The restless Weight family

The Weight family were a restless bunch – well some of them were anyway.

In 1911 Albert John Griffiths Weight aged 59 made the decision to emigrate to Canada. With his wife Emma and their daughter Elsie Pauline, a teacher aged 25, they boarded the Royal Edward setting sail from Bristol for Montreal on May 3. Albert’s name appears on the Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, Canada Homestead Register dated 1872-1930. Emma died in 1937 at Shamrock, Saskatchewan and Albert died in 1942.

But it would be their son Clifford who led the most memorable of lives and left his mark on the art world.

Clifford Seymour Weight was born in 1891, the youngest of Albert and Emma Weight’s four children. In 1901 the family were living at 17 William Street and Albert worked as a Saw Mill Machinery Fitter in the GWR Works. By 1911 they had moved up the social ladder to Old Town and lived at 32 The Mall. Just weeks after the census was taken in 1911 Albert, Emma and Elsie left for Canada.

Clifford remained in England, leaving two years after his parents when he set sail from Liverpool to Maine on the MS Canada. He spent some years in California where he trained as an architect and in around 1925 he travelled to Mexico where he met Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.

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Photograph of Diego Rivera and Clifford Wight published courtesy of Local Studies, Swindon.

By 1929 he was better known as Clifford Wight. Whether the name change was a deliberate decision remains unknown, just another facet of this man’s extraordinary life. At this time he was working as a technical assistant, translator and secretary to the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. Clifford worked on murals for the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Rockefeller Centre in New York (later destroyed) and the Coit Tower in San Francisco.

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Surveyor by Clifford Wight – Coit Tower, San Francisco.

Clifford led a fascinating life, full of action, adventure and political intrigue. Read more on the Swindon Library website and the Syracuse University website.

Clifford’s death, like his life, is shrouded in mystery. He died on May 7, 1961 at the Hospital Clinico Barcelona Spain, apparently having fallen from a tram. Or was he pushed?

But getting back to the Weight family in Radnor Street Cemetery …

This is the grave of Samuel Joseph Weight and his wife Mary Ellen, a more settled couple.

Samuel J. Weight was typical of most newcomers to Swindon. Born in Gloucestershire in about 1839 he came to New Swindon in the 1860s to a job in the Works. At the time of the 1861 census he was lodging with his brother John and his family at 17 Reading Street where both brothers worked as fitters and turners in the railway factory.

Two years later Samuel married Mary Ellen Ford at St Mark’s Church on July 16, 1863. By 1871 the couple were living at 5 Cromwell Street with their five year old son Ozias Enoch, Samuel’s widowed mother Mary and nephew Albert John, the son of Samuel’s brother John.

By 1881 Samuel had left the Works and was licensed victualler at the Golden Lion Hotel, a pub on the Wilts and Berks canal, which lent its name to the iconic Golden Lion Bridge. It was here that Mary Ellen died on December 26, 1890. At the time of the 1891 census Samuel was still living at the Golden Lion Hotel with his sons Ozias, Bertie and William and daughter Emma, but soon after this he retired to Hook House in the parish of Lydiard Tregoze where he died on May 21, 1897.

Only one of Samuel and Mary’s children remained in Swindon – Bertie Charles Weight. Ozias ended up in Liverpool where he died in 1922, Samuel jr moved to Balham while William died in Bromley in 1960. Daughter Emma married and died in Heston in 1912. Little Polly, a baby daughter who died at the Golden Lion in 1881 aged three weeks old, was one of the first burials in the new Radnor Street cemetery on August 18.

Although Arthur Clarence Weight is remembered on Samuel and Mary Ellen’s headstone their grandson is not buried with them. He lies in plot E8548 with his parents Bertie Charles and Edith Eleanor and a brother Reginald Charles Frederick. A branch of the restless Weight family who stayed put.

mary-ellen-and-samuel-joseph-and-arthur-clarence-weight

Samuel Chappell – boot maker and Minister of the Gospel

The re-imagined story…

We always bought our shoes and boots from Mr Chappell’s shop in Bridge Street. I say ‘always’ as if it were a weekly event. Buying shoes and boots in our family was a big occasion and only done after much forethought and deliberation.

Father patched up our footwear until it was beyond repair and the new purchase was only embarked upon at the moment of absolute need, never on a whim or a fancy.

My sister always chose a dainty pair of shoes with buckles and bows. Of course these were never the ones she ended up with. I was just happy to have a pair of boots that kept my feet dry and didn’t scrunch up my toes.

My sister told me that Mr Chappell was born in America; New York, she said, but I knew that couldn’t be true. He didn’t look American and he certainly didn’t sound American. And why on earth would you leave New York and move to Swindon?

She also said he was a Minister of the Gospel and I didn’t believe that either. Why would he sell boots and shoes if he was a man of God?

Girls have some funny notions.

The facts …

This is the final resting place of Samuel Chappell, master shoemaker, boot and leather seller and as inscribed on the headstone, 40 years a Minister of the Gospel.

Samuel was the eldest son of Eli and Ann Chappell. His father was born in Castle Combe where he worked for many years as a tailor.

Samuel, however, was born in New York in 1847. By the time of the 1851 census the Chappell family was living in Hullavington where Eli was working as a Master Tailor. Living with him were his wife Ann, 8 year old daughter Ann who was born in Castle Combe, obviously before the family’s big American adventure, and a baby son John, born in Hullavington on their return.

Samuel appears to have been raised in Castle Combe by his aunt and uncle, Susanna and William Chappell. William was a master shoemaker and in 1861 Samuel was working as his apprentice.

The 1871 census has two entries for Samuel, one living in Stratton St Margaret with his parents and two brothers. The other entry shows him lodging with the Keylock family at 5 Albert Street in Old Swindon.

Samuel opened his own boot and leather shop at 26 Bridge Street in 1872. In 1874 he married Sarah Ann Sainsbury. On the 1911 census Samuel and Sarah Ann are living at 68 Eastcott Hill and state that they had six children, four of whom were still living.

This photograph shows Samuel and his eldest son William outside the shop in the early 1900s. According to a family member who kindly sent me this photograph, the shop remained open until the 1950s.

Samuel died at his home in Eastcott Hill and was buried in plot A2560 Radnor Street Cemetery on January 19, 1926. He shares the grave with his wife Sarah who died in 1916 and their youngest son Samuel, who died aged 24 in 1909 following a leg injury sustained whilst playing football.

William Harvie and the amazing Multiple Cake Cutting Machine

The re-imagined story …

There are two highlights in the Swindon calendar for the children – Trip, when the Works shut down for the annual holiday and we go to the seaside, and the Children’s Fete, and I can never sleep the night before either of them.

Preparations for the Children’s Fete begins well in advance and I have first-hand knowledge of this as my father is on the Mechanics’ Institute Council and our whole family is involved.

The fete takes place in the GWR Park, the gates open at half past one. Tickets cost 3d for adults and 2d for children. The children receive two free rides on the steam roundabouts, a drink of either tea or oatmeal water and a piece of cake.

For weeks beforehand we save every penny, ha’penny and farthing we can; never have so many errands been run, so many jobs done about the home.

The familiar GWR Park becomes kaleidoscopic with rides and stalls and fairy lamps festooned around the Cricket Pavilion and the bandstand. Entertainments on the central stage take place throughout the afternoon; comedy acrobats and trapeze artistes and trick cyclists and one year there was even a troop of performing dogs. Mr Harvie is the chairman of the fete committee and director of amusements but this isn’t what he became best remembered for.

The event runs like a well-oiled machine, which is hardly surprising as it is organised by some of the most well qualified and experienced engineers in the railway works. And perhaps the greatest feat of organisation is the cake.

The quantity of cake required was enormous, amounting to no less than 2 tons 13 cwts. The job of baking it went to Mr E.P. Monk of Old Swindon who produces annually approximately 1,200 cakes weighing 5lbs each. Next comes the job of cutting the cakes into half pound slices, a job which had previously fallen to a handful of volunteers. It used to take 12 people approximately six hours to cut up and bag the cake. And then Mr Harvie invented the Multiple Cake Cutting Machine.

At this year’s event Mr Harvie’s new improved machine will be used for the first time. The machine, a dangerous looking contraption, is composed of crossed knives, balanced on spiral springs, which hover above each cake. The average speed of this new machine being no less than 6 cakes, or 60 half pounds per minute. The cakes are fed into the machine on 12 wooden trays by an endless band on rollers worked by the handle at the end of the machine, and here Mr Harvie has introduced another novelty in the shape of an electric bell, which is so adjusted that when the tray reaches the exact centre of the knife it strikes two levers and forms an electric communication with the bell, which commences ringing, and continues to do so until the cake is cut. The tray then passes on with the cake to make room for the next. When the tray on which the cake is cut reaches the end of the machine, it runs on an inclined board which carries it to the packers.

So exciting is the whole process that I think it should form part of the entertainments on the fete stage. Perhaps I’ll suggest that to Mr Harvie for next year.

My fete dress hangs on the back of the bedroom door. My hat, decorated with ribbons and flowers, sits on the dresser. I open the curtains a crack, it is not quite dark yet. Early tomorrow morning my father will join the others assembling the stage. I squeeze my eyes tightly shut. I must go to sleep, I must go to sleep.

The facts …

William Harvie was born in Islington, London in c1849. He began his career as a coach trimmer in Birmingham where he met and married his first wife, Susan Newman, at St Peter and St Paul’s Church, Aston. Susan was a widow with a young son. By 1871 the couple were living at Rushey Platt with Susan’s son Edward and two children of their own, Henry and Louisa. They would have a third child George William. The family lived at 15 Faringdon Street for a number of years and by 1891 William had been promoted to foreman.

He served as foreman over the women in the polishing shop, and during the 1890s he was responsible for organising the entertainment for the ‘annual tea of the female staff employed in the Carriage Department.’ He even performed a couple of humorous songs, said to have contributed to the event.

By the time of Susan’s death in 1906 they were living at 6 Park Lane. Two years later William married again. His second wife was Alice Elizabeth Turner. She died in 1921 at their home 92 Bath Road but does not appear to be buried in Radnor Street Cemetery.

William died in 1930. Details of his estate were published in various newspapers, including the Daily Express.

‘A Black Country working lad who, in his spare time, played in a theatre orchestra, became a railway foreman, and dabbled in stocks and shares during fifty years’ service, has died worth nearly £44,000. The workers of this great railway centre used to dub William Harvie of Bath road, Swindon, “the wealthiest workman in England,” but even they were surprised when his estate was announced, and the sole topic of conversation in the town was the large sum he left. He was 84 when he died last October, a widower, and intestate.’

A notice in the Western Morning News reported that he was instrumental in building the first saloon railway coach for Queen Victoria but there is no mention of his famous invention, the Multiple Cake Cutting Machine.

William is buried in plot D14a with his first wife Susan. They were later joined by their elder son Henry.