Category: Singer

Dick Mount

Richard John Mount, 1833–1915

In an article in the Folkestone, Hythe, Sandgate & Cheriton Herald for 6th October 1900, headed “HARVEST HOME AT NEWINGTON”, the regular columnist ‘Felix’ (W.G. Glanville) described the musical contributions which followed the meal and healths:

Dick Mount, a farm hand of some seventy summers, in a twenty-verse song, told the story of a bashful swain and an innocent country lass, whilst another follower of the plough related in a ditty the doings of a certain little tailor of Dover, much to the amusement of the company.

It’s not possible to positively identify the song which Dick Mount sang, but there certainly was a farm labourer named Richard Mount, of very nearly seventy summers, living in Newington at that time.

He was baptised at St Nicholas, Newington Next Hythe, on 11th August 1833, the son of William and Sarah, née Gower. The 1841 census showed them living in the hamlet of Arpinge near Newington. William and his eldest son (also William) both worked as thatchers. In 1851 Richard was working as an agricultural labourer for William Matson, a farmer of 140 acres, at Alkham (the precise location is difficult to decipher, but could be Drellingore). When the 1861 census was taken he was boarding with the family of Samuel Hood at Paddlesworth, to the West of Hawkinge, working as an agricultural labourer, probably for Robert Marsh at Cole Farm.

He married Jane Gilham at St Nicholas, Newington Next Hythe, on 15th October 1870, and the following year’s census found them living with Richard’s father back at Arpinge (recorded as “Harpinge” on the census return). William was by now 79 years old, but his occupation was still shown as Thatcher, as was that of 38 year old Richard. He and Jane had a baby son, also named Richard.

Thereafter census records show him simply as a farm labourer. With Jane and an ever-increasing family, he was living at Coombe Farm Cottage, Newington Next Hythe, in 1881, at Arpinge in 1891, and at Grove Cottage, Newington in 1901. In 1911 he and Jane were residing at 81 Shaftesbury Avenue, Cheriton and, although he was 78 years of age, he was still listed as “Farm labourer”. He died in the final quarter of 1915.

0

Phoebe Smith

Phoebe Smith née Scamp, 1913-2001

The Romany gypsy Phoebe Smith is widely regarded as one of the greatest English traditional singers to have been recorded. When recorded by folk song collectors, from the 1950s onwards, she was living with her husband Joe near Woodbridge in Suffolk. However she was born in Faversham, spent much of her early life in Kent, and acquired her repertoire of songs primarily from family members..

It is usually stated that she was born in Tanner Street (now Tanners Street), Faversham in 1913. Certainly her birth was registered in the first quarter of 1913, and she was baptised at Elmsted on 4th April 1913. In the 1939 Register her birth date is given as 7th March 1912, but 7th March 1913 is the more likely date – this was the date given when her death was registered in 2001.  She was the youngest of at least eight children born to Bill Scamp and his second wife Ann, née Jones. Bill Scamp was born at Selling on 18th December 1851, Ann in 1873 at Forest Row, between East Grinsted and Crowborough in Sussex. Bill’s first wife, Louisa née Lee (1850-1892), bore him sixteen children between 1870 and 1890, giving birth to her youngest child one week prior to being admitted to Cane Hill Asylum, Coulsdon, Surrey, where she died and was buried in 1892.1

Phoebe’s parents had settled, and worked on fruit farms in East Kent, but would still travel around Kent and Essex for seasonal work, as Phoebe’s son Manny told Mike Yates:

I suppose life was like a holiday in those days: we would spend a couple of months here to work, then move on to another area for the next harvest, and we’d meet up with our aunties and uncles and cousins. It would be Essex, near Chelmsford for the sugarbeeting, Kent for the cherries, apples, plums and pears, then up to the Fens for the potatoes. That would be the times when the singing was practised. You’d be by yourself six or seven hours, no-one to please, no-one to offend, and an old uncle in the next orchard would shout over, ‘Have you heard this one?2

When she was about four years old the family went to live in Herne Bay. They moved again, to Ramsgate, when she was about ten, and later to Ickham. No Scamps appear in Faversham or any of those other locations in the early 20th century census records, but there were numerous Scamps living in East Kent, often with occupations such as “horse dealer” which suggest that they might be of Romany stock (also “hawker”, “general dealer”, “vagrant” or, occasionally, simply “gypsy”). At the time of the 1861 census Phoebe’s forebears were recorded as living “In Tents, Broom Street, Graveney, Faversham”. The head of the household was Riley Scamp, occupation shown as “Vagrant”. Living with him were his wife Sarah, née Lee, six sons (Oliver, Riley, William, Samson, Clarence and George) and three  daughters (Charlotte, Cinamentta and Mary). All of the family had been born in Kent. Riley Scamp was born in 1819, and when he died in 1899 his funeral merited a mention in the Folkestone Express, Sandgate, Shorncliffe & Hythe Advertiser, 8th March 1899:

A ROMANY FUNERAL. —Last week at Ramsgate Cemetery, the funeral took place of Riley Scamp, a picturesque figure in Thanet for many years, and the head of a gipsy family well known throughout East

Kent. The deceased, who was of the Romany type, was 79 years old. Formerly he was a van-dweller ; latterly he abandoned that free mode of life. At the funeral quite large crowd assembled, including many of the gipsy tribe.

Comments by family members on various internet forums revealed that the Scamps sometimes went by the surname Matthews, and in fact it was under this name that Phoebe’s family were listed in the 1921 census, camped with other families including Lees and Ripleys, at Mystole Encampment, near Chilham. Her father William Matthews was listed as “General Dealer”, her mother as “Licence Hawker”. With them were 6 sons and 2 daughters, of whom Phoebe was the youngest. The places of birth of the children attest to the family’s travelling lifestyle: Bexhill in Sussex, Hunton, Tenterden, Chilham and Faversham. Phoebe’s birth place is given here – probably erroneously – as Preston in Kent.

Phoebe’s family were living at Ickham when she married Joe Smith, a scrap dealer, in 1931. They had met the previous year, at hop-picking time:

Joe: Well, round the campfire at night after we finished hop-picking. She come down to see my sister-in-law, you see, to have a word or two with her, I suppose. And I sat there playing the violin. And we started speaking, and…

Phoebe: My husband, he started to talk about the hop picking, and I was rather bashful and shy.  And I didn’t know much to say at all. As a matter of fact, I was afraid, really, to speak to him, thinking my father and mother would hear me.

Joe: Well… I thought you were shy and so was I.

Phoebe: I were really smiling at him playing the fiddle, you know, and his brother, you see. Keep looking at me and he keep nodding his head, you see, ‘awards ‘im playing this fiddle, because his brother just couldn’t stand the row. We were grinning at each other, you know, but at the time being I never had any more thought of courting or marrying him than flying. And then he said to me “I’d like to write to you when I go home, would you  like to write to me?” I said “Well, you can write and I’ll answer your letters”. And then next year, they come down hop-picking and you said to me, “Would you marry me?” I said, “Well, I’m not old enough really. I’m only seventeen”. So he said there’s lots of girls and boys get married at seventeen and eighteen.

Joe: She was a trouble. I kept writing, you know? And she kept saying she’d see, and all this sort of thing and I got fed up. And every weekend I had off I used to go down there. Never used to go down home because I wouldn’t dare, you see. Her father wouldn’t let her out if I went down home. She say to me “Well, I’ll meet you at the bus stop at Canterbury”, which was the nearest point, you see, where the buses come in, and that’s how we done our courting, and we never did go to the pictures.3

Phoebe recalled that she was desperate to go to see Sonny Boy, the first talkie to come to Canterbury (actually she probably meant the film The Singing Fool, Al Jolson’s follow-up to The Jazz Singer, which featured the song ‘Sonny Boy’, and which was released in the UK in November 1928). But her brother Charlie said “it’s not good for girls to go to the pictures… it learns them things they never ought to know” and the resultant argument led to her father forbidding either of them from going.

Joe: We never  did go to the pictures and I never did walk nowhere with her, only from the bus to the bus stop, put her on the bus that used to go home. That’s where I used to meet her and where I used to leave her, at the bus stop. That used to annoy me, you know, I used to get fair bored with it. All my worries were not getting her in a row, you see […]

Phoebe: So of course we just signed the register and away we come out. He got hold of my hand, and then he said “God bless you, Phoebe, you’re a nice girl”.

Joe: I remember that. I remember saying that, and I remember you wished me the best of luck.

Their marriage was registered West Tilbury in Essex on 27th October 1930. The bride’s name was recorded as Phoebe Matthews. Phoebe’s father said that he wouldn’t have given consent for her to marry so young, only when she was 21, but “that’s three more years, perhaps I wouldn’t live that long anyway”. And indeed he died within a year. Phoebe said that “He died 12 months after I were married”; in fact he died aged 79 on 27th May 1931, at Minster-in-Thanet.4

Phoebe and Joe’s first child – also named Joe – arrived within a year of their marriage, and money was tight. Joe recalled that “It was very hard times then, wasn’t it? I’m working steady […] But still, we carried on. We didn’t owe anybody nothing. That was a job to make ends meet”. When she was able to, Phoebe started to make floral Christmas decorations to earn some extra cash, and also did farmwork, “fruit-picking or pea-picking or anything”.

Joe found them a home to move to at 57 St Chad’s Road, Tilbury, Essex, and they were living here at the time of the 1939 Register. Joe’s occupation was given as “Caterpillar Driver – Oil Co”. He was navvying with pick and shovel at the start of the war, but then  moved on to operating a D8 Caterpillar, cutting chalk. This may have been a sedentary job, but it was physically demanding – “I have come ‘ome of a night time with, with my arms aching so I could hardly make a cigarette”. Joe’s work took him to Scotland at one point, although Phoebe stayed behind in Essex, doing agricultural work. And then, when the farmwork stopped, “I’d go on making these wax roses, roses, daffs, tulips […] I think it’s the most nicest job I’ve ever done is going selling flowers”.

As a port town on the Thames, Tilbury was frequently the target of German air raids. During one heavy raid, when they had had to abandon their home and take shelter elsewhere, a policeman came to find Phoebe to tell her that her mother had died.

Then that’s when I began to realise that everything was gone. At the beginning, I didn’t bother about the ‘ome, I didn’t bother about anything, as long as we were alive. That was everything you see. But when I lost my mother, I thought, well, I don’t know, everything seemed to be going…

Her mother’s grave records that she did on 3rd September 1940, aged 67 years. She was buried in All Saints Churchyard, Biddenden.5

At some point after the war Phoebe and Joe moved to Melton near Woodbridge, where Joe ran a scrap-metal business, and this is where they remained for the rest of their lives. Frank Purslow described it thus:

Near a small Suffolk market town is a well-conducted scrap metal business run by Joe Smith and some of his sons. Next to the yard, in a neat garden, stands the Smiths’ bungalow (built mostly by family labour) surrounded by the trailers of the Smith boys and their families.6

Mike Yates recalled

In those days Phoebe and her husband Joe were living in a bungalow at the side of a moderately busy road. There was a small scrap yard at the side of their home, where Joe and his sons worked. I think what most impressed me on my first visit was Joe and Phoebe’s large collection of Crown Derby porcelain. Every shelf and furniture top seemed to be holding yet another prize piece. They clearly loved their collection and were only too happy to tell me how the horse-drawn gypsy waggons of old had always been full of similar items.7

Phoebe had learned most of her song repertoire in Kent. Mike Yates notes that “Phoebe learnt many of her songs as a young girl from her elder sisters. Her uncle, Oliver Scamp, a Kentish horse-dealer, was also an important source of songs”, while she told Frank Purslow that she learned one song from her favourite uncle, her father’s brother George. Peter Kennedy provides details of the specific sources for several songs: ‘The Oxford Girl’ came from her uncle Oliver, “a Ramsgate tinker who could make a kettle out of a penny”; she had ‘Young Ellender’ from her mother; and ‘Higher Germanie’ and ‘Molly Vaughan’ were learned “from her uncle, George Scamp, the horse-dealer”.8 Phoebe’s son Manny, quoted in the booklet to the 1998 CD The Yellow Handkerchief, said:

A lot of her songs she learned from her mother and father and ‘Higher Germany’ came from her oldest sister, Polly [born 1900, Blean] and her younger brother Henry had a good voice. Her uncles Bill and George were also great singers and Bill had a high pitched voice. If he was singing in another room and you couldn’t see him you would swear it was a woman singing.”

The different sources given for ‘Higher Germany’ are not necessarily contradictory – it’s likely that Phoebe had heard both her mother and older sister singing the song.

Peter Kennedy was the first to record Phoebe. When searching for songs in Kent in January 1954 he visited a “Mrs. Stanley (Bird)”, who was living in a caravan on a farm near the Three Chimneys pub, between Biddenden and Sissinghurst. Although Mrs Stanley had tonsilitis, Kennedy’s notes record that “She gave us address of her sister Mrs. Smith, Melton Meadows, Melton, Woodbridge, Suffolk. Her husband, Joe, plays fiddle and melodeon”9. This Mrs Stanley / Bird was probably Phoebe’s sister Mary, seemingly known as Polly who, when the 1939 Register was taken, was hop-picking at Frogs Hall Farm, Tenterden, along with various other people named Scamp and Matthews.

Over the next few days Kennedy recorded songs from Phoebe Smith’s step-brother Charlie Scamp at Chartham Hatch, and from Oliver Scamp (possibly Phoebe’s uncle) at Lower Halstow. He visited the Smiths in Suffolk as part of his collecting trip to East Anglia in July 1956 (although possibly this was a return visit – some years later he wrote “From the time I first met Phoebe it took nearly two years before she was able fully to record for me her family songs, in July 1956”10). A copy of his report on this collecting trip can be found at https://www.peterkennedyarchive.org/1956-2/east-anglia-1956/. It commences

Friday 6th: Collected machines and tapes, drove to Woodbridge making a number of calls in Essex en route without much success.

Saturday 7th: Made a number of calls in Woodbridge and arranged to record the Smith’s, gipsies, and Jim Baldry a painter and decorator at Melton.

Sunday 9th: Recorded from Mrs Phoebe Smith (42). Joe her husband had unfortunately hurt his hand in the meantime and was unable to play step-dance tunes on fiddle.

The songs collected from Phoebe Smith on this occasion were:

  • A Blacksmith courted me
  • I am a Romany
  • Shannon Side (Captain Thunderbolt)
  • Molly Varden (Shooting of his dear)
  • Higher Germanie
  • Young Ellender
  • The Oxford Girl
  • Pretty Betsy.

He visited the Smiths again in 1962, and on this occasion was able to record Joe playing the fiddle, and their eldest son Joe singing ‘The Riddle Song’, and playing step-dance tunes on the harmonica.

Phoebe told Peter Kennedy that she had been a mouth organ player:

I used to love to play the mouth organ and I began to play it very well, but my father used to say to me, “Phoebe, you mustn’t play that. That’ll give you horrible thick lips”. And I said, “Well, you won’t stop me from dancing will you, Daddy?” Used to say “No. You Can Dance. I love to see you dance, love to hear you sing”.

The step dancing was not without its issues, however – once, when step dancing, she kicked the toes out of her best boots, with the result that her father bought her a pair of boy’s shoes to dance in.

Kennedy put out his recordings on a Folktrax cassette, noting

Although Phoebe & Joe were living in a bungalow with hop-plants in the garden, they still had their wagons there, alongside their scrap-metal business, and most of the chat and singing was around the campfire.11

The Folktrax cassette also included extracts from their conversation, but Phoebe was unhappy about this, when she came to know, as she had not been aware that the material would ever be made available to the public at large.12 It has to be said that, nearly 70 years on, these recordings have proved invaluable in assembling this biographical sketch, and they also show Phoebe and Joe in a very positive light, as a devoted and loving couple.

By the time Kennedy’s Foktrax cassette was released, Phoebe Smith’s singing could be heard on three LPs on the Topic record. The first of these was Once I Had a True Love (Topic 12T193) released in 1970. The songs on this LP were recorded by Paul Carter, but the sessions were directed by Frank Purslow. Phoebe Smith had been the first traditional singer that Purslow saw, when she performed at Ewan MacColl’s Ballads and Blues club and, as he wrote later, “Phoebe was a revelation!”. Another London appearance had attracted the attention of Paul Carter:

It must have been early 1969 when I went to Woodbridge to record Phoebe Smith. Her singing had much impressed me when I heard her at Cecil Sharp House, and I felt she should be represented in the Topic catalogue. I knew that Frank Purslow knew her quite well and was familiar with her repertoire, so an arrangement was made for Frank and I to visit her. I picked up Frank from Bampton. Frank had decided what Phoebe should be asked to sing. We went to Woodbridge the next day. I was there to press the buttons on my Uher portable, and that’s about all. I’ve no recollection of the visit, but there were things on my mind at the time. It turned out that I had picked up the wrong tape boxes, and what I had was not virgin tape but stuff for recycling. So although these songs played fine on my Uher and on the bigger machine I used for editing, when they got to London the previous recording on them showed through. 13

Although Carter argued that it was simply a matter of adjusting the head alignment on Topic’s machine, the record company said that these tapes were unusable, so Carter and Purslow went back to Suffolk, and recorded the songs for a second time. The Topic LP Once I had a True Love was released in 1970. Frank Purslow’s notes for the album describe Phoebe as “a warm, homely, motherly woman adored by her family, despite the strict upbringing they have received at her hands. To Phoebe the most important things in her life are her home, her husband, her family and her friends”. He continued

Both Joe and Phoebe come from backgrounds where the importance of making one’s own entertainment was a necessity – and a tradition. From her childhood Phoebe had been a stepper, tapper and singer.

[…] “In those days,” she told me, “people used to make their own amusements, used to have nice week-ends together, used to sit round and have a little sing-song; and of course you’d learn songs from your parents, and you’d learn them from the people that used to come round. They were made of things that really happened. I mean, years ago when I was a child – and I’m not all that old – we never had radios and that sort of thing; and of course things that happened they used to make songs about, and stories. People used to learn them by listening to other people singing them. I learned one particularly from my father’s brother George. He was my favourite uncle, and I remember he used to get me on his knee and give me sixpence to sing for him. I used to love to hear him sing, he used to be – well you know – so dedicated into his songs when he was singing . . . he used to help the songs.”

When l asked Phoebe what attracted her to a particular song, she was quite definite. “l like the words of a song to have a real, true meaning, and I like a tune that goes according to the words and the happenings in the song. You can imagine – I can – as well as feeling for them – things that happened – what they did. I can picture them, you know, in the sorrow parts as well as the happiness. They’re human. Oh! I sing modern songs as well; there’s some very very, nice modern songs, but I don’t think they hit you quite so deep inside, because a lot of the songs today are just made up from out of the wind. No, I never went out and had music lessons, or dancing or singing lessons. All I learned I was self taught or from my parents. And l think that is the only true way that anyone can call themselves a tapper or a singer. I mean, if you learn it yourself you’re interested, you’re dedicated. There’s a lot of people today that do it just to get around and some money and that sort of thing. They don’t do it for the love of it, they just do it for what they can get. I always did singing and tapping and dancing just to please myself and make other people happy.”

Purslow also explained that

I have long since wanted to see her on record, but she is rather a difficult singer to record satisfactorily. Attempts to record her at “special occasions” have failed to capture what I consider to be the real Phoebe. Faced with a strange audience she tends to put on a “performance”. So we sat with Phoebe and Joe in their lounge and chatted and drank tea and then recorded a few songs. The results were excellent. A few days later I visited them again and had a long chat with Phoebe about the songs and her attitude to them, which I taped, and which shows how aware she is of the content of the songs and their meaning – and the tradition behind them, a living tradition, of which she, and Joe, and the family are a vital part.

Reviewing Once I had a True Love in the 1971 Folk Music Journal, Peter Kennedy wrote that having Phoebe’s songs available on record “realizes a long- awaited dream”. The album did not meet an entirely positive reception, however. Frank Purslow considered that Phoebe’s uninhibited singing style in front of an audience represented a put on “performance”, and that he had captured the “real Phoebe”. Others held a diametrically opposite view. The singer Danny Stradling, who met Phoebe and heard her singing in the 1960s and 1970s, has called the album “a travesty”, and relates that

in the months after the release of this record she was very unhappy with the outcome, and told me “they kept telling me to do it again because I didn’t do it the same as last time”.14

The “last time” here presumably referring to Paul Carter and Frank Purslow’s first attempt to record her for Topic. But, really, they should have been aware that it was unrealistic (and insensitive) to expect any traditional singer – still less one from the travelling community – to turn in an identical rendition of a song on two separate occasions.

Phoebe’s son Manny, quoted in the booklet to the Veteran CD The Yellow Handkerchief, gives a further reason for dissatisfaction with the LP:

Mum had such a clear voice and when she’d had a glass or two of Guinness she would sing and you could hear her at the other end of the village, but when she was recorded for the record (Once I Had a True Love) they wanted her to sound like a folk singer, so her singing is subdued.

This suggests that, as far as her family were concerned, these more restrained performances did not represent the “real Phoebe”.  

It’s worth noting that Paul Carter was probably aware that the recording equipment at his disposal was simply not capable of dealing with the wild, unrestrained style of singing that Phoebe was wont to adopt in public performances. Indeed Musical Traditions editor Rod Stradling believes that “in those days, there was not any microphone available that could record her very dynamic singing properly”, and that it was impossible for any recording to do justice to her singing – “you needed to ‘be there’ to properly appreciate England’s finest female traditional singer”.

Mike Yates, writing in the magazine Traditional Music in 1977 advanced a further theory about the relationship between Phoebe and folk song collectors:

I have heard it suggested that when Hamish Henderson discovered Jeannie Robertson and played those first tapes to English and American collectors, some or those collectors then went out determined to find an English female singer of equal stature. The implication, of course, is that Phoebe Smith was that discovery and that she was asked, directly or indirectly, to alter her singing style, to slow down her pace, to emphasise certain notes in far greater detail etc. Some readers may dismiss this as rubbish ; but it intrigues me that Phoebe is the only English singer that I have heard who sings in this manner. The other members of her family – sisters and brothers including the Kent gypsy Charlie Scamp who now lives in Faversham – that I have heard certainly sound no different from most other gypsy singers. The matter is still unresolved in my mind.15

Mike Yates spent time with Phoebe in the 1970s, and some of the songs he recorded appear on the Topic LPs Songs of the Open Road (12T253, 1975) and The Travelling Songster (12TS304, 1977) and, subsequently, on the Veteran CD The Yellow Handkerchief (VT136CD, 1998). Mike wrote:

I first heard of Phoebe Smith in 1963, when I was working a Cecil Sharp House as an assistant to Peter Kennedy. Peter had recorded Phoebe as a part of the BBC collecting scheme and he was busy transcribing her songs when I first went to work for him. Some years later I began collecting songs from English gypsies and travellers and whilst in Faversham, Kent, I met Phoebe’s relatives who told me that she was still an active singer. They gave me her telephone number and, within days, I was in Suffolk, driving out of Woodbridge along the Melton road looking for her home.

[…]

When I visited Phoebe I was aware that she had also been recorded by Paul Carter […] on behalf of Topic Records. There seemed little point in going over old ground and so we worked on the songs that Phoebe had learnt in her youth, many of which lay half-buried in the depth of her memory. Some songs came back quickly. Others had to be coaxed, verse by verse, sometimes line by line, until she was happy that she could recall no more of the song. And what songs they were

[…]

Phoebe and Joe Smith came from large families and were used to entertaining. They loved social gatherings such as dances, where Joe would play his fiddle, or pub singsongs where Phoebe would sing and step-dance, and they especially loved the company of other people. I think that they were two of the kindest and most likeable people that I ever met, and I am very glad that John Howson is now able to make so many of their songs available again. I know that Phoebe and Joe would approve.

Phoebe Smith died on 8th November 2001 at  the age of eighty-eight. She and Joe had seven sons: Joe, Henry, Nick, John, Manny, Fred and Tom, and by the time of her death the family had expanded to include thirty grandchildren, fifty-four great grandchildren and twenty great, great grand-children.  

Songs

Recorded by Peter Kennedy:

  • A Blacksmith Courted Me (Roud 816)
  • Captain Thunderbolt (Roud 1453)
  • Down by the Sheepfold (Roud 559)
  • Higher Germanie (Roud 904)
  • The Hopping Song (Roud 1715)
  • I am a Romany (Roud 4844)
  • Jolly Herring (The Herring Song ) (Roud 128)
  • Molly Varden (Roud 166)
  • The Oxford Girl (Roud 263)
  • Young Ellender (Roud 1417)

Recorded by Paul Carter and Frank Purslow:

  • A Blacksmith Courted Me (Roud 816)
  • The Dear Little Maiden (Roud 1751)
  • Higher Germany (Roud 904)
  • Molly Vaughan (Roud 166)
  • Once I Had a True Love (Roud 170)
  • The Tan Yard Side (Roud 1021)
  • The Wexport Girl (Roud 263)
  • The Yellow Handkerchief (Roud 954)
  • Young Ellender (Roud 1417)

Recorded by Mike Yates:

  • Barbara Allen (Roud 54, Child 84)
  • Captain Thunderbold (Roud 1453)
  • Dear Louise (Roud 23792)
  • Green Bushes (Roud 1040)
  • Jolly Herring (Roud 128)
  • Johnny Abourne (Roud 600)
  • Lavender (Roud 854)
  • Old Gypsy’s Waggon (Romany Rye) (Roud 13213)
  • Raking the Hay (Roud 855)
  • The Sheepfold (Roud 559)
  • Wings of a Swallow (Old Rocky Road) (Roud 13214)
  • Young Morgan (Roud 5369)

Others:

Discography

  • Once I Had a True Love, Topic Records 12T193 (LP, 1970), TSDL193 (digital download, 2009)
  • The Yellow Handkerchief, Veteran VT136CD (CD, 2001)

Songs by Phoebe Smith also appear on

  • Songs of the Open Road: Gypsies, Travellers & Country Singers, Topic Records 12T253 (LP, 1975), TSDL253 (digital download, 2009) – Mike Yates recordings
  • The Travelling Songster: An Anthology From Gypsy Singers, Topic Records 12TS304 (LP, UK, 1977), TSDL304 (digital download, 2013) – Mike Yates recordings
  • Songs of the Travelling People: Music of the Tinkers, Gipsies and Other Travelling People of England, Scotland and Ireland, Saydisc CD-SDL 407, (CD, 1994) – Peter Kennedy recordings

and on several volumes of Topic Records’ Voice of the People series – see the discography on the Mainly Norfolk website https://mainlynorfolk.info/folk/records/phoebesmith.html

  1. Louisa Lee Scamp, Find a Grave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/242771238/louisa-scamp ↩︎
  2. Mike Yates, notes to The Yellow Handkerchief, Veteran VT136CD (2001) ↩︎
  3. I am a Romany, Folktrax FTX100 (1975) ↩︎
  4. William Scamp, Find a Grave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/244201038/william-scamp ↩︎
  5. Mary Ann Jones Matthews, Find a Grave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/244418813/mary_ann-matthews ↩︎
  6. Frank Purslow, notes to Once I Had a True Love, Topic TSDL193 (1970) ↩︎
  7. Mike Yates, notes to The Yellow Handkerchief, Veteran VT136CD (2001) ↩︎
  8. Peter Kennedy, review of Once I had a True Love, Folk Music Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2 (1971) ↩︎
  9. Peter Kennedy, Kent Trip January 1954, https://www.peterkennedyarchive.org/1954-2/kent-1954/ ↩︎
  10. Peter Kennedy, review of Once I had a True Love, Folk Music Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2 (1971) ↩︎
  11. Peter Kennedy, notes to I am a Romany, Folktrax FTX100 (1975) ↩︎
  12. Mike Yates, Review of I am a Romany, Traditional Music No. 6, 1977 ↩︎
  13. Paul Carter, quoted in Mike Butler, Sounding the Century: Bill Leader & Co. Vol. 3, Troubador, 2023, p172-173 ↩︎
  14. Danny Stradling, review of The Yellow Handkerchief, Musical Traditions, 1998, https://www.mustrad.org.uk/reviews/p_smith.htm ↩︎
  15. Mike Yates, Review of ‘I am a Romany’, Traditional Music No. 6, 1977 ↩︎

2

Clarence Rook

Clarence Rook, 1862-1915

Cecil Sharp included two versions of ‘The shooting of his dear’ in the 1905 Journal of the Folk-Song Society. He wrote that “I noted the second version – which is but a fragment – from Mr. Clarence Rook, who heard it sung twenty years ago by a very old man at a Harvest Supper at Homestall, Doddington, near Faversham, Kent”. The readers of the Journal would probably have known Clarence Rook’s name, as he was a successful journalist and author.

His birth was registered at Faversham in the first quarter of 1863, although his death certificate gives his birth year as 1862. His mother was Miriam née Beall, while his father Henry Rook was a bookseller and postmaster in Faversham. The 1871 and 1881 census returns show the family living at 2 Market Place, Faversham; Clarence had one younger sister.

Local newspapers show that he took place in various local entertainments in 1880. For instance in May at the Board Schoolroom in Lynsted, when his delivery of an unnamed song earned an encore1; in Sittingbourne in November, when “A concert of secular music was given at the school-room in Crescent-street, on Monday evening, by the Free Church Choir, assisted by friends from Faversham”, and “the humorous songs of Mr. Frank Shrubsole, and Mr. Clarence Rook provoked much merriment”2 (other songs performed at this event included ‘The bailiff’s daughter of Islington’ and ‘O, who will o’er the Downs’); and then in December, at a Penny Reading given in the Town Hall, under the auspices of the Sittingbourne and Milton Workmen’s Club and Institute3. At the latter event, “Mr. Clarence Rook, of Faversham, created a perfect furore with his comic song about “the big drum, the kettle drum,” &c., and although it had been arranged that there should be no encoring, owing to the length of the programme, the audience would not be satisfied until he re-appeared, when he gave “I am so volatile” [one of the most popular songs of the comedian and singer George Grossmith] with equal success”. At the same event he also played a part in a performance of the comedic play ‘The Heir at law’.

He studied at Oriel College, Oxford between 1881 and 1886, although he still found time to make a musical contribution to the annual general meeting of the Sittingbourne Literary and Scientific Association in December 1885.4 At the time of the 1891 census he was residing at 9 Manilla Road, Clifton, in Bristol, employed as an Army & Civil Service tutor. He married Clara Wright in London, in 1893.

The 1899 Post Office London Directory lists Clarence as a journalist, living at 7 Milborne Grove, West Brompton, SW, and that was also the address recorded for him and Clara in the 1901 census; in 1911 they were residing at 139 Coleherne Court, Earls Court, Kensington.

Rook wrote for various London publications including The Globe, contributing to the humorous “By the Way” column, and The Daily Chronicle, where he founded the “Office Window” column. A brief notice of his death in the Faversham News, 1st January 1916, described him as “the originator and for 15 years editor of “The Office Window” in The Daily Chronicle”.

In the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Anita Levy described Clarence Rook as

a journalist, novelist, and writer of short, witty sketches of Edwardian London and its inhabitants. Bernard Shaw praised Rook as a “very clever fellow”; and Rook was most admired for his novel of working-class life, The Hooligan Nights (1899), an evocative, irreverent portrait of a young petty criminal, Alf, and his felonious and amorous adventures. As a chronicler of the slums of London’s East End, Rook takes his literary and historical place among such eminent contemporaries as George Gissing, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Morrison, and Sir Walter Besant — writers of fiction, non-fiction, and semifiction in the literature of urban life popular in Britain during the 1880s and 1890s.5

In his Introduction to The Hooligan Nights: Being the Life and Opinions of a Young and Impertinent Criminal Recounted by Himself and Set Forth by Clarence Rook, Rook stated

This is neither a novel, nor in any sense a work of imagination. Whatever value or interest the following chapters possess must come from the fact that their hero has a real existence. I have tried to set forth, as far as possible in his own words, certain scenes from the life of a young criminal with whom I chanced to make acquaintance, a boy who has grown up in the midst of those who gain their living on the crooked, who takes life and its belongings as he finds them, and is not in the least ashamed of himself.6

Questions have been raised as to the veracity of what Rook had written, while readers were scandalised by his apparently non-judgmental portrayal of the central character. To quote again from the Dictionary of Literary Biography

The Hooligan Nights consists of twenty-two short, descriptive sketches of the hooligan’s exploits, a format that Rook perfects in London Side-Lights. The reader meets the hooligan Alf on the bustling streets of London’s Elephant and Castle, eager to announce his “philosophy of life,” which Rook transcribes in the harsh phonetics of cockney English: “If you seen a fing you want, you just go and take it wiveout any ‘anging abart.” From there Rook follows Alf in word and deed as he shares his life story over ginger beer in a Lambeth pub, shows Rook around his turf, and introduces him to his girlfriends and criminal associates. In the process Rook recounts such gems as “The Burglar and the Baby,” a charming piece describing Alf ‘s rescue of a choking baby in a house into which he has broken; “Jimmy,” an account of Alf ‘s first mentor in crime; and “The Course Of True Love,” recounting Alf ‘s decision to marry his pregnant lover, Alice. “Holy Matrimony” finds Alf at the church after his marriage, bringing the book to a surprisingly traditional end much after the fashion of a domestic novel.

On the whole, Rook’s approach to representing his working-class hero is remarkably unsanctimonious, reveling in the hooligan’s felonious adventures and attempting to scandalize his middle-class readers, especially when he recounts Alf ‘s brutal treatment of his future wife. In fact, the public was so scandalized on the publication of portions of the work in the Daily Chronicle, as Rook explains in the introduction, that he was accused of making too positive a portrait of criminal life. In defense Rook argues that Alf is real and that “in real life the villain does not invariably come to grief before he has come of age.” He goes on to compare Alf ‘s life favorably to that of a clerk, no doubt raising a few more eyebrows among his readers, and ends by denying responsibility for the book’s contents:  “If under the present conditions of life a Lambeth boy can get more fun by going sideways than by going straight, I cannot help it.” 7

In his newspaper articles, when Rook discusses popular song, he is generally referring to songs such as ‘Two lovely black eyes’, ‘Champagne Charlie’ and ‘Tommy make room for your uncle’, rather than folk songs from the oral tradition. However, having remembered just a fragment of ‘The shooting of his dear’ from the 1880s, he actively sought out the remainder of the words. The following appeared in the Faversham Times and Mercury and North-East Kent Journal, Saturday 21st December 1901:

AN OLD KENTISH BALLAD.

MISSING LINES WANTED.

The following paragraph appeared one day last week in the leaderette columns of the Daily Chronicle:-

A curious accident in the neighbourhood of Colchester awakens dim memories of an old Kentish ballad which used to be chanted monotonously at harvest suppers. The accident happened to a Mr. Mussett, who was out shooting wild fowl by night. The account runs: “As Mussett rose to shoot some approaching birds, the other man, it is stated, let drive at him with a punt gun, mistaking him in the dim light for a wild swan.” The melancholy refrain of the ballad runs:–

O! cursed be my uncle for a-lending of me a gun!
For I bin and shot my trew love, in the room of a swan.

It was set to a dismal melody in the minor key, and should linger in the memory of many of Kent. Can anyone supply the rest of the lines?

We have received the following communication on the above subject: –

To the Editor of “The Faversham Mercury.”

Dear Sir, – I wonder if any of the Mercury‘s readers could remember and reproduce the missing words of this song. Little more than I have quoted (in that paragraph from the Daily Chronicle column) remains in my memory, for twenty years have passed since I first heard it chanted by a solemn man with chin-whiskers and a pipe in a Dodington farmhouse. And as you will see the Association of Men of Kent and Kentish Men want to disinter it. Another couplet which I can recall runs thus (it is spoken by the girl, supposed to have been shot):-

With my apron tied ower me, I ‘peared like unto a swan;
All underneath the green tree, while the showers they did come on.

Now, surely someone among your readers can supply a few more lines.

Yours,

CLARENCE ROOK

The Daily Chronicle,
Editorial Office
31, Whitefriars Street,
London,
December 13th, 1901.

Given that these were the only words for the song which Cecil Sharp had from Rook, we have to assume that his appeal for the words was not successful.

Clarence Rook died at the age of 53, on 23rd December 1915, his death being registered at St. George, Hanover Square, London. His death certificate gave the cause of death as “paralysis, bed sores and exhaustion”, but also stated that he had suffered for 26 years from Locomotor ataxia, which is often a symptom of syphilis. He was cremated at Golder’s Green.

Songs

The shooting of his dear (Roud 166)

  1. East Kent Gazette, 8 May 1880 ↩︎
  2. Kentish Gazette, 30 November 1880 ↩︎
  3. East Kent Gazette, 18 December 1880 ↩︎
  4. East Kent Gazette, 3 January 1885 ↩︎
  5. Anita Levy, Clarence Rook (1863-23 December 1915), Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol 135, British Short-Fiction Writers, 1880-1914: The Realist Tradition, p304 ↩︎
  6. https://www.victorianlondon.org/publications7/hooligan-01.htm ↩︎
  7. Anita Levy, Clarence Rook (1863-23 December 1915), Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol 135, British Short-Fiction Writers, 1880-1914: The Realist Tradition, p307 ↩︎
0

Dave Wickens

David Richard Wickens, 1898-1970

In her report on her October 1953 folk song expedition to Kent, Maud Karpeles wrote that she had recorded a version of ‘John Barleycorn’ from “Dave Wicken”, at Smarden.1 The fate of that recording is, sadly unknown – it is not listed in either the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library catalogue, or the Roud Index.

Dave Wickens had been born at Boughton Malherbe on St David’s Day, 1st March 1898. At the time of the 1901 census his father James was working for his father, William Wickens, who farmed at Park House Farm, Boughton Malherbe. William was originally from Ulcombe. He had been an agricultural labourer, but by 1891 had progressed to farm bailiff, and farmer by 1901. David’s mother was Annie Maria, née Martin, who came from Dover. She and James would ultimately have six children; David was the third eldest, and the second eldest son. By the next census in 1911, James Wickens was farming Park House Farm, and by 1921 Dave was “Assisting Father In General Farm Work”.

Between these dates, however, Dave had served in the Royal Navy. His service appears to run from 6th November 1916 to 18th March 1919. When enlisting, his occupation was given as agricultural labourer. He was 5 feet 3½ inches tall, with dark hair, hazel eyes, and a fair complexion. His service began at HMS Pembroke II (Eastchurch, Isle of Sheppey) and included periods at Gibraltar, Woolwich and Greenwich, and on board HMS Dido, HMS Columbine, HMS Hecla and HMS Prince George.

Dave Wickens in his sailor's uniform
Dave Wickens in his sailor’s uniform, probably taken November 1916, when he enlisted at Chatham Dockyard.
The Wickens family circa 1918
The Wickens family circa 1918. From left to right, back row: Dave (in naval uniform), older sister Esther, elder brother James, younger brother Roland; front row: sister Alice, parents James and Annie, brother Edward. Photo taken at Park House, Boughton Monchelsea.

Dave married Ethel Pack in the final quarter of 1924, and the 1939 Register shows them living at Haffenden Farm, Tenterden – roughly halfway between St Michael’s and Biddenden. Dave’s occupation was given as “Farmer Stock Breeder Hw” (i.e. Heavy Worker). His granddaughter Gill Bromley, who has fond memories of visiting her grandfather at Haffenden as a child in the 1960s, writes “Dave was married to Ethel Pack (another big local family) and they moved from a farmworkers cottage at South Park, Egerton to Haffenden Farm before the War in 1938 or 39. They rented it until Dave eventually bought it”.

Wedding photograph from the marriage of Dave Wickens and Ethel Pack
Wedding photograph from the marriage of Dave Wickens and Ethel Pack, 1924.

Dave and Ethel had five daughters, all apparently named after characters in folk songs. One of his surviving daughters recalls him “singing at home, after tea.  There was one song he had to stop singing as it made her cry, because it was sad – The Faithful Sailor Boy”.  Also “John Barleycorn, which she’d found a bit scary as a child (involved “cutting him down at the knees”).  She also remembered him singing carols at Christmas at his mother’s request.  But she couldn’t remember him singing publicly other than in the church choir”.  There’s no recollection in the family of him singing songs in other contexts, although he “did go to the Flying Horse [Smarden] on Saturdays, so maybe there was singing there?”2 It seems likely that he had some kind of local reputation as a singer, or how would Maud Karpeles have encountered him in 1953?

Dave Wickens died on 8th October 1970.

Dave Wickens using a horse-drawn one-way plough
Dave Wickens using a horse-drawn one-way plough (date not known).
Dave Wickens standing in front of a barn, September 1946
Dave Wickens, September 1946
Dave Wickens and dog
Dave Wickens and dog, date not known.
Dave Wickens watching Smarden play cricket in the early 1960s
Dave Wickens watching Smarden play cricket in the early 1960s

I am indebted to Gill Bromley (née Batt) for passing on her own recollections, and those of other descendants of Dave Wickens, and for providing these photographs.

Songs

  • The Faithful Sailor Boy (Roud 376)
  • John Barleycorn (Roud 164)
  1. Maud Karpeles, Folk Song Collecting Expedition Kent October 12th – 17th 1953, Vaughan Williams Memorial Library MK/1/2/4907 ↩︎
  2. Gill Bromley, personal communication, February 2025 ↩︎
0

Charles Bassett

Charles Bassett, 1840-1890

The Brighton weekly newspaper Southern Weekly News featured a regular column titled “Sussex Notes and Queries”, edited by Frederick E. Sawyer. In the edition for 9th June 1888, under the heading “Sussex Songs and Music”, Mr Sawyer appealed for information on a range of songs, of which he had only fragmentary texts. One of these was

Hunting song: –
“There was Dido and Spendigo, &c.”
Is not this called “The Berkeley Hunt.”

A follow-up to this request appeared in Southern Weekly News, 8th September 1888:

A correspondent suggested our applying to Mr. Charles Bassett, of Seal, Sevenoaks, Kent, for the words of this song, which we have done, and he now kindly sends them to us and says: – “I think it was in the year 1856 when a friend of mine came from Sussex to reside in this locality, and used to sing the song. It was by this means that I came to know it, so I think it may well be considered a Sussex song. I never saw it in Print, and whether the enclosed are quite the original words or not I am not prepared to say.”

There followed the words of ‘A Hunting Song’, as supplied by Mr. Bassett.

Charles Bassett had been baptised on 3rd May 1840 at the church of St Peter’s, Ightham. His father George, a labourer, and his mother Sarah née Knight, had both been born in Ightham; in 1841 they lived at Butchers Green, Ightham. Charles married Anne Parsons, a native of West Grinstead, in the parish church at Ightham on 16th December 1860. A year later, census returns show them living at Fuller Street, Seal. Charles was employed as an agricultural labourer.

The South Eastern Gazette, 3rd November 1863, reported on a ploughing match held at Sepham Farm near Otham, under the auspices of the Holmesdale Association. Among the prize-winners at this event, in the Implements section – prizes “awarded to agricultural labourers, servants of subscribers, for producing an implement or other article used on a farm, being entirely made by themselves” – were Charles Bassett, with Mr. W. Cronk, Seal, who won 2nd prize for “2 swing-gates, and wheelbarrow”.

By 1871 Charles had taken up the trade of carpenter. Ann was shown as the head of the household in Seal, looking after five of the eight children they would eventually have together, and was listed as “Carpenter’s wife”. Charles was away, working in the building trade at Kingston on Thames in Surrey, lodging at the Victoria Tavern. His occupation was shown as carpenter in the 1881 census, when the family’s address was given as Seal Village.

His name crops up in an unexpected context in a letter printed in the Kent Times, 12th July 1879. The newspaper devoted an entire page to the Kent and Sussex Agricultural Labourers’ Union, in preparation for the union’s seventh annual “demonstration”, due to take place at Rochester on Monday 14th. It was expected that Alfred Simmons, the union’s founder, would be speaking at the demonstration, making his first public appearance since his return from New Zealand – where he had accompanied locked out agricultural workers whom the union had helped to emigrate. The newspaper reports that, in addition to successfully resisting employers’ attempts to lower wages the previous winter, the union had supported “several thousands” of immigrants seeking – and finding – a better standard of life in New Zealand (for more on the formation of the Kent and Sussex Agricultural Labourers’ Union and the labour disputes of the 1870s see the article on Mary Powell).

The newspaper article included a letter home to “George”, from one Reuben Baldwin, “Late of Maidstone, No. 1 Branch”. He extolled the virtues of New Zealand as a place where work was readily available, for good wages, with good working conditions, and where food and other essentials were more affordable than in England. He stressed that

there is plenty of work for them that will work, but it is no use coming out here unless you mean hard work. You must all be prepared to use the shovel and the pick, for they were the first tools I had to use, and it is so with all; you must take the work as it comes. There is plenty of room for more to come out, but they must work; the work is quite as hard here as the old country, and I think harder for the time, only the day work is shorter. Clerks and counter jumpers are not wanted, there is plenty of that class; we want men that will ram in with pick and shovel, for there is any amount of road making going on; I don’t know a better man suited for this place than Charles Bassett, of Seal. He could have his 12s. a day if he was here; please to write to him and tell him to come out to me, for there  is not a better place for him in the old colony.

If this message reached Charles Bassett, he clearly did not act upon it. He died aged just 50, and was buried at the church of St Peter & St Paul, Seal, on 26th April 1890.

Songs

0

Dr Johnson

John Martin Johnson, 1898-1962

Francis Collinson collected one song from “Dr Johnson, Smarden”. This would have been Dr John Johnson, who was born in Richmond, Yorkshire in 1898. His mother was Janetta Jane Johnson, née Ayres. His father, Jonathan, was listed in the 1901 census as a boot dealer, but in 1911 – although still at the same address, 20 New Road, Richmond – as a farmer.

John, by then a medical student, was shown as a visitor to the family home in the 1921 census. He married Sybil M Wetherell in Richmond in 1925, and they must have moved to Smarden at some point between then and 1934 – the Sevenoaks Chronicle and Kentish Advertiser, 11th May 1934 reports that Dr J Johnson was to be one of the two vice presidents of the newly established Smarden, Biddenden and Bethersden Nursing Association. Clearly he became involved in village life in other ways: the Kentish Express, 14th April 1939, reported that he was re-elected as a church warden; while the Sevenoaks Chronicle and Kentish Advertiser for 3rd May 1935 noted that “John Clementson, as “Fergus Wimbush,” and J. Martin Johnson as “Mr. Priestly” were outstanding” when The Rooting Players, from Biddenden and Smarden, presented a dramatic piece titled The Man from Toronto.

The 1939 Register has John and Sybil living at “Appletree, Smarden”, presumably Apple Tree Cottage on Cage Lane, which is now a Grade II listed building. He died in the final quarter of 1962.

Songs

My Nan’s a Mazer (Roud 21895)

0

Tom Batt

Thomas Batt, 1886-1950

Francis Collinson collected a six verse version of ‘Come Come My Pretty Maid’ from the Batt Brothers of Bethersden in 1942. He had previously collected an identical version, but with only the first two verses, from Tom Batt, also at Bethersden. The Batt Brothers had a half-brother Thomas, from their father’s first marriage, but he died in 1912, so could not have been the singer that Collinson met. The singer was most likely the brothers’ nephew Tom, whose father Alfred Batt, born 1850, was the youngest of their half-brothers.

Tom was born in the third quarter of 1886. His mother was Harriet, née Rudderham. The 1891 census shows his father Alfred as a farmer, at Tearnden Farm, Green Lane, Bethersden. Tom was the third eldest child of five. His uncles, the twins Ebenezer and Harry Batt, who were 15 at the time – and who would become part of the glee-singing Batt Brothers ensemble – also lived at Tearnden, working as agricultural labourers on the farm.

Subsequent census records show that Tom stayed at Tearnden, working on the farm. He was listed as “Farmers son” in 1901 and 1921, and “Farm labourer” in 1911. The 1921 census shows him as married, although his wife was not at Tearnden when the census was taken.

Tom Batt with horse and buggy
Tom Batt with horse and buggy, Tearnden Farm

Local newspaper advertisements show that by 1919 he was branching out into buying and selling motorcycles. For example in the Folkestone, Hythe, Sandgate & Cheriton Herald, 31st May 1919, he was advertising as follows

1917 4½ h. p. Precision Cluck, good plating and enamelling, good tyres, seen any time, trial given before purchasing; £45 nett cash to first one comes along. – Tom Batt, Turnden Farm, Bethersden, Ashford, Kent.

A similar advertisement in the Kentish Express, 11th May 1934, gave his address as Wagstaff Farm, Biddenden, which was farmed by Victor Millen.

Tom Batt viewing two motor cycles
Tom Batt viewing two motor cycles
Tom Batt on a motor cycle
Tom Batt on a motor cycle
Tom Batt driving a motor car
Tom Batt driving a motor car

Reports suggest that Tom Batt was the black sheep of this respectable chapel-going family. As a dealer, he does not appear to have been too scrupulous about the provenance of the goods he was selling. Under the headline “VICTIMISING MOTOR CYCLE OWNERS. KENT MEN SENTENCED AT OLD BAILEY” the Kentish Express, 17th September 1921 ran a long report which began

Late on Friday afternoon the trial opened before the Common Sergeant of London at the Old Bailey, of Joseph Hill, 42, a shoemaker of The Cottage, Church Lane, Kennington, and Tom Batt, 35, a farmer of Turnden Farm, Bethersden, who were indicted, the former with stealing eight motor cycles […] Batt was indicted with receiving the same well knowing them to have been stolen. Hill pleaded guilty and Batt not guilty and was defended by Mr. Curtis Bennett.

The article concluded

Hill was sent to hard labour for 18 months and Batt to 12 months in the second division.

At some point, as shown in this photo, Tom Batt set up as a haulage contractor.

Lorry belonging to Tom Batt, General Haulage Contractor, outside Kent Wool Grower's Limited, Tannery Lane, Ashford.
Lorry belonging to Tom Batt, General Haulage Contractor, outside Kent Wool Grower’s Ltd, Tannery Lane, Ashford.

The 1939 Register shows Tom’s eldest brother, Alfred, running Tearnden Farm, along with his sister Kate (listed as “Poultry Farmer”) and son, also Alfred. A record for Tom Batt in the 1939 Register has not so far been located, but clearly he was in Bethersden in 1941 when he met Francis Collinson. He died in the first quarter of 1950.

Many thanks to Gill Bromley (née Batt) for providing the photographs of Tom Batt.

Songs

0

The Batt Brothers

A report on the autumn show of the Bethersden Cottage Gardeners’ Show, Kentish Express 23rd November 1907, contained the following:

In the evening a diverting entertainment was presented, most diverting contributions being submitted by Miss Creaton, Miss Inge, Miss Skinner and Miss Parker, the Vicar (the Rev. D.H. Creaton), and Messrs. W. Parker, James Batt, Martin and the men’s part-song class. In addition instrumental selections were played by the Bethersden brass band, under the leadership of Mr. Chas. Heathfield.

One week later, on 30th November, additional information was provided:

THE SHOW.– We are asked to state that Mr. James Link, who was such a successful exhibitor at the vegetable show last week, is father to the gardener of Lord Hothfield. The opening ceremony of the above was performed by Mrs. Elmslie, who was accompanied by Colonel Elmslie, C.B., of Forge Dene. We are also asked to draw special attention to the musical contributions in the evening of the Batt Bros., who rendered the anthem, “Awake” and “Dame Durden” in excellent style.

35 years later, ‘Dame Durden’ was one of two songs which Francis Collinson noted from the Batt brothers on 25th June 1942, the other being ‘Come Come My Pretty Maid’ (which he also took down from their cousin Tom Batt). And both songs formed part of the repertoire of the Millen Family (related by marriage to the Batts) when they recorded the CD In Yonder Green Oak in 2000.

George Frampton, in his article The Millen Family of Bethersden, Kent, provides further information on the Batt brothers’ activities:

The Smarden Local History scrapbooks compiled by the local Women’s Institute, which are on microfilm at Ashford Public Library, list two more items in their repertoire: The Mistletoe Bough; and the local version of Nahum Tate’s hymn While Shepherds Watched, to the tune known elsewhere as ‘Lyngham’ or ‘Nativity’.  In both cases, only the tune of each is given, on the assumption that no local variant on the words existed for those generally known.  There are also numerous references present to their singing at various village functions.  The Batt brothers’ singing was evident in the 1920s, when the New Year Old Folks’ Tea was revived.  The ‘Old Friends’ Tea’ as it was renamed had been abandoned with the First World War, but was started up again by the sisters Doris Julia and Kate Batt of Romden Farm, Smarden (a photograph of whom appeared in English Dance and Song in 1969)1 – who were distant relatives of the brothers.  After the repast, there was entertainment supplied from the guests themselves – including Bill Crampton (Dillon’s gardener in 1942) playing his accordion and singing his songs, also from professional performers from Maidstone and elsewhere.  The Batts were often joined for this by their brothers-in-law Victor and Basil Millen from Wagstaff Farm at nearby Biddenden.  The local paper reported that in 1928, the Batt and Millen brothers ‘rendered old glees unaccompanied.’  In 1931, they were referred to as the ‘Messrs. Batt Glee Party.’  Both Batts and Millens were involved in 1932, but after that, no mention was made of this coupling.  In 1937, ‘the four well-known Batt brothers (rendered) their ever popular glee-singing, and their favourite song Just Kitty.’

It seems curious that Francis Collinson only noted down two songs from the Batt brothers – he must have been aware of their larger repertoire.  Dan, Harry, Eb and Mark were featured in the fifth edition of Country Magazine broadcast in July 1942, wherein “… a fifty years old song was sung …” – without specifically stating who did the singing.  One can only deduce that he was looking specifically for one type of song – i.e. the ‘folk’ song, rather than anything book-learnt, even though the item concerned may have beenhanded down orally from generation to generation, from friend to neighbour.  Or perhaps it was that in the 1940s, when Collinson was active, glees were still perceived as modern songs or art songs from literary sources and therefore not worthy of transcription.

In 1935, the Batt brothers decided to do a recording of their singing.  They rehearsed at Jim’s farm at Sevington, standing in a circle trying to get the harmonies right, then it was off to London and the studio.  Only a few discs seem to have been cut, and these copies of the record have gone to ground – even among the surviving members of the family, although it is recalled that the tracks concerned were Dame Durden and Stephen Foster’s Uncle Ned.  The record itself did not find universal praise.  As it was, when each of the Batts died, with no direct descendant keen to continue the family singing tradition, the inheritance of their songs remained solely with the Millens.2

George Frampton has identified the singing Batt Brothers as Dan, Jim, Harry, Ebenezer and occasionally Mark. A report on the 1942 Country Magazine radio programme, Kent Messenger, 3rd July, included photos of the brothers who had taken part in the broadcast: Dan, Harry, Ebenezer and Mark Batt. These were the sons of James and Jane Batt of Hodgham Farm, Bethersden.

James Batt was baptised on 29th April 1810, at St Michael’s, Smarden. He married Harriet Lindridge at St Michael’s, Chart Sutton, on 12th October 1831, and the 1841 census found them living at Further Quarter, High Halden. James’ occupation was agricultural labourer, and they had four children. In 1851, still at Further Quarter, they had another three sons. Harriet died in January 1855, and the 1861 census shows James as a widower, living with his two youngest sons at Hodgham, Bethersden. His occupation is no longer agricultural labourer – he is now listed as “Farmer of 12 acres of land”.

In 1861 the household included a 23 year old house keeper, Jane Lengley. She and James were married the following year, and it was her sons who would go on to sing together as the Batt Brothers. At the time of the 1871 census the family were still at Hodgham. James was now shown as “Farmer (14 acres)”. In 1881 James was still “Farmer using 14 acres” but the family was shown as living at Odiam House, Bethersden. The household included two children from James’ first marriage, plus seven sons and one daughter from his second.

James died in 1886, at the age of 77. Jane continue to live at Hodgham until her death in 1914.

Daniel Batt, 1869-1956

Dan, born in the third quarter of 1869, was the third son to be born to James and Jane. He remained at the family farm at Hodgham, working as an agricultural labourer at the time of the 1891 census, when his mother Jane was listed as “Farmer”, and shown as “Helping on farm” in 1901, when his older brother George was the farmer. By 1911, however Dan was farming Hodgham. He married Pluckley-born Annie Pearson in 1916, and by 1921 they had moved to Langley Farm, Bethersden, where they remained for the rest of their lives. Dan’s obituary, Kentish Express, 19th October 1956 described him thus:

A FARMER FOR 30 years at Langley Farm, and previously at Vine Hall, Bethersden. Mr. Dan Batt, 87, of Langley, died in Hothfield Hospital. His wife died over five years ago and there are no children. Mr. Batt a keen all-round sportsman and an excellent shot was one of seven brothers. of whom only Mr. H. Batt survives. Formerly some of the brothers, known as The Batt Glee Singers, recorded for the BBC.

George Frampton records that at various times Dan Batt played trombone in both the Bethersden and Biddenden brass bands.

James Batt, 1871-1941

Jim Batt was born in the final quarter of 1871. Like his older brother Dan, he was working at Hodgham as an agricultural labourer in 1891. He married Alice Link in 1896 and in 1901 they were living on Ashford Road, Bethersden; Jim was working as a butcher.

In 1911 his occupation was given as “Butcher and farmer”, and the family were residing at an address in The Street Bethersden. There were five daughters and two sons, and the household also included a male assistant and female general domestic servant. Another daughter had been born by 1921, when the Batts were to be found at Court Lodge, Sevington. Jim was now shown simply as “Farmer”. He employed his son Norman as a shepherd, while daughters Gladys and Daisy were “Assisting Father”, and son Ashley was “Assisting Father In Farm Work”.

Jim remained at Court Lodge until his death on 27th April 1941. An obituary was printed in the Kentish Express, 2nd May 1941:

DEATH OF WELL KNOWN FARMER
MR. J. BATT. SEVINGTON

Kent’s farming districts and market towns will regret to learn of the death of Mr. James Batt, Court Lodge, Sevington, on April 27. Mr. Batt, who was 69, and who had borne a long illness patiently, had resided at Sevington for over twenty years, and he was recognised as a skilled farmer in all branches of agriculture, including hop-growing, fruit cultivation, sheep-rearing and formerly, dairy-farming.

He was born at Odiam Farm, Bethersden, in which locality he lived for about forty years, during which time he became well-known. as a farmer and a butcher. In 1916 he removed to Headcorn, but after a year he returned to Bethersden, and in 1919 he went to Sevington. He was a keen cricketer and an excellent shot in his younger days. He had the honour to win a silver cup (1936) presented by the organizers of the Ashford Cattle Show for the best grass farm in Kent. Until ill-health caused him to resign, he served on the local War Agricultural Committee for the disposition of plough-lands.

He is survived by his wife Mrs. A. Batt, and his daughters and sons Mrs. H. Lorden (Kenardington), Mr. N. Batt (Bethersden), Mrs. S. Burbridge (Headcorn), Mr. A. Batt (Sevington), Mrs. C. Hunt (Sevington), Mrs. A. Chisman (Poole), and Mrs. H. Crump (Bilsington). The second daughter died in 1934. There are nine grandchildren.

Like Dan, Jim played euphonium in local bands, and could also play the fiddle.

Henry Batt, 1875-1964

Harry and Ebenezer were twins, born in the third quarter of 1875. In 1891 both were working for their half-brother Alfred (born 1850) as agricultural labourers, at Ternden Farm, Green Lane, Bethersden. In 1901 Harry was working for his older brother, Charles Batt, who farmed at Barrell Farm, Bethersden. He married Eva Minnie Brown in 1909, and two years later they were living at Sunny Side Farm, Bethersden. Harry was described as “Farmer grazier”. In 1921 they had a daughter, and were still at Sunny Side Farm. Harry’s occupation was given as “Farmer – Employer”, Eva’s as “Farmer – Own Account”. Still at Sunnyside Farm, School Road, Bethersden in September 1939, Harry was by now a widow. His occupation was given as “Dairy & Poultry Farmer”.

Harry was the last of the brothers to survive, dying at the age of 88 in the second quarter of 1964.

Ebenezer Batt, 1875-1954

The 1901 census shows Ebenezer “Helping on farm” for George Batt, the oldest of his brothers, who had taken on the running of the family farm at Hodgham. Later that year he married Elizabeth Pearson, with whom he had three children.

By the time of the 1911 census Ebenezer was farming at Wissenden Lodge, Bethersden. Elizabeth died in 1919, and the following year Ebenezer remarried. His new wife was Dorothy E. Bee, originally from Southampton; they were married in the Pancras Registration District, London. In 1921 they were living at Wissenden Lodge, in 1939 at Kench Hill Farm, Tenterden. Ebenezer retired in 1944 and moved to Sellindge. He died in 1954, at the age of 78. An obituary in the Kentish Express, 26 February 1954 read:

Was Weald Farmer And Hop Grower

Member of well-known Smarden family, Mr. Ebenezer Batt, dairy farmer and hop grower of Wissenden, Coopers-lane, Sellindge, died on Friday, aged 78.

He worked on his father’s farm, when 11. and later farmed Wissenden Farm, Smarden, until 1934 when he went to Kench Hill Farm, Tenterden. In 1944 he went to live in retirement at Sellindge, after farming for nearly 60 years. He was a great sportsman and a fine shot, gaining many awards for clay pigeon  shooting.

His twin brother, Mr. Harry Batt. still lives in Smarden.

His funeral took place at the Tilden Chapel, Smarden, a Strict Baptist chapel dating back to 1726, of whose congregation all of the Batts had been members.

Mark Batt, 1879-1950

Mark was born in the first quarter of 1879. In 1901, like Dan and Eb he was “Helping on farm” at Hodgham, and ten years later was still there as a farm worker. He married Esther A Jarvis in 1920. The 1921 census and 1939 Register both show him farming at Buckman Green, Smarden. He died in the final quarter of 1950, aged 71.

Songs

  1. The photograph appeared in English Dance & Song, Vol 31, No 4 Winter/Christmas 1969, p123, accompanied by the following text: “An interesting old photograph sent to us by Mrs. Helen M. Windibank of Smarden, Kent. It shows a musical group which used to meet at Chessenden, Smarden, Kent for playing and singing together. The photograph was taken in the summer of 1909.
    The Misses Kate and Doris Julia Batt, and Miss Dorothy Morley on the right of the picture were enthusiastic singers. Even then, when travel to London was a great adventure, Kate used to go to Town each week for a singing lesson. They all played and sang during the Winter evenings, at their home, Romden, Smarden. This playing and singing was inborn in the Batt family. As early as 1860 six Batt sisters (the sisters of Mrs. Windibank’s Grandfather) used to sing part songs from an old song book.” ↩︎
  2. Frampton, George, The Millen Family of Bethersden, Kent, Musical Traditions, 2001. https://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/millens.htm ↩︎

0

Bob Ellison

Robert Ellison, c1836-?

Cecil Sharp noted down fourteen sea shanties from Bob Ellison at Belvedere on the 4th and 7th September 1914. Belvedere, between Abbey Wood and Erith, was at that time part of Kent; since 1965 it has formed part of the London Borough of Bexley. Although he didn’t specify this in his manuscripts, when publishing one of Bob Ellison’s songs in the Journal of the Folk-Song Society, Sharp made it clear that he had collected the song at the Sailors’ Home in Belvedere. This was Belvedere House in Erith, run by the Royal Alfred Seafarers’ Society, which had been opened on New Year’s Day 1876, as a home for “Worn-out and Disabled Merchant Seamen”. The charity remained in Belvedere until 1978, before relocating to Belvedere House, Banstead, Surrey, which still operates as a residential home for men or women from a seafaring background.

Sharp must have written to the Governor of the Home, Captain John Dowdy, enquiring if any of the residents were singers, because his archive contains two letters from the Captain. The first (CJS1/13/1/10/1), dated October 14th 1908, is short and to the point:

Dear Sir in answer to yours re. the old men singing to you I regret very much to say that I have no singing men in my crew. I have asked them times out of number to try but they have no voice left in them. Therefore it would only be waste of time and expense to you to come.

Sharp was clearly persistent, because a subsequent reply  (CJS1/13/1/10/2), dated October 22nd began “You are at liberty to come to the Home and do the best you can”, and advised on the best time of day to visit. We do not know if Sharp visited the Home in 1908, but clearly he did go there in 1914 – by which time, one imagines, there would have been a number of new inmates including, presumably, Bob Ellison. In fact, he not only took down shanties from Mr Ellison, but from at least one member of the Belvedere’s staff: as well as the verses of the shanty ‘Shanadar’ which he got from Bob Ellison, he took down another 3 verses which were “Given me by the Hall Porter of Belvedere” (CJS2/10/3028); and the song ‘Drunken Sailor’, which he collected from George Conway at the Sailor’s Home in Leman Street, Whitechapel, includes a verse which Sharp noted was “given me by Doorkeeper of Belvedere Home” (CJS2/10/3025).

Sharp recorded that Mr Ellison was 78 years old, but other than that we know practically nothing about him. However Sharp’s notes for ‘Shanadar’ quote the singer as saying “I am nice and comfortable here but I’m afraid they will want to bury me in a church yard. I would rather be buried on the high seas on a dirty wild night than in Westminster Abbey!”

Songs

0

Children at Trosley (Trottiscliffe)

On 29th July 1908 Cecil Sharp noted down six children’s singing games at the primary school in ‘Trosley’. This is in fact the local pronunciation of the village officially known as Trottiscliffe – although it has been referred to as both Trosley and Trotterscliffe.

The following description is from The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland, 1868, quoted from https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/KEN/Trottiscliffe

TROTTISCLIFFE, (or Trotterscliffe or Trosley), a parish in the hundred of Larkfield, lathe of Aylesford, county Kent, 9 miles W. of Maidstone, its post town, and 2 N.E. of Rotham. The village, situated at the foot of the chalk hills, was given by King Offa to Rochester Priory in 788, and subsequently came to the Bishops of Rochester, whose palace was built here in 1185 by Bishop Granville. The land is partly in hop-grounds. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Canterbury, value £332, in the patronage of the lord chancellor. The church, dedicated to SS. Peter and Paul, has been restored and modernised. There is an endowed National school. At a farm in the vicinity Druidical stones, British coins, copper swords, and other relics of antiquity have been discovered.

The name ‘Trosley’ survives today in nearby Trosley Country Park.

Songs

0

Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Baskerville 2 by Anders Noren.

Up ↑