A Victorian Mystery.....

Miss Bella Pateman

It all started when I decided to face the horror of clearing out the space under our stairs! Dubbed ‘the computer room’ it was actually a hidey hole of hell. I rolled up my sleeves and dragged everything out to sort and tidy. Whilst in there I discovered a box of photographs and bits from my Nan’s house. I have dabbled with Family History over the years and absolutely love old photos so this was a double treasure to unearth.

In amongst the photos was an old newspaper cutting with a handwritten message across it. The cutting was the obituary of an old actress called Bella Pateman and the handwritten note was by someone who clearly knew her personally – here was a mystery. Who was Bella and was there a connection to my family?

Finding Bella the actress proved fairly simple – she was a Victorian actress who saw fame both here and in America in the late 1800’s. She was married to another famous actor of the day, Robert Pateman. But I wanted to know more and here is where the story got a little more difficult.

I have access to the Ancestry site and so following up births, marriages and deaths and other useful Census info is usually a time consuming but fruitful job. This one proved otherwise! It seems that Bella and her pre marriage records suffered from a catalogue of alternative spellings and without the magic marriage certificate (which I cannot locate anywhere so far) I cannot be certain I have the right family – but playing along with hunches and some matched details this is what I have so far....

Bella was born in 1846 to Caroline and Robert in Reading. She appears in the 1851 census in Chatham Street as Isabel Radborn living with her parents and siblings. Mr Radborn was an engine cleaner and supported his wife and four children, William, Thomas, Jemima and little Isabel.

By 1861 Mr Radborn had passed away leaving his widow (now documented as Radbowin) with two teenage girls. Jemima is now listed as a 17 year old comedian and Isabel is 15.

I could now link to facts from her professional career, she met and married Robert Pateman in 1869. Robert hailed from Ireland and so far I cannot locate any further information on him. Later that year the newly married Pateman’s set sail for New York. They remained in America touring some of the major theatres for the next few years, returning to the UK in 1876. There are tantalising clues as to the plays they appeared in and some of the famous people of the age that they mixed with. These included their friend Edwin Booth, actor and brother to the notorious John Wilkes Booth who assassinated Lincoln.

Robert Pateman - Google Image

By 1881 the Pateman’s were living in Hammersmith and it was here in 1886 they had a daughter, Isabel Roberta ‘Robbie’ Pateman. They continued living in Hammersmith and then Barnes while taking a number of prominent roles on the London stage. Bella is listed at the Adelphi amongst other places. She carried on as a significant actress until 1902, her last role being that of Lady Ridgeley at the St James’s. Bella died at her home in Barnes on 30^th January 1908 at the age of 64. Robbie followed her in 1910 at the young age of 24. Robert continued acting, travelling to the USA for further roles before he, too, passed away in 1924 at the age of 83 leaving the not inconsiderable sum of £11000 to his nephew and another acquaintance.

My Ebay find!

There is still much I do not know. The link between Bella and my family is intriguing. I do have connections to the Reading area and so I assume this is where it might be – but until I can prove Bella’s early details I cannot go further here. An interesting aside, while I was searching for links to Bella I found a signed photograph of her for sale on Ebay. It came as a pair with a signed photo of Hermann Vezin, a well-known American actor of the same period whom Bella had acted with at the Adelphi in a production of ‘Amy Robsart’. Of course I had to buy them! I will continue the search in the hopes that new details come to light and the mystery is finally solved.

Loafing Around

Ok so it was a bit heavy - I could have injured someone with it!

Oh my goodness, I have been doing so many things just recently and blogging has taken a bit of a back seat I’m afraid. And now, sitting down at the computer at last I’m not sure which exciting adventure to share first  :)

So, I’ll leap in with my sourdough and save the rest for other posts....

My friend Helen and I decided we were ‘of an age’ and took the leap in joining a local WI group to see what it was all about. Forget all the stereotypes you might have heard, the WI are experiencing a bit of a revival and many of the groups are seeing huge increases in numbers. This is great news, especially as the WI are celebrating their centenary this year. The group we chose to try out call themselves the ‘Folly Dollies’, they are a really friendly bunch and host an interesting range of talks and events . The night we went a lady was there talking about Sourdough Bread – if I’m being honest this one didn't strike me as the most interesting but it was in actual fact a really good evening! Judith (bread lady extraordinaire) spoke about the history of sourdough, some of the benefits and then talked through the process of making it. Clearly she couldn't show us the whole thing in one evening but we saw a range of highlights from the starter bubbling away to a batch proving (rising) to the finished product ready to try. It was delicious! 

Once home, I read up on sourdough and decided to treat myself to one of Judith’s starter kits so I could have a go myself. It duly arrived looking beautiful and slightly scary. I had to transfer the starter from a zip lock bag into a jar and then feed it regularly with flour and water to get it to grow. Judith had sent three different starters so I labelled them carefully and spent the next week tending my jar babies and watching as the amount of starter grew and grew and grew – a bit like a scene from the magic porridge pot I was half expecting the mixture to take over the whole kitchen! DH was a bit worried I was becoming obsessed when he caught me feeding my babies at 5.30am :)

The kit arrived looking very exciting!

 This weekend I had set aside time to actually make the bread – a lengthy procedure involving kneading (lots of) and rising (lots and lots of) and then baking.

I discovered it's quite hard to take a photograph of yourself kneading bread.

Arise Sir Oxfordshire Starter - clearly I didn't arise for long enough. Note the clever labelling system which fell off at every given opportunity :(

I won’t bore you with all the details but I really enjoyed the whole process  - I was a bit worried the kneading would be hard work and a bit ‘mysterious’ (how do you know when it’s done?) but it was actually really therapeutic and mindful. I was too impatient with the proving bit – the first rise was very successful but I was in a hurry to get it into the oven and I don’t think I left it long enough and so my resulting loaves were a bit dense but vaguely edible. Still, it’s a learning curve and I can’t wait to have another go!

Birthday Celebrations (for old people)

Blue Skies and Tall Masts

I haven’t really been up to anything exciting recently. It’s been too cold to do any allotmenting, I’m too crafted out to be creative and it’s that bit of the winter where the enthusiasm of the New Year has passed and I just want to hibernate for a while.

But – January sees my birthday and a reason to celebrate (if being a bit greyer and a bit wrinklier is a reason to celebrate). DH and I took the day off work and had a trip out to Gloucester. He was tempted by the wonderful industrial architecture of the docks and I had heard tell of a fabulous Antique Centre. A win-win situation!
 

So we set off on what must have been one of the wettest and most miserably cold days of the month but determined to have a good time.

We parked up and began the day with a hot chocolate which seemed like the best decision. The antiques then beckoned. I was most disappointed to not find anything that really drew me. An Enid Blyton book entitled ‘Mr Pink-Whistle Interferes’ caused some sniggers and I was tempted by a beautiful wooden Victory puzzle of kittens. We spent some time looking around the docks and admiring the wonderful restoration they have done. There were lots of artefacts around the place, giving a sense of the history of the setting and I was filled with longing, looking at the rows of colourful narrowboats all moored up (we used to own a narrowboat and I still really miss it)
 

Detail from a stone carving

We lunched at a small place called Hubble Bubble and both enjoyed some fab burgers. Hubble Bubble is conveniently located right near Gloucester Cathedral so we decided to look around that too.
 

Gloucester Cathedral

Cathedrals are awesome places – the scale, the history, the architecture! I had absolutely no clue that this particular cathedral had been used famously for filming some of the Harry Potter films. There was nothing inside to advertise this fact and I didn’t find out til afterwards – but it did explain why some of it seemed so familiar! The day we went they had film crews in again, setting up to shoot some scenes for Sherlock.

Gloucester Cathedral dates from 1089 and its other claim to fame is it houses the tomb of Edward II. Edward was alledgedly murdered at nearby Berkeley Castle and was buried at Gloucester although his heart is at Newgate Church in London (I just love a gruesome detail!). The tomb is pretty impressive and typically covered in graffiti from schoolboys in the 1700's. I didn't purchase a photography permit and so have no actual pics from inside the Cathedral.

 

Detail from outside the Cathedral

 

A final visit to some shops and the purchase of a suit for DS#2 (hang on, it was MY birthday!) saw us finish off the day before heading home.
 

Rain on the Cobbles!

I reflected afterwards on how grown up I must be now, cathedrals and antiques rather than mad drunken debauchery for my birthday – but then I don’t think I could keep up with the debauchery any more. I’d probably be asleep before it really got going!

Handmade Hats

The second post this week! It’s got to be a record!

All ready to get knitting!

I just wanted to update you with my attempts at spinning – as you may remember I borrowed a wheel from work over the Summer and have been enjoying teaching myself to spin wool from a mixture of trial and error (mostly error) and some helpful Youtube videos. Hurrah for technology.

I was determined to finish something from fleece to knitted item before Christmas. In my head I had the lovely idea of presenting DH with a hat and scarf on Christmas morning. In reality I had not taken into consideration how I would secretly card, spin and knit when he wasn’t looking. A spinning wheel is not the most easily concealed item in the world and my knitting is not something I can do without tons of concentration and regular reference to the pattern. So, my plans were reduced to just a hat. And a reasonably small hat at that!

I got the wool spun and the threads were spun into something resembling yarn. I still have sadly not got a Niddy Noddy and so had to use the back of the chair! I was unsure of how much yarn I would need for my hat. The ‘recipe’ in the knitting pattern doesn’t work in handspun lumpy balls and so I had to just go with it and accept that I may well have to be spinning more as I needed it.

Knitting the hat was a case of a few rows as and when. So, I took it to work, out and about and gave up my gym sessions in order to knit (ok, this is a slight lie – I didn't need an excuse to not visit the gym).

It was all worth it when I finally completed my first ever handmade hat! I even added a label and gave up a vintage button from my collection to give it a stamp of originality. I was thrilled! Even DH looked impressed.

The finished article 

 It’s not the most beautiful hat in the world. The wool is lumpy, the knitting a little uneven and in fairness it could use being a bit bigger in size. But I made it myself and it was the gift that I had the most pride in handing over this Christmas.

The new project - it's a fleece not a wig!

Now, I was given a new fleece to work on as a Christmas present – a Hebridean fleece (yes, thank you Helen, you do get the prize for most random gift!!) and so endless new possibilities present themselves. Well, endless new hat possibilities anyway!

Back to reality.....

Well, that's that. Back to work tomorrow after a week and a half of chilling and relaxing. I had lists of things I wanted to do, sewing to catch up on, crafts, blogging, reading and allotmenting. Instead I have pottered about and not done very much at all. Oh, I did reorganise the larder - does that count?

Anyway - here are a few pics from the last couple of weeks and a belated Happy New Year to you all!

Christmas on the Home Front

Tea and Christmas cake anyone?

I have had a very exciting couple of weeks at work (well, more exciting than normal!) which I wanted to share with you.

I am involved with the WW2 programme at work where we run an evacuee camp and get groups of school children to try out lots of different period activities whilst learning what life was like on the Home Front. I love running these days – dressing up and indulging in my love of this period of history. So, I decided to approach Mr Bossman and see if I could run a couple of weeks of Christmas on the Home Front as a special offer. He happily agreed to let me give it a try and I am proud to say it was a huge success.

Some of our props.

We decorated our WW2 building and shop with period decorations. I spent hours creating paper chains from facsimile WW2 newspapers and sourcing paper decorations and streamers of crepe paper. We found the tiniest tree in the world and added some red, white and blue bunting too. I even found a supply of old Christmas cards to stretch above the mirror. Some fresh greenery from around the site completed the decor.

I spent hours researching facts and figures. Being a bit nerdy I wanted everything to be perfectly accurate but in truth we could just give an flavour of the time. Hence we had some American supplies in the shop alongside ration guidance from earlier in the War. Petrol rationing facts didn’t quite match with the dates on the magazines – but overall it gave a good impression of life in that era. And I just had to get over it!

The children got the chance to look at some toys and to think about what they might find in their stockings. They cooked and tasted authentic WW2 recipes and learned about rations in the shop. They got to weigh out a weeks’ worth of sweet ration to take home with them although I suspect none of them managed to make them last a whole week! Hopefully alongside the fun we managed to get the children to appreciate some of the hardships suffered by people, we certainly had several very thoughtful comments from the children.

A visit to our authentic Anderson Shelter (also decorated for the season) and an exciting Beetle Drive game with an onion prize were also on the agenda.

To top off the fun for me, I got to spend some time away from my Land Girl dungarees and look a little more dressed up. Curled and pinned hair, a nice party dress and even some lippy (apparently those Americans down in the town have a little to spare!!) 

Egypt Adventure Part Three - in which we ride camels and get sand in our crevices!

I promise I won’t be boring you with any more Egypt Adventure posts but I just wanted to share one last experience with you all!

DD was determined to ride a camel while we were out there – it was number one on her wish list. This is actually one of the few things that I could say ‘done that’ to, but I was quite happy to have another go.

So, the trip that best fulfilled this brief was the ‘Desert Adventure’ which promised a day full of excitement and a camel ride too. On booking the trip we were presented (read ‘sold’) a scarf each. This was the traditional keffiyeh which I have since learnt has different political meanings related to colours. We wondered if ours were more of a stereotypical tourism trap – like selling University sweatshirts to Oxford or Cambridge visitors but I can safely say they were very welcome out in the desert!

 

Don't you just hate it when you dress for the desert and someone is wearing exactly the same!

The day started at the Centre where the trips are run from. This was an attractive place just outside of Hurghada. We arrived and met up with the rest of our group for the day over a lovely cup of Hibiscus tea. First part of the adventure was Dune Buggy driving. DD and I had teamed up with a couple from Yorkshire. Myself and Julie decided we would let the others take turns in driving while we admired the view from the back. DD was very excited – dreams of speeding off into the desert were, however, cruelly dashed when we found ourselves at the back of the convoy and stuck behind someone who had to stop and take photographs every 5 seconds.

 

Pedal to the metal - not.

Next we all piled into jeeps and set off into the real desert. This took us into the Red Sea Mountains. I was surprised at actually how beautiful the terrain was, not at all what I expected from desert.

We made a couple of stops on the way to a Bedouin Village, the first one to see a real mirage. It was ok, but I didn't feel the awe that I think our guide expected.

The second stop was to climb a sizeable mountain and run down a sand dune on the other side. Now this was pretty awesome! The top of the mountain afforded some great views and a chance to glory in the peace before we whooped our way down the slope.

We arrived in the Bedouin Village not really knowing what to expect. Clearly they no longer live in the huge tents that everyone visualises but in huts and shacks. Not so romantic but that’s the price of progress I guess.

We got to share sweets with the children – this felt a little weird, were they really hanging out for Werthers Originals and Haribo? Then followed a tour around the Village. I couldn't help but feel bad about this too. Many of the Bedouins now make their living through tourism which basically amounts to herds of us traipsing through their space while they put on a show of making bread, weaving, and generally getting on with the day and trying to ignore us. It felt wrong, a little like being in a zoo and getting them to perform. And I felt bad that I was contributing to this trade but then also I was helping them to maintain a living. All a bit morally confusing.

However, we did get to have the camel ride. Some of the children (buzzed up on all our sugary treats) helped us on and off the camels and led us for a few minutes’ walk. DD was thrilled! I was just overawed by the absolute silence in the desert. Not a bird or a creature, no wind, just nothing…. It was a moment of pure calm.

The trip back to the Centre took in a visit to a water spring and a chance to take some photographs as the sun went down. We were told we didn't get the most spectacular sunset due to clouds – but I was impressed anyway.

 

The camera sadly just didn't capture the colours....

Back at camp we got to settle down for a Folkloric Show with a pretty poor bellydancer, some whirling dervishes and an impressive men’s stick dance. There was a good buffet and BBQ and some traditional tea.

To finish the evening we had the chance to use some massive telescopes to star gaze in the night sky over the desert.

It was a full on day and we left the Centre tired but very happy. We snuggled on the balcony back at the hotel to chat about the experiences and how the beauty of the desert would be with us forever.

How true this turned out to be when we took our shoes off and prepared for bed that night!