15/52 How do you spell that: Jane Prince 1887 - 1985

 15/52 ; How do you spell that? Jane Prince

This great aunt was a steady presence in my life until I was 36. We called her Aunty Ginny. Many years later when I started investigating my family history, researching my paternal grandmother’s family, the Princes, I couldn’t find anyone called ‘Ginny’. I soon realised that Ginny was Jane, or Janie. Our Australian ears heard ‘Ginny’ in the Liverpudlian accent. I never saw her name written down. It astounds me thatI didn’t even know her name, someone I had known for so long!  When I came to write this blog I only knew family stories. There weren’t any documents. My cousin told me he had recorded an interview with her and had it on a cassette. But he didn’t know where it was and how do you deal with a cassette now? My mother’s sister said she wished my mother were still alive because she knew stuff. And of course, my dad, as, after all, Auntie Ginny was his aunt. So this blog has led me to search out the truth of some family legends. What was true? 

Jane Prince was born in Liverpool, Lancashire in 1887. Her mother was Ann Jane née Roberts and her father James Edward Prince. Ann’s marriage to James Prince was her second marriage. Ann, a widow, had had three children before she married James but she left the oldest two to be cared for by someone else and only brought the youngest one, Margaret, aged three, into her second marriage. She then had four more girls: Annie, Edith, Jane and Louisa. 

They didn’t have an easy childhood. In 1891, when Janie was 3, the Census shows them living in 9 Gaskell Street in Toxteth Park, an area which had become incorporated into Liverpool. Liverpool had undergone massive increases in population over the Industrial Revolution and housing was notoriously close, overcrowded and unhealthy. All the Prince children survived childhood. Oral family history indicates that James, and possibly also Ann, drank. Apparently the girls’ job was to fetch jugs of beer from the local pub for their dad. In 1891 he was allegedly, according to the census, a butcher. 

Further oral family history tells that Annie, James and Ann’s first child, ran away from home when she was 14. Annie turned 14 in November of 1899. It is told that she went house to house, offering to ‘shine your step for a penny’. At one house the famous Florence asked her ‘What is a girl like you going around shining steps for a penny?’ and Annie showed her the bruises on her body, allegedly the result of James’ violence. It is told how Florence went around to their place and gave him a piece of her mind. However, I suspect the timing isn’t right because James Prince died in July 1899. Unless it was her mother who was responsible for the abuse? Or maybe Annie was younger than 14? This is Janie’s story, not Annie’s, but it gives us an idea of the kind of background in which Janie grew up.  

Two years later, in 1901, Annie was a domestic servant for a school master, Edith a domestic servant for a carpenter. Neither Jane, Louisa nor her mother can be found in the 1901 census. But I have a number of historic family Bibles. the most tattered is the one that belonged to Janie Prince. In the fly leaf it says ‘Present to Janie Prince, Irby Hill Sunday School December 1902.  

This picture shows the Irby Hill Primitive Methodist Chapel.  Did the legendary Florence play any part in rescuing these girls from sin? In 1905, as recorded in the Bible, it says on May 22nd, Janie was ‘born again’. ‘The happiest day of my life, when jesus [sic] washed my sins away.’ She was 17. Irby Hill was in Cheshire, so Janie was presumably living there, and not in Liverpool. 

By 1911 we can find Janie working as a domestic servant for the Secretary of Education and the curator of the Art Gallery in Southport.  He was Frederick William Teague and Mrs Teague was Florence Amelia: surely not the same Florence who had rescued Annie?  They lived in Southport which was a salubrious seaside resort  - said to be more refined than its neighbour, Blackpool. It was 27 km north of Liverpool, but easily accessible from Liverpool by the canal or train. 

At age 25 Janie joined Annie, her husband and baby, and migrated to South Australia. They left London on the Royal Mail steamer, the HMS Osterley and travelled third class, leaving in August 1914 and arriving in Port Adelaide in October. At the end of September they were very glad to see the lights of Rottnest Island in Western Australia. According to the Daily Telegraph, they had ‘an exciting time of it on the way. What with the alarms of war, terrific heat, and the fact that they were travelling near the vicinity of an enterprising army, the voyage was not the most pleasant.’ In the Mediterranean people ‘rushed pell mell on deck’ when a shot was fired across the bows. It turned out to be two French destroyers. Later near Aden they were passed by a fleet of 29 transports carrying Indian troops to the front. The passengers ‘cheered until they were hoarse’ and the band played God Save the King and the Marseillaise as everyone sang. In one report it says ‘Fear of the German Cruiser Kmden was responsible for the Osterley making a wide detour from her usual course after leaving Colombo for Fremantle.’. This must be the source of the family story that they were chased by a German submarine in the Indian Ocean. 

In Australia Aunty Ginny continued to work as a domestic servant. It is remembered that she worked for the Richardson family who lived at Mt Lofty House at Crafers in the Adelaide Hills. Perhaps she applied for jobs in 1926 & 1927, that were advertised by Mrs  J.W. Richardson seeking a competent cook,(no washing), a housemaid, or a children’s nurse to take charge two little girls - aged 11/2 and 31/2.  Mt Lofty House was a magnificent pile which had originally been built by the Hardy family. It is now a boutique hotel and the extensive grounds have been commandeered by the Mt Lofty Botanical Gardens.

Oral history has it that she worked for the Richardsons until she retired. It is said they treated her like one of the family. That suggests to me that she got the job of Children’s Nurse and it was she who raised the Richardson children. 

It is interesting that Aunty Ginny, who had grown up in the Liverpool slums, lived the good life vicariously, working in cultured upper class households both in Southport, Lancaster, and in Adelaide. It is also frustrating that newspaper reports of the social events, dances and so on, held at Mt Lofty House mention all the guests, with detailed descriptions of their clothes,  but do not mention Aunty Ginny who was, of course,  working behind the scenes. We are lucky to have the few stories, passed down by word of mouth because working class women are not included in written history. 

I have a distant memory of visiting Aunty Ginny when she was living in small cottage with a long dark corridor. But my main memories of her was when she was living in a nursing home in Goodwood and my mother would bring her to our place for dinner. She was a little dumpy woman with white hair and the Lancashire accent. She died at 98, in 1985. I am left with the usual family historian regrets that I didn’t ask her more questions. 

References

The Advertiser, Dec 18, 1925, p12, Mount Lofty House.

Census, England & Wales, 1891, 1901, 1911. 

The Daily Telegraph (Sydney) Sept 30, 1914. p 7 The Osterley’s voyage. 

The Daily Telegraph (Sydney) Oct 8th 1914, page 5. Osterely’s voyage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxteth

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southport

The  Register (Adelaide),  Oct 4th 1926, p20 Advertising 

myprimitivemethodists.org.uk/content/chapels/cheshire/k-m/irby-hill-primitive-methodist-chapel-ii

UK & Ireland Find a Grave Index 1300 - present

UK, Outward Passenger Lists 1890 -1960

www.mtloftyhouse.com.au/about-mount-lofty-house/