One of Charles Skelton Tyler’s last views of the High Street in Earls Colne was taken in 1907, showing his re-built shop, with the pair of upper bay windows, and the new houses on the corner of York Road. He retired in 1915 and leased the pharmacy to Alex Spafford (below).

Mr Spafford continued the photographic side of the business and applied to the Magistrates Court for a licence to sell tonic water wine, describing himself as ‘an optician and pharmacist’. The magistrate asked sarcastically why an optician needed to sell alcoholic drinks. Mr Spafford was most indignant – “I am also a chemist and I object to being called an optician when my principal business is that of a chemist!” The licence application was refused on the grounds that Earls Colne already had more than its fair share of licensed premises – three fully-licensed pubs, three beer houses and one off-licence. But, even without tonic wine on offer, Mr Spafford continued in business until 1945.

Extract from Earls Colne Heritage Museum (ECHM) Website

This month I turn to the story of Helen Ann, the second youngest of James Skelton’s five children with his first wife, Sarah Vaughan. Those readers who have followed my genealogical quest from the beginning will know that it is this ‘lost family’ of my great-great grandfather with which I am particularly fascinated, most of them having led the kind of swash-buckling lives that my own direct ancestors were denied through poverty and lack education.

Out of the four children who lived long enough to establish their own independent lives, Helen was the only one who remained in England. (James Skelton’s oldest daughter, Margaret Sarah died at home in Brixton at the age of 24 – see Present at the Death). In my most recent posts I have described the lives of her two other sisters, Sarah and Ann, who emigrated from London to Australia and Hong Kong respectively (where they met their deaths in the same untimely way as their oldest sister, namely by contracting tuberculosis). And in A Tale of Exploitation I set out the story of their brother James William, who had already established a successful mahogany export business in British Honduras (now Belize) with an office in  London by the time he was in his twenties. It is for these reasons that I regard this family as true ‘children of the Empire’, even though I am not completely comfortable with that jingoistic-sounding term.

Unsurprisingly, the least adventurous of the children went on to live the longest. Helen survived the death of two husbands and was the only one of the siblings to make it into the 20^th century, dying in Colchester in 1909 one week shy of her 80^th birthday. She was also mentioned in both the will of her wealthy older brother, James William, and that of her sister Sarah’s husband (the Hong Kong judge, Henry John Ball), although the amount of money she was left in each case was relatively paltry.

Helen married the widowed Charles Tyler in 1855, exactly a year after he had lost his first wife. Despite having a young family to support, as a mature carpenter who owned his own business in Lambeth employing six men, Charles was possibly seen as a ‘good catch’. More than a decade older than his new bride, he had been married for almost fifteen years before his wife Marianne died, along with his oldest child, and only son, Charles George. Both young Charles and his mother were buried in nearby West Norwood Cemetery, one of the ‘Magnificent Seven’ I described in connection with the Skelton family grave, located in Nunhead Cemetery in South London. The fact that they were both interred in the same year, makes me surmise that it was one of the common infectious diseases of the time which resulted in their early demise.

After her marriage, Helen moved into the Tyler family home in Pratt Street, Lambeth, taking on the role of step-mother to the younger of Charles’ four daughters, and eventually went on to have two children of her own  – a daughter, Helen Westle Tyler, and a son, Charles Skelton Tyler. Unfortunately for the family, the 1861 census appears to show a change in their fortunes – Charles senior is now described simply as a case and crate maker, and only the youngest step-daughter is still living at home – the others have all been sent out to work as domestic servants. The following census seems to indicate further misfortunes throughout the 1860s*, and by 1871 Helen is to be found residing in the High Street in Harlow (now called Old Harlow) in Essex, minus her husband, but with the second one waiting in the wings while a ‘lodger’ in the family home.

*As both Charles and Helen junior were born in Lambeth it would appear as if the Tyler family’s move to Harlow had been made shortly before the 1871 census. Whether it was for work or retirement or to be close to relatives, it is impossible to know. But the fact that Charles Senior died there in 1870, may point to the fact that he was already ailing previous to that, and thus the relocation to Essex might have been in connection with this illness.

Old Harlow High Street c1900 (c) The Frances Frith Collection

Helen’s mysterious ‘lodger’ in the 1871 census describes himself as a chemist-pharmacist from York by the name of William S. Chrispin, a man who turns out to have (perhaps even unbeknown to Helen herself) connections with her own roots. As mentioned previously, Helen’s father, James Skelton, was originally from North Yorkshire and had arrived in London during the 1820s, whereupon he set up a tailoring business in riverside Bermondsey (see The Tailor of Horsleydown). So it is interesting to note that not only does Helen’s new husband hail from the county of her forebears (more about these Ur-Skeltons later next year), but he also calls himself William Skelton Chrispin on their marriage certificate, and forever after.

While the surname Skelton is relatively unusual, it is not uncommon in the north of England (from where it originates) and in major cities, such as London, due to economic migration. However, as William does not appear to baptised with this name (nor was it his mother’s maiden name) I suspect he has taken it on solely to please Helen, and perhaps to create a link with his step-son, Charles, who was baptised with the middle name of Skelton. So I do not think it is a family connection, although William was born in the hamlet of Osgodby (spelled Osgoodby in the census return of 1841) in the parish of Thirkleby in North Yorkshire, a place that is relatively near to the Wensleydale area from which ‘my’ Skelton family originated.

We have no idea how William Chrispin ended up in his forties (and unmarried) far from home, living in Harlow with the newly-widowed Helen (stated to be of no occupation) and her young son, Charles. But William’s addition of that enigmatic middle ‘S’ on the census form perhaps shows that he and Helen were already viewing themselves as a couple. And as they wed only a few months after this date, it is more than likely this is the case. I still do wonder if they originally met when he lodged in their house (just as my grandparents did when my great-grandmother rented out a room in the family home in Brixton to a returning WW1 soldier – see I Remember, I Remember); or whether the situation had more in common with my great-great grandfather’s relationship with his second wife, where the much younger Mary Ann Hawkins described herself as Housekeeper on the census of 1861 (while having already several children with James Skelton)!

But however they met, the Tyler-Chrispin marriage took place in the local parish church with Helen’s brother, James William Skelton, as one of the witnesses. Perhaps it was due to the presence of this social climber that both bride and bridegroom were somewhat creative when it came to listing their own and their fathers’ professions. William stated that his deceased father Thomas Chrispin was a Merchant (it is true that he’d once been some sort of merchant, but he had turned to farming by the time William was born); and Helen described James Skelton as a Gentleman. This was a neat Victorian catch-all phrase for someone who has no need to work, which other members of the family had previously used when referring to their father (despite the fact that he was actually retired and bringing up a second family with his young mistress). In addition to this, William called himself a Surgeon; but was all this simply for the benefit of Helen’s older brother, whose wealth and success may have intimidated the new bridegroom?

In any case, the marriage must have been a relative success as the couple were to stay together for other 30 years before William died in 1904, five years before Helen. While organising my research notes several days ago, it came as something of a surprise to realise that I still had not yet applied for the death certificates of this branch of the family, despite my intentions to do so. However, I am assuming that Helen and William died of old-age related illnesses and it is perhaps the death of Charles Tyler senior* which will give more clues as to how the family ended up in Harlow.

*A search in the BMD records several months ago proved inconclusive, before I realised Charles had probably died in Harlow, not Lambeth. Such is the nature of the silly mistakes we can make while carrying out research. 

Just to confuse matters more, William Chrispin had a younger cousin who not only was called William Chrispin, but was also a chemist-pharmacist, operating a pharmacy in King Street, Huddersfield. Was William Chrispin the younger encouraged in his career path by William Chrispin the elder? If so, he is not the only younger relative that our William influenced as his step-son Charles was eventually apprenticed to a chemist in Cambridge. And shortly before Charles left home to start his studies, William had established a pharmacy in the small coastal community of Walton, Suffolk (next to Felixstowe), perhaps with plans for his step-son to take over the business when he eventually retired.

But this event did not appear to come to pass: in 1887, at the age of 23, Charles Skelton Tyler married a local girl, Annie Archer, and set up his own chemist’s shop in neighbouring Felixstowe (in competition with his step-father?), before moving to Earls Colne in Essex in 1892. He was to remain in this part of the country for over two decades, successfully running the local pharmacy and bringing up his family of four until his ‘retirement’ in 1915, when for some inexplicable reason he went to Australia for a long vacation with his wife and two daughters.

In contrast, Helen’s daughter, called Helen Westle (that family name again!) remained unmarried all her life, and continued to live with the Chrispins (with no discernible job) until their deaths in the first decade of the new century. She herself died in 1940 at the age of 82, several weeks after her brother Charles, a man who I have become rather fond of in the course of my research. This is mainly because, unlike other family members, he appears to have left his mark on the world in a way that did not involve the exploitation of people or resources.

Bill Jones, the local blacksmith, c1900, by Charles Tyler (c) ECHM

While running the Earls Colne pharmacy, it would seem that Charles also had a side line in developing photographs (for himself and others), going on to create a good number of prize-winning pictures of the village and its inhabitants – including the above image, which was published in several national newspapers – some of which can be seen in the local history museum. As the C.S. Tyler pharmacy was situated in the middle of the High Street, this gave Charles the chance to readily document daily life in Earls Colne. And when I gaze in admiration at some of his photographs, I cannot help but wonder if any of his own family feature in them.

High Street, Earls Colne, by Charles Tyler, c1900 (C) ECHM

To come across these wonderful photographs taken by an ancestor (however distant) gave my enthusiasm for my genealogical quest a much-needed boost. While researching and writing this post I had become rather dispirited by my lack of progress, as well as annoyed at myself for neglecting to order the death certificates of Helen Ann and her two husbands. But this discovery of Charles’ photographs reminded me again of how family history can throw up these unexpected twists and turns to feed the addiction.

Yet how many more of these images are out there somewhere, perhaps languishing in a battered box belonging to one of Charles’ descendants, similar to those that my mother is fortunate  to  have inherited (see Begin Again)? And might Charles Tyler have taken pictures of his own elderly mother or her surviving relatives? Just when I was almost ready to hang up my genealogy hat, I find I’m enthused once more by the idea of tracking down a living descendant of Charles Skelton Tyler – someone who may be a repository of his ‘lost’ photographs from the turn of the last century.

Chalkney Mill, Earls Colne, 1897, by Charles Tyler (c) ECHM

This may, however, prove to be a more difficult task as 20th century genealogy can be notoriously tricky due to the lack of published records, although the 1939 register has certainly been a boon to family historians. And to make things more complicated, not only do the two girls appear to have remained childless after they married in their thirties, both boys (with their relatively common names, coupled with the number of ‘Tylers’ increasing as the population booms) seem to vanish after 1911. Did Edward and William Tyler die during the Great War? They would have been in their early twenties when the conflict broke out, most likely still single, and at the age where signing up through patriotic bravado was common.

When I imagine that somewhere in England there might be a cache of Charles Skelton Tyler’s lost images in an attic or cupboard, I also wonder if in this same household there is a velvet-lined box containing the jewellery the teenage Helen Westle Tyler inherited from her Westle namesake aunt, Sarah. On her death in 1871, the possessions of Sarah Westle Maria Ball (neé Skelton) went directly to her husband, the Hong Kong judge Henry John Ball. And when he died three years later, his will stated that: I bequeath all the jewellery and trinkets formerly belonging to my late dear wife excepting such as I may otherwise in my life dispose of to Helen Tyler the niece of my said wife absolutely. Did the young Helen appreciate these gifts, or were they perhaps pushed to the back of a drawer and later deemed to be the outdated objects of a middle-aged woman she’d barely known?

But I like to think that once these two worlds might have collided, and alongside the portraits Charles took of local characters (such as Miss Jane Sadd, below), that there is, in a stranger’s attic or family album, a photograph of Charles’ unmarried sister. I can just imagine Helen, posing for her little brother in her Edwardian finery, while on a much anticipated visit to see her beloved nephews and nieces.

Perhaps she is even wearing one of her own aunt’s jewelled brooches.

Miss Jane Sadd, landlady of The Castle, Earls Colne, by Charles Tyler c1900 (c) ECHM

The Incidental Genealogist, September 2018