Harriett Wombwell and Charles John Robinson in Numbers

Harriett Wombwell and Charles John Robinson had nine children. This resulted in – and here is an insight into the times – an astonishing fifty-five grandchildren. Harriett lived long enough to witness the birth of twenty-seven of them. Harriett therefore has to qualify as a grand matriarch of the first order. Even Queen Victoria only managed forty-two grandchildren.

Of course in the world that Harriett and Charles were born into, large families were the norm. Infant mortality was high, and life expectancy as a whole therefore lower. But even in those times, a little bit of wealth, coming in this case through Irish land rentals, enabled a better standard of living. The majority of the children survived, and once they had passed the age of five, the chances of them then reaching a healthy old age were dramatically increased, one of the major remaining risks being death during or after childbirth. On the evidence of these Robinson lines, any kind of birth control practice in the extended family was either only sporadically observed, or sporadically successful. The family spread far and wide and at an impressive rate.

Ratcliffe Highway, St George in the East, the parish where Harriett Wombwell was born. Note Jamrach’s animal shop across the road. From: https://www.flickr.com/photos/100027183@N07/9805332785

There must though have been an economic price to pay for this fecundity and new found longevity. Even when the Irish lands of Maria West had finally been auctioned off in 1881, Harriett’s legacy was a very divided one, even for her children. With the large families that these children then had, it cannot have taken very long for their inherited wealth to vanish. They were then left to make their own way through life using their own wits. Most – but not all – sought to find their way out of the London docks, and all that dockland life represented. Some of the children put the technical skills they had learned in the area into practice, through carpentry, engineering, and through engaging with emergent technologies such as bicycle manufacturing, radio equipment, and nautical instruments. Others fell back into more working class pursuits becoming plumbers, boiler repairers, and the like. There were branches too who were attracted to possibilities overseas, and who made their way to new lives and new possibilities in the dominions.

What all of them seemed to have in common, by and large, was the view that life in the London Docks was less a romantic idyll than an evil necessity. As soon as the opportunity came to move on, they did so. London, the great seducer, which had drawn into her web, Essex farmers like the Wombwells, and Irish emigres like Maria West, and brought them into contact with stalwarts of the maritime community, such as the Robinsons, was beginning to lose its allure. Many of the later Robinson descendants left London entirely and moved on, to the South Coast of England, even then popular as a retirement destination, to Yorkshire, to the West country, and to the New Worlds of Australia and Canada.

In 1805, Horatio Nelson famously pronounced, just prior to the Battle of Trafalgar that ‘England expects that every man will do his duty’. This exhortation however conceals the truth that his fleet and crews were extraordinarily cosmopolitan:

Apart from English, Welsh and Scottish, the Irish were by far the largest contingent with over 3573 men indicating that Ireland was their place of birth. There were over 361 American born sailors. There are examples of Swedes (78), Norwegians (25), Prussians (23), Russians (9), Maltese (25), and Italians (115). From France there were 20, and Spain 8. Even from land-locked Austria there were at least 5. From Canada, particularity Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, 31 men. 17 are listed as born in Africa. They were all probably black although race is not given. Similarly, 123 from the West Indies. Probably all former slaves, now free men and sailors. 

(From: http://www.historyhouse.co.uk/articles/nelsons_navy.html)

Such was the melting pot of Nelson’s fleet. Whether through desperation, compulsion, patriotism, vocation, or simply a sense of adventure, the assorted multicultural fleet of sailors and mercenaries did Nelson proud. For those Robinsons involved, heralding from Shadwell in the heart of the docks, such diversity can hardly have concerned them too much. Indeed, the Docklands population itself would have very much been a mirror of Nelson’s navy.

This was after all, just a part of what it meant to be part of a global trading empire in which movement of goods was accompanied by - as a natural concomitant - movement of people. This is not to say that these docklanders mixed particularly freely. Race, language, religion, colour, education and social class all played a part in the formation of numerous sub-communities within the whole, with the family being a prime unit of operation.

It is fair to presume that the average nineteenth century mariner would not have been awarded too many prizes for a life of temperance, sobriety and abstinence. The taverns and streets of Shadwell must have fairly hummed with scandal, gossip, and knowing looks. But even in such communities there must have been limits. And when Mary Weston – acting perhaps on the presumption that Charles John Robinson was dead, managed to acquire herself ‘three dark children’ in the space of five years, she must have crossed several lines. Blackwood, well over a century later, recording this in the Linen Hall Library would have raised his eyebrows and given a quizzical shake of his head whilst recording the details. For Mary, he wrote very simply ‘public performer?’, his question mark hanging heavily in the air.

In the end though, it is thanks to the amorous but adventurous Mary – with considerable assistance of course from Napoleon - that Charles John went on to meet Harriett Wombwell – and the rest as they say is history – Robinson history, to be precise.