Tag Archives: Leslie Daykin Jeffcoat

A Darling of Third Avenue

Heaton History Group’s Arthur Andrews was looking through some papers belonging to his father’s first cousin, Alison Jeffcoat, recently when he came across a page from ‘The British Dental Journal’ dated 20 February 1988, containing an obituary for a Professor Arthur Darling. Noticing that the professor had been born in Newcastle, he decided to do some research to see if there was, by any chance, a Heaton connection.

Happily for us, it turned out that, in 1912, Arthur Darling’s father, John Straughan Darling, who worked in insurance, had married Henrietta Jeffcoat, a clerk at a boot manufacturer and a great aunt of our Arthur, the researcher. The Jeffcoat family were living at 8 Bolingbroke Street at the time.

Indeed, for a time, the Darling family had lived at 36 Third Avenue, next door to the Jeffcoats at number 34.

Not only was Arthur Ivan Darling a distant relative of ‘our’ Arthur, he was also a direct descendant of George Darling, the brother of Grace, the Northumberland heroine who, in 1838, helped rescue passengers and crew from the shipwrecked, paddle steamer ‘Forfarshire’ off the Farne Islands.

Cutting his teeth

John and Henrietta Darling went on to have four children: Joyce, Edna Grace, Arthur Ivan (in 1916) and Kathleen.

The family relocated to the coast, while Arthur was still a young boy, so he was educated firstly at Monkseaton and then Whitley Bay Grammar School. He went on to Kings College University of Durham to study dentistry. On qualifying, he became a lecturer at the Newcastle Dental School on Northumberland Road where he was greatly influenced by the Dean of Newcastle, Professor Sir Robert Bradlaw, who encouraged him to obtain a medical qualification, as well as to carry out research into caries (tooth and bone decay) for his Masters. Arthur achieved all of this by the age of 29.

Vigour

At the time, Bristol University was looking for young people ‘of vigour and vision’ to enhance its department of dentistry. Arthur fitted the bill and so became Bristol’s first Professor of Dental Surgery in 1947 at the age of 30.

WWII had depleted all of the dental schools of staff, students and resources. At Newcastle Dental School, Professor Bradlaw had put the emphasis on discipline and research as a basis for progressive teaching by doing both himself. Arthur set about doing much the same at Bristol.

At first, it’s said that his blunt north country approach did not go down well at all. There was opposition from some of the part-time honorary dental surgeons and senior members of the medical faculty, who looked upon Arthur as a ‘young upstart’.

Arthur admired Jack Armstrong and his Northumbrian pipe playing and he emphasised his northern roots by singing Geordie songs at dental school concerts and anyway he was ‘too young to be a professor’! But he was a fighter, carrying on his, sometimes lonely, battles for full-time staff, resources and the power to use them as he saw fit.

Reputation

Gradually the dental school’s reputation grew, as more full-time staff were appointed and student numbers increased. Research papers were published. Arthur’s own work on enamel structures was highly-rated. The Medical Research Council set up its first dental unit at Bristol, with Arthur as Honorary Director.

Soon Arthur’s whole-hearted enthusiasm for teaching dentistry and advancing the dental school broke down the earlier hostility from the older members of the university and hospital staff. Through his own research, he achieved first a national and then an international reputation in the dental world.

He successfully attracted funds to the university too, including a large sum from the Wellcome Foundation for a new research wing at the dental school. He was rewarded with the position firstly of dean of the medical faculty and eventually that of pro-vice chancellor, where he continued to display his skills as an academic politician.

Honours

Nationally, Arthur became an important figure on the General Dental Council, at the Royal College of Surgeons, the Department of Health and on many other bodies.

His services to education and dentistry did not go unnoticed and he was rewarded with a CBE and many honorary degrees.

Home life

Arthur and his wife, Kathleen Pollard, had four children.

He is described as having had a great sense of fun and he enjoyed fishing, music, foreign travel and working with wood, becoming a competent maker of chairs and stools, enhanced by delicately carved designs.

Arthur Ivor Darling died on 22 December 1987.

Postscript: Yet another Arthur and another Andrews

A scrappy fragment of a newspaper photograph in a diary belonging to Arthur Darling’s uncle Leslie Daykin Jeffcoat (of whom we have written previously) led our Arthur (Andrews) in another direction.

He knew, from the 1911 census, that Leslie’s father, also called Arthur (keep up!), had been a foreman at a chemical company. The words he could make out on the above photograph led to the discovery that Arthur Jeffcoat worked for 45 years at Wilkinson and Simpson Ltd who had premises at 36 and 38 Newgate Street and also at Low Friar Street in Newcastle. Numerous advertisements can be found in the British Newspaper Archive for many and varied concoctions. One that caught our Arthur’s eye was for ‘Natural Health Salt’ , their own version of Andrews Liversalts. (Ed: Not more Andrews as well!)

Can you help?

If you know more about Arthur Darling, we’d love to hear from you. You can contact us either through this website by clicking on the link immediately below the article title or by emailing chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org

Sources

British Dental Journal – 20 February 1987

British Newspaper Archive

Ancestry

Findmypast

Acknowledgements

Researched and written by Arthur Andrews, Heaton History Group. Copyright Arthur Andrews and Heaton History Group except images for which permission to reproduce must be sought from individual copyright holders.

Leslie Daykin Jeffcoat

Leslie Daykin Jeffcoat, a son and great uncle at war

Our HLF-funded ‘Heaton Avenues in Wartime’ project has uncovered many poignant stories. That of Leslie Daykin Jeffcoat of 34 Third Avenue was especially moving for Heaton History Group member Arthur Andrews, not only because Leslie was Arthur’s great-uncle but also because, in the course of his research, he found a letter from the young soldier’s worried father preserved in the National Archives. Arthur takes up the story:

At the time of the 1911 Census, the Jeffcoat family lived at 8 Bolingbroke Street, Heaton. Leslie Daykin (his mother’s maiden name) was the youngest child of Arthur Jeffcoat, a chemist’s assistant, and his wife, Mary. Leslie’s older siblings were Eleanor Lilly (26), Henrietta (24), William Arthur (21) and Florence May (16). Leslie had been born on 2 June 1898 and so was just 12 year’s old at the time of the census. By 1916 the family were living at 34 Third Avenue, just a few doors from Jack Common and his family.

Serving soldier

From family records, it is known that Leslie enlisted in the army aged 18 years, on 3 June 1916. His enlistment papers described him as being 5ft 7 1/4ins, with fair complexion, fair hair and grey eyes. His chest measurement was 35 inches. He is pictured below in his military uniform.

Leslie Daykin Jeffcoat

Leslie Daykin Jeffcoat

Leslie’s occupation is given as an engineer’s clerk, working at the Armstrong Whitworth Naval Yard, Newcastle. He had been employed there for 2 years. Several pages of information exist on the British Army WWI Service Records about Leslie’s service as a gunner in the Royal Field Artillery. His military history sheet says that he spent from 3 June 1916 to 12 September 1917 in the UK, before spending from 13 September 1917 to 4 March 1918 with the British Expeditionary Force in France. While Leslie was away in France, like many thousands of other parents and loved ones, his father and mother were concerned to know their son’s whereabouts and how he was. His father, Arthur Jeffcoat, wrote two letters to his regiment. The first was written on 13 December 1917 and the second, below, was written on 23 December 1917.

Arthur Jeffcoat's letter  about his son

Arthur Jeffcoat’s letter

The transcription is as follows:-

‘Sir,
Further to your Army Form B104, Ref no FJ of the 15th inst. We should be glad if you could tell us if our Son Gnr L.D. Jeffcoat 232642, D Battery, 240 Brigade RFA,
BEF France has been moved to another front or have you any other information, as we are really anxious.
When we last heard from him he was at the 48th Divisional Signal School.


Yours respectfully
A Jeffcoat’

The two letters are logged in the service records and stamped as having been received. The Action Taken column has comments made but they are not readable. There is no record in the family archives of any reply.

Honourable discharge

Leslie returned to the UK on 5 March 1918 and spent time at Fusehill Military Hospital, Carlisle and Auxiliary Military (Primary) Hospital, Penrith until he was discharged as ‘Being no longer fit for war service’. The reason for no longer being fit was given as a ‘paraspinal haematoma’. This could have been caused by a fracture to his spine. Leslie was honourably discharged at the age of 19 years and 11 months. On discharge, he received a certificate

Leslie Jeffcoat's WW1 discharge certificate

Leslie Jeffcoat’s discharge certificate

Leslie also received the WWI British War Medal and the WWI Victory Medal.

Leslie Jeffcoat's medals

Leslie Jeffcoat’s medals

After the war

Leslie must have been known to tobacconist William Castle’s family from 47 Tenth Avenue as, on 2 June 1925, he married William and Elizabeth’s youngest daughter, Ruth. On the wedding certificate, his occupation was given as ‘solicitor’s clerk’. The couple went on to have a daughter, Alison, born on 10 January 1929. During WW2, Leslie served as an honorary lieutenant in the Home Guard in Tynemouth, his adopted home town. At some time he left his job as a solicitor’s clerk and became an insurance agent until his retirement. He died on 24 January 1972.

It was when Leslie’s daughter, Alison died in 2014, that I found Leslie’s medals and more unusually, his spurs (as worn in the above photograph) and leather identity tag with his name and army service number impressed upon it:

Leslie Jeffocat's ID bracelet

Leslie Jeffocat’s ID bracelet

Jeffcoat's spurs

Leslie Jeffcoat’s spurs

These items were previously unknown to me and are very precious. They formed a key part of my continuing family history research. Once I knew Leslie’s army service number, I looked it up on the WW1 Army Service Database. This is by no means complete as a lot of paper records were destroyed by fire during WW2. However, much to my surprise, I found there were 17 pages relating to Leslie. I printed them off and used them as the basis for this contribution to Heaton History Group’s ‘Heaton Avenues in Wartime’ HLF-funded project

Leslie Daykin Jeffcoat: 2 June1898 – 24 January 1972. Regiment No. 232642, Rank:- Gunner R.F.A (Royal Field Artillery) 240 Brigade, D Battery, 48 Division

Arthur Andrews

Can you help?

if you know more about Leslie Jeffcoat or anyone who lived in First to Tenth Avenue during World War One, please either leave a comment on this website (by clicking on the link immediately below this article’s title) or email chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org

William Castle

Castles of Heaton

Heaton History Group member, Arthur Andrews, has been researching his family tree. Luckily for us, although Arthur lives in Whitley Bay, a number of his family members lived in Heaton, including during World War One, the period we’re researching for our ‘Heaton Avenues in Wartime’ project. Here is Arthur’s poignant account of the life of William Castle and his family.

‘My great-grandfather, William Castle was born in London on 24 July 1858.  He was the third of the six children of John and Susan Castle. Susan came from Southborough in Kent and John from Letcombe in Berkshire. We know that by 1861, when William was two, his father was a domestic servant/valet and the family were living in Lillington Place, London. Ten years later, with William still a schoolboy, they were in Paddington.

William Castle

William Castle

Country estate

‘However by 1878, for reasons I haven’t yet discovered, 19 year old William had moved to the other end of the country. He had followed his father into domestic service and was, at the age of 19, employed as a footman to a wealthy Northumberland couple, Watson Askew Esquire and the Honourable Sarah Askew. His new home was what can only be described as a stately home, Pallinsburn, near the Scottish border. A bit different from Paddington!

Pallinsburn, Northumberland

Pallinsburn, Northumberland

‘I managed to find records relating to William’s time at Pallinsburn in the Northumberland Archives at Woodhorn and so know that his starting wage was £26 a year but that within a year, he’d been promoted to the role of First Footman and earned an extra £2pa. The Askew family’s expenditure books show that he received an advance on his wages occasionally.

‘While at Pallinsburn, William was presented with a small, personally inscribed, leather bound bible, which I still have. The bible has gilt edging on all the pages and a decorative metal clasp and ornate metal corner protectors, which make it quite special. Expenditure records suggest it cost £3 to purchase, quite a lot of money at that time. The inscription says “William Castle, from honourable Sarah Askew March 10th 1880“. We can only speculate as to what prompted the gift.

Bible presented to William Castle

Bible presented to William Castle

Inscription in William Castle's Bible

The 1881 census shows that William was still living and working at Pallinsburn but the final reference to him in the family expenditure records is in May of that year, when his annual pay of £30 is recorded.

Heaton home

‘The next I know of William, he was working as a tobacconist on Shields Road and living above the shop at number 145. On 31 July 1884, he married 22 year old Elizabeth Stanners, a shepherd’s daughter from the small hamlet of New Etal in North Northumberland. The wedding took place in a Primitive Methodist chapel in Milfield, a few miles north of Wooler, which is still used for worship today. The newly-weds seem to have immediately come to live in Heaton, which must have been as big a shock for Elizabeth as the move from London to rural North Northumberland had been for William.

‘Between 1886 and 1900, Elizabeth and William had four children, John, Eleanor Susan (known as Nellie), Winifred (‘Winnie’) and Ruth. During this period, the family lived at various addresses not too far from the Shields Road shop, including 172 Tynemouth Road and 5 Charles Street, before moving, by 1900, to 47 Tenth Avenue. William kept his tobacconist’s shop until  September 1915, when he retired, receiving a silver fruit bowl from his staff. I still have the bowl.

William Castle's fruit bowl

Just before then we have found a reference to him in the local newspaper: On 25 March 1915, his gift of cigarettes to the sick and wounded of Armstrong College Hospital was publicly acknowledged.

John

‘The Castle children all attended Chillingham Road School, newly opened in 1893 to accommodate the growing number of children in the rapidly expanding suburbs of Heaton and Byker. Eldest boy John was among its first cohort. He was registered as pupil number 91 on 17 November 1893. He went on to the secondary school, which he left on 21 July 1899 to join his father’s business as a ‘tobacconist’s assistant’. I have at home, a lovely memento of John. In 1904, he was given a fine wooden smoking cabinet, with a small engraved plaque, which reads “Presented to J Castle for meritorious work, by the proprietors of The British Advertiser, Dec 1904″.

John Castle's smoking cabinet

Sadly, less than two years later, John died at home in Tenth Avenue, aged only 20, of appendicitis, not a disease we normally think of as fatal today.

Nellie

‘Nellie also went to work in her father’s shop until, in 1912, she married a young Irishman, Arthur James Andrews, in St Mark’s Byker.

Nellie and Arthur Andrews on their wedding day

Nellie and Arthur on their wedding day

Her husband was a dentist who, at the time of their marriage, worked and lodged in Wallsend. They went on to have five children: Dorothy, Ronald William, Marjorie, Nellie and another Arthur, Arthur James. In 1931, however, seven year old Dorothy and her father died of meningitis within days of each other. Nellie, widowed with four children at the age of 31, left the family home at 137 Heaton Park Road to live in Whitley Bay. Youngest son, Arthur, who you might have guessed was my father, was brought up by his grandparents to ease the burden on his mother.

Winnie

‘Winnie married Frederick Justus Hurdle, a Canadian engine fitter, on 18 October 1916. Within three months, they left for Canada, perhaps to get away from the war, which was causing such distress and hardship at home. Perhaps Winnie found it hard to settle or maybe because the war was over, she and Frederick returned in June 1919 but, in yet another tragedy to hit the family, Winnie died of meningitis just three months later.

Winnie Castle

Winnie Castle outside her Toronto home

Her widowed husband returned to Canada. As I write this, we’re reminded that meningitis is still a killer, with a new vaccine for all babies having just been authorised.

Ruth

‘Youngest daughter, Ruth, is pictured here outside the family home at 47 Tenth Avenue,  in the earliest photograph Heaton History Group has seen of the avenues.

Ruth Castle outside 47 Tenth Avenue

Young Ruth Castle outside 47 Tenth Avenue

Ruth married Leslie Daykin Jeffcoat of 34 Third Avenue in 1925, if not quite the boy next door, then not far off. But theirs is a ‘Heaton Avenues in Wartime’ story which I’ll tell on another occasion.

 Heaton resting place

‘After William’s retirement and with two of their four children having died prematurely, he and Elizabeth continued living on Tenth Avenue for another ten years, before moving in 1920 with youngest daughter, Ruth, to a much larger house in Shotley Bridge. Elizabeth died on 28 February 1929, aged 69 years and William a little over a year later on 5 May 1930, aged 72. William’s estate amounted to almost £10,000, showing how far the footman and the shepherd’s daughter had come.They returned to the area in which they’d spent most of their married life to be buried together in the family grave in Heaton and Byker Cemetery with John, the son, and Winifred, the daughter, who had pre-deceased them.  It was to be less than a year before a son-in-law and granddaughter were to join them.’

Can you help?

This article was researched by Arthur Andrews.

Heaton History Group member, Arthur Andrews

Heaton History Group member, Arthur Andrews

It forms part of our HLF-funded, Heaton Avenues in Wartime project. If you have a story to tell about your family or would like to help us research the history of Heaton, please contact: chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org Arthur would especially like to hear from anyone who has a photograph of William Castle’s tobacconist shop on Shields Road or has any information about the British Advertiser.