Dear Rootschatter,
I needn't tell you how super impressed I am!
I didn't ever really think that he was on the Owen side of the family.
To give you some background, Arthur was married to Eliza Flude. They had children and then Eliza died from asthma during a miscarriage.
Arthur had five children under the age of 12 plus a business to run. He began to go down hill fast. The business was lost, the house (bought in the early 1850s by his now deceased, entrepreneurial father) was sold and he took to drinking. He then met up with Emily and I am not sure if she came to help with the children or what but the upshot was that Arthur, Emily and the children moved to Nottingham for a period of time and when they returned they were Mr and Mrs Owen.
The children did not approve. They blamed Arthur for their situation which saw them have to leave school and go to work, their descent in the social order, and the intrusion of Emily. Arthur tried to deal with it by asserting his authority but the children constantly rebelled which must have made for one heck of a life! None of them returned to London with Arthur, preferring to make their way in the world. My grandfather ran away to see when he realised that he might have to go with Arthur who in family legend became the vengeful Victorian papa.
It seems that he was a victim of circumstance but of course children don't always see it that way and apart from the youngest who returned with him, none of the other had contact with him until he was very old - if at all. Emily was always portrayed as the wicked step-mother.
My grandfather did go to see Arthur when he was ill, in about 1925, taking my grandmother with him. He had still kept the old family four poster bed and my grandmother told my father that Arthur was quite a terrifying figure when she met him. With a big beard and a gimlet eye. He died on Christmas day in 1926 and Emily died a few years later.
The story of him, in more prosperous days, chopping his youngest daughter's finger off with the carving knife because she pointed while he was carving the Christmas goose may be apocryphal but goes to show the view his children had of him.
Looking at things from over one hundred years later I do feel sorry for Arthur. I don't think he was quite the family ogre. He took in the orphaned Sydney Long and I see that he completed the 1911 census form for one of his neighbours which means that he must have been approachable enough for them to go and ask his help.
Anyway. thanks once again for sorting out Sydney for me.
Bye for now
Kirk
