Arthur Hawkins 1848 - 1930


 Edward Hawkins 1881-1944
Edith Annie Brightman 1886-1918
Robert Arthur 1912-1918


John Albert Hawkins 1918-1996

 

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Hawkins Family

From Suffolk & Nottingham, England

 

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 The Hawkins Story

 

William Hawkins (my great great grandfather) married Harriet Quinton in Earl Stonham, Suffolk on Christmas day 1830. They went on to have nine children, the youngest, Priscilla was born when Harriet was 47. When Arthur (my  great grandfather) married, William’s profession was said  to be a miller but on every census he is described as an ag. lab. (agricultural labourer). William lived and worked in Earl Stonham all his life and he died a pauper at the ripe old age of 87 in 1894. Harriet died in 1865.

Arthur is to be found on the 1871 census for Stonham Earl so some time between then and his marriage in 1874 he moved to Worksop in the north of Nottingham. He worked as an ag. lab. until the 1901 census when he became a shepherd. According to Albert, Arthur took care of 800 sheep and because of this his two dogs were licence free. Arthur and Elizabeth Heaton must have lived in a farm cottage, as when he retired he worked part time in Kings Mill to get one of the Kings Mill Cottages. When he retired from the mill in 1924/5 Arthur and Elizabeth moved to 81, Bradder Street where they lived until they died. Elizabeth died in 1926/7 and Arthur died in 1930.

Their son Edward Hawkins was born in Hodsock, and went to school part time until he was 10 or 12 years old. The rest of the day was spent working on the farm. He could not read when he left school, but taught himself later.
Edward worked an ostler on a farm until he joined the army in December 1901. He was sent to Fermoy, Ireland and just missed the last draft to South Africa for the Boer war. He was sent to India for several years on the frontier, serving in Mhow and Quetta. When he was demobbed he got a job in a brickyard as a carter and maintenance boiler man. At this time he moved into lodgings with Francis Sarah Brightman and her family. When the brickyard closed, he worked for Mansfield Council for a time emptying tubs from house toilets and dumping it on a tip where corn was growing six feet high!

Edward began courting Edith Annie (Annie), the daughter of Robert Brightman and Francis Sarah Warren. (On the marriage lines Robert is deceased). They married in February 1912 and at this time Edward was working at New Hucknall Colliery on the coke ovens.

 Robert Arthur was born in 1912, Frances Elizabeth (Lizzie), their only daughter was born in 1914, Edward Fred (Fred) was born in 1915. In 1915 the family were living at 6 Bainbridge Terrace, Huthwaite. In 1918 the family were living at 22 Bradder Street where John Albert (Albert) was born.

In 1918 there was an epidemic of influenza. Three months after Albert was born Robert Arthur caught it and died, quickly followed by Annie. Robert Arthur was only six and Annie was thirty-two. Being unable to take care of the children alone, especially a new baby, Edward sent them to live with Annie’s mother, Frances Sarah, and sister Frances Phoebe (Phoebe), at 46 Newcastle Street. Edward himself went to live with his own parents and brother Leonard in Kings Mill cottages. In 1922/3 Edward moved in with his sister and her husband, Harriet and Samuel Thorpe at 20 Bradder Street. In 1927 Frances Sarah died, and because the house she lived in belonged to the colliery, Phoebe and the children had to leave. Edward found them a house at 143 Sutton Road Huthwaite and he went to live with them. Edward had an allotment just around the corner where he had two large sheds with over 100 chickens. He sold the eggs and at Christmas he “necked” some of the chickens and sold them.

In 1929 Frances Elizabeth had an operation to correct a badly twisted leg (broken after an accident with a bicycle?) She died under the anaesthetic. She was only fifteen.

During this time Edward had a variety of jobs. After he left Hucknall Colliery he moved to Rampton pit, where it was so wet they had to have three-foot channels to drain the water from the face. He moved to Welbeck Colliery, then to Rufford as a coalface worker, became a butty (in charge of a stall), later a repairer. Early in 1932 his whole shift was sacked and he was unemployed until 1940, when he worked for Huthwaite Council for six weeks as a general worker. He went back on the dole and was sent to make the airfield at Hucknall. While there he collapsed and was taken home, staying in bed for a while. He was then taken to hospital where stomach cancer was diagnosed, and Albert was sent for. He was so ill Albert had to give him some blood, a direct transfusion from vein to vein. He never worked again, gradually deteriorating until he died in 1944. He never knew of the marriage of Elsie and Albert.

 


 

 

Albert left school when he was fourteen in September1932 and worked in the evenings as a striker for a blacksmith. As there was no work, he moved to Nottingham the following May to live with his Aunt Jane and he got a job as an errand boy for Priestly and Swan the printers. They were nicknamed Piss and Shit by the police at Shire Hall. He worked for them for ten months then moved to a drapery warehouse as a general dogsbody, working in the shop on Saturday afternoons and going to Grimsby market every Tuesday. He left there to go to Westdale Nurseries but was given the sack after he hit a man for calling him names. He went home and stayed about a year.

In October 1935 he got a job in Ericssons engineering and lived with his cousin on Burrows Avenue Beeston. He joined the T.A. in 1937 and was mobilized in 1938 for the Munich crises.

He was sent to camp in Cambridgeshire for ten days, was then stood down and got home Goose Fair week. In July 1939 he was mobilized again and spent a month on a farm in Sleaford. As part of the farm had been made into a pub they “had a right old time of it”.  They were stood down once more, but on August 24 they were mobilized again, this time they were moved around various camps. Albert’s birthday was on August 26 so “I spent my twenty-first birthday digging bloody trenches!!” Every time they were mobilized they were given £5 10s.

As Albert had worked at Ericssons engineering he applied for Class W reserve because of his reserved occupation (otherwise known as comb out). It was a long time before he heard anything and he thought he had been refused. He was going to apply again but on 26th January 1940 he was finally given his discharge.  When he came back he moved into lodgings on Willoughby Street, then he moved to 65 Dovecote Lane Beeston on the corner of Queens Road, in the house next to Jack and Gladys Williams, the parents of Elsie.

TO BE CONTINUED