When writing, and indeed thinking, about our ancestors it is easy to inadvertently ignore what was happening around them. The most pivotal ‘Big John’ Cobbold (1746-1835) #56 on the web family tree and his second wife, Elizabeth Knipe (1765-1824) #58 enjoyed their first Christmas at Holywells in 1814. The following year the country celebrated victory at Waterloo. James Humphreys (1775-1833) #10378 wrote his Letters from Waterloo (see ‘Books for Sale’) and Elizabeth wrote her Ode to Waterloo.
June Rose in Elizabeth Fry, A Biography says ‘Victory over Napoleon had brought in an era of distress and discontent. Half a million soldiers and sailors, discharged from the services, came home to compete for jobs with pauper children and civilians who had been engaged in war work. By 1818, 107,000 persons were committed to the gaols of the United Kingdom, a number supposed to be greater than that of all the other kingdoms of Europe put together.’
‘Scenes of horror, filth and cruelty which would have disgraced even the interior of a slave ship met visitors who ventured inside London’s prisons in Regency England. Throughout the country prison conditions for women were even worse. Herded into small, dark rooms, where they cooked by day and slept on straw at night, women prisoners served ‘often as a mere brothel for the turnkey.’ At Newgate, half naked, drunken women clawed through the iron railings with wooden spoons tied to sticks to beg the public for pennies or for ‘garnish money’ to be paid to their fellow prisoners to buy them sight of the fire. Shrieking curses, bawling, spitting, and tearing each other’s hair, they aroused an almost superstitious horror in spectators.’
243 years ago, was born one of the most influential and enigmatic women in English history. Elizabeth (Betsy) Fry née Gurney (1780-1845) #15031, mother of eleven children and a Quaker minister drew the world’s attention to the plight of women in prison. She instituted an order of nursing sisters and became the figurehead of much of the philanthropic endeavour in the first half of the nineteenth century. At the height of her fame and popularity, to see Mrs Fry reading to the prisoners of Newgate was considered ‘one of the sights of London.’
Like the Cobbolds, the Gurney family was a banking family but probably somewhat more prosperous. Their interests were based in Norwich and finally ended up as part of Barclays. Whilst celebrating John Cobbold’s Holywells we should not ignore the plight of others elsewhere.
