Helping you discover your Dorset Ancestors
This picture depicts the two Portland Lerret boats launched to rescue survivors of the collision between the Avalanche and the Forest of Windsor off Portland in September 1877. One of these boats was called ‘Black Joke’. Our thanks to David Carter for sharing this picture, which originally appeared in the Illustrated London News.
This was a night when gale force winds lashed the Jurassic cliffs of Dorset’s coastline, a night when the sea thundered ashore on Dorset’s beaches, and a night when lifeboats saw action but still there were vessels lost and numerous casualties. Furthermore, this was a night when many seafarers sailed their last voyage. And it was a night when the decision to head for shelter or go bare masted into the storm would be critical – and a night when good Captains earned their rank.
Storms ushered in September of 1877 and for seafarers in the waters off the Dorset coast the nights of September 10th and 11th were very difficult. A French fishing vessel crashed aground on Chesil Beach, all hands lost. Many local Chesil fishing boats were smashed up on the beach. But the biggest loss came as two large vessels both at the start of long deep sea voyages out of London collided off Portland.
Ploughing down the Channel and in the charge of a pilot was the iron ship Avalanche, her Captain, E. Williams was well thought of by his ship’s owners, Shaw, Savill and Company. He was a seaman of great experience: he and his ship were much favoured by colonists who regularly visited or traded with England. The crew and officers numbered thirty four, to which could be added a steward and twelve foreign seamen along with emigrants and other passengers making a total of about one hundred souls on board the Avalanche, which was headed for New Zealand. Built three years earlier, the ship was rated A1 at Lloyds and was of some 1,000 tons.
The wooden ship Forest of Windsor bound for Sandy Hook near New York in ballast, had departed London at about the same time as the Avalanche. The ship, about 200 ft and nearly 1,500 tons, was built at Windsor, Nova Scotia in 1873; she was owned by Churchill and Sons and was also registered A1 at Lloyds. Her master was Captain Ephraim Lockheart.
On September 10th the wind backed, blowing strongly from the south-west causing huge seas in the Race off Portland. The following evening, with the tide under her, Avalanche sailed close in to Portland Bill in an attempt to steer clear of the tremendous seas churned up by the Race. Rain kept her from the view of the lighthouse-keepers and others watching the sea from the shore.
Captain Lockheart on the Forest of Windsor had been leading his hard stretched crew of just twenty-one men continuously through the turbulent seas encountered during the passage down the Channel. He caught only a glimpse of the cliffs off Portland through the rain. Both vessels hidden from each other by a wall of rain were racing through this turbulent vortex of water, their masters unknowingly heading directly towards each other.
At half-past nine on the evening of Tuesday, September 11th with no warning, the Forest of Windsor suddenly tore into Avalanche. The ship foundered and all her crew and passengers were lost to the sea within minutes with the exception of the Third Officer, John Sherrington, and two seamen who against all the odds stacked against them managed to get on board the Forest of Windsor. Two emigrant families with ten children between them were amongst those lost.
The Forest of Windsor began to fill with water but remained upright long enough for attempts to be made to launch her boats. Violent squalls of wind and high seas swamped four of the boats but one, manned by Captain Lockheart, his chief mate and John Sherrington from the Avalanche, and nine others was able to get away before the Forest of Windsor capsized.
Peculiar to the Portland area is a fishing boat known as a lerret. Not only is it a good sea boat but has some characteristics of a surf boat which enable it to land through the surf onto Chesil Beach. It was to their lerrets that early on Wednesday morning, several brave Portland fishermen ran. J. Chaddick, John and Tom Way, Tom Pearce, Tom and Lew White and John Flann to one boat and to another went another Flann, another John Way, G. White, Bennett, and J and G Byatt. Later the bravery of all these men was recognised by the Agent General of New Zealand, who sent them all a payment of £5 matching an award made to them by the Board of Trade. A further £130 was collected and handed to the men later in the year.
For several days bodies of the drowned washed ashore on to Chesil Beach and at Portland, Chickerwell and Abbotsbury. The Jury at the Coroner’s Inquest held at Portland on September 15th expressed dismay at the “neglect to provide decently for the interment of the drowned.”
The upturned hull of the Forest of Windsor showed no inclination to sink; it was a hazard to shipping and the Royal Navy ordered H.M.S. Defence under the command of Captain Howard, aided by H.M.S. Black Prince and H.M.S. Galatea to sink the wreck. The Navy attempted to blow the wreck out of the water using torpedoes but these just ran through the wreck. Over the following three weeks it shrugged off gunpowder charges, mines and all sorts of means, stubbornly remaining unmoved. As if to mock its attackers after one assult the lid of a seaman’s chest floated to the surface decorated with a picture of the Forest of Windsor in full sail. The demolition of the wreck was finally accomplished three and a half weeks after the collision at a cost of about £1,000.
There is an illustration of the rescue in the photo gallery.
“Carved by time out of a single stone” was how Thomas Hardy described Portland. Yet all of Purbeck can be regarded as a geologist’s bonanza, a chronicle of millions of years of the earth’s history set in stone. Small wonder then, that this “county within a county” should have become one of the country’s major centres for the quarrying and mining of aggregate and building stone.
The stone industry of Purbeck has been the economic mainstay of the ‘Isle’ for over 500 years. For Britain, and for the Empire through export, it has been a font of supply for several kinds of rock belonging to the Portland and Purbeck Beds. All these are part of the two uppermost-and youngest-formations of the Jurassic period, deposited between about 150 and 135 million years ago, when Dorset was sub-equatorial. The Portlandian was laid down in shallow, warm sea, which then regressed to leave a lagoon environment in which the Purbeck beds were then formed.
Although prehistoric man probably carried out very local quarrying for the stone, it was the Romans, particularly favouring the use of the decorative Purbeck Marble for their villas and tomb slabs, who first began quarrying on any significant scale. In ‘modern’ times the industry really took off during the Middle Ages; in the 17th century, too, stone was shipped from Swanage to London, where Wren employed it in re-building the capital after the Great Fire in 1666.
During the 18th and 19th centuries the Purbeck quarries reached their peak in manpower and production. It was at this time when a variety of stone used to build many of Dorset’s older cottages and homes was extracted from small local quarries now long since abandoned and overgrown. Sine transporting the stone overland was difficult and costly, the major quarries and mines were concentrated upon the coastal outcrops, where the stone could be transported away by sea.
As a focus for quarrying, nowhere else in Purbeck was more central or important than Swanage. This town became a centre for the mediaeval trade in limestone, where serious quarrying began in about 1700 and continued until the mid 19th century. This was the heyday of great stone barons, the businessmen who made their fortunes from the industry, George Burt, and John Mowlem being probably the prime movers. Swanage was built from stone in more ways than one; exports from the quarries secured its location and the prosperity of the Burt and Mowlem families. It was during this period too, that the quarry platforms in the cliff outcrops at Tilly Whim, Dancing Ledge, Winspit and Seacombe were cut.
Tilly Whim, Dancing Ledge and Winspit are all coastal quarry sites for Purbeck stone which has been used in a number of Buildings including Durlston Castle, Lulworth Castle and Swanage Town Hall. The Tilly Whim Caves at Anvil Point are the most easterly of the coastal quarries and are thought to have originally been open-cast working which later shifted towards adit or drift-mining from galleries cut into the cliffside. A capping rock was blasted away so that the high-grade building stone, the Under Freestone, could be quarried out using wedges called “gads.” Galleries of about 3 metres by 8 metres were cut into the hillside, sometimes as far as 60 metres. To support the roof, quarrymen left pillars in the in-situ limestone or else built pillars from stone wasters. Blocks were lowered from the caves using timber derricks (whims) that loaded the stone onto lighters or barges which then trans-shipped the stone to an offshore cargo vessel in calm weather.
Similarly at Dancing Ledge Quarry, the stone was lowered to a large sloping ledge, and carried to a shipment point at the very edge. Here the trammels or ruts made by the carts or wagons, which moved the stone, can still be seen. Quarrying at Dancing Ledge ceased in 1914. Winspit is an area just below Worth Matravers on the south coast where large cliffside quarries have been opened on both sides of the valley. Stone working at Winspit began in 1719. The west quarry has a very large underground gallery, which was worked until 1953; the east quarry has square cut holes for crane positions still to be seen on the cliff top.
Seacombe is a large quarry excavated where Seacombe Bottom meets the coast. This was worked from the 18th century until 1923-31, when much investment in mechanisation took place. Stone was shipped from below the west end, and the foundations of the steam-derrick remain. Other quarries were opened between Durlstone Head and St. Aldhelm’s Head, from where the stone for the harbour walling at Ramsgate was shipped. At Durlstone, deeper beds were worked from underground “quarrs,” the stone being brought to the surface by a horse drawn capstan. There are also shallow quarrs in the country-park. In 1897 197 men were working in 58 quarrs. The last timber derrick to survive anywhere in Dorset can be seen at St. Aldhelm’s Quarry.
Away from the coast there have been extensive quarries in other Purbeck Beds outcropping over the high ground between Swanage and Worth Matravers, though Lychett Matravers to Acton. Purbeck Limestone is worked for aggregate in Swanworth Quarry (due for imminent closure) and Purbeck stone is still quarried in the Acton area west of Swanage, where the rock was formerly mined from underground shafts. Today good decorative stone is being extracted at Acton from open cast pits down to 10 metres. Corfe was formerly the centre for the quarrying of Purbeck Marble (which is not true marble but shelly limestone able to take a hard polish), but the trade no longer exists today.
While the stone native to the mainland has been of considerable commercial value, Portland’s limestone has probably been even more so, and not wholly for its infra-structural applications. This oolithic limestone has encased the gargantuan shells of Titanities, the largest ammonite to have inhabited British Jurassic waters, and which today is to be seen displayed in many of Portland’s garden walls. For centuries, man and nature have contributed to the island’s landscape, and there are features marking where the original landscape once stood.
Wren used Portland stone in the re-building of London, notably the new St. Paul’s, but it has also been applied in the re-construction of the capital after the destruction left by the last war. The old quarry gangs and their methods have almost entirely disappeared. The piers and jetties of the old quarries, from where stone has been shipped around the world, also have largely vanished, and some of the excavations have been infield; no derrick or crane now remains in the Portland Quarry. In Jordan Quarry the succession in the Portland Beds can be traced up to the overlying Purbeck in a sequence which the geologist can read like a book, and which reveals the climatic changes in the region 150 million years ago.
But today some of the Portland quarries have been given a new lease of life. Through a 1983 initiative begun by the specially formed Portland Sculpture Quarry Trust (PSQT) artists and sculptors have been coming to Portland to work creatively in response to the quarry environment. The Trust aims to forge links between the artists and the lives of the masons working in stone, enabling them to share and exchange knowledge and skills, rather than undertaking public commissions for works. This project has fostered much working collaboration over the years, including the creation of Britain’s first Sculpture Quarry in the now regenerated Tout Quarry. Works produced here include Anthony Gormley’s ‘Still Falling.’ and ‘Falling Fossil’ by Stephen Marsden. PSQT is further extending access through workshops. Since 1983 the experience of the Trust has been as appreciation of the importance of the personal aspects of people’s lives and their relationship to the landscape.
Happily, after decades of decline in Portland and Purbeck, something of the old landscape is making a comeback. Abandoned quarries and older sites are being restored to their pre-extractive agricultural state, often with no trace of the former activity in evidence. While the industrial landscape on Portland is being revitalised, in Purbeck nature is re-claiming the traces of an industry, which ranged from prehistoric bell-pits, through opencast excavations and thence gallery mining, to mechanisation and decline.
The south coast of England in particular has had a long tradition of smuggling, especially where there are many coves or inlets ideal for concealing contraband. Devon and Cornwall are particularly well endowed in this regard, but Dorset has hardly been less important as a focus for the trade. The life of Isaac Gulliver, the ‘smuggler’s king’ of Dorset, has been covered in a biographic feature on the site, here I am considering the more general look at smuggling and what motivated people to become involved in its illegal operations.
Usually thought of as a male preserve, what may at first surprise many people is the extent to which women were also involved. Some of these would have been smugglers wives, though this is not invariably the case. Dorset, in the heyday of smuggling, was of course a very rural and sparsely populated county, with much agrarian poverty. The business of importing goods, usually liquor, from cross-channel boats under the cover of darkness in order to flout excise regulations was a lucrative sideline that impoverished families living within a few miles of the coast would find too great a temptation to overlook.
The register for Dorchester Gaol 1782-1853 lists the names and occupations of no fewer than 64 women convicted of various smuggling related offences. Twenty one of these (32%) were from Portland alone, while just six resided in Weymouth, five in Bridport, three in Bere Regis and two in Lyme Regis. The parishes of another nine are not recorded. Wool and Woolbridge, Preston, Pulham, Sutton Poyntz, Langton Matravers, Marnhull, Morecombelake, Beaminster, Bradpole, Broadwindsor, Buckland Ripers, Charmouth, Chetnole, Chickerell, Corfe, Dorchester and Kington Magna account for the remaining sixteen.
Three notable examples are Charlotte Drake of Bridport and Ann Maidment, a Bridport buttoner, who both assaulted and obstructed excise officers, and Mary Applin of Langton, who committed an excise offence. Martha Lumb of Weymouth was sentenced to three months hard labour in 1822 for smuggling, while Catherine Winter, a Weymouth seamstress, served an 18-day sentence in 1844 for smuggling at the age of 70!
But regardless of the sex of the offender, for the populace as a whole, smuggling was generally considered an honourable trade. The customs officers or the “King’s Men” were responsible for ensuring that contraband was impounded and fines levied. At Poole the problem of smuggling was so rampant and the customs men so understaffed and overworked that Dragoons had to be deployed to assist them as early as 1723. Typically the customs officers were brave and resourceful with a strict code of conduct; so that names were never banded about and nothing ever put in writing.
Poole was especially ideal for smuggling operations because of the exceptional size and highly indented nature of its harbour, the second largest natural harbour in the world. Goods were disembarked into inlet hideaways at Hamworthy and then transported by waggoners to Bristol via Blandford. Furthermore, goods could be offloaded on the south Purbeck coast and hauled overland to be temporarily laid up in the deep inlets such as those at Arne or the Goathorn Peninsula for later distribution to Poole markets without the smugglers having to risk detection by passing through the harbour mouth. Longfleet and Parkstone farmers constructed secret tunnels down to the water’s edge for bringing goods ashore.
After 1759 the volume of smuggled goods passing through Poole significantly increased, though raised vigilance on the part of the Preventatives gradually brought this down. The Commissioners of Customs based in London frequently requested reports on the amount of smuggling going on in the Poole area.
Although landings and disembarkation operations took place from Lyme Regis to Christchurch, the coast from Portland westwards to Lyme attracted special attention. This was because most of the coast is occupied by the Chesil Bank, a shingle spit enclosing a lagoon (the Fleet) which was a convenient storage-sink to hold casks (“tubs”) for collection at a more appropriate time. One memorable incident took place in 1762 when a Cornish vessel was broken up on the Chesil in a winter storm and its cargo washed into the sea. There then followed a desperate attempt by Weymouth citizens to salvage what tubs of liquor they could before the customs house officers could reach them! In the end the citizens claimed 26 tubs to the revenue’s 10; another ten were cast out to sea but recovered the next day.
Probably the greatest hideout and smugglers haunt along this coast was Lulworth Castle, the seat of the Weld family, but which had a connection with smuggling throughout the 18th century from 1719 onwards. In 1719 revenue officers from Weymouth raided the castle and the entire Lulworth area. It has been said that maids working at the castle would routinely warn smugglers when the customs men were in the vicinity by showing a light at a window to indicate when it was safe to come in, but also act as a bearing. The gangs at Lulworth could comprise as many as 100 disguised and heavily armed men, who used Mupe Rocks as the disembarkation point, but the deep ravines and inlets along the coast west of Kimmeridge were also ideal for concealing kegs. A gap in the cliffs at Worbarrow Bay was a special favourite and tubs were raised to the top of Gad Cliff, and brought ashore at Arish Mell and for storage at Tyneham Church.
On a knoll near the coast between West Bexington and Puncknowle there still stands an unusual monument. This is The Lookout, a square building constructed as a signal-station for the Fensibles, but which may also have been used by Isaac Gulliver, who used the Bexingtons, Swyre and Burton Bradstock as landing sites after 1776.
Lyme Regis has had an especially long smuggling history extending back at least as far as the 16th century, when certain merchants were suspected of smuggling bullion out of the country by sea. In 1576 a revenue man called Ralph Lane was sent to Lyme with a deputy bearing a warrant to search ships alleged to be involved in the operations. His arrival however, provoked a riot during which the warrant was seized and Lane’s deputy was thrown into the sea. From Lyme contraband was traditionally floated up the Buddle River, often under the noses of the Preventives, who were frequently understaffed and restrained by bureaucratic regulations. Booty offloaded onto the Cobb could not be inspected until it had been carried half a mile to the Cobb Gate. Lyme is believed to be the birthplace of Warren Lisle, a customs officer who at 17 was appointed Patent Searcher at Poole and who made his first seizure of a cargo from a small vessel in Portland Harbour in 1724.
Weymouth was central to excise operations for the sea, but the town’s revenue officials had a long and shameful history of ineptitude and corruption. Enter George Whelplay, who in the 16th century failed to make any headway in countering popular local support for smuggling. Originally a London haberdasher, Whelplay came to Dorset to try his fortune as a public informer, and as such could claim a fifty per cent commission on each fine he imposed upon those he caught, but in 1538 he incurred the wrath of smugglers and fellow customs officers alike when he exceeded his remit. Whelplay twice stumbled on a cargo of horses being illegally shipped to France, but instead of coming to his assistance in rounding up the French boats the officials joined a gang of merchants and attacked him.
Around 1830 smuggling reached a climax in the Weymouth area, where, it is said; tunnels were constructed from the harbour to merchant’s houses and even to the residence of King George III. The leading figure in smuggling to be connected with Weymouth was Pierre Latour, otherwise known as French Peter, who functioned as a prominent gang-leader in the town. In Wyke Regis churchyard there is a grave of one William Lewis, a smuggler shot dead by a revenue officer on board the schooner Pigmy.
In conclusion, anyone who has anything to do with Dorset will know of Thomas Hardy, the well-known novelist-poet. Less well known is that Hardy was an authority on smuggling – and not without good reason. His birthplace cottage at Highter Bockhampton was actually a capacious safehouse for smuggled contraband that could accommodate up to 80 casks of brandy. “But this isn’tall.” When a child, Hardy was regaled with smuggling stories from his grandfather and his own father had a manservant who was actually involved in the trade. The Bockhampton cottage lay on the smugglers route between Osmington Mills and their markets in Sherborne and Yeovil.
It is rare for a woman condemned to death for murder to leave behind any permanent mark in the form of a work of art. However, for about 130 years St Peter’s Church on the Isle of Portland has been the home of just such a labour of devotion to the Christian faith – or to atonement for a cardinal sin.
Set into the floor of the chancel in St Peters there is a mosaic pavement. Like all other parts of the building it is the work of a felon, a convict from the island’s prison, but one who’s criminal circumstances are more unusual than most others. For there has been a long-held tradition that the mosaic was laid by Constance Kent, who when just sixteen years of age stabbed her step-brother to death in a toilet at the family’s home at Rode, Wiltshire.
Constance Kent was born in 1846. Her father was Samuel Kent, said to have been an illegitimate son of the Duke of Kent, father of Queen Victoria, while her mother was the Duke’s first wife. On her mother’s death in 1854 Kent married Miss Pratt, governess to both Constance and her younger brother William. By 1860 another five children had arrived, and a sixth was expected.
When she was sixteen Constance told school-friends she was constantly unhappy at home. On the night of 29th to 30th of June 1860 Constance’s four-and-a-half year old brother was taken from his bed in the nursery to an outside privy, where he was stabbed in the back and had his throat cut. A blooded nightdress belonging to Constance was found and despite no apparent motive she was arrested, but later released due to lack of evidence.
When the Kents moved to Wales Constance entered a convent in France for three years, and then moved to another convent in Brighton. Voluntarily she approached Bow Street magistrates to confess to the murder, but it is suggested that a minister, a Reverend Wagner at the convent, put pressure on her to confess. As a doctor had judged her mental state to be normal, it is likely that Constance’s motive for the murder was jealousy of the children of her father’s second marriage.
Constance was tried at the assizes at Salisbury, found guilty and initially sentenced to death, though this was commuted to life imprisonment on Portland. Between her arrival in 1864 and her release in 1885, she laid the mosaic to be seen in St Peters Church.
During the morning of Monday the 16th of December 1735 there was an earth tremor on the Island of Portland described at the time as an earthquake. It did considerable damage but we haven’t found any reports of lives lost. A petition signed by one hundred and eighteen local men was got up and sent to London. Of interest to the family historian is the list of signatories which we have saved in an Excel file: email us if you would like a copy – it’s free.
Here is the wording of the petition headed, The Humble Petition of the Inhabitants of the Island of Portland in the County of Dorset. It was addressed to The Right Hon’ble the Lords Commissioners of his Majesties Treasury and reads:
Humbly Sheweth,
That on Monday the sixteenth of December last in the morning a great and Sudden Shock of the Earth was felt near the Quarrys at the North End of the said Island by which the Earth for more than a mile in length sunk away from the Clift and carried with it the Way leading to the Piere, Overturned the said Piere, and broke and destroyed the Crane thereon, so that at present it is Impossible to carry down from the Quarry’s or to Ship Stone as formerly, by which means his Majesty will loose entirely the Revenue of fourpence per pr.Tunn paid by all persons who Shipped Stone off the said Piere; and also the Duty for all Stone raised in the Island and payable to his Maj’tie and the Inhabitants, will be in a great measure lost, and the latter consequently deprived of his Majesty’s most gracious Bounty extended to them by his Grant of the 28th of July 1730 Until the said Way and Piere is Repaired.
Therefore Your Petitioners most humbly pray that your Honour’s will take this Unhappy Circumstance into your Consideration and Order that the same may be Repaired fit for Shipping Stone as formerly And they as in duty bound shall ever pray.
There follows a list of the 118 signatories.
John Bagg (1828-1900) and Hannah White (1834-1900) were both born in rural Dorset from working class families. Hannah, the daughter of Joseph and Sarah White was born in the village of Piddletrenthide. John the son of Joseph Roberts Bagg (1801-1882) and Ann Vincent (1799-1874,) was christened in the village of Cattistock. John and Hannah were married on June 24th, 1852 at St. Nicholas Anglican Church, Sydling. Their marriage was to be the start of a dynasty spreading across the world, with living descendants today in Canada, Australia, Wales and England.
John and Hannah had 12 children: Eliza Ann White Bagg (June 14th, 1852 – 1925) Eliza married John Denning of Weymouth, Dorset, where the couple operated a green grocer shop. They had 8 children.
Emma Jane Bagg was born October 13th 1853; Joseph John White Baggs (March 6th 1856 Piddletrenthide – July 19th, 1930) Joseph emigrated to Newcastle, NSW, Australia where he worked as a coal miner and married Mary Jane Gills (1865-1940) they had 6 children.
George Bagg (July 15th, 1857 Piddletrenthide – May 12th 1951) George married Mary Jane Shaw (1858-1937) and farmed near Woolbridge, Ontario with their 4 children. And James Bagg born June 2nd, 1859 at Piddletrenthide married Catherine Morris and lived near Toronto Junction with their 5 children.
Elizabeth (Bess) Bagg was born July 15th 1861 at Weston, Portland. She married William Bull (1866-1920) at Beaufort in Wales, where they raised a family of 6 children. Bess died on December 30th 1950.
John and Hannah then moved to Weymouth where Frederick William Bagg was born on July 28th 1865. Fred had 4 children with his first wife Annie Dennis (1870-1897) and 3 more children with his second wife Jennie Bishop (1867-1949). Fred was a successful farmer near Guelph, Ontario. He died on September 28th, 1940.
In 1867 on November 28th, Harry (Henry) Bagg was born. Harry married Alice Dennis (1862-1942) and they had 7 children. They operated a successful farm in Downsview now in the City of Toronto.
Thomas Bagg was born in 1869 and married Margaret Graham (1873-1920.) The couple had 3 children. Thomas, who died on August 6th 1942, was a farmer and thresher at Downsview.
William George Bagg was born at Llagattock, Crickowell, Wales in April 1871 and died at just 7 months.
Walter Bagg born May 16th 1874 at Crickowell, Breconshire, Wales died in 1942. He married Charlotte Duncan (1872-1954) and had 7 children. They homesteaded on the unsettled Saskatchewan prairie near Springside, in 1900.
John and Hannah’s youngest child, William Charles Bagg, was born on July 29th 1877 at Crickowell. Bill married Blanche Hadden and they had 7 children. Bill and Blanche also homesteaded near Springside, Saskatchewan, and operated some grain elevators. They eventually retired in the Rocky Mountains near Trail, British Columbia. William died on October 21st, 1953.
The Bagg family moved frequently in search of work. They originally lived near the rural villages of Sydling and Piddletrenthide. Here, like many of his family, John worked in the fields as a general farm labourer. This was a time in British history when mechanisation was replacing the need for farm labourers. The agricultural based economy of rural Dorset County provided fewer and fewer employment opportunities. Industrialisation was underway and many people were forced to move from farm cottages to city slums in search of employment. The working class struggled to survive.
In search of employment, John moved his family to Portland, Dorset, where manual labourers were required to work in the limestone quarries. Long hours, low wages, harsh working conditions and child labour were the norm. The Census taken on April 7th, 1861 has John listed as a labourer living at the top of the steep slope above Fortuneswell on Yeats Road with his younger brother George Bagg (1835-1916) and his family. George is described as a “carter,” which means he worked with teams of horses or mules and a cart used to move materials in the limestone quarry. Hannah (6 months pregnant) and their young children Emma (7), Joseph (5) and James (1) were living about 20 miles away, on the Doles Ash Estate, near Cerne Abbas. Hannah is listed as a “farm servant.” Eight year-old Eliza was sleeping over at her White grandparents’ home at Lower Sydling.
A short time later, Hannah and the children joined John in Portland. Hannah gave birth to daughter Elizabeth (Bessie) at the small Portland village of Weston on July 15th 1861. They later lived for a few years at nearby Weymouth, where John likely worked at the harbour.
Their first-born son Joseph left home with a friend at 14 years of age, about 1870, and emigrated to Australia. He married and settled in Lambton, Newcastle, New South Wales and worked as a coal miner. Joseph worked in the mines for the rest of his life and many of his descendants are still living in Newcastle today.
Times were still very difficult for John and Hannah and their family, so about 1870 they moved to Wales to look for work in the coal mines and steel foundries. They worked in the coal mine at Llangattock, Breconshire for what was likely subsistence wages in chronically dangerous conditions. It was still very difficult to get ahead financially. Even the young children were expected to work. When she was 12 years of age, Elizabeth (Bessie) went to work as a domestic for the Ebbw Vales Ironworks Company Shop.
John’s younger brother George Bagg (1835-1916) had previously left Portland limestone quarries and moved his wife Mary Ann Porter (1832-1907) and two children, James (1854-1932) and Martha (1856-1941) to Ontario, Canada. They had emigrated in 1871 and were already doing quite well farming near Toronto. George encouraged John and the family to leave Wales and come to Canada. Their decision to do so was a turning point in their lives.
In 1880, John, Hannah and seven of the sons (George, James, Fred, Henry, Thomas, Walter and William) emigrated to the Weston area, near Toronto. George and his “little brother” Walter came to Canada first with their friends, the Mellings family. The family bible states “March 28 1880, leaving for America.” The rest of the family followed several months later. John and Hannah farmed in Downsview on Jane Street and Wilson Avenue. John also kept the tollgate at Wilson Avenue and Weston Road. These areas are now part of the City of Toronto. With the help of their seven sons, John and Hannah lived a happy and prosperous life. They were able to watch their many grandchildren grow up and establish their own farms, businesses and professions.
In April 1900, just as William and Walter were preparing their move to homesteads on the Saskatchewan prairie, John and Hannah died within a week of one another. They are buried together in the Weston Riverside Cemetery. The large “Bagg” tombstone is shared with George and Mary Ann Bagg. Also memorialized on the tombstone are John and Hannah’s grandson Arthur Bagg (1892-April 9, 1918,) who was killed in France during World War 1, and their great-grandson, Sgt Murray John Henry Bagg (1918-July 12, 1944,) who was killed at Caserta, Italy during World War II.
On July 1st 1930, 50 years after John and Hannah’s arrival in Canada, the first Bagg Family Reunion was held at the farm of Harry Bagg in Downsview. This was attended by 130 of the Ontario descendants of John and his brother, George. It is amazing to see how prolific and successful the family of John and Hanah Bagg has been in the last 150 years. There are now over 700 known descendants in Ontario, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Australia, England and Wales. Like their 19th century ancestors, these Bagg descendants possess a strong work ethic, and a close sense of “family” that includes providing improved opportunities for the following generations.
