Happiness is Harrop!: 'Sliding Doors' into my ancestry 1893

It’s 30 May 2020, we’re entering our eleventh week of lockdown measures. This morning I picked up Ted's Clacton Belle, written by my Mum, Victoria Wood and published symbolically in millennium year 2000.

On Friday 29th May Mum & I

Sam at Mona's Queen Anchor at Kallow Point,
Port St Mary - June 2012

should have been at an annual service to be held by the memorial anchor at Port St Mary in the Isle of Man, this year commemorating 80 years since the Isle of Man Steam Packet ship, Mona’s Queen sank in just two minutes off Dunkirk, killing 24 men.

Mum was invited to the special service by Captain Jack Ronan, who's three uncles, Harry, Fred and Tom survived the explosion on board Mona's Queen. Divers were due to place a plaque on the wreck of Mona's Queen in the sea at Dunkirk which was to be live streamed to us in Port St Mary.

Unfortunately, the current coronavirus restrictions allow no travel to or from the Isle of Man, where my great grandfather, Ted Groom, a little man with a camera and a passion for the sea photographed the captains, staff and holiday makers on the paddle steamers, which now form part of a permanent exhibition at the House of Manannan Museum in Peel.

This day in particularly it seems significant that John & I are not yet allowed to visit our daughter, Emma, in her new home at Stroud Green, just 14 miles from where Ted lived with his family at 51 Ladywell Road, Lewisham.

Currently we don’t know when or where we’ll next see our son, Tom, located in Manama, Bahrain, a port my Grandfather, Freddy, may have sailed to as a young boy in the Merchant Navy on reconnoitre in the Middle East circa 1925, aged about 17.

I am however, blessed to live in the Ribble Valley near to the very place where Ted and his wife Fanny took a holiday with friends in the late 1930s on their way back from the Isle of Man.

A walk by the River Ribble, my Grandfather, Freddy Groom, Freddy's sister,
(my Great Auntie Doris) & friend, Mrs Oldham from Accrington

In Mum's book Ted's Clacton Belle, Ted’s story starts with the death of his mother, Emily Elizabeth Groom (nee Loscomb) from typhoid in April 1893.

What is typhoid? I googled to search any correlation between 1893 and now, 2020. Typhoid is a water born epidemic which 127 years ago hit London areas hardest. The seaside town of Worthing, most surely one of the routes to which Ted sold tickets for day trips, had a population of 16000, 1050 people died of typhoid there. One in every sixteen people were stricken with the fever. Five improvised hospitals were created "Nearly all the windows stood open to the sun. All the rooms, upstairs and down, had been turned into wards, and every bed was occupied by a fever patient – by men and women, boys and girls, and little children....."

"The summer visitors have scampered away, and the front of the town is a desert. No pleasure boats put out to sea, for there are no holiday makers to use them.....The hotels and lodging-houses are empty, and many escape the fever merely to find ruin staring them in the face.”

If you'd like to read Ted's Clacton Belle and you have the time just now, Mum still has a few copies we can lend to you, or you can pick up a preloved copy online (if we haven't bought them back already!).

Commemorations will resume on May 29, 2021 - we'll be back!

Below I list most of the references I have surfaced this morning. I'm going to 'dig for victory' and plant my veg, then this afternoon I'm going to re read Ted's Clacton Belle in the sunshine and safety of my home.

Take care & stay safe.

Samantha Jane Turner (31st May 2020, Harrop Fold)