BERTUNA'S CHILDREN

 

Generation 1
Robert Bishop and Sarah Knights were married on 11 October 1758 and lived in Great Barton all their lives.

Generation 2
Their daughter Sarah Bishop married John Garwood on 28 December 1789.
Their eldest son John Bishop (b. 1772) married Eleanor Hale on 26 December 1796 and their son William Bishop was born in 1816.
In 1805, John gave evidence, together with James Long, against William Cock, a carpenter from Thetford who had a wife and 6 children and was accused of grand larceny. William Cook was found guilty of stealing two scythes and a scythe stick from John and James and was sentenced to 7 years transportation (BNP, 24 July 1805).
John’s younger brother Edward Bishop (1774-1839) married Mary Ottoway (1771–1852) on 4th July 1896. After Edward’s death, Mary lived at home with their son Robert, daughter Elizabeth and three grandchildren, including female twins named Sarah and Jane, and then moved in with her daughter Elizabeth, until her death at the age of 82.

Generation 3
Edward and Mary’s son, Robert Bishop (1813-1867), was baptised at Holy Innocent’s Church on 23rd May 1813 where he would have had the opportunity as a young boy to attend the Sunday school. In 1842, he married Caroline Pollard (1812-1884) from Walsham le Willows, who was the daughter of Thomas Pollard and Elizabeth Morley.
Robert and Caroline lived on Conyers Green and Robert worked as a farm labourer, probably for the Bunbury family. They had five children – Jane (b. 1839), Phillip (b.1844), Robert (b.1846), James (b.1850) and Thomas (b.1852) – and there is no evidence to suggest whether any of them attended school. Thomas was described as an agricultural labourer in the 1861 census when he was 9-years-old.
In 1844, Robert Bishop was working as a gardener when he appeared in court as a witness at the trial of James Lankester of Palgrave, who was described in the Bury and Norwich Post as a ‘rogue and a vagabond’. James was found guilty of setting fire to a wheat stack of about ’60 coombs’, owned by Frederick Paine (BNP, 12 June 1844).
After the death of her husband in 1867, Caroline lived at home with her son Thomas and then moved into one of the Widows’ Homes.
Thomas Bishop (1801-1867) may also have been a great grandson of Robert Bishop. Born and brought up in Great Barton, he married Eliza Sturgeon (1804?-1863) on 21 December 1823. They lived at the Farm Cottages at Cattishall and had at least two children – Manasseh Bishop (1824-1864) and Ephraim Bishop (1827-1871). By 1850, the children had left home and Manasseh and Eliza took an 85-year-old labourer called Thomas Hart as a lodger.
In 1850, Eliza was accused of the theft of money and a silver watch, which she later tried to pawn in Bury St Edmunds. She admitted the theft and was given a prison sentence. At the time of the 1851 census, she was serving time in the County Goal in Bury St Edmunds and Thomas was living in Great Barton with his brother-in-law, Abram, in a cottage in Church Lane (BNP, 18 Sept 1850).
Manasseh married Maria Olley (1827-1894) and they had five children – Christianne (b.1847), Harry (13 April 1851 – 7 February 1929), Frederick (b. 1852), Catherine (b. 1855) and Charles (b. 1860).
In 1876, Harry married Mary Ann Downing (1853-1931) who came from Thelnetham. Harry worked as a shepherd and they lived in Suffolk at Coney Weston and Knettishall and then in Norfolk at Cranworth, Caston, Wighton and North Barsham, where they lived in a five-roomed cottage.
They had six children – Annie Marie (b.1876), Arthur William (1878-1947), Frederick (b. 1879), Harry (b. 1882), Gertrude Mary (1886-1985) and May (1888-1967). All of the boys worked as farm labourers when they left school.

George Bishop (1803-1886) may also have been descended from Robert Bishop.
He married Elizabeth (aka Eliza) and they had at least five children – Henry (b. 1830), Sarah (b. 1836), Jane (b. 1839), Mary (b. 1841) and William (b. 1844).
William became an agricultural labourer when he left school and then joined the Coldstream Guards.

Generation 4
Robert Bishop (1846-1898), the son of Robert and Caroline, married Phoebe Pawsey (1847-1897) who was born in Great Barton and was the daughter of John Pawsey (1816-1899) and Sarah Newman (1814-1909).

Robert and Phoebe had at least five children, all of whom attended the village school. Their eldest daughter Kate (b. 1867) died on 7 March 1876 at the age of 9 and was commemorated on the same gravestone as her parents. She had one sister, Flora (b. 1882) and three brothers – William Henry (b. 1870), George b. 1873) and Robert (b. 1876).
At the age of 15, Robert worked as a house servant at the home of Maria and Jacob Lofts, who farmed 350 acres of land. 10 years later, he worked as a labourer and in 1881, lived in the Mill House with his family.
After Phoebe died in 1897, Robert was unable to cope and spent three months in the lunatic asylum at Melton, Suffolk, after which he worked as an odd job man in the village helping in the gardens at Barton Hall and elsewhere in the village. He went to stay in London with his son George at 11 Eaton Mews, possibly intending finding work in London, and left the key of his house with Daniel Pawsey, a neighbour, who worked as a jobbing gardener. Whilst in London, Robert’s son was so concerned about his father’s state of mind that he called in a doctor on the Saturday, who gave him a certificate for entry into an infirmary on the Monday morning. George wrote to the Revd Hervey of Holy Innocents’ Church, Great Barton, about his concerns for his father’s mental health but on the Sunday morning, Robert left his son’s house and his son assumed that he was intending returning to Great Barton. The Revd Hervey and PC Rix went to investigate and saw Daniel Pawsey who told them that Robert had not collected the key. Whilst the Revd Hervey was at the post office sending a telegraph to Dr Hinnell, Daniel Pawsey found Robert in his pigsty, where he was lying on the straw and groaning. Edmund Pawsey offered him a cup of tea, but he said he would prefer brandy. However, he was unable to drink anything, collapsed face down into the straw, and died. The autopsy showed that he had taken poison about an hour before his death (BNP 16 Aug. 1898).
In 1875, the brother of Robert’s father, Thomas Bishop (1851-1923), married Alice Maud Long (18 September 1856 – 15 February 1935), the daughter of William Long (1825-1902) and Hannah Sharpe (1833-1924). Alice lived at Poplar Grove with her parents until her marriage in 1875, when she and Thomas moved into a four-roomed cottage at Conyers Green, who worked as a horse driver and farm labourer.
They had 12 children – James (b.1876), Alfred George (b.1877), Kate (b.1879), Bessie (b.1881), Emma (b.1884), Robert (b.1886), Herbert Henry (b.1888), Walter Charles (b.1889), Ernest (b.1890), Katey May (b. 1894), Thomas (b.1896) and Agnes Maud (b.1900).
In 1883, Thomas was fined 6d and 4s. 6d costs for neglecting to send one of his children (either James or Alfred) to school.
In 1886, Kate died in a tragic accident. The nearest doctor to Great Barton was located in Bury St Edmunds, but there was a Doctor’s Club in Great Barton, to which members paid a weekly contribution of 2d. or 3d. per family. The Bunbury family paid the salary of a doctor and a nurse, who were available to visit the sick in the village and permitted to order soup and other things from Barton Hall for their patients. This may have explained why Alice went to the Hall one Saturday morning to fetch some broth for her children leaving 11-year-old Alfred at home in charge of four younger siblings. There was a fire burning in the fireplace, protected by a fireguard, but whilst her mother was out, six-year-old Kate reached over the fireguard to wind up the clock on the mantelpiece and her apron caught on fire. She ran next door, where Eliza Bishop (see above) doused the flames with water, but Kate’s thighs and the lower part of her body were so badly burnt by then that she died the next day in great pain. At her inquest, a verdict of ‘accidental death by burning’ was delivered (BNP, 12 Jan. 1886).
In 1893, the local clergy brought the Bishop family to the attention of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and, in 1895, Alice and Thomas were taken to court at Thingoe and Thedwastre Petty Sessions, accused of child neglect, having already received several warnings. It was stated that the family took home 25s. or 26s. a week, which included the wages of 18-year-old Alfred and 19-year-old James, but no money was spent on soap, and the children were always in a verminous and filthy condition. The two oldest brothers had recently suffered from sore throats, and the five younger children were sent to school with sore throats and were allowed to run around the village. Five of the ten children caught scarlet fever and their skin peeled off their hands like a glove. At one point, Emma Daine, the school mistress, told the children to stay at home for three weeks until they were ‘purified and fit to attend’; and made an entry in the school logbook to that effect. However, the children returned the next day with shaved heads. Their mother, Alice, who appeared in court with a baby in her arms, was given a prison sentence for 21 days, and the magistrate said that her husband must ‘have the house and children thoroughly cleaned in her absence’ (BFP, 30 Nov. 1895; BNP, 3 Dec. 1895).
All of the sons became farm labourers after they left school.
In 1902, Robert joined the Royal Hussars and Royal Field Artillery for 12 years. Walter, who also became a soldier, drowned in Malta in 1908 at the age of 19. Whilst attending the funeral of another soldier, Walter disembarked from a tug into a smaller boat, which capsized when it was caught on the tug’s propeller.
Two of their brothers were killed during the First World War and are commemorated on the war memorial in the churchyard at Holy Innocent’s Church.
Six battalions of the Suffolk Regiment fought at the Battle of the Somme, which lasted from July to November 1916, and was intended to be a decisive breakthrough. It was the scene of indiscriminate slaughter, at the end of which, the Allies had only advanced a few miles, and nearly one million men had been killed or wounded. Amongst the dead was Herbert Henry Bishop (23525) who served in the 9th Battalion and died on 16 September 1916. He is remembered with honour on the Thiepval Memorial.
Five battalions of the Suffolk Regiment fought in the Battle of Arras in 1917. Ernest Bishop, who was a gunner in the Royal Field Artillery, died in April after a shell dropped in front of his gun and shrapnel hit him in the shoulders and neck.
In 1909, Bessie married Frederick Harry Mayes (1888-1967), a farm labourer who was born in Pakenham, and they lived in a four-roomed house in Livermere Road. Ethel was born in 1910 and Ernest in 1911.
By the 1920s, Thomas and Alice had moved to Ice Pits Cottage where Thomas died in 1923 (BFP, 10 March 1923) and Alice in 1935.
Alice was buried in a polished elm coffin and her funeral was attended by Jim and Jill Bishop (son), Mr and Mrs Alfred Bishop (son), Bessie and Fred Mayes (daughter), Katey and Tom (daughter), Mrs Trudgett and Mrs Sargent (nieces), Miss Mayes (grand-daughter), Mrs Moule, Mrs Stiff and Nurse Land. The youngest son Thomas was unable to attend because he was in hospital. Wreaths were sent by most of the above and by Tom Mabel and Ernie (son), Lionel and Robert and Ester (Alice’s sister), Ethel (grand-daughter), Ernie and baby, Irene, Gerald and Topsy Stiff (BFP, 02 Mar. 1935).