MARSH FEN AND TOWN………..AND CLASS PART 6. CLASS IN RELATION TO MY FAMILY HISTORY

My great-grandfather was known by everyone as Frank Elsden, although his birth name was Frederick, who moved to Spalding as a “man from the Pru” – an insurance agent for the Prudential Assurance Company in 1932,  with his wife Ada and his son Cyril Frank Elsden. As such his was a story of social mobility from working class to middle class.

As a boy, in Soham, he had to take time off school each week when his mother was going to bake bread for the family. He had to help his mother, and his job was to light the outdoor turf oven and keep it stoked up. His parents, Cooper and Louisa Elsden, whilst clearly domiciled in Soham, did move to Sidbury in Devon for about four years as he was a bricklayer working there between 1896 and 1900. At this time there were much civil improvement works in the area with a high demand for bricklayers in Devon. The influx of bricklayers from outside of Devon caused frictions with some local tradesmen  as they felt they were being undermined by cheaper workers from other parts of England. This caused local strikes with warnings posted in local press of the time warning bricklayers from away to stay away from certain sites where there was a strike. Thus we see the conflict between local and migrating labour.

Emma and John H Palmer

By 1901 Cooper Elsden and his family were back in Soham and in 1907 the thirteen year old Frank started work for G.H.Colchester in the office of the Manure and Chemical Works at Burwell. The manure was from primary sources – guano, bat droppings from Peru, and treated fossilised dinosaur poo quarried from the Cambridgeshire Fens. His boss was clearly a clever a man and recognised that Frank wished to better himself when he wrote the reference for him to change jobs in 1914 ( see below). The reason behind this was his marriage to Ada Palmer, my great grandmother. Her parents were middle class farmers in the Soham area John and Emma Palmer. John Palmer was a self-made farmer and land owner. They lived in a modest (by today's standards note most cottages in the area had one bedroom) semi-detached, three bed house known as The Shade in Soham near to a wind mill. I recall as a child visiting one of the relations from this era in the 1970's, Eady Palmer, a very old lady living in a large farmhouse, they still kept pigs much larger than anything you see today. It was a standing joke in my family that my grandfather, each Christmas, would come out with the line at tea time, "That's the best bit of ham since Granny Palmer's funeral."

As such they were not landed gentry and so the barriers between classes were relatively low. Mr Colchester was himsellf a self-made man, clever, but poorly educated and it is highly likely that Frank's writing and numeracy skills were greater than his employers just by virtue of a slightly better education.

In January 1914 the young Frank left Colchester & Ball to work for the Prudential as he wished to better himself. This was with his employer’s blessing as illustrated by the following copy of his reference.

Frank Elsden's Reference that marked his step into the middle classes.

This point is important to note, that such a profession, along with others such as nursing, policing, banking and working for large national retail shops provide an initial local stepping stone that is available without the immediate cost of living away from parents. I do not say that there are other opportunities, but these in particular enabled people to get established in work within their home geographical area and then opened up wider opportunities to move elsewhere. Closing of local offices, shops and businesses in the internet age does away with this route of social mobility. High Street banks and shops have reduced numbers and offices increasingly centralised or, in the case of police and hospitals, moved to ever more centralised areas of population. Also employers used to assist with accommodation. In the case of police and nurses housing costs have become a significant barrier to those professions. Minimum wage does not help as it creates a race to the bottom to  a level of income that is almost impossible to fund accommodation. This ham-stringing of working people is at best crass and at worst a disaster in my opinion.

Frank’s movement to the Prudential was no doubt motivated by his marriage to Ada Palmer and the coming birth of his son Cyril. This job provided the opportunity for them to move to Windsor. Here their standard of living changed from the rural market town of Soham to a sophisticated barracks town. Certainly their son, my grand-father Cyril, went to a rather posh school that he did not much care for. He described it to me as a rather austere place that was very strict. It even had its own cadet force that he belonged to. The cadets were armed with rifles and even had live ammunition for training in Windsor Great Park. I have visions of the 1968 movie “If”. Cyril, whilst highly intelligent, did not care much for school and it is clear to me that his various skills and knowledge were largely self-taught. He was good at maths, and had an aptitude for mechanical and electrical engineering, he was also good at drawing. He enjoyed quite a privileged middle class childhood.

Cyril Elsden with his mother Ada

1932 saw the Elsden family arrive in Spalding as Frank was promoted by the Prudential and moved with Ada and young Cyril to Spalding. By 1935 the young Cyril Elsden had started his own radio business selling radios, bikes and recharging people’s accumulators. An accumulator is a lead acid battery that, with no mains electricity in most homes, powered radios of the era. These required maintenance in the form of top ups of acid and recharging.

As such he was a lower middle class tradesman and developed his business to include wiring and cycle sales repairs and maintenance.  Wartime saw him experience the culture shock of conscription as an electrician in the shipyards of Newcastle in very poor wartime living conditions.

Despite the conditions it is clear he loved the work and the people he worked with. Cyril was between the classes in many ways, middle class in up-bringing, but in many ways working class where he was equally comfortable and experienced few social barriers, or disregarded them if they existed.

Working class and middle class were often closer together and I believe this is largely so until the 1970's in this area, but acknowledge there are huge regional differences. At this point I am aware of my ignorance of sociology and can only state the world as I see it through the windows I have seen it. My father, Michael Elsden was born in 1938. His mother Edna Beeby was from a middle class background in that her father, John Henry Beeby was a butcher. However, he sadly died on a hospital ship in Thessalonica at the end of WW1 before Edna was born.

John Henry Beeby

Although it has not been stated openly it appears that as an unmarried widow she was somewhat shunned. Furthermore it appears there was much resentment towards John Henry Beeby for having served his country and gotten himself killed, albeit by disease. I understand he was a butcher in the Army in the supply lines and as such outside of much of the direct firing line. Fortunately she remarried regaining status/respectability.

With my grandfather Cyril being conscripted to the shipyards my father was largely brought up in his early years by his grandparents who had landed into middle class society in Spalding. I am loathe to judge, but feel that like his father he was caught between working and middle class not quite fitting in either. My father did an apprenticeship at PYEs electronics factory in Cambridge, something he is rightly very proud of. Being at the dawn of many changes in electronics he was much sought after but chose to stay in the family TV business. One telling incident is etched in my memory was when a local optician referred to my father as "not being a professional unlike myself ". This hit a nerve with him and he waltzed home, got out his framed indentures ( an end of apprenticeship certificate and qualification as such) to hang on the shop wall as proof of him being a "professional". This possibly is reflected in other areas where acceptance by others was not forthcoming as the later 1970's saw a widening gap between classes in my opinion and more social demarcation.

On my mother's side she was from a working class background. Her father, Frank Parish was a farm-worker in a tied house. The closeness between classes is possibly identified by how well my grandfather Frank Parrish was treated by the Stevenson family when they took over ownership of the Farm from Cecil Smith. The Smith's had issued him with an eviction notice as they were selling the farm. Mr Stevenson visited my grandfather and made it clear he could stay as they had known each other since they went to school together and he would have a job. This he honoured into his early retirement as the then widowed Frank stayed in the house doing some casual work feeding the cattle kept at Spinney Farm, at the bottom of Twenty Drove.

Frank Parish's wife, was from a working class background with her initially going "into service" working in a Blackpool town house before returning to marry near Bourne, Lincolnshire. It is perhaps telling that my grandmother was, so I'm told by a cousin, quite "bitchy" at my mother's wedding and thought my mother had married "beyond her station". Thus we see a typical "class" situation which, referring to the Michael Caine interview that I refered to in Part 1 of this series of posts Michael Caine describes how his mother was a char-woman that described her employer as "a proper lady". Michael Caine said to his mum, "but you are a proper lady too", but she did not see it. The point Michael makes is that the working class give the middle and upper classes their status. It is sometimes referred to as "inverted snobbery".

Thus we see a bumpy progression through three generations from 1900 from working class backgrounds that see me raised in a middle class household.

The next post will follow this in a more personal look at class and my observations and considerations through my lens. How objective that is is for the reader to judge.