JUNE: Roots of Steel

If we start at the beginning of my life, I was born eight years after the First World War. My father Charles Wilfred Whitham was the director of a steel business in Sheffield, England, Henry Whitham and Sons. He had inherited the file and steel works business when he was only 13, from his father, who died in his 30’s from diabetes.

The Steelworks originally was started by my father's grandparents, Henry Whitham and Sarah Ann. (I have included a short pedigree chart, to help understand my family tree.)

Sarah Ann was the first child born to John Kelshey and his wife Jane in 1838, in Keadby, Lincolnshire, a rural farming community. She had four younger brothers. By the time of the 1851 Census, Sarah Ann age 13, had left home, presumably to be in service. We next find a record of her, the marriage to George Dawson from Ecclesfield, near Sheffield, on May 23rd, 1861. This took place in the church of Althorpe, county of Lincoln. (Althorpe is the village where lady Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales was born, and is buried. I wonder if Sarah Ann had worked in the Spencer service?) In the 1871 census, we find George and Sarah Ann Dawson living at 44 Butterthwaite, Ecclesfield, and they had five children. Dawson had started a file cutting business. Recorded on this census, the family had a young apprentice living with them, his name was Henry Whitham, born in 1851, and learning the steel trade.

In this1871 census, Dawson was 35, his wife Sarah Ann was 32, and Henry Whitham the apprentice was 19. George Dawson died in his 30’s of consumption, which is the same as tuberculosis today. It was a very common disease at that time. If you read any biographies from that period, most families lost someone to consumption. D H Lawrence is one person I think of, whole groups of his family died young from it, and he himself died of it too.

After George Dawson’s death Henry Whitham felt it was ‘his Christian duty’ (so my Mother said) to help Sarah Anne Dawson look after her five children, and help her run the steel works. In spite of the 13 years age difference, they were married on the 10th July1876, and they had one child in 1878, Charles Henry Whitham, who was my father's father (see chart). By that time Henry and Sarah had moved to 118 & 120 Psalter Lane, in Sheffield, they had 3 Dawson children still living at home with them, Annie, Arthur, and Frances, and their own son Charles, plus Henry’s brother, Arthur. He was living with them, and was also a file cutter. The Steel Works was then called Henry Whitham and Son. When Charles was old enough he also worked with his father, I have a good photograph of the two of them, father and son, standing at the door of their first workshop in Sheffield.

In 1913, after the death of Henry Whitham, his son Charles was in charge of the Steel Works. Charles met Ada Gertrude Brine, who had moved to Sheffield from Swindon, Wiltshire, where all her family lived, to work in Cole Brothers, a very elegant department store in Sheffield. All the girls who worked there lived in a large house in Broomhill, and on the early photos of my granny, Ada, she had exquisite clothes. I guess she was able to get them from Cole Brothers. Charles and Ada were married, and had a son on April 15th 1902, my father, Charles Wilfred Whitham.

Unfortunately, Charles had to travel to the United States of America. His agent and salesman for Henry Whitham & Sons, had been absconding with funds, so Charles went over to try to sort it out, and when he returned to England, with all the worry and strain, he had severe ‘diabetes mellitus’ for three and a half years, and was then in a coma for 5 days. He died on July 12th 1915. Ada Gertrude his wife, was expecting her third baby when he died. She was left with my father who was only 13, and his sister Dorothy, and another little girl, Joan, who was born after her husband’s death.

Charles’ death was registered by his brother in law, C.W.Street, who took over the management of the Steelworks until my father was a little older. The Sheffield Telegraph of 12/07/1915 carried an obituary of Charles Henry Whitham – Wesleyan. A copy can be found in the Central Library, Sheffield.

Sarah Ann, Kelshey/ Dawson/Whitham, my Great Grandmother, was an outstanding woman. She had been a teacher and when she married Henry, who was 12 years younger, she taught him to read and write, as he had not had much schooling. Sarah Ann Whitham had lost all her menfolk. Her first husband George Dawson, in his 30’s, then her second husband Henry Whitham died at the age of 62, in 1913. Her son, Daddy’s Father, had died in his 30’s.in 1915, so Daddy was the only man left. She apparently kept herself abreast with current events and mentally was very alert. Even at the age of eighty eight, she would invite a group of lively young people to her house, on Sunday evenings, and they had very interesting discussions. Daddy, her grandson used to go down and join her, and sometimes brought my Great Granny up to visit us in our house at 34, Barnet Avenue, in Bents Green, Sheffield.

Mummy told me that when Sarah Ann was young, she had to have her breasts removed, and apparently walked down to her doctors, no anesthetics then of course, had the surgery and walked back home, where she made a pot of tea and wrote a letter to her mother to tell her she was fine! What amazing strength some people had in those days, before any drugs and anesthetics! Not even any aspirin. She must be my most powerful relative.

When Charles her son, died in 1915, the steelworks, Henry Whitham and Son, was run for a few years by Wesley Street until my father was about 18 and was old enough to take it over. Daddy had to leave school very young and had done a brief metallurgy course at the University of Sheffield at the age of 16-17. He inherited a lot of responsibilities for his Mother and 2 sisters, as well as the employees in the steel works, who had worked for his father and his grandfather before that. Gradually they expanded and got larger premises and more workers and started to get their orders direct, not through an agent. By the time Daddy, a third generation took over, he moved to a larger factory on Countess Road in Sheffield, with perhaps 90 or 100 men. His family lived in the Totley Rise area of Sheffield, which is on the outskirts, and next to the Moors of Derbyshire. Although it must have been a very difficult time for him after his father's death, Daddy was able to have some wild boyish adventures with Wesley Street’s sons.

They had an old motorbike and built some wings on to it and took it up on to the moors above their house, and got it to do some hedge-hopping, by driving it fast and pulling up on the handle bar! Daddy told me that one day they had seen a trickle of gasoline running down a hill, which they had set fire to, and it ran all the way up the hill to a car that it was dripping from, which apparently blew up!

When he was taken to tea parties, to an older relative, she had a new ‘Flushing’ toilet in the house, and the water cistern was up in the attic. My father used to play up there, and when he heard someone enter the bathroom, just as they sat down, he would press the ball valve and it would wet their clothes and underclothes! Maybe the seriousness of his life forced him to do these wild things, or perhaps it is what a lot of boys without a father would do- I don't know, but he was always pretty wild.