MAYOR JOSEPH GIBBS

 

My great grandfather, Joseph, was born in a small cottage alongside the parish pump in the tiny village of Souldern, North Oxfordshire, son of clockmaker, Joseph, and his wife, Jane, daughter of the local Boddington farming family.

 

The couple were to have four sons and four daughters, but four died in infanthood and only two – Joseph and his sister, Ann, were to survive beyond their early twenties.

 

Joseph, born in 1843 was obviously a bright child and a great uncle, also Joseph, a member of the Plumb family, of Tredington, Warwickshire, left money for his education and he went on to study law – by the 1861 census he was living as a boarder at a house in Evesham, Worcestershire, where he was described as a solicitor’s conveyancing clerk.

 

Later as a young solicitor his work took him to Mildenhall in Suffolk and there, as my mother wrote: “He was received in the home of Charles Fox Youngman, a hard riding, etc, widowed gentleman farmer with snobbish tendencies and several daughters.”

 

According to the Gibbs family Bible, the surname was originally Youngerman, but this may have been changed to the name, Youngman, recorded in the census, where their address was shown as Elder House, West Row, Mildenhall.

 

My mother wrote: “Joseph was dressy and he was known as ‘Nellie’s little swell’, but he fell in love with the younger sister, Kitty, who had a theatrical nature and gave the Gibbses their ‘interesting’ but difficult nature.

 

“Kitty and her sisters used to go to hunt balls in Mildenhall and a room was taken for them at the hotel where they could change into their finery.”

 

On June 2, 1870 (by coincidence my brother’s Hugh’s birthday) Joseph and Kitty were married in some style at the neo-classical St John’s Wood Church in London, between Lord’s cricket ground and Regent’s Park and where nearly 100 years later the marriage of Paul and Linda McCartney was blessed.

 

The Youngman family obviously liked the church, because just over a year later on July 13, 1871, it was where Kitty’s sister, Fanny, married one Frederic Pawsey of Newmarket.

 

Joseph and his new bride moved to Newport, Monmouthshire, where his legal practice flourished and his wealth increased, leading him to go into property development, building cheap houses to rent and naming the streets after his children – a Gibbs Road still survives.

 

He also entered local politics as a Conservative representing the East Ward and in November, 1878 - the year he became the town’s chief magistrate - he was proposed as the next mayor, a suggestion that was opposed by some in view of his youth and the fact that he had only been on the council for two years, according to a detailed report in the Monmouthshire Merlin and South Wales Advertiser.

 

One councillor referred to suggestions of a secret meeting and attacked private wire-pulling to rig the election, saying he believed that “private friendships and business connections had had a great deal to do with the nomination.”

 

However Joseph was elected on a show of hands and, after donning the mayoral robes, acknowledged that while “his knowledge of municipal matters must necessarily be of a limited kind”, he was prepared to “devote his best energies, such as they were, to the discharge of the duties of the high position to which he had been raised.”

 

He went on to say he hoped the year ahead would be one of trade revival and that he thought that a railway connecting Newport with the “vast coal fields of the Rhondda valley” would be started very shortly.

 

Joseph said he believed that when the railway was completed the shipping and commerce of Newport would be increased greatly and their dock accommodation, large as it was, would become inadequate, so making the case for an extension of the town’s Alexandra Dock.

 

The winter of his year in office was one of the worst on record - snow still lay heavily on the ground in late February when Newport played Clifton (Bristol) at home, winning by one goal and a try to the visitors' nil.

 

The victory was marred by an outbreak of hooliganism after the game. According to the Star of Gwent: "Roughs and cultured mingling together pelted with snowballs old and young alike; Magistrates sober and staid; policemen officious and bumptious; the Clifton boys stalwart and muscular; children young and tender; all fell in for a share of the uncouth and unpleasant treatment. Snowballing may be invigorating and to some a pleasing pastime, but those unfortunate to be on the receiving end cannot be said to view it with much favour. The Magistrates and policemen in question did not admire the play, while the Clifton lads did not consider it a kindly welcome to Newport."

 

Mayor Joseph established a Newport Relief Fund and soup kitchens were provided for the needy. There were complaints that every hundred yards or so the public were accosted by men, women and children begging for alms. Coal stealing was on the increase and many children were involved. Magistrates, looking at the youth of the culprits before them, invariably treated them “leniently” and merely ordered them to undergo a short imprisonment in the cells and a whipping.

 

By this time Joseph’s home was the imposing Bryn Tegid Villa, in the wealthy Gold Tops district overlooking the town, and it must have become very noisy with the arrival of eight children – Archibald (Archie), Ethel (Dollie), Reginald, Raymond, Lionel, Mildred (Mim), Horace and Florence (Flo).

 

Joseph according to my mother was “too busy making money to interfere in domestic affairs” and would disappear to his club when he was not working, so the running of the household, which included servants and nursemaids, was left to Kitty, who was totally unable to control her eldest, Archibald.

 

My mother wrote: “Archie was spoiled and a bully. He was indulged by Kitty and terrified the other children, who hated him, except Reginald, who was his henchman and under his domination.

 

“My father, who never hated, hated Archie because he had seen him and Reginald take Raymond into a field and beat him nearly unconscious.”

 

The girls were sent to Lindisfarne school for the daughters of gentlemen in Oxford, run by their gifted Aunt Annie, who also cared for her mother, Jane, “who was looked down upon by the Gibbses” possibly because of her simple farming background.

 

It was there that Mildred met Emmy Wood, the daughter of a wealthy Sussex family, who lived in the mansion of Burletts, and started a friendship, which was to lead to her marrying Emmy’s brother, Hugh.

 

Meanwhile the boys were sent off to boarding school, but Archie ran away.

 

My mother wrote: “Kitty kept it from his father and he was not sent back. All the children spent their time quarrelling when they were at home. Archie would lock them in rooms and Kitty would let them out while he was away and lock them in before he came back. She made the girls slaves to the boys. Dollie was made to play the piano for hours on end to accompany Horace, who had a beautiful voice as a boy.

 

“Lionel was the only one his father could stand and took him out with him. He called him ‘the peacemaker’. Lionel used to find quiet corners away from the others where he could draw in peace. He was close to his brother, Raymond, and used to play doubles in tennis with him. He was also very protective towards his sisters, especially Mildred, who found him kind and gentle.”

 

My mother said her father was amusing and was known as Bogey because he told his brothers and sisters ghost stories at night.

 

“Kitty exaggerated everything and was very theatrical. She was fiercely protective of her brood and never forgave those who criticised them. The neighbours must have thought them pests. When they had silk worms, they stripped the neighbours’ Mulberry tree.”

 

My mother said that the children amused themselves like those in the later Edith Nesbit and Arthur Ransome books – “they had toy theatres and made up plays and charades. The whole family was involved in the church, where Horace sang as a boy chorister. “

  

By 1889 Joseph was working from Arlington Chambers, Newport, with another solicitor, John Moxon, as a junior partner, but his glittering career came to an abrupt end on February 27 of that year after he had caught a chill on a business trip to London.

 

The Newport newspaper reported: “The deceased had been unwell for about a week and remained indoors in the hope of shaking off the malady. He died in his sleep, or whilst he was dozing, during the absence of Mrs Gibbs and her children, who were taking part in the rehearsal at the New Theatre in a performance on behalf of the Children's Home. Immediately on her return she went to see her husband and was shocked to find him dead.”  

 

My mother wrote later that Joseph suffered from Bright’s disease, a kidney condition often linked with over-drinking, and this may have contributed to his death.

 

One obituary noted: “In politics Mr Gibbs was a staunch Tory, although a recent notable confession of his, made in a speech in the town council during a debate on the harbour commission question, showed that his mind had been influenced by misinterpretation in certain quarters of his action in regard to that matter.”

 

Joseph’s funeral, like that of his son, Lionel, 45 years later, was a lavish civic occasion according to one local newspaper  with the cortege procession from Gold Tops to the New Cemetery (now St Woolos Cemetery), being watched by large crowds as it passed through the streets of Newport.

 

The large official party included the mayor and aldermen with the borough maces draped in black crepe carried by two policemen with “a posse of constables under the command of Superintendent Sinclair”.

 

Joseph was laid to rest in a “coffin of polished oak with massive brass mountings” in an impressive tomb and it was here that he was joined by Kitty, when she died in 1924.

 

His will showed that he left in addition to property £29,439 16s 11d – a considerable sum in those days – so It was therefore extremely puzzling that 12 years later his widow had moved with her remaining children to Chepstow Road, Newport, a far cry socially from the dizzy heights of Gold Tops.

 

As my mother wrote: “The luxury life ended when Lionel was 14. They moved into a smaller house in the poorer end of town.”

 

Maybe there is a clue in the fact that they named their new home, Dieudonne, after a famous racehorse of the 1890s and indeed racing was the passion of my paternal grandfather, Raymond, until the end of his life.

 

Twenty-two years later the 1911 census revealed Kitty, the once mayoress of Newport, living as a lodger in a house in Priory Road, Great Malvern, near her daughters, Mildred, and Florence, and helping as a seamstress at Southlea, the preparatory school, run by her son-in-law, Hugh Wood.

 

Her late husband’s junior partner, John Moxon, who had been named as executor, told the family when she died that there was no money left as she had been living on the capital.

 

He in the meantime became an alderman, chaired the council’s Parliamentary, Electricity and Tramways Committees, as well as the Harbour Board, and was awarded the OBE and later knighted.

 

With my great grandfather gone, there was no one to keep the bully Archie in check and he became known in the family as “the heir”, strutting round saying: ‘It seems to me all this belongs to me.’”, although of course it did not.

 

Such was the siblings’ dislike of Archie, little knowledge of his later life was passed down to me by my mother, although she did say that he and Reginald had money spent on their education – “Archie to become a solicitor, but he failed the exams.”

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And I now know that Archie lived until he was ??85, dying in ?? London in ??1955 - I wonder if my parents were aware of his proximity or cared.

 

However thanks to newspaper archives on the internet I discovered the sad fate of his brother and ally, Reginald, who in April, 1894, like his father before him, had qualified, as a solicitor after being articled at the family firm under Mr Moxon.

 

The Newport Evening Express reported on December 22, 1897: “The disastrous effect of one rash act upon a man's career has once more been exemplified in a case from Cheltenham. A young solicitor of great promise, named Reginald Gibbs, son of a well-known solicitor and ex- Mayor of Newport (Mon.), was acting as managing clerk to a Cheltenham solicitor. One Sunday morning a dispute arose with his landlady, the caretaker of the office, and it was alleged that during the dispute Gibbs seriously assaulted the latter. Although he strenuously denied this, the magistrates fined him inclusive of costs (the sum is unclear). The conviction produced such an impression upon Gibbs that he immediately left his situation in Cheltenham, and looked in vain for other employment. His failure, the bitterness of which was increased by a sense of having been unjustly treated, made him very despondent. In a fit of melancholy he left his parents' home at Newport (still at Gold Tops), stating that he would go away in search of work, but on Tuesday his relatives identified the body of a man, which was taken a week ago from a reach of water between Oxford and Abingdon, as that of their son.”

 

So Reginald, who had supported his brother in the terrorising of the Gibbs household, ended his days, aged 24, in the cold, dark waters of the Thames with eight gold sovereigns in his pocket and was buried in the churchyard in nearby Radley, far from his Newport home.

 

It was a second devastating blow for the Gibbs family in less than ten years, but life moved on, as my mother wrote: "Dolly and Mildred were the first to marry – Dolly to Wallace Carey, a vicar’s son and Cambridge graduate, who came from an eccentric Brixham, Devon, family.”

 

My mother said that Wallace was only interested in languages – German and French. She wrote: “When his daughter was expected he was mad on Faust and had two telegrams prepared – one said: ‘Ich bin Faust’, the other ‘Ich bin Gretchen’, which is why his daughter, Margot was known as Gretchen in the beginning.”

 

She also revealed that a relative of Wallace, Lieutenant Jahel Carey, had been disgraced in 1879 when the Prince Imperial, heir to the French empire, was killed in Zululand , after he persuaded Lord Chelmsford, general-in-chief in South Africa, to allow him to see action.

 

The death of Napoleon Eugene Louis Jean Joseph Bonaparte, son of Emperor Napoleon III and the Empress Eugenie and godson of Queen Victoria and the Pope, made headlines around the world, ending as it did the final, faint hopes of his supporters for the eventual return of the empire to France.

 

But if my mother had had the help of the internet when she wrote this, she would have learned that although Lieutenant Carey was court-martialled for failing to ride to the rescue when the prince foolhardily headed off on horseback to find the Zulu army with just five soldiers and an African guide, he was later pardoned when it was decided that the surviving three men had been insufficient to confront a large force of the famed warriors.

 

The second Gibbs daughter, Mildred, married Percival Sinclair-Williams, the irresponsible son of a good but impoverished family.

 

My mother wrote: “He had TB and gave it to Mildred, who had to have a foot amputated. Lewis died of pneumonia, so Mildred, who would have liked to go on the stage, found herself a young disabled widow under 25. Her prospects were bleak and Lionel was a comfort to her.

 

“She later went to stay with her school friend, Emmy Wood, in the beautiful house of Burletts in Bramber, Sussex (now a Grade Two-listed mansion)."

 

The Wood family could trace their pedigree back to an ancestor, who lived at Swanwick Hall, Derbyshire, in 1510, as I discovered when I found their carefully hand-written family tree among my mother’s documents, and they were also related to Sir Oswald Moseley of blackshirt fame, through one of their not too distant cousins.

 

My mother wrote: “Emmy’s elder brother, Hugh, who was educated at Winchester and Oxford, had admired Mildred, but she had no eyes for him in the early days. He was very shy, but proposed to Mildred and they married and bought Southlea in Malvern and began a prep school.

 

“Mildred was a great help with the social side as she knew many people and found the first pupils. Florence and Kitty also came – Florence as matron and Kitty to do needlework and mending, etc (she made all the boys’ ties and I still have some of her crochet.)”

 

Hugh’s pupils included one Philip Chamberlain, later to become an Air Vice Marshal, who was a brilliant signals and electronics specialist and helped to develop the vital air interception radar used by night-fighters in the Battle of Britain.

 

He wrote to Mildred following Hugh’s death in 1954 that the loss of “the boss” was “bad news for the many nasty little boys he turned into reasonably sensible ones – certainly well-mannered and well-informed ones and started in their repertoire ways as useful citizens.”

 

He continued: “I have often described H.E. Wood as the best schoolmaster I have ever known.”

 

Burletts obviously held a special place in the hearts of Mildred and Hugh as in the Fifties, after moving from their retirement cottage in Great Comberton before the Second World War to an art deco house off Cumnor Hill, Oxford, they bought a picture-postcard cottage near Bramber in Beeding, Sussex.

 

It was there I visited them with my parents and brother in the late Forties and early Fifties and remember being taken on outings to the taxidermy museum of Walter Potter in Bramber, where we had to look at numerous displays of stuffed birds and animals, including cats and dogs dressed as nursery rhyme characters.

 

The museum had proved a major tourist attraction for the Victorians, but horrified me.