Gibbons family

Centre of the Universe

by Jacqueline A. Gibbons

April 2015

Totley, centre of the world? A place where careers were shaped and where men and women developed remarkable lives within striking distance of the shadow of Sheffield? That's what I discovered when I started to look for what shaped my father's life.

Let's start from the beginning. I was never interested in family history: after all I thought I might discover that I was descended from wayward highwaymen, or perhaps an executioner (or two) of a previous era? Certainly the genealogy for Richard II is used up, so, I thought, best let demons lie on misty moors and that murky waters not be stirred.

However, this was not to be. I recently become interested in 'What made my father tick?' So, armed with a precious bit of time, I started reading some documents that outlined his life, another life, long before I was born. Since he was in the Navy, I started with a Royal Navy public archive document which gave the dates he enlisted and his service record.... of the First World War. At the top of the application form, 1916, in father's writing, was his address: Inglewood, Totley Brook Road, Totley Rise, Derbyshire. In geographic ignorance I looked it up to discover the village that is now included in the official parish that is Sheffield. However, as we know, during that period, it was an autonomous leafy enclave where you could escape from the smoggy grey and smokestacks of industrial England that was up the road, an hour or so away. I needed to get the feel of the place, to sense my father's beginnings, so I did two things which I could not have done before the Internet: first I found reference to the Totley History Group and saw pictures and photographs of their Great War Exhibition. This viewing was rather special, even exotic, since I was sitting in Toronto, Canada.

With help of the Totley History Group's genealogist, it seemed there weren't highwaymen, robbers or known executioners in my family, after all, though there were some marital unions where any feminist today would roll her eyes at the insensitivity of certain of those husbands towards their wives and indeed their children.

So the next thing to do was to visit. I flew to London, then came by train to Sheffield. I met one of Totley's historical experts at the Cross Scythes (now there's a spot which might have known a few highwaymen). There we exchanged notes, and chatted. We were joined by Nicholas, a cousin from Nottinghamshire, who was also curious about the grandfather from Totley, who we shared in common.

Totley Brook Road in 1914; Inglewood is the right hand gable below the handwriting (The Thompson Postcard Collection, photograph by R. Sneath of Totley)

We all then drove to the old family home, (a semi-detached, circa 1897) to get a sense of its dimensions and spaces (with permission of its owners, who were also interested in its history). I was informed that the garage had space where a carriage would have been housed, and adjacent, there was a door where a small stall for a horse, could have been accommodated. How these physical features take us instantly back to the past! Actually, I think Grandfather would have had a very modern motor car, since he would have loved new gadgets and new mechanical challenges.... but more on that later.

More personally, I felt that I was walking on the earth where my father had set out for war, 99 years ago: definitely strange and a bit other-worldly... Similarly, when we were sitting in the pub, I thought how father would have come home to Totley for occasional, often unscheduled or brief periods of leave during the First World War. Certainly, he would have stopped by the Cross Scythes for a pint, to catch up with local news, learn who they had lost, who'd been wounded or was missing?

The Gibbons family, William.G. standing, John H is the eldest son, standing to the right of his father in a three piece suit

In the exploring of this story, I had to ask "Who was Grandfather Gibbons?" William G. Gibbons was listed in the Marine Engineers' archives. He was known in the family as inventive: we learn that he had sought at least one patent, and that he was involved in breakthrough creative work that addressed ships' automatic steering, water tight doors and a new design for lifeboat derricks, the latter inspired after the tragic Titanic sinking.

We learned too, that grandfather worked with John Brown, which developed as Firth Brown, well-known throughout the North: this huge shipping and engineering company who made absolutely everything from steel precision implements and instruments; tools, engines, varied machinery and guns (ship, automobile, airplane, railway), in the early century; then many more guns, and all forms of armaments during the Great War.

Totley then, was, a bedroom community for the economic heartland that was the City of Sheffield. The region was a driving force of industry in the early nineteen hundreds. In fact, in 1912, their industrial products were being exported to Vancouver, New York, Boston, Montreal, Vienna, and Hamilton, Ontario; in 1918 the Company's financial accounts name exports to New York, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Freemantle, Melbourne, Sydney, Johannesburg, Calcutta, Rangoon, Madras, Mexico, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Shaghai, Vienna and Charleroi. We are also talking about most of the manufacturing needs to make a shop floor, a shipyard, or an aerodrome, a railway yard and all that can be associated with these. Utterly remarkable.

Totley's contribution to industrial revolution and progress around the world at the cusp of the 20th century cannot be underestimated. Those who commuted would have enriched local life and village infrastructure, i.e. local shops, repair stores, the building supplies of a rising community. Families would have enjoyed the emotional and aesthetic luxury of a gentler, kinder, country air environment that offered beautiful walks, and a change of pace from the long, polluted and grungy hours spent in the city.

We know that my grandfather used to enjoy walking in the countryside, and I imagine him concocting some of his creative inventions as he strolled through the local fields chatting with his sons, especially the eldest, John (also called Jack,) who was my father.

I cannot finish without noting some characteristics of my father, which would have developed in the those early years of the twentieth century: as a teen, himself, my father apprenticed in the tool and die trade. There, he would have known the immediacy of the shop floor both technically and interpersonally. (It then took my father another 25 years before he opened up his own engineering company close to London, where he used this knowledge along with his communications skills; talents he would have fine-tuned in his Totley years and brought to his maturity after the Second World War.)

This son of Totley, so to speak, was also an innovator and a risk taker (qualities perhaps shaped and developed from the grandfather). Father joined the Royal Naval Flying Service, in early 1918. He flew the early seaplanes, which were very experimental throughout that war. The technical background developed and learned by father, from those formative days would have been a godsend. The ocean environment for tiny seaplanes was not conducive to safety and reliability.

How proud and deeply thankful they all must have been on board his ship (Gibraltar,) on November 11th, 1918, when father wrote in the Ship's Log: Cessation of Hostilities with red crayon underlining! How formal, minimalist yet poignant.

Page from the ship's log of HMS Engadine. (c) copyright Fleet Air Arm Museum Archives

And lastly, this same Totley lad, continued his Naval Service after coming home for Christmas, after the Peace of 1918. Their ship went in Spring 1919, to join the Eastern Mediterranean fleet, sailing to Malta, Mudros, Crete, Constantinople and the Crimea: the latter where there was Bolshovik unrest and revolution. In fact this was where members of this fleet, and father's ship, took on board fleeing Tsarist Russians.

Aerial view of Constantinople, 1919

In conclusion, Totley's recognized heritage is the quiet, leafy and peaceful enclave, that we know. However, there is also the key early twentieth century component shared above: this centre of universe was a small region where there was state-of-the-art innovation and enormous economic influence, on the nation and across the globe.

White Russian evacuees: Novorossiysk, on board H.M.S. Engadine, 1919

And, for her sons, who survived..... adventure: swashbuckling abduction of beautiful and elegant White Russians during the summer of 1919. What tales that must have been shared, across the bar, of the Cross Scythes during the Christmas season of 1919!

Jacqueline A. Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus and Sociologist, living in
Toronto, Canada.*

*I am grateful to the archival knowledge and huge support of the Totley History Group. Also we are indebted to the archives of the Fleet Air Arm Museum, for kind permission to reproduce a portion of the page from the Ship's Log of H.M.S. Engadine, dating the end of War. Other photographs, here, are from the family archive.

Finally, I thank my father, John H. Gibbons for sharing his qualities of creativity, curiosity and professional inspiration of this life. His talents, and those of my grandfather, were clearly shaped by Totley's unique rural space, and her vibrant (though inevitably grey and grimy) urbanscape, next door.

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