John Fretwell, great-uncle to the eight surviving children of his nephew William Fretwell, made provision for them in his will, dated 2 December 1848, as follows.

From the sale of the Talbot Estate -

From monies arising from the Foundry Estate -

From the Residue of Personal Estate -

We will deal first with the children born to William and Elizabeth who died in infancy and then follow the life of their second child, Elizabeth.

Rhoda Fretwell

The information I have for Rhoda, the first born, is as brief as her life-span. She was born on 17 January 1828, at Leeds and died fifteen weeks later on 29 April. There is no record in the family papers as to her baptism, but she was buried, in the Mill Hill Chapel Yard, Leeds.

William Henry Fretwell

William Henry Fretwell was the third child, and only son, of William and Elizabeth. He was born on 12 November 1830 and baptised, by Joseph Hutton at the Mill Hill Chapel, on 31 January 1831 Just five years after his baptism, and two months before his father’s remarriage, William died and was buried on 3 February 1836. The burial service was conducted by the Rev. Charles Wicksteed, at the Mill Hill Chapel.

Daughter Fretwell

Nothing is known about this baby daughter, the fourth and last child of William and Elizabeth Fretwell, who was born on 13 June 1832 and died within a few hours of her birth.

Elizabeth Fretwell

Elizabeth, second child of William and Elizabeth, although herself also delicate, managed to overcome the traumas of childhood ailments and survived to adulthood. She was born on 4 April 1829 and baptised later that year on 20 September. Although she perhaps would not remember much of her brother William, as she would only have been four years old when he died, or her sister, born in 1832 and who only lived a few hours, Elizabeth’s early life would not have been a happy time. She may not even have remembered her mother who died so prematurely in 1834. There is no account of how Elizabeth reacted to her father’s remarriage, or of her relationship with her step-mother, Anne Jackson. For the 1841 census she is listed with them as a 13 year old, together with her baby step-sister Mary, living at Knostrop. Her step-brother, John, eight years her junior, does make some references to Elizabeth in his Recollections. He describes her as having inherited consumptive tendencies and a somewhat unhappy disposition, but adds that he recalled her kind treatment to him in his younger years. A further remark might also serve to confirm Elizabeth’s possibly prickly nature, when John relates how in 1857, at which time he was sharing accommodation at Peckham Rye with his step-sister, he spent his Sundays -

divided between my sister at Kentish Town and my step-sister at Peckham Rye, for although the two were both on good terms with me, they did not like each other.

The reason for Elizabeth having moved to London was to make arrangements for her journey to India where she was to marry Washington Teasdale who was employed there as a civil engineer. We hear from John that the relationship was one of long-standing.

It was a pretty old affair, for he had to make his way in India, and even in 1857 when he could make a home for my sister, he could not leave his duties to fetch her. So she was preparing to go out to marry him in Bombay.

Washington Teasdale had been born at Brunswick Place, Leeds, on 8 August 1830, the first of five children born to John Teasdale and his wife Mary (née Heaps) who had married on 29 October 1829. Washington was baptised at the Mill Hill Chapel, Leeds, on 19 January 1831, where his four siblings were also baptised. The Leeds Mercury of 11 February 1837 reported that John Teasdale, aged 38 and a commission traveller of Brunswick Place, had died on 5 February. He did not live to celebrate the birth of his last child, John Christopher Teasdale, who was born a few months later on 19 June 1837. Two daughters - Mary Elizabeth and Mary Emily - had predeceased their father. And so, with the death of her husband, Mary was left to raise the three remaining children, Washington, Jane, and the baby John, under the guardianship of their maternal grandfather, Christopher Heaps, a prominent and highly respected citizen of Leeds. Washington was educated at Mr. Richard Hiley's Academy, and subsequently qualified as a civil engineer. When did Washington actually go to India? We know that Washington was still in England in 1851, as he was listed as living at Rosehurst, Grosvenor Road, Headingley with his grandfather (then aged 75), and his mother Mary. Two years later, in April 1853, his grandfather died. A notice in the London Gazette, dated 19 November 1855, stated that the partnership between Thomas Atkinson Heaps and Washington Teasdale, General Ironmongers, was to be dissolved due to the withdrawal of Washington Teasdale. He was definitely in India by April 1856, as reported in the Huddersfield and Holmfirth Examiner of 10 May 1856.

There are very many persons in this neighbourhood who will be glad to hear that Mr. Washington Teasdale who was recently living amongst us is now successfully pursuing a profession, for which the ability and enterprise of this gentleman eminently fit him. By the Poonah Observer (April 1) we notice that Mr. Teasdale is in India, on an official engineering staff, and we may safely predict that his services are likely to be both valuable to his country and creditable to himself. The assistance he rendered to the cause of education throughout Yorkshire by his personal sacrifices, will be gratefully remembered, and hearty wishes for his welfare will be uttered by all who read this notice of his removal from amongst us.

There were a number of ways in which the lives of the Fretwell and Teasdale families intersected and which afforded the opportunities for Washington and Elizabeth to become well acquainted. The most important of these was their shared the Unitarian faith. The boys, John Fretwell and John Teasdale were the same age, having been born just a few days apart. Jane Teasdale, Washington's sister, was listed as a Grocer and Tea Dealer in the 1847 Leeds Directory.

By the mid 1850s it was nothing unusual for women to be travelling to India. However, events in India the year before Elizabeth’s planned departure must have given her, and her family, some cause for disquiet. At the very time she was making her preparations, reports of the Indian Mutiny, sparked off on 10 May 1857, were reaching England, and were widely (and somewhat luridly) reported in the national and provincial newspapers. But maybe Elizabeth did not dwell on the potential dangers, and concentrated more on the challenges facing her as the future wife of a Raj Sahib, as cited by Margaret MacMillan in her study Women of the Raj.

The end and object is not merely personal comfort but the formation of a home - that unit of civilization where father and children, master and servant, employer and employed, can learn their several duties. When all is said and done also herein lies the natural outlet for most of the talent peculiar to women. And, in her miniature empire, the woman of the Raj had many of the same problems as the men on their larger stage.

But if Elizabeth found this somewhat daunting, there was help at hand. By the middle of the nineteenth century there were books of advice for the novice memsahibs. The authors, usually women themselves, thoughtfully gave lists, of enormous length, of items which should be brought out from Home. Most of the lists - and much of the baggage - were taken up with clothes. The sheer number and variety seems staggering today. The anonymous author of Real Life in India (1847) recommended, among other things, 36 calico nightgowns and 36 nightcaps. Finally ready for her new life in India, Elizabeth set out on her journey early in 1858. She was accompanied on the journey by her future brother-in-law, John Teasdale (who himself was later married in India to bride Elinor Pollock who, like Elizabeth, travelled to India for the event) while her step-sister and step-mother accompanied her as Marseilles with them. At this time most passengers for India travelled the whole distance from Britain by boat but, to shorten the journey, some, like Elizabeth and John went by train across France or down through Italy to catch a steamer to Egypt. The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce noted, in its 9 June 1858 issue, that Miss Fretwell had arrived from Marseilles.

John Fretwell alluded to the long engagement period. Commentators on Indian Raj history agree that extended engagements and separations were not necessarily the wisest course of action. As noted by Margaret MacMillan, this was even more critical when the bride-to-be was venturing to a country about which she probably knew very little, taken away from her close family, and definitely out of her ‘comfort zone’.

Girls took a risk if they got engaged at Home before they had seen India. They shrugged off the warnings about the heat, the insects, the diseases the boredom of life on small stations. At a distance India was glamorous: the rajahs in jewelled turbans, the elephants in harness trimmed with gold and silver, the spacious bungalows, all those servants. Sometimes engagements took place years before the wedding. The men returned to India to establish themselves in their careers while their brides-to-be waited - and waited. Not surprisingly, there were couples who did not recognize each other when they finally met again. Or perhaps they found that the reality was not quite so attractive as the memory.

It is to be hoped that this unhappy experience was not shared by Elizabeth and Washington and they married very soon after Elizabeth's arrival - on Monday 14 June 1858 at the Cathedral, Bombay. Was it a quiet wedding or a more lavish occasion? It was held on a Monday, perhaps suggesting a low key affair. However we do have some account of the general way the wedding celebrations were conducted, depending on one’s means and preferences.

Most couples got married in a church as a matter of course. Everything was done to make the wedding as much like one at Home as possible. Family and friends rallied around to help with the church and the wedding breakfast…For more elaborate weddings, invitations, in silver or perhaps white with a silver border, were sent out months before. The champagne was ordered from France, oysters from Bombay, tinned pâté de foie gras from a branch of the Army and Navy Stores. The bride wore clouds of white tulle, and a veil with a circlet of myrtle or orange blossom. If her family could afford it, the dress came from Home or from one of the big shops in Calcutta or Bombay; otherwise the invaluable durzi [tailor] came up with something. There would be a white cake on a stand and a display of the presents - photograph albums, vases, clocks, cruets, silver salvers - with which the young couple were going to start their housekeeping.

Elizabeth did not have the opportunity to practise her memsahib skills for very long, if indeed she had ever been physically and mentally capable of doing so. For her confinement occurred almost nine months to the day after her wedding. We know that she did not enjoy a robust constitution, and the fact that she had been carrying twins must of itself have sapped her strength, even before any account is taken of the prevailing conditions, and the climate. Childbirth itself was bound to be a frightening experience for these women, not least because it was difficult to obtain proper medical care. Women in the bigger cities had access to doctors, nurses and hospitals, but those on the smaller stations had to take whatever was available, and that usually meant military doctors…even after the use of chloroform was accepted in Europe, doctors in India continued to think it an unnecessary luxury.

On 22 March 1859, in the Fortress of Asseeghur, Elizabeth gave birth to twins, a daughter Mary Eliza and a still born boy. Within two weeks after her confinement, on 7 April 1859, three days after her 30th birthday, Elizabeth herself succumbed from exhaustion. The deaths column of the 28 May issue of the Leeds Times carried the following notice, signalling Elizabeth's sad end.

On the 7th ult., in the fortress of Aseerghur, India, ELIZABETH, wife of WASHINGTON TEASDALE, Esq., C.E., and eldest daughter of Mr. Wm. Fretwell, of this town.

Mary Eliza was taken back to England by her Uncle John Teasdale and was there cared for by her Teasdale grandmother. She did not survive long past her first birthday. Her death was recorded in the Leeds Times of Saturday 28 July 1860.

On Sunday, at Rosehurst, Headingley, in her second year, Mary Eliza, daughter of Washington Teasdale, Esq., Esq., Asseerghur, East Indies.

We do not know how much longer Washington stayed in India. But he was back in England for the 1871 census, living with his mother, at Rosehurst, 5 Grosvenor Terrace, Headingley, and listed as a retired civil engineer. He was still there for the 1881 census, by which time his widowed mother had died, and the only other people with him in the household were two servants, Hannah Ward and Martha Williamson. By 1891 Washington had moved out of the family home and was, for the census of that year, living at Fir Dene, 4 Bainbrigge Road, Headingley. He was being looked after by Mary Turner, housekeeper. Ten years later, and Washington had again moved, to 255 Hyde Park Road, Leeds. He was then 70 years old. He had also had a change of housekeepers, and this position was now occupied by one Caroline Shaw. Having seen in the new millennium, Washington died in 1903 at the Scarisbrick Hotel, Southport. He was buried at the Woodhouse Cemetery, Leeds. He left an estate valued at £11,069 14s 9d, to be administered by his executors – John Christopher Teasdale, accountant (brother), James George Chadwick, cloth-merchant (brother-in-law), and Frank Kidson, artist (close friend).

The Royal Astronomical Society journal (Vol 64, p.293) published a lengthy obituary, covering Washington's early years and then his life from the time he qualified as a civil engineer to his death.

When the railway system of India was being constructed, he went out to that country to take part in its development. Here he remained for several years, acquiring such a complete mastery over the native language that it is said he preserved the habit of thinking in Hindustani till the very close of his life. On his return to England he settled in Leeds and possessing he means, and having ample leisure, he devoted himself to the cultivation of his scientific tastes. These were many and varied, and there was hardly any local scientific society with which he was not connected. In particular he actively interested himself in the Leeds Astronomical Society, the Leeds Naturalist Club, the Institute of Science, Art and Literature, throwing himself into whatever subject he took up with most delightful enthusiasm. Photography was an art in which he took especial interest; indeed he was amongst the earliest workers in his field, and in conjunction with a few friends, he founded a photographic society before he went to India … Astronomy had, however, the chief fascination for him. He was elected a Fellow of this Society in 1886; he was an original member of the British Astronomical Association; and in his native town he had a large share in the resuscitation and the development of the Leeds Astronomical Society, of which he was President from 1893 to 1897 … His love of science amounted to a passion. It had for him an absorbing interest, and for the greater part of his life was his sole occupation, and a hobby which gave a joy to existence. His house in Hyde Park Road, Leeds, was quite a treasury of scientific apparatus, works of art, and interesting curios, and other subjects which denoted the wide range of his studies and sympathies…

His death took place during the meeting of the British Association at Southport. He had gone thither to attend the meetings, and was visiting a friend, when he was seized with illness, and remained in a state of coma for some time. Hopes were, however, entertained of his recovery, but a second attack followed the next day, and he died on Saturday, the 19^th of September 1903, at the age of 72.

Washington Teasdale was a typical Victorian gentleman amateur scientist whose. These were men of means who had the time and the money to invest into their hobbies. The materials and instruments needed were expensive and it would require extensive free time to set up and perform experiments. The sciences they dabbled in included astronomy, geology, geometry, microscopy, mechanics, meteorology, and photography.

How free would Washington have been to indulge in his passion as a gentleman amateur scientist if he had family responsibilities? The obituary makes a fleeting reference to his wife –

Mr. Teasdale married and had one child, but he survived both his wife and child by many years.

A particular interest of Washington’s, and one for which he had gained some eminence, was the development and use of microscopes. He was a Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society, and it was this expertise that was called upon by Messrs Field and Co, Manufacturing Opticians of Birmingham, Sole Makers of the Society and Arts’ Prize Students’ Microscopes, when they asked Washington to write a small treatise, endorsing one of their products. This paper, published in 1876, served two purposes. Not only did it give Washington the opportunity to introduce the readers to the instrument that he had designed, but it also provided some good publicity for the stockist. This little pamphlet was entitled :

A BRIEF PAPER
on the
USE AND EDUCATIONAL VALUE
of
SIMPLE MICROSCOPES
in general and the
Field Naturalist’s Microscope
in particular

Not missing the opportunity to talk about a subject dear to his heart, albeit in the rather didactic and unimaginative style of the day, Washington declared himself delighted to be:

…complying with the request of Messrs. Field & Co. that I would write for publication some description, and directions for the intelligent use of the cheap educational Microscope they have at my request made for sale, and now offer to the public.

William Fretwell’s grief from the loss of three children in such a short time span was to some degree mitigated by the more robust family that his second wife was able to bear. Of the nine children born to this couple, seven survived to adulthood. It is an interesting statistic that according to social historian J.F.C. Harrison, the infant mortality rate was such in the late 1840s that to ensure two surviving children a married couple could expect to have five or six births.

John Fretwell

We are fortunate that John left an account, albeit somewhat ‘one-eyed’, of his life, much of which deals with his religious beliefs, and the troublesome Herr Ronge. Rather grandly titled

Fretwelliana
being
Fact and Fiction
from the
Life and Thought
of
John Fretwell, of Leeds in Yorks
The Lad and the Ladye

it does provide some valuable insights into his own, and his relatives’ lives and attitudes. The story of John will, therefore draw heavily upon his own account which I have named "Recollections". This account was written in his later life when he was living in America. Thus sums of money are given in US dollars rather than English pounds.

John was the first child, and one of two sons, of William and Anne. He was born on 11 June 1837 at Upperhead Row, Leeds, very shortly after his parents’ first wedding anniversary. It was three months later that he was baptised, given the family name John, at the Mill Hill Chapel, the Rev. Charles Wicksteed officiating. John’s early life was spent in Yorkshire.

In a very neatly set out letter, to his paternal Grandmother Mary Vause, written at Selby and dated 12 December 1849, John, aged 9, reported on his and his brother’s and sisters’ educational progress.

My dearest Grandmother,
As I and my Brother,
Have a holiday granted to day
I cannot do better
Than to write you a letter
To please you is better than play
I am sure you will hear
With pleasure sincere
That I and Vause are improving at school,
In accounts I’m as far
(Though some hard tasks there are)
As Decimal Fractions, first rule
I am now learning Latin,
But of myself to keep chatting,
Will make you fancy me full of conceit,
So now let me tell
That Mary spells well
And Alice the Alphabet tries to repeat
As Christmas is near,
Now Grandmother dear
Your company we hope you will give us
And dear Uncle will come,
To meet him we’d run,
He was always so very kind to us
In the hope you will come
Believe we all join,
And at the Train my Mother will meet
You with a coach,
Of one Selby can boast,
So pray don’t refuse us the treat
I hope you are well,
And that Uncle will tell
When he writes, (which I trust will be shortly)
That Rheumatic pangs
Have not seized your hands,
Which would indeed grieve us most heartily
Unto Uncle and you
I must now say adieu,
As my lessons I still have to get well,
Believe me to be
In truth and sincerity
Your affectionate Grandson,
John Fretwell

The 1851 census records John as a boarding pupil at the Yeomans’ School, Lord Mayor’s Walk, in the St Giles area of York. Why the choice of school away from his home town? The Yeomans' School specifically catered for the sons of families from what may be described as the lower-middle class. John was enrolled there at a time when his parents were facing financial difficulties, and moving houses, and he may have either lived or stayed with at his maternal grandmother’s house at Selby and also with his step-sister during the holidays as he makes reference to the latter's kindness to him during his schooldays.

As the eldest son it seems that John was destined for the grocery trade. In September 1852, just after his fifteenth birthday, young John was taken by his father to London to begin his apprenticeship with Wall, Smith and Co, of 103 Saint John Street, West Smithfield. It was not a career, in any other circumstances, that he would have chosen for himself. As was to be confirmed later, he was temperamentally and intellectually unsuited for the commercial world, being far more drawn to matters religious. The move to London was :

… in direct opposition to my personal inclinations, for while my Father was a Unitarian, I was strongly attached to the Anglican Church, in which my mother was born and bred; and could I have followed my own desires, I should have prepared myself for the ministry of that church … But my Father, I now think, made a better choice for me than at that early age I should have made for myself. It was certainly the best he could make, with due regard to his own conscience and means; and I doubt if any parents in their position could have done better for their son than mine did.

Thus the dutiful, if reluctant, son left home to prepare himself for his future career, and he certainly applied himself to the task over the next few years.

John gives an enlightening account of life as an apprentice. For the first two years he lived in his employer’s house, giving his services for his board and lodging, and, he says, though he hated the business, he became very much attached to his employer and gained his confidence. Initiation was evidently a prescribed rite of passage for new apprentices for John recounts a very early experience of his life in London.

On my first Sunday there my fellow apprentices had taken me on a long walk to Jack Straw’s Castle on the Heath, where certain mystic rites, common among the ‘prentice lads of those days, were indulged in at my expense.

The working day of an apprentice was protracted, beginning at 7.00am and ending at 6.00pm. Apart from the long hours, John reports that his business indeed had another very serious objection. In order to succeed in it, it was necessary to acquire a reputation as a good judge of the quality and value of teas and coffees. This could only be done by tasting their infusions, and in a large business, many hundreds of samples were tasted daily. The unfortunate effects of which were that :

This makes the tasters extremely irritable, and many of them indulge in quantities of tobacco, alcohol, or other narcotics, to counteract the excessive nervous irritability induced by the abnormal consumption of tea and coffee. This I did not do, and so became very excitable, and was often warned that I ought to leave the business or devote myself to a less lucrative part of it.

For the first two years of his time in London John did not see his parents, for the rule of the business house to which he was indentured was that holidays were only given once in two years. But not all contact was lost with his family, and John seems to have been relatively contented and free to follow his extra-mural interests.

But I was in receipt of regular letters from home. My superiors in the office, though very fond of pleasure, were very thoughtful and gentlemanly, and never interfered with my free employment of my leisure and I led on the whole a happy life.

As with many young men of the time, John’s formal education had finished on reaching his 15^th birthday. Unlike the more frivolous superiors referred to above, John’s time after work was spent in study. No doubt he was motivated by a need to get on in life, and this was coupled with a life-long enthusiasm for learning. He spent his evenings at Crosby Hall, an Anglican establishment, where various clergymen gave their time to teaching young men who, when their day’s work was over, went there for self-improvement. Indeed, John still harboured hopes of being accepted into a theological course and then entering the Anglican ministry and to assist him his mother offered him money she had saved from her household allowance. On the other hand he was given no encouragement from his father who was staunchly Unitarian. Besides, as John fully realised, his father was now 60, had lost all his money, had no life insurance, and if John was to enter the ministry, who was to provide for the younger Fretwell daughters in case of his father's death?

What John describes as the first important change in this life occurred in 1854 when his employer decided to get married, and needed the run of the whole house that he and John and shared. John was therefore obliged to find his own board and lodgings. To assist with this, his employer now paid John $300 a year, which he found, with care, amply sufficient for all his necessities. John was fortunate to find lodgings, about 35 minutes walk from his work, with the family of Mr. and Mrs. Dalby, who were from Yorkshire, and who were distantly related to his step-sister Elizabeth. The Dalbys were to have considerable influence over John, and maintained an abiding interest in his progress and family. From them John

… learned how much high thinking was compatible with very plain living.

John formed a particular bond with Mrs. Dalby.

Especially valuable to me was the intercourse with Mrs. Dalby. Since leaving my mother’s house I had no female intercourse at all, and while my male associates were of the best, the influence of a well bred and experienced woman is of inestimable value to a young man.

John’s interests broadened during his time with the Dalbys. He continued with his evening studies at Crosby Hall, but now also music and the drama began to take some place in his recreations. Through reading aloud with the family he learned to appreciate the works of Sir Walter Scott and Shakespeare. But, most significantly, it was through accompanying the Dalbys to their chapels and meetings that John gained a better understanding and empathy with Unitarianism. A reading of the Recollections will provide a clearer and fuller exposition of John’s religious affiliations, and I do not want to dwell too much on them here. However, it is important for understanding John’s character, and the path he took in later life, to have some comprehension as to his religious ‘quandary’. Though he finally wholeheartedly adopted the Unitarian faith, it was not a decision made without much soul searching and almost with some sense of regret.

My teachers at York Diocesan School … and other Anglican Ministers who taught at Crosby Hall ... and other Anglican lay and clergymen under whose temporary influence I came at the Working Men’s College in Great Ormond St. were all, so far as I could see, true incarnations of the spirit of Christianity, and to their church many of my best friends belonged. They have done me much good, and no conscious wrong. Both my interests and affections held me firmly to them.
And if that other influence of my Father’s, beginning so quietly yet effectively in holiday time, strengthened by my desultory reading in his library, and made thoroughly clear to me by those historical studies with Dalby, or the guidance of Ierson’s preaching, had finally led me to believe that the ethical and intellectual balance was in favour of the Unitarian argument, it was in no spirit of revolt, but with infinite sorrow that I renounced the notions of my early life.

It was during his stay with the Dalbys that John first began to teach in the Unitarian Sunday School, and work voluntarily with the associated Domestic Mission, which sought to spread religious and moral influences among the very poorest people of London. The branch of the mission to which he was attached was located in Spitalfields, a wretchedly poor part of the East End of London, originally settled by Huguenot silk weavers. He describes them with some admiration.

They were miserably poor, seldom earning more than $4 a week, but they were far more temperate and economical in their habits than the people of English and Irish descent among whom they dwelt. Their garret homes were clean and neat, and often adorned with flowers … On Sundays they would often wander far into the Epping Forest and the Woodlands beyond the Lea, botanising and collecting insects, and I learned in converse with them to appreciate the meaning of John Milton’s ‘Spare fast, that with the Gods doth diet’.

In his nineteenth year John was pleased to report that the previous two years of his life had been rewarding and that he was generally happy with his lot.

I was busy all day as the confidential clerk of Wall, Smith and Co, who after 5 years experience, trusted me thoroughly…I was working hard in business from 9 till 6. By early rising in the summer I secured time before breakfast for my studies. In the evening I was either among fellow students at Crosby Hall, or teaching in the domestic mission. My Sundays were divided between the chapel and the school, and at the morning and vespermeal enjoyed the society of Mr. and Mrs. Dalby, who treated their lodger as though he were a younger brother. My noonday meal consisted generally of bread and cheese and a few raisins and a glass of water.

As well pursuing his studies, John was also called upon as a lecturer at Crosby Hall, and had the honour to deliver the inaugural lecture in the newly formed class in Political and Social Economy, as reported in the London City Press of 14 November 1857.

The lecturer, after defining the nature and objects of the science, and urging the importance of a more extended acquaintance with the principles which regulate the phenomena of industrial and social life, stated, that the object of his lecture was to give such an outline of the science as might form a plan for the future studies of the class.

This summing up gives no indication of the watershed that the year 1857 was in John’s life for in that year his future became embroiled with Herr Ronge, a German exile who established the first kindergarten in Britain at Hampstead, London, in 1851. This meeting heralded years of difficult situations for John and his family, but, on a happier note, it was through Ronge that he met for the first time the young girl who would eventually become his wife. Their first encounter was at Ronge’s house, Grove House, Upper Kentish Town, and was a source of embarrassment to them both.

Ronge took John into a room in which two ladies were practising their singing. The first did not impress John at all, but the second, younger singer did catch his attention.

The second voice, a full and rich mezzo-soprano, much more reserved in expression was sung by a slight girl about 18 years old. I am no critic in music, having since leaving York only sung for the purpose of keeping my voice in order for public speaking; but the impression made upon me by this girl was more like that of watching a lark, the sound seemed so unforced and yet so tuneful, and so full in proportion to that little body whence it issued, that I could hardly understand how so small a person could manage so well to harmonize with the shrill first voice.

John reports that, when the song had ended Ronge clapped his hands and laughed, evidently enjoying more the discomfiture of the ladies at having sung unwittingly before a stranger, than appreciating their performance. In turn, the ladies were evidently not pleased that a stranger had entered unheralded. Notwithstanding his untutored musical appreciation, John had no portent, at this time, of any romantic attachment to the younger singer.

Who was this slip of a girl with the delightful voice? Bertha Traun was of German stock and with her marriage to John began a German/English inter-relationship that carried through for the next three generations of Fretwells. The Meyer family with which the Traun and Fretwell families were to become linked was well established in the commercial world of Hamburg, with connections also in America. Chief architect of the Meyer fortunes was Bertha’s grandfather Heinrich Christian Meyer (1797-1848). He and his wife Agathe Margarethe (nee Buesch, 1794-1833) had eleven children, of whom Bertha Traun’s mother, also called Bertha, was the second born child.

Bertha Meyer, John’s future mother-in-law, was considered quite a beauty as the photograph of her as a young woman will confirm. Bertha Meyer married, Christian Justus Friedrich Traun (1804-1881), another well-heeled Hamburg businessman, known by the family as Friedrich, on 31 July 1835. They had four sons and two daughters, the younger of whom they named Bertha, after her mother. She was born on 27 December 1839, and baptised at St Catharinen, in Hamburg.

At some stage in the marriage Bertha senior had become attracted first to the religious teachings of Johannes Ronge, and then to the teacher himself, with the resultant estrangement from and, amid great scandal, subsequent divorce from her husband. Around 1848 Johannes Ronge and Bertha Traun left Germany for London where, when the divorce was finalised, they were married on 5 August 1851. The April 1851 census shows that they had already set up house, as man and wife, living at 11 Pratt Terrace, St Pancras. Johannes' occupation is given as author. Bertha’s two daughters, Agathe and Bertha Traun, came with her, leaving the sons with their father. (Agathe, who died aged 17 before John knew the family, was buried on 10 April 1854 in Highgate Cemetery, her grave marked by a simple white marble obelisk, with the plain inscription ‘Agatha Traun, von ihren Freunden'). There followed a constant custody battle between the parents Friedrich and Bertha for their children, even with some fears (not unfounded) of attempts to abduct the younger Bertha and take her back to her father. Subsequently, according to John Fretwell, Herr and Frau Ronge had a child of their own whom they named Marie.

But back to the prospective groom and bride. Towards the end of his life John described Bertha as she was when he first met her.

She was as quiet and reserved in her intercourse with me as with all strangers. The circumstances of her early youth had made Miss Traun serious and reserved to such a degree that English people who knew the German tongue made this the occasion of a pun upon her name (Miss Traun – Misstrauen, or distrust).

If Bertha was not encouraging, John did not see himself as being particularly eligible.

Nor was a person like myself likely to attract the favourable attention of a girl of 18 years.
I had always worked to the very limit of my powers, and therefore in my hours of rest, had not the high spirits common to my age. I was economical to the extreme in matters of dress and toilet, in order to save money for my literary tastes and for my sister and accustomed only to seek the good will and esteem of men who were occupied with the most serious problems of actual life; I never devoted the slightest thought to making myself agreeable to any young women but those of my own flesh and blood, and not over much to them. If I continued the singing lessons commenced when I was a schoolboy at York, it was only for the sake of strengthening my naturally weak voice for the purpose of public speaking. I never sang a song. Though I had learned to dance at York, I had imbibed Lord Chesterfield’s idea, that dancing was a thing for actors and not for gentlemen. My thoughts too were far too much absorbed in serious questions as to securing my own future and that of my sisters’ to permit any question of love. In short I was a prig.

A fuller account of their courtship is given in the Recollections, and is here only set out in brief. Owing to the death of a son, Mrs. Ronge (formerly Mrs. Traun) and Bertha returned to Germany, and were away from England for some time. During that absence John and both Berthas kept in touch by letter or by messages delivered by mutual friends and acquaintances. During this period John actually moved in with Johannes Ronge, at Bertha senior’s request, to keep an eye on the older man. Meanwhile John was able to put all family matters into the background of his mind.

None of these events or persons interfered with the steady course of my work and study. My principals again increased my salary and I again took a prize in the Society of Arts examinations, this time in political economy, while I pretty well read through the German books in Johannes Ronge’s library.

The year 1858 was one of change and challenge for John. Mrs Ronge, in appreciation of John’s ‘guardianship’ of her husband, invited John to spend a week in Hamburg at her expense, and made arrangements for him to stay with one of her relatives, Ernst Conrad Meyer, in the Bankstrasse. In the midst of planning for this trip John, having decided that it was time to look for another position which would give him more opportunity to sharpen his commercial cut and thrust, had handed in his notice to his employers and had secured another position, which he would take up on his return from Hamburg.

Judging from John’s self-deprecatory remarks on his appearance on setting out for Hamburg, it can be surmised that the relationship between Bertha and himself had warmed, perhaps through the encouragement of Bertha’s mother. In John’s own words:

I certainly was nothing like a man that would a wooing go when I started out on that journey…The very clothes I wore had been made to fit my younger brother … He was something of a dude, and I must have looked more ridiculous in his clothes than in my ordinary economical and careless apparel. Having no trunk but an old sea chest, the legacy of my sailor uncle Fred, I had borrowed a lighter, but dilapidated trunk of Johannes Ronge. My sister Mary proposed to accompany me to the Tower Wharf, whence I had to take a wherry [a light rowing boat used for carrying passengers and goods on rivers] for the Hamburg steamer. It was early in the morning and the omnibus had not yet begun to run. To save cab hire I proposed to walk the 3 miles. So I took the trunk on my shoulder. When Mary saw me -
‘Oh John’ she said ‘you surely are not going to walk through London in that fashion.’
‘I surely am,’ I replied.
‘Well, then,’ said she, ‘you may go alone for I will not be seen in London streets with such a figure as you are.’

Having suffered the rigours of steerage class (a self-imposed financial stringency) the miseries of sea sickness and the humiliation of having been duped by a confidence trickster, John arrived in Hamburg. This was John’s first visit to a foreign country so, once ensconced in his lodgings, he set out to see the sights. Also on the agenda was a reunion with Bertha Traun and, more daunting, a first meeting with her father. From the former he received a cordial unaffected greeting, and was relieved and surprised with Herr Traun’s initial welcome (though alluding to less happier future meetings).

His smile gave a singularly pleasant expression to his countenance, and he was too polite to meet strangers with the frown that I had often enough to brave in later days.

However, it became immediately apparent to Herr Traun that young Fretwell had an eye for his daughter, and the relationship turned instantly frosty. John afterwards learnt that Herr Traun had, on that very day of their first meeting, given instructions to prevent the chance of a tête-a-tête between his daughter and the young Englishman with an inkspot on his collar. Such obstacles notwithstanding, on the last day of his stay in Germany John was able to spend time alone with Bertha and, almost surprising himself, proposed marriage.

The gold circlet, which like German husbands I still wear, bears the date 10^th September, 1858.

But some time was to elapse, and numerous hurdles to overcome, before the pair could get married. Immediately on his return to England John took up his new position with Hill, Son and Meadows, shipping agents of Milk Street, Cheapside. He certainly found there a more aggressive business ethos, but not one that sat comfortably with his personal code of ethics.

The firm had made a composition with its creditors of 25 cents on the dollar; in itself surprising enough to a Unitarian, who regards anything under 20 shillings in the pound as damnable heresy. In what is here called smartness, they could have given points to the smartest Yankees I ever knew, and won the game. I began to think that now I understood why my former principal did not make money. He would have resented the insinuation that he should adopt the practices of this house as a mortal affront. Not that I would call them dishonourable. Perhaps he was behind the times; certainly they were all but ahead.

John also wrote formally to his future father-in-law requesting his daughter’s hand in marriage, and requesting permission to correspond with her (she was still in Hamburg) until such time as he could provide a home for her and thus embark upon married life. Whether to ensure that his son-in-law would be able to provide adequately for his daughter, whether to encourage John to move to Germany to work and thus enable the father to see more of his daughter, or whether, as John suspected, to ensnare him into being financially dependent upon his father-in-law, Herr Traun sought ways of establishing John in business in Germany. This offer came at a propitious time, because within a few weeks, John had decided that he could never be happy working for his new employers. He gave notice, and left in November 1858 to pursue options in Germany, armed with what he called the wealth of commercial experience he had acquired in the previous six weeks. Before leaving he was able to fit in a quick visit to Leeds to his parents and to announce the good news of his betrothal.

The business opportunities offered by Herr Traun were either to manage a chemical company or to work for an insurance agency. John was both bemused and alarmed, as he felt that his qualifications and experience left him ill equipped to undertake either of these ventures. Tactically he was at a disadvantage, money being just one factor. He had expected to, but never did, receive unpaid wages from Hill, Son and Meadows, and he did not wish to antagonise, any more than could be helped, the man whose daughter he wanted to marry.

No business agreement was reached between John and Herr Traun, and in the interim John devoted his time to those studies which might help him in German business and in mastering the details of commercial work. By early 1859, with no resolution to the situation, and no doubt with tensions rising between the two men, particularly as it appeared that Herr Traun was intent on thwarting the marriage, John decided to return to England with the avowed intention never to settle in Germany. He had, in any case, another reason to return as he was about to come into his inheritance left to him by his late great-uncle John Fretwell on his 22^nd birthday which fell in that year.

John was fortunate that his first employers were prepared to take him back, and to pay him a sufficient salary. Maybe the tea and coffee business was more to his liking than before, in view of his recent experiences. But overall, 1859 was not a happy year for John.

First, Bertha called off their engagement (although, strangely, she does not appear to have advised her father of this, as he continued to canvass business opportunities for John). Second, possibly as a consequence of a depletion of his physical reserves, John fell victim to the small pox epidemic of autumn 1859. He was seriously ill, requiring him to take five months off work to recover. The attack of small pox apparently left him badly disfigured, of which he was very sensitive. He was most fortunate that his employers continued to pay him in full during the recovery and convalescence. However, his convalescence would have been speeded up by Bertha’s decision to resume their engagement.

John himself refers to the strain of overwork and anxiety, and ascribes the period from December 1858 to March 1861 as contributing to the onset of his ‘head trouble’, a cure for which he did not find until he went to America later in life. There is some confusion as who actually called off the engagement as John also claims that as an honest man he could not, in conscience, undertake to marry Bertha until he had determined whether the affliction was temporary or permanent. Therefore he had written to her suggesting a postponement of the marriage. However he regained his health sufficient to assure himself that the marriage should proceed. (If the ‘head trouble’ was migraine, it is interesting to note that this affliction has continued down through the male line to the current generation).

Once more Herr Traun had a proposition for John, and now that the relationship with Bertha had resumed, it seems that John was ready for some serious negotiating. The business ‘on offer’ was in Lippstadt, and from the first inspection, John had strong reservations about its potential and its location.

A more unattractive place to commence life in, or a less attractive business for a man of my tastes could hardly be conceived. [The customers were mostly Jews or Papists, a large part of the business was in what are called religious articles for Roman Catholics]. The customers of the business were the petty nobility and gentry of the neighbourhood, an altogether contemptible set of people, or Jewish and Roman tradesmen. There was a ropery connected with it, where twine and cordage were made by hand. About $15,000 were necessary as capital and I had only about $3,000. The country belonged to the kingdom of Prussia, but the sympathies of the Roman Catholic population were mostly with Austria, which then had a terribly bad influence on the German people.

Haggling over the financial arrangements of the deal between the vendor, Herr Traun and John continued without any satisfactory resolution. It was time for decisive action, and John, in a move quite alien to his character, confronted Herr Traun with an ultimatum, the setting for the drama being the Leipzig Fair of 1860. Having first received Herr Traun’s assurance that he had no objections to John as a son-in-law, John launched on what was probably a well rehearsed speech.

He must have seen, I continued, that his daughter’s preference for me was no mere girlish fancy, since it had withstood the temptations of all the luxury with which he had surrounded her and even the repulsive ugliness of my pock-marked face. She had just written me that she would follow me to China if I called her there. If he thought she was likely to give me up, well and good. I would abide by the result. But so long as she preferred my poverty to his luxury, I proposed to fight for her to the bitter end. I could, I said, earn more by my own exertions in England than all his help would bring me in Germany, and I preferred to do so. I would not undertake a single obligation that my own small capital would not cover. It was his affair not mine, if he insisted on my undertaking a business requiring more.

And John then delivered the coup de gras.

I would not, I said, undertake any business at all in Germany, unless he published notification in the Hamburg papers that F. Traun of Hamburg had the honour to announce the betrothal of his daughter Bertha with John Fretwell the younger of Leeds; and that as to money matters, he might do what he liked, and I should do what I thought prudent.

John set a deadline of that same afternoon for a response. It would seem that his boldness had paid off.

He promised me that if I would undertake the business in Lippstadt he would consent to the immediate publication of our betrothal and to our marriage a year later, and he would put into my hands $10,000, no part of which was to be repaid within 14 years even if we did not marry, and if we did, it was to be his daughter’s dowry, and that at the end of the Fair he would bring his daughter to see the place before I decided on staying there.

But, as John ruefully noted later, Herr Traun’s response was not given in writing. While John kept his side of the bargain by determining to make the best of the Lippstadt business, and to prepare for Bertha to join him there, Herr Traun found a number of excuses for delaying the announcement. Finally, however, it was made official with the following notice in the German papers.

Bertha Traun
John Fretwell
Verlobte
Leeds : Hamburg

A great party was held at Rothenburgsort, the Traun summer residence and there, in the presence of all the family, John and Bertha exchanged betrothal rings. As John comments:

There might be many a slip twixt cup and lip, but I had gained one decisive battle on the enemy’s ground, and now I went back to Lippstadt to prepare for the next.

There were still a number of formalities to be completed, including obtaining permission from John’s parents for him to wed. This is surprising since John was now in his 23^rd year, past the age of majority in England which at that time was 21. However, in Germany the age of majority was 24, and this may be the reason for obtaining parental consent. The declaration, in duplicate, signed by William and Anne Fretwell and witnessed by John’s sister Mary, and Ishmael Lythgoe, Manchester Town Clerk reads :

We the undersigned William Fretwell and Anne Fretwell of 4 York Terrace Whalley Range Manchester, in the County of Lancaster England do hereby declare that we consent to the marriage of our Son John Fretwell jnr now residing in Lippstadt Prussia, with Miss Bertha Traun of Hamburg.
Manchester
April 2nd 1861

On the basis of this declaration:

In Faith and Testimony whereof
I, the said Mayor, have caused the Seal of Mayoralty of the said City, to be hereunder put and affixed, and the Certificate of Consent mentioned and referred to in the said Declaration to be hereunto affixed.
Dated at Manchester, the second day of April in the twenty fourth year of the Reign of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, and in the year of our Lord 1861.
Matthew Curtis
Mayor

Proof of John’s baptism was also required. With two copies of the original baptism entry, the following letter was furnished. The signatory was James Kitson, then Mayor of Leeds, and the great-grandson of Mary Fretwell, who had married Richard Kay (and thereby second cousin once removed to the groom to be):

Borough of Leeds in the Country of York
To all whom these Presents shall come, I, James Kitson, Esquire, Mayor of the Borough of Leeds, in the County of York, in that part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland called England, In pursuance of the Laws in that behalf, do hereby certify that on the day of the date hereof, personally came and appeared before me Thomas Hincks [Minister of the Mill Hill Chapel], being a person well known and worthy of good credit, and who did before me solemnly and sincerely declare the two several documents hereunto annexed marked respectively with the letters “A” and “B” to be respectively two copies from the Register of the Book of Births and Baptisms kept by the Minister of Mill Hill Chapel, in the parish of Leeds aforesaid.
In Faith and Testimony whereof, I, the said Mayor, have caused the Corporate Common Seal of the said Borough, to be hereunto put and affixed, and the said Documents to be hereunto annexed. Dated at Leeds aforesaid, the Twenty Sixth day of March, in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty one.

The year following their engagement, some four years after they had first met, John and Bertha were married. The ceremony was conducted at the Traun summer residence and a notice placed in the newspapers in July 1861, announced the event to the world.

On the 9th inst. at Hamburg, by the Rev. Dr. Alt,
Mr JOHN FRETWELL, of Lippstadt, Westphalia, eldest son of
Mr William Fretwell of Whalley Range, Manchester, to
BERTHA, only daughter of FRIEDRICH TRAUN, Esq. of Hamburg

Traun Residence, 1861

In John’s words:

At last I was enabled to take Miss Traun from his [Ronge’s] House to that of her Father and there, on the 9^th July 1861 we were, after so many conflicts, happily married by the senior pastor of the Hamburg Lutheran Church, Senior Alt, in the presence of the Father and Mother of my wife, her brother, her uncles Heinrich and Adolf Meyer, and their wives.

John, never one to wax lyrical, gave, for him, an effusive account of their honeymoon. The tone indicates that, for the present, he and Bertha were a very happy couple.

But to return…to our own little heaven. We drove off along the Elbe, and past the factory of my Father-in-law, where the Union Jack floated alongside of the 3 towers of Hamburg, then across the Ferry, and through the Farms of Wilhemsburg, again were ferried across the Southern Elbe, and then by rail through the Lundburger Heide till we halted where my mother-in-law had spent the first year of her unhappy marriage at Hanover. But soon we left that behind us and were in the land of romance—the German Harz; in the old imperial palace of Goslar; down in the silver mines of Klausthal, where the miners working in their old fashioned way reminded one of the gnomes with which folklore peoples the whole district, then on the Brocken, where Goethe’s Faust saw witches dance with Mephistopheles, or amid the elfin dwellers of Rübeland. And so we drove through this wonderful land of legend, taking our carriage when we were tired, at other times losing ourselves in the woods, or walking over the hilltops sending the coachman round to meet us at some distant spot, living in the recollections of hoary antiquity, and an ever-present heaven of our own. After a fortnight of this travel we sent our German coachman back to Harzburg, and took the rail for our future home at Lippstadt.

And Lippstadt, Westphalia, seemed to take on a difference perspective now that John had his wife by his side.

Lippstadt, a place of 6,000 inhabitants, had more educated people in it than an American town of the same size would have. The officials at the law courts, the teachers at the high school and the medical men of the place, were all university men of wide literary culture. And my sweet wife won all hearts, though, after all, we were enough for each other.

By all accounts the first months of their married life, and the business in Lippstadt went smoothly But this peace was not to last. First, at the behest of his wife, John returned to England to sort out the financial mess left behind by Johannes Ronge, when he returned to Germany in 1861, under the amnesty for religious dissidents. On his return John brought his fourth sister Fanny to stay, and she remained with the family until he and Bertha eventually returned to England. The effects of this interruption on John’s business were heartfelt, and the following, recounted later to his own son, indicates clearly the fragility of his relationship with his staff.

Hardly had I returned to my work in Lippstadt, when your mother demanded of me that I should leave my business, go to London, and clear up the Augean Stable that Ronge had left there. Willing to render any sacrifice to help your Grandmother [Anne Fretwell], I went, and did so, but for every dollar that I saved your Grandmother I lost more than a dollar for myself; you can well understand what it means for a man to be absent fourteen days from a business such as mine was in Lippstadt, what thousands of dollars worth of stuff can be stolen without the slightest possibility of detection, unless one can rely implicitly on the clerks, and how could I, a stranger in Prussia, do this?

However, despite his fears, after this visit to England John reports that he had six months of quiet domestic life, and was kept very busy with his business affairs. But Bertha’s family soon intruded again, and, in what was to be a continuing pattern, Bertha left John for an extended period to care for her mother, returning to Lippstadt in 1862, only to be recalled once more to her mother’s sickbed. Apparently, Frau Ronge suffered bouts of what was diagnosed as "Hysterische Frauenzimmer". This time she did not return until after her mother’s death in April 1863. For the first three years of their married life Bertha was ‘absent’ staying with her own family - in 1861 at Alte Teschenstrasse, Breslau; in 1862 at 27, Oederweg, Frankfurt on Main; and in 1863 at 8 Obermainstrasse, Frankfurt on Main.

This is an appropriate point to take a look at the children born to John and Bertha. But we cannot rely on any detailed account of these events from the father for, while John wrote in considerable detail about his religious beliefs, and his business affairs, and the troublesome Ronges, there is only one reference in the Recollections and the Supplementary notes to the birth of any children - the first born, Freddie. There is no reference to the early deaths of this first son, nor to baby John, and nothing said about the still-born son. It is not until much later that John makes any reference to his only daughter Emmy. Bertha’s family duties, and the frequent periods of separation, probably accounts for the fact that it was not until after her mother’s death that their first child was conceived. Thereafter over a period of seven years, four more children were born, of whom only two, Emmy and Ralph, survived to adulthood.

The years immediately following the birth of son Frederick were a time of upheaval - in every sense - as once more Bertha left John to go and stay with her father, leaving John to carry on, and then liquidate, the business. It was during this time that he was admitted into the local Westphalia Masonic Lodge, and may have been the first of the Fretwells to join the freemasons.

And clearly things were awry. John alludes to this period in his notes to Ralph, and in so doing makes reference to his faith, which, more and more, was to become the focus of his life.

Even before the birth of your Brother my married happiness was sacrificed by her [Ralph’s mother]…I sought and found in my Unitarian faith some substitute for that which I had hoped in vain to find in my life with your Mother.

Notwithstanding, John was able to extricate his wife from her family, and by 1865 they were living at 8 Upper Homerton Road, London NE. Frederick was baptised on 3 December 1865 at the Unitarian Church by the Rev. Robert Brook Apsland. It was at Upper Homerton Road that son John was born, and died two hours later, on 29 September 1866, the death being due to his premature birth as reported to the registrar by father John.

For the 1871 census the Fretwells were recorded as living at Downs Lodge, Downs Road, Hackney. John was listed as a 33 year old Merchant. Bertha and son Frederick Dalby had become naturalised British subjects. A nurse, Elizabeth Overley, was employed to assist Bertha, who would have been again pregnant. The rest of the household comprised children Emmy aged 2 and Ralph Traun aged 10 months, Hannah Saunderson, housekeeper, Jane Greaves, domestic servant, and Rebecca Barrett, cook. The family stayed in London until about 1873, moving once more in that time to 37 Evering Villas, Amherst Road, Hackney. Ralph also records that his own mother was severely ill in 1870 and in November of that year went to convalesce at Dallon House, Broadwalk, Buxton. In between the births of their children and Bertha’s bouts of ill-health, the family occasionally went to Brighton for holidays, where they stayed at Casa Ruge, at 7 Park Crescent, which was the home of one of John’s closest friends Arnold Ruge. Ruge, a German philosopher and political writer, had arrived in England in 1849 and to Brighton in 1850 where he lived as a teacher and writer. In what was a very sensible arrangement, while the Fretwells were in Brighton, the Ruge family stayed in the Fretwell house in Hackney.

What business John was engaged in over this period is unclear but it must have been connected with his wife’s family's business concerns. Even in England, the machinations of the German relatives could not be avoided and John had by 1871 resolved to sever all business connections with Herr Heinrich Meyer. The latter stalled him with an offer of an agency in America at some time in the near future, and in 1872 John, having arranged for his sister Fanny to take care of his children, undertook his first journey to America. It was apparently a successful visit and Meyer paid John £1000 over an above the agreed sum. John was then sent to represent Herr Meyer at the Vienna Exhibition of 1873. For John this was in many respects the most interesting journey of his life, and it was at Whitsuntide that year that he first visited the Unitarians of Transylvania. In memory of his visit to Transylvania John published, privately in 1902 (and apparently cheaply as the page cutting is very crude) a small treatise, entitled ‘The Christian in Hungarian Romance’ dedicated to Dr. Maurus Jokai, a literary man whom John met while in Hungary.

On the home front, the estrangement between husband and wife had reached the point where in 1873 Bertha finally left John and returned to Germany with the children. John’s sister Edith arranged for the packing up of all the household effects. In all seventeen cases were made ready for transmission to Bertha on the ship Virgo. The manifest document was signed by Edith on 16 June 1874.

Household Effects Shipped to Hamburg
I Edith Fretwell of Ilkley in the County of York Spinster do solemnly and sincerely declare as follows.
That I did on the tenth day of June last instant by the direction of my brother John Fretwell (who is at present travelling in the United States of America) cause to be transmitted by the Ship Virgo 17 cases ... directed to Bertha Fretwell care of H C Meyer Hamburg - The following is a list of the contents of the said seventeen cases.
Case BF1. 1 Bookcase, 7 Pillows, Spring Mattress, Carpet, 1 pair blankets, Books.
BF2. 1 Walnut Table, 4 Chairs, 2 Blankets, 2 wool mats, 2 small candlesticks, 1 ink stand, 3 albums, Letter Rack, Tool Box, Curtains and Fringe, Bed and Table Linen, Showing Glass, Feather Bed, Counterpane, Box of Photos, Books music etc, Childrens toys, Curtain, blankets, Music Stool, Horsehair mattress, Bed covers, pillows.
BF3. Walnut Table, part of Whatnot, Marble Clock, Mattress, Foot stools.
BF4. Dining Room couch, 1 Chair, Marble slab, picture, part of whatnot, Sliding table, 1 Leaf of dining Room Table, 1 Sheet.
BF5. Wash Stand.
BF6. 2 Easy Chairs, part of dressing table, 5 small chairs, painting, part of sideboard, 1 sheet.
BF7. 1 Chest of Drawers filled with linen, ornaments and various knicknacks, Crimson drugget.
BF8. Dressing table, Fancy cups and saucers, plate, two salt cellars.
BF9. Wash Stand, pictures, pole brackets and ends, Tea urn, knives and forks, sugar basin, butter cooler, jug, Dolls tea set, Curtain holders and tassels.
BF10. Writing table and work Table, pictures, mattresses, sheets.
BF11. Dining Table and leaves, 2 Easy Chairs, 4 small chairs, 5 curtain poles, Spring mattress.
BF12. Side board, Table mats, Bracket, Glass Dishes, Globe of the World, pictures, Dolls cradle, Toys, Butter dish, Candle cups.
BF13. Sofa, 2 arm chairs, picture, 1 small chair, marble slab or washstand, Large photograph.
BF14. 2 Marble topped bedroom cupboards, ground glass lamp, globe, Carpet etc.
BF1412. Books and pictures.
BF4180. Books etc.
That the whole of the goods therein contained consists of household goods and effects the property of and used by my said brother in his residence in England and sent by me at his request for the use of his wife and family in Germany.
And I further say that I did on the twelfth instant cause to be sent another case marked BF18 through Messieurs Elkam and Company addressed as above consisting entirely of articles of silver used by my said brother and sent for the use of his said wife as aforesaid. And lastly I say that none of the said articles are of the nature of merchandise or intended for sale but are solely articles used by my said brother or his family. And I make this solemn declaration conscientiously believing the same to be true and by virtue of the provisions of an act made and passed in the Sixth year of the reign of his late Majesty King William the Fourth entitled “An Act to repeal an Act of the present session of parliament” entitled “an Act for the more effectual abolition of oaths and affirmations taken and made in various departments of the state and to substitute Declarations in lieu thereof and for the more entire suppression of voluntary or extra judicial oaths and affidavits and to make other provisions for the abolition of unnecessary oaths.
Edith Fretwell
at the Marion House in the City of London this
sixteenth day of June 1874
Andw. Lusk
Lord Mayor of London

Bertha’s life in Germany post 1873 is barely documented. A tragedy befell the family within a few years of her self-imposed estrangement from her husband, with the death of their son Frederick Dalby Fretwell on 4 April 1879, just short of his fifteenth birthday, at Eisenach. Father John has not recorded this event in his Recollections, but the death of this young boy has been commemorated in a short poem, written by G. Bewlay Dalby, and included in his 'Verse and Prose’ a privately published collection of works for personal friends published in 1902. Frederick was given the middle name Dalby in recognition of John Fretwell's long-standing regard for the Dalby family.

Sweet mother Nature! Take back thy sweet son,
Enfold him lovingly in thy soft arms,
Safe from the world, its sorrows, sins, alarms,
And all the flaws that mar lives long out-spun;
Unsoiled, undimmed, the final peace he’s won
Whilst yet nought but the school-boy’s joyous strife
In games or study, chequered his young life
Of reverent wonder, mirth, and frolic fun.
How many who toil on through years of care
Would wish, dear boy, their fate had been as thine
To see bright morning’s glory break and shine,
Nor feel the noon-tide heat, nor eve’s chill air:
Taught by the griefs that come with lengthening years
We may not dim thy memory with tears.

Bertha Fretwell died on 19 January 1908, in Hamburg in her 69th year, at her house Jungfrauenthal 53, from heart failure. Her death was marked both in Germany, with the notice prepared by her children, and by a terse notice in the press in America. Hopefully she, at least, was able to find some peace and happiness.

Am 19. Januar, um 12 ¾ Uhr verm., entschlief
sanft im 69. Lebensjahr unsere liebe Mutter, Schwieger-
Mutter und Grosmutter
Frau Bertha Fretwell, geb. Traun
Herzlich betrauert von
Emmy von Tiedemann, geb. Fretwell,
Ralph T Fretwell,
Rüdiger von Tiedemann,
Major un Bataillonskommandeur
im 5. Grenadier-Regiment König Friedrich 1.,
Emmy Fretwell, geb. Fester,
und Enkelkindern

FRETWELL–On January 19, at Hamburg,
Bertha, wife of John Fretwell, of Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.A.

The last word lies with her estranged husband:

I do not think I should have been alive today, if I had lived with your mother. I trust that she enjoyed the 25 years separation. She has only herself to thank for it.

From 1873 John spent his life, for the most part in America, where he became a naturalised citizen, making only the occasional brief trip back to Europe. He had finally accepted the offer to work as agent for the Meyer family company. However, a number of incidents finally persuaded John to sever once and for all this connection.

After freeing myself from my connection ... I traveled for a while, hoping to regain my health, and made arrangements to represent some business houses at the Philadelphia Exhibition of 1876, where I arrived just before the May opening. I was really quite unfit for any business work having, under the mental strain of the last 15 years become singularly restless and excitable, and it was only by the most determined self command that I could control myself sufficiently to attend to my duties …That I was able to do so was, I believe, due to my Unitarian training and habits of thought. The most cheering feature of my Philadelphia life was a gift of $1,000 for my religious work in Philadelphia, and $400 to myself.

After the Exhibition John made a winter business journey through Canada but was not a well man.

… finding myself still troubled with nervous excitement so that at times I hardly trusted myself, I consulted a physician who told me that I must return to the less stimulating atmosphere of Europe.

Following this advice, John made another brief visit to London to evaluate business prospects, but lacking capital, he returned to America. In April 1891 he was again in England, this time to attend his mother’s funeral, and was still in Leeds in June, where he was staying at the Trevelyan Hotel. His daughter Emmy too was in Leeds at that time and John took the opportunity to meet, albeit fleetingly, with her. On 16 June he wrote to his son Ralph from Leeds to say that 'Father and daughter have met. Alice, one of John’s sisters, also was able to see him ‘for a few minutes’ before he boarded the Etruria and he was back in America by December 1891.

His final years were devoted almost entirely to the Unitarian cause, for which he embarked on a series of lecture tours. From correspondence to his son Ralph, we find that John also interested himself in American politics.

We are now in the midst of the unpleasant political strife which precedes every Presidential election, and I am taking a more active part in it than usual.

and

I shall be able to return East in about a fortnight but the doctor forbids me to do any public speaking before the elections. She says I must leave all this lung work to younger men and confine myself to the thinking and writing … I hear that Carl Schurz who is a few years older is going to make some speeches for the Democratic party - but I am not on that side.

John seems to have spent time in a series of sanitaria in America, including Delaware Water Gap, where he received treatment for his failing health, and for his continuing head problems. A further letter was sent to Ralph from the Battle Creek Sanitarium, which, according to its letterhead, was ‘A Well Equipped and Scientific Medical Establishment.’ While he was there his recovery was set back by an accident in the bathroom when he fell on the slippery stone floor and which resulted in a severe contusion and much bleeding on the back of his head. Fortunately for John, the surgeon was within call and as he was not a heavy man the consequences were not so bad as first thought. As an aside, John, no doubt an expert in such matters, described Battle Creek, and its Superintendent, one J.M. Kellogg, MD, as:

… the finest Sanitarium in the whole world. Wherever I went in Europe I heard Dr. Kellogg, its Superintendent, spoken of with the highest respect … It is carried on by a religious society, the Seventh Day Baptists, who in the last 30 years have sent a thousand medical missionaries to heal the sick and to preach their views of the Gospel … It is a part of their religion to abstain from tobacco, wine, tea, coffee, and all animal food except milk, eggs and butter, and Dr. Kellogg has devoted years to making cereal foods which are as nutritious and digestible as any animal food. His reputation has made the fortune of this thriving little city of 30,000 inhabitants.

Furthermore, John recommended that his son Ralph make enquiries about some of the branches of the Sanitarium in Europe in case he or his wife should find it necessary to avail themselves of their services. And even if a visit was not required, John informed Ralph that his wife should be able to purchase some of the Battle Creek foods in Hamburg and would find them a useful addition to her breakfast table.

This October 1904 letter to Ralph finds John so much recovered that, following a further month at Battle Creek, he intended to return to Providence in November in time for the presidential election. As a Republican, John would have been pleased with the outcome, and almost lived long enough to see out Theodore Roosevelt’s second term as President.

John survived his estranged wife by just over eighteen months. He appointed son Ralph as the executor of Bertha’s will.

Know all Men by these Presents
That I, John Fretwell, of the city and county of Providence, State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations
have made, constituted and appointed by these presents do make, constitute and appoint Ralph Traun Fretwell, my son, of Hamburg, Germany my true and lawful attorney for me and in my name, place and stead, in all matters relating to the last will and testament of my deceased wife Bertha Fretwell, daughter of the late C. J. Traun of Hamburg, Germany.

It was a sensible move. Ralph was at hand, and better able to manage Bertha’s estate than John, now clearly not well himself, and understandably disinclined to handle the matter.

John died on 1 July 1909 he at Attleborough, Massachusetts of ‘Heart Failure and Cancer of the Stomach.’ The Certificate of Death notes that his Occupation was Lecturer, but for names and places of birth of father and mother the notation is ‘unknown’. The required documentation having been prepared, John’s body was cremated on 10 July 1909.

The news was conveyed to England by notice in the press. In one short sentence is marked the passing of a man who one senses was stultified by the weight of responsibility he both assumed and had imposed upon him. His own writings give the impression of an embittered man, disappointed by those closest to him, and compensated only by his abiding faith in the Unitarian values, his writings and his books.

FRETWELL–On July 10th at Attleboro', U.S.A.,
aged 72, John Fretwell, formerly of London, England.
(By cable).

The few photographs we have of John Fretwell were all taken when he was in his later years. They confirm John’s own description of his physique, and show a rather small, slight man.

Apart from the posed portrait taken in 1890 at Seattle, the photographs we have are taken from a distance. This may be due to the photographic style and techniques of the day. But they somehow seem to reflect the nature of the man - quiet, introverted and withdrawn - and a very different character than his younger brother whose story follows.

Emmy Hilda Bertha Fretwell

+ Rudiger von Tiedemann

(work in progress)

Ralph Traun Fretwell

+ Emmy Elizabeth Fester

(work in progress)

Vause Fretwell

In a letter dated 2 November 1928, found among the family papers, Ralph Traun Fretwell living then in Basel, Switzerland, wrote as follows to his Aunt Mary Fretwell enquiring about some family details.

As you know, and as I wrote in my last of 18th Oct., I am interested in our family records, it is pleasant to know something about one’s ancestors and gives one a better understanding of one’s own character and the characters of one’s children … Of your brother Vause, I know very little.
Did he not enlist as a soldier and go out to India?
Then he stayed there, married three or four times and died in Bombay in 1887?

Ralph's son, William Eric Fretwell, managed to make a little more headway and, from further subsequent research, it has to be said that Vause was definitely one of the more ‘interesting’ of the Fretwell ancestors.

From his mother’s records we know that Vause, second son of William and Anne Fretwell, was born at Knostrop at 7.45am on Monday 10 December 1838. His parents waited just over two years to have him baptised at the Mill Hill Chapel, on 6 January 1841, with Charles Wicksteed officiating. It was in fact a double ceremony, as his sister Mary was also baptised on that day. His academic progress to the age of six has been reported by elder brother John in the 1849 poem to their paternal grandmother Mary Fretwell (née Vause), and after whom Vause was named. Vause was at home at Selby with his mother and sisters for the 1851 census, listed as a 12 year old scholar. As to his further education and academic attainments we know nothing. It is more than likely, however, that he would have been trained for a business or clerical career. As to his early character - in his brother’s eyes at least - Vause must have cut a dash, for John has described him as a “dude”. We also know that Vause could act quickly in an emergency, without regard to his own safety, as his brother later recounted to Vause’s son William, on the eve of the latter’s departure for Australia and New Zealand.

My dear nephew,
Looking over some old letters written to me on my first visit to America, I find one from your grandmother Fretwell dated 18 November 1872, which contains so interesting a memorial to your Father that I would have sent you the letter itself, but for the possibility that it may not reach you before the ‘Benmore’ sails away.
Your father was very brave even before he went to India. I rember [sic] one Sunday afternoon in 1857. I was just 20 and he under nineteen. I had arranged to meet him at the house where my wife then lived, tho’ I never thought of her becoming my wife in those days; and he was very late. A child had fallen into the Thames from the steamer in which they were travelling; and he sprang into the water and saved it. A few days later he received a gold watch from the parents of the child, with an inscription recording their gratitude. I never knew what became of it, it ought to have been kept for you.

With this account we find Vause in London in 1857, but have found nothing to explain what he was doing there. However, a major overseas event may have decided him on the direction his life was to take. It was in May 1857 at Meerut that sepoys of the East India Company's army rebelled and thus began what is generally known as the Indian Mutiny and ended with the fall of Gwalior on 20 June 1858. The 1857 mutinies and rebellion which accompanied them presented a serious challenge to the British Empire. Indeed  during tht time the the British lost control over a vast area of northern India, from the Punjab down the Ganges to Patna.

Recruitment for both the Queen’s Army (regular troops) and the Company (men of the Honorable East India Company (the HEIC) had been conducted at regular intervals for many decades before 1857, but the Mutiny of that year added an imperative to the drive for men to go to India to defend Queen and Country, and the Company’s interests. The outrage in England, fired by colourful reports in the press of the ravages to British women and children, was no doubt a prime motive for those who answered the recruiting sergeant’s call. But, for many, a secondary motive might also have informed their decision - the appeal of India, regarded as an exotic country offering young men of all social classes the promise of adventure and perhaps also acquiring considerable personal riches.

Vause, along with hundreds of other men from all parts of the country, answered the Company’s call. What his motives were are not recorded. What we do know, from his brother’s comments, is that this decision was deeply regretted by Vause’s parents. But seen from Vause’s standpoint, this may have been a wonderful opportunity for him. He was young, unattached, and the second son of a family which had fallen on bad times, and who was himself broke – he had given the suit of clothes that he wore on enlisting to his brother John in lieu of a debt he was unable to repay. Weighing up his dubious prospects in England against the possibility of improving his situation in India, would leave little question as to the better option, and one confirmed by his brother in later life, again in the letter to Vause’s son.

In those days before the Honorable East India Company’s army became a part of the Queen's Army there were far better chances of distinction than now, when everything goes by favoritism.

Indeed clerks, if this was Vause’s profession, were among the occupations most likely to prosper from enlisting in the Company’s service. Since most situations of responsibility required literacy and numeracy, and often command of a native language, literate and intelligent men were welcomed by the Company’s recruiting parties. If Vause tossed up between enlisting with the Company or the Queen’s Army, he may have plumped for the Company on the following grounds cited by Peter Stanley in his work White Mutiny, British Military Culture in India 1825-1875.

The Queen’s army regarded such men [clerks] as a risk rather than an asset, and accepted them reluctantly … one Queen’s army officer considering them to be objectionable, including footmen, shopmen, profligate young gentlemen and ‘out of place clerks’… distinguished from most recruits by their wan complexions, doughy skin, clean teeth and fullness of belly, they were suspected of having been corrupted by proximity to the soldier’s usual social superiors. Literacy itself seems to have caused unease … Such men allegedly became, in contemporary terms, ‘lawyers’, liable to contest commands and lead combinations against authority.

So, recruited into the Honorable East India Company (HEIC) army, Vause left for India in 1857. His mother came down to London to see him off at the Chatham Barracks. She, Vause and John had a farewell lunch at the Rochester Inn, immortalised by Charles Dickens in his Pickwick Papers. It was not a happy occasion for Anne Fretwell, and within six months she was to say a final farewell to Vause’s step-sister Elizabeth. We do not know if Anne regretted this departure as much of that of her son, and we do not know if Elizabeth caught up with Vause when she was in India. But, as we shall see, at a later time her widower, Washington did at least have news of him.

In India the influx of reinforcements was greeted with relief and elation. Charlotte Canning, wife of the then Governor, reported to friends and family back in England.

The Fort church on Sunday morning, Charlotte noted, was full of the tidiest of men, in little brown holland short blouses, with red cuffs and collars, and white cap-covers, showing they were sent out well provided for the climate.

We do not know where Vause was stationed. The glow of the initial welcome would have been very quickly extinguished by the realities of military life. By 1858, not counting the Punjabi and Indian troops, the commanders had at their disposal 46,400 British troops. Overall losses from enemy action were relatively small. Of far greater impact during the campaigns on the wellbeing of the forces were heat and disease. Over 8,000 British soldiers died from sunstroke and diseases, and a further 3,000 had to be discharged and sent home as invalids. Intense heat, fatigue, boils, smallpox, dysentery and recurrent outbreaks of cholera wiped out more men than rebels. On disembarkation, soldiers had to reach their posts on foot. The recruits, fresh from the English climate, and outfitted in completely unsuitable serge uniforms, were frequently forced to march long distances, rising before dawn to avoid the midday sun and afternoon heat, but still enduring the furnace-like winds of the Indian plains.

Vause’s military career did not last long. By the 1858 India Act, the European regiments of the East India Company became part of Her Majesty’s Indian Forces, an amalgamation which may have pleased the powers that be, but which was not well received by troops of either arm of the military.

Broadly speaking the Company men were concerned that if they were absorbed into the Queen’s army they would lose status, and the entitlements, by right or by custom, owing to them from their Company service. The Queen’s Army was horrified at having to take into their ranks men whom they considered to be a very inferior lot. One option widely canvassed, long and hotly debated, and finally, by General Order 883 of 1860, agreed to, was to offer those Company soldiers, who did not wish to be transferred to the Queen’s army, a discharge with a small bounty or a free passage home. Vause was not one of the 10,000 or so men who took up the offer of a free passage home. He was now in his 22nd year, but unlike his elder brother John as the same age, did not fare so well from his great-uncle John’s will. Apart from a division of the residue of the personal goods and chattels and proceeds of real estate, which he shared with his living siblings and with his May cousins, the only other benefits that Vause may have acquired from the will were dependent upon his elder brother having died before reaching majority and we know that 'unfortunate' event did not occur and, as we shall see, John in fact outlived Vause by just over twenty years. Prudently, then, Vause seems to have opted for the small bounty. Marriage may well have been on his mind. In fact, it seems to have been on his mind quite a bit over the next three decades.

WEF and RTF have noted that Vause married three and perhaps four times. His brother John Fretwell was more definite. Writing in the mid 1880s he says

Of him I can only say that after 28 years residence in India, he has just married his 4th wife in Bombay.

There is some documentation, supported by family hearsay and my own research, to probably support three marriages. This has been used to try and construct Vause’s family life in India. It is pretty certain that wife number one was Annie (or Anne Marie/a) Hartley. According to family notes the wedding took place at Sharanpur (now Shahapur, a suburb of Nashik) Mission Church, on 1 September 1861, the ceremony being conducted by one Reverend Isengerg. Charles Isenberg was an appointee of the Church Missionary Society (CMS). No official record has yet been located for the marriage. An India mailing list correspondent, the late Donald Jacques, did a search for me and could not find a marriage for A. M. Hartley anywhere in India. He suggested that a Mission marriage might not have been 'captured' by the reporting/recording process. To muddy the waters, we have a report from brother-in-law Washington Teasdale to his mother and sister Jane. Washington wrote that Ward Royce’s (spelling not clear) wife had left her husband to live with Vause as the latter’s wife. This suggests a number of alternatives: Annie Hartley was divorced from Ward Royce – divorce was not easily obtained in those days; Annie Hartley was a bigamist – doubtful, and it would have been difficult to get away with it; Ward Royce died after his wife had left him, freeing her for marriage to Vause; they never married, belying the family notes. If Washington’s gossip had no foundation, why mention such a delicate matter to his mother and sister?

As an aside, in the same letter home, Washington mentioned that when he was working close by to Vause in 1860, the latter was seriously ill - but did not say from what. If Vause had a predisposition to ill health, his army experiences may, and India certainly would, further test his constitution. For so many in India, the debilitating heat, rudimentary sanitary conditions, disease and epidemics were a constant threat to them and their families. It was no easy matter bearing and raising children in India. In the years before modern medicine had started to deal with the diseases that were endemic there, mothers faced an unending struggle to keep their children alive. Of course, any assessment of the effects of the conditions prevailing in the British Raj must be counter-balanced by remembering that epidemics were also a constant threat in England, and those who succumbed in India, may have equally fallen victim to any one of a number of diseases that periodically raged through their ‘home’ country.

One child, a daughter named Alice Anne, is listed in the family papers as being born to Vause and Annie. She was, in fact, born on 7 August 1862 and baptised at Sharanpur, on 14 August 1862. Her arrival heralded in the 10 September 1862 Allens Indian Mail. This was followed one week later with the sad news of her death. Donald Jacques, who located the baptism and burial records, confirmed the details of Alice's short life.

BIRTH – At Nassick, on the 7th instant, the wife of Vause Fretwell, Esquire, of a daughter.
DEATH - At Nassick, on the 14th August, aged 7 days, (of convulsions) Alice Anne Fretwell, the infant daughter of Vause Fretwell, Esq., of Chalisgaum.
BAPTISM - N/3/36/f.188 - Alice Anne Fretwell, d of Vause and Anne Maria, Chalisgaum, Commission Agent b. 7.8.62; bp.14.8.
BURIAL - N/3/36/f.233 - Alice Anne Fretwell, d.14.8.62; bd.15.8, Convulsions.

She must have been a sickly baby as she was baptised on the day she died. As Alice Anne was born at Nasik, presumably Annie went to this larger settlement, where the medical facilities would have been better, to have the baby. At the time of Alice’s birth Vause was living at Chalisgaum (now Chalisgaon) and was employed as a Commission Agent. What fate befell Anna Maria is a mystery. At this stage no record of her death and burial have been found. We now move forward some ten years forward to 1872.

Nearly ten years after the death of his daughter Alice Anne, we find Vause embarking on married life once again. At age 34, he took for his wife a young girl of 18, named Mary Jane Elms. The wedding took place at Christ Church, Byculla, in the Diocese and Archdeaconry of Bombay on 2nd April 1872, by licence. Rev F. L. Sharpin performed the ceremony. Witnesses were Caroline Bouvarius and R [Robert] Elms, brother of the bride. The extract from the Register Book of Marriages records Vause's occupation as 'farmer', and Mary Jane’s and Vause’s ‘Condition’ respectively as Spinster and Bachelor. This again raises the query as to the relationship status between Vause and Annie Hartley. The baptismal record for Alice clearly has Annie as the wife of Vause. Was she so described to keep things ‘respectable’? Did Vause mean ‘Widower’ rather than ‘Bachelor’? Was the notation on the marriage certificate incorrect? The certificate states, under the column ‘Residence at Time of Marriage’ that both bride and bridegroom were residing at Bombay, just over 100 miles south of Nassik . At what stage prior to the wedding Vause moved to Bombay is not known. In Mary Jane’s case it is likely that she had not been a long-term resident in Bombay.

Mary Jane Elms had been born in Teignmouth, Devon, to Robert Elms and his wife Agness (née Coker) and was baptised on 26 October 1853, at the Parish Church of East Teignmouth. whose marriage in August 1849 had also been celebrated at the East Teignmouth parish church. registered at Newton Abbot, Devon.  Robert Elms had been listed as a gardener for his marriage and for the 1851 England census. However, by the time of the 1861 census he was listed as a 38 year old farmer of 33 acres employing one labourer and one boy. The household also included Agness, a 34 year old farmer's wife, and five children - William [Henry Chamberlain] aged 9, Mary [Jane] aged 7, Robert aged 5, George [Thomas] aged 3, and 7 month old Emily [Charlotte]. 'Missing' from the 1871 census for the Elms family were William, Mary and Robert Elms and it is likely that all three had made the journey to India sometime between the 1861 and 1871 census returns.

We do know however, that within a very short time after their marriage Vause and his wife had relocated to Khandeish (now Nasirabad), just north of Chalisgaum, where Vause was the Manager of a model farm, which tallies with his occupation as recorded on the marriage certificate - Farmer.

We have Vause's brother John Fretwell to thank for the following information, an extract from the same letter referred to earlier to his nephew William.

My dear nephew,
Looking over some old letters … I find one from your grandmother Fretwell dated 18 November 1872, which contains so interesting a memorial to your Father. My mother wrote

I have received a government newspaper in which it says ‘His Excellency the Governor in Council has read with very much regret this account of the outbreak of Cholera at the model farm, and desires to record his sense of the great courage and devotion displayed by Mr. Fretwell on so lamentable an occasion. His wife, her brothers, the doctor and 14 labourers on the estate all died of Cholera. He had it too, but was indefatigable [sic] in his exertions to save the rest.’

Here we have yet again testament to Vause’s bravery. We also have evidence of yet another tragic event in his life. Given that there would be a delay in news reaching England, and then allowing for a further short delay in conveying the news to America, I calculated that Vause and his wife were only married for a very short time before she fell victim to cholera. The records confirm this. The Times of India of 22 and 25 July carried two death notices, with a further one appearing in the 2 August edition.

July 19th at the Model Farm Khandeish Mary the beloved wife of Vause Fretwell Esq
Jul 20th at the Khandeish Model Farm of cholera Mr Robert Elms aged 17 years
Jul 20 at the Government Model Farm Khandeish of cholera, Robert Elms of Brimley Devonshire aged 17 years

The memorial cited above refers to 'brothers' but death records have only been found for one brother - Robert. If, as suggested above, William Elms did accompany Mary Jane and Robert, his passing went unnoticed. As far as is known, Vause, a product of metropolitan Leeds, and subsequently a soldier, did not have any agricultural qualifications, suggesting that his role as manager of the model farm was principally administrative. However the Elms brothers referred to were definitely of agricultural stock, and would have been very useful in the model farm venture.

The Khandeish Government Farm was started in early 1869 by the then Collector, Mr. Ashburner with a government grant of £2,000. Dhulia (Dhule) was initially the preferred site but, as the land was too expensive, a site two miles north of Bhadgaon was selected. In April 1869 the farm was handed over to Vause Fretwell, who had been appointed superintendent. Experiments were carried out on various crops, including tobacco, but the main focus of the farm was cotton-growing.

One of the most significant outcomes of England's Industrial Revolution was the manufacture of cotton. Critical to the industry was a ready, reliable and abundant supply of the raw material which, was principally sourced from America. In 1857, concerned about the dependence on one main source, a group of cotton industrialists formed the Cotton Supply Association, the primary objective of which was to obtain as full and reliable information as possible respecting the extent and capabilities of cotton cultivation in every country where it could be grown. India, where cotton was already cultivated, was identified as having great promise, subject to an effective regime of improved cultivation methods. One of the measures recommended by the Association was the establishment of experimental farms, which would become, in effect, schools of agriculture. In the words of Vause Fretwell, in a letter dated 11 October 1871 to The Times of India -

The only purpose it has as yet served has been to show the native cultivators, that with a little more attention to cleanliness and tillage they may, even with their own system of rotation and with their own implements, obtain heavier crops and of better quality than they are in the habit of getting.

From the commencement of operations the viability of the farm was in question and it was lucky to escape the swathe of expenditure cuts imposed by the government in 1872. Funding was not the only problem. Labour shortages, exacerbated by the native resistance to cultivating cotton, and a generally held view that model farms, being in effect small holdings, could never turn a profit, added to the operational difficulties. Apart from its attack on Vause Fretwell, a scathing letter published in the 4 June 1872 issue of The Times of India represents the views of many doubters.

Sir
It was with pleasure that I at first saw in your paper, the other day, the long-winded epistle on Model Farms, signed "Vause Fretwell". Here, I at once thought to myself, is something to the point, something worth reading, something that will clear up the disasters that have hitherto befallen model farming, something, in fact, that will make us forget the past, and look forward with hope to the future. But as I waded my way through the weary and sometimes incoherent sentences, how grieved I was to find that it was not to be, that Vause Fretwell, although a model gardener, was a good deal like other men of his class, impatient of criticism, and more inclined to bandy words than answer in any way an impatient public's curiosity. This is a great pity, for it is plain, I think, that he might have done much better if he had liked. Yes, Mr. Vause Fretwell is evidently a man of no ordinary stamp. He hates "coddling" and he don't "peg", and he defies the sun, as another hero of old did the lighting. He is, moreover a man of no mean literary ability, and is, I should say, quite fit either to edit a newspaper, or to act as Secretary to the new agricultural department. But all this only makes "confusion more confounded", and makes it more difficult to solve the problem of how these model farms are to be made to pay their expenses. With a man of such varied talents, of such wide experience, and of such undoubted pluck as Mr. Vause Fretwell at the head of the Khandeish model farm, and with a debt of nearly half a lakh all incurred within the space of two or three years - what are we to think, where is there any hope for the poor modest "model" men in Berar, who perhaps cannot stand the sun, and who may be inclined to "coddle"? Where is there hope for any one where such a giant has come to grief? But Mr. Vause Fretwell don't admit failure, nor indeed the debt of R40,000 mentioned by Mr. Ashburner in London. He claims to have a "capital account" just like any railway, and I dare say not many will quarrel with him on this point so long as he can show value for the money and pays a decent interest. But can he do either the one thing or the other? He certainly never done the latter, and as to the former, what have we? He tells us of "650 acres of land reclaimed," but as they don't belong to him, he can hardly place them in the list of his assets; and I fancy it don't [mean?] much, seeing they have never made any return for all that has been spent on them. Then he has "houses built of timber carted 200 miles," and "agricultural implements, &c." It would have helped us greatly in coming to a conclusion, had Mr. Vause given us even a rough estimate of their value; but he leaves us entirely in the dark, and we can only form an opinion by comparing them with "buildings," &c., on the model farm in Berar. And what are they? They are certainly not built of "timber carted 200 miles," but they are good substantial buildings, and fitted exactly for a "model" farm, whose remunerative qualities are doubtful. They are built, in fact, of the resources of the district, namely, mud, timber, and grass, and are worth collectively on each farm about two thousand rupees. No doubt those on the Khandeish farm are superior, seeing the timber was carted so far; but suppose we allow double the amount for buildings and double that again for "implements", &c., where is the balance of the enormous sum of Rs 40,000? Perhaps when Mr. Vause favors us again, he will let us know more about it. No doubt, there are many things he forgot to mention in his list of assets, perhaps for instance, "Cedars from Lebanon all the way on camels." We can easily believe the Khandeish "model" man, when he tells us of the many trials and troubles he has got to fight against; but he can hardly expect the public to weep with him over the "Roonda grass". It is an enemy that every poor ryot has got to contend with, and he contends successfully. Then the "account department" which troubles the model man so terribly, why, Mr. Vause surely reckoned here without his host! Does he really expect sympathy on such a point from the public, whose money he has spent to the galloping tune of R40,000? All I can say is, that I hope the "account department" will trouble him still more until he can show a better balance sheet than he can at present produce.
Mr. Vause Fretwell concludes his lengthy epistle with the statement that the "Government is conferring a "great boon in establishing these model farms". I will finish with the same remark. It is undoubtedly conferring an inestimable boon upon all those either at "home or abroad" with model farming proclivities. It is showing them in, in a most unmistakable way, that model farming in India by Europeans is utter "bosh" and that he who attempts it will certainly only reap disaster and ruin.
YOUR CORRESPONDENT
Berar, June 2

The Editor, in Vause's defence, appended the following comment to the letter.

There is just a shade too much of banter in this letter. Mr. Fretwell's steady perseverance and comparatively great success under adverse circumstances are deserving of much praise. We regret not to have available the full account of the Farm showing what the outlay in capital has been. It is a farce to charge that against revenue.

Regardless of Vause's efforts he was removed from his position in 1874 when administration of the farm was restructured. Under the management of the new superintendent, Mr. Alexander Stormont, the farm was to be fully self-supporting. The changed arrangements were reported in the 21 July 1874 Times of India.

As the Khandesh Model Farm does not appear to have made any progress in teaching the natives improved and advanced modes of agriculture, &c., and as there has been an annual loss in the undertaking since its formation in 1868-69, aggregating a total loss of over R50,000, the Government have decided to make a change in the management and supervision, more especially as there are a number of cotton gardeners (who came out under covenant) now in the Bombay Presidency who are doing little or nothing. The change is as follows: Mr. Fretwell's0 services to be dispensed with at once, and as he appears to be entitled to six months' notice, six months' pay to be given him, and his place filled my Mr. Stormont from Surat. Mr. Milne, from Khandesh, succeeds Mr. Stormont at Surat. One cannot but congratulate Government on the wise and sensible measure they have adopted, though at the eleventh hour. I never could see the reason of paying a special Superintendent R400 a month, while a number of cotton gardeners were available. Latterly, one of these gentlemen (Mr. Milne) was acting as a subordinate under Mr. Fretwell and drawing R500 a month, while his superior, the Superintendent of the Khandesh farm, drew only Rs 400. Total Rs 900 to manage a Farm which showed an annual deficit!

Mary Jane Fretwell had only been married a few months before she died of cholera and so there were no children from that marriage. However records have come to light of children born to Vause in 1874, 1875, 1877 and 1879.

The first of these was daughter Ruth Lilian Fretwell, born on 14 December 1874 to Vause Fretwell and Mary Isabella, and baptised at Colaba, Bombay on 20 December 1874. As shown in the following record she survived only 7 days.

N/3/48/f296 - Ruth Lilian Fretwell, father late Superintendent Government Model Farm Kandeish. s.20.12.74, bd 21.12, Sewree Cemetery. 7 days. Convulsions.

Among the family records is a baptism certificate for William Fretwell, dated 23 January 1877, Bombay. The certificate states that this boy, son of Vause Fretwell, was born on 19 December 1875. A further record for William, found by Donald Jacques, confirms his birth date and the date of his christening, and also furnishes the name of William’s mother.

N/3/51/f13 - William Fretwell s of Vause and Mary Isabella, Bombay, Secretary. b.19.12.75. bp.23.1.77, Byculla.

Then followed two daughters. Ann Elizabeth Fretwell was born to Vause Fretwell and Mary Isabella on 10 July 1877. It was not until 8 January 1879 that she was baptised at Bombay, one day before she died aged 17 months and was buried at the Sewree cemetery.  May Francis Daisy, the last recorded child of Vause and Mary Isabella, arrived on 12 May 1879 and was baptised at Bombay the following month, on 24 June 1879. But she was another child who died in infancy.

N/3/54/f62 - May Francis Daisy Fretwell, father public accountant. d.6.7.80; bd.9.7. 14 months. Dysentery.

To summarise -

William Fretwell was the only child to survive infancy.

So, with Mary Isabella we have another woman in Vause’s life. But who was she? There is no marriage certificate in the Fretwell family papers and Donald Jacques was not able to find any record of the marriage from his sources. It is through Vause Fretwell himself that we find out about Mary Isabella - and under very unfortunate circumstances - the coronial inquiry into her death, which was reported in The Times of India of 23 June 1885.

Suicide of a European Female
Dr. Thomas Blaney, coroner, held an inquest at the General Hospital yesterday on the body of Mary Isabella Hunter.
The following evidence was taken-
Mr. Vause Fretwell, a rubberstamp maker, living in Marine Street, Fort, said:- I have looked at the body before the inquest and identify it as that of Mary Isabella Hunter, my house-keeper. She was about 35 years of age. She became my housekeeper three months ago. I have known her since the year 1868. She lived with me as my wife from 1872 to 1880, when I found that she had been previously married and that her husband was living when she married me. She had five children by me, one only is alive and is in England. I separated from her about six years ago, and I allowed her a small monthly subsistence during the last two years. She frequently complained that it was not sufficient to support her, and that she was without other resources, and often asked me to take her to my house in the capacity of a housekeeper, and in March last I took her, and she gave me entire satisfaction. When she first took up the duties of housekeeper she seemed satisfied with her place, but about three weeks ago she endeavoured to persuade me to take her back in her former position, and was so persistent in her endeavours that I was compelled to lock my own apartment except in business hours. About a week ago, after complaining for several days of severe headaches she refused her food, and was at time morose and at times hysterical. On the 16th instant, about 11 p.m. I was awoke by the deceased knocking at my door. I went out to her, she was crying and hysterical and begged me to forgive her and restore her to her former position. I quietened her, and got her away to her own apartment. Between then and two o'clock in the morning the ayah came and called me several times to see the deceased. I found her in her night clothes, walking about the room in an excited hysterical state. Just after 2 o'clock the ayah again called me, and said her mistress had fallen off the bed in a fit. I went to her room and found her lying on the floor. She was unconscious and shrieking hysterically. I told her if she did not become quiet I could not take care of her, and she must go to the hospital. She then became quiet, and I left her with the ayah. I had hardly got back to my room before the ayah came and recalled me and told me that her mistress had taken some medicine and was dying. I followed the ayah and found the deceased in my dining-room, in which is one of my work benches. She was lying on the floor. The ayah showed the bottle now before the jury, and said the deceased had swallowed some of the contents. The bottle belongs to me, and was used by me in my business. It stood upon the work bench. It contained nitric acid, and I saw that about two ounces of it had gone. It is now a greenish blue colour by having been used for cleaning brass, and returned to the bottle. I asked the deceased what she had done - she did not answer my question, but asked me to forgive her and said she was on fire. I sent the ayah for the police at once, and placed the deceased in an easy chair. The police immediately took the deceased away to the General Hospital, and left her there. I went with her. On my return from the hospital I found a large patch on the boarded flooring of my dining room charred by acid. The clothes which the deceased had on at the time, and which were changed before she went to hospital, were also charred with nitric acid. I have since seen the deceased frequently at the hospital, and as she was forbidden to speak I have her a slate to state whatever she wished to say. On the evening the the 18th or 19th instant, when I was visiting her, I asked her if she was aware of the possible serious consequences of what she had done. She wrote on the slate to the effect that she did not intend to take her life, but merely to burn her lip to excite my compassion. I heard of her death when I reached the hospital at 3-10 this morning.

The jury also heard corroborating evidence from the ayah and a deposition by Dr. Baker, assistant surgeon of the European General Hospital. The jury returned a verdict that 'the deceased had committed suicide while in a state of temporary insanity'.

No doubt Vause was shaken by this distressing event. From his evidence the status of his relationship with Mary Isabella remains ambiguous and, interestingly, he refers to five children but records have only been identified for four offspring.

Just over a year after Mary Isabella's death the marriage between widower Vause Fretwell and 42 year old widow Annie Maria Johnstone-Lysle took place by banns in the Church of Scotland in Bombay on 3 August 1886. There were four witnesses - W. B. Fellowes, James Pearse, Annie Bapty, and Alice B. Greig, who must have been related to the officiating minister, Thomas H. Greig, Senior Chaplain. Both groom and bride were residents of Girgaum, Bombay, and Vause is described as an accountant.  This was the third marriage for the bride. She had been born in Whitkirk, Yorkshire, in 1844 to Benjamin Hemingway and his wife Rebecca (née Neale), who had themselves married on 7 March 1842 at St Peter's Parish Church, Leeds. At that time both parties were living in Hunslet and Benjamin was a labourer. When Benjamin and Rebecca had their daughter baptised (recorded with the name Ann Maria) on 26 May 1844 the family was living at Halton, Whitkirk - a parish about five miles east of Leeds. The 1851 England census finds the Hemingways residing at 9 Bolton Street Liverpool. As well as Annie and her parents, the household included an older brother, William, and a younger brother, Joseph. Had they relocated to Liverpool in anticipation of their journey to India which they would have made sometime between March 1851 and 1858 by which time Benjamin was a contractor with the Great Indian Peninsular Railway and when their daughter married (aged just 15) for the first time in June of that year, as reported in the Bombay Times of 2 July.

At St. Mary's Church, Poona, on the 28th June by the Revd G. L. Fenton BA, Mr. Walter Wardrop of the Mechanical School of Industry, to Ann Maria, daughter of Mr. Benjamin Hemmingway of the Railway Department.

At the young age of 30 Walter Wardrop died on 17 April 1867 at Vepery, Madras, and was buried there the following day, leaving behind 23 year old widow Annie. No children have been found for this marriage. Five years later, on 11 July 1872, at Bombay, Annie Maria married again, this time to 32 year old bachelor Thomas Johnstone-Lysle. They were married for twelve years before, once again, Annie Marie was widowed, when Thomas died on 17 October 1884 and was buried at the Allahabad Civil Lines Muir Road cemetery. The unfortunate Annie was yet again a widow shortly after marrying Vause. Their partnership lasted less than four months, and this time it was the wife who outlived the husband. On 11 December 1886 Vause, aged only 48, died of dysentery, and was buried that same day in the Scottish portion of the Sewree Cemetery, Thomas Greig, who had officiated at the wedding in August, conducting the burial. The news was conveyed to those 'at home' through the pages of the York Herald of 15 January 1887.

FRETWELL - December 11th, at Bombay, aged 48 years, Vause, second son of the late William Fretwell.

In the three decades that Vause he had lived in India he had changed occupations from soldier, to clerk, to farm manager, to secretary, to public accountant and manager of the Anglo Rubber Stamp Company.

Apart from his business interests he was took an active part in the Bombay Volunteer Rifle Corps, which, in 1878, agreed to form a Rifle Association to promote the efficiency of the Corps through holding an annual competition, like that held at Wimbledon. A Committee of Management was established to conduct the Association's business and to draw up a set of competition rules, etc. Color Sergeant Fretwell represented 'E' Company on this committee. In addition to honing his rifle skills, Vause undertook training, both theoretical and practical in other aspects of military life such as parade drills, guard-mounting, courts martial etc. The Times of India of 13 April 1878 reported on a recent course for which the Commanding Officer expressed himself highly pleased with the creditable way in which the officers and non-commissioned officers had all acquitted themselves.

Vause also occasionally featured in the local press in connection with his business interests. The following classified advertisement appeared in the 17 January 1881 Times of India.

FRETWELL, DAVY & Co.,
(Late VAUSE FRETWELL & Co,)
Trades' Rooms, 7, Marine Street, Bombay,
Public Accountants, Auditors, Arbitrators,
&c. &c.,
UNDERTAKE the COLLECTION of DEBTS and OUTSTANDINGS,
Adjustment of Partnership and other Accounts, Employment of Legal Advisers,
and all other branches of business connected with Law Agency and Accountantship.

The same newspaper, on 14 July 1881, published an item under the heading 'Charge of Defamation'. Mr Henry Davy, an accountant carrying on business under the name of Fretwell, Davy and Company brought a charge of defamation against one Jehangeer Byramjee, clerk to a rival company. Mr. Davy claimed that the defendant had written an anonymous letter to one Mrs. Jacob Hunt, milliner, warning her against having any dealings with Fretwell, Davy and Company. The author claimed that Fretwell was 'sent in jail on Saturday last'  and is preparing his petition for bankruptcy', and and that Davy would reap the same consequences for his debt. Through his lawyers, Davy stated that Mr. Fretwell was not and never had been a member of the his firm, and he himself was not in debt in any way. However, Vause Fretwell was indeed in financial strife. He had petitioned for bankruptcy on 1 July 1881, as confirmed by the 21 October 1881 issue of The London Gazette.

Vause Fretwell -  Lately a Manager of the Anglo-India American Rubber Stamp Company, and now unemployed -  European - Lately at Marine-street, without the Fort (at present in the Bombay Goal).

It was not until February 1882 that Vause was declared a discharged bankrupt.

Meanwhile, Vause Fretwell had brought an action against Henry Davy and Frank Benjamin Stewart for theft and cheating. As reported in The Times of India of 5 August 1881, he deposed (somewhat long-windedly):

I am employed on behalf of the Anglo-American Rubber Stamp Company to carry on the manufacture and sale of rubber stamps in India. On the 14th January last I left Bombay for Ceylon, leaving the more valuable part of the appliances and stock in trade of the said business locked up in cupboards, and the remainder thereof in the room in which the manufacture was carried on. The only person who possessed any power or authority to deal with the said stock in trade and appliances during my absence was Mr. James Pearse, who holds the power of attorney of the proprietor of the said business. One Henry Davy carried on business in the same premises under the name and firm of Fretwell, Davy and Company as a public accountant and auditor, and resided on the said premises with full liberty of access to the said workroom. On my return to Bombay I found the whole stock in trade, appliances and furniture had been removed to another room, that the apparatus and appliances had been utilised in the manufacture of rubber stamps, and that a large portion of the property of the said business had been abstracted. On being questioned on the subject by me the said Henry Davy denied that any such use had been made of the stock and appliances as aforesaid, or that stamps had been made or money received on account thereof during my absence. I have obtained evidence of the fact that such stamps have been made and dealt in by Mr. Davy in conjunction with the said Henry Davy at No. 3 Bell Lane, Fort, Bombay. I have received information and verily believe that the stock in trade and appliances of the Anglo-American Rubber Stamp Company which were abstracted during my absence from Bombay have been and are being used by the said Henry Davy and Frank Benjamin Stewart in their Rubber Stamp Factory, No. 3 Bell Lane. I have also been informed and verily believe that the said Henry Davy and Frank Benjamin Stewart have manufactured stamps and received the proceeds thereof in the name of the Anglo-American Rubber Stamp Company, falsely representing themselves as the representatives thereof, and that they have not accounted to the constituted attorney of the proprietor of the said company or to me for the proceeds thereof. The said Henry Davy and Frank Benjamin Stewart have further falsely represented to the Port Storekeeper for State Railways to make a cheque originally drawn in favour of the Anglo-American Rubber Stamp Company payable to the British Indian Rubber Stamp Company. I, therefore, charge the said Henry Davy and Frank Benjamin Stewart with theft in respect of the property of the Anglo-American Rubber Stamp Company of the aggregate value of R1,462, and also with dishonest misappropriation of the said property and with cheating by personation, and thereby inducing delivery of property or the altering or destroying of a valuable security.
A search warrant had been issued by the magistrate on the application of the complainant, but none of the property mentioned in the information was discovered.

The case was adjourned but, unfortunately, I have not found a report of the final outcome. But two weeks later, The Times of India of 18 August reported that Vause was again in court, this time prosecuting a case of 'Criminal Breach of Trust by a Clerk'. It was as the acting secretary and manager of Messrs. Pearse and Company Limited that he gave evidence.

A few days since Mr. Vause Fretwell, the acting secretary and manager of the company, returned to business after a short illness; and examined the cash-book kept by the accused, in which all the money which was received by the latter from the collecting peons was entered. He noted down on his cash book from the one entrusted to the accused, Rs.7-4-9 credited to Mr. C. E. Wallace, Rs.25-7 credited to Mr. H. Bedford, and Rs.1-18-9 credited to Mrs. Peile. On the following day he discovered that the item of Rs.7-4-9 had been altered to Rs.67-4-9 in both books. He asked for an explanation from the accused, who, after some prevarications, admitted having made the alterations, but denied having appropriated the money to his own use. Subsequently he offered to restore the Rs.60 he had taken; and begged that the matter might not be brought before the notice of the directors. Mr. Fretwell told him that he must do so, but that the restitution of the money would very much improve his position.
Later it was discovered that the other items had been altered, and the money appropriated by the accused to his own use. He, however, restored Rs.72 in all, and promised to made good the remainder, begging at the same time that he should not be criminally prosecuted. The matter had been in the meantime reported to the police, and he was taken into custody.

Again the case was adjourned, and the outcome not known.

It is difficult to gauge how comfortably off, or otherwise, Vause was when he died. Without doubt, he was in a better financial position than when he left England nearly thirty years earlier. On 13 January 1887, just over a month after he died, the following notice was placed in The Times of India.

On Saturday, the 22nd inst., sale commencing at 1 p.m., Messrs. Crawford & Co. are instructed to sell by Public Auction at Grant Road, nearly opposite the Methodists's Church, in the bungalow lately in the occupation of the late Mr. V. Fretwell, the valuable and handsome French-polished blackwood and teakwood household furniture, plateware, crockery and glassware, table and hanging lamps, pictures, &c., also the materials of the Anglo-American Rubber Stamp Company, consisting of types, moulds, chases, rubber stamps, initial letters, rubber, presses, vulcanising stove, thermometer, quoins, furniture &c.
Full particulars will be given hereafter and the property will be on view 3 days before sale.

As to his widow, we do not know what befell her, apart from what his grandson, Victor Vause Fretwell had to say to WEF.

I have a hazy recollection from my mother, told her by our great aunts, that she did a bunk with what monies he had after his death.

Was there any truth in this family gossip? We will probably never know, but we do know that Anna Maria Fretwell died at the age of 66 on 13 January 1910 in Roorkee, Bengal, and was buried the following day.

The majority of Vause’s time in India was spent in Maharashtra. His earlier years were spent ‘up country’ but never too far from Bombay where he spent his final years. He died young, after a full and eventful life. He was never it seems long without a partner in life, but this comfort was tinged with much sadness. If Vause was prone to self-analysis, he may have questioned the wisdom of his decision to leave England to make his fortune in India. He may in also in later life have done the ‘what if’ exercise when considering his decision not to join the Queen’s army when the HEIC was disbanded. His brother seemed to allude to this when he commented to his nephew William:

I think if your father had remained in the Indian army he would have had a better chance of health and wealth. But it is no use to cry over spilt milk. We who are still alive must do what we can to give honor to our name and family.

From all accounts, Vause was not your typical Fretwell, and if John is typical, his observations about Vause being of a very different temperament to himself and their sister Mary, bears this out. And it is now to the genteel world of this Mary that we turn.

William Fretwell

+ Flora Watson

(work in progress)

Mary Fretwell

Mary the third child, and first daughter, of William and Anne was born on 20 April 1840 at 5 o’clock in the morning and baptised on 6 January1841 by Charles Wicksteed at the Mill Hill Chapel in a joint christening with her elder brother Vause. The birth certificate shows Mary as having been born at Knostrop, and that at the time her father was still running the family grocery business.

She made her census debut in June 1841 where she is found as a 1 year old baby, with her parents and her step-sister Elizabeth, living at Knostrop. Mary’s arrival coincided with the bad times that had befallen the Fretwell family. By the time of the March 1851 census, the Fretwells had moved to Selby where Mary, her mother, sisters and brother Vause were living. Her father, by this time, was ‘on the road’ as a travelling salesman.

We catch up with Mary some years later when, in 1857, her elder brother John wrote to his parents suggesting that if they should send Mary to him in London he would take care of his 17 year old sister. In case her parents might be concerned about the welfare of a young woman in London, John was able to reassure them, as he stated in his Recollections :

I could not bring her to London without being sure that she had all womanly guidance that a young girl needed. Mrs. Ronge’s success with the Kindergarten system of children’s education led me to believe that it would be well for my sister, who was an ambitious, talented girl, to learn this system and after some negotiations I made a contract with the Ronges for her board, lodging and training.

How long Mary may have stayed with the Ronges is not known, but her training would have stood her in good stead. According to John, her qualifications landed her first, with a job with a Mrs. Rendall of Bridport, in Dorset as pupil-teacher, to manage a private Kindergarten at Bridport, and subsequently a position at a school in London. By 1861 she was back with her mother at Beech Grove, Leeds, assisting with the running of a kindergarten, and moved with her to Manchester, where mother Anne, Mary and her sisters were running a school from 4 York Terrace, Whalley Range, Manchester.

By 1881 Mary had given up her teaching career for a new role, as can be gleaned from the census return of that year. She was, by then, living at Stonegate Road, West Lea, Chapel Allerton. The full household is as follows :

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