The Christmas Carol: A Jayne Sinclair Genealogical Mystery Read online

‘Yes, but which line is it?’

  ‘The last one, sir. The engine is driven by my brother, James Duncan.’

  ‘Here’s my ticket.’

  The station master took it and immediately his eyes lit up. ‘The mail coach. Certainly, sir, shall I escort you, sir?’

  ‘If you would be so kind, Mr Duncan.’

  The man took Dickens’ bag and hurried off to the far side of the station, weaving through the assembled people.

  Despite having travelled by train many times before, Dickens never ceased to be amazed by the wonders of train travel. The glass roof with its soaring iron pillars arced above his head. In front of him the engine steamed, sending clouds of white smoke into the air. Around the iron monster, engineers bustled, adding those finishing touches with oil cans that made them look busy. Dickens didn’t know what they were doing, but he was content their tasks were necessary to help him arrive at his destination safely and securely.

  They both hurried past the Post Office coach. Inside, Dickens could see a row of clerks sorting the mail.

  The man stopped and pointed to the entrance of a carriage. ‘Or would sir prefer to ride in the open in the cabriolet? The views can be stunning.’

  ‘The carriage will be fine.’

  ‘There are just four other passengers in the mail coaches today, sir. But the rest of the train is full. Will you be completing your journey in Birmingham?’

  ‘No, I’m going on to Manchester.’

  He opened the door. ‘Certainly, sir. A station master will be waiting to escort you to the Manchester train at Curzon Street.’

  ‘How long is the journey today?’

  ‘Oh, very quick, sir, with James driving. Just five hours and ten minutes to Birmingham and another four hours to Manchester. With the transfer, you will be arriving in Manchester at 7.10 p.m. on the dot this evening.’

  A loud toot from the engine, followed by a long hiss of steam.

  ‘Please step aboard, sir, we are ready to depart. The steward will take your bag.’

  A white gloved hand reached down. Dickens’ bag disappeared into the coach.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Duncan.’

  ‘No, thank you, Mr Dickens. It will be a pleasure to have a famous author on our train today.’

  For the second time that morning, Dickens was reminded what a pleasure it was to have him enjoy the transport.

  He only wished there were more pleasures in his life. The recent news about Chuzzlewit had definitely destroyed his mood.

  He climbed aboard the carriage. Perhaps the journey could help him forget his troubles. He certainly hoped so.

  For the first time since the publication of Sketches , his future as an author didn’t look so rosy. Had he become like Icarus, flying too close to the sun?

  Chapter THREE

  Monday, December 16, 2019

  Didsbury, Manchester

  Jayne took her seat back in front of the computer. Now it was time to tackle the paternal line; the Atkins.

  She logged on to the FreeBMD site to search the Births, Marriages and Deaths indexes and typed ‘Norman Atkins’ into the fields, adding the date – 1921 – and the district where he was born, Oldham.

  Just one result popped up on her screen almost immediately.

  Atkins, Norman T. Mother’s maiden name: Radcliffe. Registration district: Oldham

  It was catalogued under January to March with a number of 9c, 1441.

  ‘We’ve got a start.’

  This time, the cat looked up at her for a second before returning to the far more important task of cleaning his paws.

  Jayne went to Ancestry.com and in the search box typed the name and birth date again, requesting only results from England as she knew exactly where he was born and he had never lived overseas.

  ‘With a bit of luck, there might even be an existing family tree. What do you say to that, Mr Smith?’

  The cat said nothing, turning his back on her completely.

  Since her separation from her husband, Jayne worried that she might become a cat lady, one of those women who talk to their cats just to hear the sound of a human voice. In the middle ages, she might even have been tried as a witch, with Mr Smith hung, drawn and quartered as her familiar.

  She’d had relationships, of course. The most recent, with a lecturer from Manchester University called Tom Carpenter, had fizzled out of its own accord. The spark just wasn’t there. They remained friends but it was obvious it wasn’t going to develop into anything deeper. Jayne could see little point in being with somebody just because they were a warm body or because she was lonely.

  The way she saw it, if there was no passion, there was no life.

  At the moment, her passion was her work and her family. Nothing else mattered. When she met the right person she would know, but that was yet to happen.

  She returned to the screen. Unhappily, nobody else was researching Norman Atkins’ family. Despite there being over 1000 hits, only two were applicable for the search.

  The first was a transcript of his death certificate in 1994, which confirmed the dates of his birth and death but gave very little other information.

  The second was much better. It was the 1939 England and Wales Register, taken just after the outbreak of the Second World War. Jayne was surprised to see Norman Atkins’ name there, as his birth was less than 100 years ago. Had someone informed the Census of his death?

  The details were wonderful.

  286 Oldham Road

  Atkins, George

  M

  17 Sept 92

  Married

  Driver. AR Warden

  Atkins, Mildred

  F

  20 July 96

  Married

  Housewife

  Atkins, Norman

  M

  10 Jan 21

  Single

  Cotton Piecer

  Jayne punched the air, thanking the gods of genealogy. She now had Vera’s paternal grandparents. She typed George’s name into the Findmypast website. This was another of her eccentricities, using more than one family history search engine. Sometime, the results were slightly different depending on the documents the site held.

  She quickly scanned the leading results. There did seem to be a listing in the 1911 Census. But one result caught her eye. It was from the Manchester Evening News , dated December 27,1944.

  Bomb Dropped On Oldham Road, 7 Dead

  Christmas Eve was a dark day in Oldham which will never be forgotten.

  A flying bomb dropped on Oldham Road at 5.30 p.m. on Christmas Eve. Residents of numbers 286 and 288 were just sitting down to their evening tea when the bomb landed, killing everybody in both houses.

  The devastating blast took the lives of two family members in number 286, and a husband, wife and three children in number 288.

  Nobody else was injured.

  The names of the dead have been released. They are:

  George Atkins, aged 52

  Mildred Atkins, aged 48

  Thomas Lord, aged 34

  Elspeth Lord, aged 32

  Michael Lord, aged 6

  Peter Lord, aged 4

  Catherine Lord, aged 2

  The relatives of the deceased have been informed; they include two members of the armed forces serving overseas.

  It is believed the original target of the raid was Manchester but that the doodlebug had fallen short after running out of fuel.

  Dorothy Settle, aged 10, told the Evening News :

  “I was passing by, walking home from the shops, when there was a drone overhead. Suddenly the sound stopped and ten seconds later there was a terrible blast. I don’t know what happened after that as I went unconscious but they said I had to be pulled out of the wreckage.”

  It was a lucky escape for young Dorothy.

  The public must remember to be extra vigilant over these holidays. The Ministry of Information reminds people that the Nazis are targeting England with their new V-1 bombs. If you hear one overhead, do not look at
it but take cover immediately until it has passed.

  An immense wave of sadness passed over Jayne. This must have been one of the last V-1 attacks of the war. What a senseless waste of young lives. And at Christmas. A horrible time to be told of the deaths of your mother and father.

  What about Norman? Was he serving in the Army at this time? Poor man.

  Jayne printed out the article. It would go in Vera’s file, along with the family tree.

  She glanced out of the patio window. She had been so engrossed in her work, the sun had risen without her realising it. There was little difference in the light, however; the sky had that dull grey dishcloth colour, as if a vast reservoir of water was waiting to be dumped on to the waiting citizens of Manchester.

  Jayne stretched, elongating her body and groaning. Being hunched over a computer day in, day out was not the best training for the body. She must rearrange her pilates classes, anything to release the tension in her shoulders and back.

  She glanced out of the window again. It wasn’t raining yet but it was certainly thinking long and hard about it. She mustn’t forget her umbrella and her heavy coat when she went out. Manchester in the middle of December was not the most comfortable place to be if you didn’t wrap up well.

  Jayne returned to her screen. Time to check up on the 1911 Census return for George Atkins.

  She brought up Ancestry.com again and typed George Atkins into the search function. By her reckoning, he would have been nineteen at the time of the Census.

  No results for a George Atkins in Oldham. She broadened the search to include the rest of Lancashire. One result came up, written in the handwriting of the man who was Vera’s great-grandfather.

  Name

  Age

  Status

  Work

  Birthplace

  John Atkins

  44

  Married

  Scrounger

  Manchester

  Ethel Atkins

  42

  Married

  Housewife

  Manchester

  William Atkins

  21

  Single

  Scrounger

  Manchester

  George Atkins

  19

  Single

  Coal Carter

  Manchester

  But was this the right George Atkins?

  Ancestry.com offered a few suggestions to follow up. One was a notice of banns in Manchester for a wedding to a Mildred Goodall in 1913. The Christian name of George’s wife certainly checked out, but the change of location from Oldham to Manchester was a concern.

  Jayne pencilled the names into the Family Tree and added a note to herself to ask Vera discreetly about her great-grandfather.

  She noticed the listed profession of George’s father: “scrounger”. He must have been a rag-and-bone man. A sort of Steptoe and Son , going round collecting and recycling people’s junk. George himself was a coal-man, driving a horse and cart, delivering the coal that heated most houses in those days. It was not such a great leap to imagine changing that profession to being a driver. It was simply a matter of exchanging a horse and cart for a petrol engine.

  There were two other pieces of information suggested by Ancestry.com, both military records for the First World War. An attestation record and a pension record. Jayne clicked the first link.

  Despite being married in 1913, George joined up just over three weeks after the declaration of war with Germany. He must have been one of those young men driven by patriotic fervour to accept the King’s Shilling in the early days of the war.

  Jayne made a note of the information listed on the attestation papers.

  Name: ​ ​ ​ George Atkins

  Where Born: ​ ​ Ardwick, Manchester

  Age: ​ ​ ​ 22 years 8 months

  Trade: ​ ​ ​ Driver

  The profession certainly indicated that this was the right man. She also noticed he had already upgraded himself from a coal carter to a driver, a much more skilled trade.

  She carried on reading the document.

  Have you resided in your father’s house for three years? ​ Yes

  Are you an Apprentice? ​ ​ No

  Are you married? ​ ​ Yes

  Have you ever been imprisoned? ​ ​ No

  Have you ever been in the Services? ​ ​ No

  Are you willing to be enlisted? ​ ​ Yes

  The document was signed by George Atkins and the recruiting officer, Sergeant Osborne, and dated August 30, 1914.

  Jayne went back to the top of the document to make a note of his service number to check out his medal awards later. Strange – he had three numbers, two of which were crossed out.

  19683

  11746

  38675

  The answer lay on the other side of the document. George Atkins had served in three different regiments, receiving a new number each time.

  King’s Own Scottish Borderers

  Border Regiment

  Machine Gun Corps

  Jayne knew the first two well. Perhaps George was transferred out of a Scottish Border Regiment to an English Border Regiment because he couldn’t understand the accents. Unless there was a complete file for George, they would never know. The absence of a link on Ancestry.com to a record suggested his file was one of the many that had been destroyed by fire in World War Two. Somehow the attestation and pension records had survived.

  The third unit mentioned was interesting. Jayne checked out the Machine Gun Corps on Wikipedia. It wasn’t founded until October 1915, when the top brass had finally realised that machine guns were important to trench warfare. There was a surprising line in the article, though. ‘ It had a less enviable record for its casualty rate. Some 170,500 officers and men served in the MGC, with 62,049 becoming casualties, including 12,498 killed, earning it the nickname “the Suicide Club”. ’

  George had served in the ‘suicide club’. What a horrible name for a military unit. But behind the name was a dark, self-deprecating sense of humour that was typically British, even in times of war.

  A shudder went down her back as she thought of the name.

  She was tempted to do even more research in the Machine Gun Battalions, but realised that she could quickly vanish into a black hole of documents, never to appear again.

  ‘Stay focused, Jayne.’

  She clicked on the pension record dated 1919, entitled FIRST AWARD – SOLDIER in solid black capitals.

  Name: ​ ​ ​ George Atkins

  Regiment: ​ ​ Machine Gun Corps, 11th Battalion

  Date of Discharge: ​ 12.4.19

  Regimental No.: ​ 38675

  Address: ​ ​ 29 Mount St., Ardwick, Manchester

  Jayne quickly checked back to the address on the 1911 Census. It matched.

  Jayne punched the air again, causing Mr Smith to open one eye cautiously before closing it, adjusting his position slightly and going back to sleep.

  The address was exactly the same. George and his wife must have continued to live with his father after they were married. She had the right man.

  She checked out the rest of the document.

  Rank for Pension: ​ ​ Private

  Age: ​ ​ ​ ​ 28

  Nature of Disability: ​ ​ Code no. 43

  Disability: ​ ​ ​ Debility

  Degree of Disablement: ​ 30%

  Weekly Rate: ​ ​ ​ 12s 0d

  Allowance for Wife: ​ ​ 5s 3d

  It was unsigned, but dated February 14, 1920.

  Valentine’s Day.

  George received a love letter from the Ministry of Pensions nine months after his discharge, awarding him a pension for ‘debility’.

  What was that?

  Jayne went back online to try to understand what it meant. She quickly found out that the large numbers of people being injured in World War One led to the standardisation of pension awards. The loss of two or more limbs, for example, entitled a man to a 100% pension, whe
reas amputation of a leg above the knee was assessed at 60% and below the knee at 50%. Psychological and functional somatic disorders, such as shell-shock, were more difficult to diagnose but were for the first time beginning to be accepted as illnesses. In the years after 1918, a total of 817 soldiers were diagnosed with Neurasthenia and 568 with Debility.

  Jayne recognised these diagnoses. George was suffering from what today we would call PTSD, or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Not surprising as he was a part of an elite unit called the ‘Suicide Club’.

  She quickly made notes. None of this information was strictly part of the Tree she was creating for Vera, but it was part of the narrative of the family. Jayne believed strongly that family history was made up of people’s stories. Sometimes you could recreate these stories from documents. It was all part of understanding where one came from and what motivated our ancestors.

  She glanced up and saw the clock.

  ‘Damn. Damn. Damn.’

  11.30. Where had the time gone?

  As usual she had been so lost in her research that she had lost track of time and was now half an hour behind schedule. Her meeting was in the centre of Manchester and, depending on the traffic and finding somewhere to park, the journey could take twenty minutes or an hour.

  Luckily, she knew the centre of the city well; she’d spent two years there as a young copper based in the town hall nick. She wondered if Sergeant McNally was still on the front desk. A grumpy old bugger who’d seen it all but had taught her everything she knew about reading people.

  ‘Look at their posture. The ones who are ready to fight are tense, their hands often clenching and unclenching. You then decide it’s time to defuse the situation, make a joke or try to understand what’s happening. It’s not the violent ones I worry about, though. It’s the ones who won’t look you in the eye, the ones who keep their head down all the time and mumble an answer. Soften your voice and try to engage with them. If they don’t respond, put them on watch, got it?’