The fourth estate down under

The roof's on at Wimbledon and the rain is thundering down here too, complete with celestial fireworks.  Just another summer's day in Britain!

Anyway, I'm going to continue my praise of the Australians and their Trove newspaper site.  Go to: http://www.trove.nla.gov.au to see what I mean.  I have had just *so* much fun with it!

The latest discovery was one of quite a few detailing the life and loves of one of the Pioneer families of Western Australia.  Not within my tree, alas, but no less fascinating for being antecedents of one of my friends.  I'm deliberately not mentioning names at this point because the "latest discovery" was three articles questioning whether one of the sons had actually abducted a young girl .....

Quite heart-rending, actually, as the girl herself was an orphan who was being treated badly by the woman who had taken her in. The first article rather suggested that the young man was a peeping tom, as well as a child abductor, but I recognised other names and realised he was just looking to see if his sister was at home!

In the end, all charges were dropped against him, although I feel sure he was warned to be more careful in future!  Sadly, I don't recall whether the girl's life improved ....

My strawberries and (free) cream are calling to me.

More soon.

It was all going so well ....

Good morning from a pleasantly damp Cambridge!  Maybe the weeds will be pull-up-able soon .... ?

Anyway, this morning I have been Culpin hunting again.  Thanks to a discovery via Google (btw look at today's Google page, it's brilliant), I found that Richard Culpin (1831-1912) moved to Cheshire and begat a number of little Culpins there - excellent!!

And then, because of another search, this time on Find My Past, I came back (as it were) to Titchmarsh, near Thrapston, to William Culpin and his wife Lizzie (nee Quince) at the time of the 1911 census.  There they were, in Chapel Street, with their children - seven - plus one grandson and I saw that they'd had fourteen in total, losing one prior to the census.  That's quite impressive, in my book, to have so many children survive and I was really pleased for them.

Until I read down the page on the database ..... and saw that fate, in the shape of the Great War, had decided to redress the balance somewhat.  Eldest son William, already in the Army in 1911 and a Sergeant in the Northamptonshire Regt by 1914, was killed in March 1916; third son Edward, a 14 year old farm labourer in 1911, also joined the Northants and was killed on 5th November 1918. Just six days before the Armistice.

For some reason my brain then brought forward the line from Albert & The Lion: What, waste all our lives raising children, to feed ruddy lions ......

More soon.