How could Sir John Campbell, K.C.T.S., afford to live on Charles Street, Berkeley Square?

As I've been looking at records of the life and career of Sir John Campbell (1780 to 1863), many times I've wondered about money. I first found him because I've been looking at  Charles Street, Berkeley Square in London, a prestigious address with many poobahs as neighbours, and that's where he lived in the last decades of his life. My lingering question was, how could he afford it?

Sir John's father, William Campbell, was a Commissioner of the Navy, a high-ranking civil servant, but not necessarily a wealthy man once the benefits of his office (notably, a house) were removed.

Sir John's two sisters married two brothers of the Onslow family, who themselves have an illustrious pedigree. However, any Onslow family wealth and land would have bypassed Elizabeth and Marianna Onslow nee Campbell and passed to the male heirs.

Sir John did enjoy some hospitality from his sister Elizabeth and her husband, Reverend George Onslow. In the 1841 census, we find Sir John and "Elise", whom I assume to be Sir John's daughter Elizabeth, with the Onslows at their family home, Dunsborough House in Send, Surrey. I've taken this to be either  the normal reciprocal visiting among family members or a temporary residence for Sir John and Elizabeth. At some point during or after 1834, Sir John returned from his stay as a prisoner of war in Portugal. During his absence, his only child Elizabeth may have been sent to stay with the Onslows, and perhaps Sir John joined her there.

Website for The Wey Valley, with a picture of Dunsborough House and interesting history about the villages of Send and Ripley

So, I've ruled out inherited wealth, but I should look for the will of Sir John's father and also of Sir John's siblings, just in case there is a pot of gold somewhere. It's unlikely any siblings transferred any wealth to him. I think each had a family of his or her own to care for.

Sir John's first wife, the young Portuguese lady Dona Maria Brigida de Faria e Lacerda has a noble-sounding name and it wouldn't surprise me if her family had a prominent position in Portugual. However, she married out of her society and went to England, where she died young. Sir John was persona non grata in Portugal after supporting the losing side in the War of the Two Brothers (and being a noted prisoner of war following it). Also, I have always had the impression that being an army officer in his day was not usually a way to get rich. I suppose perhaps there were occasional opportunities for plunder, but he hardly seems to have been in the right place and time for that, at least not at the latter stage of his Army career.

Having written off these various sources, I took a closer look at who owned 51 Charles Street and how Sir John came to live there at all.

Sir John Campbell, Knight Bachelor, and his wife Harriet Maria: what probate told me

In 1851 and 1861, Sir John Campbell and his wife Harriet Maria were  living at 51 Charles Street, Berkeley Square, London  with four servants in 1851 and two of the same plus two new ones in 1861.

My first impression was that this was a couple who had spent 50 or 60  years together. There was no mention of children in either census, but  as Sir John and Harriet were each born in about 1781, any children they  had may well have been married and gone by 1800 to 1810.

Sir John's presumably self-described occupation changed just a little  over the 10 years. He was a Knight Bachelor and a retired Lieutenant Colonel from the Army.

The fact that he was knighted gave me some hope of finding a formal and  detailed biography somewhere, and I wasn't disappointed. Sadly, the name  "John Campbell" is hardly rare. Even "Sir John Campbell" born around  1780 isn't unique. Throughout, I've had to be careful not to get mixed  up with other Sir John Campbells and other army officers of the same time, named Campbell.

Knowing that Sir John and Lady Campbell were each 80 years old in the 1861 census, it made sense to look for information about their respective deaths first. This is following the principle of working from the known to the unknown, a good basic research strategy.

Sir John Campbell: Information from probate

I am quite grateful that the National Probate Calendar for England is available online through Ancestry.com. This index lists all the grants to people who acted as executors and administrators of estates. It often gives a few good clues about where a person spent the latter part of their life, how much money they had at the end, and often identifies one or more close relatives.

A quick search for Sir John Campbell dying in 1861 or later turned up an entry in the Wills of 1864.

Instantly, I had a positive identification:
Sir John Campbell, Knight, late of 51 Charles Street;
and some new information:

• He died 19 December 1863 at his home on Charles Street;
• He was Knight Commander of the Order of the Tower and Sword of Portugal;
• His effects were originally valued at under £8,000. In March 1865, the value was changed to under £10,000.
• His executors were Richard Onslow of Wandsworth, Surrey, Esquire, and William Campbell Onslow of 28 Leinster Gardens, Middlesex, Esquire, a retired Lieutenant Colonel of Her Majesty's Indian Army.

This provided me with clues to last a month. Wonderful stuff!

It will be confusing to start into Lady Campbell's details here but don't worry, I did the same for her and will be back with more about her, too.

A goodbye, for now, to Henry Fleming

I have so loved researching Henry Fleming, who lived at No. 2, Charles Street, Berkeley Square, London, in 1871.

But it's time to say goodbye, at least for now, because I want to move on down the street.

Here are a few things I'll mention before leaving.

1. Henry's mother, Catherine, was the daughter of a famous, or infamous, Irish Protestant leader, John Hunter Gowan II (aka Hunter Gowan). One of her half-brothers was Ogle Gowan, who started the Orange Lodge in Canada.

2. Henry's father was Captain Valentine Fleming, from Tuam, County Galway, in Ireland. He was a captain in the British 9th Regiment of Foot. He was Catherine's second husband, and died in 1824 when his four children were roughly aged 10 to 14. I have a copy of his will.

3. All three Fleming brothers, James, Valentine, and Henry, were apparently educated in Ireland, possibly all at Trinity College, Dublin, and all three were lawyers, though Henry didn't continue with the practice very long.

4. Although I have traced each of the brothers, I don't know what happened to their mother and their sister, Emma.

5. A James Fleming, who had a brother named Henry, both of Dublin, petitioned the House of Lords in the late 1820s to claim the title "Baron of Slane". I think this may have been the brothers, before they moved from Ireland to London. They did not succeed.

6. James became a QC, Chancellor of the Palatinate of Durham, and an official for the West Indies. His wife was Julia Mary Canning, and I suspect she had a reasonably impressive pedigree herself. Their children all had the middle name "Francis", except the eldest, who was named "Francis" as his first name.

7. Henry's nephew, James's son Francis Fleming had a distinguished career in the foreign service, and was variously governor of Antigua, and a senior official (possibly also governor) of Hong Kong, Sierra Leone, and Mauritius.

8.  Another nephew from the same family, Baldwyn Francis Fleming, followed his uncle Henry into the Poor Law Board and then the Local Government Board. My first impression is that he was a good civil servant who cared about the people he was responsible for.

9. Henry's brother, Valentine, became Sir Valentine, and was the Chief Justice of Tasmania for some time, before returning to England where eventually he died in retirement in Surrey.

10. Henry had kind of a double life: civil servant and socialite. As a civil servant, he was described in none-too-glowing terms, varying from boring through to incompetent, depending upon who was saying it, and when in his career they were commenting. I have yet to see a comment describing him as dynamic and indispensable, and yet he was a top-level official for decades.

11. In his social life, Henry knew everyone, and it is in this capacity that the real interest lies. He mingled with lords, ladies, writers, members of Parliament, Prime Ministers Disraeli and Palmerston, and probably Gladstone too, and his role was to spread strategically-placed gossip. This is the part of Henry Fleming's life most deserving of scholarly study.

I have collected a number of links to references to Henry Fleming. Though I haven't seen any one work devoted to the man himself, it is rather surprising just how many 19th century Londoners mention him in their own memoirs and accounts of the day.

He died in 1876, still employed by the Local Government Board, still living at No. 2, Charles Street, Berkeley Square, and on the same day as Lady Stanley, thus departing life in the same manner as he had lived it: in the penumbra of the upper class.

Henry Fleming and Disraeli

I am becoming convinced that someone should do a thesis about Henry Fleming. Perhaps they already have.


So far he is a footnote, literally, in the papers of a number of prominent people. In his role as a trusted gossip, he seems to have been an important part of the communication channels of his day, from the 1840s until his death in 1876.


As I've mentioned before, his social life and his work for the Poor Law Board were in one way quite incongruous: champagne and gruel. On the other hand, in a paternalistic society, so notoriously class-stratified as 19th century England was, it's not surprising that the fates of the poorest were in the hands of people who had no direct personal experience of poverty.

In these two cuttings from letters of then Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, Fleming is mentioned. It seems from these two notes that Fleming had the opportunity to chat with Disraeli if they should meet; that he was a familiar, more than a nodding acquaintance.

I will let those who understand the history of the British Parliament in the 1870s explain further, in the many books and papers published about this period. Even to try and give a sketchy background is a bit of a daunting task.

In late January 1876, when the first letter was written, Parliament was about to resume sitting. Some of the contentious matters of the day involved the Suez Canal and Bosnia, names familiar in the news of our own time.

I quickly and the opposite of thoroughly checked Hansard for a debate where Gladstone and Lowe took a particularly active role, but I didn't locate one.

I did find this lovely picture and a connection to W. S. Gilbert.

(Copied from Wikipedia. Original credited to the Illustrated London News of March 22, 1873.)
"The Happy Land" was a musical by W. S. Gilbert and Gilbert Arthur à Beckett. It broke the rules about portraying public characters: here, as shown is a parody of then Prime Minster Gladstone, Chancellor of the Exchequer Lowe, and First Commissioner of Works, Ayrton.

More from Disraeli's letters, under the heading "DISSENSIONS IN THE CABINET".

I'm assuming that this is the same Fleming, Henry Fleming "The Flea", as there are no other Flemings appearing in these letters. It would be in character for Henry to fill Disraeli in on the goings-on at the Easter Sunday church service.

Or, as Disraeli put it, "Fleming having, of course, prepared a rich discourse for my edification." Sounds like him.

John Burgoyne Blackett at 2 Charles Street in the late 1840s

This is a listing from the Northumberland Archives, via Access to Archives, a very useful service indeed.

Here's exactly what's on the screen:

"Notebook (vol. IV) comprising copies of letters from J[ohn] B[urgoyne] Blackett, initially at 2 Charles Street, Berkeley Square, then at 10 Eaton Place to Congreve, May 1848-Dec. 1851. Concerning politics, literary matters, mutual friends, foreign affairs, university reform, possible personal insolvency, retrenchment in standard of living. A group of undated letters at the end, perhaps c.1844, predate the main section. ZBK/C/1/B/3/1/9 [n.d.]"
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/records.aspx?cat=155-zbk_3-1&cid=1-1-2-3-1#1-1-2-3-1

Why it matters to our story

You may notice that in 1848 when the letters started, Blackett was living at 2 Charles Street. He was also the Member of Parliament for Northumberland South from 1852 to 1856. His successor as the MP for the riding was George Ridley, who lived at 2 Charles Street later.

Maybe No. 2 was rented for whomever represented Northumberland South from time to time. But, the dates of the letters from Blackett at No. 2 don't match the dates of his time as an MP. Perhaps the connection is more to do with being from the nobility of Northumberland.

It raises the question of what Henry Fleming was doing there on census night in 1871, though. Guest of an absent MP, perhaps?

Blackett later lived at 10 Eaton Place, London, and for some reason I think I have run across Eaton Place in this research already. Will have to keep my eyes open.


Connection between Blackett and the March family (of No. 1 Charles Street, in 1871)

This is one of those "the world is a pretty small place" things, but that's what happens when you have people descended from William the Conqueror, Plantagenets, and so on.

The name "Umfreville" appears in both the Blackett and March families. For the Blacketts, it's way back around the 1500s. For the Marches, one of Thomas Charles March's sisters married a Yorkshire clergyman (of a titled family, if I remember correctly), and their sons had Umfreville as a middle name. The spelling varies, Umfreville, Umfraville.

A distant connection.





 

Charles Jarrald, a well-placed servant indeed

Charles Jarrald, born in Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, around 1849, is only loosely connected to Bram Stoker. His wife (or, the woman I assume to be his wife, but haven't proven) Elizabeth Jarrald, was a widow and the Nurse of Bram Stoker's only child in the 1881 census. Trying to learn more about Elizabeth, I found myself drawn into Charles's story. Where it took me was away from the Stokers and into territory I hadn't expected.

Servant in St. George Hanover Square in 1871

Because Elizabeth was a widow in 1881, I went looking for her husband in the census before that. I already had a hunch that the Charles Jarrald who died in 1877 was the man I wanted, so it was reasonable to look for him to be alive in 1871.

My result: A 22-year-old Servant born in Bury St. Edmunds, married, but not living with his family on census night, Charles Jarrald can be found in the census at 27 Charles Street, St. George's Hanover Square, in London.

When I first reported that the Stokers lived on Cheyne Walk in Chelsea, I said it was a good address, fashionable now as then.

St. George Hanover Square takes us beyond fashionable. On the census pages in and around where Charles Jarrald was, there are many servants and here and there a Landowner, or Annuitant, or other wealthy person. The servants include Grooms, Butlers, and Lady's Maids, not just the more common Cook and Housemaid as the Stokers had. But the surprise for me, a mere commoner, was how many Viscounts, Earl's daughters, Lords and Ladies, etc., turned up when I did just a little digging. I don't want to give it all away now, but it is quite amazing.

Charles Street is called, in directories of the day, "Charles Street, Berkeley Square". It runs out of the south-west corner of Berkeley Square, in a westerly direction. In the census, St. George Hanover Square is split among several areas. Charles Street is found in St. George Hanover Square, Mayfair.

In my next few posts I will have a peek in the windows of each house on Charles Street in 1871. We'll soon see the real Upstairs, Downstairs.

This article is one in an ongoing series, starting with Bram Stoker, author of Dracula in public records: BMD (Birth, Marriage, Death).

Next: Six degrees of separation for Dracula and Queen Victoria