T IS
is an inescapable fact of life that ancestors
are a major factor when it comes to gauging the prospects for a
new-born child. As is often remarked, those who have high
ambitions in life should choose their ancestors with the greatest
of care! That was especially true in those days when class
origins were so important in determining the opportunities for
education and advancement.
The principal role of ancestors is to provide the two main early influences on a child - its parents. Those unlucky enough to be born of less able and less well endowed parents start life with a distinct handicap. In the case of our subject, Neville Bradshaw, we need to go back at least two generations to form an impression of the family background to his early years.
Bradshaw is not an uncommon name in central England, especially Staffordshire, Derbyshire and Lancashire. They go back many centuries and they were in all walks of life, high and low.
Neville Bradshaw's paternal grandfather, Henry Bradshaw, was born in Ravenstone in 1831. His wife Sarah (née Lewin) was born in Leicester in 1829. In their early married life Henry was in a clerical position with a brewery in Burton-on-Trent. As a clerk he would have had some basic education in reading, writing, book-keeping and accounting. As a white collar worker he would have had about twice the income and better conditions of employment than the average for the labouring masses. He was comfortably off but by no means wealthy.
Around 1861, Henry, his wife and daughter moved to Tipton in the Black Country, a town that specialised in iron and steel production during the Industrial Revolution. Consumption of beer in such an area would have been prodigious given the nature of the work and the lack of healthy sources of drinking water. Henry was probably working at the Tipton depot of his brewery back in Burton.
From the 1881 census we find that Henry and Sarah Bradshaw lived at 54 Burnt Tree, Tipton where they raised their four children, Elizabeth, Rowland, John (known as Frank), and Herbert. At that time their eldest daughter was 21, unmarried, living at home with no occupation given. Rowland, 19, was also living at home and working as a solicitor's clerk (which he remained and was so described in the 1901 census). This occupation is testimony to the fact that he had had some education and was capable of dealing with his employer's legal paperwork.
The second son, John Joseph Frank Bradshaw, who was to be Neville's father, was aged 15 in 1881 and was described as a "scholar", a term that in those days meant that he was attending school, as was his younger brother Herbert, aged 13. The fact that Frank was at school at the age of 15 is clear evidence that he was at a grammar school - most boys in 1881 would normally leave school at 13 and enter a trade or begin labouring for a living. It is quite possible that he attended nearby Dudley Grammar School, an endowed ancient foundation providing grammar school education for children of the local population. However scutiny of the school documents, incomplete as they are, in Dudley Record Office archives at Coseley does not confirm this.
Clearly, Henry Bradshaw and his wife had clear views about the advantage of grammar school education - an outlook not shared by the majority of the population of the day in the Black Country who regarded education with great suspicion or outright hostility. It was seen by them as a waste of time that could be better used in paid employment.
Neville Bradshaw's mother was a Gillard. There were several Gillard families in the Black Country and Joseph Gillard was a millwright whose business was in rolling, cutting or forging steel. Whether he built machinery for steel mills or owned a mill we cannot be certain, but it is likely that he was a man of property in a small way and would have had an income that placed him firmly in the lower middle classes.
Joseph Gillard was born and bred in the Black Country a few miles from Tipton and at the 1881 census was living with his wife Eliza (née Tingle), also born at Tipton, in Tividale Road, Burnt Tree, about a hundred yards from the Bradshaws. They had, at the time of the 1881 census, five daughters - all unmarried and living at home. One can feel some sympathy for the poor chap being paterfamilias to a female household of six women - four of them teenagers! The daughters were Phebe (21), Mary (19), Sarah (17), Elizabeth (15) and Clara (13).
The occupation of the two oldest daughters is not known but Sarah, aged 17, is described as a pupil-teacher, so it seems that she had ambitions to become a fully qualified teacher.
Elizabeth is described as a scholar and was probably at Dudley High School for Girls a school that had been founded in 1850 and then taken over by a middle-class buy-out and reformed and revitalised some years later. There are no known records of the school from that period. Clara Gillard, the youngest of the brood, who was to be Neville's mother, is also described in the 1881 census as a scholar and it is possible that she too was at the girls' high school in Dudley.
A recent visit to this area revealed that the original houses at 53 Tividale Road and 54 Burnt Tree no longer exist. Nearby houses in Tividale Road as have survived from the 1880s suggest that they would have been new at that time and inhabited by lower middle-class families.
Henry Bradshaw Sarah Lewin Joseph Gillard Eliza Tingle
1831 1829 1837 1836
(Brewer's Clerk) | (Millwright) |
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Elizabeth Rowland John(Frank) Herbert Phebe Mary Sarah Elizabeth Clara
1860 1862 1866 1869 1860 1862 1864 1866 1868
(Clerk) (Clerk) (Teacher) |
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Muriel(Minnie) Neville Cicely(Cissey) Ronald Grace Frank
1893 1896 1898 1902 ~1904 19??
(Headmaster) (Headmaster) (Teacher)
So we have the situation where both of the future Neville Bradshaw's grandparents and their families lived in close proximity at Burnt Tree, Tipton. Frank and Clara probably knew each other (though there was a two-year age gap) and possibly attended schools in Dudley. Both families seem to have had some belief in the importance of education. Both families would have been of above average means, though by no means wealthy. The area that they lived in would have been regarded as one of the nicer parts of Tipton by the standards of the time.
Whether or not the Bradshaw and Gillard families had social connections we do not know. Clearly the father's occupations did not bring them into contact, and the mothers presumably had a busy life keeping their family and household in good order.
What happened to Frank Bradshaw and Clara Gillard after they left school is, at present, not known but subsequent evidence would suggest that Frank was employed in various clerical jobs. Clara presumably left school about 1883 aged 15 or so. Given that she already had an elder sister, Sarah, who was training to be a teacher by the then common method of training known as the pupil-teacher system, it is certainly possible that Clara had taken the same route. So it may be that Clara was teaching from 1884 until about 1892 when she married. If we could find the record of her marriage to Frank we could perhaps find her occupation at the time.
At some time around 1892 Frank Bradshaw and Clara Gillard were married and set up home but, as we shall see, Frank was not able to provide the income that would have kept Clara and their children in the style and manner that had been hoped. Such information as is available suggests that Frank was not particularly clever, ambitious or industrious. He appears to have been something of a disappointment to the Gillards who had hoped for someone more dynamic as their son-in-law. It must have been a struggle, for Frank had a succession of clerical jobs that did not bring in much money. They began to have children, their first child Muriel (Minnie) was born in 1893. Neville followed in 1896, at which time Frank was employed by a pawnbroker.
By the time of the 1901 census Frank was employed as a clerk in a nail warehouse which presumably was a better job, but by then there was another child Cissey (Cicely). We can see an extract from the census page for their street which lists Frank, Clara, the three children and an 18-year-old girl, Lucy Baker, who was recorded as a domestic servant.
As we shall see in the next section of this biography, Frank and his family lived in a small house in Springfield a short distance from Rowley Regis - a small town of about 40,000 working mainly in the quarrying, brickmaking, pottery and nail-making businesses. A few small collieries were still working but their days were numbered - they were almost exhausted. It was a typical Black Country scenario.
In these not very prosperous surroundings the young Bradshaws were to have a hard introduction to the world that belies the initial assumption of the comfortable upbringing in a leafy middle-class suburb.