Doreen TURNER, wife of my late father’s younger brother, has researched the background of this unknown 4g-grandfather. In the Tithe Apportionment of 1837, William owned about 9 acres of land in widely separated plots in Donisthorpe. John and Doreen Turner visited each of these plots of land hoping to find evidence of ancient willow trees, sadly,they were disappointed. The family are recorded in the 1841, ‘51 and ’61 censuses but not thereafter. William died in July 1867 after a long and withering illness.
Oakthorpe in 1881 had the following occupations: 52 coal miners, 10 agricultural labourers on 5 farms, 10 brewers and coopers, two publicans with ten Masters and Mates lodging, 5 railway employees and 5 teachers including a pupil teacher and a governess, 3 weavers and a basket maker, one tailor, butcher, carpenter, grocer, cordwainer, clerk, carter, two grooms and two gardeners, and 11 domestic servants.
Grandfather’s grandfather, James TURNER, was their lastborn son. We have his hand, albeit, ‘James Turnner’ in an ancient tome of the times. The polemical text, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, was carried to Birmingham in about 1852 by James and records on its flyleaves, the early births and deaths of the first children born in the city together with the book’s provenance. James was probably the first ‘literate’ TURNER, in the sense that he was able to sign his name, his penmanship was splendid, his spelling idiosyncratic. However, subsequent official documents such as Birth registrations display only the ‘Mark of’ William.
Before looking in detail at the life of our direct ancestor let us see what we can make of the records of his siblings. John TURNER was born about 1824 in Oakthorpe and was baptised in Measham. He is with his parents and five brothers and sisters in 1841.
By 1876 he has a business in Victoria Street in Derby; in the intervening period he married thrice had at least five children, trained his only surviving son, Augustus Fred, into becoming a basket maker – and they had, by the 1881 census, all left home. From Trade Directories of the time we can see that John was in business from at least 1870 to 1904, either as John TURNER or latterly as John Turner & Son. In 1908 at the Victoria Street address we have Frederick Turner, basket maker; Fred has dropped his first name. This continued up until 1922. From 1925 we find Frederick L. TURNER, cabinet maker of Copeland Street in Derby – the Victoria Street residence had become a dairy. And, Frederick H. TURNER of Turner’s Garage & Motor Sales in Osmaston Road. [To date Fred L and Fred H have yet to be determined as family members]
Fred’s twin sister, Mary Elizabeth, married into a tailoring family, the BOSTOCKS; Francis and Mary appear to have left the area by 1891.
On the 1881 census return John states his occupation as Master Basket Maker employing one man and one apprentice. Surely the apprentice was Fred? As for the one man, not far away in Green Lane is John’s younger brother, Francis, also a basket maker. Some work needs doing in Derby here but it looks very much as though John, in 1881, by employing his younger brother and apprenticing his son is doing exactly what his nephew, James Morley would be doing twenty years later.
Francis TURNER, second-born son of William and Elizabeth, was obviously bent on confusing later genealogists, firstly by marrying Frances then naming their first-born son, Frank. Twenty years later Frank, son of Francis, met Jane TURNER, daughter of Francis. And how did Jane’s father make his living – yes, he was a basket maker.
Recent work on the Derby census returns has unearthed the further complication of Francis’ sons, Frank, Bruce and Samuel all with the middle name ‘Innocent’ being mirrored by three of Frank’s sons with identical names.
Mary Ann, the only child born outside of Oakthorpe, married Thomas KIRK in 1846. Thomas was a coalminer all his life. Of their seven children, Tom junior and his older brother Joseph, became basket makers. Joseph learnt his craft at the knee of his grandfather, William TURNER, in Oakthorpe – almost certainly so did Tom but we have nothing to show the latter. Joseph was living with his grandparents at the time of the 1861 census and it was Joseph who was there at William’s deathbed in 1867. Two years later Joseph married and adopted his father’s occupation – a coalminer. At least he was a miner by the time of the next census in 1881.
The youngest child of William and Elizabeth, Elizabeth, married a tailor, John COULTON, and moved to Belper.
Hannah TURNER, Elizabeth’s older sister, married a coal miner, Edmund BRIDGET, the 1881 census return from Jarrow gives evidence of their peregrinations in the far Northeast.
James, great great grandfather, and William, great great granduncle, were resident as neighbours in Birmingham in 1861. The entry for William in the census states he was born in ‘Hopethorpe, Derbys.’ With him are his wife Isabella, son James and his six-year-old daughter Charlotte who was born in Walsall. Ten years on and there is no change except James, now eighteen, is a Basket Maker. From Trade Directories at the same address, 17½ Hill Street, William is in business until 1875; from that year until 1878 Isabella is the Basket Maker. By 1878 the business has passed to Frederick WATTS; Frederick married Charlotte TURNER in St Philip’s on Christmas Day in 1873. The last Trade entry for Frederick was in 1884. The couple appear to have been childless.
James TURNER was born just months after the advent of Civil Registration in England and Wales in late 1837 as a consequence we have his Birth Certificate: James, son of William TURNER, Basket Maker, and Elizabeth TURNER formerly BENNETT was born on 7th January [1838]. William registered the birth as ‘.. the mark of..’. James is a thirteen year old basket maker living with his parents in Oakthorpe in 1851, ten years later he is a married man with two daughters living in Howard Place off Suffolk Street in Birmingham. James married Mary Ann MORLEY on the 6th of February 1859 in St Philip’s; one of the witnesses was Mary’s half brother-in-law, Isaiah YOUNG. Isaiah had married the daughter of her father’s first marriage, Sarah Ann MAULEY, nine years earlier.
Mary Ann TURNER, our great great grandmother, had 14 children in 13 confinements. Elsewhere we have learnt of the tragedy of her early married life, the loss of twin girls within days of losing her firstborn daughter. Of these children nine survived into adulthood and we are lucky to have found considerable detail of three of them. But first let us look at the minor players; ‘minor’ only in the sense that we know least about them. Clara Jane, fifth child of James and Mary Ann, was employed as a French Polisher when she was 17 in 1881. The family had, by this time, long moved away from the unsanitary conditions of Howard Place and were now living in Irving Street. Four years later she married John Henry GLASGOW in Christ Church, New Street. John was a carriage lamp maker, the son of a London-born fitter/tool maker. We know of two children, John and Florence, but not of any subsequent history.
Mary Ann, named both for her mother and the stronger of the twin daughters who survived for just three days in May 1862, was the ninth child. She married Harry Charles JACKSON, a coach builder and son of Charles who was also a coach builder. Once again we know of three children, Harry Charles, Arthur James and Dorothy Alice Mary all baptised in St Thomas’ in Bath Row but again not of any subsequent history.
Ernest TURNER, born in 1875 and a trained basket maker, married Ada SMITH in 1800. Harry Smith TURNER was born the following year; by 1923 when he joined the Police force, he had served with the RAF for three years. By 1953 he had risen through the ranks to Police Superintendent. In that same year he was awarded the Commonwealth Medal. He retired in 1960 when he was superintendent in charge of Brierley Hill Police Station in the Black Country.
Ernest’s elder brother, William Frederick, married Caroline Mary Miriam CHERMS in their preferred church in New Street. The couple had at least seven children and at least nine grandchildren have been traced through the marriages of their five surviving children. We know there are descendants as fresh flowers have been found on William and Caroline’s, ‘Kate’ as she favoured, grave in Witton Cemetery. William died in his 47th year and, as far as we know, a basket maker all his working life.
Arthur Bertie TURNER, born just after the 1881 census, was a lifelong Basket Maker, he worked both for his older brother James, and for his nephew, Charl, James’ first son in Birch Road, Quinton.
Florence Bertha, the twelfth child of James and Mary Ann, thoughtfully married another Turner. Mike HULME, husband of a granddaughter of Florence has comprehensively elucidated the genealogy of this branch.
James Morley TURNER was born in Birmingham in 1868; he learnt his craft in the narrow confines of Five Ways, his father, James, incomer from Oakthorpe, his tutor. He married Maria JOHNSON when he was 21; the couple briefly set up home in the city but soon moved to Birch Road when Maria’s mother and three of her brothers moved into Quinton. For several decades the JOHNSONs and TURNERs dominated Birch Road – between them they owned some 35 houses, two smallholdings and much land.
The Basket Works was in its infancy at the turn of the century but soon James had 7 or 8 craftsmen working for him. After the Great War, James Morley succumbed to the dreadful influenza pandemic. His only son, James Charles, universally known as Charl, inherited the business on his return from Active Service in France. Grandfather continued to work as a Basket Maker well into his seventies, he was the last in at least four generations of Willow Craftsmen.