Common People: In Pursuit of My Ancestors

288 Pages·2015·4.41 MB·English

by  Alison Light

ALISON LIGHT is a writer and critic and the author of the acclaimed Mrs. Woolf and the Servants: An
Intimate History of Domestic Life in Bloomsbury. She was born in Portsmouth, studied English at Churchill
College, Cambridge and was awarded a PhD from Sussex University. She is Honorary Professor in the
Department of English at University College, London, has lectured at Royal Holloway College, and also
has worked at the BBC and in adult education. She is a contributor to the London Review of Books and
writes regularly for the British press.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
Copyright © Alison Light, 2014
All rights reserved. Published 2015.
Printed in the United States of America 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-33094-5 (cloth) ISBN-13: 978-0-22633113-3 (e-book) DOI:
10.7208/chicago/9780226331133.001.0001
First published in 2014 by the Penguin Group.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Light, Alison, 1955– author.
Common people : in pursuit of my ancestors / Alison Light.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-226-33094-5 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-22633113-3 (ebook) 1. Light, Alison, 1955
—Family. 2. Light family. 3. Genealogy. I. Title.
CS439.L527 2015
929.1—dc23
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).
Common People
In Pursuit of My Ancestors
ALISON LIGHT
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
Chicago
Praise for Alison Light’s Common People
“Light writes beautifully. With such colour and with perception and lyricism she
clads the past. . . . Common People is part memoir, part thrilling social history of
the England of the Industrial Revolution, but above all a work of quiet poetry
and insight into human behaviour. It is full of wisdom.”
Melanie Reid, The Times Book of the Week
“This book is a substantial achievement: its combination of scholarship and
intelligence is, you may well think, the best monument you could have to all
those she has rescued from time’s oblivion.”
Gillian Tindall, Financial Times
“[A] short and beautifully written meditation on family and mobility.”
Roger Clarke, The Independent
“Intellectually sound and relevant . . . a refreshingly modern way of thinking
about our past.”
New Statesman
“Light [is skilled] in probing dark corners of her ancestry and exposing their
historical meaning . . . packed with humanity.”
John Carey, Sunday Times
“Exquisite. . . . Barely a page goes by without something fascinating on it,
betraying Light’s skill in winkling out the most relevant or moving aspects of
her antecedents’ lives, which echo through the generations.”
Lesley McDowell, The Independent
“A brilliant portrait of the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. . . . [Light is]
informed, deft and purposeful.”
The Guardian
“Evocatively written . . . a thrilling and unnerving read.”
Ben Highmore, The Observer
“Intelligent . . . admirably organised . . . deeply absorbing.”
The Spectator
“Alison Light’s excellent and humane exploration of her family tree . . .
confirms her as the pre-eminent exponent of a new kind of public family
history.”
The Evening Standard
“Extraordinary. . . . Family history, thanks to the internet, has become a hugely
popular pastime. Common People, with its fine sense of nuance, raises the game
for everyone.”
The Economist
“This is by turns mesmeric and deeply moving: a poetic excavation of the very
meaning of history.”
Sinclair Mackey, Daily Telegraph
“A deeply researched and fascinating double story. . . . Light hopes the books
will encourage others to write their family history as public history, a feat she
pulls off brilliantly. It is a hard act to follow.”
Sunday Telegraph
“Common People is not costume drama but the real thing dirty, tragic but
joyous, too.”
Mail on Sunday
“A moving meditation on the role of family history and on the nature of history
itself. . . . Few historians can match Light’s ability to see a subject anew and
explore it with imagination and humanity.”
Times Higher Education
“An exploration of an English family tree the like of which has never been made
before.”
Claire Tomalin
“A remarkable achievement and should become a classic, a worthy successor to
E. P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class. It is full of
humanity.”
Margaret Drabble
“Beautifully written and exhaustively researched, Alison Light makes her family
speak for England.”
Jerry White, author of London in the Eighteenth Century
Contents
List of Illustrations and Credits
Family Trees
Preface
Prologue: A Child’s Sense of the Past
PART ONE: MISSING PERSONS
1. Evelyn’s Grave
2. Hope Place
PART TWO: TALL STORIES
3. The Road to Netherne
4. Albion Street
Postscript
Notes
Acknowledgements
Index
List of Illustrations and Credits
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders. The publishers will be
glad to rectify in future editions any errors or omissions brought to their
attention.
Map of Southern England, the Midlands and Wales
Spanish donkey ornament (author’s photograph)
Remembrance card (author’s photograph)
Evelyn Whitlock’s grave (author’s photograph)
Brandwood End Cemetery (photograph by B. Simpson, 2005, courtesy of the
Friends of Brandwood End Cemetery)
Binton police station, 1890 (Warwickshire County Record Office: PHO239/58;
reproduced by permission of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust)
Alcester High Street, 1860 (photograph by George Dolphin, Alcester and
District Local History Society)
Grave of Henry Dowdeswell (author’s photograph)
Evelyn Whitlock with horse (author’s photograph)
Evelyn in uniform (author’s photograph)
Members of the Women’s Forage Corps on hay baler (photograph by Horace
Nicholls, IWM)
105 Cleeve Road (author’s photograph)
The Little Oxford Dictionary (1930, author’s photograph)
Zion chapel, Shrewton (author’s photograph)
Lake Road Baptist chapel—exterior (Portsmouth Museums)
Lake Road Baptist chapel—interior (Portsmouth Museums)
St Agatha’s, Portsmouth (author’s photograph)
Bert Light on building site (author’s photograph)
Ruined entrance to Netherne Asylum (photograph by Simon Cornwell)
http://www.simoncornwell.com/urbex/hosp/n/e140106/1.htm
Lottie’s wedding (author’s photograph)