Harry graduates from farmer to coal merchant

Picture of Thomas Moy's coal trucks. Thomas Moy started his enterprise in Colchester. By the 1890s he was organising many more coal agencies and depots in London and the East of England. Photograph supplied by railway historian and photographer J.E.Connor.

My Norfolk ancestors from Tunstall moved from remote rural living to urban life. When her cousin Stephen died at Corporation Farm, Thrigby on 5th June 1896, great grandmother Emma Jane and her mother Jane Betsy heard about it at their home in Stoke Newington. Brother Harry heard the news at St Augustine, Norwich. His four children were doing well at the Norwich schools and colleges, especially in physiognomy and drawing. 

   Harry had been running the farm at Burlingham St Edmund until 1887, when he sold everything and took Mr Rising's advice to file for bankruptcy. After that he worked as a draper. Five years later he became a canvasser (or salesman) for coal merchant Thomas Moy, when Moy's took over from Jewsons in Norwich. They advertised Mr H.B.Skinner as the firm's authorised agent. In June 1896 Harry and his wife Emma attended a Jarrold family wedding held at St Peter's Wesleyan Chapel in Lady Lane. This was where Harry and Rosa May had attended my great grandparents wedding thirteen years earlier. The Norfolk Press notes Harry and Emma Skinner gave the couple a wedding gift of a tea caddy.

    Mary Ann was working with husband Frank as a bookseller and stationer in Lowestoft. Sister Laura was working with her husband Job in their ironmongers shop in Gloucester.

   Rosa May had been the only member of the Tunstall Skinners to live on a farm, in Gloucester, after 1888. She had died in December 1893. Cousin Alice Skinner, who had worked on Staithe Farm in Tunstall, after Jane Betsy and her family left, married Rosa May's widower, Edward Dennis Ballinger in 1894 a few months after her cousin died. I am speculating here, but it is possible Alice was previously helping Edward on the farm, especially with his horse teams. Either that, or she was intent on making sure a family obligation, debt or credit was honoured. Another explanation could be that Alice wanted to make sure Rosa May's children received their share from Jane Betsy's bequest. Jane Betsy had not been informed of her daughter's death, if I am to go by documentation kept by the family.

   Eleanor, Alice's younger sister, who had also been on Staithe Farm, Tunstall, with her brother and sister, married Job Sharpe's younger brother Samuel (1892). They were living in Great Yarmouth and running a greengrocer's shop, when her brother Stephen died. Older sister, Eliza Harriet Skinner was still working as a  housekeeper for the vet in Acle.

   Of Stephen's other sisters, Annie Skinner, who had helped Harry on his farm at Burlingham St Edmund in the 1880s, moved from Thrigby to St George's Road, Great Yarmouth, when her brother married Rebecca Fabb. She went to live with her widowed aunt Louisa Crow Page. They were neighbours of Annie's mother and Louisa's sister, Eliza Charlotte and her daughter Harriet Skinner. They had a bank cashier living with them as a boarder. Because his mother had invested in Corporation Farm at Thrigby Stephen's widow, Rebecca Fabb, continued to run Corporation Farm with her sister Sarah Ann Fabb, until they retired to Hemsby. Stephen Bately Skinner's will was not proved until after his mother, Eliza Charlotte's death in 1914.

   Of all the Skinners of Tunstall and Thrigby, it was now only Stephen's brother, Arthur Skinner, and his family who were still living and working on a Norfolk farm, at Burgh St Margaret.

   Barely a month after Stephen Skinner's death, in the Eastern Daily Press, J. Wilson Gilbert, the vendor (Alfred Neave's solicitor) advertises a 60-acre farm at Starsten for sale. It is "in the occupation of the executors of the late Mr Skinner." When I found this, I realised my co-researchers were correct when they suggested the mortgage for £350 our Norwich solicitors mention in their 1912 letter to Emma Jane, was taken out to loan money to members of the family. Alfred Neave had taken the mortgage out with our Norwich solicitors on December 6th 1887, according to their letter. Harry had paid the same amount in dividends for 4s/9d in £1 via Alfred Neave as trustee for his bankruptcy debt, to our Norwich solicitors in March 1888. (Source, The London Gazette)

   The amount put aside in trust from James Pollard Skinner's will varies from £750 (probate records Somerset House) £450 (in the chancery case set to be heard 12th January 1888 with Rosa May and Jane Betsy as defendants). The amount was £360 in Job Sharpe's letter of December 1886 and £350 according to our Norwich solicitors. They claimed the amount was left from the £450 Alfred Neave had taken in to them on 6th December 1887. They state Jane Betsy was paid what was owing her and a substantial amount taken for costs. Uncle Alfred Neave had taken the loose change (which amounted to £8.11s.4d). Our Norwich solicitors state he invested the remaining £350 in mortgage with them, and took the interest on it out, until it had been paid off on 9th May 1896, when he re-conveyed the property. 

   Wherever these amounts went, Harry took responsibility for them. He left the land for good in 1887. An advertisement in the Eastern Daily Press of 13th October 1896 tells us he moved from Norwich to Great Yarmouth:-

   "Thomas Moy Ltd, Coal, Coke and General Merchants, Head Office, Colchester.

Coal Office & Wharf, North Quay, Great Yarmouth desire to intimate that they have appointed Harry Bately Skinner Manager of their Yarmouth Depot.

   In making this announcement Thomas Moy Ltd wish to thank their numerous connections in this neighbourhood for their past consideration and have pleasure in introducing Mr Skinner who has been connected with the firm for several years in the Norwich District."

     When my mother was on the case, she discovered four generations of our direct ancestors were born in Tunstall rather than Stokesby, Runham or Thrigby. That was when we set off to find if Staithe Farm still existed. She remarked at the time, with a certain amount of amusement: "Whilst sorting out their affairs to suit them, families sometimes forget Somerset House holds all the original records." The evidence suggests to me solicitors for trustees can make the same mistake.