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
- A Hunting Song (There was Dido and Spendigo) (Roud 584)
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