Death and Diaspora: The Wertheim Story

Death and Diaspora : Part Eleven

2010-06-13T16:09:00.000+01:00

Caroline’s depression in 1880/1 had undoubtedly shaken the family standing. She was now a very frail woman, grey and withered. She had, in these brief months, gone through a sad transformation at the end of which she had gone from being a graceful eagle to a timid sparrow. The heartache she endured too, by the actions of Samuel her now only surviving son, had caused a great rift in the family, as her late husband Moses reciprocated his anger onto his younger children, punishing them in his absence. But Moses’ death in April 1880 left a hole in Caroline’s heart deeper than any reconciliation could fill.

Samuel, however, was a busy man himself. He had his own family now, which was growing. He and his wife had produced more siblings for Moses born 1874, and Caroline born 1876. In February 1881 came James Wertheim, and later that year in November came Samuel Henry. Then, finally two years later came Thomas. But Samuel was about to experience an unknown grief, and a heartbreak of his own, when on the birth of Thomas in 1883, his wife Elizabeth haemorrhaged in their home in Ebbw Vale. Samuel and his young children watched in horror. There was so much blood, Samuel sent the children upstairs to avoid some sort of mental implications on them, but the outcome it seems had already been decided. Elizabeth died very soon after, whilst Thomas was merely a day old. She was thirty-three years old, and died on April 15, and the Wertheim’s mourned yet another life cut short.

Samuel felt alone. Exhausted by a frail enthusiasm to keep his family afloat, he often wandered at night whilst leaving his children in the house, with Moses and Caroline keeping watch, though they were barely children themselves. It is interesting how this family seemed to cope with death, or rather, not cope. The deaths of many children had taught Moses and Caroline harsh truths about life and poverty. Yet, when it came to the end of a life longer lived than a child’s, they seem to be a family who find that very difficult to deal with. And as the remaining children grew up, the Wertheim’s of Bristol dispersed into their own collective pockets.

Samuel was still grieving though, and in the autumn of 1883 he received a letter from his brother-in-law, Bart Gidley, telling him that should he be willing, his mother wished to see him and the grandchildren she still had not met. Withered by grief himself, tired of old grudges and in need of a piece of home, he agreed, and Samuel took his children back to Bristol for a “holiday”, sometime in late 1883. This comes from a family relative who says she can remember her granny Caroline talking about going to see her granny shortly after her own mother died. It therefore must be the case, that Samuel had settled his old ways, and had made peace with his mum after almost thirteen years. Blood he thought, would always be thicker than water in the end. In this case the tragic happening is that somebody’s end had to manifest in order for him to see it. In a small way this teaches me that no matter what disagreements I may have with my own parents, they still brought me into this world. I am still bound to them for life and beyond.

The holiday was a bittersweet one for Samuel. Seeing his mother in such a weak disposition added to his pain and disappointment with life. He was now a man who sought a legacy, a real turn around. Sadly, he would never get it. But when talking to his mother and visiting his fathers grave he must have been overcome with regret at the muggings and the robberies he had committed, even if they were ever to help his family in dilute poverty. Who knows?

This was actually the last time Samuel saw his mother, even though it was the first time in over a decade. She was so delighted to see her grandchildren I probably could not describe the moment, so I shall refrain. It must have been a moment of happiness in amongst such a bleak and pale-toned family. But Samuel and Caroline had made their peace, and it was just as well. Around eight months later, Caroline suffered a stroke, when she was roughly sixty-six years old. But she was not alone. She was of course living with her daughter Rebecca, and her husband Bart. With them she woke, and slept, and she was as comfortable as she could have been, given her paralysis. When she was ready, she passed from this life into another, and was reunited with Moses. Her death certificate states that Caroline died 126 years ago today, on June 13 1884. It also states she was 64 years old, which must be incorrect because this would place her birth around 1820, and she was baptised in 1817, on the same day as her sister Hannah. So she is more likely to have been approaching her 70’s.

Caroline was buried in Arnos Vale Cemetery, in a plot shared with a man I have never heard of. His name was Frederick Anderson. I have yet to confirm whether or not this grave has a headstone. It is one of the largest cemeteries in the country.

With Caroline’s passing, this story in Bristol ends, in most parts. She is without a doubt another example in my Family Tree of a woman whose strength can only be described as fierce, if not unrelenting. With her death, Bart and Rebecca moved out of Windsor Terrace, and into Green Street. The Wertheim story now moves solely to Wales, and I will continue to tell the story of Samuel and in particular his daughter, Caroline. Caroline born 1876, is my great, great grandmother, and had an interesting story of her own to tell.

That in mind, Samuel’s life was not done with yet. His odd actions had by no means not ended!

Death and Diaspora : Part Ten

2010-05-23T22:52:00.003+01:00

Events in the 1870’s had marked the Wertheim family. It had also changed them. With Samuel’s activities and brushes with the law that spanned a decade and a half, Moses turned on his son, and had banished him. Caroline seems to have not had a say in this action, despite the two being devoted and closer than most couples were, and even are today. This is not hyperbolic.

Furthermore, Samuel had married, and had produced children with his wife Elizabeth. But Amelia had also been banished and had come into contact with her brother Samuel again. She brought bad news, that their father was terminally ill, and that their brother Baruch had died too, something I forgot to mention in my previous posting. He had died of a ruptured bowl…not very pleasant at all. This left Samuel the only male Wertheim left and after Baruch’s death there were only three male Wertheim’s belonging to this family in the United Kingdom, one of which was near death. The name was in danger of dying out.

But Moses was not a bitter man. He relinquished his extradition of Samuel and wished to have him come home to say his goodbyes. Samuel then appears to have made the critical decision to not return. He did not wish to see his father, not after their past, despite him, in the grand scheme of things, being the one in the wrong. Yet the decision was made, and Samuel remained in Bristol. This also meant he refused to introduce his parents to their first two grandchildren. Whatever the reason, it remained true in practice, and he never saw his father again.

For Moses was now, a very ill man. His cancer of the stomach had spread into his legs and he could not walk. He was bedridden and uncomfortable, in great pain and quiet distress. Caroline feared for his life, and so did he. Amelia was summoned back to Bedminster and without Samuel; she visited her father at 50 Windsor Terrace. The scene was sombre. The great dream that had brought Moses to Britain had manifested to be everything he did not wish for. The family he wished for, and that they should grow up and old, marry and be successful…had barely survived at this point. Five children of fourteen remained, with inclusive of those five had gone abroad. Only the remaining two visited him, and so he cherished the time he had left, as Caroline looked on, like a wilting flower about to lose its head. But her pain, she kept locked away. By spring 1880, she knew that she would lose her husband in a matter of weeks.

But Moses kept on going, prolonging the inevitable, and Samuel was once again invited back to Bristol. He refused again. The lapsed Jew had grown very old now, although seventy-four, he appeared as if eighty. His beard had calmed to grey and so had his hair. The fight lasted for another three months, and on April 24 1880, he slipped into unconsciousness, much to Caroline’s distress. But the final hours of their life together were transpiring before them on their bed in Windsor Terrace.

Moses passed away some time later. Caroline’s heart broke immediately.

Following the silence of Moses’ breathing, Caroline was thrown into a fit of hysterical wailing. She fell to her knees as she clasped her husband and buried her head in his chest. The doctor that had been sent for, together with Rebecca, her husband Bart, and her sister Amelia, attempted to calm her down, which eventually they did, but the woman was clearly devastated and all the pain she had endured during her life suddenly rushed out. And her grief was total. After forty-three years of marriage, the man with a dream had gone before her. All she had left now were her daughters. She thought that perhaps Samuel would come back one day, but he did not. Moses was buried two days later in St Phillip’s Cemetery, Bristol. Today, however, the location has been lost, and the stone has long gone too, if there was one. The beginning and end of Moses’ journey on earth will remain a mystery now, for eternity. But at least I know the area where he lies.

After the death of her husband, Caroline broke up. Emotionally and physically she became drained. Her hair turned grey in weeks, she refused to eat and her sleep was disturbed by an ode of cognition that she seems to demonstrate, as if ritual. After her daughter Amelia returned to Wales, Rebecca and Bart Gidley moved in to Windsor Terrace to be with their mother. But she continued to deteriorate. For months after Moses’ death, Caroline would often lock herself in her room, and insert a handkerchief through the lock to stop her daughter from getting in. On one occasion she began hallucinating that Rebecca in fact wanted to kill her. She began waking up in the middle of the night, screaming “Murder!” and that she had seen ghosts and fairies. She would spend hours, gazing out of the bedroom window, rocking back and forth on her chair, back and forth, back and forth, as if somehow, she thought it would bring Moses back. She somehow thought, if she minded about him enough, he would see her. Everything about this strong woman fell apart about her. So Rebecca decided she needed help.

What happens next, I find hard to comprehend, but it did happen. Caroline was seen by a doctor and he concluded that she was a lunatic. This decision recorded, she was taken to the Stapleford Lunatic Asylum, and labelled a Lunatic there. Rebecca had done all she could have possibly done, but on January 27 1881 it became too much. Caroline spent five months in Stapleford asylum, alone, cold with winter’s chill, and silent with grief.

However sad and lonely Caroline felt, however lost she seemed, she was not. The staff in Stapleford genuinely helped her recover from the death of her husband. She still missed him like hell, and on occasion she still broke down into tears, but they had saved her from insanity, maybe even suicide. Who knows? They kept her on a diet of beef tea and arrowroot, and after she began to sleep whole nights through, and talk again, she could peacefully talk to people about her husband. She seems to have rediscovered her strength, in what was arguably the biggest test of her life. If she had lost Moses whilst her children were young, things may have been very different, but that should not be contemplated really. What’s the use, after all?

Things briefly got better for Caroline. She moved back in to her home, which was now under Bart Gidley’s name. Things began to settle, and had it not have been for Rebecca and Bart, this temporary bout of dementia may well have killed her. She started smiling again and times moved on. But still she heard not from her son, over in Wales. Mind you, he was a man occupied too…

Death and Diaspora - Part Nine

2010-05-19T18:12:00.001+01:00

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…

Death and Diaspora : Part Eight

2010-04-28T19:08:00.000+01:00

In April 1855, the Wertheim’s were verging on poverty. Samuel, feeling neglected by his mother who had been in constant attendance of her ill children, had left him essentially to the discipline of his father, who was always out on the streets working. Samuel decided to turn to the other side of the law.

Aged just 14, one spring evening just before closing, bootmaker Mr Clarke was out the back of his shop polishing shoes. Samuel, and another lad, John Clements, seized the opportunity to sneak into the shop and steal a pair of boots. Once they had done this, they proceeded to a street stall where a woman was selling food. The boys bought some food but conned the woman into believing they had no money, and so they left the boots with her until they returned. They never did return, and on hearing the boots had been stolen the following week, the woman decided to go to the police. Samuel and John were charged with robbery.

Samuel, was sentenced to six months hard labour, and he was also whipped. He caused a great deal of disappointment amongst his parents, who punished him in their own way. He must have had a few nights without supper!

But Samuel did not stop there. When he was allowed to go free into the arms of his mother, his mind was already transfixed on his next move. In June 1856, he saw a woman walking alone by Temple Meads train station, and after a struggle with her, the teenager stole her purse, which was on her person. He then fled the scene. However, the woman identified the fifteen year old Samuel and he was detained by police, who charged him in late July. Samuel was acquitted in November. He had escaped justice, and this gave him thirst to steal again, and again, and again. His confidence had soared.

Soared so much in fact, that over the course of the next decade, Samuel would appear in court twice, and his crimes were reported in the Bristol Mercury as he was arrested for almost every one of them. Some he was acquitted of and on one occasion he was charged with stealing a piece of meat from the butcher. For this particular crime, he spent four years in prison, from 1857 to 1861, being released just before the census that year, and only days after his twentieth birthday. Yet, his biggest crime was yet to come. In 1866 Samuel plotted his defining crime. He would frequent the Seven Stars pub in Bristol, and plot with his friends exactly what and when this crime would be. They came to the conclusion that they would break into the slaughterhouse nearby, and steal some pork, which Samuel would hide in his house. “My father is a Jew” he would say. “He won’t eat the pork, nobody will suspect it’s there”. So, after the robbery took place in October 1866, the pork was hidden in the Wertheim household, with Moses and Caroline blissfully unaware. Samuel presumably hid it in the cellar, as the stench would have been noticed had it been hidden in the living quarters of the house. But Samuel did get caught, and on being caught cases were reopened of unsolved burglaries in the area. Samuel was tried for both crimes and found guilty. He was sentenced to seven years in prison, to be served in Kent. His father was so disgusted with this act of crime and offence to his religion, that he banished Samuel from ever entering into his house again. Samuel appears alone and miserable in the 1871 census, in Gillingham prison, Kent. What is odd about this, is that Samuel seems to think he is married!

Samuel’s antics had repercussions for the entire family. Moses felt hurt, cheated, and very disappointed in his own son. He moved the family from Temple to another area of the Bristol city, Bedminster. He became a Jeweller here and life was interestingly different once the move had been made. He saw his daughters marry too. Rebecca had married a Cooper named William Bartholomew Gidley, and they continued to live with Moses and Caroline. Louisa had married a man named Frederick Brandt, but remains a mystery, as she completely disappears! And Amelia, although she too was banished by her father for insensitivities towards his faith, was also banished. She fled to Wales and married a grocer turned businessman, Frederick Naylor.

Interesting it is therefore, that Samuel chose Wales as his new home. When he was released due to good behaviour in summer 1871, he fled west, going back to Bristol and, when he discovered his parents no longer occupied the house where he was banished from, carried on and seems to have cut them off. He had intended on going back, but they were nowhere to be seen. So he kept on going…right until he reached the Welsh border, and he crossed that too. He could be anybody he wanted to be, and he did exactly that. He looked for work as a Boiler Maker, and then a certain young woman seems to have caught his eye…

Death and Diaspora : Part Seven

2010-04-18T21:02:00.001+01:00

The Wertheim family had survived intact into the middle of the 1850’s. Although children were baptised and buried within weeks of each other, their one common fabric – their parents – had survived, and their mother was of still child bearing age. By 1855, the family were at a turning point in their fortunes. The loss of nearly all of her children had taken a toll on Caroline and Moses was struggling to be strong for his family and still earn a sustainable living. Having less children to feed meant money that was spare, was not ample. The family came into difficulty as Moses struggled to find work that could continue with security. He had spent the last two decades mourning the loss of his children and his wife was, although depressed, determined to have more children. Caroline knew she had to keep producing children. She fell pregnant again in 1855 to a boy, and he was named Solomon James Wertheim.

Solomon, in a seemingly awful display of inherited misfortune, did not survive long. He died just after he turned one, in 1856. Moses wanted another son, as he always feared his one male descendant, Samuel, who was now fourteen, would follow his siblings to the grave, and the Wertheim name would die out in a very short time. He craved legacy, and hoped his son could provide it. Therefore, when Caroline gave birth for the twelfth time on April 4 1857, Moses and she were very happy that Caroline had given birth to twin boys. They were given traditional Jewish names, Baruch and Aaron. Aaron died very soon after birth, but Baruch survived. He was a healthy baby, and the Wertheim collection of children had grown. Two years later, Caroline gave birth for the final time, to a girl who she named Amelia (III). She also survived, as cholera epidemics passed and sanitary conditions improved, although the young still continued to die in abundance. Such was life in mid-Victorian Bristol.

Yet, during this time, something dark was occurring. The business of nurses attending to dying children had meant that Caroline rarely had time to concentrate on her surviving children. This, along with both a small bout of depression and Moses not being in the house unless he was sleeping or eating, meant that the Wertheim children were not receiving the love and care that most do today. They would be left to the outdoors and whatever it held for them, whether it be playing in the streets or going down to the Avon Gorge. Yet, whilst the rest of the children watched the gradual completion of the Clifton Suspension Bridge, Samuel had chosen some very mischievous characters to “hang about” with. With the arrival of a new brother, Samuel also became jealous of the attention Baruch was receiving, as his mother nurtured him, clinging onto the hope that she would not have to bury another child. But although Caroline’s hopes this time were received, Samuel became more dependant to learn from his friends, the closest of whom was another boy, named Samuel Reynolds. The ice-breaker of having a common name bound these two boys for association.

Reynolds and Wertheim would, on occasion, talk about growing up to be famous and rich, and having “all of the money in the world”. Somewhere, between all of the adolescent lust for wealth and the lack of nurture he got at home, Samuel turned to larceny. He thought too, with good intention that maybe if he could steal things, he could give them to his father, so that the family would benefit. He was naive, immature, and prone to looking for ha’pennies on the streets of Bedminster. The clumsiness of the wealthy spilling money unknowingly onto the cobbles gave Samuel an opportunity to entertain himself on a hunt for loose change. And then, he and Reynolds decided they would go that extra mile. Overnight they turned from scroungers into thieves, criminals, junior burglars. Teenage criminal minds were born…
Luckily, I can accurately pinpoint exactly what he got up to...

Death and Diaspora : Part Six

2010-03-31T20:43:00.001+01:00

Just days after Aaron died, Caroline became pregnant. This may be just a coincidence, or it may be Moses panicking! This is and never shall be known. She was still of child bearing age, and there was no real reason why she should stop having children, despite being increasingly exhausted. There must have been some moments in the 1840’s when she thought “what is the point”. She was giving birth only to bury, feeding only to see her children reduced to skeletons through illness.

In all this confusion of emotion, death struck the Wertheim family again, or should I say, struck Caroline. Just a few weeks after Aaron died, Caroline lost her father, James Westcott. The cholera had mown him down too. This horrid, vile disease, showed no mercy, and had claimed both young and old now in the same family. James was 72 years of age at the time he died, and Caroline lost one half of the two people who had been with her through thick and thin. As devastated as she was, she could not weep for her father. She had known him all her life and he had passed her on to Moses, entrusting her care to him. James would have died a happy man knowing his daughters were all happily married, even if he had had to have signed the death certificates for most of his grandchildren.

In death, James had left no will. His money was sent to unknown locations, despite not having much. Cabinet making was all he knew, and after his death in the winter of 1849, Caroline was left unto her own family.

And as the months after James passed by, Moses and Caroline were once again blessed. Another girl was born in summer 1850, and she was named Amelia Elizabeth. In the following years, Amelia would sadly die, as her siblings before her tragically did. She died, in actual fact, three months before the birth of the next Wertheim child, Sarah. Sarah remains a mystery to us, because after the age of eighteen, she disappears. Completely, utterly, disappears. The journey to locate her may be a long one, as we do not even know if she married. She completely and utterly disappears. A mystery in her own right. But she is not forgotten. Typical of this family perhaps, that those who survived are the hardest to track down.

Yet, for those who were left behind, life was about to take a very interesting turn. Moses and Caroline, together with their surviving children, Samuel, Rebecca, Louisa III and Sarah. By 1854, the money accumulated by this family seems to have taken somewhat of a dip. Moses, by now was struggling, for reasons unknown. His eldest surviving son, Samuel, decided to take things into his own hands, as his childhood friends seemed to enter into the wrong sort of circles. Here we see the beginnings of the real change that leads ultimately to the Wertheim family splitting in two. Not for the better, either…

Death and Diaspora : Part Five

2010-03-19T16:06:00.001Z

Caroline had, at the time of Hannah’s death, given birth to six children. Now, only half that number remained alive. Caroline still had Amelia. She still had Samuel. She still had Rebecca, and of course, Moses her beloved husband, and her father James Westcott. She had suffered already too much grief but was by no means alone with it. People in the street where the Wertheim’s lived often looked unto the house where there had been all of this loss, and secrete a look of pity to Moses on his way to work, and Caroline as she made the miniature journey to her father’s house. James had now retired, and in 1845 was aged 67. Later however, sometime shortly after Hannah’s death, he moves, this time into the Clifton area. This is the last we hear of James for a few years. Caroline must have felt the distance grow between her and her father, despite how close recent events had brought them so much closer.

But Caroline gave birth again, in 1846. Yes, you guessed it reader…another daughter! Once again, in an avid attempt to keep the name in the family, the name Louisa was chosen for a third time. Louisa III was born into a family changing face. Two years later, along came another child, this time a son, and he was named Aaron Isaac. He was Caroline’s eighth child, fifth surviving.

Yet, as 1845 was such a turning point for the Wertheim’s, so was 1849. The family in the 1840’s had so suddenly become a target for tragedy and a such a symbol for sorrow, it is perhaps difficult to realise just how beaten down Moses and Caroline had become. The business of life rocketed for them, and too many times in so little space had they visited the cemetery where their daughters lay rested.

However, 1849 brought with it peril nothing like Moses and Caroline had ever seen before. In early 1849, their first daughter Amelia passed away, the last surviving of the set of twins that were the first Caroline bore. She died of phthisis, a wasting condition that weakened organ tissue. But even after yet another death, the family carried on. Caroline had begun to develop a thicker skin, and as sad it is to state, she grew and learned to expect her children to die, living in the hope that at least one might survive to produce her with grandchildren. Moses had a much more difficult time accepting this. He was a sensitive man, and the times had failed to harden him.

In 1849, terror hit Bristol. An epidemic of cholera swept through the city in one of the worst epidemic’s in nineteenth century England. It came in July, and lasted for three months. It preyed on the young, old, strong, feeble, and men, women and children of all classes. Despite an increase in hygienic care in the region, cholera could not be stopped. Why? It was in the water. In the very water that kept the Wertheim’s alive. In the drains, the streets, and in cups on the dinner table. And it had the Wertheim family in its sights. Sometime in August, Aaron Isaac contracted it, and the medicine men came to the house in Cathay. At this time, as in the 1851 census two years later, the family were now lodging in the home of a Beer house keeper named Elizabeth Jenkins. Somehow, Caroline had found time to work from this house, as a Tailoress with a fellow lodger, Rebecca Adams.

Perhaps with this slight neglect, Caroline made her youngest child vulnerable. She chose a wrong time to take a focus away from her children, in an effort to make more money to keep them safe. In a way, she was very much holding a double edged sword. In her attempt to keep poverty and disease away, she had in fact left the door open for it.

Cholera hit the house in September sometime 1849, and claimed little Aaron in October. So much loss, so much hurt, so much grief. Why her? Why them? A sign of the times or an unbearable sense of a previous sin of some sort?

Whatever it was, Caroline was about to lose one of the most important figures in her life. She had survived most of the worst, but was by no means through it yet…

Death and Diaspora : Part Four

2010-03-16T20:31:00.000Z

In the weeks and months following Louisa II’s birth, and after the death of her namesake sister, the Wertheim family had settled back into the arc of normality during the last few years of the first half of the 1840’s. Despite a cholera epidemic that killed hundreds across the city of Bristol, the family had survived. In fact, they had grown. In 1844, Caroline had given birth again, to yet another daughter. Moses chose to gift her with the traditional name of Rebecca, and she became his fourth daughter and fifth child.

With a growing family to care for, Moses and Caroline decided to make some changes in their lives. They could not afford the rent in their house on Avon Street, and Caroline’s father had now retired, so he could not help her. So Moses and Caroline decided to move to Cathay, a small neighbourhood near the centre of Bristol, which encompassed the area of St Mary Redcliff. Moses had also bettered himself in terms of his occupation. He became a Traveller, and often wandered into the markets of Bristol in search of jewellery that he could buy and sell on himself. He may also have spent many days outside of Bristol doing the same. This we do not know, but as he got older and his family grew, the demand for a better job manifested. It depended entirely on not a routine but luck. He was completely at the mercy of the customer and the demand. But as they say, he did okay.

Okay that is, until the spring of 1845, when things took a turn for the worse. At This time, Caroline found herself suffering from insomnia due to worry at the peril of two of her children. Recently, her daughter Hannah (twin of Amelia) had developed cancer, at just six years of age. It was not diagnosed until very late into the process by which Hannah had lost all of her hair and was very weak indeed. For Moses and Caroline, their hearts slowly broke, and their lives were hectic indeed. Moses did not stay out at work long now, as he came home during the afternoon to be with his daughter. This meant that money was very tight, and the landlord was on his back. Due to the fact that he could not speak English very well Caroline sorted out the problems with the landlord, despite the fact she could not read nor write.

Times were extremely difficult. The pain endured by a mother watching another one of her children slowly die must have been so horrendous, so evil, so unjust. The list is endless. The emotion is total. How can one even in today’s world when most conditions are known, truly contemplate without first hand experience this sheer horror this awful disease wrought…especially on a child. It does not beg for too much thought. I can feel myself welling up just writing about this awful, awful year.

But the days and nights faded through into the shadows, and Hannah weakened with them. Then, to add to the plight of this loving family, Louisa II contracted measles. This small household was so confused, so gloomy, if one makes a mental image of the house, the Wertheim house seems to be overcast with storm clouds and rain. As Caroline devoted her time to Hannah and Louisa II, Samuel felt neglected, Amelia watched in shy horror and Rebecca cried and cried and cried. There would be times, rare as they were, when Caroline would stand by the door and look up to the rain, face completely soaked, as the doctor and nurse came round to check on her condition. Moses was beginning to get very used to seeing the medical bag on the kitchen table, when he got in from a day buying from the poor and selling to the rich. He often wondered what he was doing, handling these goods that he saw somehow to be not of his class. “My children are dying” he would think to himself. “My family is falling apart, and it is not in my hands.”

He would probably have gone to the synagogue, and prayed for help from the Rabbi, but he chose in all to keep away from the practises of Judaism. The reason for which is unknown. But whatever peace he prayed for, did him little good. When Moses returned home from his stall on Monday April 21 1845, his father-in-law was waiting for him at the door. He embraced him and the two men entered the house in Cathay, to see Caroline cradling their daughter Louisa II, who had been ravished by measles. She was dead. For the second time, Moses and Caroline had seen their daughter Louisa die. She was aged just two years and five months. How can I even attempt, to describe this loss? I cannot. All I can do now is to tell this story as it happened next.

And for Caroline, things got worse. Thank goodness she had her husband there to cordial her pain, to cradle her grief, in some miniscule way. Just four weeks after losing Louisa, Hannah’s condition deteriorated. She was so weak, deprived of a childhood and as her mother settled her into bed, she found herself cuddling up to her daughter, and wondered about the rest of her children. How many more were to be taken? How many more children would she have to bury? She sat there with her on the evening of February 18, and did not leave her side, as Moses sat and watched them both sleep. James Westcott had also come from Stapleford –to be blunt-watch his granddaughter die. Hannah passed away in her mother’s arms the next morning, aged six and a half years.

Death and Diaspora : Part Three

2010-03-15T17:56:00.000Z

The census in 1841 is an odd document. Not only is it the first real record we see the Wertheim’s thereon, as a family, but it is also a document that has so much emotion attached to it. Here, for me, knowing what was in store, the 1841 is a document through which innocent faces seep, a life without detriment, despite cordial poverty. This family were happy, they wanted for nothing, and yet, this 1841 document is the first and last time we see them together like this. In this small, slim street in Bristol, the politics of war and the ills of depravity did not touch this family, as much s the many. Now, however, this was all about to change.

One night in January 1842, in the very midst of a winter chill, Caroline awoke in her bed to the cry of her daughter, Louisa, not yet three years old. Merely a toddler. She was coughing abnormally, and her nose was running. A cold Caroline thought, and so she brought Louisa into bed with her and Moses, to keep her warm. It was a cosy scene. Yet, as the night passed through the coughs became more apparent, their frequency moreso, and Moses made a point of turning to his wife to warn she had a fever. “Look at you” she said to her daughter. “You poor thing.”

However, when Louisa’s temperature rocketed the next day, she quickly descended into fever, and when the doctor called to Avon Street, he diagnosed Louisa with Whooping Cough. A frantic Caroline – who had been taught by her father to expect to bury a child one day- would cling to the arm of her husband and stare down at the bed where their daughter lay, peaceful and sleeping, waking only to splutter a few times an hour.
This carried on until January 13, when Louisa stopped breathing. The doctor was called again, but Moses, young yet wise, knew nothing could be done. As Caroline sat on the bed, her children came to surround their sister, in a combined effort to keep her warm in her final hours, but it was futile. The doctor placed his fingers on Louisa’s neck and then her wrist and gave a sigh, on which Caroline burst into tears. She immediately went next door to the arms of her father James Westcott, as Moses cradled his dead daughter.

At present, Louisa’s burial location is unknown.

With all of the pain and the sorrow and heartache that comes, with losing a child as she did, Caroline struggled for a while to come to terms with the loss of Louisa. For a month she sat and did not eat as she should have, she hardly spoke, until Moses managed to persuade her to start having more children. In November 1842, she gave birth again, joyfully, to a baby girl. There was no question in it; she was named Louisa, after her sister. Somehow, Caroline saw this as a blessing in light of the daughter she had taken from her, and Moses was over the moon. He seems to be a real family man, and Caroline was his ray of light. Together, they pulled themselves through heartbreak, and the darkness of Louisa’s death had been replaced with the light of another birth.

Forward they went. Look back they did not. They remembered Louisa, and loved their new daughter of the same name. To Caroline, with her husband at her side, what might have been was not important anymore. The present mattered for them, they had been blessed after tragedy, and so they spurred onwards. Yet, it was what the future had waiting for them that would test them both even more…

Death and Diaspora : Part Two

2010-03-09T03:00:00.001Z

And so it was that with this marriage of Moses and Caroline, a story had begun indeed that would change the two lovers like they had never witnessed. This is the key year in this story, the year it all began, that in time would spawn a catalogue of personalities, tragedies, celebrations, reunions and more children than most of us today cannot even contemplate two people having together.

Life in Bristol was kind to Moses and Caroline in the first few months of their marriage. Moses had only been in the country for a few months himself, and was adjusting to life in England, and in peace. A place that he would not be persecuted for what he believed to be true, and somewhere he could make his mark, no matter how small. Britain was of course at this time, the wealthiest country in the world. He also had a beautiful young wife eleven years his junior. They were both completely in love with each other, and although the marriage was not likely well received by some members of Caroline’s family, she seems to have been of a sound mind to continue on her path with the man she loved regardless. She respected her father, and he respected her. Unusual perhaps, for this period in time.

On October 16 1837, Caroline gave birth in Rose Street, Temple, which came under the district of St Mary Redcliff. She and Moses were overjoyed at this time. Both of them had borne this love together, and here it was manifest. The day was made even more special for the couple, because on this day, not one baby was born, but two. Caroline had given birth to twins, both girls. The girls were names Hannah and Amelia, and quickly became the most important things in their parents’ lives.

With these births, Moses had a family to look after, and he made a living from a risky business. He was a Hawker, something that seen today would be associated perhaps with those struggling to survive, of cordial poverty, or maybe even someone looking to make money quickly. Although it is not confirmed, it is thought that Moses sold jewellery or other luxuries on the streets of Bristol in order to survive. Perhaps he worked near the railway station, or the river bank? It is not entirely clear where exactly but Moses’ was a man trying to fit in to Victorian England society, to the extent that he decided to change the spelling of his name, to the more Anglican looking Vertine. He would take his place wherever seemed best for him in the town, and call for customers to come and purchase from him. In many ways, he could be perceived as a humble businessman. He very much seems to have had a talent for making money. He strikes me, just for the sake of instinct, of looking somewhat like this :

Some would have stopped and bought happily from him. Some would have spat at the very sight of him. It is rather difficult, I admit, to gage my 4x great grandfather as a character. When I think of him however, I imagine a man of dark, wavy black hair a trimmed beard, and a man reluctant to broadcast his faith to the majority. He may not have taught his children the ways of the Torah, but he made sure they knew about it. Judaism transcends through the female line, and so had Caroline had been of the faith, all their children would have been so too. But this was not the case. However Moses must have had a difficult few months, despite meeting the love of his life and marrying her too. He stood a long day working on the city streets. Sometimes in the dark and dreary night of Bristol, a passerby would mutter at him wearing his Kippah as he passed by on his way home. Sometimes religious folk even cursed him, but Moses never boasted about his faith. He felt slightly ashamed to be a refugee, but his life was coming home to Caroline, Hannah and Amelia. There was always going to be a bond with his first children, and Moses indeed shared long and tender moments with his family. Caroline could not have been happier. She may not have lived in the cleanest, hygienic house Bristol had to offer, but it did for them. Here we have two very loving parents, dreaming of a brighter future for their children, in the most complete sense imaginable.

As 1837 came and went, Moses, Caroline, Hannah and Amelia were a comfortable family unit. Yet, both parents knew the likelihood of both their daughters surviving to adulthood was slim. This was, as the case stood for almost all families at the time, a prompt to produce as many children as possible, in order to increase the chances of survival. This is also the reason why, in the cases of those that did survive, families seem to be considerably large in this bygone era.

St Mary Redcliffe Church, Bristol, where the Wertheim children were baptised.

Clinging true to this theory, in the summer of 1839, Caroline gave birth again, to her third daughter, this time naming her after her own mother, Louisa. Eighteen months later Caroline gave birth to her fourth child, this time a baby boy, and he was given the name Samuel. He was born on January 5 1841 in Great Avon Street, and the family appear here in the 1841 Bristol census, next door to Caroline’s father James, now aged 63. How proud Moses must have been, that he had escaped persecution and prejudice for a life of love and stability. Yet, stability was fragile, and in the months that followed the census, tragedy struck this “model family”, which started in motion a heartbreaking chain of events that would come to dominate the family story for years afterwards…

Death and Diaspora : Part One

2010-03-06T18:25:00.000Z

Often in one’s family tree, amongst all the births, marriages and deaths, the lies, scandal, hunger and war, stories are born. These stories, when contemplated deeply enough in today’s world, have a message for us all, and sometimes make us feel humble, if not lucky. A story that when told, leaves a mark upon us that we look back upon and dwell for a few quiet moments or so.

In the life of Caroline Pallin Westcott, a story therein manifests. Caroline was born in the spring of 1817, in St Michael’s District of the city of Bristol, England. She was the youngest and fifth daughter of cabinet maker James Westcott, and his wife Louisa Pallin, who had married a decade before. She was born into a world only recently bereft of the terror of Napoleon and the war that raged across Europe as a result of his quest for lustful dominance and flamboyant authority. It is interesting to note here that in actual fact, the man Caroline would grow up to marry, would have links to this conflict, that nobody would have really imagined at the time. Why would they?

Caroline grew up and her childhood years are a blur. We know her father’s occupation, and that Caroline also went into work at a young age, but as a Laundress. Her father was also able to vote, notably in the 1822 elections where in Bristol he voted for the Chartist Henry Hunt, who had previously been deemed an instigator in the Peterloo Massacre of 1819. So much so was James respected by the parliamentarian, he mentioned him by name in his memoirs. How proud a moment, to find this whilst frantically searching through Google books! Discovering it was odd. Finally a link, even though so indirect, with political change in this country. Small it was, but it is great for me to know that my ancestor believed in the same sort of society that I do.

The 1820’s and 1830’s resulted in numerous changes to the Westcott family, as one by one James and Louisa married their daughters off to farm labourers, mariners and bargemen. And amongst all of the happiness and stability that came with marriage, the face of the family changed even more dramatically when Caroline lost her mother in 1829, just aged 52. A document in later years would detail Louisa’s cause of death as “the change of life”, which can only really be assumed to be linked with menopause.

With The premature death of her mother, Caroline became increasingly close to her father James and by the time 1836 had arrived, father and daughter had a bond that was arguably closer than that his other four daughters, who were now all married.

It was at this time, that Caroline fell in love, and she fell deep. In all honesty one might say, with an unlikely fellow. A man who as much today as then was classed as a foreigner, an immigrant, perhaps even a refugee. His name was Moses Wertheim (pronounced VER-TIME), who was a Jewish migrant born in the Duchy of Poznan, Poland. He was eleven years older than Caroline, and the two had met after James and she had moved to the Temple area of Bristol, from St Michael’s. He had not long been in the country, and had fled Europe due to the anti-Semitic vibes generated during the Napoleonic Wars.

Caroline married Moses Wertheim on January 3 1837, in Temple, Bristol. This date marks the beginning of one of the most colourful and tragic families I have known to research...

An Introduction To Death And Diaspora

2010-03-06T18:23:00.000Z

Following the tantalising success of the blog I wrote on www.rootschat.com just over a year ago now about my 2x great grandmother, Mary Ann Owens, I have decided to pen another one, telling the story of another family through time.

A lot has happened in the last year and in my free time from university work and the numerous nights out that come with student life, I have been slowly getting to know another family, who have, as the Owens did in Nothing But Bad Times, been the subject of my focus when venturing back into my favourite hobby. Also as before, for this blog I have chosen a matriarch to be the centre figure, this time on my father’s side. In fairness, it is perhaps strong to say that this central character is “the Mary Ann Owens of my paternal lines”, but as you will see in the coming weeks, she is equally as tragic, and her story is also captivating. At least, I certainly think so.

This is the story of the Wertheim Family…a name that I have learned to associate with colour courage, tragedy, notoriety, eccentricity, but above all, survival and struggle.

The first post shall be up imminently. I look forward to sharing another one of my family stories with you.