How the Joyces and Junipers come into the Tunstall story

This picture shows a wherry at a wharf with warehouses behind. It comes from Aylsham pictures for schools. It is the best I can do to illustrate Robert Kerrison Juniper's coal merchant's business at Water Lane, St Edmund's, Norwich.

 I have often wondered how my great grandfather, Joe Joyce from Islington, came to be in Norwich to meet and marry my great grandmother, Emma Jane Skinner of Tunstall.

    I thought maybe he was a travelling salesman for his employers, G. Nelson. Dale and Co of Dowgate Street in the City of London. This Warwickshire firm, which employed Joe Joyce at its London premises, produced jellies, lozenges, beef tea and baking powder, among other things.

  Another thought I had, was that Joe Joyce was visiting his aunties Cecilia, Frances and Emily who lived with his bachelor uncle when he retired, at Burgh Castle. But Emily was living in Islington with Joe's widowed mother Elizabeth at that time and his uncle Frederick had not retired from the customs and excise. In fact, Joe was probably visiting his older sister Elizabeth in Norwich.

  Elizabeth had married Robert Kerrison Juniper from Mundsley in 1873, when she was 21. The Junipers of Mundsley were brewers, publicans, coal merchants and sea captains. In 1877 Robert Kerrison bought the premises, wherries, horses, wagons and carts belonging to George Burrows, coal merchant of Water Lane, St Edmund, Norwich, who retired from the business.

   Robert Kerrison Juniper took regular advertisements in the local press. In 1880 he applied to the School Board to supply coal to the Norwich schools in place of the current supplier, who had been delivering short. The current supplier's contract was renewed by the school board, backed up by our Norwich solicitor. Robert Kerrison Juniper's tender, although advocated by the publisher of the Daylight, was unsuccessful. It was even remarked, at the meeting which rejected it, his tender could not be considered as it was was at the bottom of the list of the School Board's potential coal suppliers.

  The Junipers of Mundsley owned a little land, which abutted on to the land owned by the Allards of Trimingham, according to an enclosure notice the following year, 1881. The same year, Robert Kerrison Juniper spoke at the Parliamentary Debating Society in favour of the Sunday Closing Bill. He is noted in the press, the following year, for supporting the Liberal candidate for the borough. At the beginning of the year his employees take a notice out in the press thanking him for the beef etc he has given them at Christmas.

   Robert's wife Elizabeth advertises for staff to help her in the house and with her children in the early 1880s.

   Robert Kerrison has to take a carter to court in 1880 for the disappearance of some of his coal in transit. Apart from being a busy coal merchant, he was  an active in the community and an advocate for child welfare. He is also appointed as an overseer for the district. He is reported as giving an address at a Wesleyan Chapel and also chairs meeting in the Philadelphia Mission Room for a Band of Hope collection. He attends Baptist meetings and provides conveyances for The Silver Band Sunday School outing.  He is re-elected as secretary and treasurer for St. Mary's Juvenile Missionary society. He and Elizabeth have four children of their own to care for. These are Annie Bessie (1876), Kerrison (1877), Flora (1882) and Elsie(1884).

  In March1883, my great grandparents Joseph Joyce and Emma Jane Skinner married at the Wesleyan Chapel, Lady Lane, Norwich and moved to Mildmay Park, Islington. This is where their first child, my grandmother, May Gertrude was born, in May 1884. It is probable they initially moved in with my (then widowed) second great grandmother, Elizabeth Joyce. She was a nurse and wrote poetry. She shared accommodation with her sister in law Emily Joyce.

  In Norwich, in June of the same year, when Jarrolds wins the contract from the School Board to supply stationery, the board also agrees to ask Robert Kerrison Juniper to supply the coal. Our Norwich solicitor has left the School Board by this time. The publisher of the Daylight, who is still on the School Board, gets the committee to send a petition to parliament in support of the London Vigilance Association for the Protection of Young Children. The publisher of the Daylight is also very keen for a cheque to be rescinded. In this he is overruled in a letter to the School Board from a former board member (one of our Norwich solicitors) who threatens his firm will take legal action against the Board if the cheque is withdrawn.

    In June that year, Robert Kerrison Juniper was re-elected as secretary and treasurer for St Mary's Juvenile Missionary Society. He lent wagons for a summer Sunday school outing and at the Baptist Church Harvest Home meeting at Felthorpe, it is reported that he gave "an instructive and animated address."

   It has taken a considerable amount of research to establish these facts. My second great aunt Elizabeth Juniper (nee Joyce) seems to have been written out of people's family history. As with so many women of her time, it is very difficult to find out anything about her. She was probably out at work for the 1871 census, when her younger brother Joe, aged 12, was working as a cheesemonger's assistant. Elizabeth may have trained as a nurse, as her mother had done. I found an advertisement for a companion to an elderly lady in the Juniper family in Norwich. Perhaps Elizabeth answered that and met and married Robert then.

   I failed to source a photograph of Junipers coal business or wharf in Norwich. In the course of looking for one I discovered many picture agencies have copyrighted engravings and photographs going back two hundred years or more. Fortunately there are some altruistic picture websites which appreciate the educational value of pictures and I was able to source the above picture from one of them.