Стивен Бут - Drowned Lives

You will easily comprehend, from these particulars, that the circumstances are more desperate than they are generally believed to be. The World has been deceived in that respect; and I scruple not to lay all the ill consequences on my own folly alone.

If you should have no objection to receive me into your house, I propose myself the satisfaction of waiting on you and your family and shall probably trespass on your hospitality for two or three days.

Your friend,

Gruesome find halts restoration scheme

Work on a major waterways restoration scheme was halted yesterday by the discovery of human remains.

Ogley and Huddlesford Canal Restoration Trust members made the gruesome find while clearing earth and debris from the site of the former Fosseway Wharf, near Pipehill. A Trust spokesman said the remains had been concealed in a heap of lime and were uncovered by an excavator driver. ‘We were all very shocked,’ he said. ‘And work stopped immediately.’

Police say the body has not been identified and may have lain undiscovered for some time. They are appealing for anyone with information to come forward.

The incident happened during a visit to the site by Junior Agriculture Minister and local MP Lindley Simpson, who was on a fact-finding mission after recent protests by waterways groups against the proposed South Staffordshire Link Road.

Mr Simpson was unavailable for comment this week.

When I read the article, my first thought was of Frank. Had he committed suicide? But then I read it again, and I noticed the line ‘may have lain undiscovered for some time’. That sounded like a police euphemism for a rotting corpse. Frank had been very much alive when the excavator had begun to dig into the lime.

That night Rachel came around again, clutching more notes and looking pleased with herself. These sessions were becoming a regular thing now as we set about re-creating Samuel’s stolen manuscript.

Rachel had spent her time fruitfully in the County Record Office at The Friary. She’d scoured the parish register indexes for Buckleys and identified several members of the family in the records for St Chad’s. Obtaining an address, she’d gone on to locate them at their Lichfield home in the historical ‘snapshots’ that were nineteenth-century censuses. For the first time, I saw the names of my great-grandparents, Alfred and Eliza Buckley, of Tamworth Street, Lichfield. Alfred was described as a mercer.

‘Alfred’s ancestors were a bit more difficult to establish,’ said Rachel. ‘His parents were boat people, remember.’

‘Josiah and Hannah.’

‘That’s right. So he was probably born in the cabin of a narrowboat, like his brothers and sisters. But I did find a young Alfred Buckley in the 1891 census. He was six years old and described as the nephew of the people he was living with, the Bensons. I’d guess that Mrs Benson must have been the sister of his mother, Hannah.’

‘So they sent him to live with his aunt and uncle.’

‘Yes. I wonder why?’

‘Probably Josiah and Hannah had too many children to cope with on the boats,’ I said. ‘It was called “putting a child on the bank”. It probably meant that he got an education, at least.’

‘Lucky for him.’

‘But Alfred was left without a father,’ I said. ‘Josiah was killed.’

‘Was he? How?’

I was remembering what Samuel had told me. Josiah Buckley had operated a pair of narrowboats on the Ogley and Huddlesford, but had ended up drowned in the cut. There was a suggestion at the inquest that he was drunk, which was nonsense. Josiah Buckley was an abstemious man, a teetotaller ... But, like many canal people, he was quite unable to swim .

Samuel had described in detail Josiah’s body being pulled out of the water from behind a lock gate. His head had been battered against the wall by the pressure of water when the sluices were opened, and his face had been unrecognisable. It was reported that shortly before his death Josiah had been involved in a fight with another boatman. He’d made himself unpopular with rival carriers by winning a lucrative contract for transporting coal to the power stations. But it seems he was just more efficient and better organised than the others. Probably more honest, too. There were some who didn’t like that .

I repeated to Rachel what Samuel had told me, and she grimaced at the gory details.

‘Well, Alfred did all right after that anyway,’ she said. ‘He was already a mercer by the time he married Eliza Shaw in 1911, and his address was the one in Tamworth Street. I also found an older brother, Thomas.’

‘Yes, Thomas was the one who tried to keep the boats operating after his father died, but the business failed.’

‘As a child, he seems to have lived on the boats with his parents. But he appears several times in the court records too. He must have been a bit of a bruiser — he was charged several times with affray, often fighting over women it seems. I also came across a paternity order against him. I only found him because Buckley is an unusual name. By the way, he was described as Thomas Buckley aka Thomas Pounder.’

‘A pseudonym. I think it was quite common among the boatmen in those days.’

‘Really? It sounds a bit suspicious to me.’

‘Who are we to judge? I suppose they had their reasons.’

‘Well, every family has its black sheep,’ said Rachel.

‘So both my grandfather and Great-Uncle Samuel would have been born at the house in Tamworth Street, I suppose.’

Rachel hesitated, seemed to consult her notes. ‘That’s the address your great-grandparents gave when George was baptised at St Chad’s. It would help if we could get the later censuses, of course, like 1911 and 1921.’

‘Why can’t we?’

‘The details are subject to the one hundred year rule.’

‘Sorry?’

‘They’re confidential. They’re not released until a hundred years have passed. So you won’t see the details of the 1901 census until 1st January 2002.’

‘We can’t wait that long. Go on.’

‘Okay. There was another child, a daughter, who died very young. That was very common too, of course.’

‘And Great-Grandfather Alfred himself died, when?’

‘Oh, not until 1947. But his brother Thomas died much earlier, in 1918. He was in France, serving with the Army Ordnance Corps. He was reported missing in action, presumed dead.’

‘One of millions,’ I said glumly.

‘Army records show him lost in action near Bethune at the start of the Lys offensive in April 1918. The Germans used gas in those attacks, didn’t they?’

‘He would have been over 40 years old by then, Rachel.’

‘Yes, and they didn’t extend conscription to men over 41 until almost at the end of the war. The Military Service Act Number Two, April 1918. But records weren’t terribly accurate then. He could have lied about his age to join up.’

‘That would be a pretty stupid thing to do.’

‘Men can be stupid at that age as well as at any other.’

‘A mid-life crisis?’

‘If that’s what you want to call it. And we know this one was stupid on two counts — fighting and women. Whatever it was, he never came back.’

‘It sounds as though Great-Grandma Buckley wouldn’t have been too keen to have him back anyway.’

‘It’s a pity we can’t ask her.’

I was impressed by the work that Rachel had put in. It was plain that she’d not only searched the parish registers and censuses, but had also hunted the Buckleys relentlessly through the court records and even the army lists. I could only guess at the amount of time and effort it had taken.

‘Parish registers are okay, but they’re incomplete,’ she said. ‘We really need to research the official registers of births, marriages and deaths. But they’re in London, at the Family Records Centre.’