In this blog we will be looking at articles from two journals that were first published in the 1980s.
The first is the short-lived publication ‘Dorset Tatler’. This magazine was only published between January and December 1988, but contains still contains some interesting articles alongside some adverts for very eighties fashions.
These include an article describing the pantomimes and plays that are happening across the county and beyond starring celebrities such as Matthew Kelly, Lorraine Chase and Jon Nettles, and our favourite article interviewing staff from museums across Dorset about their favourite items in their collections.
Roger Peers, the curator of the Dorset County Museum, chose a carving of a Roman figure, Kathy Callows, the recently appointed curator of the Priest house museum, chose a Steiff Teddy Bear and Graham Smith, curator of Poole Museum, chose a model of the HMS Pandora.
There are two vehicles amongst the selections, a Rolls Royce armoured car chosen by David Fletcher, librarian at the Tank Museum, and a boneshaker tricycle chosen by Roger Street, proprietor of the Christchurch Tricycle Museum. He says that the tricycle is one of the oldest in the collection and, despite its name, it is quite comfortable to ride. The Tricycle museum closed in 1995.
Yvette Staelens from Weymouth Museum chose the painting ‘Horse Racing and Fair at Lodmoor’ by an unknown artist. It was painted around 1870. She says
‘There is activity all around – a Punch and Judy show booth, a prize fight with people ringed around, a peg-leg sailor, soldiers, a Peeler – presumably on his way to arrest the pickpocket. Costume is portrayed really well, top hats were obviously ‘in’ at the time. You can stare for hours and still find more in it and its detail means that it is excellent for schools’ work.’
The painting is still on display at Weymouth Museum and is one of their most popular paintings.
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The second journal that we will look at is the Journal of the Dorset Family History Society. Volume One of this journal came out in December 1987 and contains advice for researching family history, stories that people have discovered about their ancestors and requests for help with research. One article that combines both a discovery and a request for help is ‘Lady Eliza – Rag Merchant’. This concerns Eliza Bailey, a rag dealer from Lyme Regis with an illegitimate daughter. A family story says that she was a wealthy woman thrown out by her family after having an affair with a stable groom. She was always known as Lady Eliza in the family and after her funeral a relative known as the Hon Lionel Bailey asked Mary to go and stay with him in South Africa. Many families have a story like this, and they rarely turn out to be true so we thought we’d see if this one was any different. The author, Eliza’s great grandson Gerald Rowe, had traced her to Lyme Regis in the 1888 census, but couldn’t find her before that.
We looked on Ancestry and were able to find her in the 1861 census living in Uplyme with her mother, a fruit dealer, and her six-year-old daughter. Her father appears on the 1851 and is a farm labourer, so it seems that she didn’t come from riches. We have not been able to find any records for a Lionel Bailey so that part of the story remains a mystery. We wonder if Gerald Rowe ever unravelled it.