LFR 12 July 2016 - Number 933

We are registered with the GUILD OF ONE-NAME STUDIES

www.one-name.org

Welcome to the Laws Family Register blog

We reach out to all, regardless of Race, Colour, Creed or National Origin, with support for researching family and documenting cultural inhertance

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DearAncestor,-Your tombstone stands amongst the rest, neglected and alone

The names and dates are chiselled out on polished marble stone

It reaches out to all who care, it is too late to mourn

you did not know that I exist, you died and I was born

Yet each of us are cells of you, in flesh, in blood, in bone.

Our blood contracts and beats a pulse entirely not our own

Dear Ancestor, the place you filled one hundred years ago

spreads out amongst the ones you left who would have loved you so,

I wonder if you lived and loved, I wonder if you knew

That someday I would find this spot, and come to visit you. 

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IMPORTANT

We are suspending operation of the LAWS FAMILY REGISTER

from June 30, 3016

We will work on our LAWS FAMILY TREE

This Blog will continue

All LAWS Enquires arw still welcome

Mail us at 
registrar@lawsfamilyregister.org.uk

                       Family Events for today 12th July, from our database

We have excluded records of living people to protect their Privacy -we are not showing births after 1920 or marriages after 1940 these are only available to members of the register

If you are interested in anyone listed here, email us with the name, date and reference number, and we will happily do a look up, you might even get a whole tree! 

This blog will also appear on our Facebook page, please come visit us, We will be happy to help with your LAWS/LAWES research, and in certain instances we may be willing to undertake private research on your behalf.

registrar@lawslamilyregister.org.uk 

Family Events
1667 - Birth: James Robert LAWS, Jewett, Cumberland Co IL USA
1741 - Baptism: Congrave LAWS, Spittalfields MDX UK

1766 - Birth: Jerimiah LAWS, Harroldsburg Mercer Co KY USA
1799 - Christen: Rose LAWS, East Winch NFK UK

1837 - Burial: John LAWS, Fincham NFK UK

1860 - Birth: Josephus LAWS, Carroll Co TN USA
1867 - Burial: George Lewis LAWS, Hawkinge KEN UK
1873 - Birth: Rachel Agnes LAWS (Dressmaker) , Old Catton, Norwich NFK
1876 - Birth: Frank John LAWS (Stationer) Isleworth MDX UK

1883 - Birth: Charles LAWS (Farmer) Chatteris CAM UK
1886 - Birth: Annie Louise Mary Elizabeth LAWS, Folkestone KEN UK

1891 - Birth: Goethe Grecian LAWS, Carroll Co TN USA
1896 - Birth: Ernest LAWS (Australian Army N282437) Mackay QLD AUSTRALIA
1900 - Birth: Ivy Lavinia LAWS Stowmarket SFK UK
1910 - Birth: Austin LAWS (Mechanical Engineer) East Laxham NFK UK
1912 - Birth: Sidney John LAWS,
1913 - Birth: Fred LAWS,
1913 - Birth: Francis George Ryland LAWS, Lewisham KEN UK
1914 - Birth: Annie Isobel LAWS, Borough SRY UK
1915 - Birth: Arthur H  LAWS (Ag Lab),
1917 - Birth: Douglas Watson LAWS, Thatcher, Box Elder UT USA
1918 - Birth: Richard Ernest George LAWS, 
1919 - Birth: Joseph T LAWES (Corporal US Army) ,
1931 - Death: James LAWS, Roos ERY
1933 - Death: Fred LAWS, Royal Infirmary, Kingston Upon Hull ERY UK

1934 - Death: Thomas Henry LAWS, Tyler, Smith Co, TX USA
1934 - Death: Gertrude Mabel LAWS, Beccles SFK UK

1940 - Death: Thomas Joseph LAWS, Plymouth DEV UK
1953 - Death: Gene A LAWS (Pvte US Marine Corps 1163389) , Korea - Killed in Action
1965 - Death: Abba Frances LAWS, 
1965 - Burial: John Morrison LAWS (Nurseyman) Christchurch NZ
1971 - Death: Albert LAWS, Campbell Co KY USA
1977 - Death: Martin Bernard LAWS ARMY Life Guards Tpr 24344842) ,
1983 - Burial: Bree LAWS, Shepparton VIC (Pine Lodge Cemetery (Banksia Lea site 125)
1986 - Death: Doris May LAWS, Castle Hill NSW AUSTRALIA
1991 - Death: Mark Grant LAWS, Sonoma, Tuolumne CA USA
1991 - Death: James Herberts LAWS,
2006 - Death: Robert E LAWS,
2006 - Birth: Thomas Ashley LAWES, Yeovil SOM UK

MISC

1823 - Birth: Jane MARCH, Ryton DUR UK

1864 - Birth: Alice Lydia MOONEY, Islington MDX UK

1873 - Birth: Adeline SOUTH, Leichhardt, NSW AUSTRALIA

1886 - Birth: Ada KEMP, London N

1898 - Birth: Agnes SPROAT, Lochmaben DFS UK (Shaw Cottage, Templand)
1910 - Birth: Joseph RIPLEY, High Spen DUR UK

1953 - Death: Fanny Elizabeth BROWN, Watford HRT UK
1962 - Burial: Peter DACRE, Stanley cun Wrenthorpe WRY UK

1986 - Death: Doris May TRENBATH, Castle Hill NSW AUSTRALIA

1997 - Death: Esther Helen PETRICK, Cleveland UT USA

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A CHILD OF THE 1920's

AS SEEN FROM THE 1990's

by

John Robert Laws 1921-2008

Part 9

Besides cars, the other result of the internal combustion engine was the increasing number of aircraft in the sky. With development forced ahead of WWI they had now become a practicable though expensive form of transport. Small air shows with two or three small aeroplanes would tour the summer holiday resorts seeking out a suitable field to set up their circus. They would offer a quick circuit of the town at five bob a go and give a little show of aerobatics. With a small charge for admission to the field they struggles on for a few years before going broke or in a very few cases managed to get an airline or charter business going.

As well as these little efforts, the RAF put up an annual show at Hendon which was very impressive at the time though very small beer by today’s standards. In my late schooldays I went there on my bike and found a hillside field overlooking the aerodrome where one could see it all for free. The highlight of the show was a low wing monoplane, probably a prototype Hurricane which came through a shallow dive at over three hundred miles an hour. There were still ten years to wait for the first jet engines.

Another lusty industry of my early years was the cinema. The silent screen with its overworked pianist trying to provide theme music was just beginning to give way to the ‘talkies’. Charlie Chaplin carried on without a word eating his boots in ‘The Gold rush’ but the soundtrack was with us and although it all continued to be black and white the musical was on its way and the cinema was moving into its few decades of boom years. One of the more treasured toys of my under ten years was a movie projector and its few cans of film. It had no motor and had to be cranked by hand, like the early movie cameras, but it was well made and worked well. The was no eight millimetre then and it used the full size 35mm so the films were short and ran perhaps five or ten minutes. I knew them all off by heart before long but this did not detract from the fascination of something that actually worked.   

Although the early thirties were just crawling out of depression there were more large houses being built than cheap semis. The extension to the Piccadilly Line of the Underground railway to Enfield West now called Oakwood, and then to Cockfosters which influenced our move to Southgate was an important event. Free tickets to try it out were given out to all households in the catchment area. A building project which interested me more was however the new ice rink at Harringay was. It was after we had moved to Southgate when I was able to get there, but Harry and I became regulars. Being already able to roller skate made it much easier to get going on ice though not without a few tumbles. At one of our first visits we were offered free admission to the evening ice hockey if we would take part in a farcical match with brooms and a football in the interval of the ice hockey. We accepted of course and I seem to remember it brought the house down. Next Monday a school I found that I had been observed was asked why I had been acting the clown.

Innovations in materials were less noticeable than other major changes but nonetheless on the way with enormous potential. Plywood soon replaced solid panels in all but the most expensive furniture. A brief reign of a few decades  before chipboard came, bring back the use of veneering which had existed a couple of hundred years earlier. In our old fashioned furniture the wood was solid and in our kitchen the knives were sharp, made before the new stainless steel became de rigour for cutlery. They had to be cleaned of course and the knife cleaner, a wooden machine with rotary brushes turned with a cast iron handle stood in the kitchen with its tin of abrasive powder nearby. There was no plastic except celluloid which was highly inflammable and used for little except toys, and ebonite which was used for a while in electrical goods. Even the plug tops for our new electric points were ceramic. Cooking pots and saucepans were iron, vitreous enamel or copper, aluminium on the way for a few years later and stainless steel way in the future. Plastic bags were a blessing yet to come. This means that few groceries were pre-packed, the grocer weighed out your biscuits from a large tin into a paper bag and the broken ones were sold off cheap.

SCHOOL

The school was less than a quarter of a mile away. Between parallel side roads of late nineteenth century houses an oblong block held the separate buildings of the infant school, the Elementary school and the Grammar school. It was a gentle sloping site with the New River flowing south along the upper western boundary bringing drinking water to London from Hertford. The infants’ school was between the other two and shared an asphalt playground with the girls of the Elementary school. The boys of the elementary school had their play ground facing the other road, firmly separated from the girls by a high brick wall on either side of which were built the children’s loos. The Grammar school was on the downhill side of the block, separated from the rest by a foot passage which ran parallel to the High Street through all the side roads. The iron railings round the school were set in strong brick piers and gated in the same style, a line of Plane trees were well established and were as un-climbable and as sturdy as the railings themselves.

The buildings were no-nonsense and built to last. Plenty of glazed brick and most lower walls of dark colour. Classrooms were built to hold about thirty and the desks and seats all-in-one in pairs.

The first day at school sticks in memory. It was the first real contact with kids in the mass and the first contact with any authority other than parental. At that time there were no nursery schools or crèches as mothers, nor indeed, didn’t married women in general, go out to work. I started school a month or two after I was five with the worst of the winter out of the way. Mother took me and the Head mistress saw us, having established her identity she passed me over to the class teacher to absorb into the mass. The teacher kept me with her during the morning assembly then brought me into the class, found me a desk, it cannot have been very traumatic as the rest has faded away.

Our lessons as infants were the three R’s punctuated with drawing and games. The alphabet and tables were chanted in unison. We wrote and made our drawings in chalk on pint-sized blackboards which slotted into the front of the desks. Some kids were bright and some kids were dim but everyone learned; there were no options on offer. Before long we graduated to pen and ink writing in exercise books with inky fingers, scratchy pens and ink blots. Ink was still king and ball point easy scribble still twenty years ahead.

School dinners were also twenty years in the future. All kids walked home for their dinners and back for the afternoon school. School milk started however in my first year or two at school. The little third of a pint bottles turned up in the morning break and there was much bubbling noise as the last drop was sucked up through the straws.

On the other side of the road from school was the Primitive Methodist church where I went, reluctantly and intermittently, to Sunday school. Mum and Dad did not go to church but Sunday school was the one thing in those days so I went for a while though they did not insist when I opted out. All that sticks in my mind is a Harvest Festival where I had been inveigled into read a poem about a windmill. It was the only time I saw my mother in church until I got married.

When we moved into junior section of the Elementary School, the horizons of our lessons broadened to include history geography & some science. There was now an objective in front of us, the entrance exam for the Grammar schools which were themselves the first step towards better paid jobs further ahead. Classes were now divided by ability into A, B and C and school reports began to arrive, largely designed I suspect simply to prod all and sundry to greater effort. I believe the teaching must have been good though it was a bit double edged for me. The first year in Grammar school had nearly all been done before and the need to work faded.

At the elementary school there was no sports field but we managed to have a Sports Day at a ground near Muswell Hill. How everyone got there remains a mystery but the sun shone, there were sack races, egg and spoon races and mums races and a good time was had by all. Running was never a favourite pastime for me it was only done when unavoidable. Swimming was another matter however and we were lucky in that there was a swimming pool in the basement of the grammar school next door. Here we were permitted a Saturday morning class for a dozen or so and I achieved the great heights of a certificate to say I could swim fifty yards.   

10

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Lord, help me dig into the past

and sift the sands of time

That I might find the roots that made

This family tree of mine

Lord, help me trace the ancient roads,

On which my father's trod

And led them through so many lands

To find our present sod.

Lord, help me find an ancient book

Or dusty manuscript,

Thats's safely hidden now away

In some forgotten crypy.

Lord, let it bridge the gap that haunts

My soul, when I can't find

The missing link between some name

That ends the same as mine

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Member of The Guild of One-Name Studies

"This organization recognizes the United Nations' International Decade for People of African Descent 2015-2024. We reach out to all regardless of race, color, creed or national origin with support for researching family and documenting cultural inheritance.”

With grateful thanks to Simon Knott for permission to reproduce his photographs on this site see :-http://www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/

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