John Smith's Family Tree Website
Mason
family 
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Part 3: William Mason (c1842 - 1914)
Early life and marriage to Ellizabeth Tippett Wyatt
William Mason was the third child of Isaac Mason Jr and Frances ‘Fanny’ Howell. He was baptised 09 January 1842 in Tamerton Foliott Parish Church, Devon. As a young man he moved to Plymouth and lodged with a family, working as dockyard labourer. Today’s City of Plymouth was formerly three towns: Plymouth, East Stonehouse and Devonport, the latter originally being known as ‘Plymouth Dock’. The Royal Navy had had a base in Devonport since 1691 and the area attracted many workers to build the various docks, as well as those who joined the navy or the army.
William married Elizabeth Tippett Wyatt (1839 - 1917) 14 July 1861 in Charles the Martyr Parish Church (later destroyed by German bombing during the Blitz of Plymouth in 1941). (More information about Elizabeth appears in the Wyatt section.) They had ten children: Annie Elizabeth Jane Wyatt, Fanny, Bessie, William Isaac, Elizabeth, Ellen, John James, Laura, Rose and Ernest Frederick. Sadly five of their children died young. Their eldest child Annie was the only one with a known baptism record which might indicate her parents began worshipping in another denomination (or simply that the baptism records for subsequent years were lost, destroyed or not yet made available online).
Working life
By 1871, William was working as a messenger at the Royal Naval Hospital, East Stonehouse, and the family was living there, too. Within a decade he was describing himself as a ‘civil service messenger’ for the ‘Inspector General’s Office’, still based at the hospital. The Royal Naval Hospital was built in the mid-1700s, designed to accommodate over 1,000 naval patients and was considered a model institution in its design. The hospital closed in 1995 and is now a residential area. [2]
The Civil Service was a neutral administrative organisation which, since the mid-1850s and the publishing of the Northcote-Trevelyan Report, recruited and promoted by merit (unlike the former system which often relied on patronage). The Civil Service exam required candidates to have had a high standard of education, display excellent handwriting and spelling and be single with no dependants. [3] It would be fair to say that William did not meet at least two out of these three requirements! It is highly unlikely he ever took any exams but must have shown some written and oral abilities to work as a messenger. It is not known what William did in his work. An advertisement p1 of the ‘Western Morning News’ 23 September 1870 indicated the Inspector General received tenders to supply meat, butter and eggs for the hospital. The Inspector General was responsible for the efficient running of the hospital.
By 1898, William had retired and was living at 5 Hyde Park Road (now no longer standing). He was luckier than most people, being a former civil servant. Most people did not have access to a pension until the introduction of the Old Age Pension Act (1908) – and there were conditions to be met. However, since the early 19th century, all civil servants were entitled to a pension when they were unable to work regularly (usually after the age of 60 – there was not a compulsory age to retire), provided they had contributed annually, had worked at least seven years and had a good behaviour record. It is not possible to know how much William was provided for as there was a rate calculated on the final salary, based on the number of years worked. However, the state pension was for those who earned less than £31 10 shillings annually (about £1,800 today) and provided £13 (£740) a year to live on so it could be assumed William received an amount somewhere in between. [4] William died 29 August 1914 at 10 Old Park Road, Plymouth, aged 73. The house is part of a row of terraced housing and is still standing today. Elizabeth moved in with her eldest daughter and died 26 December 1917, aged 78.
Children of Isaac and Ann
Annie Elizabeth Jane Wyatt (1862 - 1927) was born 12 March 1862 and baptised the following month, 04 April at Charles the Martyr Church, Plymouth. Annie was the only child to have been blessed with multiple middle names (‘Tippett’ has also been recorded in records).
Surnames arose in Europe in the medieval period and middle names were known to be recorded from the late 13th century. However middle names in Great Britain were still very rare by the 17th century and generally the preserve of the nobility. It was not until the 19th century that the use of middle names increased, and across the social classes (though they were still more common in European countries, possibly because of religious and cultural reasons). Certainly within the Mason family, the use of middle names was virtually unknown until the 1830s when the uncles and aunts of Annie's father William gave many of their children a middle name (sometimes that of a forebear). It is not clear why the use of middle names increased but multiple middle names were extremely rare. [1] It is well-documented how influential the royal family were introducing and popularising Germanic social customs. Perhaps Annie's parents wanted to emulate Queen Victoria and Prince Albert whose children had between two and six middle names each!
After receiving some education, Annie worked as a dressmaker. She married bricklayer William E Curtiss (1858 - 1924) 24 September 1882 at Charles the Martyr Church. William had been born and brought up in Kidderminster, Worcestershire, but in 1881 he was visiting his sister Agnes’ family in Plymouth. Agnes had married into a Wyatt family (possibly distantly related to Annie’s mother).
Annie and William had seven children: Beatrice Annie (1884 - c1911), Laura Elizabeth (1885 - ?), Gertrude Agnes (1888 - 1966), William George (1890 - 1971), Hilda Rose (1892 - 1946), Ernest Frederick (1894 - 1936) and Ellen Louise (1896 - 1939). Many of their sons or sons-in-law joined the royal navy or worked in HM Dockyard. William worked his way up to being a bricklayer foreman in the building trade. From the turn of the century until their deaths, Annie and William and their family lived at 3 Mainstone Avenue, Plymouth (still standing). William died 09 March 1924, aged 65, and Annie (now plain ‘Annie Elizabeth’) died 07 October 1927, aged 65.
Fanny (1864 - 1864) died in infancy.
Elizabeth (1865 - 1866) was known as ‘Bessie’. She sadly died aged 09 March 1866, aged 9 months, and was buried 13 March at Stoke Damerel Parish Church.
William Isaac (1867 - 1901) worked as a telegraphist after he finished his schooling, being a civil servant like his father. From 1870, the General Post Office held the monopoly on the telegraph (and other forms of communication when they came along). For both young men and women, being a telegraph clerk offered the chance to earn more money and move away from where countless generations of their ancestors had toiled for a pittance. An 18 year old male telegraph clerk in London in 1910 could earn £46, rising to £160 by the time he was 36 (women and those in the ‘provinces’ earned less). By contrast an agricultural labourer in 1910 earned about £39 with little hope of a pay rise! [5]
William moved to London where he married Edith Grace Wheeler (c1872 - 1895) 25 November 1889 at All Saints Church, Poplar. They only had one child: Edith Grace Elizabeth (1889 - 1985) who claimed to have been born at the Criterion Hotel, Reading, the day of her parents’ marriage! The family stayed living in Poplar. Edith Sr died in 1895, aged only 25, and almost immediately, William remarried Sarah Glazer (c1865 - ?) 10 December at St Saviour’s Church, Southwark, the London borough where they were both living at the time. William died in April 1901, aged 33, and was buried 19 April at Chingford Mount Cemetery. It is not known what happened to Sarah.
Elizabeth (1870 - c1878) died aged 7.
Ellen (1873 - ?) worked as a tailoress as a teenager. She moved to London (perhaps encouraged by her brother William). She married tailor George William Bryant 26 August 1899 at Christ Church, West Green, in north London. Ellen and George had seven children: George Stanley (1900 - 1984), Dorothy Beatrice (c1902 - c1902), twins Cecil Reynolds (1903 - 1987) and Gladys Ellen (1903 - c1998), Dora May (1905 - c1981), Phyllis Winifred (1906 - 1992) and George William (1910 - 1991).
By 1911, George was managing a tailoring factory and the family was living at 12 Eastbourne Road, South Tottenham (a terraced house still standing today). George died 26 May 1926, aged 54, and Ellen stayed living in the same house with many of her unmarried children until the early 1930s. They all moved to 77 Stirling Road, Wood Green. Ellen died 05 August 1936 at North Middlesex County Hospital, aged 63.
John James (1874 - 1875) died aged 1.
Laura (c1877 - 1877) died in infancy.
More information about Rose (1878 - 1978) appears in Part 4.
Ernest Frederick (1880 - 1891) died aged 11.
Next: Rose Mason
Footnotes
[1] ‘Now You Know: Why Do We Have Middle Names?’ by Merrill Fabry, 16 August 2016 (http://time.com/4451977/history-of-middle-names/); ‘The Means of Naming: A Social History’ by Stephen Wilson (1998), Routledge
[2] ‘The History of the Royal Naval Hospitals’ by Surgeon Vice Admiral A Revell, ‘The History of Anaesthesia Society Proceedings, Vol 19, 1996
[3] The origins of the modern Civil Service (webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140402151837/http://www.civilservice.gov.uk/about/a-partial-history-of-the-civil-service/the-origins-of-the-modern-civil-service-the-1850s)
[4] Pensions information: (http://www.pensionsarchive.org.uk/76/); ‘The experience of retirement in Britain, past and present’ by Pat Thane, ‘Österreichischer Zeitung für Geschichtswischenschaft’, Vol. 22, No. 3, 2011, p. 13-32; ‘Pension Schemes and Pension Funds in the United Kingdom’ (2nd Ed) by David Blake (2003), Oxford University Press
[5] www.postalmuseum.org; post office wages (‘Royal Mail: The Post Office Since 1840’ by Martin J. Daunton (1985), Athlone Press); British Labour Statistics: Historical Abstract 1886-1968 (Department of Employment and Productivity, 1971) (historyofwages.blogspot.com.au)
