At the ending of his sentence, Samuel Wertheim was free. Banished from his home never to return, his parents lost contact with their eldest son, and eldest surviving child. As time passed, the Wertheim family of Bristol forgot Samuel had ever existed.
Yet in Ebbw Vale, the place where Samuel had decided to stop running, he had started afresh, and was employed as a boiler maker near the steelworks. Very soon after beginning his job here he met a haulier named Price Edwards, was 30 years Samuel’s senior, but had a daughter named Elizabeth who was seeking a husband. In no time at all, the two fell for one another. They also shared the same birthday – January 5, albeit Elizabeth herself was nine years Samuel’s junior. They married in November 1872 in Bedwelty Registry Office. In effect Samuel had lied his way into wedlock. The only person outside of Bristol who knew of his spell in prison were his parents. But perhaps in reality it was not that serious, theft. It would be a different story if he had hacked off limbs of prostitutes or tried to kill somebody. And so Samuel’s past died a death. From 1871 until 2007 it stayed hidden, until I began delving into his past. But this secret he kept would always be on borrowed time.
Elizabeth Edwards belonged to a non-conformist family, which means her baptism may well not exist, I certainly have had great difficulty tracking it down or that of her parents, Price Edwards and Sophia Thomas. The same applies to the children she had with Samuel. First, there was a son in 1874, and Moses he was named. Then on June 8 1876 there came Caroline Rebecca. Samuel had a reason to give a toss in life again. He had a conviction to provide, a man who in his own childhood had been neglected. He was beginning to build something and although he missed his parents he had his own family now. And to his great surprise, his youngest sister, Amelia, unknowing as to where her brother had gone, had found a man named Naylor and they had moved to Cardiff. It is with this that something truly amazing happened, according to family legend.
Amelia and her husband Frederick Naylor, who was a grocer with ambition in business, had decided to move to Cardiff, after they had married in Bristol in 1879. Their hearts were heavy and in a complete fluke, the details of which are lost, Samuel somehow found his sister on the other side of Wales. It amazes me to think simply “what were the chances of that happening?” But reunite they did, and Amelia (who had changed her name to Frances for an unknown reason” had some news for her brother. Back in Bristol, another family argument had taken place, and Moses had banished her too, for apparently refusing to marry a man without any religious ties, which paints Moses as a hypocrite, for he himself was not a practising Jew. Sometimes Moses Wertheim Snr seems to be a man who although completely devoted to his family seems to have had some disagreements with himself sometimes, and in turn punished his children for it. But not his wife. Never Caroline.
Amelia aka Frances also fled west, and after this revelation she had some bad news for Samuel. She told him that their father was beginning to weaken. His knees were weak and he was suffering with stomach cancer. The both, however, were both banished from visiting, which seems harsh. Moses was dying, so let us turn our attention back now, to Bedminster, Bristol…
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