The family of William and Ruth Gidley of Marylebone

Whether William Gidley who married Ruth Ames was the foundling child or not (see previous posting), his death in 1842 left the family destitute, as papers in the London Metropolitan Archives show.
I have found five children of the marriage, although the only boy, George, the oldest, who was baptised in St John's, Lambeth, died 17 months later when the family had moved to Marylebone. The four girls, Mary Ann, Grace, Emma and Susannah, followed in quick succession, and were all baptised together on 13 June 1841 in Christ Church, Marylebone. Their mother Ruth described herself in 1841 as being a British subject born in Spain, but in 1851 her birthplace had changed to "North Walson, Norfolk". In 1841 William was a servant, living in Little Carlisle Street, Marylebone. When their daughter Emma married in 1862 she gave her father's occupation as "stockbroker's apprentice". Disaster struck on 18th July 1845 when William died of dropsy in the Middlesex Hospital, and only a month later Ruth Gidley found herself undergoing a settlement examination at the Police Court in Marylebone, on August 20th 1842. She had obviously approached the parish of St Marylebone for parish relief, and the Board of Guardians were keen to offload the family to another parish.
The examination ran as follows: "Ruth Gidley of Little Carlisle Street, aged 37 years, her daughters Mary Ann Gidley aged 5 years, Grace Gidley aged 4 years, Emma Gidley aged 3 years, and Susannah Gidley aged 2 years. That she married William Gidley in St Martin in the Fields 8 September 1833, and that he died on 18th July last. That in 1832, then a single man, he hired himself as a yearly servant to Mr Carrick of Southgate, Edmonton at yearly wages of £30, that he served one whole year, and boarded and slept in the house of the said master, and did no act since to acquire a subsequent settlement."
The judgement was that "Ruth Gidley and her four lawful children had intruded and have lately become chargeable to St Marylebone and that they should therefore be removed to Edmonton as their last legal settlement".
The parish of Edmonton felt themselves aggrieved about this offloading of responsibility, and it seems odd to us nowadays that the fate of a whole family should hang on the basis of one year's work by a dead person, which took place ten years previously, before his children were born, and even before his marriage. Presumably none of the surviving family had even been to Edmonton, where it was proposed to dump them. The parish of Edmonton gave notice of appeal and requested a hearing at the next Quarter Sessions in January, but failed to provide any evidence and made no enquiries. The clerk to the Board of Guardians of St Marylebone requested information from Edmonton by return of post, but that is where the file at the London Metropolitan Archives ends. Presumably the family was taken to Edmonton, where there would be no support network awaiting them.
By 1848 Ruth Gidley had returned to London where she married Robert Derrick Smith, a gas labourer. There the whole family was found in 1851, and her second husband had taken on the family. The three younger girls were still at school, and Mary Ann was a dressmaker. By 1861 Ruth was a monthly nurse, away from home about her duties; in 1871 she was now widowed for the second time. Of the girls, Mary Ann married in 1884 at the age of about 48, Grace in 1861 (after which she vanishes), and Emma in 1862 to the presumed father of her illegitimate child aged 2. The fate of Susanna (or Susan) is not known. I can find no reference to her after 1871, when she was a needlewoman, living with her mother in St Pancras. The oldest, Mary Ann, was in the St George's Hanover Square Workhouse in Mayfair by 1891, already widowed, and in 1901 was living in St Pancras, "kept by friends". She probably died in St Pancras in 1908.

William Gidley christened 1794 in the Foundling Hospital

William Gidley appears in the IGI, christened in the Foundling Hospital Church, St Pancras on February 18th 1794. I've just spent a morning in the London Metropolitan Archives investigating him. It was an interesting search, although not strictly necessary to the One Name Study in the end, as what I didn't know was that all the foundlings' names were changed on baptism. William wasn't, strictly speaking, a Gidley at all.
From the Petitions Books for the relevant year, I discovered that the petitioner was his mother, Martha Hillyard. By the time he was admitted in February 1794, as child number 18168, he was 14 weeks old, and was immediately "sent to nurse". I didn't check the nursery books for exactly where he was sent, but Chertsey, Dorking, Harlow, and Odiham were all places where the foundlings were taken. Martha Hillyard's petition to the general Committee was a sad and familiar story. It ran as follows, "Martha Hillyard was delivered of a male child about 11 weeks ago, and was obliged to quit a very reputable family where she was a servant. By her indiscretion she has disobliged the few friends she had, and was left to herself. Expenses attending her lying-in and confinement have nearly caused her to expend the small sum of money she has saved in servitude and is therefore unable to provide for her child's sustenance, and she should be sorry and grieved to see it suffer on that account."
Martha left no token with the child, as a few mothers did - I saw a small piece of paper with a Latin motto and a symbol attached to one child's record, and another where a silver threepence had been attached. I tried to find out what happened to Martha after William had gone, but it wasn't easy. The IGI provided a possible Martha Hillyard or Hillierd, baptised in 1774 at St Michael, Crooked Lane in the City of London, but a likely marriage for a Martha Hillyard on the IGI turned out to be for another Martha Hillyard born, according to the 1851 census, in Sutton Courtenay, Berks. Either or neither of them could be the correct Martha. Ancestry's London burials' index didn't turn up a likely Martha Hillyard either, but deaths before 1813 haven't been indexed yet, and the London marriages' index came up with a Martha Hillyard, who didn't quite fit the bill, as she was a widow.
As for William Gidley - what happened to him? The Foundling Hospital apprenticeship registers record he was apprenticed on 10 December 1806 to John Mackenzie of Welwyn, Herts. to be instructed in the household business, though this was a standard phrase, and I haven't found yet what the Mackenzie business was. The William Gidley who died on 18 July 1842 in the Middlesex Hospital is of an age to be William the Foundling. (However, there was another William of similar age, baptised in 1793 in St James' Westminster to John and Elizabeth Gidley, and this could also be the William who died in 1842.) The occupation of the William who died in 1842 was a servant, therefore he was the same William who had married Ruth Ames and had 4 daughters (1841 census - Little Carlisle St, Marylebone, William, servant, born in Middlesex, aged 47). There are no other likely deaths that I can see, but if this was the same William the Foundling, then he seems to have left no descendants in the male line.
I also investigated the family of William and Ruth, and this will be my next posting.

The Gidley Arms
Situated on the B3137 south of Meshaw, Devon, at Gidley Cross, is the old house once known as the Gidley Arms, now called Gidley House. The owner has been investigating its history, and has provided some interesting information on it:
"Between the years of 1826 (when it was built) and about 1960, it was a pub and known as the Gidley Arms Inn. I believe it was named by the owner, Robert Preston of Leigh House, Chumleigh, after his Gidley relatives. In his will he states that his great grandfather Gidley was buried at Winkleigh. He clearly thought a lot of the Gidley family as he used their name for this building. However he must have fallen out with them later, as in his will dated 1843 he attached a codicil in which he cut all Gidley relatives out of his will as follows: “As I have been most unjustly deprived of the family pictures of the Gidleys, I recall and cancel the recommendations in favour of that family by way of advice not of trust…”.
The old pub sign, which was fixed above the door of the pub and is present in a photograph dated 1907 but not easily visible, has now long been destroyed."

Many thanks to the current owner of the house for the above information, and to Pete Gidley for the photograph.

James Gidley, jeweller of Plymouth, 1824 - 1910

Having just returned from another visit to the Devon County Record Office, I'm pleased that a marriage entry I was checking for its additional notes proved so informative that I can now say that the family of James the jeweller of Plymouth, one of the small "orphan" trees, can be added with some certainty to the Gidley of Dean Prior tree.
Susanna Gidley married John Brand in Plymouth St Andrew on 6 January 1811. The extra notes in the parish register contain the information that John was a "mate of the Nile Transport no. 13", and also that Susanna was a spinster, and married with the consent of her mother Ann, a widow. A Robert Gidley also made his mark as a witness to the marriage. These names together made the link to the family of Nicholas Gidley, christened in Rattery in 1756, who married Anne Brownson in Buckfastleigh in 1790. They had three children, Susanna, Robert and Henry. Nicholas's burial is evidently that in Plymouth Charles in 1804. Robert is clearly placed in Plymouth, and therefore is highly likely to be the licensed victualler of Britonside and of the Black Bull in Exeter Street, and father of James Gidley, the jeweller, by his wife, Frances Elford. Robert died in 1842 and his age tallies closely enough with the Robert Gidley christened in Rattery in 1793, son of Nicholas and Anne.
Intriguingly, Robert's executor was Bartholomew Gidley, the surgeon of Plymouth, and Gustavus Gidley was his solicitor - both from a completely different Gidley tree. Was Robert also intrigued by the co-incidence of the names? As far as I know, there was no link at all between the two main branches of Gidleys after about 1600, when the first Gidley is mentioned in Buckfastleigh.
There are no known descendants of this family in the male line, but one of James's daughters married Frederick Farthing, and is known to have many descendants. Unusually for the times, James and his wife Eliza seem to have eventually gone their separate ways, and Eliza travelled round the country as a cook for some decades.

Gidleys in the England and Wales Criminal Registers

With the release by Ancestry of the Criminal Registers in HO26 and HO27 at The National Archives, I think I'd better revise slightly my statement in the Gidley Profile to the effect that the Gidleys were nearly all of good character.
25 references have been found to Gidleys, although 16 of those named were subsequently acquitted. Another was almost certainly a mistranscribed Gidlow. The years and counties covered are Middlesex 1791-1892, and the rest of England and Wales 1805-1892.
Those eventually found guilty were as follows:
1) John Kerswell Gidley (from the Buckfastleigh branch) was sentenced to 18 months for larceny in 1840. He was in Exeter Gaol in the 1841 census. In the Criminal Register he is described as being able to read and write well.
2) Samuel Gidley (of the Woodbury branch) was sentenced to 3 months at the Exeter Lent Assizes in 1820. Other sources inform us that it was for stealing a hind quarter of mutton. His wife Penelope Gidley had been acquitted of receiving stolen goods the previous year.
3) Edwin Bartholomew Gidley (the Winkleigh branch) was sentenced to 6 months for larceny in 1842. On release he must have immediately joined the Royal Navy, where he became a Gunnner First Class.
4) Thomas Gidley (possibly from the Dean Prior family) was sentenced to 4 months for larceny at Leeds Borough sessions in 1850.
5) John Gidley (the Cornwall branch) was sentenced to a week's imprisonment in 1851 at Bodmin General Quarter Sessions for larceny. This could well have been the John Gidley who almost immediately emigrated to Canada.
6) Nicholas Gidley (also of the Cornish family) who was found guilty of burglary at Bodmin Assizes in 1852 and sent to prison for one year. He was probably also sentenced in 1854 in Devon for one week, again for burglary.

The sentences seem to have had life-changing effects in some cases, witness the emigration and enlistment in the Services.
Even being found not guilty also seems to have led to long distance moves, even emigration in one case: Thomas Gidley of the Winkleigh branch found not guilty of housebreaking at the Old Bailey in 1833. Thomas Gidley of the Dean Prior branch possibly moved after his imprisonment from Bradford to Manchester. James Gidley (of the Winkleigh branch, who had moved with his widowed mother to Brighton) moved on to London after he was acquitted of larceny in 1869. Richard Gidley (of my Spreyton and Heavitree branch) was acquitted of sheep stealing in 1834 at Plymouth, presumably whilst living in Ipplepen, and moved on to Heavitree shortly afterwards.

There were two noticeable recidivists who seem to have managed to get away with it for the most part:
1) Joseph Gidley, a costermonger of Deptford, who was acquitted three times between 1837 and 1839 of larceny (twice) and of uttering counterfeit coin. A month after his first acquittal a local newspaper tells us that he was charged at Greenwich Petty Sessions with three others with assaulting several police constables from R Division, which all the defendants denied. All were fined either £5, or given 2 months imprisonment. Joseph, whose parents are still unknown, settled down after he became a family man.
2) William Gidley (of the Winkleigh branch) seems to have been incorrigible. I already had several references in the Exeter Police notebooks to him, including using obscene language, and riding a horse up and down Preston St, Exeter. He was fined 10/- for that. He was probably also the William Gidley acquitted three times for larceny between 1853 and 1867, and charged with aggravated assault in 1857. He was married twice, and his son by his first wife, James Gidley, emigrated to Australia.

Nearly all the offences involved larceny. When it was listed, most of the defendants could either not read or write at all, or only imperfectly. The most serious crime was that of John Gidley accused of assault with intent to ravish in 1873 at Exeter General Quarter Sessions, but he was acquitted.

William the Conqueror link?

I had read the history of Gidleigh village and manor in the Middle Ages in Tony Grumley-Grennan's book, and taken note of the family trees on Ancestry of the Prouz family that start with Giles de Gidley, but not really taken much notice of them. Then Pete Gidley sent me a copy this week of an extract from “Devonshire Wills “ by Charles Worthy written in 1896, pages 394-399. I reproduce it here:

"GIDLEY OF GIDLEY AND HOLCOMBE PARAMORE.

This ancient family derives its name from the parish of Gidley, on the north-eastern escarpment of Dartmoor, which land was given by William the Conqueror to his half brother the Earl of Mortain, and held under him, in 1086, by a certain " Godwin," and in the Confessor's reign it had also belonged to " Godwin," described as the " Priest" Westcote, in his seventeenth century View of Devonshire, declares that he had seen a grant of this land, by " Martine," Earl of Cornwall, in favour of his " nephew, Giles de Gidleigh,'' the seal bearing the impress of a triple towered castle, and that the said grant was "exemplified, under the great seal of England, in the reign of Henry VIII."
The said " Giles de Gidleigh," to have been a " nephew " of the Earl of Mortain, whose brother Odo, Earl of Kent, and Bishop of Bayeux, had no issue, should have been a son of his sister Emma D'Abrincis, the mother of Hugh, Earl of Chester, and there is no record that she had such a son as "Giles." Robert of Mortain, Odo, and Emma were the children of Harlotta of Falaise by her marriage with Harlowen de Conteville. Their half-brother and sister, King William and Adeliza, were the offspring of an earlier, and less respectable, intimacy on the part of Harlotta, with Duke Robert of Normandy, and it is most probable that the several personages who have been handed down to us as " nephews " and " nieces " of the Conqueror, or of Mortain, such as "Albreda," wife of Baldwin de Brion of Okehampton, William " Warlewast," Bishop of Exeter, and this Giles de Gidleigh, were children of the king's whole sister, Adeliza de Falaise aforesaid, who was married thrice, and had issue by each marriage, inter a/us, Adeliza, Countess of Albemarle in her own right, 1081-1090 ; Stephen, who succeeded his half sister in that earldom ; and Judith, wife of Waltheof, Earl of Huntingdon. The daughter of Albreda of Okehampton was also called Adeliza, and doubtless so after her grandmother. It is certain that this Dartmoor property descended in the name of Gidleigh for some generations, and down to the middle of the fourteenth century, when the daughter and heir of Giles de Gidley married William, son of Waiter Prouz, by the daughter of the Lord Dinham. Her eldest son and heir succeeded to Gidleigh, and his only child, Alice, married, first, Sir Roger Moels, and, second, Sir John Damerell. The latter family inherited Gidley for several generations, until it passed by intermarriage with one of them to the Coades of Morvell, in the county of Cornwall. It was during their ownership that Gidley Castle probably fell to decay ; the remains of it appear to be of early fourteenth century date, and consist chiefly of the large square keep, the lower chamber of which is barrel vaulted, and has two newel staircases communicating with the upper portion of the building. The name of Gidley, however, appears to have been preserved by a younger branch of the family which settled at Winkleigh, the Devonshire seat of the Honour of Gloucester, upon a property called Holecombe, which had been held under those Earls by William de Portu Mortuo in the reign of Henry III., and was afterward corruptly known as Holcombe Paramore. Richard Gidley was buried at Winkleigh, 26th March, 1574."

Tony Grumley-Grennan is not convinced by the supposed grant of the manor of Gidleigh by Martin, Earl of Mortain to his nephew, Giles de Gidley. The language used in the grant is apparently not from early Norman times, but more likely to be legal language from the 13th and 14th century.
The Prouz family tree produced from Charles Worthy's account also differs in some respects from other Prouz trees I have seen. It is unlikely that it will ever be proved that the Gidleys of Winkleigh descend from William the Conqueror's mother. That there is a link with other Norman barons seems highly likely, however. Manors weren't granted to Saxons or peasants.
The supposed link between the Gidleys and the Coades family of Cornwall is worth investigating, and I shall be checking the Visitations of Cornwall on my next trip to the Society of Genealogists, and trying to contact some Coades family historians, to see if I can find out if the Gidleys of Holcombe Paramore really were a younger branch of the Coades family.

John Edward G Gidley born 1903

I have recently obtained the birth certificate of John Edward G Gidley, born in Kennington, London, in November 1903. I had hoped this was going to solve the mystery of the parents of Edward George Gidley, of a similar age and district of London. But they are totally different people. The certificate did, however, solve the mystery of the two Gidleys I found in Dover in both the 1911 census and in death references.
John Edward Gidley born 14 November 1903 in Kennington was the son of Evelyn Louise Hatton Greenaway, a milliner. The certificate has been officially altered by the registrar to change baby John's surname from Greenaway to Gidley, when presumably John's father went to the Register Office to facilitate this. The father was John Edward Gidley, a joiner. I think this makes him part of the Gidleys of Winkleigh tree, and John Edward senior was born in 1859 in Mile End, London, the son of Gustavus Gidley of the Metropolitan Police. John Edward married Maria in 1879. They had five children, and Maria died in 1900. John married again, in 1901, to Eliza, and was presumably still married to her when he admitted the parentage of John Edward junior. In fact Eliza did not die until 1933, by which time John senior had married yet another woman, three years before he died in the Renfrew Road Workhouse in Southwark in 1926.
Evelyn (who was born in Kent) and John junior were found in Dover in the 1911 census, both using the name of Gidley. John died in 1932 in Dover, aged only 28. Evelyn had died in Dover in 1928 under the name of Gidley, and is described in the probate record as a widow.