Preslands and Pulsfords and the Early Days of the New Church

One day in the year 1790, 56 year old John Presland left his home in Epping, Essex to spend a few days with a friend in London. In religion, John Presland was a Dissenter – one of the growing number of people who followed a Protestant denomination that was outside the Church of England. He was a Calvinist, but like many others at the time he was open to other religious ideas. So he and his friend spent the Sunday of his visit attending as many different church services as they could, beginning at 5.00 in the morning and finishing late in the evening.

Such behaviour was not particularly unusual for the time. The scientific revolution and the enlightenment had led many people to question long-held religious ideas and to carry out their own spiritual searches for the meaning of life. There were also many dissenting denominations and sects competing in what has been called a “free market” of religious ideas. Along with the well-established Baptists, Methodists, Quakers and Independents (Congregationalists) there were many smaller sects, such as Moravians, Muggletonians, Sandemanians, Hutchinsonians, Thraskites and Salmonists. Dissenting groups tended to be concentrated in London and the other growing cities of the nascent industrial revolution. London at the time was largely a city of artisans and it was the class of artisans and skilled tradesmen who filled the congregations of the dissenting churches.

We do not know which churches John Presland’s itinerary embraced, but we do know which made the biggest impression on him. In the evening he attended a service at the Swedenborgian New Jerusalem Church in Great Eastcheap and when asked how he liked what he had heard, he answered, "I have belonged to a religious society all my life, and have heard a great many ministers preach, but have never heard the pure truth until now".

John Presland was among my Great-Great-Great-Great Grandfathers and began an involvement of my family with the New Church (as it is generally known) that has continued to the present day. In this article I will outline the early days of the New Church in the United Kingdom and the role that members of my extended family played in the growth of the church to its heyday in the early twentieth century and beyond.

Emmanuel Swedenborg and the New Church

The New Church derives its beliefs from the writings of Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). Son of a Swedish Lutheran bishop, Swedenborg achieved fame in his own country as a scientist and engineer and wrote many books on those subjects. In the 1740s, he began to have mystical spiritual experiences, including visions in which he talked to angels and explored the heavenly world. He realised that he was to be the prophet on earth of the coming of the New Jerusalem, as predicted in the Book of Revelation, which he was informed had begun to take place in the heavens in the year 1757. For the rest of his life (at the time he was in his mid-fifties) he wrote, in Latin, lengthy, closely argued books of theology, setting out what became the principles of the New Jerusalem Church. He published these books in London and Amsterdam, as Sweden was not at the time open to dissenting ideas. This is not the place to go into Swedenborg’s theology in detail, but a good introduction can be found here.

Emmanuel Swedenborg

Swedenborg did not attempt to found a religious denomination himself and the Church that follows his precepts was founded by a small number of men in England who discovered his many books. When John Presland first encountered the Church, it had only been in existence for a few years. It was effectively the creation of Robert Hindmarsh (1759 – 1835), a printer who in 1783 at the age of 24 convened a meeting at a London coffee house to discuss Swedenborg’s ideas. This meeting was attended by a total of five people, but by determined advertising, Hindmarsh and his colleagues grew the numbers of those interested sufficiently to establish a Church to allow worship according to Swedenborgian principles. This was the church at Great Eastcheap that John Presland attended, it having opened in 1787. The first parson was Rev. Samuel Hindmarsh, Robert’s father, who was an ordained Methodist minister, but was persuaded by his son's enthusiasm for Swedenborg's precepts.

A list of those who attended one of the New Church’s early meetings shows that along with a few “people of quality”, many were skilled artisans, or were involved in the arts. There were two engravers, a silversmith, a watch-jeweller, a carver and gilder and a musical instrument maker, among other more mundane tradesmen. One of the most celebrated artists and sculptors of the day, John Flaxman, also attended. In those early days the New Church had a reputation for attracting eccentrics and what might today be termed “new age” thinkers. Peter Ackroyd tells us that some of its members practiced mesmerism, occultism, cabbalism and sexual magic. One involved in the Church at the time was William Blake, whose fame as an artist and poet was many years in the future and who was then an unknown and somewhat struggling engraver, attracted to Swedenborg through their shared experience of seeing visions of heaven. Blake and his wife attended the first General Conference of the New Church at Eastcheap in 1789, along with 60-70 others from across England and abroad.

New age thinking was not, however part of the New Church founders' agenda and under their direction the Church quickly became “respectable”; ordaining ministers and setting out rules for how they should dress, establishing orders of service, composing hymns and speaking out against the French revolution and the democratic thinking of Thomas Paine. While these measures led to the growth of the New Church across the UK, they alienated the likes of William Blake (whose penchant, derived in part from his reading of Swedenborg, for sitting naked with his wife in his summer-house would not have met with the Church's approval).

The Preslands and the Early Growth of the Church

At this point, I must acknowledge my debt to Rev. Claude Herbert Presland (1918 – 2002; hereafter known, as he often was in life, as CHP), long-time minister of the New Church in Anerley, South London. In the 1980s, CHP compiled an entertaining, if impressionistic, history of his family and its involvement with the New Church, which his family has subsequently placed online (accessible here). What follows in this article is derived as much from CHP’s researches as my own - and I have shamelessly stolen some of his photographs.

C.H.P.

John Presland returned to Epping and told his 18-year old son, also named John, of his experience of the New Church. John Presland senior died in 1798, but John junior (1772 – 1826) became a prominent member of the early Church in London. He was a hatter by trade and established a business in Piccadilly making japanned top hats – legend has it that he supplied hats to the Royal Family. Whether this was the case or not, he became wealthy and used some of his money to support the development of the New Church. He helped found the Swedenborg Society, which still exists today to publish books by and about Swedenborg. He became a trustee of the General Conference of the New Church (the name adopted by the organised church in the UK) and supported the Church’s Missionary and Tract Society. He also donated funds to buy land for a church in the Essex village of Brightlingsea, where my grandparents spent many years of retirement.

John and his wife Mary Ann had a number of children. Sadly, the women in this story feature only as wives and bearers of children. The historian Lucy Worsley has observed that the Victorians invented and worshiped the stay-at-home Mum and New Church wives almost always accepted that role.  Only two of the Presland children remained within the New Church. One daughter, Mary Ann, married Roger Crompton, distant cousin to the cotton-spinning pioneer Samuel Crompton and a successful industrialist in his own right. They set up home at Kearsley, near Bolton and became prominent in the thriving New Church network in manufacturing Lancashire. The only son to stay with the Church was Thomas Presland (1814 – 1895). By profession, Thomas was a “corrector of press” – a proof-reader – and he worked for many years for the publishers Eyre and Spottiswoode. While a lifelong member of the New Church, in contrast to his father he did not play a prominent part in its affairs. Later, however a number of his children did take on significant roles.

Thomas Presland and his wife Jane lived in London all their lives and became attached to the New Church that was opened in Argyle Square, Bloomsbury, in 1844. The church in London had long outgrown its first premises in Great Eastcheap and by this time several congregations were in existence in London and across the UK. Swedenborg’s influence had also extended to the United States and some other countries. By 1844, the New Church in the UK had around 2,500 adherents and membership of the Church was to peak at around 7,000 by the end of the 19^th century. This was of course small in comparison to dissenting denominations such as the Methodists and Conregationalists. In the “free market” of 19^th century Protestant dissent there was a lot of competition and the New Church probably suffered from Swedenborg’s reticence in not founding a Church himself and the complex (though rational) nature of his theology. Also, the 19^th century New Church was possibly not helped by some of its ministers. In the 1880s, W. S. Gilbert, lyricist of the Savoy Operas composed by Sir Arthur Sullivan, attended a New Church service and was so put off by the tedium of the sermon that he immortalised the preacher in The Mikado:

            All prosy dull society sinners who chatter and bleat and bore,

            Are sent to hear sermons by mystical Germans who preach from ten till four…

New Church insiders name the Rev Dr. R. L. Tafel as the guilty party!

Thomas and Jane Presland

Enter the Pulsfords

A direct contemporary of Thomas Presland at Argyle Square Church was Edward Pulsford (1813-1880). The Pulsfords came originally from Somerset dissenting stock, though Edward was born in Newington, South London, the son of another Edward, a cordwainer (shoemaker). The younger Edward was apparently the first Pulsford to embrace the New Church, joining the Argyle Square Society some time after it opened in 1844. By trade he was a map engraver (is it just coincidence that engravers were so well represented in the early New Church?), working from his home in Islington. Map engraving could be a precarious trade - 125 map engravers were declared bankrupt during the 18^th and early 19^th centuries - but Edward Pulsford appeared to prosper and was able to employ a live-in servant for much of his adult life.

Judging by the names he gave to a couple of his children (he and his wife Martha had at least five), Edward Pulsford was something of a political radical. His eldest son was named George Marson Pulsford (1840-1913) in honour of his wife’s family - her father was a Surrey biscuit baker named Thomas Marson - but his second son was named Edward Miall Pulsford (1844-1895). Edward Miall (1809-1881) was a Congregationalist minister who became a radical journalist and later a member of parliament and in both roles sought to promote the disestablishment of the Church of England and the rights of dissenters. While dissent was tolerated during the early 19^th century, dissenters were in some ways second class citizens. They were not permitted to enter Parliament or to attend Oxford or Cambridge Universities and prior to 1837 they could not formally register births, deaths and marriages (making life hard for amateur genealogists). Miall helped achieve the admission of dissenters, including himself, to parliament and the universities, but did not succeed in his ultimate aim of separating the Church of England from the State.

We do not know if Edward Pulsford knew Edward Miall personally, but the latter was becoming prominent in the political sphere around the time that Edward Miall Pulsford was born. Edward Pulsford named another son, who died young, William Knibb Pulsford, after William Knibb (1803-1845) a Baptist minister and missionary to Jamaica who was prominent in the abolition of slavery in the colonies.

Like Thomas Presland, Edward Pulsford seems to have been content to take a back seat in church affairs, but again like Thomas Presland, some of his children became prominent in the Church in the later years of the 19^th century.

An outline family tree of the Preslands and Pulsfords, showing the links between the families. Many individuals have been left out, if they are not central to this account. Five ordained New Church ministers are included (in bold type) and an extension of the family tree would bring in six more. They are, Rev G. Gordon Pulsford, son of George Marson Pulsford; Rev John Rous Presland, WA Presland's son; Rev George Hill, brother of Ellen Hill, Laurence Helier Pulsford's second wife; Rev Brian Trobridge, son of Ernest and Jenny Trobridge; Rev Charles Newall, father of CHP's wife Margaret and Rev John Presland, CHP's son

The Argyle Square Mafia

There was a tribal element to dissenting religion in the 19^th century. Adherents became much attached to their churches, which frequently offered them a total way of life and encouraged marriage within the confines of the denomination. The New Church in Argyle Square, Bloomsbury, was a classic example of this principle. Under its minister, Rev Jonathon Bayley, it not only provided Sunday services but by the mid-1860s had a Sunday School and a range of evening and weekend activities, including theological classes, a Young Members’ group, an Elocution class (that put on readings and plays) and a Literary and Scientific Institute that offered public lectures and debates on a range of subjects. The offspring of Thomas Presland and Edward Pulsford, by now in their twenties, became leading lights in these activities. As well as George Marson (GM) Pulsford and Edward Miall (EM) Pulsford there was their sister Martha (1845-1907). Among the Preslands were Thomas’s son John (1839-1897) and daughter Ruth (1846-1929) and a few years younger was another son, William Alfred (WA Presland, 1855-1937). Thus, EM Pulsford played Polonius to John Presland’s Hamlet at the Junior Members’ society, while Martha Pulsford taught at the Sunday school and GM Pulsford made an ass of himself by answering a debate at the Literary Institute on “Should the law of primogeniture be abolished” without due preparation.

The boys followed their fathers into trades. GM and EM Pulsford both became engravers - they were probably apprentices of their father. John Presland was a “statistical compiler” while his younger brother William was apprenticed to a blind-maker. However, all ultimately became New Church ministers – though in one case that ministry was short-lived.

The other purpose of the Argyle Square Church was to act as a marriage bureau and in this it succeeded in joining together the Presland and Pulsford families. In 1865, John Presland married Martha Pulsford and in 1874, EM Pulsford returned the compliment by marrying Ruth Presland. The latter couple were my great-grandparents – and so the line of my New Church ancestry switches from the Preslands to the Pulsfords.

Ministers of Religion

The outline family tree included with this article contains five ordained New Church ministers (and one lay minister) and as I note in its caption, a small extension would bring in six more – ample evidence of how central to the life of the New Church my extended family has been. John Presland was ordained in 1867. WA Presland was ordained in 1882 and eventually became Principal of the New Church College, that trained young men for the ministry. New Church congregations were scattered around the country and ministers tended to move from society to society, at least in their younger years. John Presland served as minister in Derby and then replaced Rev Bayley at his home church at Argyle Square, while WA Presland led congregations in Keighley, Edinburgh, Accrington and Glasgow before settling back in London at Camden Road, Islington.

We will leave the Preslands now. John and Martha Presland had no children who survived to adulthood and lived out their days at Argyle Square. One of WA Presland’s sons also became a minister (Rev John Rous Presland), while another, Frederick, was father to Rev Claude Presland (CHP). CHP’s son subsequently became the third Rev John Presland and his elder daughter Judith is currently the Chair of the General Conference of the New Church Council.

Frontispiece of a Latin edition of Swedenborg's book De Amore Conjugiali (Conjugial Love), given to me by CHP. It had previously belonged to his grandfather, WA Presland

 Rev Edward Miall Pulsford: Minister and Anti-vaccination Campaigner

My great-grandfather began his ministry in Leicester, before moving to Jersey in the Channel Islands in 1873. He then moved to Alloa, near Stirling, Scotland in 1881, remaining at that society until his early death in 1899. His ordination service at Alloa was led by his old Argyle Street friend, Rev John Presland. His eldest three children, Emily, Edward John and Laurence Helier, were all born in Jersey. Laurence was my grandfather, his middle name commemorating his place of birth. Following the move to Alloa, EM and Ruth had two more daughters, Elsie and Jenny.

Edward Miall Pulsford, 1844 - 1899

EM Pulsford's wife Ruth (nee Presland)

EM Pulsford was described by CHP (who would not have known him personally) as “a quiet, somewhat reticent, very courteous gentleman and acknowledged to be a very good pastor because he knew how to look after his people”. This was very likely true, but he also had a steely side and a hint of his father’s radicalism. His fourth child, Elsie, was born with learning disabilities and EM apparently blamed this misfortune on smallpox vaccination. When his fifth child, Jenny, was born in 1887 he refused to have her vaccinated. At the time, vaccination was compulsory across the UK and those who refused to have their children vaccinated were liable to a fine, or one week imprisonment. There was considerable opposition to compulsory vaccination, from those who were suspicious of its side-effects as well as some who queried whether smallpox was actually caused by germ infection and others who objected on personal liberty grounds. It appaears that EM Pulsford had had his doubts about the benefits of vaccination since his days in Leicester, where he lived through a smallpox outbreak. He became a member of the Anti-vaccination league and was convicted no fewer than five times for refusing to have Jenny vaccinated. His stand generated debate beyond the confines of Alloa - he became known in the press as “the clerical anti-vaccination campaigner” - and he delivered lectures condemning vaccination around Scotland. It is unclear how his case was eventually resolved, but in 1898 the law was changed to allow parents to refuse vaccination on grounds of conscience.

This was mentioned in EM Pulsford’s obituary in the Alloa Journal of 1^st May 1899, following his death, probably of a brain tumour, at the age of 55. As well as praising his ministry it was noted that he was a Liberal in politics and had been an active member of the Alloa Natural History and Archaeology Society – perhaps that’s where I get my antiquarian interests from!

The Life and Times of George Marson Pulsford

We first met EM Pulsford’s older brother George Marson (GM) in the 1860s as an enthusiastic, if sometimes rather hapless member of the Argyle Square church’s many clubs and societies. He was already married, having wed Helen Gordon in 1861, at the age of 21. Like his father, he trained as a map engraver, but did not pursue this trade, or remain in London, for the whole of his somewhat haphazard life. A list of the dates and places of birth of his and Helen’s ten children (an eleventh died very young) give a flavour of his wanderings in the 1860s and 70s:

George Gordon, b. 1863, Whitechapel

Amy Helen, b. 1864, Whitechapel

Herbert J, b. 1866, Greenwich

Percy Llewellyn, b. 1868, Woolwich (d. 1876)

Kathleen Elizabeth, b. 1869, Clerkenwell (d. 1873)

Ernest Albert, b. 1870, Nottingham

Alfred L, b. 1874, Sheffield

Constance M, b. 1876, Sheffield

Millicent L, b. 1878, Finsbury

Percy Llewellyn, b. 1880, Dudley.

In 1871 GM and his family were living in Nottingham and he was working as a commercial traveller. Following spells in Sheffield and London, he moved again to the Midlands and in 1879 was manager of an oyster inn in Birmingham that went bust. By 1881 he had returned to London and to his old trade of engraver, working for the firm of Waterlow and sons, which made banknotes and stamps, and entertaining his fellow workers at social events by playing the piano. Then, in the late 1880s he moved his family again to Edinburgh, taking a position as an engraver in one of the then prominent map-making firms that had become established in that city – and also acting as part time lay minister to the Edinburgh New Church society.

For a couple of years he fulfilled this role with enthusiasm, putting on public lectures and taking part in theological debates in the correspondence columns of local newspapers (one senses that he would have loved today’s social media). Then in 1891 his ministry abruptly ceased and he appears to have had no more to do with the New Church, though the position of minister at Edinburgh remained vacant for some years and he lived in the city for the rest of his life. What happened to make GM leave this role? Two clues: in 1892 GM suddenly became involved with the Edinburgh Total Abstinence Society and for a year or so he participated enthusiastically in their meetings – then just as suddenly he seems to have parted ways with the society. Was drink in some way involved in his wandersome life? More significantly, some time in the 1890s he separated from his wife, Helen. In 1901, GM, then aged 61, was living in an Edinburgh boarding house, while his wife lived with their son Alfred in another part of the city. In 1911 they were still apart, GM living with a female servant and Helen with another son, Percy. It seems more than likely that the breach with his wife had also led to a breach with the New Church. One legacy he left to the Church, however, was his eldest son George Gordon, who became a minister in the General Convention of the New Church in the United States.

GM did not lose his spirit, however. He continued to work in the map trade, calling himself in later census returns a “cartographer” – a step up from a mere engraver. This seems to have been due to him publishing his own map(s) – there may have been a few, but only one appears in the records. This is Pulsford’s Map and Guide of Edinburgh, published in 1908 and sold at a penny to visitors wanting to attend that year’s Scottish National Exhibition (click here for a description of the exhibition) and helpfully showing the tram and train routes to the exhibition site in Saughton, along with notes about the exhibits. Sadly, the map, published when GM was 68, did not make his fortune and he died in Craiglochart Poorhouse in 1913, the death certificate being signed by the institution’s assistant governor rather than by a member of his family.

Moving into the 20^th Century

Rev Edward Miall Pulsford did not live to see the 20^th century, but his children took the family’s involvement with the New Church into that century and beyond. His elder son, Edward John Pulsford trained as an architectural draughtsman but was ordained as a New Church minister in 1905. He served congregations across the country, edited the New Church Magazine and also spent four years in South Africa carrying out missionary work, mainly within black communities. He finished his ministry back in Scotland, at the Glasgow society. He married Mabel Hardy in 1906; two years earlier, his elder sister Emily had married Mabel's brother, Arthur.

Rev EJ Pulsford as a young man

EM’s second son, Laurence Helier Pulsford was my grandfather. He went into the map-making trade, like his father and grandfather, serving an apprenticeship as a lithographic writer with one of the Edinburgh map firms. For a while, he lodged with GM Pulsford’s son Alfred, who was an illustrator in a map-making firm. Lithographic writers specialised in correcting lettering on maps and in the mid-1900s Laurence moved to London and set up as a commercial artist, in partnership with Alfred and a lithographic printer named Samuel Garner, drawing up certificates for professional and trade bodies and for a time creating adertisements for the Radio Times. He maintained that business for the rest of his working life, though he returned to map making as a servicemen in the Royal Engineers during the Great War.

Laurence Helier and Ellen Pulsford with their children, Beryl (standing) and Raymond - photo taken in 1927

 

EM Pulsford's youngest daughter, Jenny, survived her father's refusal to have her vaccinated and married Ernest Trobridge, an architect and New Churchman. Trobridge etsablished a practice in North London, where he achieved  a measure of local fame - some of the houses he designed are now listed buildings. According to family legend, Ernest and Jenny Trobridge were the recipients of an extraordinary act of generosity on the part of Jenny's brother Lawrence. In 1920, Trobridge set about building a housing estate in Kingsbury (now part of the London Borough of Brent), the dwellings being constructed to a novel design and marketed to ex-servicemen as part of the "homes fit for heroes" campaign. Lawrence Pulsford apparently purchased one of the houses, named "Haylands". The estate however ran into planning and other legal difficulties and only nine of the proposed houses were built. Ernest Trobridge was bankrupted and had to leave the small-holding where he and his growing family were living. To rescue them, it seems that Lawrence and his newly-married second wife gifted "Haylands" to Ernest and Jenny, themselves moving to Norbury, near Croydon. Ernest and Jenny's younest son, Brian, followed his uncle and grandfather into the New Church ministry.

Laurence Helier Pulsford was a member of the New Church for the whole of his long life (he died in 1974, aged 94). His second wife Ellen was sister of yet another New Church minister, Rev George T Hill and in retirement “Gan and Grandpa” (as I knew them) moved to a house next door to the Brightlingsea church that Laurence’s great-grandfather John Presland (the hatter) had helped to found nearly 150 years previously. Laurence and Ellen’s son Raymond and his wife Mary (my father and mother) have carried on the Pulsfords’ involvement with the New Church and all their lives have served their local societies in many ways, administratively and socially, firstly at Anerley in South London (where CHP was minister) and latterly at Chester. My father was the second in this family of artisans to attend university, studying chemistry at Imperial College, London in the 1940s (The first was EJ Pulsford's son Edgar, who attended Birmingham University in the 1920s).

Raymond Pulsford, July 2017

Mary Pulsford, March 2017

The New Church today is much changed from that of Robert Hindmarsh the printer and John Presland the maker of top hats. A particular difference is the role of women, who form a large proportion of today’s ministers. Some elements of the “new age” thinking of the early church have returned in the form of spiritual retreats at Purley Chase, the Church’s residential centre in Warwickshire. In common with all other Protestant dissenting denominations, the Church is much smaller in numbers than at its peak and it may be that there will be no more Pulsfords or Preslands in the Church in the future. I’m not sure that Emmanuel Swedenborg would be too concerned about this; for him the route to heaven was through those positive qualities of humankind that transcend individual religions. It is enough that for the past 200 years the New Church has provided spiritual comfort (and a way of life) to thousands of people and that my extended family has played a central part in its spiritual and secular activities.

Sources Used
Genealogical information avalable at The Genealogist.co.uk and Scotland's People.gov.uk 
Newspaper articles available at britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/ 
The Intellectual Repository for the New Church (some 19th century issues are available online through Google Books)
History of the Presland Family, by Rev C.H. Presland  
Ackroyd P (1995) Blake. London: Minerva
Hindmarsh R (1861) Rise and progress of the New Jerusalem Church in England, America and other parts (edited by E. Madeley). Republished by Scholas Select

The Death of Edith Dicks – a Victorian Family Tragedy and a Medical Mystery

One afternoon in June 1898, Florence Dicks, aged four and her six-year old sister Ellen sat down to afternoon tea. The meal was overseen by their mother Eliza. As the girls munched their sandwiches, their mother casually mentioned, in the course of conversation, that their eighteen-year-old sister Edith had died. She then changed the subject and as if nothing untoward had happened, encouraged them to eat up their meal.

This was the scene as related many years later by Florence Dicks (my grandmother) to her own daughter (my mother). After all that time, the death of her older sister was still a mystery to her. What had happened to Edith and why had her mother been so reticent in talking about it? Was there a scandal hiding in her parents’ comfortable middle class family?

Now, with the wealth of information available to family historians, we can attempt to answer the questions that Florence was never able to resolve. In this article I will explore the death of Edith Dicks and its impact on her family. I do not uncover evidence of a scandal, but I do find an intriguing medical mystery that is still being debated today.

Florence and Ellen Dicks

The Family Dicks: Victorian Middle Class Suburbanites

Edith Lizzie Dicks was born in Dalston, North London, in 1880. Her father, Samuel Bernard Dicks, worked for a firm of seed growers and merchants. He variously described himself as a seedsman, a manager and a commercial traveller. He married Eliza Barratt in 1872 and Edith was their fifth child. They went on to have ten children in all, my grandmother Florence being the youngest.

Edith Dicks, 1880 - 1898

The firm that Samuel Dicks worked for, Cooper, Taber Ltd, was based in Witham, Essex and had a London office in Southwark. It was not at the glamorous end of the Victorian seed market, but specialised in vegetables, advertising the merits of its swedes, turnips, cabbages and carrots. A highlight of the company’s year was its annual vegetable show, when growers competitively displayed their mangel wurzels for a £5 silver tankard. The firm had interests in Europe and Samuel often travelled abroad as part of his duties.

Samuel Dicks's Business Card

Samuel Dicks was not a horny-handed son of the soil and his family lived in relative middle class gentility. They moved house frequently as the family grew and his career prospered. In the early 1890s they moved to a newly-build semi-detached house in Howard Road, Penge, now in the south London Borough of Bromley, where Florence was born in 1894. Despite its relative spaciousness, the house would have been crowded, for all Samuel and Eliza’s ten children lived at home during the 1890s. At the time of Edith’s death in 1898, Herbert was 24 and worked as a warehouseman and salesman for a woollen clothing firm. William, 23, was a nurseryman, on the point of setting up his own business. George, 21, was working for the same firm as his father and Percy, 16, was a clerk. Then there was Ernest, 13; Arthur, 11 and Frank, 9 and finally the little girls Ellen and Florence. In previous years the Dicks had employed a live-in servant but there was now no room (or no money) for paid help and Edith, who at 18 had no paid occupation, was likely to have spent her time helping her mother run the household. The family were members of the New Jerusalem Church, a small non-conformist denomination that followed the precepts of an 18^th century Swedish thinker, Emmanuel Swedenborg www.generalconference.org.uk.

Samuel and Eliza Dicks, photogaphed the year before Edith died

The Death of Edith Dicks

The detailed circumstances of Edith Dicks’s death are still opaque, however I do have her death certificate. Completed by H. Shackleton, M.D, it states that Edith died on 20^th June 1898; the cause of death, haemorrhage from a gastric ulcer. Poor Edith died of natural causes.

So on the face of it, there is no mystery surrounding Edith Dicks’s death. But questions still remain. Today, we tend to think of ulcer as an illness of middle-aged or older men and a symptom of stress, or an unhealthy lifestyle. We do not associate it with 18-year old girls living in comfortable circumstances. What led to Edith developing a fatal stomach ulcer? And why, if Edith died a natural death, was her mother so guarded about its circumstances with her younger daughters?

A Brief History of Gastric Ulcer

Gastric, or stomach ulcer occurs when the layer of mucus that lines the walls of the stomach breaks down, allowing the acid that fills the stomach to attack its walls. Ulcers can also occur in the duodenum (between the stomach and small intestine). The generic term ‘peptic ulcer’ is often used for ulcers in either site. The main symptom of gastric ulcer is abdominal pain, especially following eating, though some people with ulcers have no symptoms and only discover that they are affected if complications arise.

Uncomplicated ulcers, while uncomfortable, are not dangerous and may heal themselves after a few weeks or months, though they may recur. The most drastic complication is perforation, where the ulcer breaks completely through the wall of the stomach or duodenum and their contents pour into the abdominal cavity. More common is haemorrhage, as happened to Edith Dicks. This occurs when the ulcer breaches a blood vessel in the wall of the stomach. Haemorrhage may take place gradually over a period of time, if the blood vessel is relatively small, or may be sudden and extensive if the ulcer breaches an artery. The main symptom of a bleeding ulcer is ‘hematemesis’, or vomiting blood. Blood may also be seen in the person’s stools.

Historically, peptic ulcers were regarded as being caused by lifestyle factors, such as poor hygeine, diet, smoking or drinking, or indeed by stress. These were thought to lead to excess production of stomach acid. Treatment focused on modifying these factors, or administering drugs that aimed to reduce levels of gastric secretions. Then in 1982, Australian scientists Barry Marshall and Robin Warren discovered a bacterium, helicobacter pylori (H. pylori), that could live in the harsh environment of the stomach and duodenum and that is now regarded as the cause of peptic ulcer (in 2005 Marshall and Warren were awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine for their discovery). The focus of treatment shifted to administering antibiotics to kill off H. pylori, along with newer and more effective acid-inhibiting drugs. Today, peptic ulcer is a relatively uncommon condition, mainly affecting older people (some of whom develop ulcer from extensive use of non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs – NSAIDS – such as Ipobrufen). The development of the endoscope (a camera attached to a tube that is passed into the stomach to view the ulcer and sometimes to apply treatment) and modern surgical techniques have reduced the dangerousness of complications, though emergencies can still occur and untreated, complicated ulcers can still prove fatal.

So this is the situation regarding peptic ulcer today, but what of the past? It is now thought that H. pylori has been common in humans since prehistoric times, though 80% of people infected with H. pylori do not suffer from ulcers and the exact mechanism by which H. pylori causes ulcers is still not known. Evidence of peptic ulcer disease also goes back to prehistory: a 2000 year-old mummy has been discovered in China who apparently died of a perforated ulcer. Diagnosis of peptic ulcer in the UK was however uncommon before the 19^th century, though the disease was known to the medical profession. Then, in the first half of the 19^th century, gastric ulcer began to be diagnosed more frequently, at first most commonly among young servant girls. Then, in the latter years of the century, diagnosis became common in the UK and elsewhere in the Western world, leading some to talk of a ‘pandemic’ of peptic ulcer disease by the end of the century. Stomach ulcer was more commonly diagnosed in women, particularly younger women like Edith Dicks, while duodenal ulcer (which reached its peak a few years later than stomach ulcer), was more common in men.

In the 19^th century, before modern drugs and surgical and investigative techniques, complications of peptic ulcer were serious. Perforation of a peptic ulcer was invariably fatal, the person quickly succumbing to infection. Haemorrhaging ulcers often healed themselves, but fatalities, as in Edith Dicks’s case, were not uncommon. Sometimes the ulcer would bleed over a period of time, leading to anaemia, weakness and organ failure. In other cases, where the ulcer ruptured an artery, death was rapid and messy.

Rates of peptic ulcer diagnosis remained high in the early years of the 20^th century, then from around the middle of the century they began to decline. This preceded the discovery of H.pylori and the advent of modern treatment. At the same time, the age profile of those most likely to contract peptic ulcer gradually changed: from being a disease of predominantly younger people at the beginning of the century, it became more common in the middle-aged and elderly.

This shift in the prevalence and age profile of peptic ulcer has been attributed by medical historians to a “cohort effect”. This theory holds that, for some reason, people born in the latter years of the 19^th century (such as Edith Dicks) were particularly prone to peptic ulcer disease. The disease did not affect everyone in the “cohort” – despite its increased incidence it only affected a small minority. It also affected different individuals at different ages – some, like Edith, suffered from it when they were young, while others were not affected until later in life. As time went on, the prevalence of peptic ulcer declined, as the affected “cohort” gradually died off.

An example of the evidence used to support the "cohort effect" theory of peptic ulcer. The graph plots the rates of diagnosis of gastric and peptic ulcer at 12 London hospitals over a 120 year period. We can see the rise and fall of cases, with rates of duodenal ulcer peaking later than gastric ulcer. Duodenal ulcer was more common in men and gastric ulcer more common in women. From Baron & Sonnenberg (2002).

As to why that particular cohort was particularly at risk of peptic ulcer disease, medical historians are baffled. It is assumed that their peptic ulcers were caused by H.pylori infection, contracted in early childhood, but there is no reason to believe that more of them were infected with H.pylori than at other times in history – it has always been common in human stomachs. Some have suggested that people at that time were infected with a particularly virulent strain of H.pylori, but there is no substantial evidence that this was the case. Others have focused on the changes in diet and public health that went along with industrialisation and urbanisation in the later 19^th century and possible environmental triggers that made H.pylori more dangerous to some individuals. We cannot however go back into the past and use modern epidemiological methods in retrospect, so the mystery is likely to endure.

Edith Dicks therefore appears to have been an unfortunate victim of an epidemic of gastric ulcers, of unknown cause, that affected individuals – especially young women – in the latter years of the 19^th century. She was doubly unlucky in that she experienced complications; her ulcer bleeding catastrophically and fatally. Her death, far from being scandalous, was due to tragic natural causes.

So the mystery of Edith Dicks’s death is solved? Well, probably. Alexander Pollock, a retired G.P., has recently completed an M.D. thesis on the history of peptic ulcer and calls into question some of the evidence on which our explanation is based. He queries whether there actually was a “cohort effect” underlying the rise of peptic ulcer in the 19^th century, holding that its apparent increase during the century was due to changes in diagnostic fashion. He points out that the “cause of death” entered on 19^th century death certificates was often wrong, as doctors at that time had to rely on their clinical judgement rather than modern investigative techniques. In Edith’s case, Dr Shackleton is likely to have based the cause of death on evidence of hematemesis, but gastric ulcer was not the only cause of vomiting blood. Finally, the possibility of scandal cannot be ruled out completely: it was not unknown for doctors to change the cause of death in some circumstances to protect the reputations of respectable families. We were not there at the time, so we will never know what actually happened to poor Edith. However, the available evidence supports the “cohort effect” explanation of her death and after nearly 120 years, we should perhaps leave it at that.

Eliza Dicks and the Victorian Way of Mourning

One further mystery remains: Eliza Dicks’s apparently offhand reaction to Edith’s death, as recalled by her remaining daughters. It is of course possible that Florence, who was only four at the time, was mistaken in her recollection of events. However, such shocking news could constitute what psychologists call a “flashbulb memory”, when highly significant events are recalled later in vivid detail (for example many people can remember exactly what they were doing when they heard the news of the New York “9/11” attacks) and there is some evidence that such memories are essentially accurate. Assuming that the scene was as Florence remembered it, how may we account for her mother’s behaviour?

On the face of it, Eliza’s response to her daughter’s death was very un-Victorian. Death and mourning in Victorian times, especially for the wealthier classes, was an intense experience, surrounded by ritual. Most people died at home and the whole family was often involved in the death and spent time with the person before death and with the body afterwards. Funerals could be as lavish (and expensive) as weddings are today and the right mourning clothes had to be worn. The facts of the person’s death were not hidden; obituaries would describe in great detail the person’s last days and hours. Sometimes, post-mortem photographs were taken, with the dead person dressed in their best and posed as if sleeping – or even up and about – and made into postcards to send to relatives. Why was Edith’s death treated so differently?

Again, we were not there so we can only speculate, but here are some possibilities. Firstly, Edith died in 1898, near the end of the Victorian era and by then attitudes towards death and mourning were changing, with families responding more as they do today, when death and grieving are regarded as more private issues. Secondly, it seems that her father, Samuel Dicks, was absent when Edith died – it was mentioned above that he travelled abroad in the course of his work – as Edith’s death certificate was signed by her eldest brother Herbert, then aged 24. Eliza therefore had to face the initial consequences of the tragedy on her own, while continuing to look after the rest of her extensive family and might be excused for protecting herself by taking on a business-like manner.

Herbert Dicks, who at the age of 24 signed Edith's death certificate

Finally, we do not know whether Edith’s illness was prolonged and she faded away from chronic bleeding, or if she suffered a sudden catastrophic bleed from a ruptured artery, but we may speculate that it was the latter. The fact that her father was away suggests that he was not expecting any tragic occurrence and Florence and Ellen were apparently unaware that their sister was ill. It is even possible that Edith and her mother had no inkling of what was about to happen before the event. If this was the case, it would have been the opposite of the Victorian fantasy of a “beautiful death” as depicted in twee mid-19^th century paintings – it would have been shocking, agonising and messy. Again, we cannot blame Eliza for defending herself from the emotions that the event would have raised.

The Dicks Family Moves On into the 20^th Century

So Samuel, Eliza and their remaining children picked themselves up and got on with their lives. Doubtless, their strong Christian faith would have helped them come to terms with their loss. By the time that World War 1 began, all the sons had left home. The five eldest (Herbert, William, George, Percy and Ernest) were all married and most had children of their own. All, like their father, were working in “white collar” jobs for small businesses around South London. The two younger sons had both moved away; Arthur was aboard and Frank was living and working in Edinburgh. All seven sons survived the war and I have told the tale of Frank’s experiences as a conscientious objector in another article. Florence and Ellen both married and set up homes in Anerley, near to where they had been brought up. After Eliza’s death in 1921, Samuel Dicks went to live with Florence and her husband Frederick Nicholls, remaining with them until his own death in 1925. Thus, memories of Edith and her short and ultimately tragic life faded – until now.

Samuel Dicks in later life with his daughter Florence and her husband Frederick Nicholls

Sources Used

Articles from The Essex Herald 1895, available at The British Newspaper Archive: http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/ 

Census returns available at UK Census Online: www.ukcensusonline.com

Information on peptic ulcer available from NHS Choices: http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Peptic-ulcer/Pages/Introduction.aspx

Baron H & Sonnenberg A (2002) Hospital admissions for peptic ulcer and indigestion in London and New York in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Gut 50: 568-560

Duggan J & Duggan A (2006) The possible causes of the pandemic of peptic ulcer in the late 19^th and early 20^th century. MJA 185(11/12): 667-669

Pollock A (2014) From dyspepsia to Helicobacter: a history of peptic ulcer disease. MD thesis, University of Glasgow

Sonnenberg A & Baron J (2010) Rising trends of gastric cancer and peptic ulcer in the 19^th century. Alimentary Pharmacology and Therapeutics 32: 901-907

Susser M & Stein Z (2001) Peptic ulcer and civilisation. International Journal of Epidemiology 30: 13-17