Edwin Bayliss

[Lynne Tann-Watson]

Hello again. After the brilliant response and the help I received from my first post, I thought I'd present my biggest genealogy problem. My cousin and I have been working on it for many years and still not been able to solve it: My gt gt grandfather was Edwin Bayliss, a blind lay preacher and musician who lived most of his adult life in Westminster. Census returns give his place of birth as both Westminster and Birmingham and he was born around 1830. I have most of his information from 1858 onwards but I can't find him on the 1841 or 1851 census returns. He married in 1870 and his certificate shows his father's name as Samuel, a harness maker. Edwin is shown as widower. I can't find a previous marriage. When He and Emma Williams married, they already had four children and Emma was six months pregnant with the fifth. They married in Deptford and are shown as "of this parish" though they actually lived in Westminster. I have a typed sheet that Edwin dictated to his grandson, about his life but some of it doesn't fit in with other info we have. His birth, parentage and early years are a complete mystery and he remains the ancestor I am most eager to know about. Anyone got any suggestions on this?

[avm228]

OK so this is his first census sighting?

1861 census: RG9/48/96/36

Private House 3, New Peter St, St John Westminster

Edwin Bayliss Head Mar 30 Street minstrel? Warwickshire Birmingham Blind
Emma do Wife 25 Warwickshire Birmingham
E J do son 3 Middx Chelsea [Edwin Joseph Bayliss, mmn Williams, Jun qtr 1858 Chelsea]
A H do son 1 Middx St John’s [Arthur Henry Bayliss, mmn Williams, Sep qtr 1860 St Margaret Westminster]

[avm228]

Have Emma’s origins been traced?  Was she really from Birmingham?

[avm228]

Interesting to see (from an 1864 newspaper item) that Edwin was a member of the Duck Lane Club, which worked with the One Tun Ragged School in the poorest part of the Westminster slum to provide education to poor children and improve their prospects.  His son Edwin must have received some education - when he married at 17 in 1875 he was a clerk, signing the register in a beautiful and confident hand.

[Lynne Tann-Watson]

avm, yes that's the first census reference to him. I also have the birth certificate of his first child in 1858.
No, I haven't found anything about Emma's origins either, partly because she too gives different places of birth and partly because the name Emma Williams is so sommon. On the marriage certificate it gives her father as Thomas Williams, blacksmith.
Edwin and family lived in the accomodation of the Westminster Working Men's club, which Duck Lane club became, for most of their lives as a family.

[avm228]

Ah - not all that surprising then that they “eloped” to Deptford for their belated marriage, rather than marry in their community and admit to have been living in sin hitherto!

[avm228]

Presumably Edwin senior received education in Braille, if he was able to be a Bible/scripture reader?  Have you looked at where such education would have been available?

[Lynne Tann-Watson]

I have wondered if they didn't marry until news came of the death of Edwin's first wife, but lacking a name for her, I can't find out.
Apparently there was a Braille school very near Old Pye Street, so presumably he learnt there. The philanthropists of the era gave lots of help to people like him. Family legend says that he also taught Braille. I haven't particularly followed that up. I'll find the sheet he dictated about his life, including the cause of his blindness, and post it.

[Lynne Tann-Watson]

This is the piece about Edwin's life however, he seems to lie or fantasize or something so I don't know what to believe:

A few items of family affairs, dictated to my son Cyril by father (about 27 years ago)

Grandfather married a Miss Wallace. His occupation was farming. He owned a farm at “Shillgrill” 7 ½ miles from Lichfield, South Staffordshire. Family sold up farm and a portion of them went with Grandfather to Australia taking with them various family relics. One of Grandfather’s uncles was in the iron trade being one of the firm of Bayliss, Jones and Bayliss, who had a large iron manufactory in Wolverhampton. Another uncle, Henry Bayliss, did not like the iron trade and lived some 30 miles from Lichfield (probably Madesley) and may have been the father of Sir Wyke Bayliss, the artist. My father bought the farm from Grandfather. There was an aunt who had a house at Walsall on the hill, it was said very wealthy, but she is now probably dead and her daughter, name of Clayton, would inherit the property. In 1856 I married Emma Ann Williams, (who was our servant) daughter of a blacksmith residing at Birmingham, at a church between Walsall and Bucknall. A few months after marriage, going home I swam a stream, to escape from some Gypsies and got inflammation in my eyes, and while sitting in church became partly blind. The sight was lost thorugh lack of proper attention. A woman professing to know how to cure me proving a fraud.

                                             ----------------------------

Uncle Arthur speaking:-

A rather interesting thing to me, is that when working at the A & N I have served on several occasions Lady Bayliss, and once she was with Sir Wyke and I was struck with the facial likeness to father, so much so that on arriving home I told them about it. This would bee about 1919 or 1920. I have a cutting from the Daily Mail which I stupidly forgot to date) giving an account of Sir Wyke Baylis’ death viz:-
“We regret to announce the death of Sir Wyke Bayliss which took place suddenly on Thursday night at his residence at Clapham. The deceased was born at Madsley, Salop, in 1835, but 10 years later in consequence of the failure of the engineering firm in which the family was interested, his father moved to London, where he became known as a teacher of military and mathematical drawing. It was in his study that his son had the only real training he ever received, to use his own expression, and a thorough grounding in perspective decided the direction of his talent. At the age of 18 he entered an architect’s office, but the work never took a firm hold of him, and preserving his determination to become a painter he continued his studies towards that end.”

                                                                               (signed) A. H. Bayliss
                                                                                    May 23rd 1936