As the government announce plans to scrap the official retirement age and raise the age of entitlement to a state pension and scientists tell today’s children they can expect to live for over a hundred years, this is a good time to look back on the life of an ordinary Dorset man who achieved his century at a time when most would have settled for three score years and ten.
Born at Iwerne Minster in 1860 and baptised at the parish church of St. Mary, William Wareham was the third child of Benjamin and Sarah Wareham. His two older siblings were Sarah and Mary and he was followed by Lavina, Charles, and Richard. His father sent him to school for half-days and made sure he had a basic education and learnt the three ‘R’s.
Someone visiting him in his later years was surprised to find this labouring-man’s bookcase filled with the works of Adam Smith, J.S. Mills, Karl Marx, Engels, William Morris, and others. William would recall how, when he was eight-years-old, he worked twenty-eight hours a week for a clergyman who paid him one shilling. He told of having to mow a lawn on a blistering hot summer’s day while the house owners relaxed and played a leisurely game of croquet. The memory of the many social injustices, the hard work for meagre wages, the poverty and the hardship suffered by the working classes, particularly in rural areas, stayed with him throughout his long life. As he grew older he determined to expand his knowledge of politics and economics and was especially interested to learn how they affected agriculture and the rural communities that worked the land.
His father, Benjamin, told him of the time in 1848 when the common was enclosed and how he was one of those obliged to carry out the unpleasant task. William had much in his character that was in common with the thoughts and aspirations of those Dorset heroes known collectively as the Tolpuddle Martyrs.
In 1885 he married Anna Maria, the daughter of Frederick and Rebecca Coombes. William and Anna enjoyed nearly sixty-years together before Anna passed away in 1944. It was a further 17 years before William died in 1961. They are buried together in the churchyard at Iwerne Minster. They had a large family: Margaret (1887 married William Baker in 1913); Norah (1888); Charles (1888 married Ethel Burden in 1912); Sydney (1891); Ellen Mary (1892 known as Nellie married William Martin in 1913); James (1894); John (1896 married Edith Lewis in 1922); Annie (1898); Walter Richard (1901 married Florence Harvey 1926) and Robert (1903).
William by all accounts was not impressed by modern amenities. He shunned electricity, preferring his oil lamp and he would not have water connected to his home and used to get his supply from a nearby pump which dispensed pure spring water. He would have nothing to do with cars, wireless or television.
His garden was one of the best kept in the parish of Iwerne Minster where he lived for most of his life and which he tended right up to his death. At 32 rods in length – that is over 500 feet to you and me – it was more than a cabbage patch and he certainly couldn’t be accused of taking things easy or putting his feet up in his old age. William was an agricultural labourer until the late 1890’s when he became a roadman; in the 1911 census he is described as a road contractor.
William Wareham had an appetite for life. His life was straight forward and uncomplicated. He worked hard, was a teetotaller and a non smoker: things those of us approaching but wishing to linger a little longer outside of God’s waiting room would do well to ponder.
