Tommy's Line

What follows is the Publication

"TOMMY'S LINE"

by Geoffrey and Valerie Locks

NOT A FAMILY HISTORY, JUST A SALUTE TO

TOMMY'S

LINE

THIS IS NOT A FAMILY HISTORY, RATHER A DRAWING-TOGETHER OF SOME OF

THE THINGS WE KNOW AROUT OUR FOREBEARS. IT IS A FIRST DRAFT ONLY.

ALL Lockses have a mighty lot to salute the Thomases for. And the Williams, and the Johns and the Georges. And the Anns and Marys and Susannas who were their partners.

Of course we wouldn't be here without them. That is obvious.

But it is much more than that. We wouldn't be the people we are without a few of their genes in our make-up.

These pages salute those forebears and explore their stories.

Of course they tell the merest fraction of the Locks story but that is all we know. You may well know more. Or know it differently.

If you do we hope you will help to fill out this draft with your information and pictures.

Much of the information in the family tree listings section came from the invaluable pedigree which Teresa Rowett and Celia Locks so painstakingly compiled 20-plus years ago, which Teresa's father, Raymond Rowett, produced and circulated.

We have added to this by hundreds - no, some thousands - of hours spent enjoyably poring through parish registers, trade directories, public records, census returns and newspaper files.

We have been grateful that we have been able to pool information and share ideas with Bob and Joy Martin in Queensland - Joy, of course, being one of our many cousins.

Like most people who try to produce anything of a family record I wish I had been able to get more information from my own father (Cyril Locks) while he was alive.

My failure to do so wasn't for any lack of trying - it was just too difficult to break through the barrier of sibling rivalry which had seemingly been strong in his generation.

So this draft is the product of research (if that isn't too posh a word) rather than family tradition. We hope you will be able to add to it, not least to help develop a section on where Tommy's line has spread to, and what Tommy's successors are doing today.

Boston, the Market Square

This was Locks country. An artist records mid-morning in Boston, Lincs. This was the Market Square, which was home-from-bome to three generations of the Locks family. The fish market is in the background. Off to the left is Bridge Street, where Thomas William set up home with Mary Ann Glass. Also off to the left are South End, where the Glass family lived, and Skirbeck where Thomas George brought up his family.

JUST SIGN YOUR NAME HERE

But Ann's Tom went a bit too far

For sure. Thomas Locks did not spare the people's champion John Wilkes even a passing thought, on the day you can to read about below. But Wilkes was just up the road from Thomas and he was fighting a battle which would be important to the Locks family for the next 200 years - the battle (among other things) for press freedom, in England.

(But who put the t in batchelor? That wasn 't our Thomas)

IT IS SO VERY EASILY DONE - haven't you ever made a mess of signing your own name? With people watching? Feeling a little bit of pressure on you... perhaps? Slightly nervous when there's no reason to be?

Maybe everyone does that some­times. But from now on you've got a really good excuse.

Try looking them in the eye and explaining this at the check­out next time it happens: tell them you can blame your genes.

Because Thomas Locks made an embarrassing mess of signing his name long, long before you were thought of. And he may have been your several-times-great-grandfather.

It happened to him on the worst possible day. It would, wouldn't it.

And to be fair to Thomas, signing his name probably wasn't something he did every day.

And he wasn't used to the pen. Or the place. And even the people watching him made the occasion more nerve-jangling.

The people watching were - after all - his new wife, the curate who had just married them, and William and Mary - the witnesses!

The moment came when the curate. Mr. Kilgour - and that name would put anyone off - handed Thomas a pen and said: "Right then, Mr. Locks, if you would just like to sign your name here..."

And Thomas carefully wrote: Thomas Loocks.

Look what I've done, he thought in horror. Two bloody o's!

"Not to worry, not to worry..." oozed the curate (and was that a smirk on his cherubic face?) "Now you

write your name here, Mrs Locks?".

And Thomas's darling Ann took the pen and wrote her name below his Impeccably. And then William Robinson and Mary Spong took the pen and wrote their names in the blast­ed register. Both impeccably, of course.

And that was probably the only thing Thomas didn't want to remember about the day - 28 September 1777 - when he married Ann Spong.

Ann and Thomas were married at St. Leonard's Church, Shoreditch.

We think he may be at the beginning of our known line.

He may have been the father - and Ann the mother - of Thomas, who married Mary Debuse and had Thomas William, who married Ann Rice and had Thomas George, who married Susanna Elizabeth Dawson and had Thomas William, Ann Rice, John George, Emily Mary, Walter Alexander, Alfred Rice, Frank Rice (and then Fanny, Frederick and Ada who all died young), Harold Arthur and Maud Edith.

And they, after two or three more generations, had us. We can't be sure. One day (with your help?) perhaps we will.

FROM COAL TO COD

TW would make it his business

A LITTLE BOY was born to a young couple who were setting up home in Shoreditch, on the outskirts of London. His mother was Mary. His father was Thomas.

Thomas was very much a working man.

He was a coal meter which meant working long hours for very modest pay. To be precise, five in the morning to nine at night for six months of the year, and six in the morning to six in the evening for the six months of winter, And the pay? Twenty-eight shillings a week.

Mary came from Stepney, and it was there - at St. Dunstan's church - that she and Thomas had married just 17 days before their baby was born.

Stepney was little more than a good stone's throw from where the couple had now set up home in Union Walk, Shoreditch.

They had their boy christened at the Shoreditch parish church, St. Leonard's. They called him Thomas William Locks - Thomas after his father, William (perhaps) after an uncle.

And the name Locks? No one knew for sure where that came from, but there had been Lockses in London for a few generations. And possibly -just possibly - since waves of French families had fled persecution in their own country and large numbers had come to London's East End in the 15, 16 and early 1700s. (Locks is an English version of a French Huguenot name.)

And what of Shoreditch itself, which was to be Thomas and Mary's home after their marriage on September 9, 1805? It had been little more than a hamlet or a village for cen­turies but the 1800s had seen London reach out and envelop the area. It had now been built up and become a wealthy, thriving parish, and even the former villages further out had become a new "place to be."

Places, that is, like Islington to the north, and Hoxton and Hackney to the east.

The pattern was the same. First, the wealthy built fine properties in the attractive villages away from the City: then new industries developed and shop-keepers and traders moved in, some good quality housing was built, and ultimately speculative builders put up rows of poorer homes.

To rub salt into the wound, while all this happened field after field of old farming land would be turned over to producing a new and highly profitable crop - bricks.

In Shoreditch, Thomas William grew up seeing the power of trade all around him. And in due time he decided to go into business himself.

There were plenty of trades which needed workers, the most obvious being furniture-making - cousins of his would do very well in timber on the strength of that trade.

But Thomas William went in a different direction. He determined to have his own business and he knew there was one thing that everyone needs to buy, and that was food. He decided to become a fishmonger. And that proved to be a trade in which he would go far - geographically.

But first, where should he have his shop? TW chose the new, rising, well-to-do town of Islington: new, rising, and well-to-do, but still retaining some of the features of the village it had been a generation or two earlier.

It still had its centuries-old turnpike, guarding the way in from the south, the London direction. It still had its Watch Tower and its green near by, and acres of farmland, even though some farm­land was now brickfields.

It still had its generous number of inns, arising from its location en route for London.

It still had its focal point - its parish church of St. Mary's, with its spire which could be seen for miles.

But most important from a business point of view, it had growing numbers of people, a still-fast-growing population of ten thousand-plus who could come into his shop and buy his fish.

TW found the premises he wanted in White Lion Street - No. 106 - and opened for business.

Sunshine Days for Thomas and Ann

He was no doubt proud to be able to record his trade in the parish register when at the age of 19 and already well established, it was his turn to ask a young woman to the altar.

His bride, on September 14, 1824, was Ann Rice. She was 22. They were married at St. John's, Hackney, and TW must have felt he had the world before him. He was established in business and he had a home of his own and a wife he adored.

Ann was very special. We know that because of the way her memory was kept alive through future generations.

Thomas and Ann set up home not far from the business, in St. Mary le Bone.

A few minutes' walk in one direction would take TW to his shop: in the other direction was a grass field, closely mown and used for the "noble game" of cricket. On one spot or another, Mary le Bone had had a cricket ground for over a hundred years, since a local man, Thomas Lord, had leased a field to the local cricket club in 1788.

Games had changed, London was changing apace, the whole world seemed to be changing. Some changes were good: some were not.

Across the Channel, France was still adjusting to its own shocking and bloody revolution. Britain's ruling landowners were taking the route of reform rather than see violent revolution in England too.

Change there certainly was, on many fronts - political, social and industrial. And Thomas William and his kin were to be part of it.

For one thing, everyone was talking about the noisy, smoke-billowing miracle monsters which were starting to tear their way across the countryside, reaching into every corner of the land. Nothing would be the same again after the coming of the railways.

But another industry was also set to grow dramatically, and this one would touch Thomas's as-yet-unborn family for generations to come. That industry was newspapers.

But back to the present.

Three years after their September wedding, Ann had a baby girl. A delighted Thomas and Ann called her Jane Louisa. Three years on, she had a boy. They called him Thomas George. Another two years and Ann had another girl. They called her Louisa Caroline.

All three were christened, at a few days or a few weeks, at that fine parish church in Islington's winding High Street - St. Mary's.

Happy days. Sunshine days. Days of promise. But as so often in Regency and Victorian England, tragedy was not far away.

Thomas would lose his wife, and the children their mother when they were just eight, five, and two.

Ann died tragically - perhaps in childbirth? - and was buried at St. John's Church, in Hoxton, no doubt where her family lived. She was just 31.

Suddenly, life had changed.

For Thomas William, this place where his work and his dreams and his future with Ann had seemed so rosy.... it had all turned to dust. This was no longer the place to be.

Shortly after, he took little Thomas George but left his two daughters with local families and set off to start a new phase of life.

He went right away - to Lincolnshire. What would he do? He would set up again in the trade he knew well. He would become a fishmonger. In Boston.

Just as the London trade directories had recorded Thomas William's business in Islington in the 1830s, so now it would be the Lincolnshire directories which would take up the story.

The shock and the parting...

TW made a new start in far-off Lincolnshire

TW moved to Boston and found a home in Bridge Street. It was near the town centre, a few minutes walk from the Market Square where he opened a fish shop in the Fish Market.

He was set to become an established figure in the town.

Life moves on. TW could never forget his Ann but in November 1837 he married for a second time. His bride was only 17, so she needed her parents' permission to marry.

Mary Ann Glass's father was a local cabinet-maker. The family lived in the South End district of Boston, just back from the town centre.

Thomas and Mary Ann were married at Boston parish church by the vicar, Bartholomew Goe, on November 27, 1837. And next year, they had their first son. They called him John, after Mary Ann's father.

Another of those changes that were sweeping Britain found effect on June 6 1841. That was the date of the first-ever census to record people's names and addresses as well as their ages, their occupations, and the county where they had been born.

The census return of 1841 duly shows the Locks household: Thomas William, fishmonger, head of the house, with his wife Mary Ann (Boston-born) and sons Thomas George (noted as born in London) and four-year-old John (born in Boston).

Next year, Mary Ann had a daughter. They call her Fanny. (That year's Lincs. Gazetteer & Directory lists Thomas William with his shop in the Fishmarket.)

In 1843 they had a boy and called him William.

In '47 they had another son. They called him John Glass, Mary Ann's name.

In 1854 Mary Ann had a girl. They

called her Emmeline. She was followed two years later by another boy. They named him Alexander. Time moved on.

The 1861 Kelly's PO Directory noted a huge milestone-change for the family. It noted Thomas William's Fish Market business as Thomas Locks & Son, and also recorded Thomas George Locks as a grocer with a business in York Street.

1861 saw another census. TW's fami­ly was now living on the north side of Low Road in Skirbeck. The household was recorded as: Thomas William, head of the household, aged 55, a fishmonger; his wife Mary Ann, 42; son John Glass was now 14 and a moulder; Fanny was 19 and a dressmaker; Emmeline was seven and at school; Alexander was five and at school.

Those big political reforms much talked-of a few years earlier had had an effect - 1867 saw a Boston Voters' List which included Thomas William as a voter because he was the owner of property in Frieston Road, Skirbeck.

The family was living at 45 Church Street, Skirbeck, when the 1871 census was taken, on 2 April. It showed TW aged 65, still a fishmonger: Mary Ann 52; Emmeline 16, unmarried, apprenticed to a cigar-maker; Alexander 15 and an iron moulder's apprentice.

White's trade directory for the next year showed TW still in business as a fishmonger in the Fish Market, and

Thomas George a fish and game dealer in the Fish Market, with a house at 11 Spain Place.

TW's 70th birthday came and went: he continued with his business in the Fish Market. This was recorded in the 1876 Kelly's. And he was still there at the age of 77 when the 1882 Kelly's was compiled. That showed him still in the Fish Market, with a house in Frieston Road, and his son Thomas George a fish mer­chant in the Fish Market, with a house at 11 Spain Lane.

But the man who was born in Shoreditch, who ran a business in Islington all those years ago, who knew tragedy at the loss his wife, who brought his young son to a new life in Boston, and saw him set up in business, this man was now nearing the end of his life.

He was taken to the infirmary of the Boston Union when he was taken ill, and it was there that he died on 16 February 1882.

It is our conjecture that TW was the son of Thomas and Ann who were married in Shoreditch in September 1777, and also that Thomas and Ann had two other sons -William and Samuel - who also went into business - in timber.

If that is correct, then Thomas and Ann headed a remarkable family - one which left a good reputation behind them.

NEW HOME NEW MUM

And then the world of work beckons

IT MUST HAVE BEEN A wretched farewell. The Victorian era had not yet begun but here were all the bitter ingredients of a Victorian melodrama, played out in real life. The tears were real. The sobbing was desperate.

When Thomas William lost his wife, and the two young sisters and brother lost their mother so tragically, the young fishmonger took his son to a new life in Boston, Lincolnshire, leaving the little girls with families in London.

The father and son settled into their new life in Boston. Thomas William started in business: Thomas George started at the local school.

In time, TW re-married and the fam­ily lived in Skirbeck, walking distance from the centre of Boston.

That is where young Thomas George is recorded at the age of ten. The date the family were recorded there? June 6, 1841. That was when England's first-ever census was taken recording names. TG was living with his father and his step-mother, Mary Ann, whom Thomas William had mar­ried four years earlier.

Thomas George had grown up by the time the next census was taken, ten years later. That census shows the fam­ily at Caves Building, Skirbeck - TG is 20 and his father is 45. Both are fish­mongers. TG's step-mother is 36, and he has sisters and brothers - Fanny, William, and John.

The 1841 census shows that TG evidently started work by helping in his father's business in the Fish Market, Later local trade directories record his own progress in business.

He was a grocer for a while and had a shop in York street - the 1861 Kelly's records that stage.

But he was soon back in fish.

In 1876 he had a shop in the Fish Market, as well as his father - both their businesses are in the 1876 Kelly's directory. The '85 and '89 Kelly's show TG in the Fish Market but don't mention his father. The '82 White's directory shows TG had a shop in the Fish Market and a house at 11 Spain Lane: it also shows Thomas William's shop in the Fish Market and his house round the corner at Frieston Road.

TG was 29 when he married. His bride was Susanna Elizabeth Dawson, whose father, William Dawson, was a local carpenter.

The Dawson family was living in the village of Wrangle, a few miles out of Boston towards Skegness. It was at Wrangle's parish church that TG and Susanna married on 12 April 1859.

Thomas William and Ann, must have taken their three children to Islington Green many times

Their first baby was born on July 13 the next year. They named him Thomas William after his grandfather.

They had a daughter two years later and called her Ann Rice, after TG's mother.

Two years later - on 20 January 1864 - a second boy was born. They named him John George. Their next baby was born the following December: this was a girl and they called her Emily Mary.

Eighteen months on, another son was born: Walter Alexander. The next year, another son: Frank Rice. And the next year, on 19 September 1870, another daughter came along, but she died at three months: they called her Fanny Elizabeth.

The family was living at Skirbeck. Fanny was buried at St. Nicholas' churchyard there.

The next son was born in March 1883. They called him Frederick Charles. He died when he was five and was buried in the same churchyard.

Tragically, he was followed into the churchyard by another sister when Ada Elizabeth, born 17 April 1874, died at eight months, just after Christmas She was buried on 1 January '75.

Thomas George and Susanna had two more children - a son on 26 May 1876 and a daughter on 10 November 1878. They called them Harold Arthur and Maud Edith. By the time little Maud Edith wm born, her eldest broth­er William was 18 and the next-in-line, John George, was almost 15. Both were now working men.

I Knew your Tommy, an old Bostonian told us

Susanna was now 39: and Thomas George 48. With their family growing up rapidly, TG and Susanna were about to see big changes. They were about to help their second son take the crucial first steps in his own business career, a career which was to take him to London and the founding of a modest newspaper empire which would last into three generations.

On that April day in 1881 when a census enumerator stood on the doorstep of Thomas George's house at 11 Spain Place, Skirbeck, to note the names and details of all who were pres­ent, he recorded TG as a "grocer and game dealer", and noted the children and a servant.

But four members of the family were not present. The eldest son, Thomas William, was now married and had his own home. But also absent were TG's wife Susanna, and their daughter Emily and son John George.

With those four away, TG's house­hold on that April census-day consisted of sons and

daughters Annie (18), now a milliner, Walter (aged 13 and at school), Alfred Rice, (aged 12 and at school), Frank Rice. (11), Harold (4), Maud (2), and Sarah Ashwell (19), a domestic servant.

Thomas George was clearly a key tradesman in Boston. He was also thought highly of as a man to be trusted.

A Boston resident, Mr Jeff Horton, spotted our letter in the local Boston Standard, in 1995, asking if anyone remembered anything of the Locks family. He wrote to us saying he certainly remembered Tommy Locks:

"He lived in Vauxhall Road. He had a wet fish shop in the Market Place. He was tall, upright, clean shaven with close-cropped white bristly hair.

"I was 12 when he died. I remem­ber him because he was chairman of the Boston branch of the Grand United Order of Oddfellows, a sick club for working men, and my father was one of the two trustees.

"For a small monthly payment you got a

doctor and medicine free, and twelve shillings a week sick pay for almost two months. It was well worth the sub when a working man's wage was around £1 week.

"The records of the lodge were kept in a large wooden box with two locks. My Dad had the key to one lock and the other trustee had the key to the other one. The lodge used to meet fortnight­ly at the Lord Nelson Inn and collect the money and conduct the business. The meeting could not start until both trustees were present.

"There was also a junior club for boys. We got the doctor and medicine free but no sick pay, and we used to have a tea and sports in a local field one day in the summer holidays. A band marched round the town in procession first, with a large banner. I should think I am last in the town to have belonged to it."

The childhood memories of a local nonagenarian seem to speak volumes about the character of our Tommy.

BACK TO TOWN

A Young man in a hurry

FIFTY YEARS AFTER Thomas William had left London to start a new life in Boston, one of his grandsons made the return journey.

Thomas William had been 29 or 30 when he left Islington for Boston in the 1830s, taking just his young son Thomas George with him.

The grandson who made the return journey fifty years later was probably like him in many ways, and very much like his own father, Thomas George.

Meaning that he was prepared to work hard and thrived on responsibility.

Meaning that he was determined, and not easily beaten.

Meaning that he was personable, but nobody's push-over.

Meaning that he had proved he was capable of running a business.

The difference between JG and his grandfather when he made the journey from Boston to London was this: young JG wasn't yet twenty, he wasn't mar­ried, he had no children, and he had no grim memories of personal tragedy.

John George was bom in Boston in 1864, and he went to school there.

Come the age of 14 or so he left school, like his classmates, and no doubt started work by helping his father in his shop in the Fish Market.

If so he obviously did well, because when he had a couple of years' experi­ence behind him, his parents decided he was ready to run a business himself, with a bit of help from them.

What business? A shop, naturally. Selling what? Fish was what he knew.

Where should it be? It could not be in Boston, because they already had their business there. You know the very best place to be, someone would have said. Where's that? Skegness. Of course Skegness had to be the place, if JG could cope away from home.

Pictured here is Keeper's Cottage, Bushwood

At the very time the family were discussing the matter in Skirbeck, Boston, the 9th Earl of Scarborough - major Lincolnshire local landowner - was pouring money into Skegness, developing the former fishing village into a tourist and residential resort. It was big news in the papers.

At that every moment, construction workers in Skegness were building a pier out into the sea. There were huge plans. The town was being put on the map in a big way. That meant people. It meant money. It meant business.

In short, the family decided that a grocery and fish business in a prime site in Skegness, 25 miles up the coast, would be the answer.

John George was 18 when he went to Skegness to open that business. His mother went too, and no doubt helped, and his sister Emily seems to have kept house for him for a while.

The household of three is record­ed in the 1881 census - the year the pier was opened. They were living above the shop at 30 Lumley Road, a prime site indeed. Lumley Road was one of Skegness' main streets, a main turning up from the seafront between South Parade and Grand Parade.

John George is shown on the cen­sus at the age of 18, head of the household, grocer and fishmonger. His mother is shown, aged 47. So is Emily. She is 16, and described as housekeeper.

These were key learning days. JG was developing the qualities he would need in the next stage of his life. And that stage was only just round the corner.

JG was an achiever. He was also a young man in a hurry.

With his experience in Boston and Skegness behind him, he was about to turn to a new business altogether. He would call a halt to working as a fish­monger and leave Lincolnshire for London. He would get experience working for a newspaper, and he would then start his own newspaper.

And he achieved all this within six years of that census being taken in Skegness.

The 1870s and '80s were a good time to be starting up in newspapers. For 150 years, successive Governments had used taxes, excise duty, the courts, intimidation and brute force to try to control, eliminate or suppress a free press. And newspaper owners had sought means to get round them, stay in business, fight back. But now that long, bitter war was over.

The 1850s had seen the lifting of a crippling tax on advertisements, Stamp Duty and duty on paper.

These key financial measures alone had opened up a new age for publishers.

At the same time a new middle class had developed in society, com­posed of people who were educated, literate and had money to spend.

It was an important new readership for newspapers to cater for.

The Great Eastern Railway Station was one signal of them.

All told, it was a new age for news­papers and for those who had the ambition to be newspapers owners.

But whatever the theoretical busi­ness opportunity, it would still be a massive switch to change from being a fishmonger in Skegness to becoming a newspaper proprietor on the edge of London, and doing it from scratch. Such a suggestion would have sounded preposterous.

So where did JG get the idea from to do exactly that?

The clue surely lies with the next-door neighbour back home in Skirbeck. His name was John Tilley. He was no doubt a close friend: after all, he came from north London like Thomas George. And his occupation? He was a typesetter and compositor. He knew printing and very likely he knew newspapers.

Thomas George and John Tilley must have talked together about the huge changes which had occurred in the printing and newspaper-publishing scene. And TG's sons John and Walter - both of them business-minded and ambitious - would have been agog with the possibilities.

And there was a further enducement which may well have appealed to TG's sons. Owning a newspaper offered a route to considerable social standing, something which their father had achieved to a heady degree through his business, and found further expression in his 20-years secretaryship of the local Oddfellows.

None of which is to say that start­ing a newspaper business would be easy, still less that making it success­ful was guaranteed. Far, far from it. Very many papers were started in the 1870s and '80s, only to fail with heavy losses.

And the era has not ended yet...

But having been in London for two or three years getting some experience, John George was just 23 when he founded his first paper. He called it the Eastern Mercury. He had decided it would be published mid-weekly and he would charge l/2d for it.

Newspaper prices in earlier years had been much higher, but JG had worked out how he could make it prof­itable at that price through good sales, a healthy income from advertisements and controlling production costs.

The first move was to get the paper known.

Writing in the Eastern Mercury's first edition, dated November 22, 1887, JG said he had started this newspaper, "yielding to constant solicititude of a large circle of friends and well-wish­ers".

He was, he wrote, "not unknown to the public, having for some years past been engaged in the publication of a newspaper known to most of our read­ers."

The Mercury's address was given as 13 Whitefriars Street, off Fleet Street. This was the address of the National Press Agency Ltd. (E. Dawson Rogers was named as the manager).

JG revelled in his new occupation and status as newspaper proprietor and editor..

He worked hard and the company grew.

Perhaps it was not such a big sur­prise when his younger brother, Walter, followed him soon after. Walter worked for JG for a while before set­ting up his own company. The broth­ers' businesses then ran in remarkable parallel for years, even to the coinci­dence which occurred when Walter - for whom writing was a hobby as well as part of his business - researched and published two books about Essex and London. That was in 1906 and '08.

John George showed that his broth­er was not the only one who could pro­duce something in covers. He re-print­ed two series of articles he had written after touring in Scotland and Austria, and issued them as booklets.

He called them An Ideal Holiday in the Highlands and An Ideal Tour in Picturesque Austria.

Soon after arriving from Boston, JG met the lady who would be at his side for the next fifty years - and remark­ably, she was from Islington.

JG and Florence Jessie Toms were married at Holy Trinity Church, Leytonstone on March 1, 1886. The next 21 years were to see the birth of a daughter and four sons.

As his company and his family grew, JG made room in the company for those of his children who wanted to work for the papers. His daughter Lily and sons Monnie (George Melbourne), John Leonard, Cyril Ellis and Clifford Maurice all took their places in the company which suffered but survived the conflicts of sibling rivalry. And they in turn shared the reins of the company with the next generation.

The papers that JG and his company founded from 1887 onwards ultimately ran to nearly 30 titles and covered much of Essex, north London, and Kensington.

JG's family home for fifty years was Gainsborough Lodge, in Church Lane, Leytonstone. For much of that time he also had a holiday home at Deal, Kent - No. 1 Ranelagh Road, barely 100 yards from the seafront - and he combined leisure-time with running the company from there.

It was at Gainsborough Lodge, Leytonstone that his children were born and grew up. And it was there that in the early days of the century he kept the horses and wagons he used for deliver­ing his newspapers - a delivery system which his son Cyril brought back into use in the '39 - '45 war years, when petrol was rationed and in short supply.

JG retired to Bramfield House, in Cross Bush Road, Felpham, Sussex, and it was there that he died on 24 January 1950.

He had made his will three years earlier, naming his elder sons Monnie and Leonard as his executors. His estate was to be divided equally between all his children, and if any of them should die before him, that one's share was to go to the spouse and fam­ily.

The company which JG founded continued within the later generations of the family, in tandem with his broth­er Walter's company, until it was sold in the 1960s.

A remarkable era had ended.

And yet not entirely. Because the Locks family had not finished with the newspaper scene with the sale of the family's newspapers.

Grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren of John George were still working in newspa­pers through the '70s, '80s, '90s - and are still there into the new millennium.

From PINS to PICAS

Walter was ready to follow his brother

When it comes to tailoring, some people are cut out for the job and some are not. A young lad who was working in a tailor's shop in Boston in the 1880s was one of those who are not.

He earned his wages well enough, beavering away in his apprenticeship six days a week. But tailoring wasn't in him.

His guv'nor might have told him: "Walter, m'lad, I'll give you good marks for trying, but I'm afraid you'll never grow up to be a Burton or an Amani." And Walter would certainly have thought: "I don't want to."

But if tailoring wasn't in young Walter Locks, something else was. It was just unfortunate that he had to break a leg - yes, break a leg - for that something to get a chance of fulfilment.

Because it was while Walter was confined to his home in Spain Lane with his leg slowly mending that he made his first moves towards a new career. And an astonishingly successful one.

Walter used the time to learn a skill that he knew he would need in a job he was so keen to have. The skill? Shorthand. Because it was Walter's ambition to work in newspapers, like his brother.

And so it happened.

With his new skill, Walter said farewell to tailoring, and to Boston, and got a job reporting for JG who had made the same move a few years before.

He proved to be a natural at the job. People liked him, so he could get a story. And he had a good way with words. He was a born newspaperman.

But young, ambitious Walter didn't altogether take to working for someone else. So before long he was looking for a paper of his own.

He found it in the form of the East London Advertiser, a paper which had been launched shortly before, on November 17 1886, as the Tower Hamlets Independent.

Walter Locks was on his way. And in more ways than one, for on a June day in 1891, at the age of 27, he waited at the front of the

church for his bride, Lily Abbott, to arrive look­ing radiant and for them to say a mutual "I will".

The first of three daughters - Doris -was born in 1894. The second - Ruby -was bom in '96. The third - Enid - was born in 1906. All three were to play their roles in Walter's business. And an important and growing business it was.

On August 27 1898, Walter launched a new title. It was Ilford's first local paper. He called it the Ilford Guardian and set up the Ilford Steam Printing Works to produce it.

For the next 23 years, Walter rel­ished his role as proprietor and editor of his two flourishing newspapers, and as husband, and father to his growing family.

He was also active in local life, becoming a member of many local organisations and supporting many charities.

Walter enjoyed writing as a hobby as well as in his business. He wrote and published two books about East London and Essex. East London Antiquities was the first. He described as "Some records of East London in the days of old: its history, legends, folk­lore and topography". Sir Walter Besant wrote an introduction.

He called his second book A Maid in Armour - Tales of Old Ilford. He brought it out in 1906.

Walter had watched the develop­ment of the Dagenham Estate, the sprawling Ford motorcar town. And he knew that here was an opening for new business. On November 1921 he launched the Dagenham Post.

When retirement finally beckoned, Walter moved to the village of Felpham, near Bognor Regis, Sussex, and it was there that he died

in1940. He was 73.

It was typical of him that he left bequests to several of the staff who had been with him for a good many years. He left his business itself to his daugh­ters. They were faced with big ques­tions about how to continue the company. Reflecting their father's positive spirit they decided to form Ilford and East London Publications Ltd, and appointed Ruby - Mrs Browning - as managing director.

She ran the company throughout the war years, coping not only with staff shortages and paper rationing, but with bombing-raids and Hitler's most-feared air weapons, the V1 and V2 rockets.

She also had a home and a family with two teenage children to look after.

When the war ended, paper rationing lifted and she was able to pro­duce bigger editions. Sales increased: advertisement revenue rose. And the old Ilford Guardian gave way to a new Ilford Pictorial, a paper with a differ­ent feel for the new age.

The Ilford Pic recalled the post-war change in a special issue in 1963. It recalled: "With the birth of the Ilford Pictorial came a phase of which all those who are associated with the East London Advertiser, Dagenham Post and Ilford Pictorial are so proud - the Ilford Pictorial Series."

By the time the Pictorial printed those words the circulation of the papers was eight times what they had been when Ruby Browning took over the running of the business. The com­pany wai strong and a strong family concern. That was the way Walter had liked it. His old guv'nor in Boston would have said it was the way he had tailored it.

Saluting a pair of the cousins...

The timber connection

and the

LAST WORD

THEY KNEW ALL TOO well that money doesn't grow on trees, but young William and Samuel both hoped to find some in timber.

Working in the timber trade did not run in the family. Both their father and their uncle Thomas were coal meters. That was lowly, low-paid work - they took home just 28 shillings a week - but it was­n't the bottom of the scale by any means.

You had to be literate, honest, reliable. Some people were coal meters for 20, 30, 40 years.

A coal meter would leave home before dawn most of the year, walk to the coal-wharves down by the river, do a 16-hour or (in the winter) 12-hour day, and not get back till well after dark.

Coal was a valuable commodity. Everyone needed it. Huge quantities were barged up the London river every day under sail.

With so much arriving, being off­loaded, changing hands as it was sold, and then loaded into wagons, a careful check had to be kept on what went on.

It was the coal-meter's job to record every barge of coal arriving, check that it was the quality and quantity stated on the paperwork, see that the buyers' and sell­ers' paperwork tallied with each other, and make sure that all coal bought and sold was cleared out of the coal-room.

Another wharf-side business was timber. That also arrived every day in barges, was off-loaded, bought and sold, and loaded on to wagons which generally headed for one of the timber yards which lay back from the river.

From there it was sold on again, some of it ending up in one or another of the scores of furniture workshops in Shoreditch, not so far from Ann Street, Stepney. And Ann Street, Stepney was where William Locks, the coal meter, and his wife Mary Ann, lived with their five girls and two boys, William and Samuel.

Young William was taken on at one of the timber yards near the river after he left school. The day he started there was an important one for his parents and for him - he had moved from being a boy to being a man.

Schooldays were over and work was a serious matter.

He knew he had to get to work on time without fail, work hard, do as he was told, be honest, be reliable. What he didn't know on that first day, starting work, was that he was stepping on to the first rung of a ladder which would lift him out of the back-streets of Stepney and give him and his family a quality of life he could as yet hardly dream of.

William did well at the timber yard. He was liked and he was trusted.

In due time he was singled out as a man who could be given responsibility. He was made a foreman.

That suited him well. He liked responsibility and he liked the business.

His life was shaping up well.

William met and married a local girl, Hannah Norman, and they set up home in Sidney Street. Life was good, and due to get better.

If William's first day at work had been a red-letter day, and the day he was made foreman was another, what can you say of the June day in 1838 - the 23rd it was -when 21-year-old Hannah produced their first baby, a beautiful little daughter?

William was only desperately sorry that his father had not lived to see this first grandchild. He had died of typhus on April 9, at the age of 57 - just eleven weeks earlier.

THE PRIDE THE PAIN

Family tragedy was never far away in the 1880s

He was buried at St. Matthew's, Bethnal Green two days later.

William and Hannah gave their first baby her mother's name, calling her Phoebe Hannah, William must have been proud that his occupation could be recorded in the parish register as Foreman at a timber yard as well as their address, 16 Sidney Street.

William now had serious responsi­bilities.

Hannah had their second baby in 1840. This was a boy. They called him William, like his father and grandfather.

Next year Hannah had another girl They called her Louisa

William and Hannah's family was growing, and William was showing his flair for work and business.

He made a momentous decision - to set up as a timber merchant on his own account. Suddenly it was no longer William Locks, foreman: it was William Locks, Timber Merchant. His address: 1 King Street, Commercial Road East, in the heart of docklands.

The business worries would be his but so would the profits which he was sure he could make.

And he did In fact he had opened a second business, at 1 Leonard Street, Shoreditch, by the time his next daughter, Julia Jessie, was bom there in 1844.

Hannah then had Emma in '45, Mary-Elizabeth in '46, Florence in '47, and Charles in '48.

Sadly, Charles died three years later, after what was recorded as 14 days congestion of the brain.

William and Hannah were to have three more children. Alice Emily was born at their Shoreditch home, but by now the family needed - and could afford - somewhere larger and more convenient.

They moved to 1 Nursery Cottage, Cassland Road, a well-to-do area of South Hackney, and there Hannah had Kate Isobel in '52, Edward Alfred in '55, and Minnie in '57.

The family moved to Shore Road, South Hackney soon after Minnie was born. And it was there that Hannah died three years later.

Since that June day in 1837, when William and Hannah had married in Stepney, Hannah had raised a family of two sons and nine daughters, and support­ed William in his steady rise in business and on the social ladder - she died having hardly reached her middle forties. The doctor recorded: parahlogia exhaustion.

William was only a year older than the dear wife he had lost. He still had a young family to bring up, though his eldest daughter, Phoebe Hannah, was 22 and still at home. How he needed her support as he coped with the loss of his wife and the practical needs of the household.

The businesses, too, still needed his full attention. The Leonard Street busi­ness specialised in mahogany, supplying high quality wood to top-end furniture-makers.

Three years after Hannah had died - after after another move, to 16 St. Augustine's Road, Hackney - William married for the second time. His new wife - Emily Louisa Blackmore - was from St. Pancras and it was at St. Paul's Church, St. Pancras, that they married on March 3 1863.

William had a second family - all daughters - with Emily Louisa. Isobel Harriett was bom in 1864, Ellen Agnes in 1866, and Edith in '69/70.

William had a fine family home for the last years of his life. No. 119 Victoria Park Road, Hackney, overlooked Victoria Park itself. It was a handsome property.

The 1871 census shows the whole family there: William is 53 and head of the household; his wife Emily is 43, Phoebe is 32, Emma 24, Alice is 20. Kate 18, Edward 16, Minnie 14, Florence 12, Nellie five and Edith is one. There is a domestic servant, Ellen Stone, who is 22.

William was just 59 when, five years later, he died at home in Victoria Park Road.

He had appointed three executors and trustees - his brother Samuel, his son-in-law John James Baddeley (Mary Elizabeth's husband), and his daughter Phoebe Hannah.

His will showed a meticulous and car­ing family man.

For a start he left £1,500 to Phoebe Hannah, £300 to Louisa (Mrs Palmer), £300 to Mary Elizabeth (Mrs Baddeley), and nineteen guineas each to his sisters, Jane Wade and Ann Rushbrook.

The trustees were to invest £2,500 for the benefit of his second wife and their three children, the children receiving £500 each when they reached 21 and his wife receiving the interest on the investment for life.

The rest of the estate was to be divided among William's children with his first wife: Emma, Alice Emily, Kate, Edward, Minnie and Florence. They would receive their share on reaching the age of 21 (or, in the case of the daughters, when they married, if they did so with the trustees' consent).

William's solicitors in Finsbury Square prepared his will for him in June 1876. He had been ill then for almost nine months. He signed the will on June 30, just two weeks before he died. The cause of death was recorded as phthisis pulmonalis.

So what of William's seven-years-younger brother, Samuel? The two were obviously close.

Samuel followed William into the tim­ber business and it is reasonable to specu­late that he learned the trade from William.

THE TOAST THE LINE

But the salute needs your input now...

Samuel had his own business at 40 Bacon Street, Bethnal Green - a turning off Brick Lane. The business is recorded in the trade directories from 1853 to 1886.

That address is where his father died of typhus in '38. He was no longer a coal meter at that time but a stone mason - a skilled occupation.

Samuel had his own business from 1853 (when he was 29) up until 1886 - the trade directory of 1888 records Samuel Locks: Timber Merchant at 5 Bacon Street, and that is where Samuel died that same year.

In his will, which still had the address "40 Bacon Street, Brick Lane, Spitalfields in the County of Middlesex", Samuel left everything to Elizabeth, his wife, specify­ing his household furniture, linen, wearing apparel, books, plate, pictures, china, his stock and implements in trade - horses, carriages, carts, and all his money and investments: all was to go "unto my dear wife Elizabeth" and she was the sole executrix.

Samuel had written his will on 18 July, 1866.

Elizabeth lived on at 20 Cassland Road, South Hackney, but contracted cir­rhosis of the liver in September 1889, and she died of the condition nine months later - on May 5 1890. William's sister Jane was present when she died.

And what of some of William's family?

The first son, William, died at 58. He owned property in the East End - seven leasehold houses in Portree Street, Poplar - and a main residence at 13 Burlington Street, Brighton, in one of the main resi­dential squares off the parade.

He would have stood on the steps of his house and looked across the square to an impressive twice-life-size bronze stat­ue of Queen Victoria. He would probably have liked that: as his father before him, he seems to have been the embodiment of the hard-working, successful Victorian businessman.

He left his estate, valued at £11,277 16s 3d - comprising properties, pictures, plated articles, musical instruments and other items - to Angelus Beyfus. He left provision for the education of his chil­dren, William Herbert and Charles William, and he left money bequests to his brothers and sit ten and to the Convent of Mercy where three of his sisters were nuns.

Jessie, Florence and Alice all entered the Convent of Mercy, in Crispin Street, Spitalfields, a convent which worked among the poor of the district. It included a school and a temporary home for young women who were out of work, and a night refuge for 40 women and children.

Florence was known as Sister Mary Evangelist. She lived to see her 100th birthday, 1947. She was remembered with immense affection and respect for her personal qualities and for her particu­lar skill in caligraphy.

She produced an illuminated address of congratulations which was sent to Queen Victoria on her golden jubilee in 1887. The Queen responded with a letter expressing her admiration and pleasure in Florence's work, The illuminated address was included in exhibitions of the Queen's jubilee gifts.

Florence also produced an illuminated history of the convent which is a treasure, prized for its high quality.

Among the latest work of the convent in which Florence may have helped was providing an air-raid shelter during the second world world. It took 150 people. Two Sisters offered religious instruction there every evening for any Catholics who wanted to take part.

Of the others of the family, Edward Alfred emigrated to Zephyr, Brown County in America, where as a result there is a sizeable Locks community today.

The youngest daughter, Minnie, mar­ried a wool broker, Angelus Beyfus, who clearly had the love and respect of the whole family.

So there we are.

In these twenty pages we have looked at just a score or so of the people who have made up Tommy's Line across three or four generations.

There have been those who picked themselves up after bitter personal tragedy, and went on to shape a new future for themselves and their next gen­eration: and people like John George and Walter Alexander who were given a good start and did great things like starting newspapers, or (like Edward Alfred) start­ing dynasties abroad!

There have been those like Susanna, Mary, Elizabeth - the list goes on - who did equally great things, bringing up their families whatever the circumstances.

There have been those like Phoebe Hannah who never married but did equal­ly great things - she spent her life firstly helping her mother in looking after a growing family in the rough East End of London (and latterly looking after her sick and dying parents): she was clearly deeply loved and cherished and valued, a very special person to many.

Phoebe was living with her sister Minnie and Anglus Beyfus at their home, 24 Sylvan Road, Upper Norwood, when she died on April 8-1906. She left £618 to Angelus.

These days the line extends to many parts of the world.

This salute is not adequate to the task. It cannot be. It needs other Lockses' knowledge and memories to correct it where necessary, and to fill in gaps in our knowledge.

But this much is sure. Each Christmas time we raise a glass to absent friends and the family. In future we shall include a new toast. To you, to us all: To Tommy's Line.

P.S. No BOATS No CAPT'N No ISLAND

And no runaway bride

EVERY family has its myths. They are not exactly fabrication. Rather - let's say - an imaginative tradition.

They tend to be widespread within the family, but thin on detail. Take, for example, the story of Thomas William and his fishing-fleet.

How many fishing boats did he have? How big was his fortune? How did he lose it? Was it a storm which ravaged the East coast and sank his vessels? Was it his lack of foresight, so that he stuck to his sails when others were putting engines in their boats and was steadily out-fished by his competitors?

And what of him founding the Boston Deep Sea Fishing Company? Can that be a fabrication?

Myths have their origin some­where. It would be a brave person who would say: there's no basis to this story at all.

One particular Locks myth is the story of Thomas William's fishing fleet. That story has wide currency among the family. The size of his lost fortune is always uncertain and the manner of his losing it varies - but the fleet itself is not doubted.

But in fact there was no fleet. TW didn't even have a single fishing boat - not with sails or engine or anything else.

Fishing boats were registered and recorded in the middle 1800s, just as they are now. So to establish the truth of this Lost Fleet story I searched the records of fishing-boat owners and skippers through the 1830s, '40s, '50s, '60s, '70s. There was no Locks. Throughout those years, Thomas William and Thomas George appear in the trade directories in business selling fish, and at times selling game.

But owners or skippers? No. That was not their trade. And what of the story of the storm which sank the mhythical fleet? I searched the files of the Boston and Lincolnshire papers for any story of any storm, or any lost fishing boats.

There was none. Had there been a storm with any loss of boats it would have been very fully reported.

No. When TW moved to Boston he used the same business-nowse he had used in Islington - he sold fish. And that was enough.

And what of his founding the Boston Deep Sea Fishing Company? Well no, he didn't.

The founding and development of the company are fully recorded in the company annals and in the Boston Standard. TW played no part.

Of course he may well have been a shareholder and been present at the founding and annual meetings of the company and that could be the origin of the story he founded the company.

And what of that lovely touch of romance which says that 17-year-old Mary Ann, daughter of a prison governor from Southend, fell in love with TW and eloped with him because she was under-age?

Not so - Mary Ann Glass's family lived at South End, Boston. She was under-age but she and TW married at the parish church so clearly it was with her parents' consent.

What other Locks stories are there, and what are the future directions for family history research? Bob and Joy Martin in Australia tell me that a Locks is supposed to have owned Brownsea Island. The story has it that they lost the deeds in a fire.

Have others heard that story, or any version of it? Can anyone suggest where it might have come from? Now what of further research?

For one thing we want to establish the link between the Locks families of Middlesex/London/Essex/Lincs and the families in Preston, Lanes., and elsewhere.

We want to explore back further. There are a lot of records to locate and go through.

We want to find out more about Mary Locks who was deported to America in the 1740s.

We know quite a lot about her, and I have stood on the quayside at Anapolis, Maryland, where she landed from the terrible convict ship The Forward - but we want to find where she links into the family if we can and we would like to know what happened to her. Our enquiries so far have drawn a blank.

But first things first. As for the next step we would appreciate it hugely if you would look.out any old family photos and let us copy them: if you would let us know of any errors in these pages so we can correct them: if you would let us know any stories - even any impressions you have - of Tommy's line at any period: and if you would help us bring this record up to date.

If we are Tommy's line it is our story - let's see if we can record it well!

Geoffrey Locks

"You know what I need?" asked Joe.

Lorna waited.

"What I need is

some family-arity"

Joe declared..

Lorna laughed.

"No, Joe

You mean

familiarity,"

she said.

"I don't mean

that at all,"

said Joe.

"Familiarity breeds

something nasty,

they say.

"Now family-arity - that's

altogether different.

Family-arity breeds......."

Jo paused.

He was

choosing his words.

"Well," he said, at last:

It breeds understanding."

From "Loves Labours Found"

by Celia Lane