In a previous article, I traced the involvement of my father’s family, the Pulsfords, with the Swedenborgian New Jerusalem Church from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. In this ‘prequel’, I attempt to trace my forebears from rural Somerset to Victorian London in the first half of the nineteenth century.
Pulsford is an unusual surname, often mispronounced and misspelt, and its rarity should make putting together my family’s history easier. However the Pulsfords have had a long history of religious dissent, which predates my family’s espousal of Swedenborgianism. Prior to 1837, there was no legal obligation for births and deaths of those from dissenting faiths to be recorded, and many were not. The family tree that I have drawn up has therefore had to be derived from the incomplete and sometimes ambiguous records that do exist, and is perhaps better regarded as a hypothesis than the definitive truth.
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| Wellington, Somerset in the mid-nineteenth century |
Pulsford is clearly derived from a place name (a ford by a pool), but there is no town or village named Pulsford in the UK. Enter it into Google Maps and you will be directed to Pulsford Lodge, a modern care home in the Somerset village of Wivelscombe. Close examination of nineteenth century Ordnance Survey maps reveals a handful of farms in the West Country named Pulsford. There are Higher and Lower Pulsford, adjacent farms in the rural parish of Teignbridge, west of Newton Abbot in Devon, and others in the evocatively named parishes of Puddington and Cruwys Marchand, in deep countryside west of Tiverton, in mid-Devon. The 1841 census lists just 202 Pulsfords, including children, in England and Wales. 34 are in Devon and 59 in Somerset. The large majority live in an area straddling the Devon-Somerset border, between Wellington in Somerset to the east, Tiverton to the south, and the North Devon towns of Barnstaple and Porlock. Wivelscombe, where Pulsford Lodge Care Home is situated, lies within this area.
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| The area of north Devon and Somerset where most Pulsfords were living in the early 19th century |
At the same time, 45 Pulsfords were living in London in 1841, and it is clear that members of the clan were forsaking the countryside for the metropolis, to escape rural poverty or to seek new opportunities in the largest and richest city in the world. Pulsfords were settled in London by the mid-eighteenth century. Most prominent were Robert Pulsford (d 1835) and his son William (1772-1833), who were wine merchants, had an interest in a Jamaican plantation worked by slaves, and acquired extensive land holdings in the Home Counties. They lived in fashionable areas of the West End. Despite this, they were Dissenters and Whigs in politics. William’s son, another Robert (1814-1888), was Whig M.P. for Hereford from 1841-1847 and had the rare distinction of having a ship named after him – a 350 ton clipper commemorating his role as a leading maritime insurance broker. In the 1860s, Robert bought an estate centred around Pitt House, Chudleigh Knighton, near Newton Abbot – presumably reflecting his family’s origins in that area.
From Wellington to Bermondsey
My ancestors appear to have originated from Wellington in Somerset. Wellington is a small market town, south west of Taunton. From the late eighteenth century into the nineteenth it achieved a measure of prosperity through the establishment of a woollen clothing industry centred around two large mills on the northern outskirts of the town. At the same time there were pockets of poverty. Daniel Defoe in 1724 reported being beset by beggars when entering the town, possibly at Rockwell Green, known as Rogues Green in the eighteenth century. The parish church, dedicated to St John the Baptist, dates from 1178, but dissenting religion also has a long history in the town, with the Presbyterians (later Independents and subsequently Congregationalists) having a presence from 1689 and Baptists and Quakers also active by the late seventeenth century.
Our story begins (according to my hypothesis) with the marriage of William Pulsford and Elizabeth Twose in the parish church in July 1760. I know nothing about William’s occupation or where he and his family actually lived. They appear to have baptised at least nine children in the parish church, but subsequently took up dissenting religion. William and Elizabeth and at least three of their children apparently moved to London from Wellington in the 1790s, and lived at a much less exalted level than Robert and William the wine merchants and slave owners, settling south of the Thames in Bermondsey. We don’t know why they settled there, but if they believed that the streets would be paved with gold, they were sadly mistaken. Bermondsey was a determinedly working-class area and for much of the nineteenth century it was one of the poorest parts of London. Although south of the river, it was not strictly a suburb, as most inhabitants worked in the area. It was a place of mainly small-scale industries. At the time, cargo ships sailed right up to London Bridge and the riverside was lined with wharves and warehouses. Industries made use of the raw materials brought into the docks and it was particularly known for tanning and leather working. At the turn of the nineteenth century there was still countryside to the south of the built-up area bordering the Thames, but as the century wore on, population increase led to the whole parish being covered with residential and commercial development. In the 1890s, Charles Booth’s economic map of London has Bermondsey containing even more areas of poverty than the East End.
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| My speculative and partial Pulsford Family Tree! |
So this was the unpromising place that the Pulsfords found themselves in. There are no records of William or Elizabeth in London, but while we know nothing of their parents’ lives, some of William and Elizabeth’s children do appear in contemporary records. We will move on to trace their families the best we can – but not in age order.
Elizabeth and Hannah Pulsford
Elizabeth (b 1769) and Hannah (b 1779) both married artisans. We know of their families through the retrospective registrations of their children’s births at Dr. Williams Library, Cripplegate, the main repository of birth and death records for London dissenters prior to the introduction of universal registration in 1837. The sisters signed each other’s entries as witnesses.
Elizabeth married a tailor, Henry Morgan and lived in the early 19th century in Camberwell, at the time gradually growing from a farming village into an affluent suburb. They had at least five children, the eldest, Henry, becoming a tailor like his father and George becoming a carpenter.
At the birth of their first child in Southwark in 1806, Hannah’s husband Thomas Beavers was a “writing instrument maker”, but by 1811 when son Edmund was born, the family was living in Bermondsey New Road (now Jamaica Road) and Thomas was a dentist. At the time, dentistry was an unregulated trade rather than a modern profession, and Thomas will have likely undertaken an apprenticeship. The family soon moved over the river to Great Windmill Street in the West End (now home of the Windmill theatre). His clientele was likely to be the well-off residents of the local Georgian squares and terraces, but he and his family would have fitted in better with other residents of the street, who were mostly tradespeople providing food and services to their betters. Hannah Beavers died quite young and Thomas married again. Edmund Beavers became a dentist in his turn and younger sons also seem to have taken up medical occupations.
William Pulsford (junior) and his children John and Elizabeth
This part of the tale is particularly speculative, but here goes. According to my hypothesis, William and Elizabeth’s eldest son was William junior, born in 1765. He marries Elizabeth Morrish in 1788 in Wellington and they have several children. William and Elizabeth junior probably do not move to London, but are likely to be the parents of brother and sister John (1789 – 1844) and Elizabeth (or Mary: 1791 – 1874), who are living in Bermondsey in the early nineteenth century. John is married to Jane Greedy – Greedy, like Pulsford, is a name found in the Wellington area. Elizabeth never marries but lives long enough to appear in later census returns, her place of birth given as Wellington.
John Pulsford was a shoemaker. He registered the births of his children at the Ebenezer Independent Chapel on Neckinger Road, Bermondsey, near to his home on Dockhead. A son, William Henry, dies aged four, but John junior (1815 – 1866) and Mary Ann Jane Elizabeth (known as Jane: 1825 – 1907) are recorded in later census returns. Jane Pulsford senior may have died giving birth to her daughter. John senior died in 1844 and was buried in Long Lane cemetery, attached to the Ebenezer Independent Chapel.
John junior takes up the family trade, describing himself as a “master bootmaker”. His wife Mary (surname unknown) was also born in Wellington, showing that the family retained links to their Somerset roots. They lived near their father, first on a street named Hickman’s Folly and then round the corner on Parkers Row. This part of Bermondsey was – literally – Dickensian. Just to the north, bordering the Thames, was Jacob’s Island, one of London’s most notorious slums (or rookeries, as they were known at the time). In his 1838 novel Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens makes it the location of the murderer Bill Sikes’s lair, where he eventually meets his end. Dickens’s description of Jacob’s Island is evocative:
Crazy wood galleries common to the backs of half-a-dozen houses, with holes from which to look upon the slime beneath; windows, broken and patched, with poles thrust out, on which to dry the linen that is never there; rooms so small, so filthy, so confined, that the air would seem too tainted even for the dirt and squalor which they shelter; wooden chambers thrusting themselves out above the mud, and threatening to fall into it, as some have done; dirt-besmeared walls and decaying foundations; every repulsive lineament of poverty, every loathsome indication of filth, rot, and garbage; all these ornament the banks of Folly Ditch (Oliver Twist, chapter 50).
Jacob’s Island was a local hotspot in the cholera epidemics of 1849 and 1854, which may have had consequences for John Pulsford’s family. He and Mary had at least eleven children, four of whom died in early childhood, including Jane in 1854 – perhaps a cholera victim?
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| The part of Bermondsey where John Pulsford and his son lived. John senior lived on Dockhead and John junior on Hickman's Folly and later Parker's Row. To the north of Hickman's Folly was Jacob's Island |
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| Jacob's Island in the 1840s |
John junior died in 1866, aged 51. His widow Mary and her surviving unmarried children moved to Drummond Road, in a slightly more salubrious area of Bermondsey, and the family remained there for the rest of their lives, Mary dying there at the ripe old age of 90 in 1908. William, a clerk, died in 1877 aged 32, but in 1911 the remaining four unmarried daughters still occupied the house. The eldest, Emma, kept house while her sisters supported themselves with home working; Myra as an envelope stamper, Martha as a canvas bag sewer and Clara as a law copyist.
John senior’s sister Elizabeth, and his daughter Mary Ann Jane Elizabeth (Jane) come across as rather troubled souls. For over twenty years they lived together in rooms in tenement buildings in Walworth or Camberwell, moving frequently. In 1851 Jane, aged 25, describes herself as a “school mistress and house owner”, while her aunt Elizabeth is said to be “supported by friends”. This is the only time that either women records an occupation. They are still together in 1871, variously described as having no occupation, or as annuitants. Presumably they were financially supported by other members of the family. Elizabeth (sometimes named as Mary in the records) dies in 1874. Jane does not appear in the 1881 census, but in 1891 she is an inmate of Camberwell workhouse, and is still there at her death in 1907.
Edward Pulsford, Cordwainer – My Great-Great-Great Grandfather
Edward Pulsford was born in Wellington in 1774, and by the mid-1790s was living on Bermondsey New Road. He described himself as a cordwainer, an old-fashioned and distinguished title that signified that he made shoes from scratch, as distinct from a cobbler, who merely repaired them. He married Hannah, son of Thomas and Rebekah Marsom, of Newington, an area south-west of Bermondsey, now better known as Elephant and Castle. Thomas Marsom was a biscuit maker, a trade that was not uncommon in the area, with manufacturers working with flour shipped into the docks. In the 1850s, the well-known firm of Peek Frean (inventors of the garibaldi biscuit) established their headquarters on Dockhead, in Bermondsey, near to where John Pulsford the bootmaker had lived.
Edward and Hannah Pulsford had four children that we know of, and may well have had others. They did not bother to register the births of their children and we only know of those who retrospectively registered their own or their children’s births at Dr. Williams Dissenting Library. We do not know when Hannah died, but Edward was living in Hoxton by the 1820s and died there in 1840.
Edward and Hannah’s daughter Rebekah was born in 1797 and married George Purdy, a whitesmith, and they had five children while living on Chancery Lane in the City of London. The family disappears from the record prior to the 1841 census and they may well have emigrated – but we don’t know where.
Another daughter, Hannah, was born in 1804 and married Charles Ruddick, a warehouseman. They also lived in the City of London. At that time, the City’s role as a commercial centre often meant physically passing on goods, and it was dotted with warehouses. Charles and Hannah had four children; one of their daughters, another Hannah, seems to have established a small book-binding business, employing her brother Charles.
Thomas Marsom Pulsford was born in 1808. We don’t know his profession – the relevant entry in the 1841 census is illegible; in 1851 he did not record an occupation and he died in 1853, aged 45. He married Eliza Allen of Bishopsgate and they had at least seven children. They moved frequently, living in Bethnal Green and later at various addresses in Holborn. Their last address, Great Saffron Hill (near Farringdon station), eerily bookends John Pulsford junior’s residence near the Dickensian rookery of Jacob’s Island. The Saffron Hill area was another notorious rookery, and in Oliver Twist was Bill Sikes’s abode before his escape to Jacob’s Island. Great Saffron Hill itself was a street of shops and small tradesmen, the poorer areas being backstreet courts lined with tenement blocks housing destitute and criminal types, and many immigrants from Ireland. Thomas Marsom and his family may have lived there due to their own poverty, but interestingly, it was a short walk from the Swedenborgian New Jerusalem chapel on Cross Street – was Thomas an early member of the New Church?’’
I have not traced the subsequent lives of all of Thomas and Eliza’s children, but their sons took up trades; Thomas junior becoming a blacksmith and Edward and Daniel for a time working for a “spinal instrument maker”.
Edward Pulsford, Map Engraver – My Great-Great Grandfather
Edward the cordwainer’s youngest son was born in 1813 in Newington. He married Martha Adcock (who had been born in New York), and in 1841 the couple were living in Clerkenwell and Edward was an engraver. Their eldest son, George Marsom had just been born. By 1851, Edward was recorded as being a “map engraver” and the family had moved to Islington, at the time a recently developed and middle-class area. He could afford a live-in servant, 18-year-old Jane Johnson. There were now five children; George Marsom being joined by Martha (b 1843); my great-grandfather Edward Miall (b 1844); William Knibb (b 1846) and Jessy (b 1850).
It is at this point that this article overlaps with my previous article entitled “Preslands and Pulsfords in the Early Days of the New Jerusalem Church”. Edward Pulsford the map engraver was the first member of the family known to follow Swedenborgianism (though note my speculations about his brother, Thomas Marsom). In my previous article I also highlighted Edward’s commemoration of two of his dissenting heroes in the names of his younger sons, Edward Miall and William Knibb Pulsford. The family was closely associated with the New Church established in 1844 at Argyle Square, Bloomsbury. George Marsom and Edward Miall both became map engravers in their turn, almost certainly apprenticed to their father and youngest son William Knibb may have been as well, though there are no surviving records of his occupation and he died at the age of 22. The subsequent careers of George Marsom and Rev. Edward Miall Pulsford were outlined in my previous article. Martha married Rev. John Presland, who was minister of Argyle Square church for many years. Jessy married David Colville, a music publisher; gave birth to two sons, Leonard and Bernard and lived out her long life in Edmonton, north London, dying at the age of 85 in 1935.
Conclusion
In this article I have endeavoured to trace the history of my father’s family from their presumed origins in rural Somerset in the mid-18th century to settling in London by the 19th century. What conclusions have I reached from undertaking this journey?
First, as I have been reminding us throughout this article, the narrative I have created is speculative and partial. Drawing up the family tree has been like completing a “join the dots” picture with half the dots missing. I have had to make assumptions that individuals whose births are recorded in one place are the same as those later recorded elsewhere, and that individuals are related to each other in certain ways. The sketchy nature of the records undoubtedly mean that some individuals have been left out as their lives were not recorded. It has also not been possible to identify links between my family and other Pulsfords living in London (or in Somerset) during the period covered by this article.
Second, there is the strong thread of religious dissent that runs through the family. This has of course made my task harder, due to the lack of opportunities at the time for dissenters to record births and deaths. Why dissent was so ingrained in the Pulsford clan is unclear. We also do not know for sure which denominations the Pulsfords adhered to, but Independent (Congregationalist) churches recur, as well as the Swedenborgian New Church.
Finally, the (male) Pulsfords were artisans. Along with three shoemakers (was this the original William Pulsford’s profession as well?), the family tree includes smiths, bookbinders, primitive dentists and instrument makers. While some branches spread across the river from its Bermondsey base to the City and the East End, the family remained resolutely working class and only Edward Pulsford the map engraver became affluent enough to afford a live-in servant. Achieving upward social mobility was as difficult in the nineteenth century as it is today, and if Edward had not been my great-great grandfather I might be an East End cockney!
Sorces Used
Genealogical information avalable at The Genealogist.co.uk and FreeReg
Historic Odnance Survey maps available at Old Maps
Cary's 1775 and 1837 Maps of London
Newspaper articles available at The British Newspaper Archive
Ross C & Clark J (2011) London: The Illustrated History. London: Penguin
