George William Mockett
18th August 1867-11th March 1949
George William was born on 18th August 1867 to Elizabeth Mockett nee Ratcliffe aged 34 and Thomas Mockett aged 40. Thomas and Elizabeth had married on 24th November 1854 at St Leonards Church, Upper Deal.
They appear to have lived in Upper Deal most of their married lives but were at Beach Street by 1911. Thomas Mockett was an agricultural labourer on his marriage certificate and Elizabeth was a servant.
George was the ninth of 13 children and his siblings were as follows:
- John Mockett born in 1857. John married Agnes Miriam Gunner in 1898 at Eastry. Miriam had been born in Wandsworth.
- Sarah Elizabeth Mockett who was born a year later in 1858. Sarah died at the aged of 6 in 1864
- Frances Ann Mockett who was born in1859. Frances married Richard Canney in 1881 at Eastry and died in Deal in 1927.
- Phoebe Mockett born in 1862 who married Alfred Hopkins in 1893 at Strood and died in 1909
- Ellen Mockett born 1864 . Ellen married William Allen at the old parish church of Walmer in 1859 and George William was a witness at her wedding.
- Stephen Mockett was born in 1862 and married Eliza Ann Goodban. Stephen died in 1938
- Thomas Mockett born in 1866. Thomas married Elizabeth Groombridge in Dover in 1894. He died in Folkestone in 1943
- George William Mockett was born next in 1867 – my Grandfather
- Charles Edward Mockett born in 1869 and married Adelaide Celia Philips in 1895 in Eastry.
- Frederick James Mockett (called Frank) was born in 1871 and married Emma Louise Coleman in 1899 in Ashford Kent where they continued to live
- Richard Mockett was born in 1873. Other than in the 1881 census when he was a student aged 7. I cannot be sure what happened to Richard but have found one working in Gloucester as a servant which could just be him as I cannot find a death certificate
- Alice Mockett was born in 1874 and married Stephen Robert Newing in 1899 in Strood, Kent. Alice died in 1950 aged 76
- Jane Elizabeth Mockett was born on 18th May 1878 and married Albert Stanley Howard in 1915 in Eastry.
Typing this out makes me so glad that I was born when I was and not 100 years earlier or I would certainly have had more than 3 children!
George William and Alice had nine sons and the only photo I have of them as a family is this one
Sadly I do not know a great deal about George William as he and Florence died when I was just 7 years old. I do remember going up to see them on my own once. It was not a long walk up the Vale to their house but I remember feeling very grown up going alone.
The information that I do have about him all comes from the census forms. In 1871 he is still a toddler aged 3, living with his parents and 8 siblings in Upper Deal Road.
These articles about Upper Deal at that time are quite interesting
http://www.eastkenthistory.org.uk/place:upper-deal
http://www.eastkenthistory.org.uk/place:photos-around-upper-deal
The second link shows Upper Deal as it must have looked in the time that George William lived there – so different to today!
In 1881 George William is still living there with his family and is a farm labourer but ten years later he is still living with his parents but is a bricklayer. This is obviously when he started on his career as a builder.
George William and Alice Florence Pysden married on 10th September 1892. I have a copy of their marriage certificate and it states that his father Thomas is a labourer and Alice’s father – Thomas Pysden – is a blacksmith from Upper Deal. The witnesses were George’s brother Stephen and Alice’s sister, Emma Kate Pysden.
George and Florence wasted no time in having children as the first of nine sons was born the following year.
- Horace George was born on 16th July 1893.
- Harold Thomas followed the following year on 31 December 1894 and
- Bertie William was born in 1897. Sadly he died in June 1898 and Teddy used to say that it was because the nanny let the pram fall over the sea wall but I have no proof of this at all.
- Walter Richard followed the following year in 1899. Sadly he died of injuries in WW1 sustained when the ship Agamemnon came under fire in the Dardanelles. Walter was injured and died a few days later. Hugh has a book about that war and it mentions Walter in it. I have found this site about the war memorial at St Georges Church, Deal, with Walter’s name on it. http://www.roll-of-honour.com/Kent/DealStGeorge.html
- These sons were followed by Leslie Stephen in 1901
- Frank Hubert in 1905
- Alfred Ernest William in 1909
- Wilfred Arthur in 1911 and finally
- Hugh Norman in 1913 (always known as Norman)
I shall be writing about the sons in later pages.
I have been unable to find the family in the 1901 census but by 1911 they are living at 155 Beach Street, where Norman was born.
I have recently found that in WW1 George joined the RAF in some way. It does not give me much information about his service and as he must have been 47 when the war started I can only assume it was in some role on the ground.
I have a copy of a letter that Norman sent to Alfred in June 1933 and the address is Elmbank, Park Lane, Deal so I presume he is living there with his parents.
When Norman was aged about 20 he moved to Broadstairs to work at the estate agents called Daniels at the top of Broadstairs High Street and so George and Florence moved there too in January 1935 buying Inglewood in Vale Road having found it thanks to Norman.
Florence and George must have had a very worrying time during the war. Having given birth to nine sons they had lost one son as a baby and a second in WW1 and then in WW2 they had the two older sons in the Navy. The fifth son, Frank, was a prisoner of war for 4 years in Poland after his ship had sunk off Buenos Aires and they did not know for 9 months if he was alive or dead and then my father was away, fighting in the desert for nearly five years. Fortunately, both Frank and my father came back safely after the war.
Alfred had jumped ship in the late 1920’s and was living in America during the war. Florence wrote to him regularly, which must have been quite a job for her as she would have left school at 10 and writing was not an easy task. When she wrote, she never used any punctuation and very few capital letters making her letters difficult to read. I have typed up some of her letters and put them in a separate post.
From the letters, I have realised what a hard time they had during the 30s in the Depression. Florence took in guests (I think they were holiday makers rather than lodgers from the way she talks about it) and George sold off his work tools to save having to pay 6/- 6d (32.5p in todays money) a week for storage for them.
There was a big epidemic of Spanish Flu in 1948/49 and George died of it on 11th March 1949 followed two weeks later by Florence ,also of the flu. I remember my mother saying how incredible it was that they were in separate rooms when ill and although she did not think that they were very happy together, Florence knew that George had died without being told.
George left an estate valued at £5593 17s 8d between the seven sons and in todays money it would be worth about £197,578.86. Now in January 2022, Hugh found that the house is up for sale at the sum of £700,000.
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Alice Florence Mockett
1872 – 25 MARCH 1949
Alice Florence nee Pysden and always known as Florence, was born at the end of 1872 in Thanet. I cannot be positive but think she was born in Ramsgate as her parents were married at St Lawrence Church Ramsgate, and she was baptised at St Georges Church in Ramsgate. Alice never really knew how old she was as, from a letter written by her in 1933, she says her mother never really told her. She was guessing then that she was aged 65 or 66.
I only seem to have the three photos of Florence, the one above, the one with her seven surviving sons and one with Wilfred and Alfred. I have already added the family photo in the posts about her husband George William and her son, Norman so will not do so again
Her parents were Thomas Pysden ((1849-1899) and Alice Sarah Pysden (1850- nee Morisson. Thomas was born in Margate in the parish of St John’s Church and Alice was born to David Morison and his wife Ann nee Collins at Ramsgate. I have traced the Pysden family back to the early 1600s. The Pysdens mostly lived in Margate and worshipped at St John the Baptist church there and I was most fortunate as someone had posted all the church records online so I was able to trace all the families back.
St John the Baptist Church Margate where the Pysden’s worshippedThis photo of St John’s church was taken from a postcard dated November 1905
Thomas and Alice had ten children with Alice Florence being the eldest. Her parents moved to Deal shortly after Florence was born as her father is then working in Walmer as a blacksmith and all her siblings were born in Deal
Florence was followed by:
Emma born in 1873
Jane 1878 – 1891
Julia born in 1878. In the 1891 census Jane was a nurse girl at the age of 13.
Thomas born in 1881
George born in 1884
Ellen born 1885
Jesse born 1887
William in 1890
Walter in 1892. In the 1911 census Walter was a hairdressers assistant aged19
Florence gave birth to nine sons with 20 years between the first and last. Either she or her husband George, recorded the births on the back of the family photograph from 1919 and this is a what they wrote
I do know that when I was born, after having 9 sons of her own, that Florence would smock nightdresses for me for the sheer pleasure of having a girl to do it for. She did have other Granddaughters but they did not live close by as I did.
My cousin, Kathie, has kindly sent me copies of letters written by Florence to Kathie’s father Alfred, in America and I thought it might be of interest to add them to this blog and have set up a separate post of them. They give a great insight into life during the depression and to our family and have helped me to find where Frank was when his ship was sunk and where he was a prisoner of war for four years. Florence would have left school at the age of 10 and this is evident from the fact that the letters are written exactly as she spoke and with no punctuation whatsoever.
I have just had an email from Kathy. Her father, Alfred, always said that he thought his father was not George William but was the doctor called Alfred Mason. I do remember hearing that my Grandmother had a photograph of the doctor on the piano. Kathy said that when Alfred left home to join the Merchant Navy, his mother gave him a locket with his photo in. One day he dropped the locket and the metal ring holding his photo in fell out. Alfred then looked at the photo more carefully and found a photo of Alfred Mason behind it which must have been why he said he thought that was his father. She also told me that he was always the one sent to fetch the doctor or to go see him to get medecine for the family. and that whenever he went to see him, Dr. Mason always sat him down and asked about him, his schooling, his studies.
Kathy has had her DNA done a few years ago and has found a lot of cousins on the Pysden side but none at all on the Mockett. She also has cousins on the Alfred Mason side. I find it quite incredible to think that over 110 years later, we realize that Alice had an affair.
Kathy has now kindly sent me photos of the locket showing Alfred at the age of about 6 or 7 and the photo of Dr Alfred Mason (I wonder if that is how my uncle got his name) in the locket.
Florence died at Inglewood, Vale Road, Broadstairs two weeks after her husband. Her will left an estate of £1197 10s 3d which in todays money would be worth about £25000.