Thursday 13th February 2020 - Number 5966

Welcome

to our
Laws Family Register  

Robert Henry Laws

1828-1881

Captain of the Barque 'Woolhampton' 

my paternal Great Grandfather

&

This is Robert Henry's Wife 

Sarah Ann Laws, formerly Fuller

My paternal Great Grandmother

1846-1924

R I P

Gone but not forgotten, 
===================
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Henry Lawes

1595-1662

We have excluded records of living people to protect their privacy (GDPR 2018)
We only show births before 1920 and marriages before 1940.

If you are seeking to find folk after these years you should contact the registrar.

Lord, help me dig into the past and sift the sands of time, that I might find the roots that made

this family tree of mine

Lord, help me trace the ancient roads, on which our fathers trod, which led them through

so many lands, to find our present sod. 

Lord help me find an ancient book or dusty manuscript, that's safely hidden now away, 

in some forgotten crypt. 

Lord, let it bridge the gap, that haunts my soul when I can't find, that missing link between 

some name, that ends the same as mine.

===================================

A CHILD OF THE 1920s, 

AS SEEN FROM THE 1990s

by

John Robert Laws 1921-2008

Besides cars, the other result of the internal combustion engine was the increasing number of aircraft in the sky. With development forced ahead of WWI, they had now become a practicable though an expensive form of transport. Small air shows with two or three small aeroplanes would tour the summer holiday resorts seeking out a suitable field to set up their circus. They would offer a quick circuit of the town at five bob a go and give a little show of aerobatics. With a small charge for admission to the field, they struggled on for a few years before going broke or in a very few cases managed to get an airline or charter business going.

As well as these little efforts, the RAF put up an annual show at Hendon which was very impressive at the time though very small beer by today’s standards. In my late schooldays, I went there on my bike and found a hillside field overlooking the aerodrome where one could see it all for free. The highlight of the show was a low wing monoplane, probably a prototype Hurricane which came through a shallow dive at over three hundred miles an hour. There were still ten years to wait for the first jet engines.

Another lusty industry of my early years was the cinema. The silent screen with its overworked pianist trying to provide theme music was just beginning to give way to the ‘talkies’. Charlie Chaplin carried on without a word eating his boots in ‘The Goldrush’ but the soundtrack was with us and although it all continued to be black and white the musical was on its way and the cinema was moving into its few decades of boom years. One of the more treasured toys of my under ten years was a movie projector and its few cans of film. It had no motor and had to be cranked by hand, like the early movie cameras, but it was well made and worked well. The was no eight millimetres then and it used the full-size 35mm so the films were short and ran perhaps five or ten minutes. I knew them all off by heart before long but this did not detract from the fascination of something that actually worked.   

Although the early thirties were just crawling out of depression there were more large houses being built than cheap semis. The extension to the Piccadilly Line of the Underground railway to Enfield West now called Oakwood, and then to Cockfosters which influenced our move to Southgate was an important event. Free tickets to try it out were given out to all households in the catchment area. A building project which interested me more was, however, was the new ice rink at Harringay. It was after we had moved to Southgate when I was able to get there, but Harry and I became regulars. Being already able to roller skate made it much easier to get going on ice though not without a few tumbles. At one of our first visits, we were offered free admission to the evening ice hockey if we would take part in a farcical match with brooms and a football in the interval of the ice hockey. We accepted of course and I seem to remember it brought the house down. Next Monday a school I found that I had been observed was asked why I had been acting the clown.

Innovations in materials were less noticeable than other major changes but nonetheless on the way with enormous potential. Plywood soon replaced solid panels in all but the most expensive furniture. A brief reign of a few decades before chipboard came, bring back the use of veneering which had existed a couple of hundred years earlier. In our old fashioned furniture, the wood was solid and in our kitchen the knives were sharp, made before the new stainless steel became de rigour for cutlery. They had to be cleaned of course and the knife cleaner, a wooden machine with rotary brushes turned with a cast iron handle stood in the kitchen with its tin of abrasive powder nearby. There was no plastic except celluloid which was highly inflammable and used for little except toys, and ebonite which was used for a while in electrical goods. Even the plug tops for our new electric points were ceramic. Cooking pots and saucepans were iron, vitreous enamel or copper, aluminium on the way for a few years later and stainless steel way in the future. Plastic bags were a blessing yet to come. This means that few groceries were pre-packed, the grocer weighed out your biscuits from a large tin into a paper bag and the broken ones were sold off cheap.

PART 10

Besides cars, the other result of the internal combustion engine was the increasing number of aircraft in the sky. With development forced ahead of WWI, they had now become a practicable though the expensive form of transport. Small air shows with two or three small aeroplanes would tour the summer holiday resorts seeking out a suitable field to set up their circus. They would offer a quick circuit of the town at five bob a go and give a little show of aerobatics. With a small charge for admission to the field, they struggled on for a few years before going broke or in a very few cases managed to get an airline or charter business going.

As well as these little efforts, the RAF put up an annual show at Hendon which was very impressive at the time though very small beer by today’s standards. In my late schooldays, I went there on my bike and found a hillside field overlooking the aerodrome where one could see it all for free. The highlight of the show was a low wing monoplane, probably a prototype Hurricane which came through a shallow dive at over three hundred miles an hour. There were still ten years to wait for the first jet engines.

Another lusty industry of my early years was the cinema. The silent screen with its overworked pianist trying to provide theme music was just beginning to give way to the ‘talkies’. Charlie Chaplin carried on without a word eating his boots in ‘The Goldrush’ but the soundtrack was with us and although it all continued to be black and white the musical was on its way and the cinema was moving into its few decades of boom years. One of the more treasured toys of my under ten years was a movie projector and its few cans of film. It had no motor and had to be cranked by hand, like the early movie cameras, but it was well made and worked well. The was no eight millimetres then and it used the full-size 35mm so the films were short and ran perhaps five or ten minutes. I knew them all off by heart before long but this did not detract from the fascination of something that actually worked.   

Although the early thirties were just crawling out of depression there were more large houses being built than cheap semis. The extension to the Piccadilly Line of the Underground railway to Enfield West now called Oakwood, and then to Cockfosters which influenced our move to Southgate was an important event. Free tickets to try it out were given out to all households in the catchment area. A building project which interested me more was, however, was the new ice rink at Harringay. It was after we had moved to Southgate when I was able to get there, but Harry and I became regulars. Being already able to roller skate made it much easier to get going on ice though not without a few tumbles. At one of our first visits, we were offered free admission to the evening ice hockey if we would take part in a farcical match with brooms and a football in the interval of the ice hockey. We accepted of course and I seem to remember it brought the house down. Next Monday a school I found that I had been observed was asked why I had been acting the clown.

Innovations in materials were less noticeable than other major changes but nonetheless on the way with enormous potential. Plywood soon replaced solid panels in all but the most expensive furniture. A brief reign of a few decades before chipboard came, bring back the use of veneering which had existed a couple of hundred years earlier. In our old fashioned furniture, the wood was solid and in our kitchen the knives were sharp, made before the new stainless steel became de rigour for cutlery. They had to be cleaned of course and the knife cleaner, a wooden machine with rotary brushes turned with a cast iron handle stood in the kitchen with its tin of abrasive powder nearby. There was no plastic except celluloid which was highly inflammable and used for little except toys, and ebonite which was used for a while in electrical goods. Even the plug tops for our new electric points were ceramic. Cooking pots and saucepans were iron, vitreous enamel or copper, aluminium on the way for a few years later and stainless steel way in the future. Plastic bags were a blessing yet to come. This means that few groceries were pre-packed, the grocer weighed out your biscuits from a large tin into a paper bag and the broken ones were sold off cheap.

The school was less than a quarter of a mile away. Between parallel side roads, of late-nineteenth-century houses, an oblong block held the separate buildings of the infant school, the Elementary school and the Grammar school. It was a gently sloping site with the New River flowing south along the upper western boundary bringing drinking water to London from Hertford. 

The infants’ school was between the other two and shared an asphalt playground with the girls of the Elementary school. The boys of the elementary school had their playground facing the other road, firmly separated from the girls by a high brick wall on either side of which were built the children’s loos. 

The Grammar school was on the downhill side of the block, separated from the rest by a foot passage which ran parallel to the High Street through all the side roads. The iron railings around the school were set in strong brick piers and gated in the same style, a line of Plane trees were well established and were as un-climbable and as sturdy as the railings themselves.

The buildings were no-nonsense and built to last. Plenty of glazed brick and most lower walls of dark colour. Classrooms were built to hold about thirty and the desks and seats were all-in-ones, in pairs.

The first day at school sticks in the memory. It was the first real contact with kids in the mass and the first contact with any authority other than parental. At that time there were no nursery schools or crèches as mothers, nor indeed, married women, in general, didn't out to work. I started school a month or two after I was five with the worst of the winter out of the way. 

Mother took me and the Headmistress saw us, having established her identity she passed me over to the class teacher to absorb into the mass. The teacher kept me with her during the morning assembly then brought me into the class, found me a desk, it cannot have been very traumatic as the rest has faded away.

Our lessons as infants were the three R’s punctuated with drawing and games. The alphabet and tables were chanted in unison. We wrote and made our drawings in chalk on pint-sized blackboards which slotted into the front of the desks. Some kids were bright and some kids were dim but everyone learned; there were no options on offer. Before long we graduated to pen and ink writing in exercise books with inky fingers, scratchy pens and inkblots. The ink was still king and ballpoint easy scribble still twenty years ahead.

School dinners were also twenty years in the future. All the kids walked home for their dinners and back for the afternoon school. School milk started however in my first year or two at school. The little third of pint bottles turned up in the morning break and there was much bubbling noise as the last drop was sucked up through the straws.

On the other side of the road from school was the Primitive Methodist church where I went, reluctantly and intermittently, to Sunday school. Mum and Dad did not go to church but Sunday school was the one thing in those days so I went for a while though they did not insist when I opted out. 

All that sticks in my mind is a Harvest Festival where I had been inveigled into reading a poem about a windmill. It was the only time I saw my mother in the church until I got married.

When we moved into a junior section of the Elementary School, the horizons of our lessons broadened to include history geography & some science. There was now an objective in front of us, the entrance exam for the Grammar schools which were themselves the first step towards better-paid jobs further ahead. Classes were now divided by ability into A, B and C and school reports began to arrive, largely designed I suspect simply to prod all and sundry to greater effort. I believe the teaching must have been good though it was a bit double-edged for me. The first year in Grammar school had nearly all been done before and the need to work faded.

At the elementary school, there was no sports field but we managed to have a Sports Day at a ground near Muswell Hill. How everyone got there remains a mystery but the sun shone, there were sack races, egg and spoon races and mums races and a good time was had by all. Running was never a favourite pastime for me it was only done when unavoidable Swimming was another matter however and we were lucky in that there was a swimming pool in the basement of the grammar school next door. Here we were permitted a Saturday morning class for a dozen or so and I achieved the great heights of a certificate to say I could swim fifty yards.

12

Extracted from our database today 13th February

1624 - Marriage: Thomas BELL-2690 and Alice LAWES-2689,
            Newcastle upon Tyne Northumberland England

1677 - Christen: George LAWES-2350, Folkestone Kent England

1701 - Baptism: Barbara LAWES-2713, Berwick upon Tweed Northumberland               England

1706 - Baptism: Margaret WINGROVE-23218, Martin Wiltshire England
1727 - Marriage: John MILBURN-9919 and Sarah LAWES-11728, Whitsbury                 Hampshire England
1727 - Christen: James LAWS-6456, Stepney Middlesex England

1813 - Marriage: Phillip (Pork Butcher) GREEDUS-10604 and Sarah                                 LETCHFIELD-34213, Spitalfields Middlesex England
1814 - Baptism: William LAWES-833, (Carter) Coombe Bissett Wiltshire                           England

1822 - Baptism: Agnes Cant GORDON-33815, Brechin Angus Scotland
1825 - Birth: Eleanor DUPRY-12135, 
1840 - Birth: Lucy Ann HERCOCK-44157, Manton Rutland England
1845 - Burial: Charlotte LAWS-40152, 
1854 - Marriage: Augustus R TUCKER-13514 and Minerva Ann LAWS-13513,               Carroll County Tennessee United States
1854 - Birth: Julius K LAWS-10949, 
1855 - Death: Harriett Ann LAWS-49923, City of London, England
1857 - Death: Jane LONG-42340, Calcutta Bengal India
1865 - Birth: Charles Edward LAWES-47489, (Railway Platelayer) 
           Pimlico Middlesex England
1878 - Burial: Terri Lee LAWS-41670, Folkestone Kent England
1879 - Birth: Leonard Walter LAWS-46486, (Agricultural Engineer)
           Gaywood Norfolk England
1880 - Burial: Henry LAWS-7036, (Master Mariner)  Stepney Middlesex England

           (My paternal Great Great Grandfather)
1883 - Birth: Ernest J LAWS-43178, (Poultry Farming)
1888 - Death: Arthur  LAWS-34699, 
1888 - Birth: Arthur Thomas NEAL-12539, Petworth Sussex England
1890 - Birth: Leo Clements HANLON-50034, 
1893 - Birth: Harry MANN-43066 (Ag Lab & Lorry Driver)
           Ely Cambridgeshire England

1898 - Birth: Arthur George LAWS-32884, (Locomotive Fireman - Passed For                 Driver LNER) Whitby North Yorkshire England

1898 - Baptism: James Frederick LAWS-32069, (Manager Fruit & Veg)                             Southwark Surrey England
1902 - Birth: Alice Francis LAWS-44455, Hackney Middlesex England
1902 - Birth: Alice LAWS-43155, (Private Means)
1902 - Birth: James Waltham LAWS-37453, Pennsylvania United States
1902 - Birth: Wilfred Percy LAWS-33128, (Shoe Shop Manager)
           Darlington Durham England
1905 - Birth: Percy Cyril LAWES-48687, (Omnibus Driver)
1906 - Birth: Robert Davison LAWS-44429, (Coal Miner) Monkwearmouth                       Durham England
1907 - Marriage: Samuel T LAWS-4687 (Blacksmith)  and Lily HARRISON-                   35806, East Molesey Surrey England
1909 - Baptism: Vera Doris LAWS-30390, West Kensington Middlesex England
1909 - Baptism: Lily-Rose LAWS-30389, West Kensington Middlesex England
1910 - Marriage: George Ernest LAWES-28188 (ARMY Corporal 1721)  and                   May FARNFIELD-28189, Winchester Hampshire England

1911 - Birth: James Alfred LAWS-33107,  (age one month) Willesden Middlesex               England
1912 - Residence: George Elliott LAWES-1700, (Railway Mechanical Engineer)               West Kensington Middlesex England
1913 - Birth: Mary Ann LAWS-29838, Newcastle upon Tyne Northumberland                  England
1914 - Birth: Anthony HOOPER-10757, 
1915 - Marriage: Arthur Henry DERRICK-49781 and Frances Stanley LAWES-             15783, (Cigarette Maker)  Bedminster Dorset England
1917 - Enlistment: Harold Thomas LAWES-37145, (Engineer Inspector) 
1918 - Birth: Ruth SMITH-35954, 
1919 - Birth: Dorothy LAWS-43691, (Dental Receptionist)
1919 - Birth: Edna LAWS-40422, North Carolina United States
1928 - Death: Arthur  LAWES-828, (Evangelist) Northampton                                             Northamptonshire  England
1936 - Death: Clarence LAWS-16292, (PVT US Army)
1936 - Death: Stephen (Gravedigger)  Norfolk Norwich Hospital, Norfolk                         England
1936 - Residence: Stephen LAWS-15421, (Gravedigger) LAWS-15421, North Lodge, The Cemetery, Bowthorpe Road, Norwich Norfolk England
1944 - Death: Edmund Williamson LAWES-29680, (HM Inspector of Taxes)                     Timperley Cheshire England
1950 - Burial: Mervyn William  LAWS-25182, (Invalid) Christchurch
           New Zealand
1959 - Burial: Sarah Mitchell LAWS-25187, (Married) Christchurch
           New Zealand
1960 - Death: William Richard George MORRIS-42198, Aylesford Kent England
1969 - Death: Cordie LAWS-19343, Jefferson County Kentucky United States
1991 - Death: Gertrude M TURNER-11669, (Ag Lab)
1996 - Death: Monica LAWS-41512, (Mental Hospital Nurse) Gateshead
           Durham England
2004 - Death: Lois LAWS-13255, Provena Covenant Medical Center, 
           Urbana. Illinois United States
2004 - Burial: Doris LASHLEY-13253, Graham, Alamance County, 
           North Carolina United States
2005 - Death: Edward LAWS-20798, (Construction Worker) Lenoir
           North Carolina United States
2007 - Death: Muriel May LAWS-25747, (Widow) Bristol Gloucestershire                          England

2008 - Burial: Arthur Ernest LAWES-35007, 
2011 - Death: Elspeth Ann LAWS-49355, Taihape New Zealand
2017 - Death: Alan Foster LAWS-50183, Nuneaton Warwickshire England

MORE TOMORROW

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Sharon Nicola LAWS

2008 Olympics Cyclist

Environmental adviser for Rio Tinto Zinc 

1974-2017

R I P

The content provided on this site is not guaranteed to be error-free 

It is always advised that you consult original records.

======================================================

            Member of The Guild of One-Name Studies

THE GUILD OF ONE-NAME STUDIES

www.one-name.org

registrar@lawsfamilyregister.org.uk

==========================================================

With grateful thanks to Simon Knott 

for his permission to reproduce his photographs on this site 
see 

http://www.norfolkchurches.co.uk

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