Introduction to 16th Century Plymouth

Some questions for a history lesson...

What do we now know about the origin of all men - which part of the planet do we all come from?

Why did Queen Elizabeth need so much money?

Why did the population of Plymouth grow so drmatically?

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The 'Bones of Cattedown' are the remains of at least fifteen hominids, excavated and researched by a team of naturalists during the nineteenth century. They comprise one the most important discoveries ever documented about the history of "anatomically-modern humans" or Homo sapiens sapiens in Europe. The bones are very real but another ancient story of Plymouth is based on legend - it tells us the story of Brutus, the exiled Prince of Troy who brought enslaved Trojans freed from Greece, to the shores of Plymouth where a great fight ensued with the natives - the fight took place on Plymouth Hoe - and the most famous native at that time was the Giant GogMagog.

In the year 1200, we know that Plymouth was a small fishing village, receiving its charter in 1254 and by 1390, being designated one of only two official ports of exit in the whole country - for pilgrim emigrants. Plymouth soon became a major trading port sending and bringing foreign visitors - sailors, merchants, pilgrims and other travellers - not to mention a growing number of important military expeditions. Throughout the 16th century Plymouth was exporting tin, lead and woollen goods and grain - and importing: wine, salt, paper, pitch, linen, canvas, fruit, sugar, iron ore, rye, hops - Plymouth was also importing and exporting salted fish.

The proximity of the continent meant that before long Plymouth would be subject to attack and in 1403 suffered at the hands of the French. By the year 1500, the population of Plymouth was around 3,500 and had only reached around 5000 by the end of the sixteenth century.

The Birth of the British Slave Trade

During the sixteenth century, Plymouth gained notoriety as being home to the Britain's first slave traders (William Hawkins and Francis Drake) and Hawkins produced his own Coat of Arms so highlighting the importance of this new source of funding.Plymouth was able to enjoy some of the trappings of wealth and success passed on by Drake who may well have used some of his ill gotten gains to build a conduit to bring fresh water from the moors to the people of Plymouth. 

Plymouth traded with France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, the low countries, Italy and the Baltic. Links across the Atlantic increased from and through the 16th century. Historically, as now, early migrants included both economic migrants and migrants escaping religious persecution. A local demand /opportunity for those with specific skills could also have been a major factor in attracting people to the City. Plymouth might have been just a port of call for many who were en route to some where else entirely.

In summary, during the 1500's (the sixteenth century) Plymouth was a safe harbour for the arrival and departure of adventurous ships bent on waging war or finding ways and means to fund wars. Sadly these adventures led to the start of a transatlantic traffic in African slaves that would last for hundreds of years. Plymouth also became the arrival and departure point for pilgrims fleeing religious intolerance. Plymouth also increased its communications with the continent and so trade links were established bringing new people, new products and new ways of living to the City.

Burying Plymouth's Poor

Listen to the audio by clicking the picture on the right.

Attidudes to Foreigners

In 1540 the Mayor ordered that strangers were to be indoors by six or seven o’clock in the evening, at latest, though the general inhabitants were allowed out till eight.

In the 15th and 16th centuries…. The mayor… "could deport undesirables and issue passports…."

How variegated was the port in the sixteenth century?

One book citing “The burying of a 'neger'" in Cattedown and “the removal of a ‘molato which laye about the streete’” claims that such evidence "shows that coloured men (sic) were not uncommon”  in sixteenth century Plymouth".

Princess Catherine of Spain landed at the Barbican in 1501 to great acclaim – large crowds were there to witness the arrival. She remained veiled. This was virtually an enforced migration. Her marriage was a political one, to create a Spanish/English alliance.

Would arriving Spanish migrants have enjolyed better treatment in the city, after her arrival?

Sir John Hawkins

Sir John Hawkins made the first English slave-dealing voyage.

Hawkins was following the example of Portuguese slave traders (who were transporting slaves from Africa to Madeira and Portugal). He used Spanish merchants, a Spanish pilot familiar with the African coast, London finance and African slavers. However slave dealing was very much a ‘homegrown’ practice - and this acceptance of such a trade might have inspired him. There was slavery in Devon throughout 10th and 11th century. The Hawkins coat of arms (1566) includes an African girl in chains. 

http://old.antislavery.org/breakingthesilence/slave_routes/slave_routes_unitedkingdom.shtml

'Who is this child? Why was she chosen to represent... to represent what?

What  would she say if she had been able to speak? Did she ever see her image?

What did Hawkins think she represented?

The accounts of Hawkins’ African voyages are not descriptions of ‘easy pickings’ – there were many battles with Africans before the theft of men was accomplished. There is a great deal of evidence that supports the fact that whilst some Africans colluded with Europeans, many more engaged in violent and co-ordinated resistance.

Many captured Africans were brought home to England as exotic souvenirs and as servants. Plymouth church register records the burial of “Bastien, a blackamoor of Mr. William Hawkins”.

Sir Nicholas Slanning

Sir Nicholas Slanning (1606–1643), royalist army officer who married Gertrude, daughter of Sir James Bagge of Saltram, Devon. They had two sons and two daughters. Slanning attended Exeter College, Oxford, and entered the Inner Temple in November 1628. He then served in the Low Countries, (Netherlands) becoming proficient in the art of war.

On his return to England Slanning was knighted in 1632 and appointed vice-admiral of both Devon and Cornwall.

In 1635 Slanning became governor of Pendennis Castle. He was particularly concerned with the danger from Barbary corsairs who entrapped English sailors and sold them into slavery in Africa. Slanning rejoiced at the arrival, in September 1637, of two ships bringing home British captives released from Salé after Rainsborough's expedition.

Slanning served on both the Devon and Cornish commissions of the peace. The first bishops' war led to his being ordered to take thirteen pieces of ordnance from Pendennis Castle and 100 soldiers by sea to Workington in Cumberland. He arrived in April 1639 and was ordered to defend Carlisle with these forces.

The Mayflower

The Mayflower - the most famous Plymouth Migration story ever.

The emigration of Pilgrims to America was thwart with danger and disease - even before they set off!

Due to dangerous leaks in their ship, twice the Pilgrims were forced back to port, first to Dartmouth and then to Plymouth.Such was the fear of death en route, the decision was made to leave one of the ships behind.

Eventually 102 Pilgrims and crew set sail from Plymouth on September 6th 1620 for their epic journey across the Atlantic.  During the long voyage a child was born to Elizabeth Hopkins, who named him Oceanus.

[Mayflower Passenger list 1620, Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery.]

Native Americans

George Weymouth brought five Native American Indians to Plymouth in 1605, from what is now Maine – he gave three of these men to Ferdinando Gorges, the Governor of Plymouth (who may have been resident on Drake’s Fort on the Hoe, or in Plymouth Castle).

Weymouth’s voyage opened the way for combined exploration, trade and colonisation. The five men were from the Patuxet people and they were named Manida, Skidwarres/Skettawarroes, Nahanada/Dehanada, Assacumet and Tisquantum.

They were brought to England to be trained as guides and scouts. There is a strange possible symmetry here – in 1590 a colony of English settlers disappeared from Roanoke Island - the only clue that was found was the word "CROATOAN" carved into a tree – some believe that the colony was massacred, others that they integrated into the Native American Indian population.

Did the five Patuxet men ‘disappear’ in Devon? The artist John White was the person  who first discovered the disappearance of the Roanoke Island colony and on his return to England he settled in Plymouth – his paintings of Native Americans are considered significant works. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_White_%28colonist_and_artist%29

The discovery of Native American Indians was a huge challenge to belief in the literal truth of the Bible (almost universal at the time) – according to the Bible all the world was wiped out by the Deluge apart from the family of Noah, but the Native American Indians appeared to be a surviving – perhaps pre-Adamic race. During the middle ages certain Jewish theologians had speculated on the creation of races before Adam, races that had been destroyed by god because of their sinfulness. The discovery of the American Indians generated further speculation about pre-Adamic races.

This fed the ambivalence of Christian theologians to the historical role of the Jews – on the one hand Christianity arises as an offshoot of Jewish religion and adopts Judaism’s Old Testament ‘in toto’; however, according to medieval Christianity  “the Jews” crucified Christ and were seen by many as an evil or fallen race. This ambivalence led to various theories about the Jews – that contemporary Jews were fake or false Jews, and that the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel were the British (having forgotten their heritage).

This latter theory led to British Israelism, variations on or proto versions of which influenced popular late eighteenth/early nineteenth visionaries like Richard Brothers and Joanna Southcott.

Followers of such movements were active in Devonport Dockyard and adopted the dress of orthodox Jews... in fact a contemporary asked who all the Russians were in the dockyard, worried that they might be spies. Is it possible that these men were actual Jews as observed by a nineteenth century painter who wrote of seeing at Plymouth’s North Corner  “sailors and their lasses, drunk and sober; bearded Jews...” ?

French Protestants

1685-1700 Huguenots (French Protestants) fled persecution and settled in Plymouth. They were banned from inheriting landed property, they were subjected to double taxation. They were very organised and very commercially-minded. 7 of the 24 founders of the Bank of England were Huguenots. Yet still, any distinctive mark of their arrival, other than some surnames, had disappeared.

William Parker

William Parker, privateer and merchant, appears to have been born into the minor ranks of the Elizabethan gentry, although his parentage has yet to be traced. His brother John was a man of property in Southampton. On 18 June 1590 William Parker married Willmot Rogett at St Andrew's Church, Plymouth, and the parish registers subsequently record the baptisms of their children Margery, Mary, Elizabeth, Nicholas, Willmot, Prudence, and John. Three other children died in infancy. Parker first came to prominence in 1587 when he served as one of Drake's captains in the expedition to Cadiz. During the years 1590 to 1595 he undertook privateering voyages in the Richard, backed by letters of reprisal issued by the high court of admiralty. He seized several Spanish prizes and captured Puerto de Caballos in Honduras by daring raids in 1594 and 1595. Recalled to royal service in 1596, Parker was captain of the Rainbow for the second Cadiz expedition.

He resumed privateering in November of that year, sailing to the Caribbean with his own ship, the Prudence, and the barque Adventure. His lively account of the voyage was published by Hakluyt. Having captured Puerto de Caballos jointly with Sir Anthony Sherley in April 1597, Parker sacked Campeche, the main town of Yucatan, and was shot through the chest by a bullet which remained lodged in his back. The Spanish retaliated by taking the Adventure, executing the captain and thirteen men. Parker arrived back in Plymouth in July 1597.

The most celebrated of Parker's exploits was the capture of Porto Bello in Panama during his Caribbean expedition of 1600–01. Parker's narrative in Purchas his Pilgrimes dates the voyage as 1601–2, but evidence from Spanish documents and records of Parker's activities in Plymouth point to this being an error. The Prudence, Pearl, and three smaller ships set sail in November 1600, capturing and pillaging St Vincent in the Cape Verde Islands, winning a fierce battle at Cubagua, and seizing a Portuguese slave ship. Parker arrived at Porto Bello on a moonlit night in February 1601 and concealed his identity long enough to overcome the town in a surprise attack. To his disappointment, the treasure house stockpile was only 10,000 ducats, which he kept for himself, allowing his soldiers to share the rest of the spoils. Parker withdrew the following evening but was shot through the arm by a musket ball as the fleet sailed away.

After returning home in May 1601, Parker busied himself sending out his ships on privateering voyages until the accession of James I in 1603 brought peace with Spain. Parker then turned to less adventurous merchant trading and property investment. He served on Plymouth corporation, holding the office of mayor for a year from October 1601. He proved to be as confrontational in his civic duties as he was at sea. Sir Robert Cecil received bitter complaints that Parker was hampering the work of royal officials, on one occasion sending men to play hurling on Plymouth Hoe to evade impressment.

In 1604 he was suspended from the corporation and imprisoned for his ‘sinister malice’ in creating trouble between the mayor and the captain of the Fort. In 1605 Parker and fellow Plymouth merchants agreed to back a trading voyage to Virginia by George Weymouth. This scheme failed, but Parker is named in the first Virginia charter of 1606 as one of the four patentees for the northern colony. He invested in the Richard which set out for Virginia in August 1606, only to be seized by the Spanish.

Having been passed over when nominated in 1614 and 1615, Parker was chosen by the East India Company in November 1617 as vice-admiral for a voyage to the Moluccas. Serious doubts were expressed about his suitability, not least because he had long since given up seafaring. Parker was described as fat, unwieldy, hot-tempered, and too strict with his men. His supporters prevailed, however, and Parker prepared for his journey by making a will distributing his Plymouth properties and the bulk of his belongings and wealth between his wife, sons, and daughters.

The passage of the Sampson was dogged by death and sickness. Parker wrote from the Cape in July 1618 complaining of bad beer and beef, and the want of fresh provisions and warm clothing. On 24 September 1618 William Parker died on the voyage to Bantam, lamented as a good commander: an unremarkable end, hardly befitting one who had led such a dashing life.

(Taken from Oxford Dictionary of National Biographies)

"Imported Entertainment"

Two adverts for two different entertaining events in Plymouth showing the different views of race in different eras of history. 

Expatriation and Equiano at Plymouth, 1787

At the time James York was in west Devon the town of Plymouth was the scene for an extraordinary scheme to resettle other former black slaves to Africa.  In the mid 1870's the British government was faced with dealing with the hundreds of American blacks like York who had come to England following the loss of the New World Colonies as well as others who had come from the East Indies.  Most of them were living in dire poverty in London.  A scheme was devised to resettle them outside of England and among the places considered were Nova Scotia and the Bahamas.  Eventually it was decided to send them from Plymouth to Sierra Leone.  

Equiano, a prominent former slave, was one of those who became involved.  He already had some first had knowledge of Devon; in 1777 he had spent 'some little time at Plymouth and Exeter among some pious friends'.  Nine years later he returned as one of the Navy board administrators for the project but quickly became embroiled in financial mismanagement.  He was dismissed five months later in March 1787.  Equiano's role in this endeavour, which later ended disastrously, appears to have been as a whistle-blower.  Twelve years later he would become widely known for The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavas Vassa, the African.  His autobiography has been hugely influential since its publication although only lately have parts of it been questioned. 

Introduction to 17th Century Plymouth  - A Slice of Migration History

Some questions for a history lesson...

Why did Barbary Corsairs capture sailors from the coasts of Devon and Cornwall?

Why did the King build a Citadel in Plymouth?

At the end of the 17th Century, there was a Dutch man (William of Orange) on the British throne - why did Britain have such close ties with the Netherlands?

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With improvements in ship building and navigation, the international stage became much smaller during the 1600’s. There came into being, a great age of learning, enlightenment, discovery, navigation, rebellion and for Britain, a whole new order. Plymouth stood up well to the Royalists during the Civil War but when the Royals finally took the throne back, they saw a need to protect the city from foreigners as well as from the people in the city. And so King Charles built the Royal Citadel that still stands today, with gun emplacements pointing over the Town as well as out to sea and even today, not complete without armed guards outside preventing the ordinary citizen from entering that place.

A key driving factor for migration to Plymouth was opportunity. Large Government funded building projects would have attracted migrant workers to the City. The Royal Citadel (c1670) and the building of the Naval Dockyard at Plymouth Dock (c.1690-1700) required skilled labour as well as people to service the labour force, food vendors, accommodation providers, transport services. The dockyard and the town that grew around it (from doctors to shoe makers etc. etc.) was known as Plymouth Dock. In less than 100 years it became bigger than its older neighbour Plymouth, the City.

During the 1600’s, Plymouth’s naval power was harnessed and deployed world wide. As such the city became midwife to an age of empire and emigration. Those fleeing religious intolerance left Plymouth for America where freedom to practice any religion became a biding principle of the new territory. (This freedom did not of course, extend to the beliefs and practices of the Aboriginal Americans who valued/worshipped the land, rivers and wildlife as their Gods and who would be massacred relentlessly to force them to give up their rights to their homelands).

In England during this period, Catholics were finally denied the right to sit on the throne,  Royals lost their power base and Parliament became the chief law maker as well as treasurer of the country’s finances. Britain followed Europe, where in Holland particularly, great merchant adventures were financed by men who shared their risks and the spoils of war and trade. After the last Catholic monarch was driven from these shores, the Dutch William of Orange was invited, along with his British wife Mary, to rule the nation and to share with Britain, the secrets of trade that had been so successful deployed in his own country. When he landed in Brixham, the Royal Citadel in Plymouth was the first fortress in England to declare support for him and he repaid the compliment by initiating the construction of Plymouth Dock. The age of trade was about to be explode and Plymouth was well placed to have a share in it.

Forced Migrations and the use of Vagrants and Africans as servants and slaves 

Freighted with Fools, from Plymouth sound,
To Mary-Land our Ship was bound,
Where we arrived in dreadful Pain,
Shock'd by the Terrours of the Main;
For full Three Months, our wavering Boat,
Did thro' the surley Ocean float,
And furious Storms and threatning Blasts,
Both tore our Sails and sprung our Masts.

Tobacco ships, although heavily laden on their homeward passage to Great Britain with the bulky produce of Virginia and Maryland, were but partially laden on their outward passage, and therefore able to carry a large number of passengers at small extra cost. Moreover, tobacco planters suffering from a shortage of labor were always eager to buy servants and convicts in lieu of, or in addition to, Negroes. Servants and convicts, unlike slaves, were bound to servitude for a limited number of years and therefore were less desirable than slaves as unskilled laborers, but they were less expensive, were more apt to understand English, and were usually more adaptable than Negroes fresh from the jungles of Africa. The smaller planters who could not afford to buy slaves often took convicts and indentured servants instead, and the larger planters occasionally took them either to augment their slave labor or to perform specialized functions for which they were equipped by education or experience in the mother country, such as those of overseers, schoolmasters, carpenters, coopers, weavers, and blacksmiths.

In the seventeenth century kidnappers, called "spirits," operated in English seaport towns, shanghaiing adults by force and enticing children by offers of candy aboard outward-bound Virginiamen. Various attempts were made by the government to eliminate kidnapping and deceit, but they were ineffectual. Therefore the methods used to procure emigrants continued throughout the colonial period to be somewhat unsavory. If very few emigrants were forcibly transported against their will, many  were persuaded to try their fortunes in the colonies as a result of deception and misrepresentation.

Henry Pollexfen, (of Kitley, Devon) in A Discourse of Trade (1697), pointed to the riches acquired in a short time from the colonies and asserted that “the Original of moveable Riches is from Labour, and that it may arise from the Labour of Blacks and Vagrants, if well managed.” Pollexfen also proposed seven as the age for starting work.   As for education, it bred not only sedition but laziness if acquired by the children of the poor, "for few that have once learnt to Write and Read, but either their Parents, or themselves, are apt to think, that they are fit for some Preferment, and in order to it, despise all Labouring Imployments and live Idle, rather than disparage themselves by Work." [Discourse of Trade and Coyn.]

Whether from regular schooling or from lack of it, the children of the poor distressed the authorities. The failure of the efforts to inure them to work is evident as complaints about the fecklessness of laborers rose. It occurred to a few people that it might be possible to entice the poor into greater zeal for work by making them less poor, by paying them higher wages or by lowering the price of food. But most of the self-appointed economists were convinced that laborers would work only when hungry. Higher wages or cheaper food would only mean more time lost in drunkenness. "Every one but an idiot knows," said Arthur Young, "that the lower classes must be kept poor, or they will never be industrious."

The object, then, was not the elimination of poverty but the discipline of the poor. In spite of the contempt in which they were held, there was no suggestion that their numbers should be reduced. Just as the Virginia planter who deplored the laziness of his slaves continued to buy more and encouraged the multiplication of those he had, so the English authors advocated acts to facilitate the naturalization of immigrants, especially poor immigrants, as well as acts to promote early marriage among the poor.

In practice the discipline of the poor in England stopped short of actual enslavement. Parliament did not even discuss a motion by one of its members in 1670 "that as an expedient to make servants more tractable we might bring into this kingdom the use of Negro slaves." And neither the workhouse nor its successor, the factory, enslaved its occupants, at least in any legal sense. But they can be seen as a step in that direction, and there were plenty of voices outside Parliament crying for the next step. Bishop Berkeley, who carried John Locke's epistemology a step further, also made an advance in his social philosophy by proposing that "sturdy beggars ... be seized and made slaves to the public for a term of years." James Burgh, another champion of reform, wanted a set of press gangs "to seize all idle and disorderly persons, who have been three times complained of before a magistrate, and to set them to work during a certain time, for the benefit of great trading, or manufacturing companies." Francis Hutcheson, the moral philosopher, thought that perpetual slavery should be "the ordinary punishment of such idle vagrants”

When the king tried to crack down on the transportation and kidnap of unsuspecting and unwilling persons, the tobacco merchants of London lobbied on behalf of the captains and their customers. The merchants assured the king, that these people were "the scruffe and scumme” of the nation. And so Virginia became "a sinke to drayen England of her filth and scum."

The Virginia fleet in 1665 consisted of ships from Bristol, Weymouth, Dartmouth, Hull, Plymouth, Bideford, and Barnstaple as well as from London. One fleet of twenty-one vessels included nine from Bristol. Eighteen of thirty-one ships that sailed from Virginia in May, 1666, were Bristol men. And in November that year thirty ships at Bristol were loading for a voyage to Virginia. In 1667 several Dutch vessels, nine Bristol merchantmen, two London ships, and seven from other English ports traded in Virginia waters.

 A casual observer of smuggling activity...

"About the beginning of July 1781, we drew near the land, and the wind was now got to the westward and blowing a stiff gale.

It was judged prudent to bear up for Plymouth Sound, to land the mail and passengers.  We anchored in the sound about mid-day, and the captain, after landing the mail and passengers, proceeded by land to Falmouth, leaving Mr. Briton, the sailing-master, in charge to proceed home with the ship the first fair wind.

Whilst we lay here our officer went on shore to Cawsand, to purchase spirits, and I was surprised to see this contraband article carried through the streets in open day, as if in defiance of the laws of the country.

Even the soldiers from the camp on the neighbouring height, there were the porters to carry about the kegs of brandy and Geneva there.  In this port [Plymouth] women frequently ply in boats, as watermen, which I believe is scarcely the case in any other part of Britain."

[Ref: to be confirmed]

Descriptions of Plymouth's Docks, the influx of foreigners and local labour.

To listen to the audio, click the picture on the right.

Transportations

John White (c. 1756 – 1832) was an Irish surgeon and botanical collector and native of County Fermanagh. He was born in Drumaran near Mullaghdun and attended Portora Royal School, Enniskillen. He entered the Royal Navy on 26th June, 1778 as third surgeon’s mate. He was promoted surgeon in 1780, and was the principal surgeon during the voyage of the First Fleet to Australia and later the settlement at Port Jackson. In March 1787 White joined the First Fleet transports at Plymouth where he found that the convicts had been living for some time on salt meat, a bad preparation for a long voyage.

He succeeded in obtaining supplies of fresh meat and vegetables for them, and arranged that they should be allowed up on deck in relays to obtain fresh air. His sensible and humane treatment was probably responsible for the number of convict deaths during the voyage not being higher than it was.

“from the mid-1750s convicts sentenced in Devon were invariably taken overland to Bristol for shipment.” In fact there were still ships going from Plymouth.

The transportation to Botany Bay of the navy sailor Gennis – this followed the execution on the Hoe of the leaders of a mutiny in Plymouth Sound in 1797 (as part of the mass rising of mutineers including at Nore and Spithead). During this execution the firing squad fired three times at one Royal Marine Lee and all missed him each time (ie. they were intentionally missing their target, indicating that the sympathies of the men, and perhaps that of the crowd that had gathered, were with Lee, and perhaps with the mutiny). Eventually a Sergeant moved in and shot Lee at close range http://plymouthlocalhistory.blogspot.com/2009/03/execution-on-plymouth-hoe.html .

The event was reported in detail, but rather differently, in the Sherborne and Yeovil Mercury on Monday 10th July,1797. The report read:


'PLYMOUTH, July 8 - On Wednesday morning an express arrived here from the War-Office, with a warrant for the execution of Lee, Coffy, and Branning, three marines who were last week tried by a General Court-Martial, and found guilty of an attempt to excite a mutiny among the marine corps at Stone-house Barracks and on Thursday at 12 o'clock the troops at this place and in the neighbourhood, consisting of the Sussex fencible cavalry, four companies of the royal artillery, the Lancashire, East Devon and Essex regiments of militia, the 25th regiment of foot, royal independent invalids, and Plymouth volunteers, assembled on the Hoe, and formed in a half circle in order to witness the execution.

M Gennis, another marine tried for a similar crime, and sentenced to receive 1000 lashes, and to be afterwards transported to Botany Bay for life, was brought on the ground soon after twelve o'clock, and received 500 lashes, and then conveyed back to Stone-house Barracks. At half past one o'clock, Lee, Coffy and Branning were marched from the Citadel under the escort of a party of marines, with a coffin before each, preceded by the band of that corps playing the Dead March in Saul.

“The former was attended by the Rev. Dr. Hawker; and the two latter by a Roman Catholic priest, who after praying with them near an hour, quitted them, and they all three knelt on their coffins for a few minutes, when an officer of marines came and drew the caps over their faces, and a party of twenty marines immediately came down and put a period to their existence by discharging the contents of their muskets through their bodies, after which all the regiments marched round them in solemn procession, the whole forming, perhaps, one of the most awful scenes that the human eye ever witnessed. They all behaved in a manner becoming their melancholy situation, and apparently very resigned and penitent. About thirty thousand people were supposed to be present at the execution'. 


There was more to the execution than is mentioned in the newspaper report however. Ten thousand men of the Fleet and garrison were there to watch them die and most of Plymouth appeared to have turned out too. When the three men faced the firing squad and the shots were fired, Coffy and Branning fell forward, dead, into their coffins. However, Lee was not hit and had to go through the whole procedure again.

The reserve firing squad lined up, took aim and fired but again Lee was untouched. Once more, they loaded up, took aim but again missed Lee. In the end, a sergeant came up behind him and shot him dead at close range. It seems odd that the firing squad missed Lee three times and that there was some sympathy with him in the ranks.


Earlier fourteen seamen had been hanged at the yardarm on their ships in the Sound.


This was to be Plymouth's last public execution.

Stories related to Africans and African Americans

Slave Trading Ventures from Plymouth -

The first slave trading ventures of Britain set forth from Plymouth in the 16th century. By the 18th Century, Europe had developed the trade so that it now operated on industrial levels in terms of volume, finance and logistics. Britain, keen to make money, soon joined in and Plymouth tried its hand at taking part in some of these ventures in the early eighteenth century. Bristol would soon supercede her and in turn Liverpool would cut prices and dominate the trade. Here is a list of ventures that set forth from Plymouth - many of the crew as well as the slaves on board would have died on board these ships and so many Plymouth men would have gone to their deaths in the pursuit of profit.

Slave trading from Plymouth ( (information from Tattersfield, ‘The Forgotten Trade’)

Vessels clearing Plymouth for Africa:-

1701 – vessel is Rochester of London – captain John Dennis for Guinea for merchant Edward Guinea – took 2770 lb of tobacco

1704 – Michael Galley of London – captain John Prior for Guinea – for merchant Mordecai Living and Co – cargo pewter, lead, iron, shoes, spirits, calico, cloth, hats, stockings, bugles, Holland linen,  etc

1705 – ship William, brigantine of London – captain John Collingwood for Guinea – Merchant – Joseph Martyn
Delivered 120 slaves to York River, Virginia

1707 – Pindar Galley of London – captain, John Taylor for Jamaica – for the Royal African Company – chest of Apothecaries wares for Sir Dalby Thomas in the Cape Coast Castle (there is a record of what drugs he took)

1708 – Joseph Galley of Bristol – captain Robert Mullington – for Houlditch and Brook
Delieverd 280 slaves to Jamaica in November 1709

1710 – Sylvia Galley of Plymouth – Captain John Vennard – for merchant Phil Pentyre, George Barons…

1711 – John and Robert of London captained by Robert Collins for Gambia – Pentryre for Robert Burridge

1713 – mixed cargo and 2 negroes – 1713 Industry captained by Joseph Howell – from Barbados to Upper James Virginia

1716 - Duke of Cornwall captained by William Butcher – from Barbados to Upper James Virginia

1697- 1704 – more than 75 ships left Plymouth fully cargoed for the West Indies – of which there are extant records.

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‘Devon and Cornwall with their ‘rotten boroughs’ and historic ties to West Indian planting sent no less than 70 mps to Westminster whiles such new manufacturing centres as Manchester, leeds and Halifax sent none.’
[Lewis Namier and John Brooke, History of Parliament: The house of commons 1754-1790, London 1964]

1750 First Sugar House in Plymouth

Enslaved Africans were shipped, by force across the Atlantic to the Caribbean to grow sugar to sweeten the taste of food for the rich Europeans who profited from this trade.
The Plymouth Sugar House was used for grinding cane. It was located near western end of modern Mount Gould Rd, its ruins long thought to have been an old fort. (See 1800’s for revival of sugar industry in Plymouth.

Africans protected by Plymouthians

There were examples of slaves who were passing through the port (in the 18th and nineteenth centuries) provoking interventions on their behalf by Plymouth people. This included William Castillo, from Barbados, in 1752 baptised at St Andrew’s Plymouth, then seized as a suspected slave in London, finally released after appealing to people in Plymouth.

American War of Independence brings African Americans to the City

During and after the American War of Independence, black servants of defeated British colonialists arrived in Britain from North America

Olaudah Equiano, a former slave, landed in Plymouth as a freeman in 1777. (Was it Devon or Plymouth in Nova Scotia?) He is reported as saying he had friends in Devon and Exeter to visit. Equiano worked in Plymouth as  Superintendant for Supplies for the Sierra Leone expedition set up to send Africans back to West Africa. The settlement was first planned for Nova Scotia, then the Bahamas and finally and actually Sierra Leone…  He complained about corruption amongst the white people in charge of different aspects of organising the expedition and was then himself arrested on suspicion of theft. He was duly exonerated.

A Cornish Reporter reports from Plymouth - 1798

James Silk Buckingham and his story about a rather splendid cook who came to Plymouth by ship.

25 August 1786 – 30 June 1855) was an English author, journalist and traveller.

He was born at Flushing near Falmouth, the son of a farmer, and had a limited education.

At this period the streets of Plymouth Dock were daily crowded with officers and seamen on shore on liberty, after receiving pay and prize-money to an extent beyond their power to spend in a short time without some unusual modes of extravagance, as the idea of hoarding or laying by for a future was never entertained apparently, by either officers or men.

By both, carriages of all descriptions were in request at enormous prices; and cases were described in which young midshipmen, having perhaps £200 to spend in a week, would have one carriage for themselves, another for their gold-laced cocked hats, and another for their hangers, or dirks.  

The seamen would sometimes hire three or four coaches to remain on the stand, and in groups of three or four on the roofs of each, dance hornpipes and reels to a violin player seated on the box; and when the dance was over, drive a furious race against each other for ten or twenty guineas a side, till the horses became exhausted.

As the ordinary clothing of themselves was not sufficiently expensive, the finest broad cloths were used for their jackets and trousers; scarlet velvet and gold lace for their waistcoats; golden guineas fitted with eyes were used for the larger buttons of their trousers, which had a gold fringe on the bottom; rows of half guineas, similarly fitted, and so close as to overlap each other, like scale armour, were used for the jackets, and seven-shilling gold pieces, just then introduced,  were used in double rows on each side of the velvet waistcoat.

In addition to all this, every sailor had one, and many two or three, female favourites to share his favours, so that a few days was sufficient to exhaust their funds, all parties being in a state of excitement during the whole period, from the frequent use of grog, milk-punch, and other 'necessary refreshments' as they were called.

The admirals and captains were not at all desirous of checking this extravagance in any way, as their maxim was, that as long as a sailor had any money left, there was no hope of his return to duty.

One of the most remarkable cases of this extraordinary extravagance that I remember, was that of a cook of a line-of-battle ship, who had returned to England after an absence of 7 years on the West India and South America station.  It was then custom to withhold all pay and prize-money from officers and men while the ships were abroad, so that the long arrears of both due in this case, with the gains arising from the cook's privilege of "slush-money" as it is called, - that is the sale or supply to the ship's purser of all the "grease" made in cooking operations, which is used for many purposes at sea, and for the value of which credit was given in the ship's accounts - exceeded £3,000, - and all this was dissipated in less than three weeks.

The cook was a negro, bur a fine man of his race, and proud of his person.  As a warrant officer, he was entitles to wear the naval uniform, and, having taken an extensive suite of rooms in one of the principal hotels, he was fitted by the most fashionable tailor with two or three rich suits of broadcloth, kerseymere,  satin linings, and gold.  His hair was dressed every morning, and well powdered, and he had a carriage and four for his daily exercise.  He took the stage-box at the theatre every night, invited his tradesmen to dinner before going to the play, and after the performance brought home with him sometimes as many as half-a-dozen ladies of compliant character to sup and spend the night with him.

At the end of the first week he engaged one of the Portsmouth sloop packets, which sailed daily from Plymouth, and gave a general invitation to as many ladies as chose to avail themselves of it, offering a free passage there and back, as a cruise, with ample entertainment on board.  Of course the sloop was crowded, and the cost of this experiment exhausted all his funds.  At the end of the third week, having sold or pawned what remained of his wardrobe and ornaments to keep up the game, he was at last so destitute as to be unable to pay for a bed, and was literally found, by a shopman who went to open his place of business in the morning, stowed away in the hollow space into which the shutters were placed during the night.  From thence he was taken to hospital, and in another week he was dead!

Gustavus Conyngham

(about 1744 – 27 November 1819)

During the American War of Independance, against the British, and over a period of just eighteen months, Coynyngham captured or sunk sixty ships, causing a 28% rise in British shipping insurance cost. This brought the expenses associated with shipping to their all time highest level, outpacing their rates even during England’s wars with France and Spain. Dozens of merchants resorted to paying French and Dutch ships to carry their goods for fear of the Dunkirk Pirate’s vengeance. It was reported that the King of England himself said that it would give him great pleasure to be present at the hanging of Conyngham, if he could only catch him. Even the weather could not contain him.

He was sent to England in irons and treated with great severity.  He was removed to Plymouth and in November, 1779, after several unsuccessful attempts, he escaped from Mill Prison with about fifty others. He proceeded first to London and thence found his way to Holland.

After his escape he wrote to Franklin from the Texel, December 1, 1779:

"I shall acquaint you of the many favours I received since I became a captive. 1st, in New York, that Sir George Collier ordered irons on my legs, with a sentry on board the ship. Mr. Collier going on an expedition ordered me to jaole, there put me into the condemned room. The first night a cold plank my bed a stone for a pillow. 2d night allowed a something to lay on; in this horrid room was kept for eight days without the least morsel of bread, or anything but water, from the keeper of the prison ... After expostulating of the impropriety of such treatment, [the jailer] told me he had such orders, but would take it upon himself to release me on my giving him my strongest assurances I would not make my escape. I readily consented, it not being in the power of man to get out of the condemned room . . .

In the prison of New York I continued till that tyrant Collier returned ...

Then I was told to get ready to go on board the prison-ship . . .

Then a pair of criminal irons put on my legs, weight 50 pounds; at the door, put into the hangman's cart, all in form as if bound to the gallows. I was then put into a boat and took alongside the Raisonable . . .

to be sent to England in the packet. In those Irons I was brought to Pendennis Castle [Falmouth, Cornwall] .

Then not contented, they manacled my hands with a new fashioned pair of ruffels fitted very tite. In this condition I was kept there 15 or 16 days, then brought to Plymouth and lodged in the black hole for eight days, before they would do me the honour of committing me on suspicion of high treason on his majesties high seas; then put into Mill prison, where we committed treason through his earth and made our escape. This, Sir, is an account of their favors, insults excepted. I must acquaint your excellency that the poor unfortunate prisoners in Plymouth are in a most distressed situation."

Attempts to escape from Mill Prison were numerous, sometimes by climbing over the walls, sometimes by burrowing under them, and sometimes by bribing sentries, the last generally by officers who had money. Among the officers confined at this place were Captains Manley, Talbot, Johnson, and O'Brien, and Lieutenants Dale and Barney. Of these the last four escaped, besides Conyngham; Manley and Talbot made several attempts. Most prisoners' efforts in this direction failed, but in the aggregate a large number got off and made their way to Holland and France. At Paris they found a good friend in Benjamin Franklin, who gave them money and assistance to the extent of his ability. Those who were caught after escaping were brought back, confined forty days in a dungeon called the "black hole," and put upon half allowance of food.

Some escaped by entering the British service, yielding to inducements constantly held out to them. Those doing so were comparatively few in number, and most of them were foreigners who had served on American ships. In December, 1778, over a hundred men in Mill Prison signed an agreement to remain loyal to their country and under no circumstances to enter the British service

Introduction to 18th Century Plymouth  - A Slice of Migration History

Introduction to 18th Century Plymouth

Some questions for a history lesson...

Why did Plymouth become such a busy port during the 18th Century?

What kind of lessons did they learn at school in Plymouth during the 18th Century?

Why did the population of Plymouth grow so drmatically?

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During the 1700‘s, Plymouth grew significantly. Perhaps the key period of growth and opportunity came in the period 1750-1870 when a great building programme that included Dock Line defences; Naval / Military Hospitals; a POW prison, the Plymouth Breakwater project, the Royal William Yard, various Military Barracks were completed. Much of the development of Plymouth was driven by the needs and circumstance of war and Empire

At one point in the eighteenth century, dockyard labourers were earning 16 shillings a week (with a pension of 5 shillings a week). Compare this to the income of local rural labourers who were earning 7 shillings a week. It became very difficult for landowners to recruit rural labourers because so many were attracted away to the city.

Whilst Plymouth prospered by way of its support for the war effort, building ships and acting as a safe harbour, significant increases in trade also helped to create a more prosperous city. The Slave Trade was in full swing during this time, as was the Opium trade, enabling Britain to buy and sell commodities like cotton, sugar, rice, rum, tobacco and indigo, all products that were produced by the forced labour of slaves in the plantations far off in the West Indies and in America. Buying such vast amounts of these commodities so cheaply to sell to Europe ensured Britain grew wealthy and the banking system prospered. Banks sprung up all over Plymouth to cope with the trade deals that took place here. Germans, Huguenots, Jews and others poured into the city to take advantages of the opportunities a port town could bring them. The American Revolution created a need to house prisoners of war and later on the French were filing the prisons of Plymouth too, at Mill Prison, not so far from what is now Millbridge. Youngsters came from the countryside to try their luck on the seas, perhaps hoping that by joining the Navy they might see the world and make a fortune. Many more men, young and old were pressed/forced into the Navy to serve their country.

Aside from those captured and press ganged into the navy, there were many other unwilling emigrants who left the Plymouth for the colonies. Some left voluntarily, as indentured servants, hoping to settle in the colonies and after a period of servitude, to be given land there. Others were ‘ghosted’ or 'spirited' onto ships after being entertained  to the point of blind drunkeness. These drunken souls were taken aboard ships bound for the plantations and on awakening would discover they would be forced to work on a sugar plantation, sharing their toils and torture with slaves. Slaves once bought by planters were slaves for life and in many cases owed their life to the nature of the contract that had brought them to the islands. Indentured servants were not so valuable and in many cases they were worked to their death on account of them not being worth taking care of. If an indentured servant could survive his term of employment, he could claim freedom after 7 years.

Plymouth in the eighteenth century was a busy, dangerous exciting city where a man could lose his life, his fortune and his country. But he could also build a fortune and set off for the new world for a new life of his choosing too… Some of the stories we’ve included here give us a feel for what this period of time must have been like.

Migration From Countryside to City

Migration from countryside to city from the 1720s to the 1770s Plymouth Dock grew from almost nothing to half the population of Plymouth – where did these people come from? While specialist skilled craftsmen may have come from far afield in the UK, unskilled labour from the countryside.

Perhaps the key period of growth and opportunity came in the period 1750-1870 (e.g. Dock Line defences; Naval / Military Hospitals; a POW prison, the Plymouth Breakwater project, the Royal William Yard, various Military Barracks) - much driven by the needs and circumstance of war and Victorian Empire

Is may be significant that eighteenth and nineteenth century Plymouth was resistant to Methodism (given its importance as a strongly Puritan community in the seventeenth century)  – no dissenting chapels were set up in Dock until the second half of the eighteenth century. This suggests that the incomers from countryside were rather more traditional Anglican than urban puritan types? When Wesley came to preach in Devonport in 1746 he was warned that his life was in danger and a large mob assembled, which, by all accounts, was only calmed by Wesley’s confident and peaceable behaviour.

The  ‘Grand Gazateer’ (1759) describes Plymouth as follows:  “’tis too much over-stocked with inhabitants new come from Ireland, Cornwall and other parts, and gathered Flocks of Females, charitably inclined to solace money’d sailors in distress; and that they may do it honestly… marry them ex tempores possibly half-a-dozen in as many months. The true Plymothians are in the main allowed to be as polite, genteel, religious and worthy a people as those enjoyed by any other place….”

Jewish Presence in Plymouth

Early in the eighteenth century, there were just a handful of Jews in Exeter who maintained ad hoc religious services. By 1745 there were sufficient Jews in Plymouth to hold regular services, though they did not have their own Synagogue until 1762. They were granted a lease which was held for them by a non-Jew, one Samuel Champion as the legality of Jews holding leases was doubtful.

In these circumstances it is almost certain that about 1740 a Jew died in Plymouth and Sarah Sherrenbeck, in an exercise of 'charity of loving kindness' allowed him or her to be buried in a plot of land belonging to her on Plymouth Hoe. This plot was utilized again for a similar purpose and ultimately Mrs Sherrenbeck transferred it to the Plymouth Jewish community.

In 1752 this land was held in trust for her by her husband Joseph Jacob Sherrenbeck. In 1758 another quarter acre of ground and a summer house with its garden, near to, and probably adjoining the garden owned by Sarah Sherrenbeck, was sold to three prominent London Jewish merchants. It is clear that by now the community was sufficiently large to need a proper burial ground with a small Ohel, and that Sarah Sherrenbeck's original garden was no longer large enough. On the other hand the community was still not sufficiently well established for its members to be certain that the Congregation was a permanency.

They, therefore, arranged for London merchants, who may have advanced some of the necessary cash, to be nominal owners, to ensure that if the Congregation disbanded, the cemetery would be looked after and the graves cared for.
At some time, this lease made out to the London Jewish merchants must have been transferred to the Plymouth Hebrew Congregation, but there is no record to that effect in the Congregation's surviving archives.

It was not until 1758, i.e. some fourteen or fifteen years after Sarah Sherrenbeck's ground was first used for burials, that the purpose for buying more ground was openly disclosed in the lease.

The lease of 1758 relates that in consideration of £40 the London Jewish merchants were to have a garden and summer house about 55 feet in length and 35 feet in breadth 'to permit and suffer all and every such persons as profess the Jewish ceremonies and religion and who now reside in or near the Borough of Plymouth or at any time thereafter ... to be used as a place of burial ....'

This burial ground on Plymouth Hoe, the result of a number of separate land purchases, served the community until the middle of the nineteenth century when a new cemetery was bought in 1868 in Compton Gifford near Central Park. Presumably there was no more land to be purchased on Plymouth Hoe because of road works and extensive building which today surround the old Jewish cemetery.

It appears that an attempt was made, possibly as an emergency measure, to re-use the old cemetery. There is an indication in the minutes of the Plymouth Congregation that the cemetery was covered with earth sometime at the beginning of the nineteenth century. According to Jewish law coffins may be interred one on top of the other provided that six hand breadths of earth intervene between them. In London, the Great Synagogue seems to have added earth in this way in its Alderney Road Cemetery, and the Liverpool community resorted to a similar expedient. From the close proximity of certain tombstones in the Plymouth Hoe Jewish cemetery it seems that the Jewish community in Plymouth added earth to parts of the cemetery and used it a second time.

There is a large stone set into the wall which commemorates the gift of Joseph Joseph of £157 to the Plymouth Congregation in 1796 to complete the purchase of the ground, though the inscription which was barely legible in the 1960s is now in the 1990s virtually illegible.

The Ohel which once stood in the cemetery has vanished. It was at one time used not only as a place to perform the last rites of washing the body, dressing it in shrouds and placing it in a coffin if indeed a coffin was always used, but also as a shelter for the members of the Congregation who took it in turn to guard a newly interred body to prevent it being 'snatched'.

John Jacob Sherenbeck and the Hoe Cemetery

John Sherenbeck was first heard of in 1734 at the assizes in Taunton where he was found guilty of Criminal Conversation (ie, having an affair) with the wife of Lazarus Chadwick.  He was fined £20 and imprisoned for two years.  On release from prison he became a prominent business man and with his wife was a generous benefactor to the Synagogue.  He died between 1779 and 1782.

John Joseph Sherenbeck came from Sherenbeck in Germany and was the Leader of the Plymouth Congregation in 1745. He lived in what to-day is East Stonehouse. 
At the time of the 1750s, the Jews in Plymouth were using a well in St. Katherine's Lane for ritual washing purposes.  They paid five shillings per annum for the use of the land and the well.  That was the chosen site for the Synagogue.

The Synagogue

The cost of building the Synagogue was £300.  A mortgage loan was taken out for £500 that covered the cost of the building and sundry expenses and the construction of the Holy Ark.  The Ark cost £50-10s and was built in the Baroque style.

To-day Plymouth and Exeter are the only two examples of Georgian Synagogues in the English speaking world. 

In 1834 the City of Plymouth offered the congregation the freehold of the land for the sum of one hundred guineas. They accepted.

The Synagogue has a small Sefer Torah that is a Sephardi Sefer which dated back to about 1720 and was written in Venice (a migrant object).

The building is tucked on a side-street. Sharman Kadish, a leading expert on Jewish buildings in Britain, believes that an unobtrusive location was chosen to avoid provoking the destructive riots that non-Anglican houses of worship often provoked in the eighteenth century. Nothing on the exterior distinguishes the building from the meeting houses of Nonconformist Protestants

The Mikveh

The Plymouth Synagogue had a Mikveh that was constructed along with the vestry building about thirteen years after the synagogue. It was built on the site of the spring used for several years previously for ritual washing and it utilised the same spring water.

Of the “58 Jewish aliens” in Plymouth in 1798-1803 ten were from or from near Mannheim and a further 27 from other parts of Germany and Bohemia.  While always small, Jewish immigration rises in the middle of the 18th century and then falls away towards the end – perhaps affected by the war with France?

Henry Hart

Henry Hart was a Jew and a Plymouth man. He founded the Lemon Hart Rum.  This Rum was supplied to the Royal Navy.  It was the custom to give a daily tot of Rum to all seamen, a valuable person indeed.  In 1797 Mrs Henry Hart was one of the Trustees of the Plymouth Synagogue.

Stories extracted from Newspaper Reports

The Blake family from Wadebridge

One of a handful of families who came to Plymouth to set up as photographers in the 1840s, including the Palmer family from Okehamptom and Friese-Greene from Bath.  They were drawn to Plymouth by opportunity (the growing nineteenth century population/market).

A man from London

Ended up in the Devonport Workhouse in 1863. He destroyed his clothes in the hope of being given better ones and sent to prison – on release he repeated the behaviour at the Plymouth Workhouse.

Having her cake and eating it

In 1863 a woman is referred to here as having a husband who is a “coloured” seaman (but she is also receiving half the pay of another man, which may suggest that the seaman is often travelling away).

Mary Ann Wedlock (24),

Found dead – “had not arrived in Plymouth from the country more than about four months” – drinking in pub in castle Street with a marine and others, taken to bed (too drunk to get herself there) and found dead in the morning – this was the third death from excess of alcohol in Plymouth that month.  (PDWN, 4.2.1847)

Sarah Wyatt

Arrested for begging, child in her arms, said she had come from Tavistock to seek her husband who had abandoned her and two children. With her, also begging, was Jane Cook (19) – her husband was in the 5th Fusiliers and refused to give her any of his pay.

Dockyard Deaths

In 1824 there were multiple deaths in the dockyard and some suspicion fell on the use of “African oak” that had just been introduced.

Plymouth man comes home...

In 1841 there is a newspaper report of a destitute man who has turned up in Plymouth having first arrived here from New York, who had worked for a while in the mines in Cornwall and Merthyr, but was injured and unable to work, his father had died and his brothers had been “killed at Merthyr” – presumably in a mining accident. He had returned to Plymouth.

Stealing Swede

1863 a Swedish sailor Carl Ludwig Jorgensen (18) was charged with stealing.

Migration and The Opportunity for Pretence and Fantasy

Migration gave some people the opportunity to invent new personae for themselves. There is an account of a nineteenth society ball in Devonport or Stonehouse in which the writer notes that she observed lower class women present who had, through their trade (milliners or dressmakers) the ‘costume’ of society women (but not the accents, presumably).

There is the case of the French prisoners dressing as Jewish pedlar and young woman.

A drama of such ‘pretence’ is acted out in 1841 at the trial of two female cousins, 26 and 26, - this was the trial of Ann Elizabeth Bouverie de la Haussaye (26) and Arian Parkinson (25) (one of whom had very respectable connections – “the known respectability of the connections of the defendants” -  remarked on by the presiding magistrate/judge and the case attracting an enormous audience, with one of the sittings delayed for one hour due to the uproar of the public). They were on trial for shoplifting some lace, some plaid and a pair of kid gloves (Ariana was seen sweeping the materials and gloves into her lap and covering them with her cloak.) On arrest the main culprit (the younger woman) when asked why she had stolen, said she was poor and trying to keep up a respectable appearance.

The women were apprehended by shop staff in Pond Lane.

PC: “why?”

Ariana: “because I am poor and wish to keep up a respectable appearance.”

Ann: “O, you’ll break Mamma’s heart.”

Ariana: “It is I who have taken the things, my cousin knows nothing about it”

They, or at least Ariana, comes very close to being transported and transportation is mentioned.

Identity in the 1800’s

In 1824 there is a newspaper account of an experiment in Plymouth in galvanism in which the organs of a frog were removed and yet the frog continued to leap about for half an hour before its backbone was severed – such experiments were leading people to question what constituted life (and what gave things their identity and their inner life). Was it all simply mechanical?

At the Fancy Dress Ball at the Royal Hotel, organised by the Royal western Yacht Club in 1847 (13.1.1847), people were dressed as Greek pirates, Roman matrons, Spanish noblemen, and Chinese mandarins.

This raises a general question of identity, which is often presented as naturally unitary, consistent and definable – while identities (not to speak of loyalties) can be mobile (“trans”), hard to define, mixed, complex, variable, inconsistent ...   – in certain situations (heterotopic) a welcoming environment for such subtleties and ambiguities is generated. In others – demands are made on people to declare a single identity, to suppress other aspects of themselves or hide them behind a unitary symbol or designation.

Were these fancy dress balls simple denigrations and traducing of others – or were they flirtations with multiple identities? Or both?

And what was fixing the identity of ‘the other’ – how far was it personal contact – and how far was that personal interaction altered, reinforced or overthrown by cultural productions such as the plays, lectures, cartoons, etc.

Some contested any stereotyping of ‘the other’ – there is a lecture given to the Devonport Mechanics Institute in 1841, by a former soldier, that is remarkable for its denunciation of war, particular war on people of other countries and races.

The morphing of identity is touched on by a humorous 1825 newspaper piece that notes the inappropriate names of various traders – names that once were associated with different trades.  However, in the 1860s there was a licensed victualler called Mr Beer, and a pub landlord called Mr Brewer.

Tolerance in the 1800’s?

How true is the assumption that at a port with many comings and goings there is a basic tolerance, a welcoming attitude?

There was a long tradition of such events – the arrival of people in distress and the people of the port organising to look after them – in 1809 “the wreck of Sir John Moore’s army began to arrive from Corunna”  in a terrible state and were looked after.

Again in 1848 the Town Council were making provision for English workers who were fleeing the 1848 revolutionary unrest in France where they had been working.

The Tolpuddle Martyrs left from Plymouth for transportation and some returned through Plymouth and were feted by local trade unionists.

Exotica

One privileged migrant who might be worth looking at in detail is George Wightwick, the architect who worked alongside John Foulston – they were both migrants to Plymouth and both adopted it as their home and were enthusiastic about the city and played leading roles in its public life. One of the important elements of their public role was the bringing in of a ‘foreign’ visuality. They were neo-classical and eccentric in their work – Foulston’s work in Devonport is extraordinary and exotic. He rode around Plymouth in a gig converted to look like a Roman chariot.  (In the 1820s there was a Classical and Mathematical School in Devonport specialising in teaching a neo-classical education).  We might look at the way that Foulston’s buildings have been treated – initially controversial and certainly in the case of the Royal Theatre treated later with disdain (demolished for a cinema). These buildings and the teaching of the classics were an importation, these were migrant ideas.

In the 1820s there were French dancing teachers working in Plymouth. Monsieur Huet held an annual ball at the Royal hotel, at which his pupils danced – this began at 6pm. There were participation dances such as quadrilles and country dances “to be danced after Tea when M. Huet will give any direction that may be required” (1.1.1824, Weekly & General Advertiser), minuets and hornpipes. This went on until 2am. For an advert for a ball arranged by Monsieur Huet:   (This is very shortly after the bitterness of the wars with France under Napoleon.)

A newspaper report of 1824 records that in 1822 a Monsieur Thiodon had constructed a ‘Theatre of the Arts’ – which was probably some kind of phantasmagoria, magic lantern exhibition. (A proto-cinema.)

A Monsieur Hartz “the renowned  wizard” was performing a conjuring and an illusionist show at the Mechanics Institute in Devonport. (5.1.1863).

Monsieur Leopold was advertising in 1863 as a “French Hairdresser and Perfumer”, 41 Union Street – “Ladies attended at their own residences”.

Foreign Prisoners in Plymouth

Millbay Prison was used to confine French and American prisoners-of-war before being sent up to the new prison on Dartmoor, marching, on foot, taking up to a day to make the journey.

Here is an early description of Millbay Prison as described in 1812

'Close by the barracks [Millbay Barracks] are the prisons for prisoners of war, capable of holding 3,000 men; they are at present empty; the present buildings are in a miserable state, but we understand that they are to be pulled down immediately, and rebuilt upon an improved plan.  The situation of the prison is convenient for the embarkation or disembarkation of men, and for the fine air that circulates through every part of the building from its proximity to the sea, but there is a great deficiency of fresh water.  This department s placed is placed under the command of a Captain in the navy; the present agent is Captain Pellowe.  An hospital is situated within the walls for the reception of the sick, which is under the direction of Mr Magrath, in justice to whom, it must be said, that the proper manner in which he conducts this establishment does him much credit.

'It is reported that gambling, and vices of a more heinous nature, prevail in this prison, as well as in most places.  It is lamentable to contemplate a body of men, shut up from all useful labour, and left a prey to evil propensities, unchecked by any good advice; for it is to be observed, there is no public worship performed here.  Happily, the children have been separated and sent home, from this hot-bed of vice and corruption.  This prison has of late years been used chiefly as a depot, from whence prisoners are sent to Dartmoor, and other prisons in the kingdom.'

On Thursday May 1st 1856 the "Plymouth & Devonport Weekly Journal" reported that:

'The Russian prisoners having all been sent home, the authorities of the Millbay prisons have been busily engaged, during the last week, in returning the stores and provisions that had been left, to the Royal William Victualling Yard, and the Dockyard; and yesterday [Wednesday] the establishment was turned over to Major Toby, of the Royal Marines.  On the officers of the prison being paid off, a very handsome snuff box, contained in a morrocco (sic) case, was presented to Lieut. H T Veitch, the governor of the prison, by Mr Cumming, on behalf of the staff of the establishment, as a mark of their esteem for him personally, and of appreciation of the unvarying kindness which they had experienced from him'.

Press gangs - In 1803 they cleared the galleries of the Plymouth theatres of every physically fit man.

Description of the 1803 press gangs in Plymouth.

Animal Migration

Records of unusual cockroaches, bird-eating spiders, etc. in Plymouth (off the boats.) Also a swarm of locusts in 1869.

In January 1824 a lioness at Wombwell’s menagerie in Fore Street, Devonport gave birth to four cubs, of which three survived. “they are likely, as Royal Devonport Lions!!! To equal any of their species”. Later there were jokes about “Cat Down lions”.  (in the same week – maybe on the same day, a baby was found abandoned at the rear of the Commercial Inn in Fore Street and was taken to the Workhouse).

Migration of Produce to Plymouth: In 1863 the following ships brought in these cargos: (and the country they sailed from):

Dilligence: plaster  (France)
Zebra: barley and hempseed  (France)
Patriot: mahogany, longwood, cocoa nuts  (Honduras)
E.A.Sonder: wheat  (US)
Penhayn Castle: plaster & wine (France)
Jessie Royale: timber  (Canada)
Pierre and Marie: oats (France)
Felicite: oats (France)
Auguste Louise: sugar (France)
Askeler: potatoes (France)
Prince of Wales: cattle  (France)
Effezione: pyrite (Portugal)
Pioneer: wine, gin & cheese  (Holland)
Alina y Luis:  hides, tallow, horns and bones (Buenos Aires)
Cultivateur: bones (France)
Pilar : Cattle  (Spain)

Andrew Wilson tries to make a better life for himself and meets the long arm of the law.

To listen to the audio file, click on the picture to the right.

Baron Roborough

There was a man called Fernando Lopez who came from Jamaica, a wealthy man.  He wanted to be an English Gentleman but the law had not been changed and as a Jew he was not allowed to own land. He got himself baptised and gave all of his Jewish things to the Emdon family. Amongst the items was this little Sefer Torah scroll and they gave it to the Shul and it is still in the Ark at Plymouth synagogue. Fernando Lopez with his ‘good deeds’ and having been baptised was made a Baronet and with more good deeds was raised to the nobility and was named Baron Roborough and he resided at Maristow House just outside Plymouth.  The house was bought from the Modyford/Heywood families - also families who made their fortunes from slavery by Manaseh Massey Lopez. The Lopez (aka Lopes) Family is still in existence - the daughter of the Duchess of Cornwall has married a Lopez.  The Lopez family donated a ward to the Greenbank Hospital as the Lopez Ward.  However when this hospital was transferred to new premises in Derriford his name was lost. The Lopez family were also renowned for cheating at elections and one member of the family enjoyed a spell in jail when his deeds were found out - money without power was simply not enough!

For those who ‘escaped’ the Holocaust, the terrible cost of certain legacies of migration is painfully evident in Peter Lee’s account of the toll that such an ‘escape’ took upon his parents, both of whom took their lives. The changing of their names was like a loss to them rather than a transformation. Though they had migrated, the parents seemed to have brought the fears and dread of Nazism with them.

Support For Migrants - to listen to the audio, click the picture on the right.

Introduction to 19th Century Plymouth  - A Slice of Migration History

Some questions for a history lesson...

How did the Navy get men to fight in the many wars that were fought during this time? Where in Plymouth did they find such men?

How much did the population of Plymouth grow, from 1800 to 1899 and why? Where did all the people come from?

Where were the prisons in Plymouth and what kinds of foreigners found themselves incarcerated within them? Why?

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The nineteenth century in Britain was to be the greatest era of change yet lived through. The century began with Europe at war and Napoleon with his sights on world domination. The world had become larger - with the new nation of America set to conquer the world by trade using faster boats, larger and larger numbers of slaves to increase productivity and network of agents throughout the world buying and selliing cotton, opium, tobacco and arms. Plymouth played a key role in all these activities, building ships for Britain to fight with, trade with and defend themselves with. The Victorian and Edwardian Naval dockyard was among the “largest industrial complexes in Europe...”

The Abolition movement made its most significant advances during the beginning of this Century. Whilst the practice of slavery continued to be practiced in British territories until 1838 and in America until 1865, the transatlantic slave trade, the practice of forcibly carrying people from Africa to the Americas, was at last forbidden. Plymouth sent out ships to help police and enforce the law all along the west coast of Africa where most slaving ventures originated.

The busy world of war and trade required servicing with clothes and food and reading matter and so Plymouth grew to accommodate a population that increased in size quite considerably. The combined population of  'Three Towns' (Plympton, Plymouth, Stonehouse) in the 1840s and 50s put wider Plymouth at between No 6 and 8 among the largest urban centres in the Country. There were areas of Victorian Plymouth with problems of overcrowded slums on a par with the likes of Manchester. Plymouth has long been, and remains, the largest urban area / City south west of Bristol. Between 1815-1914 Plymouth’s population grew from 56,000 to 201,000 – “in the main it was from immigration” – in 1861 there was a population of 90,000 of which 13 and half thousand were born in Cornwall, 4 thousand born in Ireland and 3 thousand born in London…  many more would have been born in the villages of Devon. By the mid 1850s, the railway and the steam ship, further increased opportunity and migrant mobility to Plymouth. New docks and harbours were built in tandem with all this.

19th Century - Irish Presence in Plymouth

Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine of 1847

Many passed through Plymouth on their way to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, but some stayed in Plymouth

The barque ‘Inconstant’, 588 (or 601) tons, under the command of Captain Patrick Culliton (variously spelled as Cullitan or Callitan) departed from Plymouth, England on 15 Feb 1849 and arrived at Port Adelaide, South Australia on Thursday 7 June 1849.  Either 210 or 211 people (equivalent to 206 statute adults) embarked at Plymouth including 197 poor orphan girls, primarily from Ireland, who were being sent to South Australia under what became known as the Earl Grey Scheme. According to the Register of Births and Deaths at Sea the 211 passengers was made up of 18 English and 193 Irish. In addition to the orphan girls there were 13 or 14 other passengers aboard, comprising 3 married adult males and 3 married adult females as well as 3 boys and 4 or 5 girls between the ages of 1 and 14 years. During the voyage one female infant died, there were no births and the remaining 209 or 210 arrived safely in Port Adelaide. 

Like so many emigrants, these orphan girls effectively disappeared – their experiences and their pasts unrecorded, giving rise to a recent commentary like this: “Little is known, however, about the experiences of these women and girls or their impact on the various host countries. Their contribution to the emigration process has been largely underestimated or ignored”.

There is a powerpoint online about the girls on this boat –
http://monash.academia.edu/MarkStaniforth/Teaching/19912/The_Inconstant_Girls

There is more information on female Ireland to Australia emigration here:  http://www.scoilnet.ie/womeninhistory/content/unit3/Australia.html

The presence of Irish people in Plymouth, in many cases escaping the famine, was noted in various ways; it is clear from some of the newspaper reports that the writers are winking at the reader’s knowledge of an increased Irish immigration. In 1848 an Irish immigrant, Peter Green, was described as “a recently imported Hibernian from Cork”  (PDWJ, 16.3.1848)

Ann Connop described as “a native of Old Ireland” – stealing chips and wood from a building site on the Hoe – had been arrested four times for felony and 11 times for drunkenness. (18.11.1847, PDWJ) Irish-sounding surnames often crop up in newspaper stories – in 1847 a Connally and his wife were accused of neglecting two children who “were observed greedily to devour any articles of rubbish thrown in their way”  (PDWJ, 3.6.1847) There was a punch up in Stonehouse Lane between J. Macarthy and T. McGinnis in 1847 – both appeared in court with bandaged heads. In 1847 Ellen Murphy, (44), was arrested for shoplifting 4 silk handkerchiefs from a draper in Union Street – this was a rather sharp case in that the accused said that she had put the handkerchiefs in her lap and the shopkeeper said it was under her shawl – she was found guilty. In 1863 there is a newspaper account of “Irish Pugilists” on trial for a punch up.  And a Mary Fitspatrick is described in the same year as “one of the band of thieves wandering about the neighbourhood” according to a constable.

Irish people were often victims as well as accused -  Eileen McMean is one of the victims in a sensational poisoning case of 1847. See Photocopy 2W. And then there is the tragic story of Mary Dogherty, a servant, and the birth of a dead child (subsequently concealed) – she seems to be a migrant as she has no family or local contacts to help her).

In 1847, Mr Doel, “the enterprising lessee of the Devonport Theatre gives the whole proceeds of a theatrical performance... to the distressed Irish and Scotch.”  (Plymouth & Devonport Weekly Newsletter, 4.2.1847)

Extreme poverty in Ireland was not a novel issue – in 1824 in Plymouth a meeting had been held in Stoke Terrace to set up a “Devonport and Stoke Association, auxiliary to the Ladies’ Hibernian Female School Society’” “the Chair... Archdeacon Grace... gave a most affecting account of the wretched state of the Irish female peasantry...”  This was not an organisation of Irish people, but of English people seeking to sponsor and organise Irish life.

In 1847 there is a meeting of the “Irish society” at the Royal Hotel – which is an anti-Catholic organisation.

Here is an account of an Irish migrant (a cattle dealer) who is accused of attempted murder – again raising the question of mental illness among migrants.

Then in 1863 in the Devonport Independent and Plymouth and Stonehouse Gazette there is this ‘humorous story’ featuring an Irishman; “one of the ‘easy’ class”. The humour around the Irishman is based on his superstitious attitude and ‘country manners’. The tale as a whole is quite entertaining – with a misbehaving policeman mistaken for a he-mermaid. It raises questions: how rooted is such a story in the cultural dislocation of rural Irish people and how   influential were these stereotypes? 

In 1863 there was a beer house in Navy Row, Morice Town, called ‘The Gypsy Tent’.

Here is a report of an inquest in 1881 into the death of an Irish labourer when working on “the New Public Hall” in Devonport.

“The Irish were in the worst houses; they flocked over because they were destitute, escaping the famines, and took homes that landlords would not repair. They were mainly in Stonehouse, not mixing with the English and living in ghettoes.”  (‘Plymouth: A New History’, Gill, C., p.149)

And a lecture for Devonport Mechanics institute including “random sketches from the Emerald Isle”.

African/African American Presence in Plymouth

Below you will find some extracts and stories taken from publications and later history books writing about the 1800’s - they serve only as a sample and a selection and do not represent a proportionate or qualitative authoritative historical account on the actual migrations that occurred to and from the city of Plymouth within the era.

Sir Charles Pole, MP for Plymouth (MP for 1802-18): “the immediate abolition of the slave trade would be the most barbarous proceeding - even to the Negro himself” (!!)

Ashantee Princes come to Plymouth

In 1841 there was a meeting held at the Royal Hotel in Plymouth – at which were present “the Ashantee princes” – described in anotice for the meeting as “Nature’s nobles” – this was a meeting to support the voyage of three steamers, two of which had called in at Plymouth, to the Niger, “to extinguish slavery”. There is very long account of this meeting (photocopied) PDWJ, 13.4.1841. Just 17 years before the local paper was reporting arrival of the Active with reports of a colony decimated by the Ashantees.

In 1845 Brazilian and English slave traders were brought to Plymouth under arrest – and eventually were taken to Exeter to be tried for the murder of British sailors attempting to disrupt their trade.

In 1863 a Mr and Mrs Jackson, freed slaves, give a presentation and lecture on their experiences of slavery. They are collecting money to try to but their relatives out of slavery.  This is in the local news section of the newspaper, but the venue is not given.

In an 1821 Plymouth newspaper there is a joke about a black servant who is examining a fish on a market stall, he seems to smell the fish, the stallholder (worried that he will detect how rotten it is) tries to stop him. “O, I wasn’t smelling it, I was talking to it I was asking it for news of the sea.” Stallholder: “What news did it have?” Servant: “It had none, having not been there for a week.” This joke performs an interesting switch – at first it seems to be laughing at the black servant talking to a fish, but then the punchline turns the joke on the stallholder and the servant is revealed as “canny” and knowing.

In 1863 there is coverage of a black man who had served as a hangman in Gibraltar and was jailed in Plymouth – for resisting when a policeman approached him for leaning against a shop window (hmmm) – this story is presented ‘humorously’ as if the man himself was a living stereotype.  

What of the “identity” being expressed or created by the “slave entertainments” of the mid-nineteenth century? In the 1840s in the Plymouth newspapers that I have dipped into show active campaigning against slavery including the direct participation of Africans (the Ashantee Princes). I have not found any satirising of the slaves. Did these “slave entertainments”, “all given in that peculiar and mirth provoking manner characteristic of the Negro Race” have a significant (or trivial?) effect on Plymothians’ perception of Africans?

Again there is a report of a play which is praised for showing “the identical savage” performed by a “celebrated Man-monkey” – again, what images and expectations were being created by such performances?

Jewish Presence in Plymouth

The burial ground on Plymouth Hoe, the result of a number of separate land purchases, served the community until the middle of the nineteenth century when a new cemetery was bought in 1868 in Compton Gifford near Central Park. Presumably there was no more land to be purchased on Plymouth Hoe because of road works and extensive building which today surround the old Jewish cemetery.

The Synagogue

The cost of building the Synagogue was £300.  A mortgage loan was taken out for £500 that covered the cost of the building and sundry expenses and the construction of the Holy Ark.  The Ark cost £50-10s and was built in the Baroque style.

To-day Plymouth and Exeter are the only two examples of Georgian Synagogues in the English speaking world. 

In 1834 the City of Plymouth offered the congregation the freehold of the land for the sum of one hundred guineas. They accepted.

The Synagogue has a small Sefer Torah that is a Sephardi Sefer which dated back to about 1720 and was written in Venice (a migrant object).

The building is tucked on a side-street. Sharman Kadish, a leading expert on Jewish buildings in Britain, believes that an unobtrusive location was chosen to avoid provoking the destructive riots that non-Anglican houses of worship often provoked in the eighteenth century. Nothing on the exterior distinguishes the building from the meeting houses of Nonconformist Protestants

Of the “58 Jewish aliens” in Plymouth in 1798-1803 ten were from or from near Mannheim and a further 27 from other parts of Germany and Bohemia.  While always small, Jewish immigration rises in the middle of the 18th century and then falls away towards the end – perhaps affected by the war with France?

In 1833 Isidore Cohen was running a pawnbrokers in Frankfort Street.

In 1847 there was a meeting at the Royal Hotel of the local branch of the Society for the Promotion of Christianity to the Jews – the main speaker commented upon conversions among Jews in Berlin and Amsterdam, but the lengthy report in the paper did not record the speaker mentioning the local Jewish community in Plymouth. (28.10.1847, PDWJ)

In 1848 a silver cup made by Aaron Levy of Bedford Street, Plymouth, was stolen from the house of its purchaser by James Honhsonson “better known as ‘four-fingered Jack’ or ‘Mevagissey Jack’” (PDWJ, 3.2.1848) – this would suggest he was an immigrant from Cornwall?  His accomplice was John Williams (a name that appears in court reports from many years before but is a very common name) also known as ‘Strawberry Jim – they sold this cup to “another jew”, Samuel Levine, in a beer shop in Stonehouse Lane. 

IN 1847 a Jewish trader is a witness in a colourful trial (the accused also meets up with local gypsies).

There is a long account of an inquest into a fire at the home of a Jewish waterproof cloth manufacturer.  Also a court case concerning the fleecing of a Jewish woman by con artists.

If the Jewish community in the mid-nineteenth century in Plymouth was very small it was certainly very prominent and Jews (often called “Israelites”) are regularly referred to in press stories. Perhaps it is because of their role in many small businesses that make them subject to court cases and also an important and visible part of the city’s public life?

In 1848 a meeting at Devonport Town hall was held to campaign for the removal of disqualifications on Jews in the UK. As a result of this a resolution in favour of the removal was passed ‘nem com’ by Plymouth Town council.  (3.2.1848, Plymouth & Devonport Weekly Journal)

Account of an unsuccessful prosecution of a Jewish trader in 1863.

Henry Hart
Henry Hart was a Jew and a Plymouth man. He founded the Lemon Hart Rum.  This Rum was supplied to the Royal Navy.  It was the custom to give a daily tot of Rum to all seamen, a valuable person indeed.  In 1797 Mrs Henry Hart was one of the Trustees of the Plymouth Synagogue.

Jewish pedlars

Many Jewish migrants to Plymouth set up as sellers or skilled craftworkers in shops/workshops – at the end of the eighteenth century these include watchmakers, a miniaturist, silversmiths, a jeweller, an optician, and an umbrella maker. But a minority (perhaps the poorest) became pedlars. In the ‘Aliens List’ revised in 1803, there are 13 Jewish men described as dealers, chapmen or dealers in old clothes, and then three hawkers or pedlars “”at the bottom of the ladder”.

In 1863 there is a reference to an Israel Zeffert who is a second hand clothes dealer.

“How did the immigrant Jew without family and friends and who arrived with little or no capital get started?

According to an account published early in the nineteenth century, he merely entered a synagogue, made his needs known to the worshippers who then made a quick collection for him and within a day or two of landing would direct him to the provinces with a peddling tray suspended from his neck filled with two or three pounds’ worth of stock with which to start trading. New immigrants presumably dispensed with the Hawkers’ and pedlars’ Licences, (with an annual cost of £4 for the hawker and a further £4 for each of his horses), which were required from 1790 onwards, and kept well out of the way of the local constables. ”

Men moved into the provinces, supporting themselves by becoming hawkers or pedlars selling haberdashery, jewellery and other small goods. They would walk from place to place, often stopping at market towns to sell their wares and replenish their stock. It could be a dangerous life. Robbery was frequent and some were murdered for their goods or cash. A number of these men eventually settled in the provincial towns that they had first visited as pedlars, such as Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool.

Some of these pedlars appear once on the records and not again – perhaps moving on – but one or two seem to have been successful – there are examples of South West Jewish pedlars becoming householders and or jewellers with their own shop.

There is an account of the prosecution of Francis Azemburg, “a hawker” in court for not possessing a licence.

Coupled with his unkempt appearance, the Jewish male newcomer would also be recognisable by the foreign style of his clothes. One such arrival, who subsequently travelled extensively in Devon, described to an amanuensis the clothes he wore when he arrived at Gravesend in 1821 at the age of fourteen:

“A pair of German boots to the knees and a large black tassel to each of the tops, a pair of nankeen small clothes, black silk waistcoat, lead coloured nankeen longcoat down to my heels without any laps or opening behind, and a hat with a small crown and wide brim. Although he had no luggage with him, and at that age could hardly have been adorned with a beard, his appearance was sufficiently distinctive to attract a crowd of 'hundreds of boys' who followed him, mocking and jeering, all the way from Gravesend to Duke's Place, City of London, where the main synagogue was situated.”

Some Jewish men from Eastern Europe continued to wear a Kaftan, a long flowing coat once part of the national Polish costume but from the eighteenth century restricted to Jewish use, possibly because of some natural tendency to conservatism in dress. Some kept their style of dress because their livelihood was to some extent dependent on a Jewish appearance. Thus it was obviously to the advantage of the ‘old clothes’ dealer, a predominantly Jewish occupation in the eighteenth century, to look the part. He walked the streets with a pile of hats perched upon his head and capacious garments hung from his shoulders, over which a bag was slung. Equally recognisable was the Jewish pedlar with his broad brimmed hat and pedlar's tray with its assorted bric-a-brac.

Contemporary prints all portray a similar type of appearance and it perhaps should not be thought that this was merely a caricature. That this dress was familiar in Devon is clear from an account by a French privateer captain who was imprisoned at Millbay prison, Plymouth, in 1807. He escaped from the prison 'disguised as an old Jew man with his bag over his shoulder'.

Officer-prisoners were often able to get parole (ordinary ranks far less often) and also could marry local women – some do seem to have stayed and settled.

This latter story has a rather dramatic conclusion – he escaped disguised as a Jewish pedlar and with him was a young accomplice called Corbière disguised as a young woman – it seems that they got carried away with the excitement of their impersonations – and ended up going to the theatre in Plymouth Dock (a rather strange place to ‘hide’) – was this some sort of thrill of becoming the ‘other’? Or just the result of a set of accidents? In the theatre they were harassed by some American sailors who supposed that a young woman in the company of a middle-aged Jew was ‘fair game’ – and it was in the context of this harassment (and perhaps their fighting back – a fight broke out) that events led to the exposure of their ‘true’ identities.

Interestingly, Chris Robinson in ‘A History of Devonport’ (Pen & Ink Publishing, 2010) characterises what he calls “an inordinate love of dress” as a key means of amusement in the Dock around this time and relates this to the entertainment area around the Dock Theatre (which he elsewhere describes as a place of “riot and debauchery”).

Mrs Parry Price’s 1805 diary (held at Berkshire Record Office) of a visit to Plymouth describes a visit to a prison ship on which she saw a play performed by the French prisoners and that the female parts were taken by men and that they performed so well and in such costumes that she thought at first that they were women. So maybe this was the origin of the 1807 escape plan?

Is there something in this story that touches on the negotiation of their identity on the part of all migrants… the Jewish pedlar hanging on to their old form of  dress as a marketing tool (!) – the ‘appeal’ of the exotic, (at a Grand Ball in Exeter in 1814 one couple came as a “Jew pedlar and his wife” ; the possibility of pretence in a new place (how many migrants have invented new identities for themselves, the chance to start again), and what of the fear/attraction of the ‘other’ – both contempt for and attraction to the ‘young woman’? and to impersonating the young woman?

There is an extant pedlar’s autobiography – ‘written by’ Samuel Harris who is mentioned in Plymouth synagogue records – he was working in the South West 1821-2, so he certainly passed through Plymouth – (his story is told in W, Clegg ‘Samuel Harris, a converted Jew’ (Sheffield, 1833):

This is a summary of Harris and his book:

In the early nineteenth century a pedlar named Samuel Harris, known to have visited Newcastle, wrote his memoirs with the help of a Christian minister.  Samuel Harris was born in Warsaw around 1808. A clever boy with an enquiring mind, he had a difficult relationship with his convention-bound father. When he was only eleven years old he heard about people journeying to England and decided to try his luck. Travelling alone across Europe, he arrived in Gravesend almost penniless and sought out a Jewish congregation in London, knowing that by custom they would help him.

London Synagogues operated a type of seed-corn charity to assist destitute new arrivals. A collection would be made, providing enough money to purchase a pedlar’s box and some small goods to sell on the street. In Samuel’s account he relates that ‘The Jews in Duke Street collected money to lay in some stock’, thus enabling him to support himself. He was still less than twelve years old, but he was in business. It seems likely that Samuel was referring to the Great Synagogue in Duke’s Place, but in telling his story some seven years later, he misremembered the name.

He stayed in London for a week, but there were far too many others doing the same thing, so he set off walking towards Birmingham to take his chances there. The journey took him three weeks and, on days when he sold nothing, Samuel had to spend his nights sleeping in the fields. But once in the Midlands he began to do quite well and spent many months travelling round the area and, on occasion, even as far as the West Country.

He described himself in his memoir as ‘a little boy, about 14 years of age, with a pair of German boots reaching up to his knees, with a large black tassel attached to each of the tops. Add to this a pair of nankeen small clothes with a black silk waistcoat and a lead coloured nankeen long coat reaching down to the heels without any laps or opening behind and a hat on his head with a small crown and a very broad rim, with a stick in one hand and a bundle in the other.’

One Sunday in the spring of 1822 Samuel was in Birmingham and overheard someone say that Newcastle Fair would begin the next day. He and a couple of other lads decided to walk through the night to be there for the start of the fair the following morning. It was a journey of forty-two miles. They set out at two in the afternoon and arrived in Newcastle early next morning.

Samuel relates that ‘first I went to the place where I used to lodge but it was full’. This short comment confirms that he was a regular visitor to the town. He went back to the market place and, despite being very tired, began trading and sold most of his goods. In the afternoon he was greeted by a friendly Jewish boy whom he had not met before. Samuel asked if he knew of any lodgings, and the boy suggested the Black Horse public house in the Ironmarket. He packed his remaining stock into his box and, because his takings were weighing down his pockets, broke his usual habit and put the cash into his box as well.

They went to the inn together, sat down and called for a quart of ale. Weary from the night spent walking, Sam fell asleep. When he woke he found that both his companion and his box were gone. He cried out, tore his hair and ran back to the market place in tears. His travelling companions tried to help and offered a shilling from their own takings, but, as Samuel wrote, ‘I also ran to a Jew who lives there, with my complaints’. This must have been Abraham Francks. The Francks family lived in Hick Street, a narrow lane just off Newcastle market place. It can still be seen today, although it has been totally rebuilt. Abraham was an optician and jeweller whose family was among the founders of the Manchester congregation...  when Samuel ran weeping to his door, Abraham and Mary already had six Staffordshire-born children. At least three more were born later.

Samuel Harris recorded that he was received kindly. The Francks family were acquainted with the rogue, Jacob, who had stolen his box and said that he came from Norfolk. They gave Samuel a bed for the night, some money and a letter of introduction to relatives in Manchester, almost certainly Abraham’s younger brother, Jacob Franks (the Manchester branch of the family had anglicized the spelling of their name).

There were dangers for Jewish pedlars. The danger of travelling the countryside is illustrated by an inscription in Cornwall (in translation): 'Joshua Falk the son of Isaac from Breslau. He was slain in the place of Fowey by the wicked man Wyatt and drowned in the waters 14th Kislev 5572 and buried on the 17th thereof [= 30 November 1811]'. 

“Along the ridge across the top of Goosewell runs a strip of trees, Jews Wood. Part of the old Radford Estate and more specifically part of what was once known as the Goosewell Plantation, Jews Wood is a comparatively ancient one and dates back to an incident that took place there in the eighteenth century. In those days road were much narrower and more dangerous, not only in terms of uneven road surfaces, but also in terms of mischief makers and highwaymen, and here it was that a travelling salesman - a Jewish travelling salesman - known as Little Isaacs, was murdered by a soldier, who then stole the itinerant’s wares. These he then tried to sell for himself in Plymouth, however, when questioned, he confessed his crime and was subsequently taken to Exeter where he was executed.”

(What this account – of a murder of 1760 - does not mention is that the soldier – a militia man called Edward Jackson attempted to sell Little Isaacs’ goods to a Plymouth Jew, Mr Sherrenbeck (presumably from the same family who provided land for the Jewish cemetery)  who was suspicious and questioned him about the goods, provoking Jackson to confess. The hill from Hooe Manor to Staddon Heights by Radford Woods is still called Murder Hill .)

In Devon it was not uncommon for the wives of Jewish pedlars to accompany their husbands – in Tavistock Subscription Library there are two dolls representing a late eighteenth century pedlar couple , each with distinctive dress and trays. 

In the late eighteenth century, prior to the success of the Romantic movement and their romance of the road – anyone walking by road was likely to be treated with contempt – as either destitute or up to no good. 

Quote from one general history: “the Jews were very much the butt of seamen, who accused them of cheating”.

Perhaps even more glancing were the Pedestrianists who walked through Plymouth on long walks. In 1863 a Jewish clothes seller, Nelson, whose family name and trade features in court cases here, has a walking race with a John Cousins of the Exeter Arms.

Extracts and Stories

The 1800’s saw a rapid acceleration in the ability of ordinary people to read and write and to serve their needs a rapid increase in the volume of literature and newspapers too. Here you will find some extracts and stories taken from newspapers at the time - they serve only as a sample and a selection and do not represent a proportionate or qualitative authoritative historical account on the actual migrations that occurred to and from the city of Plymouth within the era.

Plymouth’s Elphinstone Depot

600,000 people passed through this government inspired emigration depot during the early Victorian era.

This huge project of emigration was not accidental or ‘market-driven’ – it was a government inspired operation to help export the poor -  a massive colonial plan not so different from the rationale behind the exportation so called vagrants in the 1600’s (See 1600’s section).  The Whitchurch Vestry Minutes of 1843 (in the Plymouth & West Devon Records office) record the granting of money to sponsor the emigration of various individuals from the parish.

It was following the appointment of a local man, Mr Frederic Rogers, as Assistant Under-Secretary for the Colonies and Commissioner for Emigration, that some of the old warehouses (part of the former naval victualling operation) on Elphinstone Wharf were made into a Government Emigration Depot.  That was in 1847. As a result of the potato famine in Ireland, hundreds of Irish men and women used the Dublin and Cork to Plymouth steamship  services as a passage to a new life via Elphinstone.  Apparently it cost 10s 6d to cross to Plymouth and a further £14 14s to get to Australia.  For just £8 8s they could get to North America instead. In 1847 twenty-six vessels sailed from Plymouth carrying 1,730 emigrants.

The Mrs Simpson connection

In the middle of the nineteenth century there was a notable family called Solomons living in Plymouth. They emigrated to many places.  One branch of the family emigrated to America and they had a son called Edward.  They had changed their name from Solomon to Simpson.  Edward married a Miss Worfield who later divorced him and became the wife of Edward the Eighth, causing Edward’s abdication from the British throne for true love.  The migration (and transformation) of a name – “Mrs Simpson” was an enthusiastic supporter of the Nazis...

Baron Roborough

There was a man called Fernando Lopez who came from Jamaica, a wealthy man.  He wanted to be an English Gentleman but the law had not been changed and as a Jew he was not allowed to own land. He got himself baptised and gave all of his Jewish things to the Emdon family. Amongst the items was this little Sefer Torah scroll and they gave it to the Shul and it is still in the Ark at Plymouth synagogue. Fernando Lopez with his ‘good deeds’ and having been baptised was made a Baronet and with more good deeds was raised to the nobility and was named Baron Roborough and he resided at Maristow House just outside Plymouth.  The house was bought from the Modyford/Heywood families - also families who made their fortunes from slavery by Manaseh Massey Lopez. The Lopez (aka Lopes) Family is still in existence - the daughter of the Duchess of Cornwall has married a Lopez.  The Lopez family donated a ward to the Greenbank Hospital as the Lopez Ward.  However when this hospital was transferred to new premises in Derriford his name was lost. The Lopez family were also renowned for cheating at elections and one member of the family enjoyed a spell in jail when his deeds were found out - money without power was simply not enough!

For those who ‘escaped’ the Holocaust, the terrible cost of certain legacies of migration is painfully evident in Peter Lee’s account of the toll that such an ‘escape’ took upon his parents, both of whom took their lives. The changing of their names was like a loss to them rather than a transformation. Though they had migrated, the parents seemed to have brought the fears and dread of Nazism with them.

Introduction to 20th Century Plymouth  - A Slice of Migration History

With the end of empire, the Commonwealth was born and the people from the Commonwealth considered Britain, their country, as they too were subjects of the Monarchy. Post war, Britain was short of labour and many thousands of people from the Commonwealth came to Britain, by invitation, to work. Post war, Plymouth also saw an influx of Polish people and across Devon, settlements of exiled Jewish people sprung up, at last safe from Hitler.

In Africa, Idi Amin threw out thousands of Asians and many came to Britain as refugees, some coming to Devon and Somerset for sanctuary. Aside from tragedy of circumstance, there has been lots of migration to Plymouth, stemming from tourist and industry and education. The university, the hospitals and the military have all profited from the increased availability of international human resource. Significant levels of imported expertise has helped Plymouth to create jobs and services for thousands of local people.

The 1900‘s can be characterised internationally as an age of industrial warfare, ideological extremism, commercial depression, modernism, industry and cultural tourism. In Britain, the impact of the two world wars wrought untold horror and destruction on cities and families all over the country. Plymouth suffered hugely as a result of the Blitz during WWII but afterwards recovered to become a modern city with an excellent university and an unrivalled reputation for marine studies. Culturally sophisticated, it now attracts artists and cultural practitioners from all over the world and enjoys a significant financial boost from the tourist industry.

Located at the heart of what makes the South West the most desirable place to live in the country, with the coast and coves of the South Hams on the one hand, the rugged and rich nature of Cornwall on the other, and the wild and wonderful wildlife of Dartmoor just a stone’s throw away, Plymouth now stands pre-eminent as a City of Art, Culture and Creativity - carved out from a history of war, trade and empire.

Tragedy of the South African Labour Corp

The story of the "Mindy" ship and the tragedy that struck her and the South African Labour Corp. who was riding her.

To hear the audio, click on the picture on the right.

Chinese Presence in 20th Century Plymouth

The Chinese Labour Corps

There are a number of graves of men who were part of the Chinese Labour Corps at Efford cemetery in Plymouth. These were men who were recruited in China, by the Chinese authorities, and sent to work for the British war effort in the First World War.

Although I have found no account of these burials there is a report  in the Western Evening Herald (6.7.1917) of the burial of three Chinese men at Egg Buckland cemetery –– the report says that other ill and wounded Chinese men were present and that they “uncovered their heads and bowed several times”.  This suggests that the deaths occurred in Plymouth as a result of illness and injury incurred elsewhere, probably mostly in France.

There are images of the Efford graves.

The inscription on two of the graves clearly reads: “faithful unto death” – from other accounts it seems that there were a handful of designated phrases for these CLC graves, though whether the allocation of them had any bearing on the individual interred I don’t know.

The CLC was set up in 1916 when Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig requested that 21,000 labourers be recruited to fill the manpower shortage caused by casualties during World War One.  The request was made as part of the strategy of “attrition” (to be decided on the basis of who ran out of troops first) – the Allies policy was to seek victory by exhausting the enemy’s numbers; recruiting workers meant that they could use their own nationals as combatants. As China was initially not a belligerent nation, her nationals at the time were not allowed by their government to participate in the fighting (although the Chinese later declared war against Germany and Austria–Hungary in August 1917). Nevertheless, they were allowed to assist the war effort through manual labour supporting military logistics. 

The idea of recruiting Chinese men to serve as non-military personnel had already been pioneered by the French government and a contract with the Chinese Government to supply 50,000 labourers to the French war effort was agreed in May 1916 and the first shipment of men left Tianjin for Dagu and Marseille in July. The British government then signed an agreement with the Chinese authorities to supply labourers.

The Chinese Labour Corps cwas mostly recruited in Shandong Province, with smaller numbers from Liaoning, Jilin, Jiangsu, Hubei, Hunan, Anhui and Gansu Provinces. The first transport ship carrying 1,088 labourers as part of the British Chinese Labour Corps sailed from the main depot at Weihaiwei on 18th January 1917. The journey to France took three months.

In the end, about 140,000 Chinese workers served on the Western Front during and after the War. Among them, 100,000 served in the British Chinese Labour Corps and hundreds of Chinese students served as translators. 

The workers carried out essential work to support frontline troops, like building dugouts, repairing roads and railways, digging trenches and filling sandbags. Throughout the war, trade union pressure prevented the introduction of Chinese labourers to the British Isles. The trade union historians Sidney and Beatrice Webb have suggested that the Chinese Labour Corps were restricted to carrying out menial unskilled labour as a result of pressure from British trade unions.

In 1919 there were anti-Black and anti-Chinese riots in Cardiff, London, Newport, Liverpool and South Shields.

These riots all took place in ports and were triggered (at least) by disputes over unemployment following the demobilisation of troops. As far as I can tell no riot took place in Plymouth (at this time there was a visible Chinese community with a number of Chinese laundries in the city).

After the end of the war the surviving Chinese labourers were given transport back to China between December 1918 and September 1920 (so there may been CLC members passing through Plymouth at the time of the 1919 riots). 

According to the records kept by the British and French recruiters, around 2,000 Chinese Labour Corps died, most from the 1918-1919 Spanish Flu epidemic, some as a direct result of enemy action or of wounds received in the course of their duties. This figure is contested by some Chinese scholars who say the number was as high as 20,000. They were classified as war casualties and were mostly buried in cemeteries in the North of France with a total of about 2000 tombs (also a few tombs in one cemetery in Belgium). One of the four following proverbs was inscribed on the standard Commonwealth War Grave gravestones: "Faithful unto death", "A good reputation endures forever", "A noble duty bravely done" and "Though dead he still liveth".

Chinese intellectuals of the New Culture Movement looked on the CLC as a point of pride:"while the sun does not set on the British Empire, neither does it set on Chinese workers abroad." While the ill treatment of these workers was added to a list of political grievances against Britain.


Although the Officers and N.C.O.s  of the CLC were British, Chinese Gangers (foremen) gave instructions to the men and were responsible for supervising the work.

A number of skilled companies were formed and workers could take trade tests, which entitled them to more pay. 51 and 69 Companies, CLC, undertook skilled work in the Tank Workshops and almost 2,000 Chinese were employed in Railway maintenance. 

Following the Armistice the CLC was to undertake major roles as crane drivers at the docks and in battlefield clearance. 

The Chinese were recruited on a three year contract. In March 1918 the actions of Ganger Liu Dien Chen in rallying his men when they came under shellfire led to him being recommended for the award of a Military Medal. At the time the Chinese were not eligible for any awards but this was changed to allow them to be awarded the Meritorious Service Medal. As a result Liu Dien Chen and four other Chinese were awarded MSMs.

Chinese labourers were also recruited for service in Mesopotamia and Northern Russia.

Britain recruited also workers from many other countries, including Africa, Egypt and India. Recruitment in China concentrated on attracting farming classes from Shandong and Zhili provinces. The men, who would not be required to fight or to enter combat zones, were offered a bounty on signing up of 15 Chinese dollars. Once he had passed his medical examination the recruit was kept in camp to await transport to Britain. The ships brought the men to Plymouth

The first contingent of 1000 recruits embarked from Wei-hai-wei for England on 18 January 1917 and arrived in Plymouth on 11 April from where they were sent by train to Folkestone, before being sent to France.

Over 94,000 Chinese passed through Folkestone in this way, but there remained a steady number of some two thousand Chinese and other “Native Labourers” in the town, and these were employed at military hospitals in the area and in general manual work at a local military camp. The men were carefully chaperoned and kept strictly to camp when not working, and there is little evidence of the people of Folkestone being aware of their existence. (was this the same in Plymouth?) When the war ended, the vast majority of the men were given passage back to China.

There is little recorded about life in the Chinese Labour Corps, but it is clear that the Chinese maintained their own colourful traditions, festivals and ceremonies, as revealed in the following letter by a Chinese worker to his wife:
To my wife, Zhilan, I had intended to write to you earlier; however, it is only now that I have found a gap in my daily routine to do so. We are still at the same base camp. On the 13 it was Duanyang Festival (the Dragon Boat Festival] and we had the day off. The [Chinese] workers were made-up and put on the Yangke dance [a northern Chinese country peasants' dance] along the street. It was a very good show, but the foreigners seemed somewhat bemused by the event.
Some British Army [officers] came along and they brought with them some other [Chinese labourers], from the Hong clan from the west of Tai [the area around Tai Shan). I will stop writing now, my spirit will follow the letter to you. My greetings and best wishes. Your clumsy husband Zhong Yangchong.

There is a TV programme on the CLC available here online with plenty of footage:

http://english.cctv.com/program/newfrontiers/20091123/102795.shtml -

Also there is footage of the CLC in the middle of this report: 

http://wn.com/Chinese_Labour_Corps

There is a detailed account of the training of the Chinese workers in China and their transportation – (it doesn’t refer to Plymouth)  - the account is written by a white officer and entitled “With The Chinks” (!!!!) by DARYL KLEIN, “2nd LIEUTENANT IN THE CHINESE LABOUR CORPS” and is available online here: 

http://www.archive.org/stream/withchinks00kleirich/withchinks00kleirich_djvu.txt

This revealing poem – revealing of its author rather than its subject) poem heads up the book:

THE HAPPY LABOURER

In the Middle Kingdom he was born,
Frail life, left alone, forlorn ;
Among the millet, rape and rice
He seemed unworthy at half price ;
Uglier than the dust he seemed :
Love was not his, dead or dreamed.

Among a million little lights
He flickered, hardly shone, at night.
And his lean body manlier grew
All unaware, pale blue to blue.
And blue to grey, boyhood to man,
A godless uneventful span.

Until one day the Great White came
And gave his pattern mind an aim ;
And sent him packing overseas
With a hundred thousand more Chinese
And landed him in warring France
To do his bit and take his chance.

With pick and shovel, pole and spade,
The Happy Labourer, born not made
Bears his burden and does his bit—
With nimble hmb (?) and nimble wit,
Side by side with Tommy he toils
All unaware for immortal spoils.

Chinese Elder Communities’ Experiences – many of those who migrated from China and Hong Kong to South West England recall experiences (in ‘Sweet and Sour’ Recollections of the Chinese Elder Communities in the South West of England, Shei Ling Wong and Lorraine Frances, Plymouth and District Racial Equality Council, 2007) of suffering as a result of war, particularly the Japanese occupation of China where torture and humiliation (ordinary Chinese people on the streets were forced to bow and prostate themselves before Japanese soldiers) was commonplace and where the rape of Chinese women by the Japanese was widespread.

Such experiences had rendered people’s homes, neighbourhoods and homeland indeed, the very land itself that they sought to live on - blighted for them – the story of Cheung Mui Shek and Ho Fong is very powerful in terms of the importance of place, the attempt to live without ‘place’ and the difficulties of that ...  (Cheung Mui Shek and her husband were fishermen, so called ‘Boat People’ working around Hong Kong, catching fish and selling to local villagers, often poor and looked down on by those living on land) – they were bringing up five children on their boat – one powerful image arises from the practice of the ‘boat people’ at festival times, they would all draw up their boats together, so that they created a large communal space and then hold their festivities together – in a way establishing a temporary communal space... apart from these temporary communal spaces, they were leading nomadic lives, Ho Fong and Cheung Mui Shek then moved onto land – but soon Ho Fong had left for England pursuing the possibility of a better life for the family from wages made in the UK. (They were unable to send all their children to school and the eldest child went to work in a factory to help pay for the education of the others, while Cheung Mui Shek undertook backbreaking work picking lychees.)

The house where they were living in the 1960s, as well as being menaced by landslides, turned out to be buried on a mass grave left over from the second world war. This, she describes, “was extremely bad feng shui and I was worried that we would be doomed by bad luck”. What might be important here is to look at the way that spaces of belonging can be constructed in individual and social ways, how they can be ‘carried around’ and reassembled, how they can be ‘blighted’, and how they can be individualised. Cheung Mui Shek describes her beliefs about the mass grave as being “superstitious”, but there is a strongly historical element to it, a social memory... there is something in this story about the nature of space and belonging, of seeking improvement, but also seeking to elude bad history, bad luck..

  
She moved out to Kowloon, stayed with relatives, then bought a small wooden hut in order to qualify for a flat in a tower block built by the government. When they finally got one of these flats they were initially unable to afford any furniture for it.

After the second world war, the Chinese Revolution of 1947 led by the Communists under Mao Tse Tung threatened (or was perceived to threaten) a section (business owners, professionals, etc.) of the population – and many (over 2 million) fled to Hong Kong. Lai Kit Poon escaped in a small rowing boat at night, with a doctor and a businessman (they did not know each other before the night of their escape) – they were among and in sight of many other boats who also attempting the escape, they rowed as fast as they could. Chinese government speedboats repeatedly attacked the escaping boats and Lai Kit Poon recounts that hundreds died in the boats around her as soldiers fired indiscriminately into the boats. Perhaps this might be something that could be addressed by the performance: that a ‘host’ city, like Plymouth, one at the end of a long journey, generally only gets to see those who escape largely ‘unscathed’, but what if we were to look at those who didn’t make it to Plymouth and understand that to some extent those who never made it arrive in the form of the trauma of their loss carried by those who did make it through...  and that this incident with the many small boats is both an attempt to escape an already traumatised land (‘blighted’ by Japanese occupation) but also with the element of seeking opportunity, of an economic migration and how these two elements (and no doubt many others, personal, etc.) are combined in the process of migrations. (And also to remember that many migrant journeys are mundane and unremarkable – except perhaps for the person who is migrating.)

Yam Sin Yeung Lai escaped over the Chinese border through a pipe (beside a bridge) – she crawled through the pipe and then ran, spotted by Red Guards who shouted at her to come back she ran to a shop and mingled with the crowds – one area that might be looked at is the nature of the experience of borders by the different migrants – how they can be both secured, policed and also porous – subject to all sorts of different negotiations as well as enforcements – so that it can benefit authorities to have a negotiable border as this creates the potential for meaning and identity making (who is allowed in and who not), and profit. When she got to her sister in Sha Tau Kok, her sister wouldn’t let her stay (giving shelter to an illegal immigrant was a serious crime)  and she had to live off wild vegetables until she could get to her brother in Hong Kong. There she found work as a maid to an Indian family and learned how to cook western food as that is what they preferred... interesting irony (as many migrating Chinese people stabilised their lives by the provision of their own cuisine) and also the multiplicity created by migration. 

When Tin Sung Chan arrived at Heathrow in 1963 he could not speak or understand English – he had been told to get the train to Plymouth, but had no idea how he might do that.... he had the fortune of finding a Chinese tour guide who drove him to Paddington station... he “watched the strange landscape of green rolling hills through the window”.

A much earlier period of Chinese immigration is evident from the number of Chinese laundries in Plymouth in the early 20th century:  Wor Chung in Union Street, Jock Hong in Ebrington Street and Marlborough Street, Yoen Nip in Albert Street and Cumberland Street, Lai Chai Yee and You Kee Yee in Old Town Street, Union Street and Flora Street.

Extracts and Stories

Below you will find some extracts and stories taken from publications and later history books writing about the 1900’s - they serve only as a sample and a selection and do not represent a proportionate or qualitative authoritative historical account on the actual migrations that occurred to and from the city of Plymouth within the era.War and the Rise of Facsicm - Migration Stories of 20th Century Plymouth

The Blackshirts

In the 1930s there was Blackshirt agitation and organisation in Plymouth – in 1933 when serious organising began there was an influx of members and the establishing of a headquarters with considerable social facilities – canteen, etc. Many of the members remained inactive, but there was a hardcore of uniformed Blackshirt members  –  a handful to begin with but soon growing – perhaps to a 100 or so at their height but with larger numbers who came to meetings but  were more anonymous. Their meetings attracted large crowds – of up to 4,000 in the case of a visit from the Blackshirt leader Moseley – but even meetings with local speakers could attract 2,000 – these were very significant local political events for Plymouth - some non-affiliated members of the crowds were sympathetic, many had come to disrupt the meetings (some from other organisations – Communist, ILP, etc.) and there were hospitalisations after the meetings, but another large proportion of the crowds had come to witness the spectacle, curious and wishing to be entertained by the drama and controversy of it.

From the accounts in Todd Gray’s ‘Blackshirts In Devon’ (Exeter: The Mint Press, 2006) the Blackshirt speakers did not address the issue of immigration as a separate issue – referring to the very early days of Blackshirt activity in the city: “The fascists did not have a local issue in the city although many speakers spoke of unemployment and slums”. Indeed, it was remarked on when a visiting speaker was directly and explicitly anti-Semitic (which local speakers avoided) and that this seemed to provoke a vigorous physical protest.

The first “public face” of fascism in Plymouth was Richard Plathen – who was a national political officer of the BUF, sent by the national leadership.  Born in Leith his father was Austrian and his father German.

Recent immigrants to the city played a role in the opposition to the Blackshirts – in the course of protests one of those sentenced to three months’ hard labour for assaulting police constables was a Jack Berry of Saltash Street who “had recently arrived in Plymouth” – his real name was Jacob Goldberg, “but he was also known as Jacob T. Goldberry” – the police said in court that he was already known to the Police in London and had been convicted “of forgery”. On release on Aug 29th 1934, he immediately addressed a meeting along with Kate Spurrell of the Indepenedent Labour Party in the market place. Berry/Goldberg was arrested. According to the police Berry had told the crowd that Lockyer Street was being repaired at the time, providing useful ammunition for bombarding the local BUF Headquarters in that street “there is no getting away from it; you will have to learn the science of street fighting. You will have to fight the police and what is more, fight them with their own weapons... Take it from me, the next time you are mixed up in a fight kick the hell out of the police.” Berry apparently agreed that this was an accurate account of what he had said – but told the court that he had not been involved in political activity since and had promised his wife to give up politics – the court freed him on the basis that he kept that promise.

While trying to find a venue for a visit by the BUF leader Oswald Moseley they were refused the Guildhall due to the violence associated with their meetings – and so secured the use of the Millbay Rinkeries on Millbay Road – but on October the 1st this was also withdrawn – the booking had initially been agreed by the owner, John Brock, who was Jewish, who had emigrated to England and had changed his name from Jacob Nathan – a year earlier (May 1933) Brock had been attending a meeting of the Plymouth Public Assistance Committee (of which he was a committee member) when one of its other members, Mr. J. W. A. Campbell told him “Sit down. You ought to be in Germany.” Brock: Perhaps you will be there too and we will be handcuffed together... Campbell: Are you going to allow an alien to dominate the meeting? Brock: How long have you been here? Campbell: I never came from Palestine. Brock: You cad. You bounder.

At the October 4th1934 Moseley meeting in Plymouth – held at Plymouth Drillhall – there was violence that changed the fortunes of the BUF in Plymouth. Fascist stewards at the meeting attacked a journalist and a photographer from the local Western Morning News when they attempted to cover and photograph the stewards attacking hecklers at the back of the hall – (pages 62 to 74 of Gray’s ‘The Blackshirts in Devon’). Court cases subsequently revealed that the perpetrators were BUF members from London (all with previous convictions for violence, and one for living off his wife’s “immoral earnings”, ie prostitution) – this prompted the comment from the Western Morning News “it is against the whole spirit of English political life to introduce into a provincial assembly hooligans from London. We know of no such incident that has stained our Westcountry public life”. (8.10.34, WMN) – there had been plenty of violence at the BUF meetings in Plymouth up to this point, and the newspaper was constructing a fictional past ... partly inspired by the attack on itself, and partly on the premise now that there was a “foreign” element to this violence that somehow upset a previous local stability...  - these men had also gone to an address in the Octagon to beat up two members of the New World Fellowship, a small anti-fascist group, who had been holding anti-fascist public meetings in Plymouth. The fascist thugs’ targets were Morris Isaacs and Nathan Birch who had come from London to organise these meetings.

A ‘kiss and tell’ account of fascism in Plymouth (leaked to the Western Morning News) in early 1935 said “Fascism has failed in Plymouth because of London officials who have no sympathy with the provinces...” 

After this the BUF withered in Plymouth but for about 18 months to 2 years Plymouth had been a crucial target for the BUF and its meetings and organising (and the protests against and resistance to them) had been a dramatic and central part of the city’s public political life, even attracting professional political “outsiders”. This activity took place during the early phase of the BUF when it sought to distance itself from Hitler’s anti-semitic policies, and it was only after the BUF had largely withdrawn from Plymouth that the BUF changed tack and began to emphasise anti-semitism. (In 1935 William Joyce, Lord Haw Haw, addressed a meeting and may have been active for some weeks, in Plymouth – he was known for his support for a more anti-semitic approach.) The presence of the BUF raised all sorts of questions about identity, locality, local behaviour, migration, the role of recent arrivals, loyalties.

A “White Russian” living in Plymouth  – Mr Lomoff – wrote anti-semitic letters to the Western Morning News (WMN 4.1.39 and 14.1.39) 

There is a report of a fascist paper sale being attacked in a Plymouth street “by six Jews” in August 1935 (the report from a fascist newssheet).

The BUF headquarters were first in Lockyer Street and then at 10a Union Street, Stonehouse, also a fascist bookshop was opened at 5 Queen Anne Terrace.

The Rise of Fascism gives way to World War II

During WW2 there was a nervousness around appearance and identity – a Mrs Maria Stokes of 2 Preston Villa, Laira, Plymouth was placed on the list of those to be arrested in the event of German invasion – German by birth, she had married a British man in 1929, but still made frequent visits to Germany. When asked by police where her loyalties would lie she said “her heart was torn in two”. (National Archives HO45/25570)   Mrs Brigitta Rorden of 9 Argyle Terrace and later 5 Davy Villas was placed on the suspects list, married to a British man since 1920. Reports from colleagues, patients (she was a mid-wife) said she had anti-British views.  (National Archives, HO45/25570)

Perhaps the most extraordinary story of this period involves the family who ran the Duke of Cornwall Hotel for most of the second world war, the Welsh family. Jospeh Welsh was the child of Hungarian parents (originally Wellisch), his wife, though born in England, was the child of German parents. Their daughter-in-law, Bebe Welsh entertained US servicemen in her room (apparently with her husband’s agreement) and there were suspicions that she was collecting military intelligence.

------------------------

For many people their migrations were not caused by great upheavals such as wars or forced migrations or difficult personal circumstances, but by opportunities – and yet they still could have profound and subtle effects on their lives and experiences. There is a subtle account here of the effects of a move from Buckinghamshire to Plymouth by Helen Wyler – of the new space she has moved into and how it remains in her dreams.

Extracts and Stories

Below you will find some extracts and stories taken from publications and later history books writing about the 1900’s - they serve only as a sample and a selection and do not represent a proportionate or qualitative authoritative historical account on the actual migrations that occurred to and from the city of Plymouth within the era.

The Sinking of SS Mendi (and the dancing of the Death Drill)

Massive loss of life among South African Native Labour Corps – on a boat from Plymouth (had stopped at Plymouth after setting sail from South Africa)… SS Mendi - English Channel - 1917 - 646 Lost.
On the morning of February 21st, 1917, the SS Mendi was steaming off the coast of the Isle of Wight, transporting 823 members of the 5th Battalion, South African Native Labour Corps from Plymouth, England to La Havre, France.  It was a very foggy morning and at 5:00, an empty meat ship named the SS Darro, captained by Henry Stump, burst out of the fog and plowed into the Mendi.  The Mendi was nearly torn in two, and the South Africans, the majority of whom had never seen the ocean before this journey, were left clinging to the decks as the ship went down.  Captain Stump sailed on full-speed and made no attempt to rescue those on the Mendi. Blacks were not allowed to represent South Africa during the war as soldiers and those black people who did volunteer were sent to Europe as Labour Corps to do work like digging trenches. The men of the South African Labour Corps came from a wide range of social backgrounds and different groups within South Africa, but the majority were from the rural areas of the Pondo Kingdom in the Eastern Cape.  Some men were killed outright in the collision while others were trapped below decks.  Many however gathered on the listing deck of the Mendi, but unfortunately very few of them could swim. Oral history records that the men met their fate with great dignity. Their chaplain, Reverend Isaac Dyobha, is reported to have calmed the panicked men by raising his arms aloft and crying out in a loud voice:

"Be quiet and calm, my countrymen. What is happening now is what you came to do...you are going to die, but that is what you came to do. Brothers, we are drilling the death drill. I, a Xhosa, say you are my brothers...Swazis, Pondos, Basotho...so let us die like brothers. We are the sons of Africa. Raise your war-cries, brothers, for though they made us leave our assegais in the kraal, our voices are left with our bodies."

They were stomping the "death drill" as the ship went under.

Australian War Brides arriving in Plymouth

Australian wives of British servicemen arrived at Plymouth on the aircraft carrier 'Victorious'. During the Second World War, many British sailors serving in the Pacific and Asian theatres married Australian women, who they met when taking shore leave. In July 1946, the British authorities and Royal Navy took the unprecedented step of reuniting husbands and wives. The Australian brides were given passage to Britain on board the specially converted aircraft carrier HMS Victorious, arriving in Plymouth in early August. The women walked down the gangplank onto the deck of the Liner Tender Sir Richard Grenville, which in turn carried the women the short distance to Millbay Pier. The women were war brides, and they stepped ashore to be reunited with their husbands, British Royal Naval personnel who had served with the Pacific Fleet.

The youngest war bride on Victorious was just 15 years old, whilst about a third of the women were teenagers. The two oldest were 41. On Wednesday afternoon, 3 July, they and their fellow passengers were given an emotional send off by a crowd of over 6,000. Facilities on board included laundry, church, hairdressers, cinema, shop and library.Leather craft and felt toy making were also laid on. The women had lectures on board Victorious preparing them for rationing and other hardships in Britain
Throughout the voyage, some of the women worked as typists and clerks. Entertainment that the women devised for themselves included a ‘crossing the line’ ceremony with King Neptune, brides’ painting party, fancy dress ball, prettiest leg and ankle competition and a sports day featuring a ‘rescue the maiden’ race.

Officers of the watch conducted ‘Chastity Rounds’, described by Captain Annesley: “Rounds of all weather decks, galleries and gun positions were carried out frequently and at irregular periods after dark. All women had to be in their bunks by 11pm”. There’s a full length book account of  the voyage – Swing By Sailor by Catherine Dyson

Dockyard Story

In 1930 Pembroke Dockyard was closed and there were plans for the relocation of many of its dockyard workers into Devonport. This clearly caused local anxieties because questions were asked in the House of Commons by local MPs Hoare-Belisha and Lady Astor – where were they to be housed? Would they lead to local redundancies?

This closure seems to have been prepared for – for In 1927 “the Admiralty had a new development (174 houses) created for men and their families who had been forced down here due to closures at Pembroke and Rosyth Dockyards – hence the name of the new road... Penros Road.”  (C. Robinson, ‘Plymouth In the Twenties and Thirties’, pen & Ink Publications, Plymouth, 2008). 

This arrival of the Pembroke and Rosyth workers took place at a time when employment in the dockyard was falling from its high of 19,000 during the First World War, to 15,837 shortly after, 11,436 in 1925 and 10,854 in 1927... shortly after this figure another 800 men were dismissed from the yard. Many of these workers had assumed that they had jobs for life.

This kind of volatility in labour had happened before, particularly when technology changed in the nineteenth century and workers came from elsewhere with skills for working on metal rather than wooden ships.

There was also a turn-of-the-twentieth century extension to the dockyard – led by Sir John Jackson – houses were built specifically for the workers who worked on this extension - if one could identify these streets and then look at the 1901 census (which records places of birth) this might suggest where these skilled workers had come from. 

There is evidence in the 1940s of other earlier movement into Plymouth from other dockyards, in this case from Chatham. This is told about St Budeaux in the Second World War:  “Gas and electricity were cut off for days and Gran was in element. She had been an army cook at Chatham and rubbed her hands together and said “Oh I can get my good old coal stove going and cook on that.” It was her pride and joy and she used to cook for eight families for three weeks. We were given extra supplies of coal to keep the stove going.”  (‘Memories of St Budeux’, Tait, D.)

Liners Stories

The liners calling at Plymouth between the 1900s and the 1930s, bringing celebrities like Jack Warner, Bing Crosby, Gloria Swanson, Charlie Chaplin, Walt Disney…

A tender for the liners (launched in 1929) was called the ‘Sir John Hawkins’. It could carry up to 800 passengers from the liners to the shore.

With so many sailors passing through there was a pattern of momentary and passing encounters (of many kinds):

“...new Nissen huts for the incoming sailors from all over the ‘Empire’. I do remember a very young sailor, with ‘Fiji’ written on his shoulder wanting to play football with us and he would often meet us in the field...”

Extracts and Stories

Below you will find some extracts and stories taken from publications and later history books writing about the 1900’s - they serve only as a sample and a selection and do not represent a proportionate or qualitative authoritative historical account on the actual migrations that occurred to and from the city of Plymouth within the era.

Showmen and Travellers - 19th Century Plymouth

Nomadism: in ‘Dreams of the Road: Gypsy Life in the West Country’ (Martin Levinson & Avril Silk, 2007) travellers say “the A38 and A5 are the main gypsy roads” and describe regularly stopping their wagons in Plymouth – when they were following other gypsies to an agreed destination but did not know the way the leading wagon would leave markers at turnings – either a broken stick or torn grass...

Native American Indians would return to Plymouth in 1904 as part of Buffalo Bill’s travelling show. An academic paper on the behaviour of these Indians, as much tourists and gazers as being gazed upon has been written by Kevin Meethan, an academic at the University of Plymouth: ‘Touring the other: Buffalo Bill's Wild West in Europe’, Journal of Tourism History, Volume 2, Issue 2, 2010.

The Showmen of Efford

One group of families that have settled in Plymouth are the Showmen’s Guild families at Efford Fort (the land was purchased, I think, in the 1960s.

Showmen’s children in Plymouth schools –the children were not only taught in separate classrooms from the other children, but had their play times at separate times and out of sight of the other children – they were not given academic lessons, but mostly given crayons and paper and left all day to draw (this was in the early 1980s). Because the fairs were out on the road from Easter to late autumn the children would only go to school in the Winter.  (This has now changed and the fairs operate 12 months of the year.)

Showmen’s people are tough characters and this is perhaps part of the nature of a truly semi-nomadic life: going into unfamiliar territory and securing a small part of it for a short time – survival absolutely reliant on being able to do that – being able to defend oneself is a necessity for the survival of the travelling life.

There is great pride in the travelling life: “I tell my children you have something different from all the others”

Why Efford Fort – a heritage site?

In the 1960’s, a child died on the site. The City Council sold it the Showmen’s Guild for their “winter quarters”. The Showmen’s fierce defence of temporary territory made them reliable custodians of this site, keeping others out (there is a sign threatening the danger of rabies!) Efford Fort is one of the Palmerston Follies – forts built on the basis of paranoia about the threat from France when it had long receded.

Fleeing from Sudan to escape the war, Yakoub journeyed to Plymouth to start a new life

This compelling sotry is captured in paint and explores the emotions involved in migrating to an unknown location.

Introduction to 21st Century Plymouth  - A Slice of Migration History

Plymouth in the 21st Century - as well as stories you will find here - please view all the video stories in 'Established' and 'Settling' sections of this resource.