Frederick William Emms was born in Carleton Rode on the 22nd May 1891, the youngest of the twelve surviving children born to Henry and Rebecca Emms and one of the two Emms brothers who served in the First World War. You can read more about the Emms’ family history in the village on his brother’s page (John Emms).
By the time of Fred’s birth, only the youngest six siblings were still living at home; the oldest of whom was James, 14, who was working on a local farm, followed by John, Martha, Edith, Kate (all at school, although Kate was living nearby with her maternal aunt on the Flaxlands) and Charles, who was nearly 2.
The Emms children were already known for poor attendance at school (read more in John Emms’ biography). James and John, both of whom were about to leave school, were often absent, and Martha and Enid were expected to stay at home when their new baby brother arrived. Mother, Rebecca, as recounted in John’s biography, had grown up in a weaving family in the village at a time when the industry was home based, and in which everyone was expected to work from an early age. After they married, husband Henry toiled long hours bricklaying, and strenuous domestic duties, together with caring for her children, occupied Rebecca.
As the Emms siblings grew, both boys and girls, would have been ‘earning their keep’ supporting their mother at home as well as working in the surrounding fields where in certain seasons many tasks were considered to be ideally suited for children (even at the beginning of the 20th century) – stone picking, bird scaring, helping with the harvest and gleaning, ‘singling beet’ (the backbreaking job of thinning out overcrowded seedlings by hand) as well as feeding stock and looking after poultry (and we know that the Emms kept fowl). In the 1870s and 1880s, children’s attendance at school would not have been a priority for many rural Norfolk families struggling to make ends meet.
Against this background, the notes in the Carleton Rode School Log books from the early 1890s make fascinating reading. For a couple of years, the school had struggled to recruit properly trained staff and the reports of the HM Inspector from the Board of Education not only criticised the unsatisfactory attainment of the children, but also their poor attendance and ‘lack of discipline’. The School Manager, the Reverend John Cholmeley, must have breathed a sigh of relief when, on the 28th May 1893, a new headmaster arrived.
The handwriting in the Log has a strong, distinctive flourish:
I, Nehemiah Tink, Certified Teacher of the First Class, with Emilie Tink, also Certificated “of the First Class”, took charge of these schools.
The following day, after the Whitsun Holiday, the school reopened and Nehemiah’s opening entry leaves the reader in no doubt of his intention:
Discipline and organisation sadly at fault. Attendance very irregular. Names sent to the Attendance Officer at close of week. Several children illegally employed.
Nehemiah had form. In his previous positions, he had also been the Attendance Officer and there are several newspaper accounts of his success in the magistrates’ court, some detailing the violence he encountered from aggrieved parents who would have received fines they probably couldn’t pay (and that meant a spell in prison).
Two weeks after his arrival, he writes in the Log:
Children very, very careless in all lessons – apparently habit acquired. Mrs Emms, and others, still keep their children from school.
Five of Rebecca’s children were pupils at the time. A battle of wills ensued.
Six weeks later, Nehemiah grudgingly records in the Log:
July 19th A half holiday on account of the Chapel Sunday School Anniversary, 11 absent this morning –
… and then in a larger script, Mrs Emms still troublesome.
Clearly, Rebecca did not baulk at challenging ‘authority’.
As the year wore on, Nehemiah continued to report families whose children did not attend regularly, and he felt that many of them did not value education – referring to ‘careless parents’. He noted how many older children were kept away from school when needed at home or on the farms. He named families where he knew the children were working illegally – one boy was a repeat offender ‘selling cucumbers’ (!) – and instances of older girls looking after younger siblings or employed to help with newborn babies. He was incensed that some children were just playing about the village when they should have been in school (the handwriting acquires extra ‘frisson’!)
His comments in the Log become increasingly frustrated with the behaviour of some children and ‘so called’ influenza (he thinks they are just coughs and colds). He introduced ‘a tap of the stick’ for idleness and chattering in lessons – if a child’s name was added to the monitor’s list three times, then they were punished. It must be remembered that in the 1890s, corporal punishment in schools (commonly, use of the cane on the back or legs) was widely accepted – and many considered it essential for maintaining discipline, order and respect for authority. This type of physical violence was not unique to schools but mirrored in families and communities too. (Corporal punishment was only banned in state schools in England and Wales in 1986.)
However, a few parents in the village did object, and they arrived at the headmaster’s door to complain, including Mrs Emms. The vicar of All Saints’ Church played a significant role in the day-to-day running of the school – and as such, the Reverend Cholmeley supported the headmaster.
The Tinks remained at the helm for two years before they decided to find alternative positions. Although Henry and Rebecca Emms were married in All Saints’, and most of their children were baptised in church, it is significant that following the death of baby daughter, Minnie, in late 1887, neither Charles nor Frederick (the two children born subsequently) were christened. Also, both Henry, Rebecca and their eldest daughter would in time be buried together in the Baptist Church in Carleton Rode, so it seems likely that they worshipped there later. Perhaps being at loggerheads with the headmaster, and the Rev Cholmeley, encouraged the Emms to shift their allegiance to the non-Conformist church?
You can feel the frustration that Nehemiah felt when, before he left in June 1895, he noted in the Log that one of the older girls, a bright student aged 13, wanted to stay on at school and try for a scholarship, but her father refused, ‘How little parents appreciate free education here.’
By the time the next headmaster arrived, Charles and Frederick Emms had started in the Infants, the elderly long-serving rector had died, and the next incumbent had arrived.
The new teacher, Mr John Smith, and the Reverend Arthur Back, would help to steer the village for the next two decades, through the tumultuous years of the First World War and into an uncertain future.
The last years of the 19th century were marked by repeated outbreaks of contagious diseases for which there were no treatments. In the spring of 1896, an outbreak of measles closed the school for three months. This was followed in the autumn by scarlet fever and diphtheria (and one child died); school closed again for another six weeks. Outbreaks of scarlet fever continue into the following year; families are absent for weeks at a time and another child dies.
In the run up to Christmas 1897, many children are absent for the usual ‘preparation of Christmas poultry’, and Kate Emms is reported to the Attendance Officer. She would have been coming up to 12 years old and working at home. After leaving school, and when her father had given up bricklaying and was concentrating on the rearing and selling of chickens, Kate is described as ‘assisting in the business.’
As the early spring arrived in 1898, so too did mumps, which swept through the village; within three days, 47 children out of the 80 or so on school role had succumbed, including Charles and Frederick Emms, aged 9 and 7. School was immediately closed. Generally, children survived mumps, but it could leave them with long-term complications, such as deafness. We know from elderly residents who remember Charles in the 1960s and 70s, that he was very hard of hearing – perhaps this was a consequence of contracting mumps as a boy?
School life had its positive moments too, especially under the leadership of John Smith and his family. There were days off for local fairs – the yearly one at New Buckenham in November was especially popular (even if not officially allowed, most children attended) – and a circus regularly came to Wymondham (elephants on the train!) There were special events for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee and a half day off for her birthday too. A seesaw is erected in the playground to much excitement, and one June day, the Reverend Back arrived to set the children a challenge. How many wildflower specimens could they collect? Prizes would be given.
The Log records that this was the time when two new subjects were added to the curriculum: geography and botany. It also notes that the boys were rather too enthusiastic in their efforts – preferring picking flowers in the churchyard to attending school! The overall prize was given to Ada Tye for her collection of 99 different specimens.
So, what did the school do to promote geography?
Taken from the school log, 1900:
October 16th 2 dozen Canadian Readers & Atlases have been received from the Office of the High Commissioner for Canada. The children have taken them home to read as some of them will compete for a medal.
Was Frederick Emms one of those children who took them home? Could he have got his first taste for Canada from them?
Frederick’s school leaving date is not recorded in the Register or Log, but it could have been in late 1903 as a pupil could still leave school at 12 years old. We know that he became a labourer – but whether he was working for his father, or on nearby farmer, is not known.
However, this report appeared in the local newspaper in the summer of 1907:
Clearly, Frederick had more than a little of his mother’s attitude towards authority!
We imagine that the two Freds had become friends when Frederick Lansdell moved to the school in 1899. He was the illegitimate son of Fanny Lansdell, whose parents ran the Farrier’s Arms pub on the Mile Road for 30 years. Fred lived with them until his grandparents left the pub in 1899, when he was 9, and he then moved to live with Samuel and Victoria Seadon, his paternal grandparents, (and prosperous farmers) at Church Farm (later known as Seadon’s Farm and now known as Carleton Manor) near to Carleton Rode school. It is clear from the census return for 1901 that the Seadons’ acknowledged Fred as their grandson.
As the newspaper report makes clear, these two adolescents were a ‘bit of a handful’. In Fred Lansdell’s case, his grandfather, Samuel, had died at the beginning of that year and perhaps this had a bearing on what happened next. The following year, In November 1908, Fred Lansdell joined the Norfolk Regiment, and this set him on a long career in the army. He is also one of our First World War survivors and we will be following his story later.
Fred Emms, did not follow suit – although his older brother, Richard, born in 1872, had joined the Norfolk Regiment aged 18 (even before Fred’s birth) and served for 12 years in a career that took him to India for over 5 years, and 3 years in South Africa – fighting in the Second Boer War. His army records survive and make for a fascinating insight into the life of a foot soldier during the British Empire at the turn of the century. After his army discharge, Richard returned to England to live near his older brother, Thomas, in north-east England (who had also left Carleton Rode before Fred was born and found work in the railways and mines of County Durham). Thomas, and then Richard, had married in that area but it must have been something about home, and rural East Anglia, that drew them back as both men and their families returned to Norfolk at the end of the First World War.
So, what do we know of Fred’s time during the First World War? Very little, as his service records do not survive.
Fred attested as Private 25318 in the 2nd Battalion of the Norfolk Regiment and served mainly in the Mesopotamian Campaign (modern day Iraq).
After the war, Frederick returned to living with his parents on Flaxlands and working on the land. These were the difficult post war years of economic depression and high unemployment (see brother John’s biography.) Prospects for farm labourers in Norfolk were bleak – falling wages, longer working hours and rising prices. At the same time, the Canadian government had renewed their campaign to attract agricultural workers from Britain to settle in Western Canada. We know of several families in Carleton Rode, from around 1900 to the early 1930s, who had younger family members head there to pastures new. Four names on our War Memorial are of men who served in the Canadian forces and died during the Great War, and several others who survived.
Fred was courting a publican’s daughter from neighbouring Tibenham, (Blanche) Annie Turner, whose father, George, ran The Boot.
Annie had been born in the Heywoods, a hamlet between Tibenham and Diss in September 1901, and baptised in Diss church the following month. Her father was then a farm labourer and milk carrier but in 1906, with a growing family, decided to move to the brewery-owned pub which had a smallholding nearby that he was later able to purchase.
The Boot was a typical roadside pub, popular with local farm labourers as well as passing trade. It would have been an exciting place in which to grow up. The nearby hunt, the Dunston Harriers (stags and hares), met at The Boot weekly in the winter season and there were seasonal harvest suppers, keenly contested quoits matches (George played for the home team) and always lots of singing. In fact, just before Christmas in 1911, two dapper gents (and probably completely unlike the usual drinkers) arrived on bikes having alighted from a train at nearby Tivetshall Station. Composers Ralph Vaughan Williams and George Butterworth had come to listen to the local ‘bors’ singing traditional folk songs, and with manuscript paper and pens proceeded to note down the music and the lyrics. Imagine the scene!
George and Angelina behind the bar, perhaps Annie and her two older siblings peeking into the tap room. Suffolk musician and historian, Katie Howson, has spent many years researching these South Norfolk singers (and much else besides) – do visit her fascinating website: https://katiehowson.co.uk/south-norfolk-singers-1911
There are links to all the songs, and you can hear the tunes too.
Tragically, George Butterworth was killed during the Battle of the Somme in 1916 aged 31, but he had already composed pieces based on the folk songs that he so loved – and that you can listen to today. Vaughan Williams finished ‘The Lark Ascending’ in 1914, just as the war was beginning and so it was not performed until 1920. Wonderful to think that the folk songs that had been sung for centuries in the fields and the pubs hereabouts were written down by these two men (and one or two others) as otherwise they may well have been lost.
George and Angelina would remain at The Boot for over 35 years as publicans: Angelina died in 1942 and George in 1955. Obituaries were published in the local Diss Express.
So, returning to Fred. On his return from war, probably in 1919, he would have been 28 and Annie 18. The Boot is very close to Carleton Rode and surrounded by farmland, which is probably how they met when Fred went for a drink in the pub.
They married early in 1921 – and the couple immediately left for a new life in Canada. On March the 19th, travelling third class, they boarded the SS Minnedosa, a Canadian Pacific Line steamship in Liverpool. The ship had been launched in 1918 and was used to repatriate Canadian troops returning home before it became a civilian transatlantic liner, often carrying émigrés like Fred and Annie.
We have recently been contacted by their great granddaughter, Deena Warren, and hope to add her account of their life in Canada.