 Front Street between Mission and Howard’ shows that he was still working. In 1867 he was listed as an engine builder and in 1869 he filed a patent for an ‘Improvement in Governors for Steam Engines’.

The 1870 census still shows George as a machinist but by 1880 he had more or less retired. He passed the machine shop business on to his son Joseph, although he may have applied for more patents in the late 1880s. An 1890 San Francisco city directory lists George as a ‘capitalist’, presumably living off his income, while Joseph is shown as joint owner with Jeremiah E Day of the American Tool Works. In 1883 Joseph married Susie A Idell but he died in 1891. The firm became jointly owned by Joseph’s widow Susie and his partner, Day. The son of Joseph and Susie, George Wesley Pracy, was to write the History and Reminiscences that were a very useful source for this chapter.

For some 15 years George and Frances lived at various addresses near his machine shop, close to the San Francisco waterfront. Around 1869 on the outskirts of San Francisco they built the big house described by George Girot to Suzanne. It was on about ½ acre, on 23rd at the corner of Church St. Behind it were a water tank, carriage house, and stables. There they lived for many years until they built a smaller house around the corner on property he owned at 1037 Church St. At that point George’s daughter, Mary Ann Schneider, moved with her family into the big house.

George Pracy died on 20 September 1896 while living at Church St, said to be aged 82. His wife died exactly three months later, some two years after her namesake back in England.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, we in England had been researching all the Pracys, including George Thomas and Frances Julia. The IGI’s 1880 San Francisco census entry for George T and ‘Francis J’ intrigued me, so I discussed it in a short postscript to the George Thomas chapter in the first published version of this history. Then I found Suzanne’s interview with her father through a Google search, and emailed her. The two sides of the mystery began to come together, and we have stayed in touch.

Pracy is an unusual surname and our 19th-century family relationships are thoroughly accounted for. It is therefore inconceivable that there were two couples called George T Pracy & Frances J Booth and that one couple was otherwise unknown, particularly as they were more or less the same age. The most plausible explanation is that we have an early example of identity theft. I believe the American couple are more likely to have been the impostors because in England:

On 7 June 1841 the census recorded George and Frances as living in Acorn Street where their son George Joseph Thomas was born on 5 November, less than nine months before the American couple’s short-lived boy.

English George was always described as a wine porter or cellarman, whereas the American made a sudden and slightly improbable change to being a machinist.
Other members of the then close-knit Pracy clan would surely have known.
A certificate established George’s death in 1853, while Frances appeared on the censuses for 1861, 1881 and 1891, and on the GRO death index in 1895.

However, Mike Schmeer points out that we have no hard evidence yet, so we should keep an open mind and I agree with that. He is still seeking official American documents but has traced nothing earlier than George’s Declaration of Intent in 1849, although census data confirms the birth dates from the 1840s given in the family bible. Potentially useful English sources such as passenger lists don’t survive from that early period, and there is nothing like a will of some English Pracy or Booth family member that names George and/or Frances as an heir.

Nevertheless, unless Mike finds something new, I think the balance of probability is still that the American pair saved themselves the trouble of creating new identities by purloining those of George and Frances, perhaps because they were fleeing justice in England. They used the middle initials of the real couple although sometimes her Christian names were reversed, and for his marriage in 1883 their son Joseph gave her maiden name as ‘Julia F Booth’. This suggests that they knew the real George and Frances pretty well, or somehow got sight of an official document such as their marriage certificate. The 1896 death notice for ‘Julia Frances Pracy’ gives her age as 76 years 7 months and Frances Julia Booth was born on 28 April 1818 so would have been 78 years 7 months. This offers the intriguing possibility that the American lady knew and celebrated the correct date for ‘her’ birthday, although she took two years off the real age.

If they were impostors, the San Francisco couple who called themselves George Thomas and Julia Frances Pracy carried their secret to the grave. Yet they made a good life for themselves, and their descendants are proud of the Pracy name. Happily, some of the English family were able to meet Suzanne when she visited London in June 2007. As I told her then, even if the San Francisco people aren’t Pracys in a strictly biological sense, they are nevertheless truly members of our family.

15. Thomas Richard Pracy (1818-1888) and his descendants

Thomas followed in the adventurous footsteps of his aunt Rosetta Terry to Australia, where he also settled. Much of what follows is family tradition there. His descendants are rightly proud of him and may have elaborated the stories, most of which came from Eva Elelia MILSON née Pracy via her granddaughter Carol CLIMPSON. Eva was born ten years after Thomas’s death and some of her older relatives would have remembered him. I would neither dismiss the information out of hand nor assert it as incontrovertible fact, unless further evidence is found.

Thomas Richard is said to have run away to sea at the age of fourteen, just after the death of his father. He took his mother’s pillow and a little black box, which went everywhere with him. He sailed on a ship called the Ellen or Helen, by coincidence or otherwise the names given for his infant sister who died.

Thomas Richard worked his way up from cabin-boy to captain, and carried copra around the Pacific Islands in a windjammer. In the ultimate traveller’s tales, he is said to have ‘harpooned whilst being attacked by a shark’ and rescued his brother-in-law from cannibals who were fattening him up in a cage for the pot. He seems not to have been the traditional black sheep of the family and is said to have returned regularly to England. His younger brother Joseph William called his eldest son Thomas Richard, suggesting that the two remained in touch and on good terms.

Thomas Richard may well have gone with the intention of visiting his aunt Rosetta and eventually settled near her in Sydney, although there is no firm evidence that they ever met. In 1853 he married Jane Jackson GLOVER (1833-1910). Her father had been convicted of horse-stealing in England, and deported to Australia on the Asia 2. For some unexplained reason Thomas Richard was called James Pracey on that certificate and those of his two eldest children, although he later reverted to his correct name. They had ten children.

John William (b. 1854) and Elizabeth Jane (b. 1856) were both named after Thomas Richard’s parents. She married Emil Henry MORALES in 1877.

Thomas Richard (1858-1925) became a butcher. He married Matilda OSBOURNE in 1883 and they settled in the Sydney suburb of Redfern. They too had ten children.

Charles Richard (1884-1927) married Rachel BALLANTYNE in 1910.

Thomas Henry (1886-1936).

William Alfred (1887-1943) married Maud BOOTH in 1914.

Arthur Ernest (1889-1910) was killed in an accident with a carthorse, two weeks short of his 21st birthday.

John Joseph (b. 1892) married Ethel PARMENTER in 1918.

Herbert James (b. 1894).

Robert Septimus (1897-1971) married Ada Mary KERR in 1922.

Eva Elelia (b. 1899) married Stanley MILSON in 1918.

Sydney Roy (b. 1902) married Eva SMITH in 1922.

Ivy Elizabeth (1904-1959) married William Henry BALE in 1927.

Sydney EC (b. 1861).

George F (b. 1863).

Jane R (b. 1865) married John Thomas CURRAN in 1888.

Sarah (b. 1867) married Patrick HAGEN in 1892.

It seems rather strange that there should then be a gap of nine years before three more children were born in fairly quick succession. Perhaps Thomas Richard got another severe attack of wanderlust.

Charles (b. 1876).

Ernest (b. 1877) married Isabella SUTHERLAND in 1896.

Florence (b. 1879) married Arthur TANNER in 1906.

16. Joseph William Pracy (1820-1879) and his descendants

Joseph married Jane SHERRIN (1816-1876) at St Luke’s Old Street in 1843. Several of their descendants became music teachers but other branches of the Pracy family were not, to my knowledge, similarly gifted. It therefore seems likely that this musical ability came from Jane’s side of the family.

Jane was listed on the 1841 census as a dressmaker, living independently as a lodger at Nicholas Street, between Mintern Street and Buckland Street in Hoxton New Town. Her father Samuel was a grocer who apparently had recently remarried, to another Jane. It was fairly unusual for an unmarried daughter to move away, so perhaps she didn’t get on with her stepmother, who was only a few years older. She can’t have gone very far, for the 1841 census gives Samuel’s address as Hoxton New Town, although unfortunately it isn’t more specific so we don’t know exactly where he lived.

Initially Joseph and Jane moved around Shoreditch but by 1851 they had settled at New Inn Street. There Joseph ran Thomas (later George) Brown & Co, a firm that made fancy soap. It was a fairly disgusting trade that involved boiling up animal fat, vegetable oils, ashes and lime in large pans. Not surprisingly, it produced revolting smells. Because it used tallow it was often combined with candle-making, and in 1854-7 Joseph had a chandler’s shop at 21 Warner Place, Hackney Road.

In 1853 Lord Palmerston removed the duty on tallow in order to cut the cost of soap and thus encourage cleanliness. Joseph’s business thrived, and some time in the 1860s he was able to get away from the smells of New Inn Street to pleasant middle-class suburbs, presumably travelling in to his business by train. In the early 1870s he lived at Grange Park Road and other addresses in Leyton, and by 1878 he had moved to 95 Mildmay Road Islington. In 1876 his wife Jane died and he provided her with a fine memorial obelisk in Abney Park Cemetery Stoke Newington, close to the monument to the hymn-writer Isaac Watts. Three years later Joseph was buried there too.

Joseph was only the second London Pracy after the younger Edmund’s daughter Lucy, in 1848, to make out a will. Its very detailed provisions seem to have been intended to protect the business premises and to ensure that his money did not fall into the hands of unscrupulous suitors of his unmarried daughters. In the event, several of his children died prematurely and the business failed, rendering many of the will’s provisions irrelevant. Joseph’s was in some ways the most tragic and ill-fated branch of our family, but also many of his descendants had considerable achievements to their name.

Mary Ann Elizabeth (1844-1887) never married. She was joint-executor with her eldest brother, Thomas Richard, of their father’s will, which shared ownership of the business between them. She was to have enough from the business to pay the rent, rates and taxes on 95 Mildmay Road, though not more than £60. After Joseph’s death she became head of the household there, but by 1886 was living in Stoke Newington.

She died on 10 March 1887 when she was described as a house proprietor, living at 10 Ferndale Road Upton Park in West Ham. Her brother Thomas Richard had died six weeks earlier and her sister Elizabeth Jane three weeks after him. Mary Ann succumbed to pneumonia, which may well have been brought on by the stress of her siblings’ deaths and attending their funerals in raw February weather. All three were buried with their parents in the tomb at Abney Park Cemetery.

Jane Ellen (1845-1902?) was, under the terms of Joseph’s will, to have £26 per annum which would be forfeit if she were married. Mary Ann and their youngest sister Emily had £52 a year unconditionally. On the 1881 census they were described as annuitants, whereas no occupation was listed for ‘Ellen’. Such discrimination must have been very hurtful as well as financially disadvantageous. In 1861 Jane Ellen was listed, as her mother had been, as a dressmaker whereas Mary Ann had no occupation. In 1871 Jane Ellen was not at home at all, so perhaps she was rather too independently minded for her father’s liking.

In 1886 she married John EASTER in Yarmouth, and presumably lost her £26 a year. She may well have been the Jane Ellen Easter who died at Loddon near Norwich in 1902, although her given age of 52 would have been four or five years out. Since the case of her cousin Julia Sugden Crossley is similar, it’s possible that there was a gallant trend for a few years to be knocked off women’s ages.

Thomas Richard (1848-1887) ran the family firm with his father and took it over when he died. On the 1881 census he described himself as ‘Soap Manufacturer Employing 6 Men & Two Boys’. In the 1880s the rise of big companies like Lever and Pears brought major competition for smaller soap manufacturers, and I suspect that this must have affected Thomas’s firm. He died on 28 January 1887 of acute bronchial pneumonia and exhaustion. He was perhaps taken ill very suddenly, for he died at the factory. Thomas and Mary Ann both left over £300 so they were not bankrupt, but their premature deaths may have been related to the additional strain. The firm survived Thomas’s death, presumably in new hands, but finally closed in 1893.

Thomas married Elizabeth ANGELL (1845-1890) at St Mary’s Leyton, on 2 April 1871. The census was taken that night, and they apparently spent a rather unromantic wedding night at 4 New Inn Street, where the soap business was. Her father was John, a porter. Soon afterwards they moved to 9 Springfield Villas, Springfield Road in the developing suburb of New Southgate, where they employed a live-in servant. They had nine children in 12 years which suggests that Elizabeth did not breast-feed, perhaps because it might have been regarded as ‘common’ and alternatives were becoming available to those who could afford them.

Tragically, Elizabeth died within three years of Thomas Richard. The children, who all survived to adulthood, were left orphaned. The four oldest children were able to go out to work but the other five had to be cared for. Their three Pracy uncles and two aunts all had children of their own, and the Angell side of the family was perhaps not very well off.

There was therefore nobody to look after the younger orphans and they were taken into the Chase Farm Schools, now Chase Farm Hospital. The Edmonton Poor Law Union had opened the Schools in 1886 for orphaned and needy children. A full description can be found on a splendid website, on which this section draws[25]. It is a mercy that old Joseph William, who went to such pains to provide for his own children, died relatively young. He therefore did not live to see his grandchildren go into what was in effect the workhouse.

It must have been a terrible experience for the five children, aged between seven and thirteen. They had been brought up in a comfortable middle-class home with their parents, older siblings and a live-in servant. Within four years they had lost both parents and the siblings had moved away to seek work. They were thrust into an institution which, though not as dreadful as such places had been half a century earlier, would still have seemed cold and forbidding. On arrival, they would have been sent to the bathroom, stripped of their own clothes, bathed, put into clean clothes, and confined to a dayroom until examined by a doctor. Most of the other inmates would probably have been working-class, so perhaps teased and bullied the young Pracys for what may have been relatively posh manners and accents. They could well have been emotionally damaged, and it may be no coincidence that none of the five is known to have married.

The Guardians took parental control of orphans, who usually stayed at the school until they were fifteen. They then had a responsibility to help children find places when they left. Boys might join the armed services or do an apprenticeship. For girls, domestic service was sometimes an option. Ironically, the three youngest Pracy girls, who had been brought up with their own servant, themselves went into service.

Lilian Margaret Angell (1872-1950) never married and lived mostly in Ilford. She became a music teacher in 1903, and in 1914 advertised her services in Kelly’s Essex Directory. She formally registered as a teacher in 1920, stating that she was a Licentiate of Trinity College of Music London (pianoforte), and had a Certificate in General Principles of Scientific Teaching from the college.

Thomas Richard A (b. 1873) was in 1891 a boot finisher, staying in Tottenham with the NARMAN family where the father and eldest son were in the same trade. By 1901 he had become a draper’s warehouseman, lodging in Hackney. In 1902 he married Caroline Augusta BAGNETT there, but yet another tragedy struck in 1905 when, aged only 29, she died at Portsmouth. Happily, my previous suggestion that he could have committed suicide and not been identified proved to be unnecessarily melodramatic, for in 1906 he travelled from Liverpool to Montreal, presumably to start a new life.

Marian Elizabeth (b. 1875) was in 1891 a servant to John Sutton, a Tottenham bricklayer. She was married at Lambeth in 1897, probably to George Henry LOCK.

Joseph William III (1876-1967) became a leather cutter who eventually rose to the rank of foreman. In 1891 he was boarded at a ‘home for working boys’ at 88 Blackfriars Road, Southwark and working as a printer’s boy. In 1899 in Lambeth he married Lily Madora BATTAMS (1875-1963). They had three surviving children – Florence Winifred (1904-1988), Hilda May (b. 1908) and John A (b. 1912). Between 1900 and 1904 they moved to Southwark. Joseph inherited the family’s musical gifts and put them to good use as a Bandmaster in the Salvation Army, for which he composed several pieces of music.

The Post Office Directory for 1910 lists at 120 London Road Southwark, near the Elephant & Castle, a fish restaurant called Pracey & Masterson. There is no reason to suppose that Joseph William was involved, except that his was the only branch of the family known to have been in the Southwark area at that time.

Emily Beatrice (b. 1877) was the oldest of the children to be taken into the Chase Farm Schools. She was shown on the 1901 census as a girls’ industrial trainer at the Hitchin workhouse, but nothing more is known of her.

Grace Helen (1879-1950) was in 1901 a cook at a large house on the Epsom Downs. From 1913 she was a ‘domestic economy instructress’ at various council schools in south London. She obtained diplomas in cookery, laundrywork and housewifery, and formally registered as a teacher in 1920.

John Henry Arthur (1880-1963) and his younger brother Herbert were probably put into the armed services by the Poor Law Guardians at the age of 12.

John served as a seaman in the Royal Navy during the period 1892-1907. I haven’t traced the earlier records but on 21 October 1901 he signed on for a further 12 years and his card gives some interesting details. A stoker based at Chatham, he was dark-haired and hazel-eyed with a fresh complexion. He had a hope & anchor heart arrow on his left arm and a heart arrow on his right arm. His height was given as 5 ft 2 and nine-tenths inches; being a similar height myself, I can imagine that he might have been rather aggrieved at being denied the tenth of an inch that would at least take him to 5 ft 3 inches. He is listed as serving mostly on the Pembroke II which according to Wikipedia is the shore barracks at Chatham, though I’m no naval historian and open to correction. He was also on HMS Wildfire, of which there is a good photo at http://www.hmswildfire.org.uk/64-89/shortrn.htm . For reasons not explained on the card he was invalided out on 10 May 1906.

Margaret Alice (1882-1904) was in 1901 a domestic housemaid in the household of a Wimpole Street surgeon. She was apparently a companion to a Mrs W Hodgkinson on board the SS Ivernia when in 1903 she sailed to Bristol, Rhode Island. Sadly Margaret died in the Glendale district of Northumberland the following year, aged only 22.

Herbert Edward Leopold (1884-1954) was Elizabeth’s ninth child in twelve years, so she could have been forgiven for giving him the initials HELP. Perhaps for that reason Herbert didn’t always use his middle names.

He completed a period of service in the Middlesex Regiment and was probably the infantryman listed on the 1901 census at Hounslow Barracks as Charles Henry Pracy. He too inherited the family’s musical gifts, for he gave his trade as musician when in 1913 he rejoined the army as a private in the Royal Fusiliers, with whom he served in the First World War.

Elizabeth Jane (1849-1887) married James Darcy JONES at St Mary’s Leyton, on 22 October 1871. Six months earlier the couple had been the witnesses at the marriage in the same church of her brother Thomas Richard. James was a railway clerk and his father was said to be deceased. Elizabeth Jane received nothing from Joseph William’s will, although he expressed a wish that ‘if she should require pecuniary assistance’ his other children should ‘assist her according to their ability’. Her death three weeks after Thomas Richard, on 16 February 1887, seems to have been a tragic coincidence, for the cause was cancer of the uterus from which she had been suffering for nine months.

Joseph William II (1851-1914) was not mentioned in his father’s will, probably because he was not involved with the family firm. He was a commercial clerk and by 1901 had risen to be the secretary to a building society. He married Emily Georgina REEVES (1859-1923) at Lewisham in 1880, and they had five daughters.

Ella Marian (b. 1882) was a civil service clerk in 1901 but nothing more is known of her, or of Constance Emily (b. 1883).

Edith Florence (b. 1885) married Frank HM BOLTON in 1912.

Kate Madeline (1888-1961) never married.

Ida Winifred (b. 1891) married Clifford HOLLINGSWORTH in 1921.

Joseph and Emily at first lived at Stoke Newington where they had a live-in servant.

At the time of the 1891 census Joseph was living at South Norwood. He was the only male in a household of nine, for he also had two sisters-in-law living with him. Joseph and Emily no longer had a servant, so the younger of them –14-year-old Eveline Reeves – may have earned her keep by fulfilling that role. The elder sister-in-law, 19-year-old Clara Reeves, was listed as a confectioner’s manageress. Kelly’s 1891 Directory for Kent, Surrey and Sussex gives at 60 High Street South Norwood a confectioner called ‘Js Wm Pracy’. Presumably Joseph owned or rented the shop, and Clara managed it for him.

Soon afterwards Joseph and Emily moved to Catford. Later they went to Chadwell Heath, and when he died he left her £647.

Henry Edward (1854-92) worked for his father and eldest brother at the soap factory, and in 1881 he was living round the corner at 2 Bateman’s Row. The poor chap was perhaps left behind to endure the smells while his elders decamped to more salubrious suburbs.

Joseph’s will specified that Henry should ‘be paid weekly fair and reasonable wages gradually increasing …to two pounds a week’. He wanted Thomas ‘to do his best for his brother…either by giving him a bonus at the end of each year or in such other manner as he shall think fit and so long as he shall consider the said Henry Edward Pracy deserves the same’. That may suggest that Henry was thought incapable of running the business, and certainly he didn’t take it over after Thomas Richard died. Instead he emulated his uncles John William III and George Philip in becoming a cab driver. Like his eldest brother and his uncle George, Henry died before he was 40.

In 1874 Henry married Amelia Caroline HILLS (1853-1913). She had four surviving children, the eldest of whom probably was not Henry’s.

Richard was apparently born in 1870 and registered as Richard Hills, but after his mother’s marriage took the name Pracy. Richard was a craftsman in wood, who in 1891 made tables and later graduated to cabinets. He married Ruth Eliza PAGE in 1904 and died in 1939.

Amelia Caroline (b. 1881) married Charles T HOUSTON in 1919.

Joseph William IV (1884-c.1930) began working life as a labourer, but in 1901 enlisted in the 5th Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment (57th Foot). He was then 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighed 117 pounds. It is often said that soldiers recruited from the East End were undernourished, but in the 21st century his Body Mass Index would not have been deemed unacceptably low. He had two distinctive scars and a tattooed left forearm. He served in the South African War and guarded Boer prisoners on St Helena. He later did a tour of duty in India, and was discharged in 1913. He married Elizabeth F REED in 1917 and they moved to Elham near Folkestone in Kent, where they had seven children. I could find no record of his death but it apparently took place around 1930, for their youngest child was born in 1929 and Elizabeth remarried in 1931.

John Henry (1891-1961) married Lilian J FAIRBAIRN in 1912 and they had five children. In the First World War he served as a private in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps. Among his grandchildren is John William Pracy, who was delighted to find that his combination of forenames is so significant in our family. He and his brother David Leslie have given me useful information about their branch of the family.

John (1857-1937) also was not mentioned in the will of old Joseph William. He was a clerk working in the London docks. The 1901 census describes him as a dock officer so he perhaps rose to a fairly senior position. In 1888 he married Laura KEABLE and they had three children. They lived initially in East Ham at Red Post Lane, which was later renamed Katherine Road in honour of Katharine Fry, who lived nearby. She was the daughter of the famous prison reformer Elizabeth Fry, and author of a noted history of East & West Ham. By 1891 John and family were living in Plaistow and later they moved to Hornsey.

Douglas Sherrin (1889-1964) was the first Pracy known to have entered one of the major professions. He was only 12 when his younger brother Gordon Keable (1897-1902) died, which perhaps influenced his decision to become a doctor. In 1916 he qualified as a Member of the Royal College of Physicians (England) and a Licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons (London). In the First World War he was a Lt-Captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps. In 1917 he married Gwendoline B POWER and they moved to Colville House at Atherstone in Warwickshire. She was from a medical family, and their son John Power and grandson Robert both went into the medical profession. Not surprisingly, he was the first Pracy known to have had a telephone and one of the first in his area, being listed in the 1926 Birmingham & District directory as Atherstone 23.

Constance Maud (1891-1968) never married. She was an Associate of the London Academy of Music and won their Gold Medal for pianoforte. She began teaching in 1922, did her training in 1924-5 and qualified in 1926. She became music mistress at Our Lady’s Convent, Stamford Hill. In 1929 she travelled with her elderly parents from Liverpool to Montreal, and in 1933 from London to Marseille.

Emily (b. 1859) married Peter Speechly TAYLOR, the lodger at 95 Mildmay Road, in 1883. She thus fulfilled what seem to have been her father’s worst fears, but by then the Married Women’s Property Act of 1882 had been passed, and she would have had a little more security. Like Emily’s brother John, Peter was a commercial clerk, which may be how he was introduced to the family.

Early in 1887 they were living at 35 Ferndale Road Upton Park, the same road as Emily’s sister Mary Ann Elizabeth. There Mary Ann died less than a month after her sister Elizabeth Jane JONES. Emily recorded Elizabeth’s death the next day, but when Mary Ann died it was four days before they reported it and Peter had to do it. What it must have been like for them, with a two-year-old son and a baby daughter, doesn't bear thinking about.

Soon after these tragic events Peter and Emily moved to John and Laura Pracy’s house in Red Post Lane. In 1891 they had three children, John W, Jessie Marian and James Mackay. Emily’s 19-year-old orphaned niece Lilian was staying with them and was already a music teacher. By 1901 the whole family including Lilian had moved out to Ilford. Old Joseph William had left the family piano to Emily, so perhaps she too was musical.

17. Henry Charles Pracy (1827-1909) and his descendants

Henry was barely three when his father died. In 1851 he was living in Shoreditch with his widowed mother and his older sister Elizabeth Jane. He was listed on the census as a humble ‘wharehouseman’ and there can have been no reason to suppose that he would do any better than his brothers, but he became the most successful of all the 19th-century Pracys. His secret was simple – he married into money and influence.

Mary Elizabeth GORSUCH (1829-1884) was the daughter of James St Swithin Gorsuch (1801-1870), a London clothier. His father John was the youngest of five brothers who were all Clerkenwell watchmakers, and their father was a watchmaker in Prescot near Liverpool. There is some evidence that they were descended from a landed Lancashire family but this would need further checking. Gorsuch Street and Gorsuch Place off Kingsland Road in Shoreditch presumably had some connection with the family, although I don’t know exactly what.

John William Pracy I was also a Clerkenwell watchmaker, which may be where the connection between the Gorsuch and Pracy families began. On the other hand, Henry’s marriage certificate and his mother’s death certificate gave his father’s profession as ‘late foreman London Docks’, which is so inaccurate as to suggest that there may have been some hidden agenda. Both the witnesses were from the Gorsuch family, but when Henry’s sister Mary Ann married a fellow-servant the following year, her witnesses were her sister Elizabeth Jane and brother Joseph William.

In 1861 Henry was still a warehouseman. He was living in 11 Tuilerie Street Haggerston, so called because it was on the site of a tile factory. The road was demolished in the 1980s and incorporated into Haggerston Park, although a splendid old-fashioned street-sign can still be seen on the side of the London Picture Centre. By 1871 he was described as the manager of a boot warehouse. Perhaps he gained promotion in the firm where he was working, or Mary Elizabeth came into some money when her father died, and was able to set him up in business. Henry retired in the 1880s when in his 50s.

Under his will Henry left the very considerable sum of £6856, although he seems to have done little or nothing to help the orphaned children of his nephew Thomas Richard. He was the first in our family since Thomas Precy two centuries earlier to describe himself as a gentleman, which by 1900 was admittedly a somewhat elastic term. It nevertheless represented a notable social and economic rise for the youngest brother of a porter, a cellarman and a dressmaker. His was perhaps the only branch of the family that never quite lost the respectable tradesman’s outlook of the two Edmunds and John William the watchmaker. It may be unfair, but I get the impression that his success made him a bit of a snob.

When the Essex County Cricket Club moved from Brentwood to Leyton in 1885, Henry became a member, paying a guinea a year. At the 1903 AGM, he seconded adoption of the accounts and was mentioned in a newspaper report. Membership of the county club was almost expected of anyone with social pretensions, although he may also have had a genuine interest in the game. His sons Henry and Edward were useful cricketers who played for the Leyton club which was one of the strongest in the county at that time, and regularly featured Essex players such as Charlie McGahey. Edward was elected an Essex member after his father’s death, so presumably had previously gone to the cricket with him or borrowed his membership card.

Around 1864 Henry and Mary moved from Shoreditch to 16 Glaskin Road Hackney. In 1871 Henry took over renting the house at Grange Park Road Leyton from his brother Joseph William, and from 1881 to 1891 at least he was at Capworth Street Leyton.

Henry and Mary had four surviving children.

Mary Elizabeth was born in 1858 in the Shoreditch area, perhaps Haggerston where the family was living in 1861. She married William Henry SIMLEY at Leyton in 1881.

Emma Eleanor was born in 1863 in the Shoreditch area. In 1892 at Leyton she married George Markham MURDOCK [sic], who ran a firm of decorators. By 1901 they had three children – May, George and Catherine – and were living at 74 Grove Green Road Leytonstone. Henry Charles was at the same address ‘living on own means’, and described not as father-in-law but as head of a separate household. As late as 1939 the house was occupied by ‘Charles William Pracy Murdoch’.

Edward John (1865-1956) was born after the family had moved to Hackney. He was listed in 1891 as a salesman of fancy toys, and in 1895 as a fancy goods warehouseman at 48 Camberwell Road SE. By 1901 he was a clerk to an insurance company.

In 1894 he married Jessie FINDLATER (1864-1954), who was born in Scotland. They had two children.

Henry Edward Findlater (1894-1976) went up to Christ’s College Cambridge in 1913 to read chemistry. He left for the war in 1916 and was admitted to a degree by wartime statutes. He married Margaret Ethel SIMPSON in 1920. Henry had a long career in various parts of the world with Shell. In 1927 he travelled to Singapore, where in the following year Margaret joined him, and in 1936 from Southampton to New York and back. In 1933-9 she visited Trinidad and Tobago no fewer than six times, twice accompanied by Henry.

Alexandra Irene (1901-1997), known as Irene, never married.

Henry Edward (1856-1937) was in 1881 a clerk in a shoe warehouse, presumably a job working for his father or obtained with his influence. By 1891 he was a music publisher’s manager.

In 1889 Henry married Elizabeth Annie PEARCEY (1855-1933). In 1891 they were living in a terraced house at 23 Cairo Road Walthamstow, and in 1905 they moved to a rather grander double-fronted house nearby – Ivyside, 60 Orford Road.

Henry was quite an influential figure in the Walthamstow area. He became vice-chairman and director of the Walthamstow Building Society. A splendid photograph in a jubilee booklet of 1927 shows the directors as a group of highly respectable businessmen, with Henry the only one sporting a beard and a bow tie.

Henry and his cousin John (1857-1937, son of Joseph William) were listed in the 1932 London telephone directory and were therefore the first in our family to be on the phone at home. By 1935 his brother Edward and his daughter Elsie had joined them.

Henry and Elizabeth are buried in the churchyard of St Mary’s Walthamstow, in a prominent position next to the north wall of the church. They had four children.

Margaret (b. 1891) married Alec DAINES in 1917. Their daughter married the late Bill FIRTH, who was well-known in local and family history circles and provided me with much useful information.

Edith Winifred (b.1899) married Sidney ERRIDGE in 1928.

Henry Reginald (1894-1916) attended Sir George Monoux Grammar School in Walthamstow, and went on to ‘King’s College’ (probably London). On 7 June 1915 he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment. He was presumably among the grammar school boys who were recruited as officers after the flower of the public schools had been cut down. He was fatally wounded during the Battle of the Somme and on 5 September 1916 died at Corbie, where he is buried.

Elsie Mabel (1895-1978) never married but did much good work in the Walthamstow and Leyton area. At a time when it was still unusual for women to go into higher education she obtained a B.Sc. (Econ.) She was elected as an alderman of Walthamstow Borough Council in 1932, and became Chairman of the Education Committee. She was re-elected in 1938 and resigned when her second term of office expired in 1944. Her adult education lectures were popular with her students, not least because she was said to have had ‘a fund of racy stories’[26].

A lifelong socialist and Labour Party member, Elsie made a stirring speech at the ceremony for the laying of the foundation stone of Walthamstow Town Hall in 1938. She compared the solid foundations of the building with the solid socialist beliefs of the mayor, Catherine McEntee.

In 1949 Elsie founded the Leyton-Wandsbek Friendship Association, which twinned the London suburb with one in Hamburg. It was one of the first examples of town twinning, which became an important means of rebuilding links with France and Germany after the Second World War. She still has a place in the hearts of Wandsbek people, and the Elsie Pracy Memorial Lecture is an important date in the diary of the Waltham Forest Town Twinning Association.

* * * * *

As was sometimes the way with the Pracys, Henry Edward shared a name with his first cousin. Joseph William and Henry Charles were the two youngest sons and both went into business. They may therefore have been particularly close within the family, but the experiences of their namesake sons were very different. Within ten years of Joseph’s death the business collapsed; his Henry Edward stayed in Shoreditch and became a cab driver, dying aged only 38. By contrast, Henry Charles’s business thrived; his Henry Edward moved to the then healthier environs of Walthamstow and became a publisher, living to the age of 81.

The next generation, however, saw a great irony. Joseph William’s grandson and namesake survived twelve years as a professional soldier, but apparently did not serve in the First World War and later fathered seven children. Henry Charles’s male line came to an end, because his only Pracy grandson volunteered for that bloodbath and was among the 35% of young officers killed in it.

18. Linking the two halves of the family, and refuting one of its myths

Henry Reginald Pracy is commemorated on the war memorial at Monoux School and on a plaque in St Mary’s church, Walthamstow. The plaque’s prominent position is an indication of Henry Edward’s place in local society. In his will, he requested his daughters ‘without imposing any trust on them to keep the memorial of their brother Henry Reginald Pracy in the church of St Mary in good order’. Over 90 years after the young man’s death, his memorial is indeed in good order.

I too attended Monoux, and went to the church for Founder’s Day services. My parents had never heard of Henry Reginald, and it was his memorials that led me to start researching my family history in order to see whether we were related.

In 1965, shortly after I started working at Walthamstow Central Library, Elsie Pracy came in and I needed to ask her name. She said ‘Pracy’ and when I replied ‘So is mine’ we naturally got into conversation. When later I established that we were distant cousins she was intrigued and invited me home to 60 Orford Road, where she still lived, for tea. She was over 80 but as bright as ever and I count it a joy and a privilege to have met her. It was unfortunately only after her death that I found out about her Labour Party and town twinning activities, and I wish I had been able to ask her whether they were inspired by the loss of her brother.

I would have thought that if knowledge of our Wiltshire origins had survived anywhere in our family it would have been in Henry Charles’s branch. His aunt Ann Fox was still alive when he was in his 20s, and she in turn was 16 when her grandmother Alice, widow of Edmund of Bishopstone, died. Ann and Henry Charles could well have met at family events, although even these days few young people have much curiosity about their family history and the old lady’s deafness might have made communication difficult. His was also the best-educated branch of the family: in the early 20th century, long before university education became commonplace, it boasted at least three graduates. And Henry Edward, who was 15 when his grandmother Elizabeth Jane died, later became a joint-founder and committee member of the well-regarded Walthamstow Antiquarian Society.

They were therefore the most likely to have investigated the matter, yet Irene Pracy insisted to Bill Firth that our family were Huguenots who came out of Norfolk. Her first cousin Elsie told me the same, although less dogmatically. The Huguenot theory is a common one, but I had no idea why Irene and Elsie should have thought we came from Norfolk. Then I came across the 1871 census which shows Henry Charles and his family living in Heigham, just outside Norwich. They cannot have gone there before 1867 when they were in Hackney, and they apparently moved back to Leyton later in 1871. The earliest memories of Irene’s father, Edward John, would therefore probably have been of Norfolk. Perhaps his recollections were somehow transformed into the belief that the whole family came from there. Of such stuff are family myths made.

Part 4: Thomas Pracy (1781-1846) and his descendants

Edmund and Lucy Pracy’s youngest son was born on 6 October 1781 and baptised William on 4 November. They were scrupulous in having their children baptised, so it is inconceivable that they would have missed out one child and that the son of an otherwise unknown Edmund and Lucy was baptised at the same time. There are no further references to William but many to Thomas who would have been the same age. I conclude therefore that ‘William’ and Thomas are the same person.

I would guess that either he adopted the name Thomas because of confusion between John William and William, or more probably it is literally a clerical error. ‘William’ was one of eleven babies baptised that day and the recording clergyman usually wrote up a month’s baptisms and burials some time later, so he probably made a simple mistake.

Mary Pracy née MORGAN (c. 1781-1863) married Thomas at Christ Church Newgate Street on 24 July 1809. Apart from the Australian descendants of Rosetta and Thomas Richard, she was the only member of our family to be born outside England before the 1890s.

She stated on the 1851 census that she was born in Cardigan, in south central Wales. The IGI for that county reveals five Mary Morgans baptised between 1779 and 1783, and there may have been others not listed there. Two of them were baptised in the improbably named settlement of Strata Florida, which developed around a now ruined abbey in ‘a wild, lonely and picturesque valley deep in the hills north of Tregaron’. I would like to think that our ancestor had grown up in such a romantic place, but the reality is that we can never know for sure.

Romantic or not, Mary’s early life wouldn’t have been easy. An anonymous verse referred to the lack of work for young women in rural Cardiganshire: ‘I'll go to London come Lammas if I'm alive and well; I won't stay in Wales to break my heart.’ [27]

In the early 1800s it was still commonplace for Welsh people to drive their stock to London for market, and Cardigan was a cattle-rearing area. That is probably how Mary met Thomas, particularly as they subsequently had a milk business. It was based for half a century at Maxwell Court in Long Alley (now Appold Street), on the corner of Eldon Street close to present-day Liverpool Street station. Shoreditch in general was a centre of furniture-making but Long Alley in particular was notorious for its second-hand trade, described in 1861 by the journalist and actor-manager John Hollingshed as ‘that melancholy avenue of vermin-haunted furniture’.

Leigh’s Weekly Markets of 1819 reported on the milk trade[28]:

In delivering the milk to the consumer, a vast increase takes place, not only in the price, but also in the quantity, which is greatly adulterated with water, and sometimes impregnated with still worse ingredients, to hide the cheat. By these practices, and the additional charge made for cream… one writer has said the advance or profit is 150%. The milk is conveyed to the consumers in tin vessels, called pails, which are principally carried about by women, mostly robust Welsh girls: it is distributed twice daily through all parts of the town. The profits are undoubtedly great where the consumption is constant and certain…

According to Leigh, the cows would have been large Holderness short-horns. Some 7900 of them were kept in the then largely rural county of Middlesex – many in Islington, only a mile or so from Long Alley. Overall they produced about seven million gallons a year and the total paid out was £328,000. The price was 10d or 11d per gallon according to the distance from town. The retail dealer agreed with the cow-keeper for the produce of a certain number of cows, and undertook the milking himself. The Welsh girls would certainly have had to be robust, for they distributed the milk on yokes said to have weighed over 100 lbs. They were famous for their cries of ‘Mi-o’, or milk below, and Mary was doubtless one of them.

In the 1810s Thomas’s occupation was given as ‘milk man’, but after that he was listed variously as a porter, wine porter and wine cooper. This may suggest that Mary ran the business while Thomas helped out by collecting the milk and got other work when he could, or perhaps as their children grew up they began to collect the milk. The trade may have become less profitable: in the 1810s milk retailed at 6d a quart with a retail margin of 2d, but from 1834-64 at 4d a quart with a profit of only 1d to 1½d[29]. Certainly Mary took charge after Thomas died of ‘natural decay’ in 1846. We can’t know whether Thomas and Mary watered down their milk or made 150% profit, but the fact that the business lasted on the same premises for over 50 years suggests that it thrived. The goodwill of a ‘milk-walk’ could change hands for anything up to £100 so it was sometimes a highly profitable trade, but one contemporary rather uncharitably described milksellers as ‘the dregs of the residuum’.

Because English would have been Mary’s second language, she is likely not to have spoken it that well, or at best with a strong accent. She was the only Pracy spouse in that generation known to have marked her marriage lines with a cross rather than a signature, and her trade was not highly regarded. Perhaps therefore the rest of the family thought that Thomas had married a little beneath him, even though one of them was a jailbird and another was living with one. By her will of 1848, Lucy Pracy left £10 to John William’s widow Elizabeth Jane but nothing to the recently widowed Mary. That might suggest some sort of family rift or even anti-immigrant racism – ‘Taffy was a Welshman / Taffy was a thief…’

We can’t be sure precisely what form the business took. Behind 1 Maxwell Court there was a yard, where cows could have been kept. This is less surprising than it might sound, for the number of urban cowsheds and dairies grew from an estimated 200 in 1831 to over 2,000 in 1871. On the other hand, Thomas and Mary could perhaps just have stored milk there overnight. Neither was ever described as a cowkeeper, the usual word when cows were kept on the premises, and they didn’t appear in trade directories of the time. This may suggest that most of their trade came from selling milk around the streets, rather than from people coming to Long Alley. A large-scale Ordnance Survey map shows that by 1872 the yard had been entirely filled in.

Ratebooks show that the gross annual rent on 1 Maxwell Court was estimated at £13. In 1844 the rates were paid by Maria Wilkinson alone, and by 1854 the joint-owner with her was Peregrine Hogg Purkiss or Purvis, of Winchmore Hill. On the 1861 census he was listed as ‘Proprietor of Houses’, but there were too many Maria Wilkinsons to be sure which was the right one.

I can’t prove it at this distance in time, but I suspect that Mary was quite a forceful character. On the 1851 census she had herself listed as the head of the household, even though her 39-year-old son John, a widower with three children, was also there. John was head of household in 1861, but the 81-year-old Mary was still shown as a milk dealer. Censuses indicate that all of her children and grandchildren had jobs of their own so the old lady must presumably have had to distribute the milk herself, perhaps relying on customer loyalty built up over many years.

19. Thomas Edmund (1810-1840) and William Charles (1827-1869) and their descendants; Mary, David, Ann, Henry

Unless Mary falsified her age to the census enumerators, she was almost 30 when she married Thomas and about 45 when she had the last of their eight children. John and Richard, who had numerous descendants, are dealt with in separate sections, and the rest here.

Thomas Edmund (1810-1840) married Elizabeth Hannah PHILLIPS (1806-78) at St George in the East on 23 November 1834. The witnesses were Thomas’s cousin Edmund James and his wife Jane, so clearly the two branches of the family were still in touch. The two eldest cousins followed the family trade of carman and probably worked together, for theirs were the only branches of our family to settle in the City close to the Thames rather than in Shoreditch.

Thomas and Elizabeth had three children, Thomas Edmund in 1837, Isabella in 1839 and Francis in 1841. In 1837 they were living at Bateman’s Row in Shoreditch but by 1839 they had moved near the river.

Such was the fragility of life that by the end of 1841 only poor Elizabeth and her son Thomas were left. Isabella was buried aged 19 months on 4 November 1840 and her address was recorded as Naked Boy Alley, which led down from Upper Thames Street to the river, opposite Bread Street Hill. Thomas senior’s death was apparently not registered, but he was buried on 20 December 1840 and his address was given as 3 Crown Court Trinity Lane, a site where Mansion House Station now stands.

The census of June 1841 shows that Elizabeth and her two sons were living at 2 Church Place, on the west side of Garlick Hill opposite St James Garlickhithe. She stated that she was a chairwoman – probably what we would call a charwoman. With her was Isabella Phillips, presumably Elizabeth’s sister and the reason for the naming of her daughter. They were still there on 21 December 1841, when Francis died of ‘inflammation of the brain’ aged only seven months.

The family used several different churches. Isabella and Francis were baptised at All Hallows Bread Street, while Isabella was buried at St Michael Queenhithe and Thomas at Holy Trinity the Less, Trinity Lane. As people moved out of the City these churches and others became redundant and were demolished. The disinterred remains were moved to the new City of London cemetery at Aldersbrook Road in Ilford. A few of the graveyards were built on but after the Disused Burial Grounds Act of 1884 most were converted into public gardens.

Elizabeth has not been traced on the 1851 or 1861 census but may well have remained in the City, for in 1871 she was living in the City of London Union workhouse at Cornwallis Road, Upper Holloway. She was one of 440 paupers, 256 of them women, and there were just ten residential staff. She died there in 1878, aged 70.

Thomas Edmund (1837-1907) married Emma Harriet SHAWE (1839-1905) at Islington in 1861. He moved in with Emma and a widowed bootmaker named Henry BATTEN, described as her father on the census but presumably her stepfather. They were at 19 Goswell Street [now Road], a site now occupied by offices that you can see if you walk from Barbican station to the Society of Genealogists. On the 1871-1901 censuses Thomas and Emma were listed at four different addresses in and near Elizabeth Avenue in Islington, and they may well have moved around in between as well. He was a bookbinder who probably worked for one of the small firms in the Goswell Street area, and could have commuted even after he moved out to Islington. Thomas Edmund and Emma had no children and with his death the name Edmund, which had been so significant for two centuries, finally passed out of our family.

Mary (1815-1853?) became a cook. In 1846 at St Leonard’s Shoreditch she married Frederick Michael ASTELL, a servant, but she apparently spent most of her adult life in Lambeth. On the 1841 census she was listed as a female servant, in 1849 she possibly had a boy called William Edmund and in 1853 she probably died, all in Lambeth.

David (1819-1826) was possibly named after one of his mother’s Welsh relatives, for in England David was a much less common name in the 19th century than it became in the 20th, when we were ten a penny. I had hoped to find out more about my first namesake, but he is the only one of the eight children to whom there is no further reference.

However, on 14 November 1826 a boy named Edward Pracy from Long Alley was buried at Bunhill Fields, aged 7 years 10 months. That is exactly the age that David would have been, and there is no other mention of an Edward Pracy. David’s eldest brother was baptised as Thomas but later referred to as Thomas Edmund, so David’s full name may have been David Edward and it is almost certainly he that was buried. His uncle John William could well have arranged for David’s interment at the place where his own infant daughter, Ellen Lucy, was buried a few weeks later.

Ann (b. 1821) was one of the few known to have lapsed from the family’s respectable behaviour. She was unmarried when on 17 July 1845 at Shoreditch Workhouse she gave birth to Caroline, who the chaplain described as ‘the illegitimate daughter of Henry Smith and Ann Pressey’. The 1841 census lists 16 Henry Smiths aged between 20 and 30 in Shoreditch alone, so there is no possibility of tracing exactly who he was.

Sadly baby Caroline died shortly afterwards but that was hardly surprising, for in 1847 the report of a special Parliamentary sub-committee on workhouse provision criticized conditions at Shoreditch. It was found to be overcrowded, with 1,000 inmates in accommodation designed for 800. Its 150 chronically ill inmates were housed in poorly ventilated wards close to the healthy inmates. Concerns were also expressed about the quality of the water supply. In November 1847, the workhouse was the subject of a ‘Grand Comic Interlude’ at the Royal Standard Theatre in Shoreditch[30].

Ann may have been ‘Ann Praisey’, said on the 1851 census to be the 25-year-old servant of Thomas BOWLER of Bishopsgate.

In 1860 at St James Curtain Road Ann married James PATTINSON, a 32-year-old carpenter who was living with the family at Maxwell Court. James and Ann may well have been introduced to one another by her brother William Charles, who was also a carpenter. On the 1861 census Ann was listed as a laundress.

Henry (1823-1846?) probably died within a few days of Thomas senior in November 1846, although a certificate would be needed to confirm this.

William Charles (1827-69) was a coachmaker and carpenter. It is clear from the censuses that he was known within the family as William, but in 1862 he married Charlotte HAINES (1832-1896), who seems to have her own ideas about what he should be called. On their youngest son’s baptismal certificate in 1867 he was named as Charles William, and when he died she registered him as plain Charles. They had three sons.

Charles Edward (1863-1929), was an engineer’s fitter. In 1889 at Woolwich he married Frances Elizabeth MARTIN, who was born in Tunbridge Wells. The first three of their four children were born in south London but by 1901 they had moved to Tottenham, where they remained. Charles Bertrand (1890-1965) married Ethel LOREY in 1922 and they had five children, among them Margaret USHER who gave me much useful information about her branch of the family. In the First World War he served first as a private in the London Regiment, and later as a gunner in the Royal Garrison Artillery. Bessie (1892-1916) and Ida (1893-1964) did not marry. Nora (b. 1899) married Sydney L CHENERY in 1924. When Charles Edward died in 1929, the Amalgamated Engineering Union made a collection for the dependents of the ‘late Brother Pracy of the Tottenham Branch’.

William Thomas (1865-1877) died aged only 11.

Albert John (1867-1936) never married. On the 1871 and 1881 censuses Charlotte was described as a needlewoman but by 1891 she was retired and living at 2 Siddons Road Tottenham with ‘A. John Pracy’, as the census called him. He was, like his brother, an engineer’s fitter, and evidently he was supporting his mother. After her death he moved in with his brother Charles Edward.

20. John Pracy (1813-1867) and his descendants

John was, at least from 1836-40, a tallow chandler, but by 1851 had reverted to the family trade of carman. He married Rebecca DOLLWOOD (c.1807-1842), probably in 1834 or 1835 although the marriage has not been traced. The only Rebecca Dollwood listed on the IGI was baptised at St Giles Cripplegate in 1807, and on the 1841 census her age was rounded down to 30. There is therefore a strong chance that she is the one, but no absolute proof.

The 1841 census lists them and their three children living at Maxwell Court in a separate household from Thomas and Mary. Rebecca died in 1842 and was buried at the Golden Lane Cemetery, which operated from 1832-54. The site is currently being redeveloped as a school, and the contractor responsible for moving the bodies to a cemetery at Finchley commented: ‘The plots at Golden Lane cost more than £1, at a time when a meal cost a penny. They weren't paupers’ graves.’

John continued to live at Maxwell Court at least until 1861. That year’s census shows a widow, Mary IVE, as head and sole member of a separate household at 1 Maxwell Court. Three weeks later, on 21 April 1861 at St James Curtain Road, John married Mary. She was born HOUSNELL c.1800 and died in 1868.

John (1835-1917) was a printer who had been apprenticed to the trade by the time of the 1851 census, when he was 15. He rose to be foreman for Edmund Evans (1826-1906), who founded the Racquet Court Press, near Ludgate Circus. Evans produced attractive chrome block illustrations for children’s books. Among his best-known illustrators were Walter Crane (1845-1915), Ralph Caldecott (1846-86) and Kate Greenaway (1846-1901).

We have a fascinating insight into John Pracy’s working life, because he was interviewed for the Victorian philanthropist Charles Booth’s survey into life and labour in London. It was recorded in manuscript notebooks now held in the archive of the London School of Economics, which kindly gave permission for us to reproduce the interview with him[31].

As part of his campaign against poverty, Booth undertook his survey between 1886 and 1903. It was organised into three broad sections: poverty, industry and religious influences. The industry section investigated every conceivable trade in London from cricketers to wigmakers, to establish wage levels and conditions of employment. The investigation took the form of interviews with workers, managers and owners.

John was one of 25 printers interviewed by George E Arkell, mostly in November 1893. John’s great-grandson, Mike Jenner, made the following transcript:

Went over the questions on the form with Mr P.

Wages in this work are 44/- to 45/- best men; 40/- average rate, the union rate being 38/-. Does not think the union helps the men much beyond the fact that membership enables him (sic) to get into a larger number of houses. When engaging a man, he would ask what houses he had worked in and would judge the man’s capacity by the kind of house. There are only 3 or 4 houses doing similar work and a man who had worked at one of these would have the preference.

The men are all permanently engaged. Am (sic) obliged to keep them as the work is a speciality and they have to train the men to their work.

The work consists mainly of illustrations for books. The coloured pictures are printed from blocks, one block being prepared for each colour. Around the room in which we met were a large number of specimens of the work done by the firm. They included a number of Kate Greenway’s children’s books, and coloured frontispieces and plates for other books.

The busy season is the autumn – July to Sept (sic) when they are preparing the Christmas books. Spring is the slack time.

Men do not shift from one branch to another.

The demand for the work is decreasing; foreign competition – German and Dutch – is taking the trade. It is a question of cheapness; the cheap foreign labour enables them to do it. Things that had to be done quickly were done in England but work in which time was no object went abroad. He remarked that it was strange that people always wished them to turn out work quickly while they gave the foreigner the six months he asked for.

Trade is learned by apprenticeship – 7 years. A lad is put to the machine and if he is intelligent he is apprenticed after a while. Indentures are always given.

The most skilled part of the work is the mixing of the colours and this Mr P does himself.

As to the time it takes to learn, Mr P says it is never learnt. He has been at it all his life and still has something to learn. If very quick a lad could pick the trade up in two years but the average time is 4 years.

As regards capacity Mr P is in his 59^th year[32] and has been at Evans for 32 years and he can do his work alright. Does not like running up and down stairs so much as formerly of course.

Litho printing does compete but not in the long runs.

As a skilled craftsman in a responsible managerial position, John would have enjoyed a reasonably secure income for all or most of his life. This enabled him to be a microcosm of the way in which the Pracys, and indeed Londoners in general, gradually moved away from the centre of the city. In 1841 and 1851 he was living with the family at Maxwell Court, on the fringe of the City. In 1861 as a young ‘Printers Machine’ he was lodging at 2 Red Lion Passage, off Hoxton Street on the site of the recently-built Shoreditch Library. When his eldest child was born in 1865 he had moved a few hundred yards northwest to 15 Buckland Street. From 1871 to 1881 at least, he was living at 9 Pownall Road, which is on the northernmost edge of Haggerston, on the other side of the Regent’s Canal. By 1891 he had moved a further mile north to 48 Gayhurst Road in the Dalston area of Hackney. The 1901 census found him round the corner at 59 Lansdowne Road [now Drive], and by the time of his death in 1917 he had moved round the corner again, to 43 Lavender Grove.

In 1864 at St George in the East John married Jane BATSON (1838-1915), who was born in the tiny village of Rimpton in Somerset, the daughter of a labourer who died when she was a child. The 1861 census shows Jane as a servant, one of the thousands of girls who came up from the West Country to find employment as domestic help.

John and Jane had six surviving children:

Florence Jane (b. 1865) married Robert CHRISTIE at Hackney in 1892. By 1901 they had two children, Robert and Florence.

Frederick John (1867-1938) was listed in 1891 as running a grocery business and in 1901 as a commercial traveller. He married Elizabeth M WHITE in 1922. Frederick and his parents were buried at Abney Park Cemetery.

Walter James (1869-1945) was in 1891 following his father’s often hereditary trade, that of printer. On the 1901 census he was listed as a machine minder, living as a boarder in Portsmouth and said to be unmarried. Later that year he was married in Portsmouth, probably to Eliza NORRIS (c.1868-1941).

Every family has skeletons in its cupboard, and one of ours was the birth of Florence May Pracy on 9 March 1900 at Tynycwm, Tirymynach, Llanbadarnfawr near Aberystwyth. It is, by coincidence, in the county of Cardigan from which Mary Morgan came a century earlier. The mother’s name was given as Sarah Ann Pracy formerly LEWIS, and the father’s as Walter James Pracy, a tea traveller. Walter was not described as such on the censuses of 1891 or 1901 but, if he was telling the truth, perhaps obtained the job through the influence of his brother Frederick.

The birth was registered by Sarah Ann’s mother Elizabeth Lewis. On the 1901 census Elizabeth was listed as the head of the household and a sailor’s widow, while 21-year-old Sarah Ann gave her surname as Pracy and described herself as ‘commercial traveller’s wife’. Elizabeth spoke only Welsh but Sarah Ann was bilingual.

Although the GRO indexes for the relevant period do not list a marriage for Walter James or Sarah Ann, he was probably Florence’s father. In that case he would have had obligations to Sarah Ann and Florence, so may well have lain low in Portsmouth to avoid them. Sarah Ann was apparently convinced about the marriage because in 1925 young Florence was herself married with the surname Pracey, but Wales was a strongly nonconformist area and Sarah Ann may have taken the Pracy name to avoid the disgrace of being perceived as an unmarried mother.

Minnie (b. 1872) was a laundress. She was married in the West Ham registration district in 1908, possibly to Horace DAVEY.

Alice (b. 1877) married Walter John LE SUEUR at Hackney in 1900.

Horace Edward (1881-1954) was a boot clicker in 1901. He went on to train as a surgical belt fitter with the textile company, Jaeger, and rose to manage one of their shops in the West End of London (the Strand or thereabouts). In 1901 he was living with his parents at Lansdowne Road, Hackney, just down the street from the Paget Arms public house. There a new landlord was about to arrive with a 13 year-old daughter, Elizabeth Victoria ROOKS (1887-1973). Elizabeth's family came from Tiverton in Devon but she was born in London where her father had been a police inspector.

Horace and Elizabeth married at St Philip's, Dalston in 1912 and had three children. Horace Reginald (Reg, 1912-1993) and Stanley William (1914-1981) were both born at 19 Grove Road (now Lampard Grove), Stamford Hill. Each had one daughter, so the Pracy name does not continue in that line. Daughter Gladys Elizabeth (1920-1996) married the Reverend Kenneth JENNER in 1941. She and her elder son, Michael Kenneth (b. 1943), were both born at 3 Durlston Road, Clapton. Mike Jenner has kindly provided this information about his branch of the family.

Mary Ann (1837-1907), who never married, qualified as a professional nurse. She worked as a domestic servant in a succession of well-to-do homes, looking after sick individuals. In 1881 she was at Islington in the household of a company secretary, and in 1891 at Worthing nursing the widow of a wine merchant. By 1901 she had retired and moved to Sutton in Surrey. She died in 1907 and left effects valued at £366 to Dr Walter GRIPPER and Evelyn Hayes Gripper. They were presumably people she met in the course of her professional work, and not as far as I know members of our family.

Henry (1840-75) was registered at birth as Richard Henry but referred to as Henry on the census of 1841 and again in 1851, when he was an errand boy. In 1861 he was a labourer, living as a lodger at 65 Hare Street (now Bacon Street) in Bethnal Green.

According to the 1871 census Henry Percey [sic] (cellarman) and Charlotte BENNETT (general servant) both worked at a coffee house at 167 Bishopsgate, in the City of London. This site has been completely redeveloped and is now numbered 135. By a happy coincidence it is now a branch of Caffe Nero, described as ‘probably the best of the Capital’s coffee shop chains’.

On 15 December 1872 Henry and Charlotte were married at St James Curtain Road, even though neither of them lived in the parish. This may have represented the last manifestation of Pracy clan loyalty before increased family sizes and the expansion of the railway network made it impossible for them all to keep in touch. Henry Pracey (corn carrier) said he was the son of John Pracey carman deceased. A son, Henry, was born in 1873 but Henry senior died in 1875.

I could find no further mention of Charlotte, but at St Paul’s Clerkenwell on 8 November 1891, Henry Patrick son of Henry Patrick Pracey deceased married Rhoda Jane WARD (1873-1957). I thought that perhaps Charlotte was remarried to a Mr Patrick, but I could not find her or Henry on the 1881 or 1891 census under either surname. I therefore have no idea where the Patrick came from.

On my badly written copy of the certificate his surname looks like Peacey and that was how it was indexed by the GRO. It seems to be a coincidence that the surname was misspelt twice - Percey in 1871 and Peacey in 1891. There can be little doubt that he is our man, for on the 1901 census he gave his name as Henry Pracey, his birthplace as the City of London and his age as 29. He was then a labourer at an iron foundry.

Rhoda was described on the 1891 census as a ‘trim bead worker’. She was the daughter of John Ward, a street musician.

Most of us Pracys sometimes have our name spelt with an extra E, and have to correct it. Henry senior and Charlotte were illiterate, but were consistent in using the Pracey spelling. Henry junior continued that tradition, and his branch of the family is the only one to do so regularly.

Henry and Rhoda had nine surviving children:

Gertrude Rhoda (b. 1892) served in the First World War as a worker in Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps. She emigrated to Australia after the war.

Violet May (b. 1896) married William A MORSE in 1914.

Florence Elizabeth (b. 1897) married Albert V PIZZEY in 1914.

Henry Patrick (1899-1945). In the First World War he - or possibly his father - served as a private in the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, giving his name as Patrick H Pracey.

Albert Edward (1901-1985).

Ruth Maud (1905-1956).

Lewis Baden Ward (1908-78) became a ship’s steward. He appeared on the New York passenger lists for the Pareora in 1930, for the Aquitania in 1943 and for the Ile de France in 1944, when he was the chief engineer’s steward.

Gwendolen O (b. 1911).

Margaret E (b. 1918).

Henry died in 1955 and Rhoda in 1957 so they were married for over 63 years, the longest-lasting marriage in our family that I have traced.

21. Richard Pracy (1817-1852) and his descendants

Richard married Emma GOULD (1818-1879) in 1840 at St John the Baptist, New North Road. The church served the parish created in 1828 to cater for the needs of the rapidly growing Hoxton New Town area. However, bride and groom both lived in the ancient parish of St Leonard’s Shoreditch from which the new one had been carved, so I don’t know why they chose to be married at St John the Baptist. Unusually for the Pracys at the time, they seem not to have had their children baptised, so the church was not used for any other family event.

Emma’s late father Benjamin had a scavenger’s business, which was inherited by her brother John. He paid rates on three houses, stables, shed and harness room, so he probably owned the property and was perhaps moderately prosperous. Such small business premises were often named after their owners, and it was called Gould’s Yard. The business was there from 1840 to 1855 at least. It was situated on the south side of Worship Street, at or near the corner with Long Alley. On the 1841 census John was described as a carman and scavenger, so it is likely that Richard worked with or for his brother-in-law. Emma and Richard were then at Providence Place near the north-east junction of present-day Scrutton Street and Clifton Street, but soon afterwards they moved into Gould’s Yard, where they remained for the next ten years.

In 1851 or 1852 the family moved across Shoreditch to 16 Reliance Square, near New Inn Street where Richard’s cousin Joseph William had his soap business. For most of his life Richard followed the family trade of carman, although on his death certificate in 1852 he was described as an ostler. This probably indicates that he changed his job as well as his address.

In November 1852 Richard died prematurely of phthisis, aged only 35. A year later Joseph William’s elder brother George Thomas, who lived at nearby 25 Holywell Lane, died of the same disease. Perhaps a combination of unhealthy living conditions and London fogs accounted for both of them. Both houses were probably pulled down in 1860, but that would have been to make way for the North London Railway rather than because they had been condemned as unfit.

Emma has not been traced on the 1861 census but may well have been living in Hare Street (now Bacon Street) in Bethnal Green, for in the early 1860s her children Eliza and John Gould were both married from addresses there.

By 1871 Emma was at 7 Black Lion Yard Whitechapel, off Old Montague Street. This was an ancient and cosmopolitan area well known for sugar refining, and only a few years earlier no. 7 had been occupied by a German sugar baker[33]. In the 1880s Black Lion Yard was settled by Jewish immigrants from Europe, and became notorious as one of the haunts of Jack the Ripper.

Emma had five surviving children, the youngest of whom probably was not Richard’s.

Eliza (b. 1841) married Richard Ralph FOX at St James Curtain Road in 1862. Richard came from near Stoke-on-Trent and was a cabinet maker. He had no known connection with the Foxes who Ann and Rebecca Pracy married earlier in the century, even though according to the 1871 census he and Eliza rather curiously had two daughters called Rebecca. One aged eight was staying with her grandma Emma Pracy, and one aged nine months with her parents. By 1881 Richard and Eliza had five children, none of them called Rebecca.

John Gould (1843-1915) was at various times a smith, a stoker (described by Tony Robinson in his TV series as among the worst jobs in the world), a sailmaker, a bricklayer and a labourer. At St James Curtain Road in 1864 he married Emma CRISPIN (1846-1907), who was born in Spitalfields. She was the daughter of William Crispin, a dyer, and Sophia CONNEW, who were married at St Leonard’s Shoreditch in 1828. I think it must just be a coincidence that she had the same name as the ‘almshouse nurse’ of Elizabeth Jane Pracy in 1871.

John and Emma’s eldest child was born in St George’s in the East in 1868, but by 1870 they were living in Bethnal Green. On the 1871 census they were listed at Union Row (now Morpeth Street[34]), about a mile east of the other Bethnal Green Pracys. By November 1872 they were back in the Pracy heartland at 18 Selby Street, half a mile north-west of Black Lion Yard.

Around 1878 John and Emma moved to 28 Wellesley Street Mile End, a house shared with two other families. Later they were at 15 Wellesley Street (possibly the same house renumbered), where they remained. Booth’s survey described the street in 1898 as ‘Mixed. Some comfortable others poor’.

Unlike his sisters and his wife, John was able to sign the marriage register rather than just make a mark. The 1870 Education Act meant that such illiteracy became increasingly the exception. Rather strangely, however, he marked rather than signed the birth certificate of his youngest son in 1882. Tom Wood suggests that a similar case may have been caused by ‘some sort of temporary incapacity’[35]. If family tradition is correct, John Gould’s ‘temporary incapacity’ could well have been caused by drink, but of course there are other possible explanations.

John Gould and Emma had six surviving children.

Emma Sophia (b. 1868) was presumably named after her two grandmothers. She married Henry (Harry) SAULTER in 1887.

Elizabeth (b. 1870) married Herbert William PORTER in 1899, and they had three children. She was known in the family as Lizzy, which was the name given on the 1871 census rather than the more formal Elizabeth.

John (1872-1944) was my grandfather.

Around 1889 John began working for Slater’s Detective Agency in London, as a private enquiry agent. In 1890 he travelled from Glasgow to New York, presumably in connection with this work. On the 1891 census, he was shown as being a rent collector in Leeds. He was staying at a temperance hotel, which fits in with his later abstemiousness as a possible reaction against his father’s habits. John was listed at Wellesley Street as ‘travelling’, but respondents sometimes misunderstood instructions and included people who weren’t there on census night.

Agents were advised to adopt an alias shorter than their real name. John therefore dropped the C of Pracy and - in an unconscious echo of our Wiltshire roots - changed the P to a B, so was known as John Bray. My father always said that as a young man his father had spent some time in France and we assumed that this was as a commercial traveller, but it would perhaps make more sense that he went there on enquiry work. Herbert W Porter was also a private enquiry agent, which may well be how he met Lizzy. His son Herbert George Porter (Bert) was the only cousin my father kept in touch with, and most of the early family memories come from my conversations with the two of them.

In 1901 a ‘gentleman’ named Hugh Charles Knowles instructed the agency to help a woman named Kate Pollard obtain a divorce. ‘John Bray’ and other detectives were instructed to go to Plymouth, where Thomas Pollard was living, and try to catch him in a relationship with a prostitute. The agency’s solicitor, Albert Osborn, and ‘Bray’ persuaded her to sign a document stating that she had gone with Pollard, even though she was not certain of his identity.

Their methods amounted to entrapment, in which the prime movers were the principal of the agency, Henry Scott alias Slater, and Osborn. After one conversation between the two, ‘Bray’ told a colleague: ‘I am not at all happy over what he [Osborn] has shown you. He and the captain are playing it up too thick, and there will soon be an end to this dirty work’. He then went on to refer to ‘a terrible twisting’ he once got at the hands of a well-known counsel.

Finally in 1904 Osborn and Slater with four of the detectives including my grandfather found themselves in the dock at the Old Bailey, charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. The case was considered important, for two of the leading barrister-politicians of the age appeared at the trial: Sir Edward Carson prosecuted on behalf of the Treasury, and Sir Rufus Isaacs defended Slater. The outcome was that the manager of Slater’s, George Henry, was imprisoned for 12 months, two of the detectives for six and my grandfather for three. The judge commented: ‘With regard to Pracy, he was the least guilty, but I do not know that that is saying very much’.

When I described the birth in Wales of Florence May as a skeleton in the Pracy cupboard, I little thought that I would find an even bigger one in my own branch of the family. It is because so many people uncover unexpected episodes like this, that I have long suggested that family history should carry a government health warning. Having said that, I don’t think it’s just family loyalty that makes me feel my grandfather was very unfairly treated.

I’m far from being an old-fashioned Marxist class warrior, but it seems to me that this case displays the Edwardian class system at its worst. The three men that instigated the whole scandal, who were of higher social status, got away scot-free: the prosecutions of the owner and the solicitor were dropped, and the client never even came to court. I don’t know the background of the manager but the three detectives, who came from humbler origins, were punished for nothing worse than over-zealous carrying out of instructions from their social superiors. The only good thing to have come out of it was that the agency deservedly went out of business.

The whole case was reported in immense detail by The Times, which is now on-line. I’m working on a more detailed account of the case, and hope to have it ready for the 4th edition of the Pracy family history.

I’m very proud of the way in which my grandfather overcame this awful experience and rebuilt his life. He married Emily Mary Ann VISICK at Stepney parish church in July 1905, but suffered further tragedy when she died a year later giving birth to Emily Mary (Bess). On the marriage certificate he was described as a confectioner, and he remained a shopkeeper for the rest of his life.

From 1906-1914 John had a shop at 176 High Street Walthamstow, opposite the Palace Theatre. The theatre featured many well-known music hall stars, and was apparently quite a money-spinner for the business. It cannot have been easy for John to bring up the baby on his own and run a busy shop. It seems that for a while his parents helped out, because when Emma died on 28 May 1907 their address was given as 176 High Street.

John was remarried in 1910 at West Ham Registry Office to Gertrude Louisa WATCHAM (1880-1974). Her father could scarcely have had a profession more appropriate to his name, for he was a policeman. She came from Halstead in Essex, and lodged at 5 Clifton Avenue, off the High Street. She had my father, John Weston (‘Jack’), in 1912. My grandfather was advised to move to somewhere more rural for her health, so in 1914 he took a grocer’s shop at 1 Kings Head Hill Chingford. She lived to be 94 so the move evidently did the trick.

In 1928-9 my grandmother’s brother Montague was the last person to serve a full year as Chairman of Walthamstow Urban District Council, shortly before the town was incorporated as a borough. Montague Watcham was a Labour councillor and my father recalled that at one election, presumably in 1929, some of his friends who were Young Conservatives decided to ‘go and heckle old Watcham’. Dad was greatly relieved that Uncle Mont was his mother’s brother, so the different surname meant that he did not have to reveal the relationship. Another brother, Weston Watcham, had a fancy cake shop in Walthamstow High Street.

John was rather cunning in the way he had the shop listed in Kelly’s directories. In the Chingford edition, which went to local people, it was shown as a grocer’s. In the Essex edition, which went to outsiders who might struggle up the long steep hill on a hot day, it appeared as a refreshment room. According to Kelly’s, some time between 1924 and 1929 he reverted to his original trade and the shop became a confectioner and tobacconist’s. John was apparently the first Pracy tradesman to have a telephone, being listed in the London directory from 1932 onwards. He remained at the shop until his death in 1944.

My father took over the shop when he returned from the war and ran it until the late 1960s. On one occasion a customer introduced himself as another Pracy and they had quite a chat, but if my father found out exactly who he was I don’t remember him telling me. It shows how much the family has been scattered that they were total strangers.

The shop was housed in the front room of a cottage that is shown on Chapman & André’s Essex map of 1774. I always enjoyed going to that old place, and it undoubtedly contributed to my later love of history. I distinctly remember that it was, appropriately, there rather than at home in our 1938 maisonette that I asked my mother ‘What is history?’ ‘Kings and queens and what happened in the past,’ she replied. Not bad, considering that historians have written whole books attempting to answer the question, but she could equally well have replied ‘It’s all around you in this cottage’.

Albert (1874-1891) was often spoken of by my grandfather and Lizzy to my father and Bert Porter, and I think the family felt his loss greatly. The 1891 census listed no occupation for him, so he was perhaps already seriously ill.

Arthur William (1879-1941) was a warehouseman in 1901. He took over the Walthamstow shop from John until 1921 at least, and around 1922 he was living near him in Chingford. He married Ethel RANDALL (1895-1941) in 1914, and adopted her son Walter. The 1921 Walthamstow electoral register shows him as living with a Stella, which may have been a pet name for Ethel, although it would be unusual for it to appear on an official document. In 1921 he bought a plot of land in Oakhurst Gardens Chingford for £1100, although he apparently sold it six years later for £100 less. They later moved to Camberwell, where they were the only Pracy family to be wiped out in an air raid, although one or two individuals may also have been killed.

George Thomas (1882-1966) was a porter in 1901 but by the time of his marriage in 1907 was a tram driver. His bride was Eliza Matilda WEBB (1885-1954), a ‘tent machiner’ who was known as Lylee[36]. She was the daughter of William Francis Webb, a house decorator, and Henrietta WRIGHT. George and Eliza had two daughters, Ada Eliza V (b. 1909) and Mildred E (b. 1911). In 1921 they were living next door to Arthur, at 178 High Street Walthamstow, but later in the 1920s they moved to the Romford area. Thus the brothers who had remained close for at least 40 years scattered to three different London suburbs.

Richard (1845-1901) was described in 1871 as a carman but in 1872 and 1881 as a general labourer. In 1882 he was a marine store dealer at 9 Scott Street Canning Town, which was also his home. In 1891 he was a labourer at a gas works, almost certainly Beckton. On the 1901 census he was listed as a ‘stationary engine driver’. For more information about this occupation, type the phrase into Google. The gist of it is that he probably operated a steam engine or boiler, perhaps at the gas works.

On Christmas Day 1872 Richard married Sarah HORTON (1850-1927), sister of his sister Emily’s husband, at Christ Church Spitalfields. They were living in the parish at Pelham Street (now Woodseer Street), but unlike their siblings and cousin Henry Pracey chose not to use St James Curtain Road – perhaps an early sign that the various branches of the family were about to go their separate ways.

Richard and Sarah had eight children and over 30 grandchildren.

William (1873-1918) was an engineer. He married Mary A MUNDAY (Polly, 1877-1928) in 1903 and they had two children – Mary Phoebe Dorothy (b. 1906) and William George (1907-1985).

Richard (1875-1946) is probably the Richard Pracy who in the First World War served as a private in the Royal West Kent Regiment. In 1898 he married Eliza Ann TICKNER (Minnie, 1879-1932) and they had seven surviving children – Annie Flora (b. 1898), Eliza Ann (b. 1900), Richard William (1903-1962), Emily Sarah (b. 1906), Violet H (b. 1911), Doris L (b. 1912), Eva B (b. 1914). I think he is the most likely candidate to be ‘R Pracy’ who was listed in the 1932 London phonebook at 53 Edward St, E13.

Annie Maria (1877-1962) never married. She may have been the woman listed as ‘A M Pracy’ who traveled from Liverpool to New York in 1906.

George (1881-1934) enlisted in the Royal Field Artillery in 1899 and in 1901 was a gunner stationed at the Cavalry Barracks in Leeds, Yorkshire. He served in the Boer War and on the North-West Frontier in India. He returned to England and lived in army barracks at Colchester and Aldershot. In the First World War he served at the Battle of Mons and was very proud of being one of the Old Contemptibles. He earned various medals and decorations including the Belgian Croix de Guerre, and in December 1917 was mentioned in dispatches. He rose to the rank of Regimental Sergeant Major and stayed in France and Belgium until June 1919.

In 1910 George married Isabella Louisa Mary WOOD (1883-1935), who before her marriage was a nurse. They had three children in England – Doris N L (b.1911), George R (b. 1912), Albert J (b. 1914). In 1921 they emigrated to Australia where (Malcolm) Keith was born in 1922. He and his daughter Ann KEATING provided some very helpful notes about their branch of the family, some of which are incorporated here. George became Caddy Master at the exclusive Killara Golf Club in Sydney.

James (1884-1916) worked as a sugar refiner. He married Maud Gertrude Victoria STROWLGER in 1906 and they had two surviving children – Albert Edward J (b. 1910) and Douglas Kennedy (1913-1995). James became a corporal in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps but like his distant cousin Henry Reginald was a casualty of the Somme. He and many others were killed on 15 July 1916 and buried in a nearby field. Shortly afterwards the Germans bombarded the field and no trace of their bodies was ever found. They and over 73,000 other untraced soldiers were commemorated on the Thiepval memorial, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens. In 1926 Maud was remarried, to Alfred COLLINS.

Albert Edward (1889-1969) married Ellen CUTLER (Nell, 1890-1975) in 1910 and they had five surviving children – Annie S (b. 1911), Ellen L (b. 1912), Emily E (b. 1919), Vera D (b. 1926), Ronald James (1932-69). In the First World War he served as a driver in the Royal Field Artillery.

Walter (1891-1973) married Alice THORNTON (1889-1926) in 1913 and they had five surviving children – Walter J (1914-72), Albert E (b. 1919), Alice (b. 1921), Doris H (b. 1923), Rosaline E (b. 1925). After Alice’s death he married a widow, Kate DAVIS née BURLES (1890-1976), and they had Eileen and Kathleen. In the First World War he, like his brother, was a driver in the Royal Field Artillery.

Emily Sarah (b. 1894) married Albert S SEARL in 1915 and they had three children.

Emily (b. 1849) was a machinist dressmaker. In 1871 she was living with her mother at 7 Black Lion Yard, and their neighbours at No. 3 were the HORTON family. Later in 1871 Emily married George Horton at St James Curtain Road.

Maria was probably born in 1855, although her birth was apparently not registered. According to the IGI she was baptized in that year at Shoreditch but I have grave doubts about this so-called information, for which no source is given. None of her siblings was baptized so it would be surprising if she had been. I could not find her in the registers of the then seven Shoreditch churches or the workhouse. Maria was recorded on the 1871 census as aged 15 and living with her mother, so some over-zealous ‘researcher’ may have invented a baptism that ‘should’ have happened. Since Richard had died in 1852, he was presumably not Maria’s father. She was married at St George’s in the East in 1884, probably to Edward HALL.

The First World War and after

By 1914 the Pracys had begun to move out of east London. Rosey and Thomas Richard had gone to Australia and had many descendants. Three of Edmund the carman’s daughters settled south of the river, as did Edward John and his first cousin Joseph William (1851-1914) later in the 19th century. George Henry went up to Chester and some of his family stayed in the north-west, while his brother Frederick and his children Sydney and Hilda emigrated to New Zealand. Several men went into the Army and their duties took them further afield. They usually returned to London, although George and Isabella later emigrated to Australia, as did Gertrude Rhoda Pracey. Mary Ann’s work as a domestic nurse took her to various parts of the Home Counties, and by 1901 the orphaned younger daughters of Thomas Richard the soap maker had followed suit.

Despite these departures, the Pracy clan continued to be centred on east London. Some of the older generation remained in the East End at Shoreditch, Bethnal Green and Mile End. Most families moved out with the railway into the suburbs of West and East Ham, Ilford, Leyton, Walthamstow, Tottenham, Hackney and Islington.

After the First World War Dr Douglas Pracy moved to Atherstone in Warwickshire and Joseph William (1884-c.1930) to Elham in Kent. Everyone else remained in the same east London suburbs. In the late 1930s several families went to the Romford area, perhaps encouraged by the building of arterial roads and the growth of car ownership.

It was only after the Second World War that the Pracys really began to spread out, although most stayed in southern England to bring up their families. By the 1990s Pracys were to be found in Norfolk, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Essex, Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, Dorset, Devon and even Wiltshire, close to our roots in Bishopstone. Locations recorded on death certificates suggest that some moved north in retirement.

Many children born during and after the First World War do not subsequently appear in marriage or death registers, suggesting changing social patterns, longer lives and more emigration than before. I suspect that in 2107 a Pracy seeking to trace our family history in the 20th century will have a far more difficult job than I had for the 19th.

Postscript

In the 1970s, when we were young and fit, my wife and I did much of the donkey work for this history. We heaved hundreds of volumes of GRO births, marriage and deaths indexes at Somerset House. We had to ensure that the books did not fall over the balcony and down five floors, thereby necessitating the issue of another death certificate. We often were almost the only people there, and paid 37½p for a certificate. We trawled through original parish registers at the Guildhall and the Greater London Record Office. We squinted at scratchy census films on poor-quality readers in the Black Hole of Portugal Street, otherwise known as the Public Record Office.

We belonged to a family history society, but had no idea that other Pracy descendants were doing much the same sort of thing and finding the same information. We typed out all our findings and compiled little hand-written family trees of various branches of the family, but did not always grasp how they were related to one another. Now the Internet and genealogy software have transformed things out of all recognition. I am hugely indebted to Martin Hagger who, as well as including the Pracys on his website, converted the typewritten lists into splendid spreadsheets, available at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/martin.hagger1/groBM&Ds/Index.htm

Thirty years on, I have a BA in modern history and an MA in Local and Regional Studies. From September 2002 to December 2007 I was Local Studies Librarian at Vestry House Museum in Waltham Forest, where two branches of the family lived for most of the 20th century. Family history for me was then a bit of a busman’s holiday and so I didn’t do as much original research as I used to, although I enjoy writing and this narrative was a labour of love.

I hope this brief history will inspire you to research your own branch of the Pracy family. It deliberately finishes in the 1920s, but that is also the point at which written sources begin to be complemented by personal memories. Where I have written ‘and they had…children’, it may refer to you, your parents or grandparents. I’m grateful to everyone who responded to the first two published version with fresh information, and I will always be pleased to receive more.

Main sources

Good family historians are as conscientious as academic ones about giving their sources, but copious references would take up almost as much space as the text. I have therefore only given a few footnotes, which acknowledge direct quotations from other authors. Martin Hagger on the family tree gives full citations of sources for all births, marriages, deaths and other events. If you would like to know my source for a specific fact you are welcome to contact me. It will probably be one of the following:

Primary sources

GRO birth, marriage and death indexes and certificates.

IGI, Vital Records Index, National Burial Index.

Wiltshire Family History Society – transcriptions of Bishopstone parish registers and CD-ROM of marriage licence bonds.

Nimrod Wiltshire indexes - marriage, ‘varied’ and wills.

Websites for the Wheelwrights’, Dyers’ and Bakers’ London Livery Companies.

Registers for London parishes:

Christ Church Greyfriars Newgate Street (two marriages on Pallot’s index only)
St George in the East, Stepney
St Giles Cripplegate
St James Curtain Road, Shoreditch was opened in 1841, with 600 ‘sittings’ (seats). It was demolished in 1935 and the parish was united with St Michael’s Mark Street.
St Leonard’s, Shoreditch.
St Luke’s Old Street, Finsbury.
St Mark’s Old Street, Shoreditch was opened in 1848 with 350 sittings. It closed in 1937, when the parish was divided between St Leonard’s and St Michael’s.

Censuses 1841-1901 (some entries for 1881 and 1901 only checked on CD-ROM/online.)

Kelly’s and other trade directories.

Wills and administrations.

English Origins – apprenticeship records, teachers’ registrations 1870-1948.

The National Archive – passenger lists, First World War medal cards, attestations, and other military and naval records.

Secondary sources

PARKER, G I. An introduction to the history of Bishopstone. The author, 1985.

RICHARDSON, John. The annals of London. Cassell, 2000.

TAMES, Richard. Clerkenwell and Finsbury Past. Historical Publications, 1999.

TRUBSHAW, Bob. How to write and publish local and family history successfully. Heart of Albion, 2005.

Personal communications to Martin Hagger and/or me from Mandy Adams, Mike Booth, Rob Clark, Carol Climpson, Janice Eastment and Kevin Shaw, Bill Firth, Margaret Fisher, Pat Gerber, Suzanne Girot, Mike Jenner, Ann Keating and her father Keith Pracy, Marilyn Mason, Flick Miller, Noel Osborne, Gwendoline I Parker, Bonnie Parkins, Bruce and Maureen Pracy, David Leslie Pracy, John William Pracy (b. 1949), Mike Schmeer, Andrew Smith, Graham Smith, Clive Tolley, Margaret Usher.

If you would like to develop your own research on the Pracy family, or if you would like advice on how to go about it, you are welcome to contact me at d_pracy@hotmail.com

David Pracy, Nazeing, Essex. Third published version, December 2007

[1] ROUTH, Marigold. Amport: the story of a Hampshire parish. Quoted in The Family Historian, Feb 2005, p22.

[3] My thanks to Mrs GI Parker, who has researched the development of the church’s landholdings in Bishopstone. She has very kindly corrected my misunderstanding of this and some other aspects of the village’s history, and given some very useful new information.

[4] Transcribed by the Wiltshire Record Society and published in 2003.