Beyond the Names: Unraveling the Mystery of the Young Girl from Hereford and the Foreigner of Jewish Origins

Many years ago, my father intrigued me with a story of our family secrets – tracing back to a young girl from Hereford and a “foreigner of Jewish origins.” Needless to say, when I started to undertake a study of our family stories, this one I had to figure out! The genesis of the legend can be found in a memoire recounted by Beresford Day Davies (dated October 6, 1985). Beresford’s story is also interesting and shrouded in even more family shame and secrecy, but that is a story for another time. Beresford talks of how his father, Edward Futcher Davies (1881-1936) was the son of a hatter, who was himself the “illegitimate son of a young girl who came to London from Hereford and had a liaison with a well-to-do foreigner of Jewish origins.”

We are not amused by bastards!

It’s probably worthwhile to describe what England would have been like for the bastard son of a Jew in the early- to mid-1800s.

Queen Victoria took the throne of England in 1837 to 1901. The United Kingdom was a well-entrenched constitutional monarchy, which became more so as Queen Victoria’s reign continued. As a result, Queen Victoria’s power came from the moral influence she could exert on the population, and she focused on “family values”. Victorian England is therefore known for its strict moral standards. Being a bastard in this era was, needless to say, less than acceptable, and the law didn’t help.

Victorian England’s Bastardy Clause focused on punishing the mother and absolving the father of any responsibility. The intent was to dissuade loose women from sexual liaisons out of wedlock. This had the predictable effect of sending unwed mothers into lives of poverty at workhouses, and their children to suffer along with them. Unwed mothers were scorned by Victorian society, and their illegitimate offspring ostracized.

I found it interesting that the father in our story was described as of “Jewish origins.” Jews had been in England since the Norman Conquest of 1066, and tolerance and discrimination had waxed and waned in the centuries since. By the mid-19^th century, while still relatively unknown to most British citizens because of their small population, Jews found themselves emancipated and were allowed to sit in Parliament. In fact, it seems that being an unwed mother or a bastard was considered far more offensive in this relatively religiously tolerant society than being a Jew was in most of the rest of Europe.

To find who the young girl from Hereford was, and perhaps even to find the foreigner of Jewish origins, first I had to find the hatter that was their son. To do that, I had to find Edward Futcher Davies. I soon discovered two men by the name Edward Futcher Davies: Junior and Senior. EFD Jr. (1881-1936) was the father of Beresford Day Davies (to whom the memoire is attributed). EFD Jr. lived his whole life in London, and was a bank clerk, beginning his occupation sometime before his 20^th year.

In 1901, EFD Jr. was living with his father and mother. EFD Sr. (1848-1926) was working as a silk hatter. EFD Sr., according to Beresford’s memoire, was “rather withdrawn in family circles.” This was attributed to the fact that he was the “illegitimate son of a young girl who came to London from Hereford and had a liaison with a well-to-do foreigner of Jewish origins.”

Interestingly, I have been able to trace EFD Sr.’s father, who was a French polisher named Edward Lane Davies (1825–1902). He was married to Susannah Futcher, EFD Sr.’s mother. So the father here is not unknown, and Susannah is from Shoreditch in London (not Hereford). Maybe it was Edward Lane Davies’s father and mother that were the cause of the family secrecy? This is where my trail gets murkier, but I can certainly, based on evidence, construct the following story that makes some sense from the facts that I have discovered.

The Story of Edward Lane Davies

Sarah Davies found herself quite alone when she gave birth to her son Edward in 1825 in Shoreditch, London, England. No father was listed on the birth or baptism records, so baby Edward started his life as a bastard. Victorian values were strong, and an illegitimate child to a young mother would have been nothing more than a burden. While Sarah may have tried to make a life for herself and her son, she had no chance of seeking any help from the father. The poor laws were against her.

St.Luke's workhouse circa 1830

Eventually, her son, and perhaps even Sarah herself, needed relief from the poverty in which they found themselves. The nearby St.Luke’s workhouse offered shelter, but this was coupled with demanding conditions. For a poor family, though, the workhouse was the only way that Sarah could guarantee that her only son Edward received the necessities of life, and some semblance of an education.

Living in the workhouse meant that Sarah saw her son very little, and contributed even less to his upbringing. She knew that her choices were limited, and her son’s even less so. The workhouse at St.Luke’s became their home, though they were mostly separated from one another.

When he was a teenager, Edward left the workhouse to fend for himself. His life in St.Luke’s had been regimented, and life outside the institution offered a freedom he didn’t know he could have.

Ironmonger's Row is just around the corner

In 1841, Edward, as a fifteen-year-old, was living with a number of others, mostly men, on Ironmongers Row in London, quite near St.Luke’s. There, even without a trade, he could get by on his own. His mother Sarah, to whom he had never been close as a result of their separation in the workhouse, was no longer a part of his life, and she never would be again.

In his 20s, Edward renamed himself Edward Lane Davies, to create a new persona perhaps, one that captured his birth mother, but also represented his desire to be something more than his accidental birth. He was, perhaps, imagining his birth as one that did not come with the title “bastard”.

In the late 1840s, Edward Lane fell for Susannah Futcher, from Andover in Hampshire. As one of 11 children, and the oldest girl, Susannah was sent to London to find work to help support her father, William Futcher, a sawyer. Like Edward Lane, she was seeking escape. Edward and Susannah soon found each other while living in the poorer parts of London, and shortly after had a son, whom they named Edward Futcher Davies. They moved in together, unmarried, to an apartment at 11 Charles Place in Shoreditch, London.

Watching his grand-child being raised outside of a Victorian family unit didn’t sit well with William Futcher. He travelled from Andover to insist that Susannah and Edward marry and raise their family properly. They did, at the parish church at St. Leonard’s in Shoreditch on January 30, 1853. The curator, Mr. Attwood, recorded the marriage. He turned to Edward to find out the name of Edward’s absent father, and Edward, facetiously, replied “Adam”. Mr. Attwood dutifully recorded the name until he realized that Edward was referring to the human male of biblical origins, and crossed the name off in exasperation.

With that, Edward and Susannah began their legal union. William Futcher, in an effort to ensure that his daughter and grand-child had as comfortable a life as possible, set Edward up with some of the craftsmen who received the planks that William prepared as a sawyer. They trained Edward as a French polisher, and he would bring their custom cabinetry to a fine finish suitable for the homes of the upper classes.

By 1861, Edward and Susannah had two sons. Edward Futcher (Sr.), at age 13 had already left school and was an errand boy, helping to support his family. Thomas Lane was just two years old. Edward Lane never talked to his children about his up-bringing in the workhouse. His life with Susannah and his work in a trade was what his children needed to know and what would keep the dark stain of bastardy away from his progeny.

Edward Futcher Davies Jr. left home before the end of the next decade, marrying Annie Cole in 1871 and working as a silk hatter.

By 1891, Edward Lane Davies had lost his wife Susannah and moved in with his second son Thomas, now working as a sanitary inspector and himself married with a four-year-old son.

Edward Lane Davies, born a bastard in Victorian England, living independently, finding love on Ironmongers Row, and a trade as a French polisher, died on August 16, 1902, aged 77 years. In his later years, he would tell his son Thomas hints about the story of his humble roots. This story has changed over the generations. Perhaps Edward Lane imagined that his father was "well-to-do", and the hint of mystery that came with "foreigner of Jewish origins" made the whole story less unseemly. So, while we don’t know the foreigner of Jewish origins, we do know that our ancestors were scrappy, and sought to make something of a life that would have doomed many to failure. I like to think that tenacity is the legacy of Edward Futcher Sr., the hatter, Edward Lane Davies, the French Polisher, and Sarah, the girl who fell for a man who left her and her infant son to fend for themselves in the workhouses of London.

Sources:

I am absolutely certain about the facts up to and including the year and location of Edward Lane Davies’s birth. I found a birth record for an Edward with only a mother (Sarah Davies) listed. The name, date and location are all consistent with ELD, and the fact that there is no father listed is consistent with the family story. There are no other records that I can access until Edward Lane is 15. An Edward Davies shows up on the census of 1841 living on his own in Saint Luke’s Parish at Ironmonger Row, right beside Saint Luke’s, which was a workhouse. It is not too much of a stretch to consider that the workhouse guardians would send their wards out close by once they became teenagers. The records for Saint Luke’s residents for the time period Edward would have been there are not accessible to me from my armchair. I am absolutely certain of the marriage to Susannah Futcher, and the marriage record does show Edward Lane Davies’s father as Adam, with the name scratched out.

Updated October 5, 2015:
I have found a Shoreditch workhouse record with our Sarah and Edward listed. It seems certain now Sarah started out her new family's life in the workhouse. This is a workhouse record. The columns are: name_age_ward_date admitted (year is 1825)_date discharged_remarks. There is Sarah with her newborn admitted in June, baby born July, discharged the same year in August. I am not entirely certain what the remarks say.