Newcastle & Newspapers

I have this loose idea floating around in my head that some day I'd like to write a book about Newcastle's history from the point of view of both my own and my past family's perspective. You know, a sort of exploration of the corners of the town/city which have a 'connection' with my ancestors and I. I have been looking into my family tree, on and off, for more than 30 years, but have never properly focused in on my links with the city in which I was born in 1964. Genealogical research on one's family is never ever really 'complete', but sooner or later I'm gonna have to bite the bullet and get my Newcastle connections well and truly sorted.

The roots of my mam's direct line (the Lothians/Lowthians) go back to Cumberland. I think there is a distant cousinship to Isaac Lowthian Bell, the great Tyneside industrialist, and his granddaughter, the explorer Gertrude Bell - whose line also hails from Cumberland. Anyway, my mam's family arrived in Newcastle c.1850 and, well, here we still are today. My dad's line (the Southwicks) arrived on Tyneside c.1870 from the Black Country - but married into other, maternal lines which have a presence in Newcastle going back to at least the 1820s. Across the two sides of the family I have ancestral interests in central Newcastle, the Blandford Street area, the old streets around 'Eldon Garden' off Percy Street, Benwell, Denton Burn and some others I can't recall right now. And if I get myself sorted, there'll be plenty of other places to investigate, too!

Now I'm not going to bore you with the fine detail, but there are tons of problems with my paternal line in particular. My grandfather, Walter Southwick, and his father (also Walter), have proved to be pretty elusive. They just seem to have had a knack for avoiding officialdom and kept wandering around. Walter Jr is especially troublesome, research-wise. His birth in 1906 (Hanover Square, Newcastle) was registered under his mother's surname, which took some finding; he is not immediately traceable on the 1911 and 1921 censuses; then he gets married in London and fathers my dad in 1936; and, at 48yrs of age, he dies in Newcastle in 1954. I didn't even have a photo of him until quite recently.

In the past few months, though, things have began to appear out of the mist. I found a newspaper report that indicates that a "W.Southwick" enrolled in the army in the 1920s, was posted to the West Indies, then promptly deserted. I'm pretty confident this IS my Walter, but can't be 100% sure yet. I will have to apply for the chap's army records, I guess.

Then, just yesterday, I saw that FindMyPast, the genealogy research company, were offering free access to all their newspaper records until 10am on Monday 6th June 2022. So I thought I'd have a look to see if my grandfather, Walter Southwick (Jr), popped up anywhere.

There was no reference to the fall-out following his supposed army desertion, but, amazingly, I fell upon three other mentions of his law-breaking. In March 1931, he was caught pinching a large boxful of items from the Palladium cinema in Newcastle's Groat Market (it used to stand where Thomson House was later built). He was apprehended by a waiting PC whilst lowering the goods, then himself, from a rear window. The stolen goods included clothes, towels, cutlery - and basically anything he could get his hands on during the burglary.

He was hauled before 'The Bench', found guilty, but in view of the man's run of bad luck they decided to take a sympathetic view and remanded him in custody for arrangements to be made for some help to be obtained for him through the Church Army.

OK, then, so that's another part of Newcastle I've now got an interest in: The Palladium in the Groat Market!

In November of the same year (1931), he popped up as a "jobbing gardener" at Pontefract Police Court, accused of pinching brushes and other cleaning materials to the value of approximately £3 from Upton Council School. He was also found to have a "football bladder" in his pocket. He got six months' hard labour. And furthermore, it was added that he had been convicted several times previously at Newcastle. I guess I've got some more Toon research to do, then!

No wonder the man is hard to find. In the Pontefract case he supposedly was of "no fixed abode"; but I know that he spent some time in London in the 1930s (where my dad was born), including, probably, the war years. But then, in October 1949, he mysteriously appears as a "43-year-old labourer of Duke Street, Newcastle" in Penrith Court, after stealing a bicycle from a farm in Plumpton, Cumberland. It seems that he nicked the bike, rode to Greenhead and was arrested there. What was he up to, I wonder?

There were a couple of other suspect incidents, too, involving Walter Sr (his dad), and even a possible street fight in which his granddad, Joseph, was embroiled in Darlington in 1868. And all of this extra detail from plain old newspaper reports - brilliant!

So do have a look for your ancestors in the freely-available FindMyPast newspaper database before the offer expires on the morning of 6th June. You never known what you might find.